PURVEYOR OF FINE WORDS

April 2, 2004

April 2 2004

Interweb Wrangler

One of the more onerous duties of being a web architect is answering the ubiquitous small talk lead-in, “So, what do you do?”

To the unacquainted, it may appear to be an easy and straightforward question, equal in simplicity to questions like, “how are you?”, or, “did you happen to see a small monkey in a tutu come by this way?”, when in fact supplying an adequate response is a Byzantine process that depends upon the following criteria:

  1. Do you actually know what web architecture is?
  2. Are you really just wasting time until the one person you know at this party shows up so you can say “hi” and leave?
  3. Does this person that you’re talking to give a crap?
  4. Are you trying to get into this person’s pants?
  5. Could this person tell you the difference between AOL and the Internet?

In most cases, a “yes” to two or more of these questions leads you to assume that you are dealing with a technologically competent individual, and you, confident in your assertion that a short job description would suffice, proffer the following.

“I’m a website architect” — the addition of “-site” eased into your job title, just in case the inquirer is susceptible to thoughts of you being some kind of bioengineer who is trying to recreate spiderwebs.

The response comes back to you like a post-garlic-festival belch, “Oh, you make web pages!”, a response that sweeps the very foundation of hierarchical superiority out from under you and lays you down flat next to the guy who advertises web design services on Craigslist and openly admits he works exclusively in FrontPage.

Telling a web architect that he makes web pages is akin to describing a neurosurgeon as one who shaves people’s heads, a tax accountant who does math well, a trial lawyer who knows how to use Lexis-Nexis — all true, but completely missing the crux of what the profession is about.

“Well,” you say, with the appropriately sympathetic but hubristic intonation, “I lay out the plan for the entire site, how people move through it, what to call everything, where to put things on each page, etc., etc.”

“Oh, so it’s more like project management?” is the next attempt at summarizing your job, which is now tangentially moving away from your explanation. At this point, you determine that continuing any further discussion about contingency design, controlled vocabularies, and n-tier acrhitectures would be unproductive.

“Yeah, pretty much,” you concede.

And for the remainder of the day, you simply answer, “Yes. Yes, I do make web pages. Have you ever been whitehouse.com?”

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  • One of the most popular events of the annual New Yorker Festival is Calvin Trillin's food-oriented walking tour of SoHo, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and Little Italy. According to the New York Times, one of the tour's favorite destinations is Banh Mi Saigon Bakery, also one of my top lunch destinations.

    Standing outside, dipping his roll into peanut sauce, he said he liked to eat standing up. "If I couldn't eat in a four-star restaurant again, it would mean nothing to me," he said. "But if someone said I couldn't eat any more cilantro, I would be very upset."

    (link)

  • The Big Picture has a selection of photographs from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who is the answer to the question "hey, who takes those amazing aerial photos of all these different places on earth?" Many more images are available on Arthus-Bertrand's web site and in his many books.

    Some of these photos are coming to NYC in May 2009 in an exhibition in Battery Park City.

    (link)

  • Remember the fun we had reading about this root beer tasting a few months back? The #1 root beer from that tasting, Sprecher (from Wisconsin), is now available on the root beer section of the menu at Ssam Bar. My Moscato d'Asti-addled brain forgot to get a bottle to go when I was there last, but I'll be back for you soon, Sprecher.

    (link)

  • We've seen personal annual reports, but now Christopher Doyle has devised a set of personal identity guidelines for himself.

    The image above is from a spread marked Full Colour Vertical_Private. The following 'key identity formats' are, of course, Full Color_Vertical, Full Colour Seated_Casual and Full Colour Seated _Formal.

    The incorrect uses are hilarious.

    (link)

  • David Friedman of the excellent Ironic Sans blog took some photos of a Kentucky denim factory that distresses jeans for high-end designers.

    I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists. You can't just have any loose threads, you have to have the right loose threads. They can't just be faded. They have to be the right color. A lot of work goes into making these jeans look just right.

    (link)

  • A photographer talks about how he edits his photos and collects editing approaches from other photographers as well.

    You usually have a hunch, but the great thing about photography is that it's so unpredictable, so you never quite understand how and when a good photograph comes about. But when editing, I do contact sheets, then machine prints and then select from that.

    And when asked what makes one image stand out more than another, is it emotional or an intellectual reaction he answers: "It must be intuitive. If it were intellectual, I'd be able to explain what happens. That's why I'm a photographer. I express myself visually, not verbally.

    Two main themes emerge: 1) take some time off from your images in order to evaluate them more fairly, and 2) edit with an outside party, someone you trust to be tough but fair. (via conscientious)

    (link)

  • The New Yorker devotes the entire Talk of the Town section in their latest issue to their endorsement for President. As you might guess, Obama gets the endorsement and John McCain receives no quarter from the editors. The key part of the article concerns the candidates' possible appointments to the Supreme Court and their consequences. A more conservative court scares the shit out of me.

    (link)

  • A new study suggests that HIV jumped from apes to humans around the turn of the 20th century, which coincides with the development of colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa.

    HIV was and remains a "relatively poorly transmitted" virus, he said, so the key to the success of the virus was possibly the development of cities such as Leopoldville in the early 1900s.

    The large numbers of people living in close proximity would have allowed more opportunity for new infections.

    "I think the picture that has emerged here, is that changes the human population experienced may have opened to the door to the spread of HIV," he said.

    (link)

  • Evan Roth has been putting metal plates with messages and symbols cut into them into his carry-on luggage when he goes through security at the airport.

    Here's Roth's idea, which he calls "TSA Communication" and tells me has already made it through three trial airport runs: Take a metal plate, stencil and cut out a message -- words or an image -- place the plate at the bottom of your carry-on bag, and watch what happens as the TSA employee operating the airport X-ray machine notices ... or doesn't notice.

    So far, he's used plates with outlines of the American flag, a "NOTHING TO SEE HERE" message, and something he calls The Exact Opposite Of A Box Cutter, a plate with a box cutter shape cut out of it.

    (link)

  • Several photo series of fashion models transforming into different outfits. It's amazing how different they can look with changes in makeup, hair, and clothes.

    (link)

  • A Helvetica-themed version of Monopoly. (via df)

    (link)

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