21 December 09
I bring to you a few gems from a recent interview with Garrison Keillor with Tom Peters (more like ghost interview really, apparently Tom was too busy to talk to Garrison but that's Ok it's what Mr. Minnesota says that's important here).
Thoughts on post college life yesterday vs. today:
When I started out writing for the New Yorker I was living in a farmhouse in central Minnesota, because it was so cheap. It really removed a lot of the pressure of having to sell-sell-sell. I loved it there. I was desperately lonely, but that's not a bad thing.
I was sitting in a room upstairs at a desk that was a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood across two used file cabinets, looking at an Underwood typewriter, and typing on yellow paper. It was a contemplative life that had great, deep pleasure. I wouldn't know how to recover it today.
This, for me, is how the world has changed, that a man sits at a desk in utter silence, and the phone line is simply the phone line. Somebody calls, and you don't have to answer it. You sit in silence, and hours pass and you tap-tap-tap-tap at a typewriter. I will never, ever recover that life. It's gone forever. And the college students I know will never know that life.
On direction (and potentially management):
[Bob] Altman had the courage to remove himself a little bit, distance himself from the people in the scene, and to be a sort of reassuring, paternal presence. He gave them that freedom. You knew that all of those performers had an internal critic. He didn't need to add his own critical persona to it.
On acting in the movie A Prairie Home Companion:
When you're on the screen with Meryl Streep, you are furniture and you might as well just accept that fact.
Regarding U.S. Senators:
He was a U.S. Senator. You cannot tell these people what to do. They all see themselves as the future President of the United States.
On writing:
As you get older, you learn how to throw it out without much thought, without much pity. You look at a piece that you've written, and you take those first three paragraphs, and you dump them. You just rip them out. Usually, that's the part that needs to be thrown out, the big windup, the big introduction. The first page almost always can go. You learn to do that without regret. I edit myself much more quickly and mercilessly now than I ever could have 20, 30 years ago.
On becoming a nation of individuals as a brand (which is a notion and product line that Tom Peters created and promotes):
I think that the decline within manufacturing in this country is a terrible loss, and a cultural loss. I don't want us to become a nation of authors, humorists, and writers of sonnets. For one thing, I don't encourage the competition. But I just think that it's a terrible cultural loss for the country, as well as an economic loss, to lose the ethics of physical work.
My father was a carpenter. He worked with his hands. He was gifted with his hands. This was a life for him that had great dignity and meaning. This should be fostered. I hope that people don't follow my lead. I am a man who, in many ways, leads the life of a ten-year-old child. It's a very immature life. You have adults around you who are steering the ship.
Of course to really appreciate these quotes you should sit down and read the entire piece.
12 December 09
We should all get medals for making it through the last twelve months, like At the End of Star Wars Medals. This has been one hell of a year, one that I don't know I would ever want to repeat again. I'm all for having change in life but it's been a tad too extreme for just about everyone I know. Thankfully, those who had to endure the loss of employment and/or a family member are on the mend and we're all looking forward to a better year.
Rather than get all wordy about the past year I decided to put all my true feelings into pixel.
Before you ask—because several people already have—here are versions for you to display on your various computer devices (wide, full, and phone).
2 November 09
Just as I'm preparing to ramp up creative production on personal work here and in other places, I feel as though I've been hit by a virtual Mack truck in the middle of a quiet street. Last week I posted a quick little jab, and you may have even seen it. Not that a huge amount of work went into that effort but it definitely took more than a few minutes to get everything just the way I wanted.
Hours after posting I noticed something I had not seen before: other websites posting my content verbatim (or in some cases with a different headline of their own choosing) with a link labeled thusly: "via airbagindustries.com". That's "via". As in, "I found the content from someplace else and are passing it through to the next person." In my day if you reposted someone else's content you attributed the source either by quoting said material, and/or posted a label that started with the word "from." I don't recall seeing this just a year ago and it makes me wonder if someone needs to change the filter in the global water cooler.
Look, I'm not Merlin Mann here. I am under no delusions that any of the posts here at Airbag are worth a plugged nickel. But the change in word usage for attributing the source of the content is rather odd and potentially problem-causing in the future. Perhaps it's not so much a legal matter (rest in peace Stephen Ambrose), but more of a how do we prevent homo sapiens from devolving back into monkeys.
29 October 09
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF USER INTELLECT BASED ON ANTI-PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATIONS INCLUDED IN OPERATING SYSTEMS
5 September 09
The backseat of the car was draped in several layers of old bed sheets, towels, and "piddle pads" to help absorb what ever the cats could not hold back in their state of drugged out panic. As we had rented a car for this maneuver I suggested we let the felines have free rein, go ballistic if they wanted to. Not because I'm a freak like that, I've just always wanted to turn in a rental car that is in a state of condition that would suggest Hunter S. Thompson had come back to life and decided another drug induced road trip to Vegas was in order. Perhaps that's a lot of stress to put on some cats—here kitties, take some downers, some uppers, pee where ever you want too and pretend there are wolves chasing you inside the car while it is on fire. Instead all I got was some really freaked out pets who had shed half their weight in fur all over some old laundry. If only I was a member of a country club then I could regale Ted, Brick, and The Judge with this tale and it would come off as being more like my deranged fantasy.
And to think at that point we were only as far as Kettleman City. A place that exists solely because someone realized it was a good place for people to pull over and do something other than drive themselves further off the flat earth and into the type of mind numbing sheer boredom that encourages people to drive faster than you really should in effort to shave a few precious minutes off your total drive time. Perhaps if I had stocked for the road trip properly I could have enjoyed the trip but no amount of Pringles or Svenhard's Horns A Plenty would have taken my mind off the fact that I had to power through eight hours of pavement. Thankfully I did not have to endure this journey in something like a Honda Civic otherwise I would have jumped the hybrid vehicle off the road and into Harris Ranch wherein I could have Duke Boy'd a few doughnuts, knocked over a few filet mignons on hooves, and prepared myself for a thirty-day summer vacation at the local lock-up. I had to dig down deep and bring forth and remember my training as a Cub Scout to power through the rest of the bang-hammer-to-the-head drive up north. All that time planning, designing, carving, painting, assembling, and racing that Pinewood Derby car finally paid off.
It is different living up here, among the real Obama voters—not like those posers down South who plastered an Obama/Biden '08 sticker to the back of their Hummer—the real kind, not the limp-wristed H2 that General Motors churned out like Rock Crack Cocaine for the masses of The Sopranos Compete Set owning, suburbanized short men. The big difference, thus far, has been the weather and the constant noises that remind you that you do have neighbors. Some good, some who are aggressively auditioning for the next season of COPS, like the gentlemen I saw being cuffed by no less than five "po-lice" while on my way to the market. Hopefully that was nothing more than a little casual racial discrimination and he's now at home, like me, sitting comfortably in a nice chair and bitching aimlessly into a glowing screen.
As if migrating office, home, and my own Siegfried and Roy show wasn't enough excitement for the week, I had to fly back down to Southern California days later to meet with a potential new client. This is ironic, you must understand, because I moved up North so the Rocket Scientist and I could cut down on all the flying we have had to endure in the last two years. I now know that it doesn't take a full hour to get to SFO at 5:30AM on a Sunday morning. Who knew? I can't tell you how much fun it is to wake up with the world's melting pot with the sounds of vacuum cleaners and the smell of eggs and bacon wafting throughout terminal—everyone looking like how the other person feels. There is no joy in traveling between the hours of 10PM and 6AM. None.
I spent the night within visual range of Los Angeles County's largest fire on record. From my hotel room I could see flames as tall as buildings lashing about trees and shrubbery that hadn't committed a single act of violence in their lifetime. The view was nothing short of spectacular and I found it disturbing that more people weren't pining for a view of an event on a magnitude that only comes along every one-hundred years or so. Shame on them, sitting in their cafe's, pretending as if the fireman killing hellfire just up the road was nothing more than another cloudy day.
Here at home—the new home—we have a man-made miracle occurring a mile (as the crow flies) from where I sit now. As I write this hundreds of people are performing an engineering feat that should be considered a small wonder of the world—altering the route of a major bridge by moving hundreds of tons of road and steel to the side while a new path can be slid into its place. It's invasive surgery on a major artery of commerce and connectivity. The grandeur and scale of such ambition leaves me feeling silly for stressing about constructing digital experiences, none of which, that I know of, ever put anyone in harms way or had so much risk involved. I am glad to be here, to watch from the shore as progress is being slid into place.
This weekend we'll continue to settle in and add to the mountain of boxes and wrapping paper that is slowly starting to resemble the base of Devil's Tower. With any luck we'll have it removed by recyclers before I start to think it's really important and develop this need to head to Wyoming because I don't know that I can put another hundred miles on my car without seriously going out of my mind. In the meantime the cats and I will be at home, adjusting to all the new sounds. Eventually we'll be able to get through the day without hiding under the covers.
3 August 09
"Trust me," Hoy declared, "one day we're all going to be working together and it's going to be huge."
We were at the An Event Apart after party in March 2007, and I was very happy to meet Greg Hoy. He had recently opened Happy Cog's Philadelphia office after many, many years of managing web production shops for various companies. Hoy talked openly of his ideas on how to improve the industry, offered many suggestions on how to better handle business operations, and displayed a wit compatible with the current Airbag standard. I knew that evening that I had gained a friend and mentor whose opinion and confidence I could trust.
"Screw LA," I replied to Jeffrey with a grin, "if I'm ever going to become Happy Cog then it's going to be Happy Cog West."
I was standing in his apartment, wrapping up a very pleasant afternoon spent with Jeffrey and his family, catching up with personal news and talking shop. Airbag was about to grow by a third and I had flown to New York City to reaffirm my desire to continue to work with Happy Cog when and where it made sense. Having exhausted current events, we started to talk openly about future possibilities when the subject of Airbag and Happy Cog's future came up. After I gave my response, we chuckled, quickly said our good-byes, and I headed for JFK airport on a warm spring afternoon in April, 2006.
"You should quit your job and start your own business," he said in-between bites of Pad Thai, "I know you'll be good at it."
In December, 2003, I called in sick at work so I could drive up to Pasadena to have lunch with Jeffrey. After-all, It's not every day that Zeldman makes it out to California, and he had invited me to lunch on his only free day. Across from the table Zeldman continued talking, improving my self-esteem by orders of magnitude with just about each sentence thereafter. By the time we were cracking open the fortune cookies, my smile wouldn't fit through the door, and my head required FAA clearance for the flight path back home. Despite the enormous feeling of empowerment, the advice was hard to internalize because I wasn't in a good position to act on his advice, but even more difficult because I didn't want to believe it.
"You should call it Airbag, because that's how everyone knows you," Zeldman said over the phone. "You're Airbag."
It was June of 2005. The Rocket Scientist and I were about to turn a new leaf in our lives after twelve very difficult months. She had just started a new job that made it possible for us to take the risk of starting a business without any dependable income. We wouldn't be living in luxury any time soon, but I had good advice from many successful people that if I didn't try, it would become my single largest regret later in life. On the phone, Jeffrey offered words of encouragement and offered a few suggestions for getting started. A few days later, I called my lawyer and had him start the process of incorporating Airbag Industries into an Limited Liability Corporation. A month later, it was official.
"Hoy and I agreed that at the end of the day, if we are going to open another office then it has to be with you." Hoy nodded with confidence as Jeffrey spoke, "It has to be with Airbag."
We were sitting at the far end of the concierge room near the top of the Hilton Austin in March of 2009. South By Southwest Interactive was in full swing below and even at that height you could tell that the ants were nerds. While Jeffrey and Hoy continued talking, my head was in a mind numbing haze as I replayed some of these conversations and events from the last six years over and over. Though it may be easy to connect the dots now, I didn't see this coming and I certainly wasn't expecting to receive such an invitation. "We would like Airbag to become Happy Cog West," they said. "We have similar processes, our teams work and play well together, and combined, there's nothing we can't do." Everything they said was true and I knew it. Ten minutes into the meeting and the subject changed from "what if" to discussing next steps, goals, and timelines.
"Done and done," I posted last Friday in response to signing the final document.
It is now August 3, 2009 and it is with exuberance and joy I am very pleased to announce that on this day our friends become our family. Airbag Industries has merged with Happy Cog™ Studios. Many months of planning and negotiations have lead to this event, and I'm very excited about the potential that lies ahead for all of us. Today marks the next step in Happy Cog's evolution and the future before us is filled with more opportunity than I can currently fathom.
21 February 09
A few days ago I received an email newsletter from one of my all-time favorite book stores, William Stout Architectural Books. Along with the usual list of newly available products, this edition came with big news for design book buyers: Everything in stock is twenty-five percent off until twenty February.
Wanting to help the independent book seller, I made an announcement of the sale on Twitter and went back to work. Hours latter Mr. Murtaugh asked what books he should buy to take advantage of the sale. Looking through the online store, there were so many that I could not name one or two. And thus ensued a quick burst of recommendations. And there were many, perhaps too many to post in such rapid succession for most @brilliantcrank follower's patience, but it's not often that I turn the fire hose on so, deal with it.
Many Twitter friends asked to collect the suggestions on Airbag. And that is what this is, a list of really great books to add to your library, sale of no sale. Keep in mind there is no referral money being made here. No under the table arrangements between shifty design book collectors. I love good books and good book stores, and I'll always try to help them when I can, especially the ones that expose readers to volumes you'll never find in a big box chain.
For those of you who were first-hand witness to the Brilliantcrank Twitter Storm of Ninteen February there is something new for you and the end of this list. I guarantee that you're not going to want to pass it up.
Otherwise, here it is, the list of books I recommend buying from William Stout.
Design
Online
Wayfinding
Typography
As some of you know, this list originally included the much sought after FontBook along with the words "go buy now".
Stephen Coles, editor of Typographica and Type Director at FontShop pointed out that Stout's sale only includes books that are in stock and that he had first hand knowledge that they were, in fact, currently out of stock. I asked if the good people at FontShop could match the offer (who looks out for you people, huh?) and he replied with a different idea.
The Airbag Exclusive FontShop Special
From now until 28 February, Airbag readers get fifteen percent off FontBook, the must have tome for any serious designer and/or typography fanboy, and Made with FontFont, Erik Spiekermann's fabulously designed salute to FontFont's fantastic type collection. Act fast and spread the word. It's not every day these volumes are offered at a discount.
To get the special price use code AIRBAGGERY when purchasing FontBook and code AIRBAGFF when purchasing Made with FontFont.
And that's it, I am spent. Perhaps one day I shall make my own Uncrate for things related to online design so that this kind of excitement happens all year. For now I shall retire my clerks apron and get back to work in the mines.
