thekhooll:

Rain

Oil paintings By artist Gregory Thielker.

wow

I know what I’ll be doing tonight

(Source: garychou)

(via 11 Ways To Be Remarkably Average)

brucesterling:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-22/what-tumblrs-millionaires-tell-us-about-the-tech-industry

(…)

Tumblr’s $1.1 billion exit has minted a number of new millionaires—and made some rich folks even richer.

Here’s who made what, according to PrivCo, which studies private companies….

(Source: dontcookbilly, via neighborhoodr-eastvillage)

Interesting @constrvct review

brucesterling:

https://constrvct.com/designs/2385

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/sets/72157633732135635/

Constrvct Dress Review

by Jasmina Tesanovic

      Three weeks after I signed up online and sent them my measurements,  I received my new dress from Constrvct in New York, shipped here to Torino in Italy.

    Italian Customs hit me up for 37 euros in duty fees, unaccustomed as they are to importing dresses from Manhattan rather than exporting them there.  However, the sealed package was light and the blue dress arrived in fine condition.    What excitement and happiness: a dress that is entirely personalized, computer-assembled, and even the pattern was generative art!  I myself chose the fabric, the color, and the shape, and then some computer-governed devices sliced it up and stitched it out, for me and me alone.

    Five years ago, when our theme at the Share art conference in Torino was “digital manufacturing,” a prospect like this still seemed remote and futuristic.  Three-d fabrication machines were still the industrial monsters for cars and aircraft, not swift consumer gear  for clothes, furniture, or kitchen gadgets.  

       It’s still a bit dreamlike to order and manufacture personalized objects sent from New York to Italy, but in the time that passed, little hacker, Maker, and fabrication ateliers are springing up in Italy like mushrooms.   They’re mostly retailing simple curios in plastic, vinyl and rubber, though: a real dress that comes from clicking a website still has a Cinderella quality. 

       With that said, the dress, which is a personalized version of Constrvct model #2385, “Spines” from “Nervous System,” is a genuine dress — it’s not some mere CafePress T-shirt.  I threw the dress over my head like Cinderella, zipped it up,  and went out to road-test it on the busy streets of Torino.

      “Spines” is a pretty pattern, but it’s not strange enough to stop any traffic.  There’s a Turinese vogue this season for hyper-active floral patterns, and the streets are full of women in wild elastic jeggings that make “Spines” look demure and even ladylike.  

      The fabric is polyester, which traps heat next to the body and had me sweating on a cold day.   Despite my careful measurements — I did  my best, but I’m no tailor  — the cut was somewhat ungainly. The bustline turned out too big while the waist is too loose.   

     A sleeveless dress with a simple cut needs to be extremely precise to look elegant.   Somewhere the data had slipped: was it me, the cutting machine, the stitching machine, the data entry process, who knows?  My mother, whose generation knew a thing or two about hand-tailoring, would have sternly rejected such sloppiness from a dressmaker.  She would have  taken her tailored purchase back to the Chanel shop, or told her private seamstress to fix it.   A lost centimeter here or there is the very soul of ladylike couture.

      The dress is also too long, maybe an inch.  The past-kneecap length is good for showing-off  the unusual pattern, but  all my overcoats are shorter than my dress.  Who has the priority here, the fabric-artists at Constrvct, or the user’s knees and calves? 

    The underskirt lining is too long (it’s as long as the dress), so as soon as I sit, the lining shows itself.  Try as I might, I can’t drape the skirt in a way that conceals the lining.  The stitched seams are visible, machine-made, of uniform width, too big and coarse, and not neat and tidy.

     The dress also creases easily, while polyester cannot be ironed!

     The beautiful mermaid-like sea colors, computer generated patterns from the well-known code-artists at “Nervous System,” are shiny and cheerful, and all in all rather wonderful. The spiny, wavy patterns suit my curly hair, while the blue shades go with my blue eyes.  A dress with a pattern this busy can be accessorized with all kinds of oddities.  

      For instance, the Constrvct “Spines” dress is perfect for my blue plastic computer-generated shoes from “United Nude.” These angular Dutch shoes feature a low poly-count that makes them look like shoes off the set of Super Mario.  I bought these “New Aesthetic” shoes mostly to irritate and intrigue Italians, who always notice people’s shoes. However, with the  “Spines” dress, these shoes become a low-key ensemble.

       I walked all over the porticos and boulevards of downtown Torino in my computer-generated dress.  Far from looking like a showboat Internet geek-freak, I looked pretty standard for the Turinese, who tend toward the dignified and somewhat upscale.  I’m the only woman in Torino with this dress — it even has my own name stitched into the collar, which gratifies one’s vanity — but no style-conscious Italian stared or took critical offense.  The dress has a simple, conventional cut.  When it’s worn with a sweater, a scarf, a hat or a bag, it’s just another part of a wardrobe.

     What is the victory condition for this unorthodox means of production?  This is Maker-style disruption at work, no doubt about that.   To have our dreams come true with mouseclicks,  to encourage human creativity while avoiding the limitation and expense of human hands, to make it cheaper and more attainable, to be unique, to be pretty and comfortable…to be affordable and also adorable!   To make  Cinderella come to the ball with the magic of digital crafts, instead of the crude spells of her fairy godmother! 

     To give a woman everything she wants from a pretty dress is a tall set of orders for a new-startup with a website and a few machines.   I’m pleased and happy to wear Constrvct’s alpha rollout, but this garment isn’t yet the gorgeous finery of the old regime.   This is a rumble in the New York garment district.  This is a street rebellion.

startupquote:

Every feature has some maintenance cost, and having fewer features lets us focus on the ones we care about and make sure they work very well.

- David Karp

fred-frederator-studios:

“David Karp reminds me of Ted Turner, but also Rupert Murdoch,” Seibert said. “He is like all artists — people who don’t just have a vision; they create the future. Whether the artist is Picasso or Mark Zuckerberg, these are the people who can see around the corners while we’re just walking down the street.” -PBS MediaShift

When Channel Frederator gave tumblr’s David Karp the Vanguard Award of 2007 we already knew he was special. After all, it was David’s imagining of Channel Frederator to begin with that launched us out into the internet wild. That he went on to build his platform into one of the media greats and sell it to Yahoo this week was no surprise to any of us. 

We were fortunate to literally be there at the birth of tumblr at David’s desk at the Frederator/NY loft on Park Avenue South. He gamely showed up at Frederator’s animation events on both coasts, and even sponsored our first viral hit.

Most importantly, David’s been both a friend and a mentor to this digital immigrant every day. (Here’s a bunch of David’s appearances on Frederator’s blogs.) So, I thought it was fitting in this tumblr celebration week to point out some of my favorite articles that have popped up about David and tumblr. If you take out some of the usual digi-snarking that’s always out there after a big deal, there are a number of observers who get underneath the surface.

The One-Person Product. By Marco Arment. My favorite by far (it actually made me cry) was this memoir by David’s first employee and co-conspirator Marco Arment. In it he recounts the earliest days and how David’s visions and Marco’s talents and skill combined to launch over 100 million ships. Marco truly gets to the heart and soul that David pours into everything he does.

Tumblr’s Sale Is a Billion-Dollar Trophy for the New York Tech Scene. By Kevin Roose. Tumblr couldn’t have happened anywhere else in the world but New York City, because David Karp is a crystalline product of the best that New York has always offered to creative people, innovators, and entrepreneurs.  ”So while David Karp may be the one pocketing Yahoo’s money this time, every New Yorker should be smiling. Because his success is the city’s, too.”

Tumblr CEO David Karp’s Wild Ride from 14-Year-Old Intern to Multimillionaire. By Dorian Benkoil. The New York Times probably did the definitive piece on David’s rise (“my wife said, ‘Fred really likes teenagers, you should send him over.’”), but PBS MediaShift covered my role the best, so I’m going with Dorian on this one.  

(via moth)

Tumblr’s @davidkarp on Jeopardy!

via lilly: josefa7

<3 <3 <3

laughingsquid:

Johnny Marr Sings The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” on Jimmy Fallon

Artist uses DNA from discarded cigarette butts and gum and turns them into 3D-printed portraits.

(Tangent: Is the artist’s self portrait photo by the same Dan Phiffer who went to ITP?)

(via Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived From the DNA in Hair and Gum Found in Public Places | Collage of Arts and Sciences)

techcompaniesthatonlyhiremen:

MUST HAVES
Experience with Selenium, Watir or Sahi
Can program in one language
Hacking spirit
Lazy enough to automate his daily job

Percolate…how disappointing this is.