Tag: nyc

harpers facelift

congrats paul for a job well done! when we met last saturday, paul left before midnight, mentioning that he had “work to do.” now you know why 🙂

Harper’s is built upon a Semantic Web framework – albeit a primitive one. I’ve written about what the Semantic Web is, and why it matters before, if you’re curious, so I won’t rehash that here. Using this framework, Harper’s is divided into 2 parts: narrative content, like the Features and the Weekly Review, and a taxonomy (or ontology, depending on your preferred term), called Connections.

Dive into dive bars

i had an awesome time in new york over the weekend after our sushi event on friday night. the cast:
paul ford
writer, XML & semantic web hacker
michael wechner
physicist, OSCOM founder, entrepreneur, XML geek
michael m. wechsler
lawyer with coding fu. scares the hell out of me. operates a community law site. p2p law?
sarah m. byers
boston-based maker of trouble and film producer
susan “sooz” kaup
event organizer (geekpride 2000 etc), reed’s law embodiment
chalu kim
zope hacker, entrepreneur, artist
paul taggart
freelance photographer
joshua darden
wunderkind typographer
a trip report is available.

Typography

sooz introduced me to joshua darden. he is a type designer with the hoefler type foundry, working under the world-renowned tobias frere-jones. i took josh to the reorient party, and we talked a lot about typography and design. after a couple hours of non-sleep, i met joshua again, and we went to a flea market to look for type specimen books and other objects of interest. we then went to an appointment with irving oaklander who has one of the most exquisite collections of typography books in the world. standing in his store room in a nondescript NYC warehouse and browsing through the dusty tomes of the high art of typography awed me. my interest in typography was instantly rekindled, after it had been more or less sleeping for 10 years. with an expert guide like joshua it will be a total pleasure to go back into it.

NYC pros and cons

my trip to NYC was totally awesome and reaffirmed my earlier experiences with manhattan. i love it for the intensity of every waking moment, the vanity people display with their huge lofts, the density of cool people to meet. i hate it for the arrogance of most manhattanites (although totally understandable from an urban lifestyle perspective), for the emphasis of form over substance (contrast to cambridge, where it is completely the other way around). i definitely will spend more time in NYC. in fact, it looks like i will be in NYC the next 2 weekends anyway, first to attend a halloween party in manhattan and hang out with sooz and josh, second to meet up with michael wechsler again who is always up to interesting stuff.

internet-powered journeys

i arrived in NYC this morning, after a journey that went like this: ride to palo alto caltrain from stanford university – figure out where i REALLY have to go – call cab – drive to stanford shopping center – take bus into milbrae – hop onto bart – change at west oakland – take air bart to oakland airport – hop onto jetblue plane – get off at jfk – take bus to subway – get off at 34th street – orient on the street grid – find cafe – search for wifi
most of this would not have been possible without either notebook or wifi. technology has allowed me to be much more last minute than i ever was. no long planning, figure out your journey on the road, check the net if you are lost etc. i will try to coin a phrase for this experience, “wifi enables real time travel planning, and reduces anxiety.” will do for now.
i have to run, client meeting.