That's it! I am moving to tumblr soon, yo!

Zadie Smith:

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second - put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal - but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can't tell you how many times I've sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It's an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it's published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.

Never read her novels but sounds like a good advice.

Via Kottke

This two love birds - literally - stayed with us to watch the sun going down on us.

Almost done with my degree. One last module to take. Been out looking for a full time gig while still taking in some freelance work.

Speaking of which, I am happy to say that I am one satisfied Drupal user now. Not that I had abandon Rails. It just that I am not going to be a web developer anyway and Rails just doesn't have some really easy to use open source framework like Drupal or even Joomla. They have Aptana Rails though. Well, I am sticking to Drupal for now.

See you after the exams..

Lombard Street.. Nice walk from Ferry Plaza.

CrispinPorter+Bogusky lands Microsoft account

The two understand just how delicate the Microsoft project will be. "To try to be cool is to not be cool," Keller pronounces. "To chase cool, you're chasing something that already exists, which means you're always going to be on the wrong side of it, you'll always be following."

Can Hotshot Ad Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?

As a test of my skills, I was asked to layout photos using stock images

Here's an idea, ad-heads: take your own damn pictures! Or get to know compfight. Intimately.

AdRants

Khoi Vinn dissects Google Mail to show how space affect design

This is an idea that nags at me all the time, mostly because I see so many instances when a more nuanced attention to spacing could benefit a design at virtually zero cost. And it ’s something that comes to mind especially when I look at the school of Web design that prizes functionality so highly that the deprecation of form becomes a virtue.

Spacing Is Everything

Do we judge a wine by its label?

They asked 125 experts — graphic or industrial designers — to analyze the aesthetic attributes of each bottle. Then, they sorted responses into five primary design types: massive (or bold), contrasting, natural, delicate and nondescript.

Read more about this research on packaging. [via]

Check out my sketchbook flickr set


I am at that point in life where one is both excited and scared at the same time.