On the edge of reason

ON THE EDGE OF REASON

Talking sense…?

In the course of recent months my thoughts have happened to get stuck repeatedly on one phenomenally annoying issue. Actually that is nothing abnormal for a worshipper of blissfully twisted notions and ideas like I have been ever since I used to be a very young girl. I mean I was convinced to be the daughter of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand (hummm…). Consequently I indulged my every whim when it came to the culture of the American Indians. At the age of eight I was crazy about Dee Browns „Bury my heart at the wounded knee“ so eventually my poor parents gave in and purchased it for me. As from then on General Custer became my worst and most despised lifetime-enemy and I suffered from terrifying nightmares which I of course never reported for that would have acknowledged the earlier arguments of my parents.

However. THAT was probably all quite normal. I guess even the fact that I wrote a highly dedicated letter to Richard Nixon in which I angrily bristled at his permission to flood an ancient indian cemetery in favour for something I have forgotten. The fact that „my“ people were to lose a powerful magic place… NO WAY! I had to contribute to save this emblem of universal connection between the living and the dead. And I did. I mean I did probably not save that place – I am pretty sure that ground got flooded because US Presidents frequently do as they like – but I did write that letter and… well, I signed with my indian name which was – I should but will not apologize for its comical aspects – „WILD SPOTTED PONY“. I still wonder about that puzzling spotted – bit, and I swear I was not on drugs or optional bizarre substances. But I assume that did not make the cause more successful… And still, I felt grand and unfathomably happy by starting to stand up and out for the Good and the Prescious… Any questions?

And even more important; was it unreasonable to follow a benevolently intended impulse even if of little chance to open out into success? Or is it fine to act that way because reason quite too fequently prevents us from the things we want to to?

I am driven by the pro´s and con´s at night when my mind is floating somewhere in that indecisive trench deviding consciousness from the empire of dreams and just when my mental modulator can´t give a damn about controlling this process of melting status´ any longer… yeee,… there pops up this glitch. My lively, cheeky, smart-alec glitch.

„Hey Hey Hey…. Sleep? Nooo noooo. Over-rated! You better move your brains, have ideas, whip your thoughts the other way around Silly! What about it? What about this back and forth all day, all those lifes? Wanna repeat yourself being stupid? Not rethink, re-act, rewind and then upwind from another status? Move it Mama. Now! Time is running. Tic Tac it goes Baby. Ticce – di – tac. Twist! And do it right NOW!!!„

So, calm and peacefully falling to sleep has become history it seems and I do as I am forced. I twist my mind. I retwist. Twist. Re-twist. Until there´s loads of nonsense flooding the kingdom of my brain. My temple of neuronal activity is polluted. Contaminated. BUT… that´s step One.

Step two comes as a bloody mental rescue. A cleaner who wipes away all the blood and shredded parts of whatever crime scene and leaves proper ground for the better. Maybe „the shining, unquestionable, immaculate truth“ ? Yes. Clear.

If it only made sense. If it only fit in. But it does not. Not here. Do we not succumb to processes and regulations that work well? Can one go and throw all this over board? Honestly; the longer I hang out there in the dark and the more time I spend with that funny glitch of mine… the more I believe:

YES. ONE CAN. ONE SHOULD. ONE MUST!

But can I? Can I be foolish? I remember well that I used to be. And I was fine, felt right, felt light, felt Me. Was that me being naiv and featherbrained? Or was I alright then and am I now system-washed and out of myself?

What about this odd copycat-style I see where-ever I look? Why must we all be someone reasonable, comprehensable? Reproducable indivuduals with traceable, usual, documented behaviour. Why not talk to your friends, family and clients in a new way. Let them travel along on a freeway of wings, a path of satisfaction. Why not? Being light is not about this frightning „Drop-Out thing“. It is not about crashing all concept, values, rules we have been taught. No. But it simply means to turn around for life. For experience. For „Erleben“. That is probably the only good reason in this bizarre state of what-ever named „Life“?

„YEEEEH Mama, there you are. Now we talk„, says my grubby clever glitch and I shiver with fear. Every night. Every bloody day as from the fall of the day on I am waiting for it´s dreaded mental blow and I can scent the trail of forbidden chances. Those that I have missed already and those still ahead… shining bright… I wonder. Can we be lead into temptation to follow the unreasonable and be helpful. For others. For ourselves. If I had a wish (at least) I´d want us all to get free permission issued to become purely, childishly foolishly free hence create again.

Jump and fly. For our peace. For our presence and future. Once again.

by studioelbglanz

The builder of the unbuildable

Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku/Aserbaidjan // photo: ©Elnur Amikishiyev/123RF.COM

I love architecture so I love Zaha Hadid.

I MUST.

Architecture is the art of shaping our urban environment, the “look & feel“ of our city life. In this, Zaha Hadid excelled. Not only did she create unique buildings, but also sculptured in the form of walk-on-able poetic objects of immense vision, embodying the highest standards of aesthetics.

When I recall the Vitra Firehouse, and then consider her constructions in the years afterwards it always takes my breath away.

THE PASSIONATE EVOLUTION OF UNIQUENESS

studio elbglanz

Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul/South Korea // photo: ©Nattee Chalermtiragool/123RF.COM

And even if…

… one doesn’t share my feelings regarding this singular creation one must marvel at an oeuvre of such multi-dimensional vastness. Yes, oeuvre, for Dame Zaha Hadid acted with the passionate freedom of the artist, and left a dazzling body of work as her inheritance to mankind.

Breaking the mould.

As a woman, she bestowed upon women worldwide a legacy of personal power. To have fought her way to the top of a century-old male-dominated world—that of modern architecture—one must have some sort of inner rule I assume. Whatever – Zaha Hadid quite obviously had a target firmly in mind, and while never loosing sight of her goals she became one of the most relevant and sought-after creators in her field.

Hadid was a bloody cool-minded genius one of those courageous persons who just cracked it and came up with fluid solutions to rectangular specifications.

I love so many of her buildings. Even if some people think that a few of them better should have remained a draft… and also if to some of us it may be questionable why Zaha Hadid agreed to work for clients that are known for acting in a most degrading manner, partly even cold-bloodedly violating the most basic human rights…

I have fallen in love with the amazingly lush, liquid slope of the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Azerbaijan which seems to be melting away within no time. The gorgeously irritating MAXXI Museum with its confluent lines, the separations and intersections for in- and outside spaces. Hadids works are worth much more than words. And still al least; courageous radical monumental driving fearless irreplaceable.

To quote her very words:

„Well, it’s not normal practice.We don’t deal with normative ideas and we don’t make nice little buildings. People think that the most appropriate building is a rectangle, because that’s typically the best way of using space. But is that to say that landscape is a waste of space? The world is not a rectangle. You don’t go into a park and say: ‚My God, we don’t have any corners.'“

YES. NOW GOD…?

I just read a post somewhere – the media is full of Zaha Hadids passing away. This one I like best:

„Zaha left us ahead of time, but she did everything ahead of time.'“

I am really not into religion but nonetheless I enjoy the thought of her next to Lucio Costas, Oscar Niemeyer, John Lautner, Le Corbusier; and if God, in all his glory, is smart, he´d ask this terrific line-up to re-design his cloudy kingdom.

by studioelbglanz

Inspired by clouds

Take your time.

I’ve got a Fujifilm X100s. It runs about $1300. It’s easily the best camera I’ve ever owned. I take care of it as best as I can, but I don’t let taking care of it impact the photography. Let me elaborate on that a bit better. You’ll get better at each section of what we talked about slowly. And while you do, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it all is and how the habit forms. The best way to get better at photography is start by taking your camera everywhere. If you leave your house, your camera leaves with you. The only exception is if you’re planning for a weekend bender — then probably leave it at home. Other than that, always have it slung over your shoulder. It would probably help to get an extra battery to carry in your pocket. I’ve got three batteries. One in my camera, one in my pocket, one in the charger.

When it dies, swap them all.

For me, the most important part of improving at photography has been sharing it. Sign up for an Exposure account, or post regularly to Tumblr, or both. Tell people you’re trying to get better at photography. Talk about it. When you talk about it, other people get excited about it. They’ll come on photo walks with you. They’ll pose for portraits. They’ll buy your prints, zines, whatever.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Breathe the world.

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.

— Christopher Morley

Enjoy the morning.

The best way to get better at photography is start by taking your camera everywhere. If you leave your house, your camera leaves with you. The only exception is if you’re planning for a weekend bender — then probably leave it at home. Other than that, always have it slung over your shoulder. It would probably help to get an extra battery to carry in your pocket. I’ve got three batteries. One in my camera, one in my pocket, one in the charger. When it dies, swap them all.

It’s easily the best camera I’ve ever owned. I take care of it as best as I can, but I don’t let taking care of it impact the photography. Let me elaborate on that a bit better. You’ll get better at each section of what we talked about slowly. And while you do, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it all is and how the habit forms.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Free your mind.

Photography is better shared.

by studioelbglanz

Make it clean and simple

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Just the other day I happened to wake up early. That is unusual for an engineering student. After a long time I could witness the sunrise. I could feel the sun rays falling on my body. Usual morning is followed by hustle to make it to college on time. This morning was just another morning yet seemed different.

Witnessing calm and quiet atmosphere, clear and fresh air seemed like a miracle to me. I wanted this time to last longer since I was not sure if I would be able to witness it again, knowing my habit of succumbing to schedule. There was this unusual serenity that comforted my mind. It dawned on me, how distant I had been from nature. Standing near the compound’s gate, feeling the moistness that the air carried, I thought about my life so far.

This is what has happened to us. We want the things we have been doing forcefully to fail. And then maybe people around us would let us try something else or our dreams. We are accustomed to live by everyone else’s definition of success. We punish people for the things they are passionate about, just because we were unable to do the same at some point in our life.

I was good at academics, so decisions of my life had been pretty simple and straight. Being pretty confident I would make it to the best junior college of my town in the first round itself, never made me consider any other option. I loved psychology since childhood, but engineering was the safest option. Being born in a middle class family, thinking of risking your career to make it to medical field was not sane. I grew up hearing ‘Only doctor’s children can afford that field’ and finally ended up believing it. No one around me believed in taking risks. Everyone worshiped security. I grew up doing the same.

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‘Being in the top will only grant you a good life’ has been the mantra of my life. But at times, I wish I was an average student. I wish decisions would have not been so straightforward. Maybe I would have played cricket- the only thing I feel passionate about. Or maybe I would have studied literature (literature drives me crazy). Isn’t that disappointing- me wishing to be bad at academics. It’s like at times I hate myself for the stuff I am good at.

I feel like these concrete buildings have sucked our desires and our dreams. We are so used to comfort that compromise seems like a taboo. We have lost faith in ourselves. If we can make through it right now, we can do the same in the days to come. You only need a desire to survive and nothing more- not money or cars or designer clothes.

Staying locked up in four walls have restricted our thinking. I feel like our limited thinking echoes through this wall. We are so used to schedules and predictable life that we have successfully suppressed our creative side.

When you step out of these four walls on a peaceful morning, you realize how much nature has to offer to you. Its boundless. Your thoughts, worries, deadlines won’t resonate here. Everything will flow away along with the wind. And you will realize every answer you had been looking for, was always known to you.

It would mean a lot to me if you recommend this article and help me improve. I would love to know your thoughts!

by studioelbglanz

When you are alone

You will remember the people more than the place.

When you are alone for days or weeks at a time, you eventually become drawn to people. Talking to randos is the norm. I’ll never forget the conversation with the aquarium fisherman, forest ranger, and women at the Thai market. It’s refreshing to compare notes on life with people from vastly different backgrounds.

When you meet fellow travelers, you’ll find they are also filled with a similar sense of adventure and curiosity about the world. Five days of friendship on the road is like five months of friendship at home. It’s the experiences that bond you together, not the place. A rule I followed that worked well: be the first to initiate conversation. I met some incredible people by simply being the first to talk.

Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

Travel can be affordable.

Long term travel is different than a luxury vacation. The point is to see the world, not stay in a 5-star hotel. During the trip, I stayed on a strict budget. The goal was to spend no more than $33 per day on accommodations. After a year, I was able to spend only $26.15 per day by booking through HostelWorld and Airbnb. When I wanted to meet people, I’d stay in a shared room at a hostel. When I wanted to be alone, I’d book a private room with Airbnb.

Take the cost of your rent or mortgage + food per month and divide it by 30. This is how much it costs per day to live at home. You will find that it’s possible to travel the world for roughly the same amount. Or, if you live in an expensive city like San Francisco, far less.

English is a universal language.

I was surprised how many people spoke English (apparently 1.8 billion people worldwide). Places where English was less prevalent, I made an effort to learn a handful of words and phrases in the local language. Even though it’s passable, I do desire to learn another language fluently. You can only take the conversation so far when all you can say is: “¿Esto contiene gluten?”

It’s possible to communicate a lot without saying a word. For instance, I left my phone at a restaurant in Chile. I pointed at the table where I was sitting, put my hand to my ear like a phone, then shrugged — 2 minutes later, my phone had been retrieved.

Trust your intuition.

I learned to trust that tiny voice in my head a bit more. When you are alone in a foreign country and your phone is dead, you are forced to trust your intuition. Is this neighborhood safe to walk around? Is this person someone I should interact with? Am I heading the right direction? Intuition is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. It’s feels like a sixth sense when you’re able to read between the lines of a situation.

The world is endless. The world’s a tiny neighborhood. My fav people are the ones who can hold two impossible ideas in their heads.

by studioelbglanz

Stumbled the concept

If you’re not sure how much time you are actually spending on various tasks, use a tool like Rescue Time (their free version is excellent!) which runs in the background and tracks where your time is being spent. It can even send you weekly reports so you know exactly how much time you wasted on Facebook, or spent in your email inbox! You can assign different websites or programs/applications on a scale of very distracting to very productive, so you can see at a glance things like: which days of the week you’re most productive, which times of the day you’re most productive, and the sites on which you’re spending the most distracting time. I stumbled upon the concept of margin while reading a post by Michael Hyatt, which led me to design my ideal week.

Richard Swenson, M.D. (who wrote the book: Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives) describes margin like this:

Last year I wrote about why booking too far in advance can be dangerous for your business, and this concept of margin so eloquently captures what I had recognized had been my problem: I was so booked up with clients that I wasn’t leaving any margin for error, growth, planning, or reflection. I wasn’t really growing my business in a sustainable way; I was just booking one client after the next. At the time this seemed like a good thing: doesn’t growing my business mean getting more clients?

What if instead of booking up to 100% capacity (which more often than not ends up being closer to 120%), we only booked up to an 80% capacity?

What if we left more room for growth (personal or professional) and stopped being one with “busy-ness”?
I spent nearly a year turning down every new project (and even getting rid of old ones) so that I could reduce my workload, build in more margin, and create what is now Digital Strategy School. It takes time to build margin into your schedule.

What could you accomplish with 20% more time?

Write a book. Create a program. Update your contracts and proposals (which has been on your to-do list for how long..?) Spend more time with your family. Go above and beyond for a client. Learn something new. Actually follow through on the things that have been nagging at you for a long time.

When you design your ideal week, you start to see that the time you think you have is often not in alignment with how much time you actually have.

After designing my ideal week, I had a much clearer idea of how to create a framework for my week that would empower me to feel more focused by theming days of the week, and even parts of the day. SO simple, I know. Some of you have been doing this for ages and you’re already a pro, and some of you who saw my schedule said “woah, that’s so rigid, I need more flexibility!”

Structure enables flexibility.

If you’re not sure how much time you are actually spending on various tasks, use a tool like Rescue Time (their free version is excellent!) which runs in the background and tracks where your time is being spent. It can even send you weekly reports so you know exactly how much time you wasted on Facebook, or spent in your email inbox! You can assign different websites or programs/applications on a scale of very distracting to very productive, so you can see at a glance things like: which days of the week you’re most productive, which times of the day you’re most productive, and the sites on which you’re spending the most distracting time. Turns out I’m consistently “in the zone” around 3pm in the afternoon; so instead of trying to tackle highly creative work first thing in the morning (when my brain is barely functioning), I handle it in the afternoon, when I know I’m at my peak!

Creating more margin has been game-changing for my business.
What would be possible for yours?

by studioelbglanz

Time is passing by

CSS selectors all exist within the same global scope. Anyone who has worked with CSS long enough has had to come to terms with its aggressively global nature — a model clearly designed in the age of documents, now struggling to offer a sane working environment for today’s modern web applications. Every selector has the potential to have unintended side effects by targeting unwanted elements or clashing with other selectors. More surprisingly, our selectors may even lose out in the global specificity war, ultimately having little or no effect on the page at all.

Any time we make a change to a CSS file, we need to carefully consider the global environment in which our styles will sit. No other front end technology requires so much discipline just to keep the code at a minimum level of maintainability. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time to leave the era of global style sheets behind.

It’s time for local CSS.

In other languages, it’s accepted that modifying the global environment is something to be done rarely, if ever.

In the JavaScript community, thanks to tools like Browserify, Webpack and JSPM, it’s now expected that our code will consist of small modules, each encapsulating their explicit dependencies, exporting a minimal API.

Yet, somehow, CSS still seems to be getting a free pass.

Many of us — myself included, until recently — have been working with CSS so long that we don’t see the lack of local scope as a problem that we can solve without significant help from browser vendors. Even then, we’d still need to wait for the majority of our users to be using a browser with proper Shadow DOM support.

We’ve worked around the issues of global scope with a series of naming conventions like OOCSS, SMACSS, BEM and SUIT, each providing a way for us to avoid naming collisions and emulate sane scoping rules.

We no longer need to add lengthy prefixes to all of our selectors to simulate scoping. More components could define their own foo and bar identifiers which — unlike the traditional global selector model—wouldn’t produce any naming collisions.

import styles from './MyComponent.css';
import React, { Component } from 'react';
export default class MyComponent extends Component {
 render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <div className={styles.foo}>Foo</div>
        <div className={styles.bar}>Bar</div>
      </div>
    );
  }

The benefits of global CSS — style re-use between components via utility classes, etc. — are still achievable with this model. The key difference is that, just like when we work in other technologies, we need to explicitly import the classes that we depend on. Our code can’t make many, if any, assumptions about the global environment.

Writing maintainable CSS is now encouraged, not by careful adherence to a naming convention, but by style encapsulation during development.

Once you’ve tried working with local CSS, there’s really no going back. Experiencing true local scope in our style sheets — in a way that works across all browsers— is not something to be easily ignored.

Introducing local scope has had a significant ripple effect on how we approach our CSS. Naming conventions, patterns of re-use, and the potential extraction of styles into separate packages are all directly affected by this shift, and we’re only at the beginning of this new era of local CSS.

process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development' ?
    '[name]__[local]___[hash:base64:5]' :
    '[hash:base64:5]'
)

Understanding the ramifications of this shift is something that we’re still working through. With your valuable input and experimentation, I’m hoping that this is a conversation we can have together as a larger community.

Note: Automatically optimising style re-use between components would be an amazing step forward, but it definitely requires help from people a lot smarter than me.

by studioelbglanz

Hey DJ play that song

Many years ago, I worked for my parents who own a video production company. Because it is a family business, you inevitably end up wearing many hats and being the czar of many different jobs. I mainly managed projects and worked as a video editor. On production, there were times that I was called on to work as an audio tech and was made to wear headphones on long production days. In those days, having a really good set of headphones that picked up every nuance of sound was essential to making sure the client got what they needed.

Keep me dancing.

They are wired headphones, but the 3.5mm stereo mini-plug cable is detachable. Something else I noticed right of the bat was the very nice carrying case that comes with them. It has a hard plastic exterior with a soft cloth interior that helps to protect the surface of the headphones from scratches. I never truly appreciated cases for headphones until I started carrying them from place-to-place. Now I can’t imagine not having a case.

All night long...

Once I gave the headphones a thorough once-over exam, I tried them on. As I mentioned, they have a classic over-the-ear style and just looking at them, the padding on the ear pieces seem adequate and the peak of the headband seemed to be a bit lacking, but you don’t really know comfort unless you try on the product. So, I slipped the headphones on and found them to be exquisitely comfortable.

Play me something for me and my darling, want you to make everything.

Now that I had the headphones on my head, I was finally ready to plug and play some music. I plugged the provided cable into the jack on the headphones and then the one on my iPhone 6. Then I called up Pandora. I tend to have a very eclectic music purview and have many stations set up for different moods. From John Williams to Fallout Boy, the sound quality of these headphones was remarkable. There is an amazing depth of sound and incredible highs and lows that make listening to music a truly breathtaking experience.

In order to test how voices sounded, and the overall art of sound mixing, I pulled up Netflix on my iPad Air 2 and watched a few minutes of a movie to hear all the nuances of the film. None of them were lost. In fact, I ended up hearing sounds that I hadn’t heard before. Echoes…birds chirping…wind blowing through trees…breathing of the characters…it was very impressive what the headphones ended up bringing out for me.

by studioelbglanz

Me Myself and I

First impressions.

Naturally, my first impression of these headphones is based off of the look of them. They have a classic over-the-ear style that is highlighted by a blue LED light that indicates the power for the noise canceling. The padding on the ear pieces seems adequate for extended usage periods.
They are wired headphones, but the 3.5mm stereo mini-plug cable is detachable. Something else I noticed right of the bat was the very nice carrying case that comes with them. It has a hard plastic exterior with a soft cloth interior that helps to protect the surface of the headphones from scratches. I never truly appreciated cases for headphones until I started carrying them from place-to-place. Now I can’t imagine not having a case.

A perfect fit.

It’s safe to say that because of my unique professional experiences, I’ve tested out a lot of headphones.

Quality.

I would highly recommend these to any sound mixing specialist.

by studioelbglanz

My tech travel setup

MacBook Pro

Robert Capa, a famous photojournalist once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” It’s not just about zooming in with your lens, either. It’s about getting physically closer to people and getting to know them better. It’s also about spending a little time with a stranger before taking their photo. That helps build the trust and comfort that’ll come through in your pictures. Walk up to your subject with a simple wave and a smile to help communicate that you mean no harm.

Ask permission to take a photo if they speak the same language as you. If you don’t share a language, try learning some basic phrases ahead of time, gesture at your camera and ask through expression. Of course if someone doesn’t want their picture taken, it’s imperative to respect their wishes and move on — people are always more important than photographs. National Geographic writes that “making great pictures is primarily a mental process.” What makes you want to photograph the person or place? How might you describe it to a friend, and what adjectives would you use? Are there details you can focus on that tell a story?

iPad/iPhone

Maybe it’s a dry, arid desert, captured by focusing on the patterns of cracked earth. Or a prairie that’s photographed with the horizon at the bottom of the frame, to help create a sense of the open sky and tranquility. Or maybe it’s the story of a deft artisan, fingernails covered in wet clay as she molds a pot. When you’re on the road it can be tough to eat right and make sure you get all the right nutrients. I started taking daily supplements of Multi-Vitamin, Fish Oil capsules and Vitamin D and it helps a lot. Especially the Vitamin D since I don’t get to see the sun a lot during the winter in Sweden.

Sennheiser HD-25 Headphones

It’s difficult to recreate the grandeur of a vast landscape in the confines of a picture frame. But one way to add a sense of depth to your photos is to compose them with objects in the foreground that support the scene. It can be as simple as a winding road through a national park, or some rocks to show off the local geology.

If you’re taking photos of people during normal daylight hours, a quick way to get more flattering light is to move the person out of direct sunlight. The light is much “softer” and doesn’t cast stark, unflattering shadows across their facial features. Even better, have someone stand next to an open door or window as the single source of light.

by studioelbglanz