Author: jtminor

Berkeley Architecture

My architect father and I spent Boxing Day in Berkeley. While there we were lucky to get a quick between-terms private tour of the Thorsen House, a landmark of Arts and Crafts by Greene & Greene, which is now a frat house. So that’s where the interior images come from.

Illas

The city I was drawing became 6 connected cities in a megalopolis along a lake sized river. Not sure if these will become separate maps or stay together, but just got on a roll/variations on a theme. I do know they’ll all have names starting with Illa, and use “~” as compound name punctuation.

Papier-mâché menagerie

I acquired these fine papier-mâché animals, one per year, at ages 8-16 at the Texas Renaissance Festival from the artist. I recently got them on shelves in the living room.

New Adventures in Acrylics

Recent small canvas experiments with different mediums, iridescence and different application techniques. All acrylic paint on canvas. Not the best photos, but you get the idea…

 

WordMap 10th Anniversary Update

10 years ago, when I built the first version of WordMap, I had to build all the natural language processing code from scratch. In iOS 11 Apple added built-in NLP APIs that cover almost all the functions I had built. Its really cool to see language technology, and machine learning in general, go mainstream and be just another system function. So, I updated WordMap (undoing the HD branding I tacked on when I added iPad support). I also cleaned up some other UI and data source messes, added iPhone X support, and made the layout better for big and super high res devices. I also added support for my top 15 most downloaded languages, so now everyone from the Chinese to the Swedes can make word clouds on the go.
I also updated the website: http://wordmap.info

finishing 47 Days in Exile, 15 years later

When I graduated from college, I was directionless, with the ideas that would become the Way of the Pattern  floating around my brain. I was living with my grandparents, working an office admin job I pretty much instantly hated. During the last 47 days for this time (at the end of which I moved to Seattle with no job and no prospects) I kept a “symbolic” journal, noting images, materials and motifs that resonated with me each day, as an excel spreadsheet. Eventually I got a blank book and started creating a page for each day based on my notes. Although I planned out the whole thing in November of 2002, it took me until November 2017 to finish all the pages. Not a great work of art, but it represents the first embodiment of many ideas that I continue to play with, and finishing it, after 15 years, feels like finally putting those 47 days in their final context, artistic and personal. I feel like I’ve found my direction, and these were among the first sign-posts on the road I now, much more confidently, walk. Here are a few pages to illustrate:

dark mode gorgeousness

I don’t normally post work related stuff here, but I couldn’t let this pass without a “cross-post” as I consider the Wikipedia app a work of art, since I think software is a medium. Certainly flawed in places, but a piece of beautiful, meaningful, culture emerging from a team’s shared craft, years of volunteer passion and labor, and the power of letting humans express themselves, together.

Below are images of dark mode “Explore” cards from the app. This is not planned. Editors pick content, our backend picks the image, iOS picks the focus point and crops the image, our designer (a talented one) picked the colors, graphic layout and fonts. And yet day after day, it is diverse, informative, and even beautiful. Its not an accident, and people are working hard to make it happen, but its not an intentional human process either. It emerges like this. And it is great software. Users love it. Apple agreed, naming us an Editor’s Choice, and making us one of 10 apps recommend for their new flagship iPhone X.


Kid in the Shell

When Radiohead’s Kid A was released, my friends and I were already huge Radiohead fans, and it was a quick little contemporary masterpiece of an album we embraced. This same group of friends had a habit of watching favorite movies “synced” to favorite albums, pairing things by shared mood or motifs. One day Kid A and Ghost in the Shell got played together. It was the most synchonous pairing we ever did. 15 years later I created this website to highlight the uniquely beutiful interplay between this seminal album and (the first part of) this influential landmark of a movie. This interplay takes the form of shared themes, lyrical symbolism, timbre matching visual tone, and even some closely matched scene transitions and synced cuts. The fact that the title song and movie title card come together exactly is certainly quite a coincidence.

I created this website as an inventory of synchronous moments for your consideration.

Philadelphia

I was lucky enough to lead a work off site event in Old City Philadelphia. It was my first time in the city of brotherly love, and it is my kind of place.

The Way is Pretty Much Published

The final version of The Way of the Pattern is published. There will likely be very minor edits or errata, but this is the complete pdf and website. When I set out to create my own imaginary religion, and embody it in hypertext, I figured I would never finish such a silly and fraught project. But, it is finished. And I live it. It frames my thinking and choices, at work and in life. It gives me comfort. I want to keep it my deepest closest secret, but I want to tell anyone who will listen about it. I fear it is irredeemably cliched, while I am also proud it is uniquely weird. I am sure now, I had no choice but to make it.