BBC – Secret of Drawing Series – Episode 4: Drawing by Design
From the BBC website:
“The Secret of Drawing
This four part series, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, explores how drawing has shaped our lives. Join him to discover the history of drawing and its relevance to the modern world.”
Episode 4: Drawing by Design
“Andrew explores the role drawing has played in technical design and architecture, studying complex structures such as the Guggenheim and Boeing 777. From Leonardo to Libeskind, he shows how drawing has been a crucial tool in the history of scientific and technological discovery.”
BBC – Secret of Drawing Series – Episode 3: All in the Mind
From the BBC website:
“The Secret of Drawing
This four part series, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, explores how drawing has shaped our lives. Join him to discover the history of drawing and its relevance to the modern world.”
Episode 3: All in the Mind
“Andrew investigates drawing as a primal human instinct and a learned discipline, looking at the earliest cave drawings and the work of David Hockney and Picasso. The programme uses the latest developments in cognitive science to examine why we draw the way we do.”
BBC – Secret of Drawing Series – Episode 2: Storylines
From the BBC website:
“The Secret of Drawing
This four part series, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, explores how drawing has shaped our lives. Join him to discover the history of drawing and its relevance to the modern world.”
Episode 2: Storylines
“Drawing has always been an essential tool for the telling of stories. Andrew looks at the satire of Gillray, Goya and Hogarth and its influence on photojournalism, American comics, Japanese Manga and Hollywood storyboards today.”
BBC – Secret of Drawing Series – Episode 1: The Line of Enquiry
From the BBC website:
“The Secret of Drawing
This four part series, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, explores how drawing has shaped our lives. Join him to discover the history of drawing and its relevance to the modern world.”
Episode 1: The Line of Enquiry
” Andrew looks at artists who have chosen the natural world as their subject matter and explores how drawing has helped man to understand his place in the universe. The programme covers the Rennaissance, the Eastern way, Turner, Constable and contemporary artists Anthony Gormley and Richard Long.”
Ya no seré Feliz
J. L. Borges
……Ya no seré feliz. Tal vez no importa.
Hay tantas otras cosas en el mundo;
un instante cualquiera es más profundo
y diverso que el mar. La vida es corta
y aunque las horas son tan largas, una
oscura maravilla nos acecha,
la muerte, ese otro mar, esa otra flecha
que nos libra del sol y de la luna
y del amor. La dicha que me diste
y me quitaste debe ser borrada;
lo que era todo tiene que ser nada.
Sólo que me queda el goce de estar triste,
esa vana costumbre que me inclina
al Sur, a cierta puerta, a cierta esquina…….
Some (visual) thoughts on Powerpoint
Over VizThink they’re asking the question: is “PowerPoint A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?”
Personally, I think Powerpoint is a great thing. Graphic power to the masses! In any case, I made a little Powerpoint presentation (but of course, what else?) with some graphics. So here it is, for whatever is worth, my “Powerpoint con monitos”.
The companion apple
Someone gave me an apple last week. A green one. I decided I should eat it at some point and left it in my office. Next day I came into my office I saw it and realized I’ve forgot totally about the apple. I came to the conclusion that I was not going to eat it at the office, because somehow the work environment is not favorable for me to eat apples. So I decided to put it in my purse and take it with me back home, where surely I’ll be more in the mood of eating it.
When I was home I saw the apple in my purse and convinced myself that it was not the moment to eat it. So I decided to leave it in my purse to take it back to the office, where surely I’d be hungry at some moment or the other, and then the apple will be there, ready for me to eat it.
Now it’s time to go back home, my work day has finished. I go to my locker, grab my purse and what do I see? My green companion apple, there she is, ready for when I’m ready to eat it. You can see that, even if she’s strong, the travels back and forth in my purse have taken their toll in her smooth surface.
I should really eat it before it goes back to the office, but now the thing has grown into me. It’s like a good-health fetish: “I’m being very health-conscious, see how I have my apple prepared for when I have a little hunger”.
It would be just easier to come to terms with the fact that I don’t like green apples. And then I could let her go, thank her for the good moments we’ve spent together the last couple of days and go on with my life.
And just for the record, I have some chocolates that have been with me since way back, they live in my desk drawer. They don’t go bad, they’ve just become hard and dry, like a bitter old lady. They’re chocolate mummies. Those are my junk-food fetishes, to remind me that I could eat them if I wanted to.
And you, do you have any food companion?
Hipster PDA as a lame excuse to get visits to your blog and the real reasons why a Palm trumps a Hipster PDA
If you have a blog and you really don’t have anything to talk about, you can either:
- choose to talk about your 43 folders and how you use them (check)
- pick a theme from a hat, preferably one you have no idea about, but you are ready to hate it. Do a quick brainstorming of, let’s say, 43 reasons it sucks (43, as we know, is the magic number) and transcribe it “as is” on your post (wonder if the author did his brainstorming with index cards, hmm). Make sure you add to your post several popular tags and wait. (Hey, after all it did work as it was noticed by The Mann). Wonder why my “Merlinism” tag hasn’t really brought me any traffic. Maybe the world is not ready for it yet.
What I’ve learned from Flickr
It has been over a year that I’ve been a Flickr member. I’ve discovered Flickr thanks to my guru, Merlin. But I would talk about that in another post.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how my Flickr behavior has changed over this year. At first I signed in just to be able to post comments. Then I decided to upload a photo to have a buddy icon. I love buddy icons. I like them so much that I change mine every so often. Sometimes I tell myself I should stick to the same image for my buddy icon, make it my “visual signature”. Alas, I find it more interesting to see how a particular image would fit the 48 x 48 pixel limit than in building a particular persona of myself as expressed by my buddy icon.
43 folders challenge
I’ve decided to give my 43 folders a chance. As from today and for a month I’ll use them as methodically as I can. At then end I’ll report on how I did.
