There’s a resurgence of small, handcrafted sites challenging the current trajectory of the internet. Joining the movement is as simple as making your own.
from Chia Amisola's excellent essay, Making Space for a Handmade Web. Just one of the Six Memos for the Future of Digital Creation.
Studio.Neat makes expensive but gorgeous notebooks (and other things).
Mused.com is like a Google Street View x Google Earth for place GSV and GE don't go. It describes itself as
Bringing Immersive Cultural Heritage Experiences to Gaming, Classrooms, and Libraries around the World.
Once you sign up for a free membership, you can do things like:
Note that I had difficulty making this work with Google Chrome but it worked with every other browser I tried. My default is Arc.
The Public Domain Image Archive is exactly what you think it is.
Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May trolls Donald Trump regarding Canada becoming the 51st state.
In 2003, I had a miserable job at a miserable company called Butterfield & Robinson. There were some wonderful people there but the bosses' bosses were useless and I hated it. I lasted 13 months and — after doing a bunch of copy editing that I wasn't paid for — I quit and went back to being a freelance web designer.
Part of the culture at B&R was to have a "Daily Huddle" where the entire company would gather and discuss the previous day's business, as well as what was in the pike. The huddle was run by a different person every day and the company made a big deal out an employee's first huddle, which would come six months into your employment. You had to make it special. Most people did this with catering or special guests. I did it with music.
For my first huddle, I made two mixed CDs, which I called A Way of Doing and A Way of Being Done. I had a friend do the artwork and I made about 75 copies of each and gave them away at the huddle. The friend recently sent me the artwork and I've recreated the playlist for the first disc on Youtube. I'll post disc two in the future. If you're a member of A Tiny Bell, you can listen by playing the video below.
I'll also explain the CD titles and write a bit about my first day at the company, which was awesome and involved lunch with Sidney Pollack and stories about Stanley Kubrick.
You may recall Khaleel Seivwright, who during the pandemic built tiny homes for Toronto's unhoused. He was charged by the city and forced to cease construction. The city claimed it was their land and the structures were fire hazards.
Inspired by Seivwright, Ryan Donais is constructing Tiny Tiny Homes to solve the same issue. He's incorporated smoke detectors and put the structures on three wheels, therefore qualifying as bicycles under Toronto law.
You can get involved or donate to Tiny Tiny Homes on their website.
These untitled oil paintings are all by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda. They're from his Deserto-Modelo series. If I showed these to my mother, she'd say, "Those aren't paintings. They're moods." She'd mean it as a compliment.
More here.
Kimmo Metsaranta writes about their series, Notes On A Place:
The pictures in the series are reconstructed observations of my surroundings. I change the spatiality and the condition of the buildings, so that their function changes or disappears completely, and they are not tied to a specific time or place.
I don't know exactly what that means, but I love the pictures.
If you like these, you might also like my own series, Orange Grove Tool Sheds & Utility Boxes of Oliva, Spain.
More on Metsaranta's site. These are also available in book form.
Alberto Ortego builds 3D models and then does 2D paintings of the sets. They're set in the 50s but I get a strong Raymond Carver vibe from them, especially High Noon (above).
Annunciation // April
Here's Ortega with one of his models:
More on Ortega's site.
