catharsis

Oakland, CA

Male

NovemberNov 21 Saturday Sat 09

Aftermath (NSFW)

San Francisco-based photographer Kerry Mansfield was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, & photographed this series of self-portraits during her treatment (via reddit)

This work is incredibly brave, disturbingly vulnerable, and poignantly beautiful. I’m speechless.

Kerry Mansfield describes the project:

As a photographer, I’ve spent most of my career looking deeply into the spaces we inhabit. The idea of Home – what it meant and how it felt, preoccupied my thinking. Almost all my pictures were of the spaces we live in or the things we live with. But at the age of 31, a diagnosis of breast cancer forced me to redefine my ideas of home.

Needless to say it came as quite a shock. I had exercised and eaten correctly, and like many of my age, I felt indestructible, never thinking the most basic of dwellings could be lost. Faced with the nihilistic process of radical chemotherapy and surgery, my ideas of “where” I exist turned inward. As the doctors, with their knives and chemistry broke down the physical structure in which I lived, the relationship between the cellular self and the metaphysical self became glaringly clear. My body may not be me, but without it, I am something else entirely. I knew that my long held image of myself would be shattered. What would emerge would be a mystery.

It was in that spirit of unknown endings, that I picked up my camera to self document the catharsis of my own cancer treatment. No one was there when these pictures were made, just my dissolving ideas of self and a camera. And what began as a story that could have ended in many ways, this chapter, like my treatment, has now run its course. While I can’t say everything is fine now, I will say, “These are the images of my Home – as it was then”, and with a little luck, there will be no more to come.

(via desideratum)

A note left with forgotten laundry, composed by Eric Willis (via...

A note left with forgotten laundry, composed by Eric Willis (via reddit)

(via desideratum)

NovemberNov 20 Friday Fri 09

A Weezer Snuggie? I mean, they’re comfortable, but this is...

A Weezer Snuggie? I mean, they’re comfortable, but this is ridiculous… (via digg)

(via desideratum)

A slide from Kristina Halvorson’s presentation...

A slide from Kristina Halvorson’s presentation “Content Strategy: The Care and Feeding of Your Biggest Brand Asset”.

The idea that content strategy can be fixed/addressed post-launch is both dangerous and short-sighted. It’s like building the structure of a house first, then afterward, trying to figure out how appliances/wiring/etc. will be installed. Making content strategy an afterthought a poor value proposition.

In her slideshow summary, Kristina writes:

How are we communicating - and demonstrating - our brand promises online? With our branded content, of course. In fact, our content is often what makes or breaks our customers’ online experience. So why are agencies and their clients constantly forgetting to consider their online content until the eleventh hour?

Content strategy plans for useful, usable content. What should you publish, and why? Where? How? Who will own the content, both before and after launch?

Let’s look past today’s “bright shiny objects” towards a future where a company’s (and their customers’) content is treated like an asset, not an afterthought.

(via desideratum)

A Gentleman’s Guide to Purchasing a Television by Zach...

A Gentleman’s Guide to Purchasing a Television by Zach Kushner @ Gliffy (via Gizmodo)

(click image for much longer, full-size version)

(via desideratum)

Fry Spider (via Bits & Pieces)

(via desideratum)

Chrome OS Available as Free VMWare Download

(via desideratum)

Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]

(via desideratum)

NovemberNov 19 Thursday Thu 09

stayinspired: Gorgeous mirrored stainless steel ping pong table...

stayinspired:

Gorgeous mirrored stainless steel ping pong table by Cumulus Studios (via Furniture Fashion)

(via desideratum)

Breathtaking typeface constructed by César Puertas for the Type...

Breathtaking typeface constructed by César Puertas for the Type and Media MA ‘08/’09 program at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague.

(via I Love Typography)

(via desideratum)

Paul Graham on Apple and the App Store

John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes:

The hard part about criticizing the App Store is that it doesn’t fit into a black-and-white narrative. It’s not bad or good. It’s both. In fact, it’s more extreme than that — it’s both amazingly good and horribly bad. And, frustratingly, many of us see how the bad parts could be made better without sacrificing the good parts.

This piece by Paul Graham addresses this dichotomy, and tries to make sense of Apple’s seeming blindness to the App Store’s severe problems:

Actually I suppose Apple has a third misconception: that all the complaints about App Store approvals are not a serious problem. They must hear developers complaining. But partners and suppliers are always complaining. It would be a bad sign if they weren’t; it would mean you were being too easy on them. Meanwhile the iPhone is selling better than ever. So why do they need to fix anything?

Later, Graham captures exactly what gives me The Fear:

An organization that wins through dirty tricks starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work.

I wish I’d written that sentence.

Read: Apple’s Mistake by Paul Graham

(via desideratum)

The Death of the Boring Blog Post

The Death of the Boring Blog Post:

Must-read (and beautifully crafted) article on macro blog posts by Paddy Donnelly (via Smashing Magazine)

I’ve been excited about this concept since speaking with Jason Santa Maria about it at AEA SF ‘08. It should catch on, as it would mark a significant step towards potential clients (and people in general) understanding that web design is a craft — not a tool for making print media available to a wider audience.

Jason originally got people thinking about this with his presentation “Good Design Ain’t Easy”, which can be listened to and viewed at the Webstock archives. Experience it and join the revolution.

(via desideratum)

Rice bear bathing in tomato sauce. It looks defiant. reblogged...

Rice bear bathing in tomato sauce. It looks defiant.

reblogged from musinginmyworldand geekhideout:

(via n-start)

Too good to eat

(via desideratum)

IEBlog: An Early Look at IE9 for Developers

IEBlog: An Early Look at IE9 for Developers:

OK. Microsoft IE Team? Let’s just make this the goal:

Fully support the features/renderings that the other major browsers (i.e. Firefox, Safari/Chrome, Opera) have implemented. Catch up.

When people finally leave IE6 behind, chances are, they’ll be doing it for IE8 and other alternative browsers. If IE9 hits and isn’t up to the capabilities of, say, Safari 5/Firefox 4/Opera 11, IE’s market share will more readily slip away. The browser on top will be

the fastest,
the most extensible,
and will play best with standards/specs.

(via desideratum)

RedditGifts: an online gift exchange program for the reddit.com community

RedditGifts: an online gift exchange program for the reddit.com community:

This is remarkable.

Imagine Digg users or even Facebook users trying to organize something like this (they aren’t).

Think of the Guinness World Record for “Largest Secret Santa Exchange” being 1,500 people when there are already ~2,000 people signed up for the RedditGifts exchange.

Consider how some people might actually put more thought into a gift for an anonymous person than they might for friends and acquaintances they know IRL.

Conducting a Secret Santa between (mostly) anonymous users on a social news site is a captivating social experiment. Are community-based trust and good will enough to ensure everyone plays by the rules? Will the organizers be able to structure it well enough that everything goes off without a hitch? Will the threat of bad karma and the shunning of virtual peers prevent people from gaming the system?

I just signed up, and I’m anxious to find out.

(via reddit and more reddit)