link » tags: [news] [startup] permamark in: Wists
Read More
admin
The real reason that I wanted to build Wists, was to re-enact a long time fantasy where I would be asked to appear on Desert Island Disks, a long running radio show in the UK where you had to imagine you were stranded on a desert island with your favorite songs and had to explain why you chose them and what they meant to you. So, being a list geek, I have put together my Desert Island Wists, tagging my favorite books, movies, albums and, of course, buildings with the tags topten=buildings etc. (Desert Island Disks only allows you 8 songs and 1 book – but this is the web and I want 10 of everything). Here they are: My Top Ten Buildings My Top Ten Movies My Top Ten Books My Top Ten Albums
I have finally pieced together and laminated the 25ft long aerial view of Manhattan that I have been working on. Its currently stuck to the floor of our apartment. I'm going to spend the next week or so looking for interesting places to visit and organize an architectural cycle tour.link » tags: [flickr] [architecture] permamark in: Wists
I hate paper – it seems mad that in 2005 there aren't more, readily available, solutions for small businesses to get rid of paperwork. In 98 before XML took off I had a stab at mapping existing EDI meta-standards to have a forms that create HTML forms for things such as purchase orders etc. See EDML Although you could argue that any online transaction is a form of EDI, existing efforts to migrate to XML have been slow. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from RSS – a trivial standard that the people working on large scale syndication standards such as ICE, used to scoff at. Perhaps EDI needs an RSS equivalent , something that handles just purchase orders and invoices, for example (which account for the majority of EDI messages), maps to existing standards such as EDIFACT and ANSI X12 (does not re-invent the wheel), and keeps…
As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school (ITP @ NYU), we've been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really "got" what we were doing – that is until we met Google. Congrats to Dens and Alex!link » tags: [news] [google] permamark in: Wists
No axe to grind here, was just curious, so dug around the web for some data: Cost of Iraq/Afghan war so far: $300 billion (From end 2001 till end of this year) Cost per year: $75 billion Number of tax payers in the US: 130 million Average cost of campaign per taxpayer: $2300 Average cost per year per taxpayer: $575 Average cut for Bush’s 2003 tax cuts, per person: $1,083 (Median, i.e. most likely tax cut per person was $227)
Was pleasantly surprised the other day to find out that a favorite architect of mine, Lebbeus Woods, lives in the same building as me. Outside of architecture, Wood's designs have featured in the films Alien 3 and 12 Monkeys. (as you can see I am messing around with Wists' new blogging tool)link » tags: [books] [apt] [architects] permamark in: Wists
Pixagogo – great site with classic Jazz LP covers. Autumn Leaves on Somethin' Else (shown) is that track that made me fall in love with Jazz. See it on Wists in [jazz] [art]
My former professor, Peter Cook's building in Graz, with an outer skin which is a media facade that can be changed electronically. See it on Wists in [architecture]
Half way through Kingdom of Heaven our hero is given a choice: Marry the good king’s, beautiful, nice daughter, who he is in love with and she is in love with him, and become king of Jerusalem, rule it wisely and keep the peace. In exchange, the corrupt guy who is going out with said daughter, who is trying to provoke war and murders people periodically and who wants to murder our hero, will be arrested and executed. Sounded like a no-brainer to me. However, our hero, does not want to sell his soul, to have his enemy arrested on a trumped up charge. At this point I switched off and enjoyed the cinematography. The good king dies, the corrupt guy marries the beautiful princess and provokes a war where thousands of people die and he is captured. The hero takes over and manages to kill enough of the enemy…
The BBC have a very moving picture of an old, old man crying at a VE day remembrance service in Europe. WWII is refered to as a ‘just war’ to allude to the idea that a declaration of war can be on morally solid ground. But even if that were the case, justification is not the same as success. If 40 million deaths and many more injuries, homes lost and lives ruined and half of an entire race wiped out in genocide is not an unprecedented disaster then what the hell is? The allied victory in the Second World War was entirely Pyrrhic. For me, remembrance is second hand, of the lessons I learned from my grandparents’ generation who lived through WWI and WWII. Remembrance of a 16 year old boy with shell shock, shot for desertion to the allied refusal to bomb the railroad to Auschwitz. Because of the…