It seems obvious that spring is here, and that here in DC, spring is different. Beatriz and I are going out to the Asian American Festival in this wild, windy, cool and bright day.

Out of nostalgia for the spring in Austin, I changed the banner picture out today to a macro shot an old moth was good enough to let me take in my garden this time last year.

(Via Gizmodo)

I’m fascinated by this video of Chad Pugh making his work “Science Machine.” The rush of the palettes and changing windows in the work space is the thing that really gets me. It just strikes me as he’s doing this how imperfect computer interfaces really still are. The flashing numbers of the info box, the grid overlays and perspective lines – it all just seems to drive home so viscerally the fact that you really can’t create something like this just with the skill it would take you to draw it.

The masterful level of skill Pugh has in manipulating the computer’s internal state through a flawed interface is just as evident here as is his artistic prowess – and just as important for his end result. But how much do each of those skills “weigh” on their own? The artistic and the technological shouldn’t have parity. The artistic skill is the rarer, more nuanced and difficult thing. The technological skill can be achieved if you have access to the right tools, knowledge, and spare time to learn.

So how do you shrink the “size” of the manipulation skill? In other words, how do you make an interface for something as complex and powerful as Adobe Illustrator into something that you’d want to ship with the XO?

What would an Illustrator interface made with something like this look like?

“I wanted to do hood-rat stuff with my friend.“

I’m putting that on a t-shirt.

Ok, so I think that maybe this is the first time that I actually like Chris Matthews. Perhaps, given the way things are going for the GOP these days and CM’s propensity to just sort of go after the conventional steak the rest of the MSM is going after, we’ll see more of this as Obama comes closer to being the President. Maybe.

It’s over — all that’s left to do now is pick the veep and clean McCain’s ancient clock.