A blog of aggregated miscellanea and things I like uncovered from my daily travails. I'm Jacob, a peripatetic interdisciplinary designer of British persuasion, having interests in gastronomy, fashion, technology, interiors and sustainability. I'm currently working on online e-Commerce and identity. I dig Macs, mountain biking and smelly cheese.
↩ Jacob's Ephemerata
Modern Day Flintstones [Spiegel]
«A modern-day Stone Age subculture is developing in the United States, where wannabe cavemen mimic their distant ancestors. They eat lots of meat, bathe in icy water and run around barefoot.»
For more see the earlier article ‘Evolutionary Fitness’ from The Times.
Adobe Puts Secret Hold on HTML5 Spec
«In public, Adobe claims to “support” HTML5. On the private W3C mailing list, though, they’ve placed an objection to prevent the current spec from being published. My understanding is that Adobe is trying to block the API spec for the canvas element. The canvas element hasn’t gotten as much attention as the video element, but clearly, 2D graphics in canvas is competitive with Flash, and it appears that Adobe’s plan is to sabotage it via W3C politics.»
— John Gruber
Hybrowse
Hybrowse is an elegant way to browse the huge quantities of stuff on sites such as Etsy, using simple category (tag) filters by drilling-down through them—from most common to least. With no interface crud, you may only add or remove categories to narrow or widen the scope of items shown, serendipitously limited to a single page of results. If there’s less items than this, you can be sure you’ve found a niche!
I’ll look forward to seeing more sources, merged results across sources, and perhaps even top categories trawled from current trends, my interests, or my network—that would be nifty.
The Accidental Hermit: A short history of the kick sled
«Kick sleds look like Zimmer frames on runners […] can be quite fast in flat areas, and ridiculously fast downhill. […] The ones who use kick sleds now are mostly those champions of common sense, the same elderly women who drink tap water, eat fish and vegetables, read books, knit and live to one hundred.»
If it weren’t for the fact my feet look like they’ve already got frostbite, this post would make me want to move to somewhere icy all year round.
![‘Bright Star’ (2009) by Jane Campion.
«Keats and His Beloved in an Ode to Hot English Chastity»— Scott in The New York Times.
«Jane Campion’s film Bright Star is a wistful and melancholic account of the unconsummated romance between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne.»— Quinn in The Independent.
«Very few films allow you to listen to the sounds of silence, or near-silence, between the lines of dialogue: the sounds of birdsong, or the rustle of clothing, or footfalls in a country lane – but that is what Campion’s does. […] a fine and even ennobling film: defiantly, unfashionably about the vocation of romantic love. […] Their love is murdered by the false choice between love and art, and sacrificed to a petty tangle of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties.»— Bradshaw in The Guardian.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxtvzkMyUF1qz4yr8o1_500.jpg)
‘Bright Star’ (2009) by Jane Campion.
«Keats and His Beloved in an Ode to Hot English Chastity»
— Scott in The New York Times.
«Jane Campion’s film Bright Star is a wistful and melancholic account of the unconsummated romance between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne.»
— Quinn in The Independent.
«Very few films allow you to listen to the sounds of silence, or near-silence, between the lines of dialogue: the sounds of birdsong, or the rustle of clothing, or footfalls in a country lane – but that is what Campion’s does. […] a fine and even ennobling film: defiantly, unfashionably about the vocation of romantic love. […] Their love is murdered by the false choice between love and art, and sacrificed to a petty tangle of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties.»
— Bradshaw in The Guardian.
“ The train moved so slowly that throughout the evening, passengers casually climbed down the side of the train, jumped off, relieved themselves in the nearby forest and then jogged back to their car and climbed up again – all while the train was moving! ”
“ There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. ”
Lord Chesterfield [via The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking]
FRONTLINE: ‘digital nation’
Want to hear some South Korean kids sing about netiquette? Well here’s a distraction! Oh but you heard the news that multitasking is turning human-kind into imbeciles didn’t you? So close that Facebook window before hitting play, and for the love of all that is good concentrate. This PBS report looks behind the research and asks us, «is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?»
An Inconvenient PR Truth «Ask yourself: what have I done to reduce my irrelevance?»
«Eco clothing does not exist»—Lika Volkova. [via makool loves you]
