You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary An Essay by James Somers jsomers.net As if a word were no more than coordinatesAnother mind as alive as yoursA soft and fitful lusterPathosAn affection for words Webster's Dictionary, 1913 Edition languagewriting
A brief foray into vectorial semantics An Article by James Somers jsomers.net One of the best (and easiest) ways to start making sense of a document is to highlight its “important” words, or the words that appear within that document more often than chance would predict. That’s the idea behind Amazon.com’s “Statistically Improbable Phrases”: Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book. mathmeaningwordsnotetakingsearchchance
Learning About Work Ethic From My High School Driving Instructor An Essay by James Somers www.theatlantic.com Should we really demand that the guy who checks ticket stubs at the movie theater hones his craft? Well, yes. No job is too low to not warrant care, because no job exists in isolation. Carelessness ripples. It adds friction to the working of the world. To phone it in or run out the clock, regardless of how alone and impotent you might feel in your work, is to commit an especially tragic—for being so preventable—brand of public sin. Bob [the driving instructor] oozes concern; he wants to infect the state of New Jersey with good driving habits. He respects his public role, the fact that the minute he's done with these kids they head straight for their parents' car keys and out onto the roads we share. When I asked him what he likes to do outside of work, he laughed: "This is my life." His reward is the pleasure of depth itself. craftworkethics
Painting With the Web An Article by Matthias Ott matthiasott.com So much about [Gerhard Richter's painting process] reminds me of designing and building for the Web: The unpredictability, the peculiarities of the material, the improvisation, the bugs, the happy accidents. There is one crucial difference, though. By using static wireframes and static layouts, by separating design and development, we are often limiting our ability to have that creative dialogue with the Web and its materials. We are limiting our potential for playful exploration and for creating surprising and novel solutions. And, most importantly, we are limiting our ability to make conscious, well-informed decisions going forward. By adding more and more layers of abstraction, we are breaking the feedback loop of the creative process. A constant dialogueConstant reflection and refinement How do you know when your paintings are finished?Designing with code artwwwcreativityprocesscode
A constant dialogue Have you ever seen Gerhard Richter painting? It is phenomenal to watch. He might start one of his large, abstract paintings by carefully applying oil paint to the canvas with a thick brush. Then, he begins to scrape, smear, or add new layers of paint with a large, home-made squeegee. After each change, Richter pauses, takes a step back, and looks at the result: What did just happen with the picture? What composition has come about? Where have interesting parts emerged? What is the next move that might bring the piece one step closer to completion? And which action would be a mistake? There is a lot of intention and carefulness in this process, yet Richter equally respects the results of accident and chance. He lets go of a certain kind of control to let things happen that are surprising and exciting. But at the same time, Richter always exerts enough control to influence the result. He decides what to keep and what to destroy. It is the ultimate creative process: a constant dialogue. chance
Constant reflection and refinement Ask any artist, musician, or writer and they might tell you that this conversation at the heart of the creative process is what makes their work special and so fulfilling. No piece of art exists in its final form in the head of the artist before the first brush stroke is put on the canvas. No musician has a full piece of music in her head without a conversation with instruments or the score. And no novel is done before the first word is put on paper or a computer screen. Constant reflection and refinement are key to creating any piece of work. This is what lets creators of any profession learn and grow, and, ultimately, achieve mastery. And the same is true for any user interface, design pattern, piece of code, or content on the Web.