Favourite Ted Talks

"Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another." As the Chief Belief Officer at Future Group in Mumbai, he helps managers harness the power of myth to understand their employees, their companies and their customers.

Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs West - The Myths that Mystify

Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

I don't know who the dude is that made this, or where it's from, but He (or She) Is. My. Hero. Long live Calvin & Hobbes!

Continuous Partial Attention... we got it

On today's CBC Spark episode, Linda Stone was talking about "continuous partial attention" and "email apnea" - ie, forgetting to breathe when confronted with a computer screen. I've noticed this (the CPA I mean) and been fighting against it all year - really having to make conscious efforts to put myself "in the groove" and get some serious work done. But I haven't been nearly as successful or consistent as I'd like to be. Is the answer really as simple as breathing exercises?? If so, time to exercise that diaphragm...

Check out the Spark blog, Oct. 30, for Linda Stone links or to listen to the audio.

Or check out Linda Stone's website.

Favourite Ted Talks

Jay Walker, Library of Human Imagination

Foxtail Type Gallery

I snapped this photo on the way home from Edmonton this summer. It's funny in a type-geek kind of way – typographic commandments in the landscape. Thou shalt KERN! But probably that's just the name of the people who own the farm. I love seeing old elevators re-used this way.

Moreover, I finally posted my gallery of type photos on my Foxtail Facebook page. I've been meaning to put up a type photo gallery as part of my Foxtail website (which has been "under construction" for EVER). But I never could decide exactly what I wanted to DO with the website, and that seems to change month to month, so the Facebook page is the perfect place for it.

Type Galleries > Foxtail on Facebook

Milton Glaser on Drawing

"Milton Glaser Draws and Lectures," short film by C. Coy.
http://vimeo.com/6986303

Writers & Company

My favourite podcast is CBC's Writers & Company with Eleanor Wachtel. Nothing sounds more dry than writers talking about their books, but it's actually more writers talking about their life, and how it influenced their writing. Sometimes they're fascinating because they're so different. Sometimes they're fascinating because there's bits that are much like your own life, even though that person was growing up thirty years earlier in Australia...

The podcasts are only archived on iTunes for 4 weeks, but you can listen to audio from 2009 podcasts on the Writers & Company website.

Recommended: Alice Munro, Dervla Murphy, and Jamaica Kincaid interviews. But generally they're all excellent.

Inspiring type: Libro di M. Giovambattista Palatino

If you love old type books, you'll love this one - inspiring Italian calligraphy c. 1550. Found this gem on Cameron Moll's blog, where he says:

"In doing research on Italian type, I stumbled across a wonderfully inspiring resource published 460 years ago, possibly on or about the typography work by Giambattista (or Giovambattista or Giovanni Battista) Palatino, the master Italian calligrapher. A Google translation doesn’t provide a lot of clarity as to exactly what the book is about or why it was created, but the source from which I discovered the resource describes the book as follows:

This jewel of a book was published in 1550 by Antonio Blado asolano in Rome. It is now available on the web and contains of complete alphabets, from chancery scripts, to blackletter and roman. There are also greek, hebrew, Cyrillic, Syrian, Arabic and other alphabets."

Browse the online version

Download a PDF copy

Via Cameron Moll