MAKING
I make stuff. Generally pretty often. When I do, I will post here. There may even be downloads!
Color Trails
Left-click to make a new trail.
Right-click to remove a trail.
Place-let
An extension of my homing bracelet project, I coded this up in a day and half while terribly sick for BarCamp Boston. So, if you download the code, please pardon the incoherency.
To create a bracelet you’ll need Adobe Illustrator, Scriptographer and the files below:
Scripts
Base file
Example bracelet
Whiskey Book
This was an update of a previous project for my friend Tim. He’d recently become a corporate stiff, and I felt he needed some emergency whiskey in case of…boredom? paperwork? Fridays? I traced the bottle and carefully carved the book with an exacto knife and sealed the result with modge podge. The cover is kept closed with a few neodymium magnets.
24 hr Clock
This is the finishing touch on my Imaginary Lands project. It’s not an imaginary clock, though it is a bit odd. The drawing is based on the Borghesi Astronomical Clock. The original kept track of a lot more than the time of day, but mine just does the typical hours, minutes and seconds. I did find a 24 hour clock mechanism so that the hour markings line up with the actual time. It’s significantly easier for me to read than a 12 hour clock.
Imaginary Lands
I bought a beautiful vintage credenza to replace some of my old Ikea shelves, unfortunately revealing a battle scarred wall. Since I really didn’t want to repaint (I’d tried that on a small alcove, not fun) I decided a salon hanging was the best way to go. Of course, filling a 19′ long wall with art is usually rather costly, and with all my recent furniture purchasing I knew I couldn’t justify spending much on the wall itself. Luckily I had my Craft Robo Pro, an idea and some pens.
The theme of the Great Living Room Redesign of 2011/12 is cartography. Well, maybe it’s also Mid-Century and walnut, but it’s definitely also cartography. In keeping with this theme, I gathered up maps from various books I read as a child, those I read now, TV shows with interesting geography and even an XKCD comic. Of course, all these sources were much too small to cover the wall, so I vectorized and laid them all out in Illustrator. I drew them with a (well, actually about eight) Sign pens onto pulp board. All told I think the wall cost me about $40 in materials, though it took hours and hours to draw (in the computer) and draw (with my Robo).
I’m pretty pleased with the result.
THINKING
This is what leaks out of my brain, through my fingers and onto the internet. I don’t vouch for the quality or veracity of anything you may read here.
rage rage rage
This NYTimes Franzen piece is giving me serious rage. To oversimplify horribly, Franzen claims that technology (and the consumption of technology) is like a one-way relationship, with the technology making no demands on the user, and always confirming their sense of self/power over the world.
While I have some issues right there, the ideas are at least things that I feel ought to be thought about. Because, you know, hubris, motivated reasoning, etc. But then! He claims that these shallow relationships turn love into like. That it is impossible to engage in a profound enough way with tech that you forgive it its flaws and inconsistencies. He then goes on to explain how he became re-engaged with environmentalism because of his love of birdwatching, despite birdwatching not being “cool”, and how this allowed/forced him to care more generally again about the environment.
To which I say, has he never heard of nerds? They are an entire class of people who by their very definition are deeply uncool. Or has he looked at the internet anytime the week before a Jobs keynote? People LOVE tech. I love tech. I love it when it malfunctions. I love it when I mess something up, send the wrong email, write the wrong code, leave my computer rendering so long I melt a stick of ram. I love it when I accidentally cross power and ground and somehow revive an Xbox from the dead. I love it when I find an operating system or program I’ve devoted years to learning is replaced by something new and better that demands more of my time and skills to learn.
Yes, tech is not sentient. It cannot love me back. The only way it cares for me is the general. The more humans buy it, the more of that kind of tech will be made in some pale reflection of Darwinian evolution. But it inspires my ardor and rage and delight. I understand it may not do these things for Franzen. I, for one, can take or leave birds.
Hello WordPress
Am I linked? Does category tagging work?
another kind of shoes
Uh oh. I’ve got a new show brand to lust after:
http://www.eject-shoes.com/
logs
This article made me look through my own gchat logs. My first two conversations were about technical troubleshooting and relationship-related haplessness. I really have not changed at all in the last five years! Even my fake-happy diction is similar to my current style. I’m finding this terribly depressing. But, also, I want to N-gram my chat logs again and visualize them in some sexy way. This seems to happen to me every time I re-realize they exist.
Anyway, everyone who uses gchat should read that article. IMHO.
super mario / sex and the city
My roommate started up a Sex and the City to go with her dinner (as is her habit). But, instead of recognizing the theme song I somehow thought she was playing Mario. This is moderately ridiculous, as I don’t know her to play video games of any kind. The Sex and the City theme does kind of resemble a slowed down version of some of music from Super Mario World. Judge for yourself:
Mario
SATC
DOING
I occasionally travel, shop and engage in social interaction. If it’s noteworthy, or has pretty pictures, it’ll go here.
AIB Workshop
I was invited to host a workshop at AIB last winter. While I’ve spoken at technical conferences before, this was first experience with real, live students. I talked about how I use digital tools in my design process. We ended by using a simple processing sketch I’d written to produce triangulated bowls. I think the session went well. More than thirty bowls were designed, exported and cut that afternoon.
If you’re interested in making your own the processing sketch can be downloaded below:
I also made a few examples beforehand:
Pecha Kucha
I spoke at Pecha Kucha Boston 25. Keeping to the timing was definitely a challenge, but it was a fun night and I got to meet some great people. It didn’t hurt that I live a few blocks from the Oberon either!
Flavors and Fanciness
I threw a real, grown up person’s party with my friend Mariah. The conceit of the party was that each guest got their own personal cocktail, invented by me using a special ingredient they brought with. In preparation I made recipe cards that I (or, really, my friend Nadya) filled out while making drinks. We asked everyone to get fancied up, so there are some great pictures of everyone looking quite spiffy.
While we were planning the party, Mariah brought up lighting. I’d never really thought about party lighting before (you just turn down the dimmer switch, right!?) so this had me at a bit of loss. Since the themes of the party were booze and adulthood, I decided to make some mood lighting out of books and empty liquor bottles. These proved a hit as well as the drinks, and I’ve made quite a few since.
Weekend of Things
Memorial Day weekend was full of….shopping, business meetings, more shopping, staying up till 4 am meshing things, and shockingly little alcohol. Mary came to visit so that we could work on finishing our new product, the N12.bikini, set up some business-y things and meet Nervous System. In addition to all the work we got done, I picked up a great vintage sewing machine/table combo at the new thrift store on Mass Ave.
It was quite interesting getting the thing to my apartment, detached from the table, up the stairs, oiled, re-inserted into the table and combined with my existing Singer. Mary was definitely a trooper through the whole thing. I should make her some pleats or something with one of the fancy attachments.
kickstarter!
Mary (and I) are doing a Kickstarter based off of Mary’s thesis project. It’s terribly exciting! Someone has already backed us for a leather messenger bag, so I’d better get designing.
READING
Google Reader sharing, but in website form! It’s, like, backwards!
Geek Chic: High-tech fashion
High-tech fashion is here to stay!
High-tech fashion is here to stay! Promising photographic precision and infinite color possibilities, digital printing first attracted innovators like Alexander McQueen; now even High Street labels like H&M are tapping the tech to produce affordable, versatile styles. So are local lines like Cambridge’s Constrvct, which allows users to customize digitally printed dresses with their choice of photo — say, the stunning NASA satellite image seen here. And 3D printers are likewise churning out jaw-dropping pieces: take the accessories of local designer Gideon Weisz, who riffs on sound waves and Möbius strips, and Somerville studio Nervous System, which draws inspiration from coral, algae, and other organic structures. We tried out such futuristic fashions at MIT’s Frank Gehry–designed — and damn stylish — Stata Center, home to the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. That’s where we met Emma, a robot whose runway walk gave our models a run for their money.
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» Constrvct dress, $350 at constrvct.com; Nervous System bracelets, $60–$80 at n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com; Julian Hakes “Mojito” shoes, $275–$300 at mojitoshoes.net
A MAN OF MANY TALENTS
BRIT ARCHITECT JULIAN HAKES NOT ONLY DESIGNED THESE SPIRALING “MOJITO” HEELS; HE’S ALSO ONE OF THE MINDS BEHIND THE NEW NORTH BANK BRIDGE CONNECTING CAMBRIDGE AND CHARLESTOWN.
from Boston Phoenix – thePhoenix.com http://thephoenix.com/Boston/life/150918-geek-chic-high-tech-fashion/
Meatless Thanksgiving Ideas
If you’re planning a vegetarian Thanksgiving dish (or multiple vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes), both the Times and Food52 have ideas for you, and pictures. If you can only pick one, go to Food52 for the pictures, pictures of food. Leek and greens tart, pear and smoked gouda dutch baby. Butternut squash and roasted garlic gallette. Okay, onward.
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See more posts by Edith Zimmerman
from The Hairpin http://thehairpin.com/2012/11/meatless-thanksgiving-ideas?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thehairpin%2FBdYj+%28The+Hairpin%29
How-To: Lego Sewing Machine
I was one of the thousands of people swooning over the Lego sewing machine from Carrie Bloomston of Such Designs that has swept through Pinterest and other social media. I was thrilled when Betz White posted about her own Lego sewing machine, and linked over to Carrie’s new step-by-step tutorial for making your own version. It’s taking everything I can do to not walk away from the laptop this second to raid our Lego stash and make one right this minute.
More:
- DIY Lego Hole Punching Card @Craftzine.com blog
- How-To: Crocheted LEGO Blanket @Craftzine.com blog
- How-To: Lego Candy Molds and Recipe @Craftzine.com blog
- Abandoned Lego Victorian Houses @Craftzine.com blog
from Craftzine.com blog http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2012/06/how-to_lego_sewing_machine.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+craftzine+%28CRAFT%29
The History of the Cellphone
Year: 2001
Model: Nokia 5510
Characteristics: Predictive text, Bluetooth compatible, features first-of-its-kind music player.
User Profile: 17-year-old high school graduate waiting for college to start. Went through high school as That Girl Who Is Always Saying “You guys, I have to get home by 12. Seriously though. It’s 11:45 p.m. My parents are going to murder me. Jon Benet-style. Guys, seriously. I have church tomorrow. Seriously.” Upon high school graduation, this model was used as both a reward and a ploy to ensure 17-year-old girl keeps in touch with her parents while away at college.
Memory: Device was used for a month and a half period. During this time, the 17-year-old always hoped that this One Guy would call. He didn’t, but at that point it was okay because no one was really calling or texting, it was more of an analyze-his-AIM-away-message-for-substantive content kind of world.
Bugs: Upon arriving at college, the 17-year-old learned that there were no towers for cell phones in the picturesque Southern Mountain town she was to reside within. The realization that the gift had been a short-term con was only ameliorated by her asshole decision to maybe never call her parents basically ever.
Year: 2002
Model: Motorola Flip
Characteristics: Built in camera, flip-phone. Predictive Text. Speakerphone.
User Profile: After a year of radio silence, the advent of towers at small picturesque Southern mountain town coalesced with her desperate parents’ desire to know that their child was alive, and an 18-year-old jerk was issued a second phone on the family plan.
Memory: It was rarely used, except for once when the 18-year-old jerk picked it up in the middle of a sorority meeting and had a full-on conversation with her mom about her week. This had less to do with the 18-year old’s continued jerk-ish behavior, and more to do with her feelings about being in a sorority.
Bugs: No passcode required. After the 18-year-old jerk experimented with tequila, she called That One Guy from high school and berated him between fits of weeping for a total of one hundred and twenty phone-to-phone minutes. The next day his girlfriend called to make sure the 18-year-old jerk was okay.
Year: 2006
Model: Virgin Pay N’ Go
Characteristics: Contract free, no SIM card, disposable.
User Profile: A 22-year-old grad student gets own phone plan but keeps her old number because the last four digits are the year the plague struck medieval Spain. Makes thirty dollars a week as a grad student and feasts upon a mixed diet of own tears and sometimes grilled almost-cheese. Company shuts off phone and while the 22-year-old grad student had gathered enough to pay the bill itself, she didn’t have enough to pay the reactivation fee. Much yelling of the evil of feudal lords was uttered nonsensically.
Memory: Purchased at now-defunct union Square Virgin Superstore. The pay n’ go was a disposable phone, or, as the kids said, a “burner.” People kept asking her if she was A) a drug dealer or B) Veronica Mars. The 22-year-old grad student responded with, “Whatever you guys, it looks awesome and spies have them.” Clearly an attempt to convince herself it was awesome when really the opposite of this was the case. Also, 22-year-old grad student missed her old phone number, as “7728” had no interesting trivia associated with it, being nothing other than the numerical component of the “7728 Gimblin,” the main belt-asteroid discovered in the early ’70s.
Bugs: Sent out a mass text telling everyone her new number, hoping that This Other Guy would take this as incentive to call and ask her out on a date. Instead this girl she knew through another girl texted and said “Who is this?” The 22-year-old grad student recycled the phone when she realized it was a money pit, and borrowed money to reactivate the old account. Sent out another mass text being all “JK, my number has not changed,” which nobody responded to.
Year: 2008
Model: iPhone, the original
Characteristics: Apple’s original, all-in-one smartphone device.
User Profile: The 24-year-old graduate student sees that This Dirty Writer Guy she wanted to go sailing and procreate and buy golden retrievers with got an iPhone and played with it all the time. She liked how it gave her the opportunity to stare at his incongruously super-long and beautiful eyelashes — why do guys who look like Hemingway’s manlier brother always have those?
Memory: Used her tax refund to buy one and so form object transference connection with Dirty Writer Guy. The next month the new model came out, which he quickly purchased. The 24-year-old graduate student co-slept in her lofted Ikea bed with her outdated model, and when her Astoria apartment became infested with mosquitoes used its light to spot them for strategic murdering purposes. She took the case off for the first time while in Tennessee for a friend’s wedding to listen to music in the car. On the walk from the car to the restaurant where they were all meeting to eat BBQ that Elvis loved, she dropped it face down on the brick walkway and it shattered.
Bugs: The dry rub wasn’t even that awesome.
Year: 2009
Model: iPhone 3GS
Characteristics: Apple’s all-in-one, original smartphone, now featuring 3G technology.
User Profile: A 25-year-old unemployed woman, recent recipient of an MFA and a well-timed upgrade policy.
Memory: Had it for a week during which time she was vocally resentful of its new plastic backing. By week two, she hated it. Week three the 25-year-old unemployed woman got drunk on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and took a cab back to Brooklyn where she “totally accidentally” left it the cab, causing many who knew her gently suggest that she give up drinking when she decided to have kids.
Bugs: The 25-year-old unemployed woman called it and called it and finally a man answered — he said “Hello?” and she said “Hello?” and he hung up, but not before she decided that he had sounded just like the actor Justin Long. She deactivated the phone and talked to the customer service agent at Apple about Elvis Costello for a little bit. She has hated Justin Long and appreciated “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?” ever since.
Year: 2009
Model: iPhone 3GS
Characteristics: Ibid.
User Profile: Ibid.
Memory: While the same model, this phone was proactively treated with respect and maturity by the 25-year-old unemployed woman. She bought it The Best Case — though it was unspeakably ugly — and a matte UV protector for the screen. She texted her best friend on this phone to say she was in love with him, and then they tried to hang out like normal a couple more times but then came the time they split a bottle of rose after seeing a play she wrote with him, and she started yelling at him and realized this wasn’t going to work, and they agreed through a slow cessation of calls and texts not to be friends anymore.
Bugs: She walked home from a ridiculous Park Slope bar to her home in Cobble Hill and considered throwing the phone into the Gowanus canal, but that felt like maybe a hollow gesture. She also called her parents on this phone to tell them about the tumor in her brain and they couldn’t hear her over the construction happening outside of Beth Israel, so she had to scream that it was benign and that she’d be fine and of course the construction stopped right then. Also This Hot Guy sent her a photo of his junk so that was pretty okay.
Year: 2012
Model: iPhone 4
Characteristics: Apple’s original, all-in-one smartphone, but chunkier, and also without SIRI but with Facetime, which is pretty okay.
User Profile: A 28-year-old woman trapped in a dead-end job with excellent health insurance, divides her time checking device constantly and watching any number of HBO dramedies.
Memory: She bought the white version this time and a white case, and that makes her feel like Karl Lagerfeld for some reason. This Other Kid sent her a really great Facebook message that she read but didn’t answer on this phone because she feels like maybe it deserves the full attention of all her digits and also because she is a coward. She bought tickets to Jack White next Friday on this phone, and laughed because it felt just like an Apple commercial.
Bugs: N/A. User does not have the numbers of anyone she doesn’t ever actually speak to on it. Her wallpaper is Woolla from the underappreciated Cinematic Classic, John Carter. Also she found out that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are engaged on this phone, the same day that she also got an email from Astrology Zone letting her know that an important change was in the air — theorizes that she will never have to buy another phone again, and that possibly love is real.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn. She’s an editor at Fempop, and spends a large amount of her time pretending to be a mildly evil cat on the internet.
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See more posts by Rebecca Jane Stokes
from The Hairpin http://thehairpin.com/2012/04/the-history-of-the-cellphone
Old Maps Online lets you find your way around 17th century Holy Roman Empire
The world’s single largest online collection of historical maps launched earlier this week at Old Maps Online. By the end of the year, the site aims to have 60,000 maps available for public access. Cooperating institutions include the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Czech Republic’s Moravian Library and the San Francisco Bay Area’s David Rumsey Map Collection. The University of Portsmouth’s Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System hosts the collection in conjunction with Switzerland’s Klokan Technologies.
Having such a large collection of cartographic history in one place and accessible by anyone with a browser is extraordinary enough. But it’s not the only online map collection of note. The University of Texas’s Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection has been a familiar online companion from the early days.
Still, what makes this project so arresting is the way the site is organized.
Starting from a map of your area, you can zoom in or reorient over a basic world map, then drill down. The right column contains a changing stack of maps germane to your area. I started, for instance, in my home state of Oregon. The stack presented me with a 1901 gazette page of the “products of selected industries” in the state and a 1935 Standard Oil road map. I spun the globe and drilled down all the way to the street level at Granada, Spain, where I had an early 20th century map of eastern Spain and an 18th century map of “Hispania Benedicta,” a map of the Benedictine religious order.
Each historical map you click on is presented in a separate frame that you can enlarge, drawn from the contributing institution. A slider across the top allows you to dynamically change the offerings by moving from as early as 1000 CE up to 2010 (check Google Maps for anything more recent). A search box allows you to navigate by place name.
Everything loads surprisingly quickly given how information-dense the graphical information invariably is. But it’s a new site and not without occasional bugginess. When I traveled back to Oregon from Granada, the page insisted there was no information for this area. We’re a little out in the trees here, I grant you, but I’m reasonably sure a modern-day “here be dragons” is technically inaccurate.
Project leader Dr. Humphrey Southall told Ars, “We tried to design a very simple search interface which anyone familiar with Google Maps will know how to use, and we aim to provide instant gratification: once you find an interesting map on our site, you will be only a couple of clicks from seeing a high quality image on the relevant library’s site. We are also trying to make it as easy as possible for libraries to be included: we don’t try and charge them, and we aim to help them get their collections ready for us. Basically, we’re aiming to include as many high quality online map collections as possible, and to make them accessible to as many people as possible.”
In addition to reaching out to large academic institutions and museums, the projects are also canvassing for maps from individuals and smaller organizations. Since the maps’ copyrights are retained by the contributors, it may be appealing for collectors and small map-holding groups like local governments to contribute. Participation could increase the use of their maps and help to advertise contributors’ missions.
from Ars Technica Full Text http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/03/old-maps-online-lets-you-find-your-way-around-17th-century-holy-roman-empire.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29
BEING
This is not my first day on the internet. What follows is, theoretically, a complete catalog of my forays into cyberspace. At least, until I impulse buy another domain and forget to add it.
Continuum Fashion
My friend Mary Huang and I started a company together! We launched our first full product, the N12.bikini, today in partnership with Shapeways.
jennafizel.com
I bought this domain awhile ago (because, I assume, jennafizel.com will be in high demand and I had better snatch it up before anyone else), but hadn’t had anything much to do with it. Since I’m doing Thing-a-Day 2011, I’ve decided to also post my content to a personal Posterous, and use this domain for that.
flavors.me
my newest site! (well, apart from this) it’s yet another aggregator of my other sites, and partial inspiration for this project..which is an aggregation of my web presence. i <3 documentation.
etsy – curves // folds
my etsy store is, tragically, less than successful. one of my aunts bought a lamp, but she is my only sale to date. i hope that changes someday, as i really do think my stuff is good and would make someone quite happy.
quilting by lynn
i helped my mother put together this site documenting her many quilts. she’s gotten pretty good at updating it herself and has even added new pages all on her own!