In general, the search for popular is wildly overrated, because it corrupts our work, eats away at our art and makes it likely we’ll compromise to please the anonymous masses.
Category: links
Rejection hurts
Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that rejection hurts, and not just in a metaphorical sense. The study found that “social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain” (via nyt). Maybe artists, musicians and poets have been on to something all of these years.
Algorithmic pricing
Michael Eisen found a good example of algorithmic pricing on Amazon which resulted in two booksellers pricing a book on fly genetics at almost $24 million (via yewknee).
On the day we discovered the million dollar prices, the copy offered by bordeebook was 1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by profnath. And now the bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times profnath again. So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged.
Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week.
I’m waiting for the algorithmic pricing that messes up in the other direction and nets me a Gutenberg bible for pocket change.
Bauhaus Dessau identity
I’m a fan of the new identity for Bauhaus Dessau, created by HORT.
We thought a generic design would work best in order to make this distinction. The new identity was created by using strict typography, a minimalist layout, standardised formats and no colour. Being the most generic and incidental typeface, Courier was selected as the new corporate font. To guarantee a unique identity we changed the capital “A” of Courier according to Herbert Bayer’s well-known logo on the front of the Bauhaus Dessau building.
The identity also makes use of Arial, presumably due to its prevalence on most machines.
Photo-Lettering
Photo-Lettering from House Industries allows you to easily set headlines and download scalable vector files of the results. The service is relatively inexpensive and will be well suited to projects that need some quick custom lettering. If you don’t know anything about photo-lettering, take some time to go through the history section of the site.
Video portrait of Stephen Sasson
David Friedman posted a video portrait of Stephen Sasson, inventor of the digital camera. I mentioned the camera last year, it might be worth revisiting his discussion of its development and the patent file (via df).
Unicode video
If you ever wondered what it would be like to sit through a video of 49571 unicode characters, now’s your chance.
Ikea’s cheap American labour
Ikea workers in the United States get paid less and have fewer vacation days than their Swedish counterparts.
Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company.
Insert joke about how the tables have turned, albeit with a sprained-wrist from two hours of wrestling flatpack furniture.
Update: Joe Clark indicated to me that the company isn’t “Swedish”, so it’s not like the Swedes are getting any sort of preferential treatment — most European countries get a lot more vacation time than North Americans. Also, it’s interesting to note that Sweden doesn’t actually have a minimum wage — their salaries are set by collective bargaining (that’s where it helps to have unions).
The Sleepless Elite
Why some people can function on little sleep and still get a lot done.
“Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they’ve been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep,” says Dr. Jones. “There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don’t understand.”
Comic Serif
Rob Mientjes adds serifs to the typeface that everyone loves to hate, giving us Comic Serif, complete with swashy Q. Why not? This one is more in keeping with the original typeface than the version I mentioned a couple years ago.
Ninjabread Men
Ninjabread Men cookie cutters from Fred, available at Think Geek
O’Reilly on E-books
Jon Bruner interviews Tim O’Reilly for Forbes Magazine. O’Reilly Media doesn’t put DRM on any of its books, he explains why:
People who don’t pay you generally wouldn’t have paid you anyway. We’re delighted when people who can’t afford our books don’t pay us for them, if they go out and do something useful with that information.
I think having faith in that basic logic of the market is important. Besides, DRM interferes with the user experience. It makes it much harder to have people adopt your product.
The lack of DRM is one of the reasons I purchase books from O’Reilly directly. It feels like you’re actually buying something — they’ll also give it to you in whatever format you want and will email when there’s an update. If you keep an eye on their twitter feed, they offer decent discounts.