After a few weeks heads-down work in code for a demo, I got to look up and read, watch, learn. The highlights.

Ted.com has an updated website, with high quality videos on important topics, and lots of them. So far I saw Bill Clinton (a really good presenter, it’s impressive to watch), and I want to see more. (Found first through Paul Kedrosky’s feed, which is an interesting mixture of stuff I really don’t care about and stuff I do care about). A friend also forwarded me a link to

Andreas Kupries pointed me to a paper mentioned by Jean-Claude Wippler called Magic Ink. It’s a brilliant paper about user interface design, or the lack of it. In the vein of Tufte, but much more applied to software. The tail end of the paper is a little too fluffy for my taste, and the paper would have been better without it, but that’s a minor flaw on what I hope will be an influential paper. I’ll try and get people to read it, but it’s too long for many.

Saw two good movies recently: After the wedding, a Danish movie about a family (hard to say more without revealing the plot), and The Squid and the Whale, a movie about kids and a couple divorcing. Both recommended.

Next on the list of movies to see: Das Leben Der Anderen, a movie about the Stasi in East Germany.

A fascinating paper in New York Magazine about the work of Carol Dweck, whose research seems to show how indiscriminate praising of kids and telling kids they’re smart leads to under-performing and lack of confidence. Important reading for parents and parents-to-be.

For fun: Luke Closs juggling at Web 2.0 expo.

Quote of the dayfrom Dwell Creative’s manifesto:

No good ever came from a doomed relationship. Except The Beatles.

I think I’m already sick of the new graphic design on this site (in particular, it looks bad on IE). I’ll have to find something else to steal.

Finally, a warning: I just ordered a MacBook, so you can expect Apple to announce a new line of laptops by the middle of next week.