neourbanite

Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance

courtney — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:53:25 +0000

Attended the Concours d'Elegance in Rochester Hills, MI last weekend. Here's my favorite photo from the day:

More can be found on Flickr:

The intangibility of being…

courtney — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:14:42 +0000

As of late I'm reading less books; I have a Kindle but it has been sitting dormant for a few weeks now. There is nothing wrong with the Kindle, and I actually enjoy reading on it. I think the problem is the persistence of a new tangible thing versus an old. What I mean is that when I used to buy books, the book was a new object and it tended to garner more of my attention which in turn would cause me to read it. But with the Kindle I have several new books to read but they have no tangibility or permanence in my day to day peripheral view so I tend not to remember I have them and subsequently they go unread. When I first purchased the Kindle it had that tangible newness and I read a few books but now it's "old" and tends to be forgotten. I find this is inherently part of the problem with all media moving to digital only, it lacks permanence and doesn't co-exist in my physical space so it's harder for me to remember/account for...

Madsen Cycles bucket bike

courtney — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:20:50 +0000

I'm really into the idea of a bucket bike, and this new one buy Madsen Cycles seems like the perfect combination of functionality, form and price:

Madsen Cycles bucket bike

They're currently having a contest to win a free bike, hence the banner ad on the right, so we'll see...

Greenwich Concours d’Elegance

courtney — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:56:44 +0000

Attended the Concours d'Elegance in Greenwich, CT this weekend. Here's my favorite photo from the day:

More can be found on Flickr:

Greenwich Concours d'Elegance

Cartography

courtney — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:33:50 +0000

Just had an interesting thought about interaction design and the similarities to cartography. Map making is about defining a landscape or geography and then providing the tools by which someone navigates it. The artifacts we create as interaction designers are very similar in concept, of course this relates more to the actual process of documentation and the output we create but it's still an interesting point of reference...

Sigma DP2

courtney — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:35:57 +0000

Here's some sample pictures taken with my new Sigma DP2 digital camera:

So far I really like the camera. It's a little quirky and definitely wouldn't be a good everyday point and shoot, but as an art/hobby camera it's great!

Pros:

- Build quality, design

- Image quality at low ISO

- SLR like depth of field

Cons:

- Lot's of noise in low light and at high ISO

- Fixed lens

- Slow auto focus

- Requires patience

More info on the camera:

Sigma DP2 Site

New site in progress…

courtney — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:57:18 +0000

As you can see I've changed my site, this is a work in progress which will hopefully be complete sometime in the not so distant future...

Afraid of myself…

courtney — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:05:51 +0000

I'm afraid of video games, not all video games of course, but those with the intent to scare. I realize this is a weird thing to say but it's true. For example, in the new Resident Evil demo, I couldn't even get past the first encounter with the zombies. The point at which they realize you are there is when I turned it off, not even one shot fired. What I realized though is that I'm not actually scared of the zombies per se, but more of the inevitable fact that my character is going to die. This fear is because of, and directly correlates to, my poor skillset as a gamer. If I was more proficient I'm sure I would be willing to charge into the mob of zombies with gusto but instead I cower in fear trying to remember whether I'm supposed to hit circle or square...