I was typing out a root-relative link in some Wordpress site this week, and remembered learning about them in “taking your talent to the web”. That was an influential book, it really explained the basics of this new web design thing so well. Another tidbit that came back: gifs stay crunchy in milk, jpegs do not.

The CMS_ui project dedicated some posts of the Drupal views module user interface from 2006, 2008 and 2011. I was heavily involved in that (1, 2 ), it was one of my first substantial contributions to the project as a designer. Still proud of this concept model.

Happy to see Herma’s work is part of this exhibition of artists’ books

Oh look, illuminated initials. Reviewing my two most recent journals, the abstract calligraphic initial and the medieval ways of stylized drawing are recurring themes. I think I’ll explore next steps in both. As a refresher, I have started works from the second Calligraphic Space series to my instagram.

If you like your noise experimental and underground, then know that momentumless identity is having a sale.

Soft-launching the tacit.studio website, in dutch.

An important part of my work as an information architect is modeling content into content types. Defining these building blocks begs the question: When is a content type?

I wrote the response above as a post to my other blog. Is this instant publishing?

The awakening from the meaning crisis lectures describe a looooong historic arc of how humans have sought to find meaning.

Designing in Dark Times looks interesting. Like this, not like this.

This twitter thread is a beautiful mini essay on geometry, beauty and mindmaps.

Ella Fitzsimmons has started writing weeknotes as well. Hers are much better.

Music: adventerous, global & longform live dj’ing with Acid Pauli:

• https://soundcloud.com/acidpauli/colors-below-the-ear
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfZu4BCi644

https://twitter.com/storyneedle/status/1321542078480945163

I said “write.as is quite nice”, but that’s only part of what happened here.

What made this instant publishing possible is that the source material for this post was already there as a note in my notes collection. I’m not comfortable with that type of coherent twitter thread that consists of one well worded full sentence per tweet. Which at the same time is the kind of tweetage that I find some of the most valuable.

I think too slowly, write even slower to respond in kind to this type of discussion. I don’t want to “be on Twitter” while trying to think/write my perspective.

(Also, these used to be blog posts and I still think it’s worth the effort to share this kind of thinking under your own URL instead of under the platform ones.)

What happened here is I already had some thoughts on this topic in a note. The initial tweet reminded me I had been thinking about that topic. I found that note, added and rewrote a bit and posted it to my blog. Even after posting I updated the post to add the two examples at the bottom.

I’m currently using Obsidian.md to do this soilwork of taking notes, writing down thoughts and linking them. Basic ingredients are local markdown text files. Write.as is a very light-weight publishing tool that also works well with markdown. Both Obsidian and Write.as follow the #hashtag convention for tagging things. The “share to twitter” feature in Write.as managed to send those along as part of the tweet I see. Nice.

This whole digital garden, second brain, personal knowledge management is a bit of a topic currently, but this post is meta enough as it is. A bit more on that is in personal knowledge management through the centuries

Written in response to https://twitter.com/eaton/status/1321534089967685644

The most obvious reason to create separate content types is because different content structure, different fields.

Other reasons to define a separate content type can go beyond differences in the needed field structure:

• Different editorial workflows.
• Governance: difference in content life cycles.
• A simple(?) way to segment who can access what

Yes, there are other tools available to achieve the above (i.e. taxonomy, roles, groups in Drupal parlance), but at a certain point, the maintenace and complexity cost of DRY (don’t repeat yourself) can become too high.

The definition of the function of a content type is a wider consideration than its functional-structural definition on field level alone.

(I suspect there’s an analogy to be made here with object oriented code. Not all giraffes, kangaroos, wolves, mice, cows, lemurs should be instances of the same mammal class?)

An example of “all in one”: in one case we pushed really hard on gathering wildly variable service-related content into a single content type for:

• future extensibility. Much of the service was info at first. Actual handling of service requests (order this, request that, subscribe to) will be added over time and can be made available across the whole set.
• governance: tighter control of who can create these items to reduce the chance of duplication, which was a problem

At the same time we created different versions of a training because even if most fields were shared, which ones were required varied greatly. No meaningful (predictable) shared set of what we could assume to be available. Hard to create view modes for that.

#contentmodeling #drupal

Just a quicky this week:

• Started reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Czikszentmihalyi. Very readable and accessible so far.
• Ton Zijlstra on his first 100 days with obsidian, pt. 1
• Treasure trove: nesslabs.com
• Lynda Barry podcast!

2020-43

Reaction videos, a whole genre on its own. Regarding music ones:

There’s the non experts that try to come up with their own vocabulary to express how they feel about what they hear:

• Metallica/Orion – Touching, beautiful
• Megadeth/Holy Wars… The punishment due – Madness!
• System of a Down/Aerials – grand and glorious!

And there’s the experts that confront themselves with collegues, but in a different genre that their own:

• Drums: Death/The Philosopher en deze – creative! (“He’s making this look terrifyingly easy.”)
• Vocalen: Type O Negative/Love you to death en deze – seductive!

Both versions offer a way back to your own first time hearing these, finding new ways to express what touched you.

Waiting to be seated

Short documentary about jazz musician Jackie McLean, the painful battle between artistic freedom and making a basic living.

Rewatched Margin Call, it’s fascinating. On with The Big Short.

More experiments in Lego printed Brunetti-style characters.

#weeknotes 2020-42

Further explorations in printing Brunetti-style characters. Looking into how to vary dress, hair, emotion, movement.

Ook bij de laatste strandtent van Terschelling graag allemaal een mondkapje op terwijl u wacht op een tafeltje.

My new favorite pen case, found at the second hand store. Turns out it is a medical case for people with diabetes. Three zippered compartments, great size.

New book arrivals: Post digital print by Alessandro Ludovico, Modes of criticism #5: Design systems, Offline Matters by Jess Henderson, This Human by dr. Melis Senova.

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” – CarlJung. Some of the books above seem related to this.

Continuing on last weeks note taking theme, Maggie Appleton has a great visual summary on Building a second brain, a course by Fortelabs.

“Being present in Life is to be emergent in the moment, not scripted. A lot of work depends upon people running their day by consciously pre-planned tasks in linear succession: It’s no wonder most all self-help methods with aspirations for commercial success are the same.” @socialwealth

I’m looking at how people use their journals, bullet or otherwise. An important aspect for me is that in my creative journal, the work can be undirected, free flowing. Anything goes. A place for process over results.

On personal knowledge management through the centuries. If note taking systems are your thing, then be sure to browse the the Taking Note blog archive. On the size of thoughts: “most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product.”

Initial experiments with Brunetti style characters in Lego-printing.

I listen to pretty heavy and hectic music. Still took me almost a year to crack Mirror in Darkness by Serpent Column. Managed to listen to the whole thing in one sitting this week and it finally clicked. Just in time for the new release!

On the other side of the spectrum: 3+ hours of chill with Namlook and Hawtin, 3+ hours of Klaus Schulze

Going to start listening to John Vervaeke on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. Via Futurethinkers. Added the youtube videos as podcast-able audio to my huffduffer (temporarily!)

Got lucky at the second hand store, found The Collected Sandman Covers as illustrated by Dave McKean for very cheap. McKean was a big influence on my own early (digital) image-making work. Great drawings, too (in Dutch).