I like Andy Rutledge's little essay on quiet structure: "Quiet structure is achieved when you de–emphasize the structural elements; the containing boxes, structural lines, bullets, structural color elements, etc… and bring a rhythmical consistency to the layout." A good grid is a powerful thing.

If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration---of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it.

From Arthur Schopenhauer's essay On Noise. I think maybe he might have appreciated GTD, were it around in his day.

Kind of a brain-stretching discussion about PhDs in Design and design research & scholarship. Lots of good feedback in the comments.

What if... Earth's topography was reversed so that continents were oceans and the oceans were continents? Pretty cool. I'm trying to imagine the societies that would spring up and the new planetary politics.

There's an interesting series on homosexuality in comics in one, two, three parts so far. The fourth and final part is on the way here.

Whither our literary arbiters? On NPR, a story about how newspapers are dedicating less space for book reviews than in the past. Goes along with the general decline in newsprint circulation & advertising dollars.

I had a chance to see the big Richard Serra exhibition at the MoMA this summer. The New Yorker has a gushing review of the show and the sculptor's career.

This was the second book I read on the Appalachian Trail this summer. Unfortunately it was the only book I had available at the time, but I pushed through it. I was surprised how bad this book was. I just loved 1984, and I for the most part I've enjoyed Orwell's essays and stories... but wow, what a disappointment. I guess the storyline was a too much of a bludgeon for my tastes.

A choose-your-own-adventure story artfully stenciled on the sidewalks of San Francisco. I'd love to see illustrated comics on this kind of scale. I'm imagining entire sidewalk squares as panels wending around some plaza or across town. [via torrez]

Mickey Smith's photographs of bound journals. I like the installations, too.

Mike Davidson has a simple solution to spend less time dealing with e-mail overload: "Every e-mail I send to anyone, regardless of subject or recipient, will be five sentences or less."

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I really, really want to see this movie. Let's hope they bring it by Atlanta soon.

A taxonomical study of desserts. I love the use of good-old-fashioned markers & posterboard.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was the first book I brought to read during my hike this summer, and also the first time I'd ever brought a book on a hiking trip. Loved it. I especially appreciate the roundabout style narration. You rarely get information first-hand, it's almost all reported within the dialogue or letters from the characters. I think what I'll most remember from this book is just the simple pleasure of reading it. When I was out hiking, sunset came around 8:30pm and darkness soon after. This was my last waking pleasure each night, just a few pages after dinner, reading until I got sleepy or just couldn't see anymore.

"The typological array’s inherent ability to depict prevalence and repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption."

I love this set of prints: illustrations of bearded guys. [via dooce]

I'm back from hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Go look at my photos from the past 2 months and 1000 miles. I'll be easing back into regular duty here over the next couple weeks, as I mull over what new directions I'd like to take the website and my life in general. It's good to be home.

Like I mentioned, this summer I will be thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, which runs from north Georgia to central Maine along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. After a minor post-ponement I'll be starting Sunday morning, April 22---things will be mighty slow around these parts until I get back. I had a mostly incredible time back in 2005, and I've got a pretty wild mix of emotions about my trip this summer. I'll probably be hiking around the same daily distance I did last time, aiming to finish in about 100 days, give or take a week. And like last time, this year I'll be hiking under my trail name of "Whistler." (Trail names are little nicknames that thru-hikers often assume.)

This year I'm leaving about a month earlier than I did in 2005. This should be interesting in a couple ways. For one, most thru-hikers start in March or April, so this time I'll be starting with the crowd rather than catching up to them, for better or worse. The weather will also be a good bit colder at the beginning--I've even heard of freak snow in the Virginia mountains in May. It could happen. At least it looks like the weather for my first week will be pretty good. An April start will also let me see more of the peak of wildflower season that I missed last time.

Anyway. Tomorrow morning in about 10 hours my parents will drop me off at Amicalola Falls State Park and from there I'll walk a 9-mile approach trail to Springer Mountain, where the AT officially starts. After that... a 2200-mile summer.

See y'all in August.

Videos of mass human choreography at the Arirang Festival in North Korea. Here's the Children's Parade. It would be kind of cool if it weren't taking place in a hopelessly poor, totalitarian state.

An interview with Chris Ware. "I think storytelling is one of comics' aesthetic hurdles at the moment, which was the novelist's problem 150 years ago: namely, to take comics from storytelling into that of "writing," the major distinction between the two to me being that the former gives one the facts, but the latter tries to recreate the sensation and complexities of life within the fluidity of consciousness and experience."