hyalineskies

Pluralists, pioneers and poseurs

Eston — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:00:14 +0000

It’s pretty obvious at this point that my original vector into the world of blogging — the role of online and offline social networks in technology and our society as a whole — has actually become important, projecting itself to some degree out of the hype surrounding any new technology. Social distribution is something that has been the tried-and-true marketing mantra of many for decades as “word of mouth”; with the increase in awareness of the actual networks at hand (partly responsible due to the popularity of online social networking services and their surrounding buzz,) we have entered a new era where every marketer is thinking “viral” and how social media is the newest way to peddle their wares. (more…)

Designing a web application like a utilitarian typeface

Eston — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:00:12 +0000

One could argue that it is utility that separates design from art: art is, in most cases, the practise of creation for the sake of aesthetic enjoyment and expression; design rather, is more of a controlled practise of aesthetic to achieve a functional means. Design is the planned creation of a product, a tool for the improvement of the human condition. In many cases, the aesthetics of art intersect with design to some degree, as one can argue that this aesthetic improvement fits the marginal improvement condition above; however, design generally requires as its product some utility as well, as merely aesthetic improvements that appeal to our senses may simply be considered art. (more…)

From the ashes of affluence

Eston — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:00:19 +0000

Now, living in the heart of Palo Alto, I’ve finally reached that goal of living among nothing but beautiful things. It was that affluent, luxury-laden paradise that I had found so attractive in college, a place where everything from houses to sofas are labelled with the names of some of design’s greats. Palo Alto is the place where the ugliest cars are still rust-free and the oldest people are still looking relatively young. It is the playground of the Stanford collegiate and simultaneously that of the capitalist, a place where local coffee shops harbour graduate studies alongside multibillion-dollar deals. I had dreamed of such a thing. When I finally found myself a Palo Altan after moving away from San Francisco, I, too, had joined the ranks of a nameless aesthetic tribe.

I think Veblen’s ghost smashed through my windshield on the 101. Veblen would have hated me.

Walking down the street in Palo Alto, one is bombarded by beauty: on University Avenue alone, I could furnish my apartment with Persian rugs, Barcelona chairs and new fixtures from Restoration Hardware before watching Some Like It Hot at the Stanford theatre. Chances are I’ve passed by over $1 million worth of luxury automobiles parked on the block, glistening in the California sunlight. The girl that passed me by was actually not 19 but rather cosmetically-enhanced at 39. Everyone has an iPhone. The bars are packed with wealthy twenty-somethings in styled clothes shrouding shaped bodies. Palo Alto is something out of an episode of Desperate Housewives, and my fourth-floor studio feels a few blocks over from Wisteria Lane. I think I saw Eva Longoria drive by in a Maserati. (more…)

No more silence.

Eston — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:38:32 +0000

Forgive me. It’s been a long time.

Now, some two months after my last real post — and after probably ten revisions of this post itself — I’m happy to say that I’m back. While the blogosphere has inevitably evolved and to some degree passed me by, I’ve got the changes in my life under control. Now, with an entirely new life and a new-found challenge, I’ve also a new hyalineskies. (more…)

The faint signal of life

Eston — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:59:53 +0000

I guess I should offer hyalineskies readers a sincere apology.

This site has been entirely dormant for a month and a half now, and posting frequency has all but died over the past few months due to all of the demands that being in school and graduating have placed on me. hyalineskies has always been exceptionally important to me, and I have literally had zero time for anything.

As anyone tracking my Flickr photostream probably knows, I’ve now moved from my wonderful home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and am currently adjusting to the nuances of city life in San Francisco. Since then, my apartment situation hasn’t been the easiest, with a fair share of apartment drama as well as issues with lesser things such as IKEA furniture not assembling properly or wireless connections randomly fading away. That said, things are finally appearing to have reached some semblance of stability, and with that means I’ll have time to keep up on hyalineskies.

Okay, that’s kind of a lie.

Not the stability part. The hyalineskies part. While I’ve been dead-silent on content lately, quite a few things are happening on the design front of hyalineskies that I outlined in my WordPress framework post back in March. Since then, Fuselage has gone from nothing to a set of usable design patterns, a whole bunch of PHP, and the first theme built with it will be hyalineskies 8, codenamed Nightingale.

So, after a month’s work on Fuselage and about three and a half solid days of coding, Nightingale is very close to completion. I was hoping to be done by the time I go to work Monday, but an impromptu trip to Ann Arbor killed some of the time I’ve had to launch the new theme. As of now, Nightingale is currently on my test server and is roughly 90% ready for release at this point. Assuming I won’t have any expected hang-ups, Nightingale will be live on hyalineskies come Monday, 11 June. I’ve made some little hints to the new version on Flickr, and one sharp-eyed reader saw a little peek of the design out of the side of the page. I’m hoping that it will live up to expectations.

With the release of Nightingale, of course I’ll have a post associated with it, and I’ll be writing on a regular schedule again with a minimum of one post weekly and most likely more than that. I’ve decided to re-work a lot of the hyalineskies design to work with this new posting schedule, so you’ll notice that for the first time since August 2005 I’m moving back to a more conventional front page layout, with posts all appearing together in a list-like format as opposed to the magazine style I used back when it was actually relatively original.

Ooh! Does that mean we get ærial?

In time, young grasshopper. Just as Gridlock was released when I was done with it, so will ærial be released to the public, although I’m sure its functionality will change a bit to adapt to work with more layouts. Before I release ærial, though, I’ll be pushing out the next version of Gridlock, in which I’ll be building more features (such as automatic centre layout capability and support for WP Widgets) as well as setting it up to be more stable (I guess that it’s in the pipeline for wordpress.com, so I’d like them to adapt to 2.0 instead of 1.4.)

Furthermore, Fuselage has taken a bit of a new development direction. I’ve been working with Chris Messina on moving Fuselage into a more overarching scope, pushing things into a realm of semantic validity usually only accessible by the super-geek élite. We’ve been in talks about doing something with Fuselage that involves Messina’s awesome hAtomic, Microformats and a little bit of Plain Old Semantic HTML, so stay tuned to see what Fuselage will turn into.

The other news

hyalineskies issues aside, a lot has changed in my life even since I’ve moved to San Francisco. One of these huge changes is the fact that I’m no longer working at a startup in Redwood City. I’m actually not working in marketing at all anymore. I’ll go into more details with the formal announcement when hyalineskies 8 rolls around next week, but Flickr holds a few key details as to what direction I’m heading professionally.

For now, however, I should get back to work on Nightingale. I’ll be pushing it live ASAP in a beta form as soon as I’ve everything working in some acceptable state.