eugene gordin

This week’s Aggregate is a bit smaller (possibly to make up for the long one a couple weeks back). I’m not sure why there weren’t as many interesting articles this week, but with the unveiling of Iran’s new uranium enrichment facility and their testing of short- and long-range missiles, all in one weekend, I’m sure next week will be back up to size. I also included a link to a new little section on my site: a listing of my favorite iPhone apps. Enjoy!

It was difficult to avoid focusing on the foreign policy issues facing America this week, but I limited myself to the two articles which most clearly explained our current situation.

I really appreciate the feedback I’ve been getting on these articles, and have thought about the different ways to share them with you all. While I’m working on it, I have set up a special twitter account where I store the most interesting articles I read throughout the week. You can receive these articles in real time (as opposed to this digest form) by either following @egaggregate on Twitter, or subscribing to the RSS feed.

As always, let me know what you think about all of this!

Well “better late than never” is the theme of this week’s Aggregate. After tracking the popularity of the articles from last week, I can’t say that I’m too inspired to keep posting them. However, I’ve decided to give it another shot and see if last week’s articles were just not that interesting. Let me know what you guys think!

That said, here’s what I have for you this week:

From crime research to terrorism, century-old photography to universal healthcare, this week’s Aggregate is truly a random collection of links from throughout the interweb.

I’ve modified the links a little bit to better understand what people are finding interesting among the articles in this series. Therefore, since you can’t see the sources of the links by mousing over them, I have added a [via …] to the end of each post indicating the source. Let me know if that’s helpful (or unnecessary). Also, I really appreciate all of the feedback people have given me on the articles – keep it coming – would love to hear what you guys think!

As hard as I tried to limit myself to my 5 most favorite articles to post this week, I simply couldn’t do it. This week’s Aggregate tackles some serious topics, with a little bit of humor thrown in for good measure.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of these articles (or any that you’ve seen here so far), so feel free to comment.

This week’s entry was a little easier to write because I have create a simple form to enter the article titles, links, and description – all of the rest, including the formatting, is done automatically using custom fields. Yet another reason why WordPress is truly amazing.

There’s a bit of a focus on the healthcare issue this week, but next week I’ll try to post on some other important subjects too. I’m trying to limit myself to the 5 most interesting finds of the week, which is proving to be a challenge in and of itself. Enough delay, here goes:

After mulling it over (and not posting for what seems like a lifetime), I have decided to start a new series of posts in this Journal portion of my site. The section will be published weekly, and will consist of a collection of articles, posts, and information that I have found interesting in the course of the previous week. This new section shall hereby be appropriately named The Aggregate. These posts will include minimal commentary (although your thoughts are very much appreciated and encouraged). Therefore, in this spirit of brevity, here’s the first Aggregate post.

Chalk it up to the new year, or the departed old one, but I’m sitting here now reflective and grateful. For as I’m about to explain, I have been blessed with an amazing group of friends.

Both at home and at school, the people that choose to put up with me are, by far, the most unique, talented, perservering, and giving people with whom I have had the privilege to cross paths. I will spare the Breakfast Club-esque descriptions for each one of them, but suffice it to say that they’re as unique as they are similar.

Last year we have, for the first time in a long time, been lucky enough to add a few new friends to our longstanding core group, and they very quickly caught on to an interesting phenomena that revolves in our little circle – we all, quite frequently, make fun of one another.

Now this might sound normal, and in certain quantities it’s almost unavoidable, but we seem to do it more often than other social cohorts. Whether in front of each other, or not (spelled g-o-s-s-i-p), we always seem to revert to the same pastime – consistent, innocuous, ridicule. Now it’s important to keep in mind that this regular tomfoolery is not done with any sordid malice, which brings me to the question at hand – if not to hurt the other person, why do we do it?

I’ve thought about the answer to this question for a while now (often during periods when one of us took one of those verbal lashings slightly more personally than usual, haha), and believe that I have arrived at the main explanation.

I say main reason with precise intention – there are likely many reasons for this peculiar behavior extending far into realms of our own respective psyches. But of all of the explanations out there, only one seems to make the most sense: we do it in order to keep each other in check. Let me explain.

The vast majority of our friends have now finished school. They, along with those of us still in school, work hard at their jobs, in addition to balancing friends, family, significant others, volunteering, side projects, and the like, all on a daily basis. Now one couldn’t really characterize this as out of the ordinary, but it does lend itself to one pitfall: it’s quite easy to begin to take yourself either too seriously, or not seriously enough. It is here that our ridicule system is most efficient: it acts as as either a wake-up call (you get made fun of to your face), or as a collaborative expression of concern (behind your back). It seems to me that we hold each of us in our circle to a high behavioral standard (academically, professionally, socially, etc) and when one of us falls below it, the rest “give that person crap” about it.

While this may answer the question as to why we make fun of each other so much, it raises another valid point: if we’re just trying to help, why do it in such a weird way? The answer to that question lies within our group’s complete and unwavering avoidance of confrontation. This means that in addition to our symptomatic social interaction tendencies (we’re mostly engineers), we also create unique ways of expressing ourselves with each other. Doing something dumb? You’re going to get made fun of. Want it to stop? Stop doing what you’re doing…

I wrote the words above while on vacation just before New Years, and looking back at what I wrote, I can’t help but think that although my theory does explain why we make so much fun of each other, it doesn’t do much in terms of a lesson learned. Ideally this post would contain some sort of New Year’s resolution, promising to make less fun of each other, but let’s be honest, that’d be the first resolution we’d break. Instead, here and now, let me say that I’m going to try to be more constructive with my feedback, and if I’m not, I’ll at least be able to explain why.

I’ve said it before, but it’s unlikely that that’ll ever stop me from repeating myself: the internet is a fascinating place. It allows seemingly distant personalities to connect on a similar plane in real-time, and creates cohesive communities among those both like-minded and not. Although there are hundreds of examples of this very phenomenon, and I, as longstanding browser, have participated in my fair (and unhealthily numerous) share of them. Recently however, I have found myself entranced by a community called MacThemes.

MacThemes has served as a home to some of the many Apple enthusiasts out there since it’s founding more than four years ago, and while there are literally dozens of sites out there for Mac fanatics, MacThemes remains decidedly different. For it is this website, this community, that some of the most talented and established graphic designers call their home.

MacThemes is, of course, beautifully designed, a graphic showcase on it’s front page, a themes page (devoted to improving the already pristine Mac operating system interface), a graphic design reference, etc. All of these are useful in their own right, but the truly interesting section of the site is buried in the waist of the navigation menu at the top of the screen – the forum.

For it is here that the true beauty of Mac culture and aesthetics shines so brightly. Although far from all of the forum participants are graphic design gods (far from it in my particular case), it is the warm and supportive culture of the forums that seems to breed constructive criticism, continual enthusiasm, and most of all, true, honest support.

I should pause here and provide some perspective. Since I was a child, I’ve been building, fixing, and explaining computers to those around me. For some reason I’ve been blessed with a particularly persistent plague of technological curiosity, and those who happen to receive my help seem to marvel at my abundance of random computer knowledge. I believe that now is the time to come clean. Everything I know about technology, all of the different ways I’ve fixed that annoying bug on your computer, all of it – I owe to the forums (and their respective communities) that I have found online. Forums are the reason that you, I, or anyone else can Google an error message and find not one but thousands of solutions, each posted key by key, letter by letter, by some helpful person from somewhere in the world. Google is a powerful powerful tool, but without the content of forum participants – it’d be useless.

Let’s get back to Macthemes. In order to understand the forums, one needs to understand a bit about the so called “Delicious Generation.”

If the Mac world had a Hollywood, then Phill Ryu and his fellow talent-drenched compatriots would be the first picks at the next Shawshank Redemption. They’re gifted, hard working, and most importantly (and fascinatingly, and consistantly) innovative. This group of individuals, usually lead by Ryu himself, are the masterminds behind MacThemes. They, above all, aim to make beautiful interfaces, whether it be online, on Macs, or on iPhones. While not all of their projects are huge successes (see MyDreamApp, which was a whole lot of hype and almost no results), they are always done with quality, thought, and unparalleled attention to detail.

It is only logical therefore, that In 2004, Ryu founded MacThemes, forum and all, with a mission to “fix things to make the world slightly prettier.” I’m not sure if this mission is meant as a less-than-subtle understatement, but the superficiality of it pales in comparison to the vast amount of unverbalized goals behind MacThemes.

While there are many examples of support, tutorials, feedback, contribution, cooperation, and compassion peppered throughout the MacThemes forums, none compare to what recently transpired: one of the staff members decided that it would be an interesting exersize in community building and holiday spirit to have a Secret Santa gift exchange. The gift would, like the best gifts out there, only have sentimental value: an avatar. For those that don’t know what an avatar is, I’ll explain. Each post on a typical forum contains several standard items: the post content, the member’s name who wrote it, and a small image by which that member has chosen to represent themselves. On a forum dedicated to beautiful graphic design, you can only imagine the levels of creativity and quality that some of these avatars reach.

With this in mind, and since most Macthemes members do not know anything about each other except what they’ve each contributed to the forum, each interested member was asked to post in the Secret Santa thread two simple things: the words “count me in,” and a short paragraph describing themselves, their interests, etc. With this information, each of the participants would randomly be assigned another particpant, for whom they would have to design an avatar that represented that person (based on their posted paragraph). People would have a week to sign up, and until December 22nd to submit their gifts.

As it turns out, sixty four members chose to participate in the gift exchange. Now I’m not sure what the number of regularly active MacThemes members is, but I know that it is quite difficult to get 3 people to do anything, nevermind 61 more. But, like I said, MacThemes is no ordinary place.

Being a newfound (and completely lost) amateur icon maker, I decided very quickly to participate in this peculiar holiday exersize. So I posted in the thread the following words:

I am currently a PhD student researching Public Policy & Structural Engineering, specifically repair of post-earthquake highway bridges. In my spare time, I own an IT services company that specializes in web & graphic design, web hosting, and Mac support. I’m absolutely obsessed with music (mostly), as you can see from my last.fm profile. Hope that helps!

I’d rather not disclose my name, but I love Macs and beautiful user interfaces (and long walks on the beach too, but that’s a different story…). I’m a huge geek, and a Cocoa developer, and I read way too much (especially scifi books and funny articles, they consume 90% of my time!). I dislike most sports, listen to rock music (Linkin Park, Disturbed, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.), live in NYC, hate following fads, and in great need of a nice avatar.

About a week later, all of the gifts were collected and began to be posted, beside the names of the creator and the recipient. My Secret Santa turned out to be a MacThemes staff member called Mac Guru, who created the avatar on the right for me.

The mark of true talent is being able to create something which the recipient didn’t even realize he represented. In the case of this avatar, my first glance at it invoked a smile from ear to ear, for here was an icon which fit perfectly into my About Me page of my new website, and the original author had no idea that I had designed, no more than two weeks prior, the icons on that page which are in the exact same vein as this one.

Missing from the ones I designed is of course is only my love of music. Unbelievable.

8:06pm

Takeoff. The endless gray runway loosens its grip on the front wheel of our plane and I suddenly cannot continue reading any longer. I’ve left home before, countless times of minimal significance, with takeoffs and landings little more than gates one passes on his way from here to there. But as we pull away from both ground and home, I become reflective about the past few days, at least before peripheral vision takes center-stage.

8:13pm

The lefthand wing blocks my view of the setting sun, and I start to think. Where I am and where I’ve come from, where I’m headed and where everyone else will be. My trip was, at least on its surface, standard. Family, friends, the warmth of home. But with each passing day, each dark slumber silence, I was left alone with my own thoughts, and I fell once more into the ditch of constant analysis. Words like crossroads and pinnacle, settling and patience, seeped slowly into the shallow depths of my mind, paralyzing my ability to think beyond them. But the meanings behind these words pale only in comparison to their questionable applicabilty to my current state.

8:29pm

Above what little cloudcover Southern California owns, the gentle chatter of my fellow passengers smoothes the murmured hum of muffled engines. Like most flights before this one, I can’t help but appreciate the arbitrary cohort with whom I travel, each with his or her own stories, joys, worries, complications. The anonymity of it all jerks me towards more comfortable thoughts of close friends and loved ones, some aging, some growing up, but all changing with unstoppable speed. Suddenly the peculiar progression of relationships gained and lost over time sparks in the distance, and I start to wonder how it all ended up this way.

8:47pm

An endless sunset breathes it’s final breaths of shimmered light, losing it’s nightly battle for attention to a dotted sea of man-made glow. As time passes, slow in realtime but fleeting in hindsight, I find one image permanently charred into the back of my eyes – it’s little more than a cinematic effect, one whose name I can neither recall nor care to investigate. But nonetheless, it’s there. Music plays behind a wide angle shot of the main character, singular as he stands in focus, surrounded by anonymously blurred people passing him from both front and back at unparalleled paces. I see it often, the lone actor’s face frozen with perpetual burden, trying but unable to slow the speed of life around him. The scene continues as the actor resigns to worn gesticulations of predictable action and little more.

9:05pm

My stomach sinks to a depth far below my cushioned seat as our plane descends closer to a different world than that which we so recently left behind. I can feel the slow start of routine motion, of work and play, and unbound freedom. An unexpected comment by the woman sitting beside me snaps me back into the present, and I begin to fumble the words of my response. In some three idle minutes, we share friendly words and bite-sized bits of information, enough to sort one another into coherent crates of first impression. Momentary silence ends our conversation, and our attention shifts back to our respective directions, left and right.

9:17pm

My window exchanges scattered light atop the windblown bay for equally- spaced bulbs, giving way to the soft touch of rubber to runway. Here it begins, another two plus week visit to a place which, after more than six full years, still lacks the warmth or soul of home. Complaint is neither justified nor appropriate, for this is my path and by no means is it regrettable. For fear of stepping onto the jetway with excessive baggage in hand, I begin to look forward to the comfort of familiar faces, unfinished progress, and the little surprises along the way.