withoutnations : Mark Mitchell » nostalgia

Snapshots: Week of 21 February, 2011

Mark — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:00:07 +0000

A Food Manifesto for the Future, New York Times [article] nutrition, sustainability, diet, America, food production
The King of Limbs, Radiohead [music] drum beat, electronic, divisive, experimentation
Back to the Future, Irina Werning [photography] nostalgia, retro, imitation, portraits, reenactment
TD 63-73: Total Design and its pioneering role in graphic design, Ben Bos [book] design, Dutch, Wim Crouwel, modernism, corporate identity
Paper Tweet, Knock Knock [print] humor, Twitter, communication, technology
Gnome Life [photography] garden gnomes, New York, identity

October

Mark — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:32:06 +0000

I’m intrigued by coincidence and parallel events, markers in a life otherwise lacking in obvious direction.

Two years ago today I began a holiday without any expectation or serious thought. I left after ten days full of possibility and uncertainty.

Twitter, 4 October 2010

This week I learned that the artist that had unknowingly provided me the soundtrack to what would prove to be quite an important holiday to the UK had since released a new album. I discovered this two years to the day of the trip. Whether that is coincidence or a plea for significance is left to question. Either way, the music I listen to this week will be the continuation of those moments in two thousand and eight.

Nostalgia is often a sentimental desperation, a dwelling on the past that creates regrets and unnecessary analysis of what may or may not have been. However, I think there are moments worth remembering; milestones for comparing past expectations against current reality. It seems that we are always pulling aside the branches, trying to reconcile our expectations with the present, when largely nothing matches our expectations. Perhaps there is wisdom in reading the differences; clarity through the choices made.

The music reminds me that I ambled towards this present with little idea of whether it was possible — or quite often, whether it was a good idea. There may comfort in the reminder that there is often possibility in uncertainty.

Geocities, In Memoriam

Mark — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:07:19 +0000

Geocities has shut down. I can’t imagine the service has seen much activity in recent times, even with the Yahoo acquisition. I abandoned it not longer after it became obvious how cheaply you could build and host your own domain. Geocities does hold some sentimental value. In the early days of the web it was a magnificent idea. It was certainly responsible for nurturing my interest in web design — or rather, design in general — and nudging a good number of people into learning basic HTML. In its prime, I was running a half dozen different sites in different neighborhoods.

Perhaps the first and longest running however was a fan page I built dedicated to Pink Floyd. There were earlier iterations, but one in particular stuck and remained live at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/6120/floyd.html for a number of years. The earliest record I see in the guestbook for the site (preserved at the internet archive) is 19 August, 1997. I was sixteen years old, writing code and pasting sites together in Adobe Pagemill.

Distortion Clouds? Check. Outer Glow? Check. Copperplate Gothic? Check. The Outer Bevel effect was probably created with Kai’s Power Tools.

Simpler times, it seems.