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About

I real­ly dis­like the notion of a page About Me and my pre­vi­ous About effort makes me feel all kinds of queasy. Sec­ond­ly, I total­ly get why pages About Peo­ple are use­ful. I total­ly total­ly get it. I always read the About Mes of oth­er peo­ple, and I find them quite helpful.

Probably the most important thing to know about this thing

is that it con­tains mul­ti­tudes. Hon­est­ly it's all over the place. Web writ­ing how-tos always begin with some­thing like: "Choose a top­ic" Or, "focus on a theme!" Well, yeah, sounds like good advice, but.

Regarding myself

I work at Coop­er, an inter­ac­tion design com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia. What is inter­ac­tion design? Even after doing it for 10 years, I still have a hard time explain­ing it. Maybe that's a sign. Any­way, when some­one asks me what I do, I usu­al­ly say some­thing like, "Well, I try to, you know, imag­ine ide­al rela­tion­ships between peo­ple and the elec­tron­ic stuff that we use to try to, like, do things, and …" and then my wife will help­ful­ly offer, "He's an inter­ac­tion design­er," and sur­pris­ing­ly THIS WORKS.

Other things

  • I live in Cal­i­for­nia, and I don't own a car. I'm excit­ed for the year 2025, when I'll be able to ride my bike from the East Bay to San Fran­cis­co, but until then I hitch rides from oth­ers, or I just don't go because hon­est­ly, don't get me start­ed on what San Fran­cis­co has become.
  • I'm not always a hater of cars. In fact, I love dri­ving. Behind the wheel, I become every­thing I hate about "caged motorists," as my motor­cy­cle safe­ty instruc­tor called them. I curse slow-mov­ing pedes­tri­ans and clue­less cyclists — because hon­est­ly more of them need to pay attention.
  • I was an Eng­lish major, and I have a job — for the moment any­way. So per­haps I'm the excep­tion that proves the rule. To my fel­low Eng­lish majors: Not sure how this hap­pened. But appar­ent­ly it's possible.
  • I hiked most of the Pacif­ic Crest Trail in 2001. It's a trail that runs from the US-Mex­i­co bor­der to the US-Cana­da bor­der, through Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton, and in ret­ro­spect it was a non-stop blast, except of course when it was so painful that I want­ed to cry or quit or both. The day after I flew home, planes crashed into the World Trade Center.
  • I am a run­ner. If I don't run for two days in a row, I get a lit­tle angry, crazy, antsy, irri­ta­ble, and gen­er­al­ly a pain in the ass to be around. So it's bet­ter, you know, if I just get my run in.
  • Myers-Brig­gs: INTP (ca. 1995) -> INTJ (ca. 2010). In my old age, I've become more judg­men­tal, and might I say, right­ly so. 
  • Star sign: Leo. Gre­gar­i­ous, charm­ing, the cen­ter of atten­tion? Lol. Yeah. No.
  • Chi­nese Zodi­ac sign: Rat. For your con­sid­er­a­tion: A list of "famous rats" from a Chi­nese astrol­o­gy site. Includ­ed: Mar­lon Bran­do. Mozart. Pla­to. Sounds about right.

I wrote this in 2003, when I joined Friendster. It's mostly still true.

I like sleep­ing in, get­ting up ear­ly, throw­ing things, eat­ing Asian pears, drink­ing beer out of bot­tles, and swim­ming. I like writ­ing let­ters, and draw­ing things. I ride my bike a lot. I like mak­ing things, I think in words, I learn by doing, and I sur­round myself with puz­zles and projects, near­ly all of which are not done and may nev­er be done.

Other things

Before Flickr was a thing

August 15, 2009

One reply on “About”

need to ask you how much you'd cost to recre­ate your lon­don kern­ing map into two oth­er cities, like Beirut and Cairo or Dubai and Abu Dhabi… (mid­dle east­ern cities).

Dude, i work for Leo Bur­nett Dubai — but we ain't loaded, so please don't think we've got mon­ey com­ing out of our ears.

Can't wait to hear from you

Simon