I haven’t been thinking much about posting lately; mind focused elsewhere, and all that. Facebook and Twitter get my status updates, so here’s a heavily-linked mishmash of my recent activities:

Watching

Hot Fuzz (via Netflix), Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express and The Dark Knight were all terrific. I’ve found I like the combination of action and comedy in my summer blockbusters, thank you. Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh were also enjoyable.

I’m halfway into Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn on my iPod Touch. The topics of space vs. place and placemaking have interested me for a while, and this 6-part, 3-hour series is a nice intro to Brand’s book. A lot of the concepts relate to the fields of interaction-, experience- and visual-design.

Reading

I finally read the Watchmen graphic novel, in part because of all the recent buzz. I found it a bit heavy about 2/3 of the way in, but I stuck-it-out and think I appreciate it more now that I’m finished. I didn’t really care for the inking and coloring style, which seems very old-fashioned. But, its multi-threaded narrative (a single page might be alternating frames between two or three different story lines), anti-hero angle and outsider-as-Ãœbermensch themes are likely the reason for its long-term appeal (that’s my take on it, anyway).

I decided to finish the His Dark Materials trilogy, so I’m reading The Amber Spyglass. As before, Pullman’s poetic style and literary references have rekindled my interest in John Milton, William Blake, and the Imagination.

As always, I’m fitting-in some readings Joseph Campbell and design wisdom nuggets for good measure .

Making

I’m happy to be working again on a Mac Pro at my day job. Mac OS X Leopard is lovely, and I’m pleased to have my favorite apps on-hand: Adobe CS3, Evernote, Transmit, Coda, Adium, Quinn (shhh). Still, thanks to bloody ActiveX in some of our web-based tools, I’m probably going to invest in Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. Ah, compatibility.

After finishing-up some recent music sketches, I’ve decided to take a break from sequencing for a bit. Every few years I feel like I’m making the same tracks as before, so I dream-up a new challenge. Do/don’t call it a side project! My intention is to record with the acoustic instruments we have around the house—guitar, ukulele, oboe, violin, trumpet, piano, drums/rattles/shakers/toys to name a few. I’ll probably still arrange and mix-down using Live. I have no idea where this project will take me—but that’s the idea, innit?

Anyways, cheerio.