Work
π
I thought I was over my work hump, but I was mistaken, and the piles of ebooks are continuing for a few more weeks. I have ideas for making them more manageable in the future, partly by reworking my ebook production procedure and partly by reworking certain features of our ebook production tools. But I can’t really do that till I’m out from under these piles, so I’ll have to be patient. The workload does interfere a bit with my projects, but maybe I can use it as an opportunity to tighten up my time management.
Conceptual modeling
π (for the Munzner book)
I listened to some Gestalt psychology articles, but they were only marginally helpful for my current project on infographic design, so I didn’t feel too bad that I didn’t get around to taking notes. I’ve moved on to the main event, working through large parts of Tamara Munzner’s Visualization Analysis and Design. Since work has been taking up project time and I haven’t been managing my time well anyway, I’m going to give myself another month on this project, because this one is important and I don’t want to wait several more months to have truly usable results.
Futurism
π
I found Dale Carrico, a critic of some of the futurists I follow, which makes me happy, because I learn a lot from watching opposing ideas clash. Here’s an index of his blog posts on ideas and figures in the “superlative futurology” camp. It’ll take me a while to get through all that, especially since he writes in such a dense, academic style, but if you want a peek at his views in a more conversational style, here’s a video of his interview on radio show The Zero Hour.
Music
π
I’ve been looking for a new music genre to listen to, and I’ve landed on a mix of lo-fi chillhop and synthwave/chillwave. Lo-fi is very popular right now, especially this video, and here’s an interesting article on its history and future. Here’s a chillwave playlist on YouTube I’ve been listening to, and here’s another one on Spotify. Driving with chillwave makes me want to add colored lights to the inside of my car so I can feel like I’m living in the retrofuture (seriously!), and I might install something like these AUXITO LED strips (demo video), if it’s legal in Illinois, though really I’d want a setup that gives me multiple colors at once.