photo


21
Sep 15

On design, tea and today’s quality of life

I have a friend who is a designer. Specifically an architecture, communicative environment, and product design specialist. Basically he creates things, and judges the rest of the things. I think that’s what he does. Interesting fellow. Full of explanations for how things work, why they work and, sometimes, how things ought to work.

He’s the sort that, when you talk to him enough, you start trying to imagine what he’d say about this handgrip or the size of that door knob or the spacing of those signs. It is the shared experience of understanding his experience, while having no qualifications whatsoever to match his experience.

if you’ve ever seen a photograph of a right angle sidewalk and the path worn in the grass cutting the corner labeled “Design” and “User experience” then you understand that. I felt like that today:

Tea

So I sent him that picture. And he simply wrote back “Like there’s need for such a thing as un-sweet tea.” Which I took to mean, “There’s no need to wax on about the employee addition of non-linear, open-manipulated, closed-environment design systems using upward communication for uncertainty avoidance. Let’s just say we only need one, you know, for the real tea.”

Which is a hard argument to overcome, as far as I can tell.

I will watch every one of these I see, because they are all amazing and unique and wonderful and provide the glimpse of young people that we all need from time to time. And this one is local:

I bet you didn’t know you needed a modular Nerf gun. You need a modular Nerf gun.

Not because of that, but … We’re Living Through the Greatest Period in World History:

The problem, the doctor said, is that these advances happen slowly over time, so you probably don’t hear about them. If cancer survival rates improve, say, 1% per year, any given year’s progress looks low, but over three decades, extraordinary progress is made.

Compare health-care improvements with the stuff that gets talked about in the news — NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted a Congresswoman last week to announce Justin Bieber’s arrest — and you can understand why Americans aren’t optimistic about the country’s direction. We ignore the really important news because it happens slowly, but we obsess over trivial news because it happens all day long.

Expanding on my belief that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, here are 50 facts that show we’re actually living through the greatest period in world history.

Unfortunate as it is when someone has to visit a doctor for a procedure, I’m always interested to hear about the latest thing and the faster recuperation or the newest therapy. Everything, as Louis C.K. says, is amazing:


17
Sep 15

Jogging achievement unlocked

I ran 10 miles today, he said nonchalantly.

And, in both of those phrases, I do not know what is happening.

I also swam 3,000 yards. So I’m tired, sure. But it feels great, too. That’s all unexpected, but then I took a rest day, no exercise, earlier this week and at one point I didn’t think one day would do the trick, but by the end of the evening I was ready to get back to it. I wonder how long I can keep all this up. Not long enough.

I found this on campus during my run today:

MIllerWire

Miller Wire Works …

was founded on April 1, 1949 by Charles E. Miller and is now into its third generation of family ownership. Originally employing three men, it now operates with 55 highly skilled workers. Present facilities include offices, two manufacturing plants and a machine shop consisting of 78,000 square feet.

They’re still in wire, and they’ve been working in polyurethane since the 1980s. I believe that campus building was built in the late 1960s, but I couldn’t say when the door went in.

Miller is far too common a name to ask Google to scare up anything definitive.

Here’s something to know for sure: I want to be this guy when I grow up. Peaking at ninety:

Richard Dreselly first hiked to the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire in 1941. He has since hiked the 6288 foot summit seventeen times. Now at 90, he climbed for what he says will be his last time. Globe photographer John Tlumacki captured his three day arduous journey amid the stunning mountain views.

Here’s the full story that goes with that photo gallery.

And a podcast with my old friend Chadd. He’s talking about what it takes to be an athletic director in college sports.


16
Sep 15

Things I’ve found and things I’d forgotten I’d found

Today I was eating one of those fruit bowls, the sort you get pre-cut and ready to eat from the produce section. Munching away in the office and I come across this:

cycling

That’s one big grape.

Things I’ve also come across recently include the announcement that Esquire has gone completist with their Classic site. Eight decades of content are now online. Here’s some heart-rending media, the boyfriend of murdered TV reporter makes emotional return to anchor chair. Here’s something I wrote earlier this week. It is a review of a documentary. It was not good.

And a podcastI recorded with the editor of The Anniston Star:

<


15
Sep 15

The new scoreboard

Everyone seems to have opinions about this, and they seem to vary widely.

cycling

I think an excellent promotion would be to superimpose an old version of the scoreboard on the screen every week. The previous scoreboard is supered here, supposedly at a 1:1 ratio. Of course, the one on display would get smaller and more basic each week. We’d see more sky and moving clouds behind it. And, after a few more weeks, there wouldn’t even be a screen to look to, just an actual scoreboard.

Crowd watching on the screen is going to be a lot of fun and the production team does a nice job of hustling around and showing all sorts of people. It’s pretty amusing, if there’s no football on at the moment. Not that you really need the screen to see football. But it is big.


14
Sep 15

Chasing the Trek

This weekend I chased The Yankee for 42 miles. She started before me and I had to catch her. I knew the route and I knew she had a big head start. That was the game we played. A game we used to play when I could catch her more often. It took me about 31 miles to find her.

cycling

I’m not sure which I liked more, the mile where I averaged 22.6 or the earlier mile where I paced 23 miles per hour. I can do that on the right terrain, just long enough, for about two-and-a-half-minutes, to wonder what it would be like to do that over an entire ride, no matter the terrain. Terrain and topography being relative terms for where we ride. My app says I climbed only 1,700 feet during that ride.

I know people at Delta State. That campus had already had a weird and tough enough year before a senseless tragedy such as this. Later in the day we learned those particular people were safe.

A review, something I wrote:

Unless you are a Ricardo Louis or Chris Davis completist, you probably can skip the new “Miracles on the Plains,” which does not fit into the group of excellent documentaries. There are several reasons.

It goes on like that for about 635 more words.