hells yeah
Christian Crumlish
hells yeah
Originally uploaded by xian
if it’s really him, why not?
 Sure don't know what I'm going for, but I'm gonna go for it for sure |
Sure don't know what I'm going for, but I'm gonna go for it for sure |
what’s the difference between a duck? - Wolfram|Alpha
Originally uploaded by xian
ok - trick questions are no fair, but hire someone with a sense of humor and load it up with snappy answers, yo.
Michael Port, author of a number of bestselling sales-guru business books, has now come out with a pocket volume called The Think Big Manifesto: Think You Can’t Change Your Life (and the World?) Think Again.
I like the arresting graphic design of the book (a publicist sent me an advance copy) but was somewhat wary of the bold marketing language on the wrapper. Still, I found on opening the book that I was drawn in by the author’s cool, knowing style and I prepared myself to be convinced.
I started reading the book, nodding my head: I agreed with just about everything I read. The prose voice is somewhat breathless, though, and I had trouble staying focused on the book’s flow. As brief as it is, I noticed myself skimming ahead to the summarizing statements.
I found myself agreeing with all of the specific advice in the book and wondering whether I can (or do) actually follow it myself. What most of it comes down to is daring to think big and avoiding the doubts and negativity and small thinking that can so often hold us back.
I like this kind of thing, though I am also wary of it. That is, I want self-help, breakthrough, artistic and entrepreneurial leaps, but I have also seen a lot of snake oil and easy answers in my day. So it’s love/hate with this type of thing for me, and sometimes I adore it (The Power of Now, The War of Art, Money & the Meaning of Life) and other times it doesn’t stick.
For all of the books of this ilk I’ve devoured, where are my masterpieces, my killer apps? I’m still waiting to see if this one will take.
Serves 6:
7 limes
1 blood orange
4 mandarin oranges (medium sized)
1 pink grapefruit
8 fl.oz. Patron reposado
6 fl.oz. Cointreau (or Patron Citronge or any decent triple sec)
rock salt
table salt
3 ice trays of cubes
Designing Social Interfaces - Rough Cut | O’Reilly Media
Originally uploaded by xian
The unedited, 500 page first draft of our book is available now in PDF format for review by anyone who can’t bear to wait till September for the first (“real”) edition to come out.
Yay!
Erin Malone and I introduced some of the fruit of our effort to carve out a pattern language for social user experience design. At the Information Architecture Summit in Memphis this past week we taught our pattern library workshop and then delivered this tandem presentation:
this is a screenshot of a sampling of the tweets about the core conversation i did with erin malone re social design patterns.
there was one that said we weren’t prepared and were just promoting our book, too.
i do wish we had explicated an example pattern. the summit talk with slides will be more useful, i think. but then this was a core conversation. we tried to seed it and then go with what the room wanted to talk about. that’s unstructured for a panel.
also, we could have walked through the handout all together. live and learn.
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Something Jonathan Lethem might have cooked up after watching all three seasons of the Venture Brothers while perusing the Watchmen graphic novel.
I enjoyed it!
View all my reviews.
Thanks to Julie Choi who is producing this series and Ricky Montalvo who directed and filmed this five-minute talk. I really enjoyed it and I think they did a great job with it (and the whole series, actually):
![[design.yahoo.com]](http://xianlandia.com/pix/dpl_logo.png){kind=logo}
In anticipation of the Pattern Library workshop I’m teaching with Erin Malone and Lucas Pettinati, Will Evans interviewed us for Boxes & Arrows, the premiere user experience magazine online.
Will asked great questions and I think he brought out some interesting discussion among us all. Here’s a taste:
Question: I have heard it argued that use of design patterns and pattern libraries removes creativity and innovation from the solution-finding process? Do these criticisms have merit?
xian: I don’t really think that argument holds water. I do understand the concern, and it’s totally possible to apply patterns mindlessly or to force their use inappropriately, but, to my mind, patterns focus innovation and creativity on the leading edge of the problem: the unsolved part.
Read the whole thing over at B&A!
Dave Gray articulates clearly some ideas I’ve been wrestling with about writing, publishing, bookmaking, the web, and social collaboration:
gee and i’ve only met barlow once
Originally uploaded by xian
was JP Barlow idly doing the comparisons today, or is this more like secret-admirer spam?
evangeline
Originally uploaded by xian
she is the queen of make-believe
my new electric uke (hollowbody tenor ukulele with pickup)
Radio Free Blogistan was a group weblog published by Christian Crumlish (xian for short), and written by xian, filchyboy, Andrew Bayer, Liza Sabater, and Rayne.
The purpose of this "web blog" (that's a joke, son) was to discuss the realm of blogs, personal publishing, microcontent, nanopublishing, syndication, online community building, and related topics.
Since the heyday of blogging about blogging the authors of Radio Free Blogistan have neglected their duties here and in a palace coup the founder of the blog, xian, has turned it into an aggregator containing more or less the same content as xian's running monolog, wrapped up in the familiar crusty old RFB design. This way folks who were subscribing to or visiting the site can get all the boring, er, interesting new blog posts from xian without having to poke around to see where he's doing his occasional blogging nowadays. I, I mean he, will look for ways to incorporate RFB content as well, but the first cut may limit it to just xian content. All the old stuff will stay, and the sidebar will get mangled, no doubt.
