the prettiest backgammon board. i like staring at it.

movie, lunch, nap, stich, stich through movie, stich more, dinner. i barely left the sofa yesterday.
and now i get to shove 3 days of work in 24 hours.

worth it.

I come into studio before 6 sometimes. It's a peaceful time to work. At any time day or night, it's rare to find oneself alone in the architecture buildings. In particular, I've seen this one guy in lab on this side of the morning on a few previous occasions. I think he must like to work through the night and, from what I've seen, usually wraps up and goes home by about 6am. In fact, he just left. Here's an especially enlightening insight into his 3rd shift habits:

That's an empty can of NOS and an empty bottle of Sutter Home, something white. I would deinitely pair NOS with a white - a refined choice.
Not pictured: empty pack of oreos.

Caroline wrote this to me in response:
"we actually recommend that pairing with one of our fourth course dishes at bachanalia. we call it "sutternos" and no one ever pronounces it correctly."

Then Christopher had this to say, "I need some Sutternos in my work flow... the ideal balance [of] up and down. It's really like a symphony."

This surprising combination might be a proverbial gin and juice for the 21st century.

Last September we worked on handheld electronics. In the design process our conversations were about ergonomics, usability, emotion, aesthetics, affordances, constraints, and mental mapping. The funny/frustrating thing about alarm clocks is that folks seem to use them in relatively rare circumstance, especially people under 30, like to catch a flight. As for travel alarm clocks, well, that's really called a cellphone, isn't it? The travel alarm clock is a product category with practical obsoletion on the forward horizon.

The challenge was to make it relevant.

With that in mind, my partner Kacey and I conceived Airavata, a travel ready cloud compatible hard drive*, speaker, and alarm-clock. Download, unwind, and wake-up. Airavata is designed to be durable, rechargeable, and widely compatible with integrated connection storage. Here, the design is represented as a 3D form model on the left* side of my nightstand - where i actually keep my phone at night. If this worked, it would live right there.

Speaking of, I just got to the end of that book on the table, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's rare that I finish a book. I've never been afflicted by the need to finish what I begin as I'm not operating through primarily linear thought processes. So all things tend lead from one to the next without subjectation to defintive starts and stops, and sometimes circling back round again.

Airavata is named for a flying elephant because you can toss it in your carry-on and because elephants never forget...your images, your music, your annual reports, your whatever, and most importantly, always remembers your wake up call. Best of everything, it simplifies life with no confusing alarm sound choices. The only alarm sound is the entirety of this composition of Baby Elephant Walk.

*this is either the future or fiction: "cloud compatible hard drive" allows the Airavata user to back-up or retrieve information locally through Airavata's storage capacity or remotely via cloud computing compatibility and interface with another smart device.
*East. Left-right are relative.

With help from friends, I was able to link 1200 feet of paper chain over the weekend. That's what it looks like. And that's what over 5000 staples looks like. It's hard to believe I can squeeze a stapler that many times in 2 days. I actually don't believe it. How improbable would it be for someone to verify the advertised count of a box of staples? Guess what I'm doing for the next 13 hours.

I love the game "guess how many beans are in the jelly bean jar." My boss at Room & Board had an uncanny talent for it. The other morning I was what-the-fuck is brunching for Christopher's birthday. At the center of the table, there was a large glass jar filled with orange pencils. I wondered how many. Everyone looked and offered a guess in turns. Upon accounting, everyone's guess fell short.

A. northern europe at night

B. star forming cloud

the megalopolis as space camouflage