robin tooms

“We don’t beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we’re born and the time he shows up.”
-Randy Pausch

Apparently I’ve been working too much this week because it took me until yesterday to realize that Pausch lost his battle with cancer this past weekend (and I thought I had been following his story pretty closely). Like many, at least 5.5 million according to YouTube, I watched the “Last Lecture” video and read all the news reports. The speech is inspirational for sure, but I honestly still can’t watch or read anything about him without thinking about this family and their loss. While he seems to have helped so many, especially in his last months, I can only imagine the impact he has had on those closest to him.

I *hope* that I possess some small sliver of what we all admired in this man.

You hear this a lot – that no one walks in Houston, we drive. I’ve lived in Houston my entire life, and would say that having a dependable car is definitely a requirement. I’d even go so far to say that driving something a little larger in Houston makes you feel a wee bit safer – that you’re not going to get crushed by the other oversized SUVs of Trucks so prevalent here.

According to this Walk Score site, there actually are neighborhoods in Houston that are “walk-friendly”. I work in one of them, the Montrose. Unfortunately, since I need my car to get to-from work, I tend to still use it, even in this neighborhood (there are a few restaurants we do walk to, which are the exception rather than the rule). Also, since it’s 100 degrees outside during the summer, I don’t want to feel sticky all day. So I guess that even though this is a “walkable” neighborhood, I suppose that might only apply if you both live and work in this area.

** update 07/22/08 – Google maps apparently now includes a beta of walking directions, so you can look at your directions by car or walking. Is Google trying to tell me something?

I have and always will love the muppets. :)

I was just reading that ICANN is considering opening up the domain name scheme to include common words such as .hotel or .sex. Can you imagine what kind of frenzy this might cause?

I’ve experienced the frustration of not being able to get a decent .com name. For example, when we are working on a naming project for a client, part of the process is to do a domain search to see if something reasonable can be obtained. If not, then that name will likely get cut. So many good names get lost this way. With this new system, say you wanted “TotallyGreen.car” and someone else had “TotallyGreen.plants” that would be ok. Different industries, so probably no real confusion, EXCEPT that you have to consider that many people would just type in the word “TotallyGreen” and get the .com version instead (and I have no idea what that is or going to be!)

Another offshoot of this would be what I might call “vanity” domains, just like the license plates. Instead of someone saying “imsohot.com” they would now say “im.so.hot”. Think of the possibilities. we’ll become a “domain.this.phrase” culture. You’ll see these in ads everywhere.

And finally, what major corporation wouldn’t want to own their own domain? Do you think either Coke or Pepsi wouldn’t blink at .coke or .pepsi? Wal-mart might be very happy to have “shop.walmart” or “careers.at.walmart”. I bet that both consultants and IT departments will be very busy creating the hundreds of domain name possibilities.

In our card-swapping culture, business cards are not only a way to exchange information, but make a good impression. This site, as it is titled, shows “70 Amazing Business Cards”, mostly it seems from designers and other creative types. Not that it’s unique to our industry, but you do often find designers have the best cards since it’s a way for us to show our creativity, and the small canvas is a welcome challenge.

My business card is ok – attractive a little personalized (another designer at our office updated them when we rebranded). I hope people keep it when I give it to them, but I doubt it would become part of someone’s “collection”. Collecting cool business cards seems to be a passion for some. Also check out this flickr group.

This week, Dress Code came and speak to our AIGA Houston Chapter about their new book, their work, and in general, their rather unique career paths. You can view the photos as our flickr group and a short excerpt on our youtube channel.

Now, they are opinionated guys, and gave lots of advice on what has worked for them – be persistent, be passionate and be opportunistic (not their word, mine, but that’s what they were saying).

I’ve thought about this, and I have some advice of my own. So here goes:

1. Take every opportunity to learn. Sure, you might be able to look back and say you weren’t paid enough or given enough time, but if you didn’t learn anything from the experience, it’s your own fault. Every project has something to teach you – you just need to be willing to see it.
2. Always do your best. Approach everything you do as if it were a golden opportunity, even the stuff you don’t enjoy. At the end of the day, you never want to say that you could have done more (if you want to sleep soundly, that is).
3. Take risks. You know what they say “you learn more from your failures than your successes.” I’ve often found that my instincts always want the risks – it’s when I overthink things that the safe route seems like the better option. I’ve learned to trust my instincts more.
4. Ask questions. For starters, when you’re young you are not expected to know everything, so just ASK people to share their knowledge. One of my few regrets early on in my career was being afraid to show my inexperience, so I missed out on a lot of great knowledge from those more seasoned than me. I’ve since discovered that most people enjoy sharing knowledge. Just be sure to make it a two-way street and be respectful enough to apply what they teach you.

These are rather broad categories, but if you want more, just call or email me. I’d be happy to share.
:)

We’ve all been bombarded with talk of “green” the last couple of weeks (before and after Earth Day). Green. Greenwashing. Green living. The Greening of… Now I’m reading that the term “green” has become oversaturated to the point that it’s lost meaning. I suppose it was bound to happen at some point. Instead of the generic “green” term, we’ll start seeing more specific terms again such as “socially responsible,” environmentally friendly,” etc.

On a related note, a friend sent me this video via facebook (a little oversimplified on the issue of climate change but you get the point).Video: Climate change action vs inaction

Just finished watching King of Kong, the documentary over the “battle” to win the best Donkey Kong score. As documentaries go, it was well done. But, I honestly spent the first minutes in disbelief that these were real people and real stories and the remaining time in disgust about the pettiness. Sadly, though, it’s real, at least as real as a film can be. I hope in actuality none of these people are as pathetic as they appear on screen (especially this guy brian). This quote from a Washington Post review sums it up: “The competition is so vicious because the stakes are so low.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I haven’t been on a bike in probably 20 years, and I think since it has been SO long, the experience is transformative. You really do feel like a kid again when you’re on a bike (corny, huh?). Maybe it’s because when you were a kid, you spent so much time outdoors, and now, most of your time is, well, indoors. Even though we bought the bikes for the exercise, I think I’ll enjoy the feeling of the memories it conjures more than the endorphins from the exercise itself.

Well, this is really more of a follow-up to the Blade Runner post. It’s not a secret that we listen to books on tape (or more accurately, books on ipod through audible.com) and have for several years, but we usually got modern books, not the classics. So, we got “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” just for comparison to the movie. Just finished it. Very interesting. Explores much more of the human psyche than the book.

Unexpectedly, though, there is a thread in the book about waste…about entropy. It’s actually, well, profound.

There’s the First Law of Kipple… ‘Kipple drives out nonkipple.’

“…Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more. No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot.”
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick, 1968

Lately, I think I’ve been experiencing a form of mental kipple.