intarweb-master

Well guys, it’s been fun. For over two years, intarweb-master has been my home on the web, but while I’ve grown, intarweb-master has stagnated. The name “intarweb-master” started back on blogspot in June of 2004. This was a different time, and I had different goals for the site. Now that I’m more and more out in the professional world, I needed a site that better reflected a more mature picture of me, and thus, I have ceased posting on IM, and started up a new site. GeekFriendly.org will have all the same great content you find here, but in a cleaner, sleeker, less script-kiddy form. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll enjoy. Intarweb-master will of course stay up as long as I’m online, as it holds some of my best work.

Before I begin: Yes, “Recommendation” is misspelled. No, this was obviously not on purpose. Yes, I am an idiot. Right before we hit the green button to start he laser, I snarked about how much it would suck if there was a typo in the design. It’s not that I can’t spell. The way I created the vector file was to re-create the original image in Illustrator by putting a new layer of text over the original raster. For the most part, this worked, and allowed me to get the placing right. I assume that because I could see the underlying text, I made the mistake of putting two “c”s.

Before arriving in San Francisco, Rupert informed me that our mutual friend Mitch, an industrial design student at Academy of Art University, had landed a job as the summer intern for Squid Labs working on Instructables. Now, this not only meant that he gets to spend every day in the official coolest place in the universe, but he has access to all of the fantastic tools at the SquidLair.

For a bit of background, SquidLabs is an R&D company in Emeryville, CA which was started by a group of ex-MITers for fun and profit. When I say fun, I mean serious fun, such as 3D printers (one of the founders actually invented the technology), glow-in-the-dark bicycles, CNC machines, shopping-cart-chairs, multiple kite sails, and every tool known to man. They also have a monkey in a cage, but no one is quite sure how he got there, or who he belongs to. They mostly leave it alone; best to let sleeping monkey’s lie.

Anyway, this mean Mitch can use the laser etching machine which had done all of the previous PowerBook etchings. I had a month to think about what I wanted to get seared into my PowerBook for eternity, and I’m happy with the decision I made.

I was originally going to go with the hel-fucking-vetica button design by Khoi Vinh at Subtraction, but during my travels through this series of tubes we know as the internets, I found something more suited to the back of my display. Markus Angermeier created a beautifully designed tag-cloud of Web 2.0 technologies and concepts, which he graciously allowed me to etch onto my baby.

Now, first and foremost, this was a cool design. Something to look pretty from a distance. I’m a huge fan of well designed information layout, and I feel that tag clouds work pretty well for getting across informational hierarchy in a cool non-traditional way.

I am in no way trying to communicate that I feel Web 2.0 is awesome and fantastic and the best thing ever and its never going to die and OHMYGOD ITS THE BEST THING EVER.

Not at all. I thought it looked cool, and felt that a lot of the ideas and concepts represented in the cloud were things I could stand behind.

As for “ruining” a perfectly good machine; give me $30 bucks and 10 minutes and I’ll have a new rear bezel on this baby.

I like it. People I respect like it. If you don’t like it, good for you. But don’t start making attacks against me because I chose to express myself on my own property.

Bryce at Soldier Ant has come up with some very well done info-graphics detailing the flickr usage model which shows the interaction of Groups, Contacts, Sets, Tags, Pools, etc. This kind of examination of a site’s “ecosystem” can be extremely useful when designing future Web 2.0 applications. It’s also fun to look at. Via visualcomplexity.

Chris Lightfoot and Tom Steinberg from mySociety have developed some truly beautiful and information packed maps that detail transit times from central London to surrounding areas. Each contour line (in white) designates half-an-hour of time that will be spent in transit. The team also compiled maps for rail travel across all of Great Briton. Via visualcomplexity.