Archive for the 'books' Category

Accord­ing to The Harry Potter Sort­ing Hat Per­son­al­ity Test, I’m a Raven­claw – but just barely:

Raven­claw 75, Huf­flepuff 73, Slytherin 68, Gryffindor 65

But, Lisa took the test for me, and is con­vinced that I’m quite Slytherin:

Slytherin 85, Gryffindor 62, Raven­claw 61, Huf­flepuff 38

One of us has a per­cep­tion prob­lem, at least when it comes to me! What house are you?

Well, it was yet another quick read, but Harry Potter and the Half-​Blood Prince was fun. I thought it was very sat­is­fy­ing, but not as enjoy­able as books 4 & 5.

I’d hate to spoil any­thing, but Design­wee­nie brings up one poten­tial inconsistency.

Dan Ceder­holm of Sim­pleBits has writ­ten a book, Web Stan­dards Solu­tions, which arrived today with it’s famil­iar cover.

I’m inter­ested in stream­lin­ing my site, improv­ing on seman­tic markup, etc., so I hope that Dan’s book will be a good ref­er­ence. Oh, and I love his redesign.

It seems that every­one is refresh­ing their sites these days.

I’ve been read­ing a lot lately, just not talk­ing much about it. I finally fin­ished get­ting through McSweeney’s Issue No. 5… I had pre­vi­ously just skimmed it.

While vis­it­ing Kunta in Brook­lyn, we stum­bled into the McSweeney’s store on 7th ave, and I found it such an odd, futilely amus­ing place.

I mean, your typ­i­cal McSweeney’s reader isn’t inclined to buy and sport a tshirt, is he or she? And as for the other random items they sell, though I enjoyed pawing through them, they aren’t at all desir­able to purchase.

I guess that’s not the point: McSweeney’s is as much a brand, or anti-​brand brand as any other buzz-​worthy com­mod­ity. Eggers’ & crew are image-​crafters as much as they are writ­ers, and if that means open­ing a bou­tique at con­sid­er­able expense, then hey, do it.

That said, I ordered Eggers’ new book You Shall Know Our Veloc­ity, and it came via UPS today.

First impres­sion, having read 1.5 pages? The inces­sant self-​reflexive pos­tur­ing in the intro­duc­tion of his first book is reigned. In fact, the novel begins on the front cover, con­tin­ues on the reverse of the cover, and takes off from there, with­out any introduction.

Gim­micky? Yes. Inter­est­ing? Always.

Finally fin­ished Sham­poo Planet, by Dou­glas Cou­p­land, (the oh-now-so-extinct zeit­geist writer of the early 90s), and found myself enjoy­ing it quite a bit. The Gen-X thing might be pass�, con­sid­er­ing many of Coupland’s read­ers went on to make intenet cash in the mid to late 90s, but i found a strong iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with his char­ac­ters. And while i can’t say that i am a 21-year-old Reagan youth, in the early 90s, in a very small, north­west town near a toxic Super­fund site, grow­ing up wiith Hippy par­ents, strug­gling with “making it” in cor­po­rate America… i can iden­tify with the strug­gling thing. You’re not going to “make it” sit­ting around wor­ry­ing about “making it”…

i am lucky to have a job design­ing in the “new media” realm. Cuts at Zefer, and Viant.