Things That Happened to Me in 2013

A quick rundown of last year’s big events in my life: on 9 Jan, Laura gave birth to our twin boys Lafayette and Thiebaud, and all of a sudden we became a family of five. That really changed up the calculus of daily living for me, but it also made life so much sweeter. We were more exhausted and more frenzied than ever before in 2013, but now we have three amazing kids and, well, when it comes to parental pride, all the standard clichés apply.

If it was only that much change that the year had in store for us, it would have been enough. But it was just the beginning; within the first twenty-four hours after the boys were born, while we were still in the recovery room, I found myself signing deal papers for Etsy, Inc.’s acquisition of my company Mixel — on my phone, no less. By the end of January, I was a full-time employee at Etsy.

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Sonos vs. AirPlay vs. Our House

At Christmas, we flirted with a Sonos sound system in my household, but ultimately decided to return it. I know smart people who adore their Sonos systems, but when I’ve played with the hardware and software in the past I’ve never been more than mildly impressed. So when it came time to commit to installing another technical system in my household — the Sonos meant more plugs, more boxes, more management — I just couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to outweigh the hefty price premium that Sonos charges.

Frankly, we’re an Apple household, so by my reckoning, we already get most of the benefit that Sonos offers from the AirPlay system that’s in the house already. We’re heavy users of our Apple TV for all kinds of video — iTunes movie rentals, Netflix, Hulu Plus, even ripped MP4s streamed from other computers in the house — and we rely on it heavily for audio, too. It’s hooked up to a pretty powerful Onkyo home theater system in the living room and out of the box it streams my entire music library from iTunes Match, which is what we listen to most often.

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William Drenttel, 1953-2013

Ratings

5 of 5 stars
What’s this?

Bill was one of the leading lights of the design industry, a true intellectual who made a difference. He passed away this past Saturday after a year and a half-long battle with brain cancer. I only just heard a few moments ago; we became friends several years ago but I hadn’t spoken to him in two years or so. He was an incredible person and I’m deeply saddened.

More about Bill at the site he co-founded, Design Observer.

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Today’s Best Action Movie Directors Are Working in Direct-to-Video

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

Insightful essay from Ignatiy Vishnevetsky:

“Direct-to-video action may be an isolated genre, but its strengths go beyond mere niche appeal. It’s a vibrant, interconnected scene that is continuing the traditions of the classic action movie without being caught up in reverence. In the process, it’s produced some of the most purely entertaining movies of the last few years—movies that often outclass their big-budget counterparts.”

Read the full essay at The A.V. Club.

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“Memorex” by Smash TV

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

This amazing super-cut video is a year old by now, but for those who missed it, it’s hypnotic and eerily wonderful.

“Sourced from over forty hours of 80s commercials pulled from warped VHS tapes, ‘Memorex’ is a deep exploration of nostalgia and the cultural values of an era of excess. It’s a re-contextualization of ads — cultural detritus, the lowest of the low — into something altogether more profound, humorous, and at times, even beautiful.

“Digging up long forgotten memories for a generation who spent their formative years glued to the boob tube, Memorex is a veritable nostalgia nuke for children of the 80s. Endless beach parties, Saturday morning cartoons, claymation everything, sleek cars, sexy babes, toys you forgot existed, station idents, primitive computer animation, all your favorite sugary cereal mascots, and so much more. An ode to the hyper consumerism and sleek veneer of a simpler time.”

As close to a trance mix as video has come so far. Watch all fifty minutes of it here.

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Thoughts on Streaming Music, at Medium

It’s rare for me to be able to find the time to write at great length these days, but when I do, I’m stingy about posting that content anywhere but here, at Subtraction.com. Still, after turning over in my head an essay about streaming music for months and months, when I recently found the time to knock it out, I decided to give Medium.com a spin. The result is “What Streaming Music Can Be,” a rumination on the potential innovations that services like Spotify and Rdio have within their grasp, but have yet to achieve. Here is an excerpt:

“The interesting thing about a copy of an album on a streaming service is that you don’t have to think about it as a copy of an album at all. It can be the canonical version of the album, a centralized, networked experience that pulls together its own audience, a gateway into supplemental experiences. Through that lens, all sorts of DVD extras-style content starts to make sense: music videos, remixes, alternate takes, commentary, and more, all housed exactly where the album ‘lives’ in the cloud. Even better, the album can become a hub for those listening. It can host blogs, tweets, photos, discussions between fans and artists — and between fans and other fans. The centralized album can show us who is listening, and where, when and what else they’re listening to.”

The experience of writing on Medium itself was fascinating; its emphasis on simplicity is something that lots of publishing systems aspire to, but that Medium has somehow obtained. Like a lot of folks, I’m still not sure what Medium actually is, but after having used it, and after having read this insightful post about the service by my friend Anil Dash, I feel myself warming up to it considerably. (Full disclosure: I’m friendly with some of the Medium team here in New York, and I got a little special attention from Kate Lee, who kindly edited my essay.)

In any event, I invite you to read “What Streaming Music Can Be” and let me know what you think.

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What Streaming Music Can Be

One gift that I won’t be giving to loved ones this holiday season is music, sadly. In the age of streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, music has become so readily available that it’s lost its thingness, that meaning and scarcity that makes wrapping it up and stashing it under a tree special. I know it’s possible to give a subscription to Spotify, say, as a gift, but somehow that’s not the same as a record or compact disc that has been sought out and acquired and then becomes owned, an object to be kept and identified with oneself.

Physical media’s ship has sailed though, and I’m certainly not making a case for its restoration. Streaming music is clearly here to stay. But when I think about Spotify, which I subscribe to currently, and Rdio, which I’ve subscribed to in the past, I wonder what it is that prevents me from feeling that sense of ownership over the music that these services make available so readily?

Is it streaming music’s lack of physicality, the absence of actual discs and packaging? Actually, no. When I look back at my old collections of vinyl and CDs, my stomach churns a bit. I spent all of that money on all of those albums, and now they occupy a greater share of the real estate in my home than I can reasonably justify, like old chests full of sunk costs. In truth, I don’t miss records as objects at all, and don’t aspire to own any more of them.

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Fénix

Ratings

3 of 5 stars
What’s this?

A handsome, vaguely calligraphic free typeface from Uruguayan designer Fernando Díaz. At first glance Fénix’s “strong serifs and rough strokes” suggest it’s well suited only for display purposes, but in the samples shown here, at least, it’s surprisingly effective for setting text as well.

Fénix
Fénix for Text

The fact that it’s free is the good news. The better news is that it’s available as a web font at Google Fonts. The bad news is that there’s only the one weight right now; no bold, light, medium, italic, etc. See the font in greater detail at Díaz’s Behance project.

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