[카테고리:] thoughts

아마도 20년도 더 된 어느 일요일 오후였던 것으로 기억된다. 평소에 영문 소설을 즐겨 읽으시는 한 가까운 친척 어른께서 두툼한 영문 소설책을 펼쳐 보여주셨다. 당시에는 처음 들어보는 인물인 Pat Conroy의 소설 Prince of Tides이었다.

‘이 첫 페이지만 한번 읽어봐라. 문장이 기가막히지 않냐’는 수사적 질문을 나에게 던지셨을 때 예의상 ‘정말 그렇네요’라고 대답할 수 밖에 없었다. 지금도 마찬가지지만 그 당시에도 영문학에 대한 소양이 깊지 않았기 때문에 간결한 은유적 표현이라는 건 알겠지만 이게 어떤 의미에서 훌륭한지 알 길이 없었다.

“My wound is geography.”로 시작하는 첫 문단을 도대체 어떻게 번역해야 할까? 이 책은 우리말로 번역도 되지 않았기에 달리 알아볼 방법이 없다. 이어지는 문장으로도 추측이 되지 않는다. 그런데 이 문장의 해석을 어려워하는 것은 서양 사람도 마찬가지인 듯. Bill Johnson의 ‘Beginning a Novel with a Wounded Main Character: Notes on Prince of Tides“이 문제를 다루는 데 여전히 모르겠다.

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아이들이 자라다 보면 놀다 다치기 일쑤인데 간혹 얼굴에 큰 상처가 생겨서 어른이 되어서까지 흔적이 남는 경우가 있다. 가까이 지내는 이웃 중 두 아이를 키우는 가정이 있는데 벌써 한 명씩 얼굴에 큰 상처를 가졌다. 안타깝지만 어쩌랴. 아이들이 두드러진 상처 없이 크는 것은 오히려 희귀한 일이 아닐까 싶다.

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상처는 일종의 역사의 기록이다. 특히 어디에서 무얼하다가 생긴 상처인지 기억에 남는다면 더욱 그렇다. 그 상처로 인해 파괴에 이른다거나 큰 흉터가 되지 않는다면 상처는 추억을 풍부하게 만들어 줄 수도 있다.

Margery Williams의 감동적인 동화 The Velveteen Rabbit에 다음과 같은 구절이 있다.

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

– Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

말하자면 오래 사랑을 받으면 너덜너덜해진다는 것. 하지만 그런 과정을 통해 진짜가 되어 간다는 이야기이다.

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스마트폰과 같은 휴대용 기기의 경우 주머니 속에서, 가방 속에서 다른 물건과 부딪히고 때로는 땅바닥에 내동댕이쳐지기도 해서 갓 구입했을 때의 깨끗함을 유지하기란 정말 어렵다.

구입하자마자 화면 보호 필름에 케이스 등으로 보호하면 되겠지만 과연 그렇게 깨끗하게 보존하는 것이 어떤 의미가 있을까? 온전하게 보전하는 것이 목적이라면 차라리 한 대 더 사서 책꽂이에 모셔놓는 것이 나을지도 모른다. 하지만 상처가 생기더라도 동행의 흔적을 남기는 편이 그 물건을 자신의 것으로 만드는 방편이 아닐까 싶다.

보편화되어 있는 A4 용지 대신 A5 용지를 실생활에서 활용하려면 몇 가지 준비가 필요하다.

1. 용지 우선 큰마음 먹고 A5 용지를 다량 구매할 것. 일반 문구점에서 파는 유선 A5 용지는 단가가 비싸고 아무 것도 인쇄되지 않은 A5용지는 시중에서 찾기 어렵다. DoubleA 등 메이커에 직접 전화를 걸어 주문하는 방법도 있다. 몇 장이 들었는지는 모르겠으나 한 박스에 3만원대. 혼자 쓰면 몇 년은 쓸 것 같음.

2.펀치 6공 펀치를 마련할 것. 온라인 상에서 쉽게 찾을 수 있다. 3만원 내외.

3. 잉크젯 프린터 우선 자신의 프린터에 맞도록 컴퓨터 상에서 A5 규격의 페이지 설정을 해놓을 것. 프린터에서 자동양면출력이 지원되면 여러가지로 편리하다. 종이의 방향이 간혹 잘못될 수 있으므로 우선 출력한 후에 구멍을 뚫는 것이 요령. 읽을 거리를 9-10 pt 정도 크기의 글꼴로 출력하면 A4용지에 12pt로 출력해서 볼 때 보다 편하게 느껴진다. pdf 문서를 출력할 때는 70% 배율로 축소하면 잘 맞는다.

4. 장점

• 크기가 작아서 들고 다니기 편하고 양면출력해 놓으면 책을 들고 다니는 듯한 느낌이 좋다.
• 종이를 아껴쓴다는 뿌듯함이 있다.
• 작은 크기의 가방에도 들어간다.
• 뭔가를 커스터마이징한다는 재미가 있어서 업무에 활력이 생긴다.

5. 단점

• 바인더의 선택의 폭이 좁고 상대적으로 비싸다.
• 양이 많으면 구멍 뚫을 때 손이 많이 간다.
• 출력한 용지를 혼자쓰기에는 좋지만 다른 사람에게 건네 줄 때 약간 난감하다.
• 양면 자동출력시 가끔 에러가 나기도 한다.

6. 바램

• 시간이 지난 자료를 바인더에서 빼낸 후 제본해서 보관할 수 있도록 실용적인 A5 전문 제본기가 있으면 좋겠다.
• 좀 더 개선된 디자인의 펀치가 나오면 좋겠다.
• 더 다양한 재질의 A5 용지가 있으면 좋겠다.

I love typography.

I think I had an inkling for logotypes when I was 11 years old.

I guess I was 12 years old when my aunt–many thanks to her–sent me a calligraphy pen as a gift, with a small introductory booklet for calligraphy. I was intrigued.

I was about 18-19 years old when I came across several volumes of typography books at the university library. I thought the roman typefaces were beautiful. I was fascinated.

I knew I had to go with Macintosh in 1989 because it had proper typography worked out within its operating system. (It was only in 2005 when Steve Jobs revealed in his Commencement Speech at Stanford how he was touched by calligraphy class at Reed College and how his appreciation for typography was designed into Macintosh.)

“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”

– Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech (2005)

I feel bad when I spot odd kerning. I sometimes give undue preference to people who have clean hand-writing. I am drawn to shops and stores with beautiful typography.

When I watch a documentary film about Helvetica or clips about typography in general, I feel the euphoria.

Does all this mean that I should have taken an art or design track for my career? Not necessarily. Appreciation of visual aesthetics can be usefully applied in any trade of business. Take Steve Jobs for example. Perhaps such talent could be more valuable when applied to the context outside the realm of art.

Some people do amazing things with their life (and their camera).

An independent filmmaker Rick Mereki and his friends went around the world, documenting their trip on camera and then editing them to fit in three clips of video, just over 3 minutes total. (Perhaps it is their brevity that makes their films shine.)

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films….. = a trip of a lifetime. move, eat, learn

– Rick Mereki

With the introduction of Apple’s App Store on Mac, it became much easier to find, install and update applications.

Here are some of the apps that I found useful for task: management. The Hit List has very simple-to-use interface design that works like a charm. It is rather expensive option, though. So moved on to Wunderlist.
Wunderlist is a fine choice. The best part is that it is free and the syncing works ok across different platforms, e.g., Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, etc. It was ok but Producteev had better collaborative features.
Producteev is another useful tool for managing collaborative tasks between two persons. (Free up to two persons.) When you put up a task, then other members can add comment on the task item or even attach files. This feature allows richer online interaction within the team. This is the one I am using for now.
Meanwhile, Day One is a tool for keeping a journal. It is not free ($9.99) but this program is useful for the way it is designed to keep you writing, with timely reminders and inspiring quotations that nudge you to writing something or anything. This is not a task management tool per se but it works well alongside the task management tools as you can keep a side note on the things you have covered each day.
I am a happy user of DropBox, a file sync application/service that works seamlessly across PC and Mac. It is free up to 2GB of usage. I use DropBox extensively for synchronizing files among many members within a team.
While using DropBox for collaborative file syncing, I needed another cloud-based tool for backing up personal files. So I started to use SugarSync alongside DropBox. SugarSync gives you 5GB free.
For managing schedule, I use Apple’s iCal and Google Calendar but neither of these seems to work very well for me. Someone recommends Fantastical, which I have yet to find out.

*I’d like to add that TeuxDeux, an online tool for to-do list management (and $2.99 iPhone app), looks quite promising, especially for their sensible use of typography. (No wonder. It was designed by swissmiss. Good job, Tina.) *Yammer also deserves a mention as a group collaboration tool. It is a twitter for an organization, enabling group conversation and record-keeping of past discussions. I think it works well for a group of 3-10 members.

Now, with all the tools at hand, actually getting things done at all is totally a different issue. Here is one long quote from William Osler that deeply impressed me recently regarding getting things done. It deserves careful reading.

Though a little one, the master-word looms large in meaning. It is the open sesame to every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher’s stone, which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold. The stupid man among you it will make bright, the bright man brilliant, and the brilliant student steady. With the magic word in your heart all things are possible, and without it all study is vanity and vexation. The miracles of life are with it; the blind see by touch, the deaf hear with eyes, the dumb speak with fingers. To the youth it brings hope, to the middle-aged confidence, to the aged repose. True balm of hurt minds, in its presence the heart of the sorrowful is lightened and consoled. It is directly responsible for all advances in medicine during the past twenty-five centuries. Laying hold upon it Hippocrates made observation and science the warp and woof of our art. Galen so read its meaning that fifteen centuries stopped thinking, and slept until awakened by the De Fabrica, of Vesalius, which is the very incarnation of the master-word. With its inspiration Harvey gave an impulse to a larger circulation than he wot of, an impulse which we feel to-day. Hunter sounded all its heights and depths, and stands out in our history as one of the great exemplars of its virtues. With it Virchow smote the rock, and the waters of progress gushed out while in the hands of Pasteur it proved a very talisman to open to us a new heaven in medicine and a new earth in surgery. Not only has it been the touchstone of progress, but it is the measure of success in every-day life. Not a man before you but is beholden to it for his position here, while he who addresses you has that honor directly in consequence of having had it graven on his heart when he was as you are to-day. And the master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts and bind it upon your foreheads. But there is a serious difficulty in getting you to understand the paramount importance of the work-habit as part of your organization. You are not far from the Tom Sawyer stage with its philosophy “that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” A great many hard things may be said of the work-habit. For most of us it means a hard battle; the few take to it naturally; the many prefer idleness and never learn to love labor.

-William Osler, The Master-Word In Medicine (Montreal Medical Journal, 1903)

Views from Kenya, composed using Posterino.

Views from Washington DC, composed using Posterino

People need places to meet.

Chairs or sofa are often needed if they intend to take some time to share stories.

And when they meet, they usually have some kind of drink or meal together. So a small kitchen would help.

When the surrounding atmosphere is like a home, it can help you feel cozy, snug and comfortable.

It takes quite a deal of workforce to run and maintain this kind of facility for meeting. Perhaps that is how prices of coffee sold in some cafes(*) can be justified.

* Medium-sized Latte at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf: 4,500 Won

* Tall-sized Latte at Starbucks: 4,100 Won

On the other hand, if you are buying a cup of coffee to enjoy on the go from such places and still pay the full price, you might be paying to much.

* Photos are from my visit to a guest house in Washington DC in 2010.

For some while, I kept thinking of how I can capture images that represents Korea in a sensible way. I first thought of traditional patterns and shapes seen in old buildings, folk costumes, stone walls, and furniture. But then not only those images have been amply covered already, most of them were so out of ordinary living scape that it seemed quite unrealistic.

Then I thought of more modern counterparts. For example, the views of locations recently developed, trendy shops, heavy traffic areas, etc. While those scenes were more realistic and more representative of everyday lives in Korea, the problem was that quite a portion of those scenes were end-products of designers and architects trying to somewhat mimic what they saw in US, Japan, and Europe.

It occurred to me only recently that the most interesting part of any scene or experience must be in the people who occupy the space. So I should make it my start point to observe the behavioral patterns exhibited by people in Korea and juxtapose it with the environmental elements.

There is a saying that goes “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” It often means that it is difficult to make people adopt a new set of skills or change their way of life when they have grown accustomed to certain patterns of doing things, or when they have aged too much.

Now I wonder if one’s age could really be a good excuse for not learning new “tricks”. Perhaps the adage could be applied to real dogs, which I cannot be really sure since I haven’t lived long with dogs. But for human beings like those who are reading this blog, I doubt the validity of the claim or assumption embedded in this saying.

Thus I wonder:

• What is the age after which you cannot possibly expect to learn how to use an iPad or an iPhone?
• At what age should you stop trying to learn a new language?
• On what ground do you accept the excuse “I am too old to do that?” from someone you know, for example, your parents or your spouse?

I sometimes observe that it is older people who have more time on their hands if not more money. Perhaps it is with that excess time that older people can be expected to accumulate more knowledge and new skills.

Life can quickly go stale if you neglect to maintain it properly. Make it a habit to keep it updated every now and then. Expose yourself to new challenges. Stop making excuses for not learning anything new.

So here are some practical applications:

1. If you consider yourself “over the hill“, even so, and all the more, buy every new Apple product as soon as it is made available. iPhone, iPad or whatever. Try your hands on it no matter what. (I am mentioning Apple as an example because it is considered one of the most innovative companies as of today, not that I am trying to build up excuses for buying more Apple products. It could be anything else.) At the least, it is the exposure that matters. It can always be handed down to your children or grandchildren if you don’t like it. Please don’t say you are too old for it.
2. Continue to give yourself a new “diploma” every year or two. Join new classes or clubs available in local department stores. Sign up on the local Toastmaster’s Club. Or even apply to evening courses in colleges. Just show up without worrying about the grades.
3. Learning new tricks often involves doing away with your familiar set of skills or tools. Give way your digital camera or mobile phone that you have been using since three years ago and get a brand new one. You will be amazed to see how much the technology keeps evolving.