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Iceland: Week 39

Last Thursday, 255 days after my first day of classes, I pressed submit on two final papers and wrapped up my one-year graduate program in international relations at the University of Iceland. This semester had less room to customize the courses, but I could still shape things to my interests: incorporating Arctic topics into my negotiation class and focusing on cybersecurity for security studies and international organizations. Most squarely in my wheelhouse was the class on governance of the Internet, which combined history, technology, law, and policy. That course, and the two focused on the Arctic from last semester, are the ones whose optional reading lists I’ll keep working through in the months ahead. But now, time for some rest and recovery from the inevitable cold that I got during the final week of wrapping things up.

On May 1, Iceland celebrated International Workers’ Day with a parade and rally hosted by various workers’ unions. It was a public holiday, as it is in many countries, except, of course, in America, which hosts its Labor Day in September instead. Apparently that’s on purpose. Even though the May 1 date was chosen based on the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, President Grover Cleveland sought to weaken that linkage when choosing the early September date instead. The lack of a public holiday makes it harder, so it’s heartening to see that many Americans still marched in solidarity on May Day, with particularly strong turnout in Chicago on the 140th anniversary of Haymarket.

I attended a film screening of Laxaþjóð (A Salmon Nation) by Patagonia Films about open net salmon farming in Iceland. The short film, which is available on YouTube, details the problems that salmon farming is causing in Iceland, including genetic pollution when escaped fish breed with wild salmon and the prevalence of diseases such as sea lice.

The setup for the event was interesting, including a Q&A beforehand with people who were featured in the film, and then another afterward with Icelandic politicians who are currently on the committee in charge of drafting legislation regulating salmon farming. The film was in English and the discussions in Icelandic, but they provided headphones and wireless receivers with live translation. The most interesting part was that this was not an event of purely like-minded people, as the filmmakers and activists were pushing to outright ban open net salmon farming in Iceland while the politicians were quite clear that was off the table. The politicians did discuss higher safety standards and regulations, but there was disagreement about how many jobs the industry creates, with the activists distrusting the numbers the industry provides. Beyond the potentially irreparable damage to the wild salmon ecosystem in Icelandic rivers, the argument was made to consider the impact on jobs holistically, since diseased fish are negatively impacting the fly-fishing tourism industry.

Overall, I thought the event did a good job of bringing awareness to the issue and fostering public debate. It’s interesting to see Patagonia spearheading this campaign, as I don’t associate their brand with Iceland. In fact, it’s rare to even see their clothing for sale here, with 66°North dominating the high-end outerwear market in Iceland.

Sticker promoting the event. Fúsk means negligence or shoddy job in Icelandic.

There’s ferry drama in Iceland.

This winter there were lots of news stories about coastal erosion at the Reynisfjara black sand beach in southern Iceland. All winter long, strong winds pushed around massive amounts of sand, remaking parts of the beach and causing the basalt-column cave there to be inaccessible. But those same conditions have also been wreaking havoc on the harbor at Landeyjahöfn, which is the port where the ferry Herjólfr sails to Vestmannaeyjar—the Westman Islands.

Apparently the harbor is so filled with sand that the ferry hasn’t been able to use the port at all this year, forcing it instead to sail to Þorlákshöfn, a trip that takes nearly 3 hours instead of under an hour. To make matters worse, the ferry’s engine recently failed, which led to an almost seven-hour journey that didn’t arrive back to the islands until 2:30am. They sent that engine to the Netherlands for repair, and have called in the ferry Baldur as a replacement, which normally operates between Stykkishólmur on the Snæfellsnes peninsula and Brjánslækur in the Westfjords.

The ferry Herjólfr docked at Landeyjahöfn last July, before sand filled the harbor.

I guess that during the winter the people of Vestmannaeyjar are used to hunkering down and dealing with the isolation, but now that it’s summer the situation is getting much more attention. It caused problems for the annual Puffin Run race this weekend, and it’s going to be a problem for tourism if they can’t resolve it soon. The road commission has published a detailed analysis of the engineering problem, and apparently the weather conditions for dredging are finally becoming favorable.

I’ve been watching the drama closely because I have tickets to take the ferry from Landeyjahöfn to Vestmannaeyjar on May 21, and I’m not sure how well the Þorlákshöfn backup route would work with my plans. News reports from yesterday say they’ve finally started the dredging work, so fingers crossed. It’s a classic Icelandic situation where nothing that relies on nature can be certain. Hopefully the classic Icelandic saying will hold true: “Þetta reddast”—it will all work out.

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Iceland: Week 38

Thursday was the first day of Icelandic summer and after my oral exam in Internet Governance that morning I attended The Green Walk, a march across Reykjavík promoting nature conservation. Iceland is a country of such natural beauty that it’s easy to assume its citizens are inherently aligned with protecting nature. While I think that’s largely true, it has, for example, struggled to outlaw whaling. Also, the majority of the countryside is privately owned and not part of a protected national park. That regularly leads to controversies about private parties making profit-driven decisions regarding hydropower dams, aluminum smelting, power transmission lines, or land alterations to build tourist infrastructure. I wish I could share more specifics about what the rally was promoting, but all the speeches were in Icelandic.

This is my last week of grad school. I have an exam on Monday, and then two papers due later in the week and I’m done. I have lots to reflect on my overall experience, which I will share later, but today I just wanted to recommend the best exam study tool I’ve ever used: NotebookLM.

There are lots of things that make NotebookLM different from a typical AI chatbot. The most important thing is that it only uses source documents you upload—no “hallucinations,” no making things up or straying into other topics. The second is that it has pre-built templates to generate particular kinds of study artifacts from those sources, such as mind maps, quizzes, and flashcards. I used some of those during the exam period last semester, but only in the last week have I played with the Audio Overview feature and it’s honestly incredible.

I can get to the point where my mind is saturated and I can’t take in more information through reading. Last semester my workaround was to go on a walk and listen to the audiobook version of the textbook. But NotebookLM can generate a custom podcast where two “people” have a casual conversation that hits on all the topics in your sources. So I can upload slides from each week and have it generate a 45-minute podcast that gives a very solid overview of everything in the class. I know you’re thinking that it must be very annoying, but honestly it’s not bad. The voices and conversation are extremely realistic, and the podcast weaves together the topics in a way that feels natural. It’s not like I’d prefer this over an actual human conversation, but it’s unlike anything otherwise available because it’s so hyper-targeted to just the content in my slides.

Noted & Done

  • A new subsea fiber-optic cable named AUÐUR has been announced, which will connect Iceland to Scotland. This would replace the aging FARICE-1 cable, which also connects to the Faroe Islands, although it’s unclear if AUÐUR will include a Faroese spur.
  • I have learned a new Latin phrase that embodies what we need to do to Trump’s legacy when he is finally ousted or dies: damnatio memoriae.
  • Saw lúpína perform at Kaffibarinn.
  • Attended a screening of The Veto at Bíó Paradís, a film about the UN Security Council. There was an interesting discussion afterwards with the director and other experts, including one of my professors.
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Iceland: Week 37

Signs of spring abounded in Iceland this week, from flowers pushing themselves out of the soil, to cats sneaking around the streets, to a mountain hike with only scattered remnants of snow and ice. The first day of Icelandic summer, a public holiday, is this Thursday. Icelanders don’t have Punxsutawney Phil to make predictions about seasonal transitions, but apparently it’s good luck if the temperature drops below freezing the day before summer begins.

My friend Christina and her friend Aaron were vacationing in Reykjavík this week and it was fun to meet up with them a few times. This morning we drove to Reykjadalur, a geothermal valley 45 minutes from the city, and hiked up to the source of the hot river. I had been once before, in December with my brother, when the days had only four hours of sunlight. This time I didn’t need to bring along my headlamp.

We walked further up the trail than I had before, to the spring that feeds the river. The sulfurous water spouting from the hillside had built up colorful mineral deposits that looked like a giant mutant gourd that could win any contest at a county fair. We didn’t fully soak, but waded into the river, which was the absolute perfect temperature — the kind of heat that feels amazing but never builds up to a level that makes you want to step out.

I saw this week that Pittsburgh is retiring the old wayfinder system, which has been in use on the city’s signage since 1995. It had simple color coding to reference five major zones in the city, which were reinforced using a stylized map at the top of each sign. If the place being indicated was in the same zone as the sign, its background would match that color. If it pointed towards something in a different zone, it was considered an “Exit-Finder” sign, which used the color in a stripe on a dark blue background. The existing design wasn’t perfect, but it had held up well for over 30 years and brought some sense of order to the city’s notoriously convoluted streets.

In a social media post, the City of Pittsburgh announced that it was retiring the design. Instead, the city’s signage will be black and yellow, with a useless and unreadable city seal at the top, much less readable typography, and no differentiation between neighborhoods. I don’t live there anymore, but stuff like this bums me out. They had an opportunity to build upon and improve a working system with a colorful and informative personality, and chose instead to regress to the dullest, least-considered default possible. It’s worse in every way, except I guess that the city now has terrible signs to match its Terrible Towels.

Old and new way-finding designs in Pittsburgh

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Iceland: Week 36

The collage above includes some photos from the previous week, a sign that I’ve been heads down since returning from my trip to the north. The upcoming week is the last for my classes, and I’ve mostly been focusing on the remaining tasks to wrap up the semester. I have a couple of assignments, a couple of exams, and four papers to complete before the end of the month. I can’t decide if the continued cold is more of a positive — because it keeps me inside working — or more of a negative, as the winter starts to feel draining. I’ll tell you, though, a little warmth from the sun would go a long way right now.

The war in Iran and Lebanon is weighing on me this week. The senselessness of civilian deaths, the war crimes and threats of civilizational erasure by an American president. I don’t have anything unique to add, despite months of classes on Security Studies and negotiations. The current US administration is so chaotic and unprincipled that it scrambles my ability to analyze the situation through theory or history. Even thinking of it as the “madman theory” is wrong; it’s just madness. I wasn’t able to attend, but there was an anti-war protest in Reykjavík this week at the US embassy.

In much lighter news, let’s talk about hotdogs. Many of you sent me the New York Times story about inflation in Iceland as told through hotdogs. Thanks for thinking of me. It’s a real deep dive into hotdog options in Reykjavík, but had nothing to say about the unique options available in Akureyri. So I had to seek out Pylsuvagninn when I was there, which was a bit tricky given their non-standard holiday hours.

Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri, Iceland on a snowy day in early April.

The toppings are certainly unique, including potato salad, bacon and eggs, and blue cheese.

Hotdog options at Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri.

I went with the Volcano Dog, which has onions, jalapeños, ketchup, cocktail sauce, remoulade sauce, mustard, and sriracha. A 2024 article in the Grapevine notes that the black buns are made in a local bakery by adding bamboo charcoal into the dough. Overall, A+ from me on this one and I thought the buns were the best of any Icelandic hotdog I’ve had so far.

The volcano dog at Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri.

On August 12, 2026 there will be a total solar eclipse in Iceland. To get the fullest impact of totality you need to be on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula or the Westfjords, but it will still pass through Reykjavík for 2 hours with totality lasting 1 minute and 4 seconds. That will be my last week in Iceland, and I was already excited to experience the eclipse, but now I have actual plans beyond just looking up at the sky. This week, Björk announced that she is throwing an eclipse rave, in conjunction with her exhibition at the National Gallery of Iceland. I bought tickets immediately. Knowing that my final week in the country will include dancing with Björk under a rare celestial phenomenon feels auspicious.

The path of the 2026 eclipse through Iceland.
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Iceland: Week 35

I had a break from classes for Easter, so I decided to take a trip to the north of Iceland. I’d never been before, and while I plan to visit again at the end of May, I wanted to get the winter experience as well and see the mountains covered in snow. The weather was unpredictable right away, switching from clear skies to a yellow warning the morning I left Reykjavík. I made it to Akureyri before sunset, but not before some white-knuckle driving in whiteout conditions.

Akureyri is a great little town, the capital of the north, but with only 20,000 people. It sits on a hill, with city stairwells that reminded me a little bit of Pittsburgh. Its iconic church overlooks the downtown area, but it’s worth walking beyond it, higher up the hill, until you reach the botanical garden. Even in winter, it’s a nice place to visit, for the novelty of a patch of trees in Iceland, but there’s also a great little cafe called LYST that’s worth the visit.

I based myself in Akureyri for three nights, but went as far east as Lake Mývatn, and as far north as Siglufjörður, stopping at natural sites and towns along the way. I’m still on the road as I write this, from a hotel room in Stykkishólmur, where I stopped on my way back to Reykjavík. My plan was to spend all day tomorrow wandering around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula before returning the rental car tomorrow night, but the weather has other plans. Today’s weather was absolutely perfect, sunny and clear, with reasonable winds. But a massive storm is rolling in tomorrow morning, triggering an orange alert (meaning “do not travel”) for the capital region and the entire south coast. I’ll need to leave early in the morning to make it back, or else I’ll be stuck on Snæfellsnes.

Despite the weather challenges — which also included getting my car stuck in the snow and having to enlist the help of a German family to dig it out — it’s been a great trip. But right now, I’m far too exhausted to write in detail about it, so I’ll save that for later and just share some photos. You can find the rest on Instagram, where I have six photo sets for this trip: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

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Iceland: Week 34

The turnout for the No Kings 3.0 gathering in Reykjavík yesterday was small, but there were roughtly 20 of us gathered in solidarity with those protesting in the States. The weather was rough all week, including orange alerts for most of the country, and the wind chill yesterday was below zero. We lasted for an hour and a half outside before heading to a nearby restaurant, but not before a grotesque Jabba-the-Hutt-style snow pile effigy of Trump was constructed. These are dark times, so finding ways to spend time with likeminded people and push back against authoritarianism matters, no matter how small. I loved seeing the rallies in large cities across the United States; I wish I could have been there.

No Kings 3.0 in Reykjavík. Photo credit: Devin Kuchcinski.

I got confirmation this week that I was accepted for a creative residency at Williamshús in the Faroe Islands. Located in Tórshavn, Williamshús is the former home and studio of William Heinesen, one of the most famous Faroese writers. The basement and first floor are a museum, and the second floor apartment hosts residencies. I’ll be there for twelve days in July. I intend to focus on writing and photography, likely publishing to Looking North throughout the stay but also gathering material for longer-term projects. I’ve wanted to go back since first visiting in 2018, but with more of a purpose than simply another tourist visit. I think staying at Williamshús will fit that goal perfectly.

This week was the start of the Reykjavík Open at Harpa, an annual international chess competition. I didn’t realize that chess was a big deal in Iceland, but apparently it really took off after the country hosted the World Chess Championship in 1972, pitting Bobby Fischer against Boris Spassky. That match, and the way it put Iceland “on the map,” was the reason the government gave Bobby Fischer Icelandic citizenship when the United States was seeking his extradition for violation of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia.

In 2005, Fischer moved to Iceland and lived there for the rest of his life. I knew that he settled near Selfoss, but I only recently learned that he also spent a lot of time hanging out at Bókin, a used bookstore in Reykjavík that is one block from my apartment.

Reykjavík Open 2026, after hours.
First Day Cover for the Icelandic postage stamp commemorating the 1972 International Tournament in Chess in Reykjavík, released in 1976, and also promoting that year’s tournament.

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Iceland: Week 33

In a week that included the first day of spring, the weather in Iceland was still very much winter. As usual, it’s the wind that makes things harsh, reaching over 45 MPH and causing yellow travel warnings across much of the country. In less than two weeks I have a trip to Akureyri planned during Easter break, so I’m crossing my fingers that things improve.

Luckily there were some indoor activities to check out. The Stockfish Film Festival kicked off, and is conveniently held across the street from my apartment at Bíó Paradís. Yesterday, I went to two sessions, both focused on Icelandic shorts: five documentaries and six narrative shorts, each including a Q&A with the filmmakers. At least half of the films were directed by film students studying at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. I don’t know how it works at other film schools, but it was impressive to hear about the level of financial and expert support they receive. It sounds like there are people on staff to support lighting, sound — even intimacy coordination — during 10–12 hour shooting days, sometimes in remote locations. Film is one of the creative industries where Iceland punches above its weight, and this was a glimpse into the educational foundation that makes that possible.

It’s not just film students who are well supported. Earlier in the week I attended a lecture by Jens Schildt, a Swedish graphic designer who did extensive archival research into the Swedish business equipment company FACIT. His work is fascinating, and involved recreating some of the company’s typefaces and publishing a book. Because his collaborator was living in the Netherlands they were able to tap into generous Dutch funding for this kind of design project.

His lecture (also at Bíó Paradís) was organized by Iceland University of the Arts and the Association of Icelandic Graphic Designers. While talking to one of the design instructors, he mentioned receiving Erasmus funding to take his entire class of graphic design students on a trip to Belgium. Europe has always had more funding for the arts, but the contrast with America (especially under Trump) is so stark. Imagine living in a society that supports and rewards creative activities that don’t have an obvious commercial profit motive?

Jens Schildt presenting his archival research on FACIT at Bíó Paradís

March 18 marked the 100-year anniversary of Iceland’s first radio broadcast, and I attended the opening of an exhibition celebrating that milestone in the building where it happened. Loftskeytastöðin, which translates simply to “the radio station,” is a small building on the University of Iceland campus that I walk by multiple times a week. The main floor has a permanent exhibition dedicated to Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the first woman president of Iceland, but the basement has rotating exhibitions.

There was a collection of some of the first radio receivers in Iceland, often with a unique story of how they came to the country. For example, one of the old shortwave radios belonged to a farmer who had taught himself German and wanted to listen to broadcasts from abroad to improve his language skills. Overall, the exhibition is small but interesting. I would have liked more information on the history of the building and broadcasting, but it focuses more on tangible artifacts from the history of radio.

Architectural detail on Loftskeytastöðin, the old radio station building.
I do, of course, love the design of old radios, particularly shortwave models with city selectors.

Finally, I attended the opening performance for Harmonic Tremor by Ben Frost and Francesco Fabris at The Living Art Museum. The installation is set up as a series of upward-facing speaker cones, filled with lava collected from eruption sites on the Reykjanes peninsula. As the speakers vibrate, the lava shifts and bounces, slowly escaping the cone to create a pile of dust surrounding the speaker stand on the gallery floor. These eight speakers were augmented by many others throughout the space.

The performance was composed from field recordings made at the eruption site, including sound recorded from contact microphones placed directly on cooling lava. It felt like you were inside the eruption itself: ethereal, immense, at times startling. I’ve followed both of these artists for years, but never seen them perform, so I feel lucky to have been able to attend such an immersive joint performance. It felt like a very Icelandic experience to walk back home, in 40+ MPH wind and snow, after attending a sound performance based on nearby volcanic eruptions.

Harmonic Tremor installation by Ben Frost and Francesco Fabris at The Living Art Museum.

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Small Flock: everyday micro-stories

I’ve resurrected Small Flock, an old project of mine from 15 years ago. In the first half of 2011, I wrote micro-stories on Twitter, as a exercise to see how much storytelling I could fit into 140 characters. That usually meant two sentences at most, and the challenge was to create a sense of place, emotion, or imagination in that tiny space — a fleeting glimpse of a situation, or someone’s thoughts, that might evoke a larger scene in the reader’s mind. After posting 100 stories, over as many days, I packaged them into a website that would display them randomly, one at a time.

The Small Flock website is the ideal place to read these micro-stories, not the endless scroll of social media. But Twitter was a useful platform to establish the character count constraint, and I liked the idea of them floating by in the chaos of social media — maybe it would slow people down for a second — while also living much more calmly on their own website.

I’ve retooled the project to live on Bluesky, so you can follow @smallflock.com, where I’ll be posting new micro-stories. The Bluesky API made it surprisingly easy for me to import all the previous stories, and even supports dates set in the past. As you can see below, old posts have an “archived from” flag indicating their original Twitter posting date. The biggest change is that now I have 300 characters to work with. Testing it out this week, that’s often more than I need.

I’ve updated the code at smallflock.com, removing some cruft, syncing with Bluesky, making it work with the longer character count, and polishing responsive design issues. I also improved how it works as a home screen app on iOS. I won’t be posting every day like I did in 2011, but even just doing it a few this week I’ve found that it’s still a fun exercise in brevity and editing.

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Iceland: Week 32

In Iceland they only recognize two seasons: winter and summer. The first day of summer this year is April 23rd, and it came up in one of my classes this week because our final exam is scheduled on that day. “But that’s the first day of summer!” warned one of the Icelandic students. Apparently in Iceland it’s a public holiday, with parades and the day off work. Although often the temperatures that day are still below freezing.

I’m pretending that spring exists, and that it’s here, even if it only shows up for a handful of hours at a time, and only when skies are clear enough for the sun warm a tiny bit of exposed skin. During this “spring” I’m trying to explore the edges of the capital region more, places where the bus can take me to the outskirts of Reykjavík, closer to the mountains or along new shorelines. It’s great living downtown, but I’m curious what else I can see beyond walking distance — but without needing to rent a car. I hear there’s a good Polish restaurant in the suburbs.

Yesterday, I went to Gufunes, and the Geldinganes Headland, which wrap around Faxaflói Bay with a backside view of Viðey Island. I primarily went to see Hallsteinsgarður, a sculpture park with large aluminum sculptures by Hallsteinn Sigurðsson. They are situated along the shoreline, framing the water and mountains with a beautiful contrast between the stark geometric forms and organic landscape.

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Iceland: Week 31

It took me a while to get used to the fact that in Iceland, ice cream is not a seasonal food. The ice cream shops are just as packed in February as July, and people walk down the street licking cones held in mittened hands. While I don’t find myself craving a winter scoop, I now have a similarly unseasonable thought: when the snow starts falling, it makes me want to go to the outdoor pool. In fact, at this point, I think of pools as primarily a cold-weather activity.

After trying all the pools in central Reykjavík, I’ve decided that my favorite is Vesturbæjarlaug. The saunas were recently rebuilt, the locker room is spacious, and the open layout of the hot tubs makes for good sky-watching while you soak. A drone photo of that pool is in the collage above, part of a series by Bragi Þór Jósefsson that celebrates Icelandic pool culture and shows off the diversity of pool layouts throughout the country.

I arrived at the pool today in the middle of a snow squall, which promptly turned into blue skies, and then ten minutes later started snowing again. There’s something extra special about soaking in 44°C water in winter. The contrast in temperature between water and air means you’re enveloped in a cloud of steam, and snowflakes linger long enough to give everyone a dusting of white in their hair. As I sat at the edge of the pool, near the glass perimeter wall that overlooks a hill, a dichotomous scene played out around me. To my left, kids in bathing suits jockeyed for position to go down a waterslide into the geothermal water; to my right, kids bundled up in snowsuits threw snowballs and sledded face first down the hill. It made me think that Iceland would be a fun place to be a kid.

Remember Flickr? I mean, it’s still around, but remember before Instagram when everyone used Flickr and you could see each other’s photos without having them mixed in with wierd scammy ads, AI-generated slop, and unwanted “suggested content”? You could tag them with informative labels that helped people find them, and associate them with a Creative Commons license that proactively let people know it was okay to use in non-commercial projects. Something tells me the AI foundation model scrapers didn’t stop to look at the license I chose as they hoovered it all up without consent. But I digress.

I think that time period when Flickr was at its peak was my favorite era of the Internet. I get reminded of it every once in a while when someone contacts me about one of my old Flickr photos. About a year and a half ago, I heard from Giovanni Marmont, who wanted to use one of my photos in a book he was writing, which has now been published.

Various robots from the Technological Dreams Series by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, on display in the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA in 2008.

The photo features various robots designed by Dunne and Raby, as featured in the 2008 Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA. Along with Flickr, it can now also be found on page 125 of A Studious Use. Designing from the Undercommons, available to purchase in print or online for free.

Noted & Done

  • To those of you in the U.S., I’m now one hour closer in time, since Iceland doesn’t observe daylights savings time.
  • I am officially old enough that “kids these days” use words I don’t necessarily understand. Well, check out this story in which every few paragraphs the author switches to write in English as it was spoken 100 years earlier, starting with 2000 and ending with the truly unintelligible 1000. I started struggling around 1500.
  • Every once in a while I see project that makes me say “why didn’t I think of that!?” because it’s so simple, and perfect, and up my alley. This week, that project was Payphone Go, a game in which you collect points by calling from any of California’s 2,203 remaining payphones.