The Backstory

The above is a riff on a line from Robin Sloan’s recent coup d’app, Fish. His tap essay explores the difference between liking something online and actually loving something online. Robin posits that in the overwhelming stream of great posts, articles, pics and videos, something we love on the internet is something come back to, something we read or visit at least twice. Fish is a beautiful essay with a strong point; it’s innovative, well-designed and touching, and I am a big fan.

However, I don’t quite agree with the disparagement of liking, faving (and even +1-ing) that helps form the essay’s underlying thesis. According to Sloan, when you deign to spend a click on one of these actions, (emphasis his):

“You’re saying to your friends or followers: This is worth your time. (But me, I’m on to the next thing.)”

Certainly, the like or fave is a quick and easy way to leave a mark. It takes an instant and not much, if any, critical thought. It’s not the same as writing a blog post or making a reply video in response to whatever caught your eye, and not even as involved as typing in a comment.

The Defense

But is the action meaningless? No. While friends or followers may or may not notice the act, there is one person who most definitely will: the original poster. This is the motivation that drives my starring, liking and +1-ing; to let the creator of the piece know I appreciated it. The small thrill, the rush of adrenaline, that comes from seeing these accolades, however minute, pop up on something you’ve posted is undeniable.

Furthermore, what these small — and nearly effortless — interactions add up to is a new network. This tertiary lattice lays on top of the world wide web like marginalia. Our likes and faves are a uniquely digital form of doodling in the margins of the internet, doodles that can mean even more than underlines or asterisks on a physical page because they have a chance to elicit a response in the author.

I’m looking forward to the album view of the internet Fish has inspired The Atlantic Tech to attempt to create, and I’m certainly going to return to Robin’s tap essay many more times, but I’m not going to feel bad about giving out likes and faves. The torrent of valuable knowledge flowing through the internet is not going to ebb any time soon, and favoriting will continue, creating an outer valence shell of information that may eventually take on characteristics of its own.

I started drinking coffee early on. Growing up in New York City, it was unavoidable. Starting around 9th grade, I would cop Anthora paper cups at the deli around the corner from my Upper West Side apartment. In 10th grade I officially became a regular at the diner down the street from my high school, where I’m sure the waitress loved when we piled in to a booth, six at a time, and ordered only cups of steaming, burnt swill, accompanied perhaps by a side of grilled corn muffin.

It wasn’t until sophomore year in college, when I met my future husband, that I actually tasted really great coffee. My caffeine addiction – by this point I couldn’t make it coffee-less past noon without a splitting headache – led me to spend an large amount of time in the many cafes of  Providence, RI. While Starbucks had already begun its march to nationwide dominance, the green mermaid had yet to reach this New England town.

Independent coffee houses were everywhere, and my man was the manager of several, even learning to roast for Ocean Coffee Roasters, who provided many establishments with locally cooked-off beans (back in the early ’90s, before local was cool). In our loft we had a vacuum pot – or several, as the delicate multi-piece glass contraption had a knack for getting smashed to bits – and we reveled in brewing interesting blends of African, South American and Indonesian strains. Thanks to the cafe connections, we even had access to prized Hawaiian Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain beans, now and then.

Over the past two decades, our coffee routine has varied. There was a time, stuck living in the suburbs of South Jersey, that we saw fit to brew each morning using an industrial Bunn automatic drip brewer. There was an espresso phase, brought on by his spontaneous purchase of a $1000 all-in-one machine, a compact Italian-made device, the open-box floor model on sale for half-price at the Starbucks the next town over. Several methods were explored for home-roasting our Sweet Maria’s-ordered green beans, too: tiring our arms by hand-shaking a hot-air popcorn popper, getting frustrated over the inconsistency of a micro-batch air roaster. We settled on the dog-bowl method, using a heat gun, which we still use to this day.

By the time we moved back to the city, Chemex carafes were all the rage, and after I had the chance to pick one up for free (a friend got married and served the whole party  Chemex-brewed goodness along with the wedding cake, so she had extras), we turned to that for our daily cup. Along the way we tried simple porcelain hand-pour cup-toppers, and even the Clever Coffee Dripper, the first time a plastic brewing device impressed me.

Last year, my husband happened upon an AeroPress while shopping in Philadelphia’s Italian Market, and brought one home so we could chuckle together about this odd-looking brewing device from the makers of the better-than-a-Frisbee Aerobie. With some trepidation, we tried it out, growing ever more excited as our tweaks to the ratios of grounds and water and timing produced ever tastier sips.

When I made a cup after self-proclaimed coffee nerd Mat Honan tipped me off to the inverted brewing method, used by many competitors at the World Aeropress Championships (oh, yes they did!), I knew I had found coffee nirvana.

@phillydesign I love mine too, it’s fantastic. Tried making it upside down? timwendelboe.no/2009/06/top-3-…

— apocryphal mat honan (@mat) December 16, 2011

Why does this hand-sized apparatus work as well as it does, and where did it come from? Palo Alto-based inventor/engineer Alan Alder holds over 40 patents, including one for the Aerobie flying disc, and he set out to create the perfect way to make coffee. After much experimentation, he came up with the final design, which has three distinct parts, made of three types of plastic: copolyester, polypropylene and a rubber-like thermoplastic elastomer (all of which are entirely food-safe).

The AeroPress achieves a great quaff thanks to achieving several of the “holy grails” of great coffee making. Here are brief descriptions of a few:

• Full immersion – ideally, all of the coffee meets all of the water for a short, set time. This is also the idea behind a vacuum pot. In drip brewers, water courses unevenly through the grounds, extracting not enough flavor at the start and over-extracting at the end, with more hitting the center of the filter basket than the edges. Pour-over methods attempt to fix this by allowing you to hand-distribute the water around the grounds.
• Proper temperature – boiling water is not optimum for extracting flavor from coffee. Water that’s too hot will scorch the grounds and pull too much acidity from them. This can happen easily in a vacuum pot, where the water is required to come to a boil just before meeting the coffee. Because you pour the water directly on to the grounds in an AeroPress, you can allow it to cool to the desired temps first, and because the process is so quick (see below), it will not cool too much before extraction is complete.
• Fast, even extraction – once the water and coffee come in to contact and have been allowed to mingle to create the desired strength brew, extraction should be as even and quick as possible. Commercial espresso machines rely on a (hard-to-get) very fine grind to allow water to move through the grounds with great speed. In the AeroPress, any size grind will work, and the precision with which the parts fit together creates air pressure, which is harnessed for a non-varying 20-second plunge.
• Good filtration – unless you’re a fan of the gritty dregs at the bottom of Greek or Turkish coffee, any particulate matter should be filtered from the final sip. The AeroPress takes a small paper filter, inserted above the screw-on filter cap, and when the disc is pre-rinsed with hot water, no paper taste attaches itself to the brew and zero grounds make their way into the cup. This is in total contrast with a French press, which produces “dirty,” or grounds-filled coffee.
• Ease of cleaning – coffee was once considered a luxury, but in our times, it’s a necessity (for most of us, anyway). The ability to easily deliver that morning cup as we rush around on our way to work or school is the reason automatic brew machines are so popular. Unfortunately, even those drip-monsters are much tougher to clean than the AeroPress. A few rinses in hot water and the parts are ready to go again. (Another direct contrast with the finicky French press, or with the fragile and convoluted vacuum pot.)

The other fantastic thing about this coffee-head/design-o-phile’s dream? Despite all parts being manufactured in California, it’s extremely affordable, ringing in at less than $30 on Amazon.

What are you waiting for? Go forth and press!

Greatest Movie examines the effects of self-awareness on advertising, and finds the two are not mutually exclusive. This is a good thing. Advertising is not going to disappear any time soon; it has become part of our global culture. And even if it could, would we really want it to? Marketing and advertising are effective methods of disseminating information. What we don’t need is false advertising. The more enlightened companies are – in terms of what goes into making their products and what their customers are looking for – the more progress we can make as a society.

One of the major goals of humanity – of existence, in general – should be to become more self-aware. To explore the boundaries of awareness, as beings in this universe (as part of this universe). How much can we realize about the “now,” the present? How far does our perception extend, and what factors are influencing it, in real time?

NASA's Cassini orbiter recently snapped this real life photo of Saturn and its rings

Linking up with other beings to form larger networks is a tool in this quest. Corporations and companies of all kinds are these conglomerates (used without the evil connotation that word has acquired), with resources and insights far greater than any one person alone could hope to achieve.

Nations are examples of these greater-than-one organizations. But our affiliations are slowly shifting away from geographic and political boundaries. Because of the internet (itself a fast-growing omni-being), corporations are no longer shut off from regular people. They can connect a person in Delhi, India with one in Delhi, New York, as coworkers or as like-minded consumers. Social networks are continually enhancing these links, be they person-to-person, company-to-company, or person-to-brand.

US Congress recently afforded corporations more of the same rights as a person, as related to political spending and free speech. What Spurlock highlights is that if corporations are people, they should embrace other parts of being human. They should have a sense of humor. Care about their effect on the environment. And be self-aware, engaging their audience for feedback and the betterment of their products. Consumerism is dead. Long live consumerism.

It’s the third go-round for Longshot Magazine (née 48 Hour Magazine), which launched in 2010 as the brainchild of Sarah Rich, Mat Honan and Alexis Madrigal. If you follow these folks at all, or read their writing, you’ll recognize them as some of the brightest minds – and coolest personas – of the online community. It’s no wonder they garner over a thousand submissions for each call, even though contributors only have 24 hours to produce once the issue’s theme is announced.

It’s not an easy gig to score, with many nationally known contributors vying for a page, and when you look at the ratio of published vs. total submissions (last time it was near 50/1000), it’s hard not to appreciate the magazine’s new title. Formulating a good piece takes time, and the effort can feel futile and frustrating if it doesn’t emerge triumphant through the narrow selection process. But, that’s not at all the case if – as David Lang poignantly points out – the process is the best part. Groups of like-minded, smart people, working as teams, in conjunction with worldwide social networks, in real time, around a common theme? Sounds like an exercise society should be praticing as early and often as possible.

Added incentive to contend for placement: this time, Longshot set up a (very successful) Kickstarter campaign, and will actually be paying contributors. They’ve also just put out the carrot of a $2,000 windfall (“That’s rent money!”) for the author of a longform cover story – enough to get anyone’s mental motor revving.

We want to meet the other people here who are inspired by this project, so we’re setting up a Longshot satellite office  this weekend at Independents Hall, thanks to the generosity of the patron saint of coworking, Alex Hillman. While we won’t be riding on a sleep-deprived high like the good peeps in New York (though Gawker’s offices are probably riddled with champagne-spewing Jacuzzis, who are we kidding), we will be holding down a corner of IndyHall at the time of the theme announcement on 3 PM (EDT) Friday (and will be there until around 6 or 7 PM), and will be around again all day on Saturday, from 9 AM to 6 PM or later. We may or may not get our works published, but we will have fun doing it.

If you’re reading this, and you want to submit or get involved, you’re already ahead. Hit me up on G+ or email me to get in the loop (I see G+ as key; we can take advantage of the real-time communication tools to make this into a whole new kind of collab).

And, some last minute pre-gaming:

1/ Forbes scored some good tips from Sarah on what is likely to get play [last paragraph]:

“We’ve found a lot of good submissions are either direct reporting that’s been conducted during the 24-hour submission period (someone goes out into their city and explores and the reports on something), or some kind of investigation that draws on history or pop culture or news. We’ve had great photo essay submissions, excellent historical narratives. The things that tend to be weakest are the deeply personal, diary-style essays that lack a contextual framework for general interest.”

2/ The Moodbook has clues about what this year’s theme will be, give it a spin.

Municipal Pier 11 – 1932 (via PhillyHistory.org)

With the opening of the new Race Street Pier last month, Philadelphia took an essential step forward in riverfront revitalization.

Jutting into the Delaware River just below the towering Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the former Municipal Pier 11 was built in 1896. From late 20th Century on, it sat empty and unused, another segment on a strip populated by big box chain stores and the occasional hotel, segregated from the street grid by Interstate 95.

Several visions were put forth in recent decades for an overhaul of Philadelphia’s waterfront , but none ever seemed to bear fruit (thanks to a combination of bureaucracy, grandiosity and a suffering economy). Then, in 2009 – at the urging of Mayor Michael Nutter – the newly formed Delaware River Waterfront Corporation began to implement the Action Plan for the Central Delaware, developed by UPenn think-tank Penn Praxis.

Looking northeast from the start of the Race Street Pier

Instead of expensive, overarching renovation, the new agenda called for small, incremental steps, with goals of reconnecting the street grid to the water, adding green space and making it easier for people to experience the riverside on foot and via bicycle.

It looks like the piecemeal strategy is working. For example, a paved bike trail now meanders along the southern banks of the river, starting at a small rain garden, which blossoms with greenery behind the Walmart at the intersection of Washington and Columbus Blvd.

A diagonal path connects the upper and lower levels of the Pier

Funding for the pier redevelopment was secured from the William Penn Foundation and others, and New York-based Field Operations won the bid to create a public park atop the 500-foot metal wharf. Led by Philadelphian James Corner, Field Operations is the firm behind the transformation of an old elevated rail line into NYC’s immensely successful High Line Park. Their track record remains stellar with this Philadelphia endeavor, where they’ve created a winning public space.

A place to find tranquility in the city

The bi-level jetty features several dozen white oak trees and a myriad of grasses and flowers along its length, culminating in a tiered seating area at the eastern tip, which doubles as stairs connecting the split upper and lower walkways. At high tide, the water is just 4½ feet below the pier’s edge, providing a feeling of being out in the river achievable nowhere else in Philly.

An uncommon view of the majestic Ben Franklin Bridge impresses, both during the day and at night, when it’s complemented by an array of 200 LED solar light blocks embedded into the paving.

The pier is understated but attractive, welcoming and accessible, clean and friendly, with unique views and perspectives. Here’s hoping what happened on Race can be repeated throughout the riverfront.

Official summer hours are 7 AM–11 PM (and it’s the perfect spot to catch tonight’s Independence Day fireworks).

Porous pavement on Percy Street (between 9th & 10th and Christian & Catherine)

Today, the City of Philadelphia unveils its first street paved with porous asphalt. It may only be a tiny Bella Vista alley that rarely sees auto traffic, but it’s one of hundreds of such side streets, and it marks a milestone in part of a larger plan.

As one of America’s first cities, Philadelphia is home to one of the nation’s oldest sewers. In the time since the stormwater system was built, modern development has blanketed the region with impervious concrete and pavement. During a heavy rain or snow melt (50-60 times each year), the drainage system overflows, mixing with wastewater and dumping directly into the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers (from which the WaterWorks draws to provide our taps).

In 2009, the city finalized a plan to address the runoff overload, pledging $1.6 billion over the next 20 years. Instead of ripping up the streets to build a huge (and expensive) below-ground holding tank, the EPA approved a strategy of implementing a series of “green” stormwater infrastructure programs.

Diagram of a porous street (National Asphalt Pavement Association)

Municipal structures are being retrofitted with green roofs (and businesses and residents are encouraged to follow suit), basketball courts are being repaved with permeable concrete, parking lots are being designed to include vegetated strips and old asphalt lots are being broken up and turned into rain gardens. The idea is to turn the city’s surface into a sponge, instead of an impervious barrier. Most of these water-management techniques have been used successfully before, but not on the scale of an entire Northeastern metropolis.

Porous asphalt is much like regular paving material, but made without the finer grains in the mix. This creates a surface with much larger gaps, through which water can seep. Beneath the blacktop is a layer of stone that acts as a reservoir, slowing down the seeping liquid even more. The street surface is still relatively smooth (smooth enough to meet ADA requirements), and because it has room to expand and contract, is much less likely to form potholes.

The Percy Street transformation cost the city $330,000, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. The next metamorphosis is set for Webster Street between Broad and 13th, later this year

Photo: Candice DeTore, from Pennsylvania Ballet's Facebook page

Deciding What to Watch

With this unorthodox opening, Benjamin Millepied introduces a ballet that continues to pique our media-savvy senses throughout its duration. His world premiere piece for Pennsylvania Ballet, This Part in Darkness, intertwines live video and dance in an exciting way that puts the viewer in an entirely new position. Does our focus belong on the the cameraman (principal dancer Alexander Iziliaev), carefully tiptoeing his way back and forth through the whirling choreography? Or the video he’s capturing, projected 40 feet high in glowing fidelity? And what about the dancers themselves, on stage in front of us, ostensibly the reason we’ve come to this theater, on this date, at this exact time?

At it’s best, the orchestration allows the viewer to pull back and absorb all parts at once, the brain slightly hypnotized by the complexity of patterns. With pacing that matches the aggressive rhythms of the score (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s Pierced), a line of men move from left to right in front of their video selves, who appear on screen to be travelling the exact opposite direction as the videographer points the lens toward the audience from behind. An overhead camera projects an Esther Williams-like view from above to create a mirror effect as we watch performers bob and weave in a circle from the front and the top at the very same time.

Multiple Media Streams

It’s similar to the way many now follow sports, entertainment or news event: TV in the background, iPad or mobile app showing up-to-the-minute stats and Twitter or Facebook providing individual commentary. We can observe from afar, or dive in to the thick of the action, zeroing in on one stream to examine details, like a close-up of two dancers’ hands creeping along a backstage brick wall, reaching out and recoiling from one another like animals doing a mating dance. This gripping scene diverts attention from the performers in front, but when the view is transferred back, the realization hits that the dancers on stage are interpreting the same back-and-forth routine, albeit in more volatile, full-body form.

Photo: Candice DeTore, from Pennsylvania Ballet's Facebook page

No built-in pauses materialize during the fast-paced, turbulent choreography, no stops that solicit the often rote, mid-scene applause that characterizes much of traditional ballet. But technique is present, in some ways stronger than ever, as dancers keep aware that at any moment their feet or faces could be appearing, larger-than-life, on the big screen. There’s no time for reflection during this performance, which draws in the viewer much like a blockbuster movie, juxtaposing quick cuts between camera angles with dancers jumping and twirling before them. Fresh off work on the Academy Award-winning Black Swan, Millepied’s incorporation of Hollywood technique is no surprise, though he notes he’s been playing with the idea of a incorporating live video in a ballet for nearly nine years.

Groundbreaking Presentation

It’s a tricky act, and – like a great film – nearly impossible to absorb in one viewing. Fans of ballet’s fancy footwork and pinpoint pirouettes might bemoan the focus on these elements, though they do exist, tossed into the mix. By layering a dance performance with live video of the performance with on-stage capture of that video, Millepied has expanded the scope of ballet. The audience becomes an essential component, as these distinct pieces would not coalesce into a whole without the existence of the viewer. He hasn’t broken down the proverbial “fourth wall” so much as added a new one, a fifth dimension whose axis traces the course of art from the dancer’s body to the camera, through the lens to projection and then back to the body again through the eyes of the observer. Pennsylvania Ballet deserves kudos for executing and enabling this innovative achievement.

This Part in Darkness premiered April 14–17, 2011, at the Merriam Theater in Philadelphia

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Watch the (very short) video above, and know this: realistic 3D holographic prints are now within reach.

The only thing needed to view the full-color, 360-degree images is a halogen or LED light source, no special glasses or projectors required

Building on hologram technology first developed in the 1960s, Zebra Imaging has applied advances in lasers and optics to take 3D data (from Google SketchUp, AutoCAD or Maya, for example), record them as highly-detailed hogels (the pixel building blocks of a hologram), and print them onto a malleable film substrate.

A good analogy for understanding how a holographic print works – on a simple level – is to think of an audio recording taken of an orchestra, then played back through a surround-sound speaker system. The original source points (of sound) have been captured in relation to a specific center, and can then be reconstituted to give the impression of a 3D soundscape. With light, the process is a bit more complex, especially when creating images like these that stay three-dimensionally realistic through a very wide field of view.

Thousands of Zscapes have been provided to the US Military over the years, for use in strategic planning, but prices for a color 12″ x 18″ version are now as low as $1,500, well within range for a non-Defense Department business. An Engadget commenter suggested Disney could use these to cover the walls of a roller-coaster ride tunnel. ArchDaily recently called them the “future of architectural visualization.” And artist Mark Henninger  (my husband) is considering commissioning Zscape art prints of his psychedelic extrusion images.

The exo-dimensional print also gave rise to a new thought: If we can see this thing in three dimensions, when it very obviously only exists in two, can the ruse be replayed on a higher level? What if the fourth dimension we experience as time is also an illusion of sorts, a trick played by our perception of matter and energy? Will we eventually be able – perhaps like a Star Trek holodeck character – to print out a life?

But simply knowing how to prepare good, delicious or even phenomenal cuisine does not a great establishment make.

In order for a place to succeed, the ambiance has to please, and the food must arrive on schedule.

Shola Olunloyo has designed Speck – his forthcoming New American in the Piazza at Schmidts — to achieve just that.

The kitchen is a focal point. The chefs are on display, visible from almost every seat in the house, behind the open counter that hosts a nightly tasting menu.

A carefully thought-out arrangement of interlocking counters, stoves, refrigerators and storage allows up to seven cooks to work the small space at once.  High-tech automatic ovens and circulator baths are tucked behind thick metal planchas and smooth induction burners.

Even the ventilation hood that keeps smoke away from patrons is a design element, gleaming in the center of the main work peninsula.

Clean lines are a theme here, one that carries out into the dining area.

Impeccable craftsmanship by Pappajohn Woodworking is the star of this minimalist show, from the wide-plank white oak flooring to the deeply-stained rift-cut white oak cabinetry and dark mahogany facade.

Rows of black walnut chairs and tables are flanked by a chocolate brown banquette, from which a soft glow emanates, highlighting hidden patterns in the understated silvery wallpaper.

A line of trim drop fixtures along the smooth wood-top bar lead the eye back towards the kitchen, where glimpses of neatly arrayed ceramic await plating.

The refined scenery and organized kitchen are waiting, too, excited to become a backdrop for the vibrant food and flavor designs that will complete the restaurant picture.

That said, it seems appropriate to finish up with some additional photos. We’re looking forward to the opening.