• Applicants: write a cover letter that flatters the company you are applying to.
  • actually know something about the company by, say, reading about them!
  • demonstrate you actually know it in the body of the letter
• Applicants: If there are instructions as to how to format application or, simply, apply, READ THEM!
• Applicants: Spell correctly (at minimum). Write well or you don't stand a chance.
• Applicants: As difficult as this seems, imagine being your prospective employer, then be the person they are looking for.
• Designers: Make sure all the content you have produced paints coherent picture of who you are.
• Companies: when hiring outside of your comfort zone, be prepared. It can be simply hard, depressing work.
• Companies: ask applicants what they did yesterday at their current jobs. Amazing what you'll learn by the way they describe day, activities or mission

Available at iTunes Store.

The basics are as follows:

1. go to the Reader link at top of your gmail page (and if you don't use gmail, please start). 
2. type in the name of a blog or author if you have one, pull up their "feed" and subscribe, or
3. type in a subject of interest, wander through the amazing list of results Google supplies, and subscribe to those of interest

Reader adds the blog to the column on the left of your new Reader page, and later allows you to organize your blogs by subject folder. When you highlight a single blog or folder, only the contents of that stream appear in the Reader field, allowing you to scroll through the information from all--or just related--blogs in a single rolling feed. This allows you to go right to your most-read daily items ("The Daily Dish" & "Mashable" for me) as often (or in my case, compulsively) as you want, and save work-related research for work times. The efficiency and time savings from NOT having to bounce around between different blog sites in your browser is reason alone to adopt Reader, but Reader goes way beyond that.

For example, you can subscribe to all the blogs that a list of noted authorities and/or celebrities subscribe to. (Seriously, it's very cool.) Or you can browse blogs by subject matter as pre-organized by Google. And Reader lets you store articles of interest in a number of ways, including posting them to your own blog with a single click (btw, Google's free blog tool is called Blogger and that's worth a chapter, though my current favorite is Posterous.com) starring them, sharing them as part of your own RSS feed, or emailing them, and you can do all of that from within the stream (vs. taking all the time to open up the original source page then doing it). Just go and get lost in it for an hour or two and you'll quickly appreciate the efficiencies it brings, not to mention the amazing new factoid you discovered about QR codes or Paypal making mobile payment form your cellphone possible.

But the real reason to use Reader if you're an unemployed architect starting up is that for those fields related to your start up and about which you have to know as much as possible, there is no more efficient way to explore, absorb, document and organize the information. Give it a try. And then please thank me in the comments below so I know you're all reading this:)

Now don't get mad!! You wouldn't respect me unless I pointed out the following.

Here is the math you asked for so you could double check your cord estimating technique:

• volume of 1 cord of wood stacked = 8' w x 4' dp x 4" high = 128 cu ft.
• volume of 2 cords stacked = 128 cu ft x 2 = 256 cu ft
• volume of my pre-existing 2009 remnant firewood pile: 2' high x 8' long x 2' deep = 32 cu ft
• volume of 2010 stack (see photo, previous email) after 2 cords wood delivered and stacked over pre-existing pile = 10.5' w. x 4' dp x 6' h. = 252 cu ft
• actual volume of the 2 "cords" you delivered = 252 - 32 = 220 cu ft
• missing volume of wood purchased from best friend (you) = 36 cu ft = 8' x 2' dp x 2' high

I can come get it if it makes it easier? Or you can never talk to me again, your choice. But I would miss that:)

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:59 PM, (best friend)  wrote:

I hope that your asshole is not as tight as you had to stack that wood (I looked) to "prove" the math. We can form the missing portion in suppository form (on a lathe) if that would be to your liking.

Yer buddy

Me to my friend:

Very nice (and funny) reply. Glad you're still my friend after me being such an asshole. I think its a version of what you say: no one wants to spend $200 on a cord of firewood when the same could go toward food or fashion, so we cling to the commonly accepted definition of "a cord" to reduce the pain, always suspecting we haven't actually received a cord (since they know we'll never check--or have the guts to call them on it). A cord, goes the thinking, is still supposed to be a cord, thank God...unlike a 2x4. Of course a cord is also supposed to be 4' deep when stacked, begging the logical question: "should the 18" logs you left be 24" long so that, stacked in two parallel rows, they create a 4' deep stack, or is the 12" of air between two rows of 18" logs also meant to be overlooked by naive consumers?"

Anyway, many thanks for your honest and auspicious reply, and my condolences for your voluntary involvement in a thankless retail operation where performance is so easy to measure. Yer bud.

Bitt, you may be asking yourself why an architect who does traditional pencil and watercolor architectural rendering would present final images of his own design in a black-and-white digital style-especially given that architect's thoughts on the shortcomings of digital rendering. In this case we were looking for a dispassionate style which combined the strengths of digital modeling (real-time navigation as we pitched the project to the Planning Board) with the charms of the pencil sketch.

Anyone else find ways to combine digital rendering and traditional rendering tools to save time and money in the architectural rendering process? Stew? Chip? Dale? Mark? Tom? Bill? Vic? Leave your comments, lads. As always, click on images to enjoy detail.

As it happens, I had had something similar in mind for a long time. Why not approach developers directly explaining that as an architect with a gift for presentation, I could help them study their options (not claiming to offer final services, mind you) more quickly and efficiently than engaging a "high profile" architect who--given the exigencies of running a large practice--would just assign the exercise to a couple of talented in-house designers anyway, slowing the whole thing down and making it cost 2 to 5 times my fee?

So I said yes, and we began the collaboration pictured below. We used a combination of traditional and digital architectural rendering techniques to explore directions, culminating in the simple black-and-white digital renderings at the end. I'm going to leave out the commentary and just make this a visual journey for now, but suffice it to say that the economic meltdown of 2008 froze the banking system and took down the project. Unless something has happened, I am confident Alan C. and his gorgeous wife S. are passing the time cooking, drinking red wine, dabbling with a little spleef from time to time, and listening to a whole lot of Bob Dylan. He's gonna rise again, trust me.

Early study based on SketchUp massing study (below)

Idea of pre-fab, stackable units enters in:

Note that project sits on top of parking...always a challenge:

Detour into another idea...

Back to a funkier rhythm:

See Part 2 above.

I've been trying to think of why yesterday was unlike almost any other rally I've ever been to.

One obvious observation: it was the first actual ironic rally I've attended. Most of those in this movement were clearly ambivalent about being in any movement, but at the same time seemed to be acting out of some shared civic duty. "One man can write a pun, but every man must try." Almost every poster and placard was ironic, or undercut the ego or seriousness of the protester. One of my truly in-joke favorites: "Personally, I Blame Matt Yglesias." Who cannot rally behind that?

There were very, very few explicitly partisan appeals or personal attacks on public figures; and if the Beck rally coalesced around vague themes of patriotism, God and motherhood, this one seemed motivated by a simple sensibility of reason, empiricism and humor. But it was no less determined for that, in a quiet, midwestern, Frances-McDormand-In-Fargo kind of way. It was BobBo, but also Generation Obama; it was cool, but also unfashionable in a frumpy NPR-listener kind of way. It was the post-everything American middle class.

The point, it seemed to me, was that politics isn't all there is to life, there is something slightly off about those who think it is, and that political ideology has come to define us culturally and personally far too much. So this wasn't an angry rally for the alienated Democratic left; or even a joyous rally like last fall's March for Equality; or a desperate and frustrated rally like the Tea Partiers. No one was demanding their country back; they were just demanding, well asking, for a little less polarization, and a little more mutual understanding. It was an Obama rally that didn't want to be an Obama rally. And it was only an Obama rally sotto voce because he seems currently the only adult in Washington with any interest in compromising with anyone.

There are, after all, three political groupings in American politics Republicans, Democrats and Independents. But there are also three cultural groupings: ideologues, the pragmatists, and the totally indifferent. This was a rally for the pragmatists, which made it, for my money, the core Obama base.

It wasn't ethnically very diverse, but there were many more boomers than I expected. It was very good humored, and one sensed that the entire crowd loathed Fox, felt queasy about MSNBC, couldn't bring themselves to watch CNN and caught NPR in the commute. The young were out in force, but, again, they seemed like the Obama generation - not the facile dreamers who saw a Messiah in 2008, but the resilient rump who knew full well what he was up against.

Is this actually a politics?

Not if one compares it with, say the Perotistas of the early 1990s, or the Beckians of August (almost all of whom will surely be voting Republican on Tuesday because to do otherwise is the end of all American liberty for ever). But it is an identity politics: proud of being educated, sick of being stereotyped, interested in facts and reality, fed up with being condescended to ... and deeeply worried about the direction in this country.

If the ghost of Richard Nixon will allow me, Stewart and Colbert have sensed a silent plurality, alienated by both parties, still hoping for Obama's success, and yet unwilling to worship any politician or even take themselves too seriously for fear of falling into the same foul-smelling bullshit that already covers far too much of our political culture.

And that gave me not just a great afternoon. It gave me hope."



This project for Hampton College--one of a series of renderings for a proposed master plan--shows a sensitive scheme by Shepley Bullfinch for the renovation of an existing "background building" along Main Street. As always, click on images to make them (much) bigger.

Enjoy more images like this in the Process section of this website.

Original rendering:

Quick photoshop study of proposed patch:

Notes from the client:

Context photos:

Pencil line drawing of patch:

Watercolored patch added to original in photoshop:

Overhead festoon lighting and additional floor lanterns added in photoshop:

Final version with festoon lights raised.

That was fun, wasn't it? According to the designers, the revised rendering was a hit with the Bryant Park commission.