Back and Forth

Tue 11 Mar 200302:45 PM

The trend of software interfaces taking on more and more properties of the Web (e.g. underlined links, Flash-driven interactivity) is nothing new, but I think my favorite feature migration is the integration of the ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons commonly found on Web browsers into traditional ‘offline’ applications.

Winning Isn’t Everything

Mon 10 Mar 200312:45 PM

The SXSW Web Awards winners were announced last night, and Gain 2.0, which Behavior designed for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, was a finalist in the ‘Content/E-zine’ category. Unfortunately we were beat out by Polar Interia. Not to sound like a sore loser, but that site is not only barely legible (even to my design-friendly eyeballs) it also crashes Safari repeatedly. Hmpf.

Talking Heads

Mon 10 Mar 200312:29 AM

Getting Closer

Sat 8 Mar 200308:02 PM

The act of porting Subtraction.com over to Movable Type has taken several weeks now, but every day I get a little closer to getting the job done. Recently, my attention has been devoted to bringing all of my old Blogger entries over to this new system. The first two months’ worth — Dec 2000 and Jan 2001 — are available now, and the rest are coming real soon now.

Gangs of Rio de Janeiro

Thu 6 Mar 200306:28 PM

While watching the Brazilian film “City of God,” I was struck by how much the sheer ferocity of Fernando Meirelles’s direction reminded me of Martin Scorcese’s early work. Like “Mean Streets,” this movie has been accused of favoring style over substance, but it too is driven by a torrid determination to record a lost history.

ICANN’t

Mon 3 Mar 200311:21 AM

Damn closed email accounts! The domain registration for Subtraction.com expired recently and I almost didn’t even reallize it — I had used a now-defunct email address as the main contact address and had totally forgotten that the term was expiring, so my registrar was unable to reach me. The Internet really needs a reliable forwarding service. In any event, my apologies for the errors when surfing or emailing to Subtraction.com over the past few days. Everything should be back to normal now.

Light ’Em Up

Sun 2 Mar 200312:56 AM

This is not made up: the State Department is distributing these crazy matchbooks — bankrolled by a private nonprofit called ‘Rewards for Justice’ — advertising the $25 million bounty on “Usama bin Laden.” The design has the aesthetic quality of a check cashing joint, and it is clearly and cynically aimed at the same constituency.

Online Frontline

Sat 1 Mar 200306:45 PM

The venerable PBS documentary show “Frontline” is celebrating its twentieth season. To mark the occasion, its producers have made over a dozen full-length episodes available online. Each episode is available in six, stamp-sized QuickTime segments — it’s not exactly the broadband future we’ve been promised since the nineties, but it’s still a feat that public television can deliver content in this way, while the major networks continue to wait for who knows what.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Fri 28 Feb 200308:48 PM

At the age of 74, Fred Rogers passed away on Thursday from stomach cancer. No matter how cynical, sarcastic or snobbish I might come across in my other posts, I intend none of that when I say that I find his death to be indescribably sad. With the late, great Jim Henson gone as well, losing Mr. Rogers makes childhood seem that much more irretrievable.

Boys in Blue

Thu 27 Feb 200301:40 AM

There’s not all that much that’s surprising about “Dark Blue,” but there’s enough to recommend it beyond its inevitable, shortcut-to-video fate. To start with, like so many Kurt Russell enterprises, the movie’s star delivers more earnestness and hard work than can rightly be expected from an actor that’s been in the business for forty years and yet still always seems to be only on the verge of a major breakthrough.

About

Subtraction.com

Khoi Vinh’s Web site

Archives

Back and Forth

Winning Isn’t Everything

Talking Heads

Getting Closer

Gangs of Rio de Janeiro

ICANN’t

Light ’Em Up

Online Frontline

There Goes the Neighborhood

Boys in Blue

Khoi Vinh’s Web site