Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
I'm Back
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Leonard finally persuaded me to end weeks of lethargy and let him fix my install of NewsBruiser, which broke when my host upgraded its install of Python. So I am back.
Since my last post, I have done various things. I saw Neal Stephenson and hung out with Sarah, I helped Leonard by having Salon staff taste-test his pear-maple ice cream and ginger-mango ice cream, I encouraged him to end Tonight's Episode, and I went to Millennium with him.
Millennium was expensive and takes a little getting used to. Don't get the fake-chocolate dessert or the "calming potion." I liked my apple-nut salad and tamarind tempeh. Also, it's scary walking through the neighborhood after dark, and so perhaps you'd prefer to hail a cab upon leaving Millennium. But eavesdropping-worthy people dine there.
I voted in another nightmare election. Within a few weeks, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to hold the office of governor of California. I suppose it doesn't make a difference whether I say it -- it's going to be real nonetheless -- but it just feeds my despair to type that. Cary Tennis, Salon's advice columnist, wrote a good piece about the election. More depression in the clash between right and left: Terry Gross's depressing interview with Bill O'Reilly, where he walks all over her and she is a good, polite NPR person.
Less depressing: Operation Give, which distributes desperately needed goods to Iraqis. The necessity of this charity saddens me, but its existence makes me cry with hope.
Last night I dreamt, among other things, that I was reading a Wired article written by Stephane. In it, Stephane contrasted two kinds of minimalism. "Computer minimalism" is reflexive avoidance of ornamentation. Use sans serif fonts. On the other hand, a fellow named "Brad Metzger" practices "Brad minimalism," in which he does not try to hide the flaws of an object, but redesigns the object from scratch, in a closed performance, so that the flaws were never there at all. At least, that's what the dream-article said.
Later in the dream, I asked a guy on the BART, "Are you a computer minimalist or a Brad minimalist?" and he said, "I'm a subscriber."
I'm dreaming design theory now? I'm now a SoMa San Franciscan!
