Archives

Time Out

I’m so, so tired this evening, due in no small part to the fact that Behavior is in the final production stages of a site that’ll launch on 20 Apr. Also, I’ve got a big presentation on Thursday for a potential client and I’m excited and worried about it. Sometimes being in start-up mode makes me feel like I could work forever doing the work of ten designers, and sometimes it makes me want to just park my butt in front of the TV with a whole stack of DVDs.

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Panic Club

Panic RoomLast night I went to see David Fincher’s new movie, “Panic Room,” which is no “Fight Club,” for better or worse. Actually, it’s a tautly made thriller, enjoyable if unambitious. But what made the trek all the way up to the hellish Times Square area worth it was a single scene halfway through, when Fincher turns the movie virtually silent — and the opening weekend crowd that I saw it with went completely wild, hooting, hollering, screaming at the screen. It’s the kind of rare, visceral, communal moviegoing experience that few directors can achieve, and it was spectacular.

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Full Color

Epson Stylus C80The latest addition to my hardware family is the Epson Stylus C80 color printer. The reviews for it have been uniformly excellent and the price is a steal (US$150 after rebate) — and yet I’m wondering if I really need or even want this thing. Since losing my job last fall and going on the start-your-own-business frugality plan, I’ve been averse to making large purchases and it feels uncomfortable to make one like this that, while nice to have, is not entirely necessary. Right now the printer box is sitting on my floor, still unopened.

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Oscariffic

OscarIt’d be hard to describe how distasteful I find the Oscars. The funniest thing I heard this Oscar season was that, in spite of all the unusually vociferous bad blood that preceded last night’s show, the most important thing was ‘to preserve Oscar’s integrity.’ Ha! All the same, I was pleased to hear that Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won big last night.

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Q&A UI

De-ConstructDe-construct, a UK Web design shop that rose from the ashes of Deepend UK, has an ingenious Web site that plays on the firm’s name in a super-smart way: rather than explicitly cataloging the site’s contents in the form of a navigation (which is what 99% of sites do), they offer a dead-simple Q&A prompt. With each keystroke, the interface auto-completes your typing with possible terms inside its “library.” Totally brilliant. It makes me a little jealous too that they have such a great site — looking at their story, I realized that they began life at the same time as Behavior.

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