SPEEDFIT

The time to invest is now.

Ensuring the future of food

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries commissioned this great video dealing with the global food crisis. A lot of their ideas sound pretty standard to me (eat local, less meat, etc.) but it was interesting to see a Japanese perspective on it. An island country with very little arable land is going to deal with food much differently than a country like the US or China. The endorsement of traditional Japanese cuisine over what appears to be essentially Western food seems like a very conservative response to overweight citizens and high food prices to me.

Anyway, I really shared this video because I really love this group's work, you can see more examples of it in HALFBY's music videos:

The Uglysuit: Chicago

The song is ok and the video is sort of goofy, but sometimes I don't know why I moved to nyc.

94 percent of blogs are abandoned

Technorati indexed 133 million blogs but only 1.5 million were active this week. It's sad to think about all those sites out there, started with ideas and hopes and etc. only to float through the web unviewed and covered in a thick layer of dust. At the same time, I must have personally started/abandoned six or seven different pages, and I don't think that my web footprint is exceptionally large. 

Merlin Mann wrote a pretty definitive answer to "What makes a good blog?" over the summer, and I'd imagine that most of those abandoned blogs were not "good" by his definition (though 43 Folders would probably be listed as abandoned by Technorati's parameters). Without the spark of obsession and desire to share, a site whithers and dies very quickly.

So far this page doesn't really meet his criteria, but I'm still getting comfortable writing in this space. Writing a blog has to become at least a habit and a necessity if not an obsession in order to thrive, and I come close to losing that on here often (especially close after my move). Here's to staying active.

P.S. I really recommend reading that whole Technorati article, it's a really interesting demographic breakdown of writing on the web (also super recommend everything on 43 Folders)

books

Went to Rocketship Comics in Cobble Hill last night and got my Achewood book signed (and one for Kevin). The thing went on well past midnight (we ditched the line and came back later). I really admire Chris Onstad for powering through it, long after the bar had closed and after his body started shaking a little bit. I think he made a lot of fans very happy last night.

While I was there I picked up the newest Acme Novelty Library. I generally thought of Rusty Brown as a much simpler story than the intertwining plots and family trees of Jimmy Corrigan, but this installment really adds another level. Woody Brown's story fits well into the Chris Ware pattern of alienation and horrifying loneliness and the sci-fi first half is really amazing.