He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) – New York Times

Link by Link
He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)
Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Philip Parker says he has computers do the substantial amount of repetitive work that is required in the writing of so many books.

By NOAM COHEN
Published: April 14, 2008

It’s not easy to write a book. First you have to pick a title. And then there is the table of contents. If you want the book to be categorized, either by a bookseller or a library, it has to be assigned a unique numerical code, like an ISBN, for International Standard Book Number. There have to be proper margins. Finally, there’s the back cover.

Philip Parker is now turning his efforts to video.

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.

Philip M. Parker seems to have licked that problem. Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.

While nothing announces that Mr. Parker’s books are computer generated, one reader, David Pascoe, seemed close to figuring it out himself, based on his comments to Amazon in 2004. Reviewing a guide to rosacea, a skin disorder, Mr. Pascoe, who is from Perth, Australia, complained: “The book is more of a template for ‘generic health researching’ than anything specific to rosacea. The information is of such a generic level that a sourcebook on the next medical topic is just a search and replace away.”

When told via e-mail that his suspicion was correct, Mr. Pascoe wrote back, “I guess it makes sense now as to why the book was so awful and frustrating.”Mr. Parker was willing to concede much of what Mr. Pascoe argued. “If you are good at the Internet, this book is useless,” he said, adding that Mr. Pascoe simply should not have bought it. But, Mr. Parker said, there are people who aren’t Internet savvy who have found these guides useful.

It is the idea of automating difficult or boring work that led Mr. Parker to become involved. Comparing himself to a distant disciple of Henry Ford, he said he was “deconstructing the process of getting books into people’s hands; every single step we could think of, we automated.”

He added: “My goal isn’t to have the computer write sentences, but to do the repetitive tasks that are too costly to do otherwise.”

In an interview from his home in San Diego and his offices nearby, Mr. Parker described his motivation as providing content that the marketplace has otherwise neglected for lack of an audience. That can mean a relatively obscure language is involved, or a relatively obscure disease or a relatively obscure product.

Take, for example, the study of bathmats in India.

“Only one person in the world may be interested in that,” he conceded, “probably a strategic planner for a multinational that makes those.” But he points out that once he has trained the computer to take data about past sales and make complex calculations to project future sales, each new book costs him about 12 cents in electricity. Since these books are print-on-demand or delivered electronically, he is ahead after the first sale, he said.

His company, the Icon Group International, is the long tail of the bell curve come to life — generating significant total sales by adding up tens of thousands of what might be called worst sellers. For example, a search at the Galter Health Sciences Library of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University found half a dozen Icon books, mainly in the library for patients and their families.

Icon is “a very innovative and interesting example of print on demand,” said Kurt Beidler, a senior manager at Amazon.com who runs the publishers’ services for BookSurge, Amazon’s print-on-demand company. “A lot of examples of print on demand take older books and bring them back — really acting as a supply-chain tool. In this kind of business, it’s a new business, using this capability to introduce new material to customers.”

Mr. Parker compares his methods to those of a traditional publisher, but with the computer simply performing some of the scut work. In an explanatory YouTube video, Mr. Parker shows a book being created. The computer is given an assignment — project the latent demand for antipsychotic drugs around the world, based on the sales figures in the United States.

“Using a little bit of artificial intelligence, a computer program has been created that mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for doing such a study,” Mr. Parker says. “But rather than taking many months to do the study. the computer accomplishes this in about 13 minutes.”

An editor picks the years to be covered, but the computer picks the optimum model for extrapolating sales in various countries, and in alphabetical order produces a chart for each country. “It will then open a Word document and export the information into Word just like a real author would out of their minds, so to speak, or spreadsheets,” he says.

Artificial intelligence researchers say computers are far from being what the general public would consider authors.

“There is a continuous spectrum, also known as a slippery slope, between a program that automatically typesets a telephone directory and a program that generates English texts at the level of variety you would expect from a typical human English speaker,” said Chung-chieh Shan, an assistant professor in the computer science department of Rutgers. “The former program is easy to write, the latter program is very difficult; in fact, the holy grail of linguistics. Like Mad-Libs, Parker’s programs probably lie somewhere between the two ends of this spectrum.”

Mr. Parker has lately taken to lighter fare intended to educate. He said he had invested “up to seven figures into the animation business” for word-based video games and animated game shows that will teach English to non-English speakers. YouTube has many examples of these games, which have computer- generated scripts.

A low-tech version of those games are the thousands of crossword puzzle books Mr. Parker has made in about 20 languages. The clues are in a foreign language and the answers are in English. The computer designs the puzzles and ensures that the words become harder as one progresses.

As part of his love of words, and dictionaries in all languages, Mr. Parker said he has taken to having his computers create acrostic poems — where the first letter of a series of words spells a synonym of those words, often to ironic effect.

Of course, one of the difficulties of generating a hundred thousand poems is stepping back and assessing their quality.

“Do you think one of them is Shakespeare?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “Only because I haven’t done sonnets yet.”

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) – New York Times.

 

Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages — TIME

Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008
Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages
By Michael Kinsley

Like the detectives and the prosecutors on law & Order, two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world’s magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it.

Writers are sensitive souls–generally intelligent and hardworking but easily bruised. Treat them right, though, and you will be rewarded. Writers shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, essay or review. Then their writing–their baby–is ripped untimely from their computers (well, maybe only a couple of weeks overdue) and turned over to editors. These are idiots, most of them, and brutes, with tin ears, the aesthetic sensitivity of insects, deeply held erroneous beliefs about your topic and a maddening conviction that any article, no matter how eloquent or profound or already cut to the bone, can be improved by losing an additional 100 words.

If you’re lucky, your editor will have lost all interest in your article by the time you produce it, and on the way to a fancy expense-account lunch, he will pass it along unmolested to the copy editors (apprentice fiends, with intense views about semicolons). If you are not lucky, your editor will take a few minutes to ruin the piece with moronic changes and cloddish cuts before disappearing out the door.

I didn’t always feel this way. (And even now, nothing here should be construed to apply to the editors of TIME, who edit with the care of surgeons, the sensitivity of angels and the wisdom of the better class of Supreme Court Justices.) I have spent most of my professional life as an editor. When editors get together, they complain about writers with the same passion that writers bring to complaining about editors.

Writers, they say, are whiny, self-indulgent creatures who spend too much time alone. They are egotistical, paranoid and almost always seriously dehydrated. Above all, they are spectacular ingrates. Editors save their asses, and writers do nothing but bitch about it. “If anyone saw the original manuscript from …” (and you can insert the name of your favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning writer here) “… that guy wouldn’t get hired to clean the toilets at the Stockholm Public Library. Say, the Pulitzer is the one they give away in Scandinavia, isn’t it? I better remember to change that in a piece we’re running. The stupid writer says it’s the Nobel. What would they do without us?”

Editors are selfless, editors believe. They labor in anonymity and take their satisfaction vicariously. The writer gets all the glory. He gets the big bucks. He gets invited to the parties, the openings, the symposia, while the editors toil at their desks turning the writer’s random jottings and pretentious stylistic quirks into something resembling English prose. But that’s O.K. Editors don’t mind. They say, “Have a lovely time at that writers’ conference, and we’ll have the rewrite done when you get back.” (“And your laundry too, you unappreciative bastard,” they mumble under their breath.)

When I was an editor, I reasoned like an editor. But these days I am a full-time writer, and I have put away the editorial mind-set. Now I say, before you criticize writers, you should write a piece in their shoes.

Did you say paranoid? Is it paranoid to wonder why an editor hasn’t returned your calls for two weeks, even though she has been sitting on your piece for four? Did you say egomaniacal? What self-respecting egomaniac would put up with the enraging powerlessness of the freelance writer, totally dependent on the whims of half-literate editors for a pathetic drip-drip-drip of income. Oh, for a regular paycheck and health care, so you wouldn’t have to suck up to some jerk of an editor for the next mortgage payment. (“Yes, I see. You want it to be iambic pentameter with internal rhymes. I’ve never read an analysis of the political situation in Pakistan done that way before. What a good idea!”)

So this is an apology to any writers I may have treated callously over my years as an editor. If I didn’t answer your e-mail, I’m sorry. If the check was late or the amount less than agreed on, please forgive me. If I shut my office door, turned off the lights and hid under the desk when I heard you coming, I deeply regret such childish behavior.

On the Internet, they don’t have editors. Or they don’t have many. Writers rule, and a thought can go straight from your head onto the Net. That used to sound hellish. Now it sounds like heaven.

*
*
* Click to Print
*

* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729711,00.html

Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages — Printout — TIME.

 

In magazine

Wendy or Erin…

how do I access your magazine?  I cant for the life of me figure out where it is.

Alison

 

Todd’s stuff from “Mosaic”

Meditations on a quote (from the Editor)

There’s something about a Starbucks beverage that each person holds in anticipation. For some, it’s the aesthetics formed by the foam and espresso when their drink is made to order. For others, it’s a chance to be set apart through a customized latte unique to them. And, for the majority, it’s all about that bit of artificial energy to get them through the dreaded 9-5.

What I look forward to the most is the quote on the side of the cup. Eloquently arranged words have a way of captivating my attention and forming a memory. A set of lines that has stuck with me for over a year are the words of Barry Privett:

“With childhood comes a brief grace period of ignorant bliss, when you’re not aware of the pain around you. That is the most special, unique time. It is the core of adult lament.”

These words provoked my thoughts, so I decided to put them to the test. I could have simply pondered the phrase, but a far more significant opportunity arose.

In the months following that fateful encounter in Starbucks, I traveled to India with four peers on a community development housing project for five weeks. We built homes for widows, a demographic ostracized by society because they’re seen as a financial strain on their families. These widows not allowed to “look beautiful” anymore, so they shave their heads as a public statement of their lamenting social status.

Having previously encountered the third world, I thought that I had seen suffering – that I knew what poverty was. But my eyes were finally opened to that reality in India. The social segregation from the caste system was so foreign to me. It then made sense that when I saw a man violently convulsing on the street, no one offered him any aid. Or when a man flew off his motorcycle and face-planted into the pavement, that some witnesses fled the scene.

My worldview was wrecked after I witnessed those things. I felt so far from home, from comfort, from the familiar. I found myself longing for that ignorant, childlike bliss.

Yet nearly a year after those experiences, I still ask myself: is ignorance really bliss, or does adult lament stem from blocking out the reality of life? I find myself looking at children and envying at their innocence to the pain around them; then I’ll be in awe of those at the end of their long lives because they’ve made it through the barrenness.

Looking back now, I know that my conception of reality would be more optimistic had I not witnessed the suffering in the world. Yet I can see that suffering leads to empathy and compassion. These things ultimately hold more value than bliss, and it took the shattering of my perspective to finally understand this truth.

_______________________________________________

The Year 2000

A new year. A new century. A new millennium. When the year 2000 rolled around, it met a world in anticipation. Some believed it was just another New Year’s Eve, but the majority were preparing for what would be the downfall in the global market via the “Y2K” disaster. Yet the clock ticked past midnight in Times Square and life went on unchanged.

The year saw many other cultural milestones, some which still garner attention from around the world.

On March 7, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected as a United States Senator, the first time a First Lady ever entered into Congressional office. Some saw this as potentially paving her way to becoming President of the United States, which has played out in the current heated race for the White House.

Another political landmark, on November 7, 2000, was George W. Bush’s victory against Al Gore in the presidential election, one of the tightest races in history. Yet this would not be fully resolved for weeks because of multiple re-counts in Florida. This controversy has been debated for the past seven years during a period of war, terrorist attacks and potential economic recession.

While politics always catch global attention, another face has dominated media coverage over the past decade. That face is Britney Spears, whose sophomore album “Oops!…I did it again!” was released on May 16, 2000. The collection sold 1.3 million copies in its first week, setting a new record for highest sales in a week by a female solo artist in recording history. This milestone of stardom was a mere stepping stone for the world’s infatuation with Spears, following her decade-long display of career success, failed marriages, child bearing, head-shaving, rehab-stints, custody battles and forced hospitalizations.

 

Faucet Magazine

faucet-magazine

 

Oh joy, here it is!!

 

em dash versus en dash

I was doing a little “research” on Wikipedia, so I thought I’d share…

 

En dash versus em dash

The en dash is half the width of the em dash. The width of the en dash was originally the width of the typeset lowercase letter ‘n‘, while the width of the em dash was the width of an uppercase ‘M‘; hence the names. A more correct definition of the em width is the point size of the currently used font, since the M character does not occupy an exact square in many fonts.^[9]

Traditionally an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a dash in running text. The Elements of Typographic Style recommends the more concise spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash “belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.” The spaced en dash is also the house style for certain major publishers (Penguin, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge among them). However, some longstanding typographical guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style still recommend unspaced em dashes for this purpose. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that this style is used by “other British publishers”, but observes that Oxford University Press (OUP) does not use it. In practice, there is little consensus, and it is a matter of personal or house taste; the important thing is that usage should be consistent.

The en dash (always with spaces, in running text) and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. In most typesetting and most word processing, the spacing between words is expected to be variable, so there can be full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words between which it falls. The effect can be uneven spacing in the text.

En dashes are often preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns (as in newspapers and similar publications).

The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words: it is already long, and the spaces increase the separation. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words is further exaggerated.

Regardless of any other variations, the em dash should never be used in number ranges.

 

The Death of the Saturday Morning Cartoon

It was a time-honored tradition for children of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s: waking early on Saturday morning, curling up on the couch with a bowl of Cheerios and watching cartoons.  For many of us, Saturday morning cartoons played an integral role in our childhood development. The Care Bears taught us the importance of sharing; Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner showed us that bad guys finish last; and Captain Planet informed us of the dangers of environmental degradation.

            During the ‘70s and ‘80s, major broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC had over 20 million viewers tuning in each week to their Saturday morning slot. Toy advertisers benefited from the networks’ ability to create a single timeslot to target younger audiences. Merchandising became easy. A child’s favorite cartoon hero became their favorite action figure or play thing. G. I. Joe, Transformers and Strawberry Shortcake dolls grew to be prized collectables. The number of My Little Pony dolls a girl owned would determine her status on the playground.

Today, however, successful Saturday morning cartoons draw less than two million viewers. What has changed? What has lead to the almost total obliteration of this sacred Saturday morning ritual? Saturday Morning Cartoons have become a thing of the past, due to increased governmental regulations, a greater prevalence of cable and satellite TV, and kids’ evolving preferences.In the late 1960s, parent lobbyist do-gooders, began voicing concerns about the violence, immorality and lack of educational content in Saturday morning cartoons. Classic television entertainment like Tom and Jerry, was attacked for its depiction of violence and lack of political correctness. In the ‘70s, lobbyist pressure increased, causing networks to implement stricter content rules for their animated programs. This restriction limited the development of drama and suspense and hindered artistic expression to the point where basic storylines were repeated over and over and the children watching became too smart for the dumbed down versions of their favorite TV shows. Other lobby group like Action for Children’s Television(ACT), began voicing concerns about the children’s advertising in the late ‘60’s. By 1970, ACT had created a petition for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to ban commercial advertisements from children’s programming all together. ACT also began targeting shows that produced popular toys like G.I. Joes and My Little Pony, which they believed were half-hour commercials. Due to outraged demands of parents, the National Association of Broadcasters was forced to limit commercial time to a mere nine and a half minutes per hour. This made Saturday morning childhood entertainment less profitable for the major television networks.In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Children’s Television Act. The Act  required that all television stations to run at least three hours of educational and informational content every week. New educational childrens shows began to take the place of loveable cartoon favorites. And so, the Saturday morning cartoon line up began to die.NBC and CBS began to replace their Saturday morning lineup with new live-action educational teen entertainment. Shows like Saved by the Bell and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air became more relevant for young viewers. There were very few programs catering specifically to teens and “tweens,” at this time. Thus NBC chose to get away from cartoons all together in order to focus on filling a previously ignored niche. With the introduction of cable TV channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, children’s entertainment has become avaliable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Saturday morning timeslot holds no significance for a child who can watch the same show every Tuesday after school.

As cable TV has developed, so have children. Some kids like animation and others do not. Networks have developed show lineups that reflect this immense diversity in kids today. Ratings show that a network will perform better with a mixture of live-action and cartoon shows.

Today, children have more choices than previous generations. It is a huge challenge for networks to get kids to watch television when the Internet, videogames, toys and after school activities are all vying for their attention.  

The Saturday morning ritual that united the kids of the ‘70s and ‘80s may be dying, but not cartoons for kids. Television entertainment for children has never been more prominent. While the Saturday morning cartoon connoisseurs of the past may not revere the cartoons of today, The way we remember Saturday morning cartoon is the same way that the kids today will remember Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. The only thing that kids have lost is the joy of waking up at ungodly hours to watch Scoobie Doo and The Ghostbusters with 20 million other children.  

 

Sole Survivor

Walking into John Fluevog’s new glassed store in Vancouver’s Gastown resembles much like walking into a cathedral. The former parking lot, now atrium, of 65 Water Street is sandwiched between two brick historical buildings, a nod to Fluevog’s inception in the area back in the early 70’s.

If his glass store is a crystal cathedral with its heavenly arched ceiling, than John’s shoes are its parishioners varying in shape, size and gender. Slabs of old oak from Cloverdale, British Columbia sit upon large sections of pipe from the Alaskan Pipeline, acting like pews for John’s spring 2008 collection. Above the assortment of Fluevogs lies a choir loft like mezzanine which houses the design studio for all things prophetically Fluevog.

His website’s small print on the main page reads, “…We are the cure for Fashion Spam, Designer footwear nonpareil, Champion of independent style, And even Open Source Footwear – John’s influence is everywhere. Your funky shoes from Fluevog cast Angelic love (on Earth, dude, as it is Above). Wear boring shoes? No ‘Voggin’ way! So, Don’t Delay – Fluevog Today!”

The Gastown location is Fluevog’s second store. His first can be found in the hub of Vancouver’s Granville Street entertainment district. But why a new store? “Because I’m expanding internationally…I wanted a place that had a vision for something that when people came here from other countries, other places, wholesalers from the US, would come here and go ‘oh this is what John Fluevog is about’ and it would make sense for them. So it’s a branding exercise,” says John.

Evoking uber-cool, John is dressed in black jeans, wears a grey jacket and coordinating black and grey man scarf. On his feet he wears his own designs.

While he has nothing on the horizon in Canada, Fluevog does have his sites set on countries like Japan, Singapore and Beijing. This makes up the 10^th store for the Vancouver born designer. When asked “why shoes?’” John’s answer is refreshingly real and anything but artistic rhetoric. “I’ve only done shoes because this was in front of me. I started doing it, like a lot of things, being in the retail business is not particularly easy, and I wanted product that was my own and I happened to be doing shoes, not because it was what I wanted to do, it’s just because I was doing it.”

John shares that he didn’t have any formal art training nor did he know he could draw until his mid 30’s. Call him a creative late bloomer John has poured himself into his art saying, “I’ve tended to be very lone wolfy about what I do. I do everything myself which may or may not be in retrospect a good plan but it gave me that sense satisfaction that I, I felt I needed to for some reason, to do everything myself. It was me and I did it. My name was on my product, I did it.”

But where does he get his ideas? “You just have them…they just are,” says the auburn haired Fluevog. “I think probably the best expression is I see things that aren’t there. Like I’ll look at someone’s shoe or I’ll look at something and I won’t see it completely…I only see what I want to see. And my mind shows me something that is actually not there but I see it, something like that.”

He admits to dreaming about shoe designs in his sleep saying, “colours, stitches, backs. I’ll wake up, I’ll dream about a back perfectly and I’ll draw it go back to sleep and boom, I’ll see the side of it, I’ll wake up draw it, fall asleep and boom…”

With this new store added to the Fluevog Empire, John, in spite of his achievements, has had to relinquish a bit of his control.

“I have a design team. There are three other people that are doing the designs, colourings, and some of the renderings, and they’re liaisons with the factories and all that kind of stuff.”

But giving up the control can’t be easy. Says John, “Yes it is hard. Very few people are actually genuinely creative. They’ll come to me with something they’ve seen some place before but for them to go out of the box and think of something completely different than they’ve seen before, it’s a different story. I want to be original; I’ve been that way all my life.”

His originality in his designs is what has made his empire distinct and his clientele are hipsters and fashionistas that set the trend for urban style.

“It’s not an easy road to hoe all the time because in the fashion industry most people want to look like everybody else. They want to fit into whatever subculture or group that they are trying to look like. So when you are doing something off of that the people that are buying need to have a strong vibe themselves, and the strength of character to be doing it on their own, with it not being in a fashion magazine.”

Evidence of the creativity of Fluevog wearers can be seen on the company’s webpage in what are called Flueshots. This online photo gallery features submitted photos of Fluevogians wearing their shoes around the world. The website which gets upwards of over 10 million hits a month – no lie – also has a section called Open Source Footwear where fans can submit their own shoe design in the hopes of being chosen as part of a Fluevog collection.

Spread among metal tables and workstations in the design studio the team is currently designing the 2009 collection. When asked what verb best describes the collection John says, “Handsomely elegant.”

“I think the art of being in business is a very artistic thing. I think that how we communicate with each other is an artistic expression, it’s our articulation of words, our communication and basically what’s been fun for me and my career is I have been able to take the things that I do and spread them out across the country so more people have known what I do that’s all.

I look back on it and people know my name all over North America and I can’t say that I went out consciously to do that, I set out to make some cool interesting shoes that I liked and that people would like… I hoped and the only way to do it was to open up more stores.”

The armchair philosopher / artist ruminates on his success. “Success is when we as ourselves integrate ourselves up wholly into the environment around us. To be real. To be genuine. And being real is not easy –‘what is being real?’ We all want to make things up, well you don’t need to make anything up because we who actually are, is very cool, all of us and I think that’s success. Success is having the freedom to be who we are.”

In the distance a cute hipster couple is seen. As her boyfriend watches, the rockabilly styled woman tries on a high-heeled version of a Mary Jane but with all the attitude of a Fluevog. When asked if he knows which one she’ll buy he says, “yes” – he always knows.

John is a “sole” survivor. Designing unique shoes throughout the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today John has had to adapt to the market, the times and relinquish some of his control…not an easy thing to do for this artist. Giving up the reigns is still hard. But now with help Fluevog is adding, besides stores, even more inspirations to his line accessories like belt buckles, handbags, laptop bags and even…chesterfields.

On the future? “I would like to do more art, I would like to start drawing things more…and that those pieces become pieces on their own apart from footwear.

All things considered Mr. Fluevog…you’re well on your way.

 

Design Redefined

Sunlight splashes through solarium-style windows, bounces off a glass table top and onto a crisp, white beadboard-faced built-in banquette. Suspended lantern-style light fixtures frame a tiled countertop island, while Spanish gold walls provide the perfect backdrop for black-framed artwork. Although the ocean view from this third-floor kitchen—a reno in a recently remodeled White Rock home—is spectacular, so is the design.

On a bright Monday morning, Brianna Carson, a 27-year-old interior designer with a flair for the unexpected, shares the spotlight with her work. “I love using opposing materials and colours,” she says. And one look around the room confirms it.

A few well-placed white uppers punch up the mostly black cabinetry. Dark walnut hardwood floors juxtapose the charcoal tile backsplash and stainless appliances. A single red cushion tossed among geometric black and white ones on the banquette adds a pop of colour.

In the four years she’s been designing, Carson has tackled everything from colour consultations to entire renovations, and she’s loved every minute of it.

The design bug bit the Langley-based Carson early. “Growing up we didn’t have much money,” she says. “I was allowed to paint my room, but I also did things like put paper-mache over an outdated light fixture to create something no one else had.”

A penchant for all facets of design led her to enroll in the Interior Design program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.  “ ‘History of Furniture’ was the best course of my life,” she says. “I learned to appreciate design as art. Throughout history furniture was a privilege. It reflected what was happening politically.”

These days, interior design is big business; the plethora of magazines, websites and TV networks dedicated to it attest to its staying power. But just who sets the trends that cause design junkies to run to the nearest hardware store for their latest decor fix?

“Fashion sets design trends,” says Carson, “and we’re two to three years behind. If you want to be know what’s going to be hot, look at what people are wearing now—the colours, patterns and style.”

Carson says the trend is shifting from casual to elegant. “Everything is getting a little more swanky. Think martini bar: brushed silver, blue and dark brown.”

But there’s still room for individuality. “The great thing about now is anything goes,” she says. “You bring your personal style into your home. If you want to make your living room into a fuchsia library, you can.”

According to Carson, libraries are just one feature homeowners are requesting these days; outdoor living space is another.

“I know of a builder who, for most homes, provides covered deck spaces with built-in fireplaces,” she says, “so you can enjoy another living room year round. That’s the beauty of coastal living—you can be outside, you just don’t want to be wet.”

And when talking design, nobody wants to get soaked, either. Carson’s advice for the do-it-yourself set? “A consult is not that expensive,” she says, “even if you just want ideas. It’s worth the money; you save yourself costly mistakes.”

Fortunately, help is also available for the design-challenged, for whom do-it-yourself is not an option. In these cases, Carson recommends leaving it to the professionals.

Growing up with a father who did tile setting, she knows a thing or two about trades. “Construction is a definite sub-culture,” she says.

“When I first started in this business, I wanted to work with both homeowners and the trades—so I became a kind of ‘anti-designer’ designer. I like to keep everybody happy.”

The current construction boom has resulted in a shortage of trades-people so builders and homeowners alike are now scrambling to find reliable, professional contractors for their projects. In response, Carson has established a network of trades and suppliers she counts on for her jobs.

“Just give me a call,” she says. “Whether you need a new roof or an area rug for your living room, I can have any supplier or trade you require contact you directly. I’m kind of a one-stop shop.”

Though colours and trends continue to influence consumer choices, design remains highly personal.

“Interior design is not about ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ ” Carson says. “It’s about defining a space in the world just for you.”

For further information, contact Brianna Carson at 604.767.3211 or email brianna@harbourhomestaging.com.

 

Invitation to Canadian Journalism Foundation Event – The Law and the Internet: What you can and cannot do

Invitation to Canadian Journalism Foundation Event – The Law and the Internet: What you can and cannot do

The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) invites you to hear from
one of the world’s leading experts on the Internet and law…

Michael Geist: E-Publishing & The Law

Date: Thursday, April 3, 2008

Time: Registration 6:00 p.m., Presentation 6:30 p.m.

Location: St. John’s College, 2111 Lower Mall, University of
British Columbia

Description: Anyone who blogs, comments, sends e-mail or
otherwise publishes electronically is subject to the laws of
defamation and libel, according to University of Ottawa Law
School professor and internationally renowned expert on law and
the Internet, Dr. Michael Geist. The Internet and new
technologies have ushered in a seemingly unlimited array of
possibilities for access to knowledge, creativity, and public
participation. Dr. Geist will highlight the role that the
Internet is playing for new creativity and knowledge sharing,
while identifying the business and policy challenges that this
creates for journalists and journalism. The talk will be followed
by a Q&A moderated by Beth Haddon, Adjunct Professor at the
UBC School of Journalism.

There is no cost to attend the event, but guests must register
online at www.cjf-fjc.ca/programs.htm

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa
where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-
commerce Law. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree
from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.)
degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law
School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia
Law School. Dr. Geist has written numerous academic articles and
government reports on the Internet and law and was a member of
Canada’s National Task Force on Spam. He is an internationally
syndicated columnist on technology law issues with his regular
column appearing in the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, and the
BBC. Dr. Geist is the editor of In the Public Interest: The
Future of Canadian Copyright Law, published in 2005 by Irwin Law,
the editor of several monthly technology law publications, and
the author of a popular blog on Internet and intellectual
property law issues. Dr. Geist serves on the Privacy Commissioner
of Canada’s Expert Advisory Board and on the Canadian Digital
Information Strategy’s Review Panel. He has received numerous
awards for his work including Canarie’s IWAY Public Leadership
Award for his contribution to the development of the Internet in
Canada and he was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2003.
More information can be obtained at http://www.michaelgeist.ca.