Pilachi_Sketch [ BLOG ]

It is good to look back at formative years and miss them longingly.

While trying to resolve a minor challenge tonight — having misplaced some of the most important images for the pages I have to layout — I started to rumage through tens of thousands of old images on 8 hard drives, trying to find the lost files. In these images I came across some images from our old apartment on 96th St.

I miss New York. I love being back home — and would not change that for the world — but there was a simplicity in being nestled in our “bougi” apartment on the upper E.

BTW… That hole in the ground [in the image] has been replaced with a luxury residential tower, also owned by the same management company: Related.

excess is so excessive.

I do miss those sunrises though.

It is remarkable to think that given ten years experience in the profession of architecture, that I never ever read architecture magazines, nor visit architecture websites, nor engage in the ongoing discourse on… lets face it… whatever.

Pregnant pause.

Core77.com, Dailytech.com and Anandtech.com are my staples. No News, no deep nor profound thoughts on the efficacy or ramifications of … lets face it… whatever.

Punctuated agression. Exclaim.

While reading Dailytech tonight, having watched the last half of a brilliant William H. Macy film, wherein he kills Julia Stiles. Not that she should have died, nor that her death was relevant to the film, nor that the film is relevant to this blog entry… I was reading Dailytech. Let us take it up from there.

While reading Dailytech, there was an article about Apple’s iphone: which is software in a pocket rocket, with a screen that you hold in your hand… nothing more, nothing less. The iPhone was reverse engineered… and is now free to roam the world untethered from the new at&t, formerly cingular, formerly At&t. Did you see how that was different? Big “A” little “a.” A spade is still a spade; call it what you will. [and having watched the William H. Macy film, I have to put in the disclaimer that I would not normally have known about...] — That statement was not racial-ist in any way. –
Disclaim. Emphatically.

So back to Dailytech… Apple… iPhone… At the end of this article about the newly untethered iPhone, someone wrote a comment that included the following three letters:

FUD.

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It is a funny thing to feel displaced; not so funny if that process of displacement becomes your life; even less humerous if this process of displacement becomes your choice. Chaos they call it. Poppycock I say. Poppycock.

To distend into chaos is a process that so many fear; and in that fear, cling to patterns and processes that continue to hurt their very being. Chaos has been called many things; yet it is the fear of the unknown and the unstable that creates the boundaries and barriers that keep us from exploring our very selfness and / or each of our different differentness-es.

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Having spent the past year redesigning the brand of Sekani Design, to transition it to become Pilachi, I find that I have taken too much time fixing something that really was not broken. It feels a bit like the description from the South Park creators, explaining why they have not deviated from the original 2D renderings of their elementary school characters.

With the skillsets acquired in the four years since Sekanidesign.com went online, it is almost tempting to redesign the wheel. In the mean time, we have so much work to do, that there is little time to percolate.

Having originally uploaded sekanidesign.com on 11 September 2003, pilachi.com comes alive on a new and more robust hosting server, now exactly four years and seven days later. How funny is that?

The initial draft of Pilachi.com transitions the content of the interim site, Pilachi_Sketch[BLOG], and the original flash based portfolio site, Sekanidesign.com into one medium. In the next iteration, the navigation headings will include the newly formulated production arm of Pilachi, and its cheap-and-dirty understudy: Type | Cast Productions.

Ultimately, the navigation structure will reflect the process driven applications of Pilachi:

• Research
• Design
• Communication
• Development
• Production

Hasta la pizza.

[ Yes, I know that's not really span-itch. ]

Pilachi is now set up as a bonafide Hosting Service, for dedicated Pilachi clients and projects; however, the objective is not to provide hosting as a publicly available stand alone service.

[ New Server. New Logo. ]

To clarify how the services work together:

Pilachi [Communication] does not sell photography directly to clients, but rather sells Graphic Design services and Print Publishing Services, both of which buy photographic services from Pilachi [Imaging]

Similarly, Pilachi does not sell web hosting directly to clients; Pilachi [Interactive] sells Web Design and Web Development Services, both of which buy hosting services from Pilachi [Systems]

Now that that is clear, all I have to do is work out a few remaining kinks in the taxonomy, then I can complete and upload the Pilachi website.

Rumaging through the archives in the deep dark recesses of my old hard drives, I found the third book I ever worked on in its entirety [ the first being a project for Utech, the second a 100 page building services analysis of the USAID building ] and the third… was the first project I got fresh out of undergrad architecture school.

That was 1999.

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Thinking about the time spent at Pratt and about just how obsessed I am with the concepts of deterministic chaos, I find myself filling time with design projects, hoping in vain efforts — like a wary prostitute — to find love in the dark.

Having left Pratt in memories, I find myself mourning the fact that I did not become an industrial designer. I think I probably would have enjoyed that.

Anyhoo… this is it… the realization of volume from chaotic fractals… the purpose of my being if ever there was one. Now, as are most things, it is relegated to the depths of my hardrives.

Dead as nit.

More than anything else in life, I found that I am most excited about Industrial Design. To those in my family and elsewhere, who think I dance about like a butterfly, I have to say that to have aptitude does not as readily translate to love.

Industrial design… that was love. That was the beauty of drawing by hand, then model making, then CAD, then 3D modeling, then rapid prototyping… then a whole host of other things… even business topics like branding, identity and market segmentation. I loved it.

If I was to say that I regret anything [ tangible ], I regret not spending more time in the transportation design studio… which translated directly to… I regret not becoming an industrial designer.

Not to be ungrateful: photography, graphic design, web design, architecture and now broadcast journalism+teaching pay the bills… and dancing, painting, ultimate frisbee, drawing and building computers are fun… but where is that sense of place, that sense of understanding… of being understood, that sense of belonging that comes from love?

The funny thing in all of this… I really do not think about or like products. I really like the processes of industrial design though.

Really really.

Fey began to tell her sister Bobo a bedtime story:

Once upon a time in the deep, dark and dense undergrowth of the Prickling Wood…

“… a tree fell in a remote part of the forest; if nobody saw it, heard it, nor read about it: Did it actually fall?”

Over the kindling breakfast fire, the ubiquitous ‘She’ thought about this with a whimper of repressed joy; the type of stymied ebullient hilarity that accompanies the crowning of profligate consternation with these rare moments of independent thought.

“Oh wait a minute…” interjected the frustrated narrator, “that thought was a cliche from psychology 101.”

[ No one listened. And indeed: No one could hear. ]

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