A week in the Big Apple!

This week was a real surprise. In March, I was in DC for a parks conference for two days. Mary and I decided that it was going to be a rare opportunity to get back to New York. We hadn't been in about three years, and there just didn't seem to be any opportunities to come for a few more either. So we came and spent a somewhat cold two days walking the city, seeing art movies, and getting our last fix in. Until. Until we got the opportunity to cat-sit for a week in an apartment two blocks south of Read more…

St. Louis City Museum

Mary and I spent the long weekend with her family in St. Louis. And on Saturday we went to the most bizarre place in the world–the St. Louis City Museum. It's basically a giant playground made from things taken from inside the city limits of St. Louis. Not only a playground for little kids though. This sign is pretty clear. This is on the roof of the 11 story building. This is also on the roof. This is looking down on the 10-story spiraling slide from the roof. It's dizzying. I'm not sure how well you can tell what this Read more…

3 Stories About Paying for News

The New York Times I was intrigued when The New York Times started their paywall. I thought the price was high, but I figured "well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it." It's been almost two full months since they launched it and the thing is–I've never triggered it. I am a diligent consumer of news, including of The New York Times. I thought. Mostly I read their stories via Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. And I read it on a variety of different browsers. Not only an iPhone or iPad browser, but the browser inside the Reeder Read more…

Final Post on Creativity

I haven't read Eat Pray Love, but Elizabeth Gilbert is really compelling in this video about creativity and genius at a TED conference. Really worth your 18 minutes if you have them. http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Creative Blogging Round Two: Arts and Entrepreneurship Edition

Last week's post on creativity was mostly about the personal side of creativity, talking about both engineers and artists. I want to touch on the economic side of creativity, and talk some ideas about what the Internet means for creativity in a city like Tacoma. The Internet is Really Really Great (for creativity) Consider this hypothetical, but very common, example of why the Internet is great for the arts and creativity: An artist wants to sell her art as greeting cards, posters, t-shirts, etc, to make some extra income. She can use the web as a virtually unlimited and virtually Read more…