Better Living Through Introspection

Blue Train

While I’m a fan of Ruby (more importantly, Ruby on Rails) and all the lovely sites inspired by its success (most of them related in one way or another to 37signals, it seems), lately I’ve been noticing that (once again) web sites are starting to look the same. I suppose this is a natural product of webolution (I just coined that jumble between evolution and web, feel free to use it [um, okay, google says otherwise])…an inescapable one, in fact. It’s a classic design dialectic, if you will: one trend emerges, there’s a reaction to the trend, a synthesis is reached and the process continues.

Web design (and development) is in a constant state of flux (constant flux…is that an oxymoron?), but it still follows this paradigm to some extent. Let’s start in the late 90’s, when web standards were just a buzz word. Sites were built with little regard to standards for the sake of pushing visual expression to its technical limits…images were sliced and diced and served in tables, code was written to support one browser over another (or worse, forked and served dependently)…all because, well, we could. Looking back, I could’ve done worse. No, really.

Then, the backlash — the standards movement emerged, and with it came a more sophisticated approach to web design and development. After a while you could tell which sites were serving valid code without even looking at the code. A multitude of “clean” styles emerged and propagated. And over the last few years, well, sites have once again started to look the same. Oh sure, there are some compelling designs out there, and I’m certainly not trying to lump any one site in with another…but the culprits know who they are (ask me about my One Man in Tijuana Theory [link forthcoming] some time). (Oh, and Sixapart, I love ya, you know I’ve been a big fan for years, but your scheme to rule the world with one blog template is chapping my hide.)

I digress.

So over the last few months, I’ve been wondering what will be next. I feel like a new design trend is on the horizon. Let’s hope it’s not grunge, because we’ve been through that already. But, how do you react against clean lines and font-family: 11px Arial and all that predictability if not with a little mess here and there? Don’t ask me: I use the subtle, bring ‘em down from the inside approach (*cough* 12px courier! *cough*).

Which brings me to…Derek Powazek. He’s on my official list of Names I’m Tired of Seeing On The Web But That Will Never Go Away And That’s Okay Because Voids Must Be Filled [link forthcoming but you know damn well Zeldman is on the list]. He recently redesigned his site, and specifically mentioned the whole 37signals “school of design” issue that I brought up about three yawns ago. And, while I like his redesign, it’s not quite as anti-clean as I would expect (though maybe we’re in the synthesis stage right now, not a completly reactionary stage…which would make sense) from someone who’s been around the block a few times. But, it’s a start. Let’s see what happens next…

Is this really necessary? And since when is blogging not already part of the cultural mainstream? Google, normally I love ya kid, but this time I think you’ve wasted your time. You should assimilate the blog content into your good ol’ regular google, not make people use a different engine. Ah, what the hell do I know.

New Google Search Engine Boosts ‘Blogging’ [via havahula]

What with the upcoming debut of Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home on PBS’s American Masters series, I thought it’d be nice to have a Dylan-themed InfoSwap half.

Reading
Okay, technically, it’s on my Amazon wish list so I haven’t read it yet. But, Chronicles, Volume 1 looks promising. Of Chronicles, one reviewer says “What Chronicles: Volume 1 delivers is an odd but ultimately illuminating memoir that is as impulsive, eccentric, and inspired as Dylan’s greatest music… For all the small revelations (it turns out he’s been a big fan of Barry Goldwater, Mickey Rourke, and Ice-T), there are eye-opening disclosures, including his confession that a large portion of his recorded output was designed to alienate his audience and free him from the burden of being a ‘the voice of a generation.’”

Though, at 304 pages, I’m guessing I’ll get bored with it…which is why it’s on my wish list and not my bookshelf.

Watching
No Direction Home (See above.) See also, Dylan Looks Back, an interview with Ed Bradley on CBS’s 60 Minutes which rekindled my interest in Dylan last year.

Listening
The soundtrack to No Direction Home (again, see above). Interesting highlight: include “Man of Constant Sorrow” — of which I’ve heard five bajillion versions of (okay three) since O Brother Where Art Thou. The two-disc set includes previously unreleased takes of Dylan stand-bys — some live, some studio — and some you might not have heard.

There’s a whole world of DC-blog related melodrama that no one really cares about, but occasionally when you dip in to it, you find humorous entries like DC Bachelor’s DCist Sucks. I personally don’t think DCist sucks — I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it, either. And, as many of you faithful readers know, since I run a little site called Life in the District, technically DCist would be competition…if I cared enough to compete. In fact, I admire how far the “-ist” sites have come in the last couple years, considering LitD has been around twice as long and has done half as much. Okay, half might be generous.

That being said, DC Bachelor has a way of reminding us (I’m lumping you all in with me now) of the things we don’t like in this city, or things we don’t like in general, and he does it with that edgy, cynical tone that is the hallmark of postmodern social commentary (yeah, you like that, don’t you). He also posts a lot of crap, but so do we all. That’s the drawback to blogs. Anyway, what I mean is, DC Bachelor is funny, funny stuff, and he (along with the rest of the dysfunctional DC blogosphere) is yet another reason why I love this city.