Tip of the Quill: A Journal

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Assault and batteries.

So today the battery on my PowerBook G4 decided to quit taking a charge. Argh. This, right after I decided not to buy a new one after all. And batteries for these babies are a hundred and thirty bucks. I may just mentally take that $130 and put it towards the purchase of a new […]

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Damn, he does good work.

So my friend Derek picked up a Canon Digital Rebel over the holidays as well, and he’s already putting it to excellent use. Behold his new site, Ephemera: Photos by Derek Powazek. Very, very cool.

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Two words. Fuh. Reezing.

Jefferson Davis and my aunt Mavis, it’s frickin’ cold down here. The windows in my room are only single-pane glass, so it’s really, really cold in here. Methinks I’m going to go work from a Starbucks or a Barnes and Noble this week, just to have someplace warm to sit. Jeezus.

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Low-hanging fruit, not in season.

For some reason, the phrase ‘low-hanging fruit’ has been running through my head all day. It’s a phrase we used to use back at The Advisory Board all the time, meaning the stuff that’s easy pickings, the projects on your to-do list that have only one or two steps left before completion. All day, my […]

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Um, whoops.

So I spent the whole day Saturday sorting, cleaning, trashing old magazines and moving things around in my room. The result? I think I liked the way I had it before better. Whoops. Oh, well – there was some desperately-needed reorganization done, a bunch of crap got chucked, and now I have a more open […]

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Case in point.

The 20th anniversary issue of Vanity Fair, from September 2003, doesn’t get to the actual content until 173 pages in. IN the first 173 pages, they get through the table of contents, the contributors’ profiles, and the letters. One hundred and seventy-three pages worth of glossy ads taking up my shelf space. Ugh. See ya.

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The rule of the knife.

Every so often, I pull up to my desk, reach for one of the five coffee mugs I keep full of pens, highlighters, scissors and other assorted desk tools, and select a thin, black shaft with metal at one end and a plastic cap at the other. This is no pen or mechanical pencil – […]

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New year, new look.

In a bout of “Designer, design thyself,” I’m contemplating new looks and trends and whatnot for 2004. I just got done flipping through the new issue of GQ (the one with Orlando Bloom on the cover, whom I was appalled to discover is the same age as me), and they had this big huge multi-page […]

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Interesting Friday afternoon reading.

One of my favorite designers-with-blogs Todd Dominey has weighed in with his take on the iPod mini. As always, interesting reading, and, yeah, he’s just about right. The iPod mini is overpriced for its target – but now there’s talk of an HP-branded iPod hybrid, which could be interesting. Will it be the same price? […]

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The design scene in the windy city.

So I’ve been thinking about moving to Chicago, but one thing keeping me here is a fear of what the economy and market are like out there. The craigslist entries for my line of work are downright paltry, which drives the point home that DC is recessionproof and New York is, well, right up there […]

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