ALEX STILLWELL

Real Life by Tanlines love the bongo drums on this song

Sun, 20 May 2012 04:54:07 -0600

Real Life by Tanlines

love the bongo drums on this song

What we're doing when we share

Thu, 10 May 2012 01:00:16 -0600

I found the most amazing song. It’s absolutely beautiful for the moment in which I’m listening to it. However, I know come tomorrow the song won’t have the same appeal that it does right now. I’ll try to share it, but the appeal won’t be there.

Because I’m not necessarily sharing the song. The song is mediocre. What I truly want to share is the feeling. It’s the mood; the thoughts I’m having. There is no possible way that I could truly want to keep this feeling to myself. No person could be that selfish.

And I realize that might be the reason why sharing music with me is so difficult. Music is meant to mirror my feelings, multiply them, and sometimes curate them. Every once in a while, a song can perfectly mirror a certain feeling that it seizes the soul. That’s when I share it.

I put the song on repeat. I listen to it until the feeling fades. The song becomes a normal song again. In some cases, a song can have such a connection that it can transplant me back to certain feelings when I listen to it later. I think that is why a hook in most pop music is so important. It’s the most visceral way that rush of feeling can either be created or restored in music.

And all this makes me think that mediums aren’t really meant to tell a story or talents, but feelings. Think about movie categories. They’re separated by emotion, unlike music. Crime scene television is so much more compelling than the news casts that they’re based on.

If you’re ever creating something, make this the most important thing. Be the emotional rush. Then soothe reason, if necessary.

Photo

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:21:53 -0600

"To be human is to tinker, to envision a better condition, and decide to work toward it by shaping..."

Sun, 06 May 2012 23:41:19 -0600

“To be human is to tinker, to envision a better condition, and decide to work toward it by shaping the world around us.”

- The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero

Florilegia

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:48:00 -0600

“Florilegia were compilations of excerpts from other writings, mashing up selected passages and connecting dots from existing texts to better illustrate a specific topic, doctrine or idea. The word comes from the Latin for “flower” and “gather.” The florilegium is one of the earliest recorded examples of remix culture — a Medieval textual Tumblr.”

-I love this idea and would love to do a series of these on some very specific topics.

Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation - hitting the spot right now

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:59:13 -0600

Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation - hitting the spot right now

Little Man by Little Dragon Tycho remix. I may have already...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:16:02 -0600

Little Man by Little Dragon Tycho remix. I may have already blogged this one. Shit, who cares even if i did.

"LIMITED-EDITION WOOD-AND-CANVAS CANOE"

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:30:36 -0600

Freemans is a pioneer in a trend that we have seen happening for a while now, striving for a sort of refined, woolly, arts-and-craftsy, anachronistic Americana feeling. Think taxidermy, hand-cobbled brogues, and cocktails made with rye instead of whiskey. The common denominator in this trend seems to be a yearning for the “authentic.” Interestingly, things don’t need to actually be authentic as long as they feel authentic. In fact, they can be completely fake.

Why the future will mean better restaurants

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:54:00 -0700

The past few days I’ve been coming back to this idea of Foursquare having a larger impact on society than what you’d normally expect. This is something I’ll expand in my Weekly Note for this week. However, it’s been bothering me. So I’ll get the basics down now.

The essential idea is the use of Foursquare as a tool to find where your friends are going and where is good. The hugely impactful explorer tab feature in foursquare is this in a recommendation setting. If you extrapolate this idea and impact to something larger it creates a very interesting idea.

By having this feature (and other features from other companies like Yelp) in commonplace in daily activity and if it actually influences decisions, you can’t help but think that widespread use will influence what is popular. I like the idea that this sort of mentality levels competition more so then in the past. It’s the idea that the good becomes popular rather than the known. If pre-internet meant asymmetrical information was used to make mediocre decisions, the internet and good information (in the form of foursquare, et al) will destroy that asymmetry and lets us makes good decisions.

It could mean that we take a lot of enjoyment in hunting for the best. It’d mean that these information sources will be integral in creating a better society.

Or at least it will demand better restaurants.

If this doesn’t make sense, I’ll expand more later. Or it could never make sense, since this idea is more of a feeling that I’m still working on properly articulating. A work in progress still, if you will.

Weekly Notes 2

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:02:38 -0700

One of the biggest themes I’ve noticed this week for me was injustice. I’m quite liberal and am typically surrounded by only liberals which might have an influence, but I’ve noticed that there has been an uptick in the conversation about injustice. With the congressional hearings about women’s reproductive rights that included no women experts, to this absolutely amazing TED talk, to conversations I’ve had this week, all of it points to injustice.

In the TED talk, Byran Stevenson talks about how as great as everything is with technology, design, entertainment and such, we’re still going to be judged in history by how we’ve treated everyone. He gave a very enlightening explanation. The story he told had him in Germany talking about Alabama’s death penalty. A German woman stood up and said how Germany, with its blaring past, could never systematically execute someone, even under the premise of the law. It would be unconscionable.

Germany’s past is definitely horrible, but it’s not all that different from the past two centuries in the South. Black people were lynched. They were bombed. They lived in terror. And ~~racists~~ white people in the South were their terrorists. Yet. Incarceration rates for African American men is still outrageously high. Death Penalty? Black men have an ownership share. For some reason that isn’t comparably unconscionable as a German death penalty is (regardless if there would’ve been a Jewish bias).

Racism, structurally and socially, is still very much alive. All we have to do is make it unconscionable.

On a less serious, less pious subject, I’ve also noticed an uptick in conversations I’ve been having with people who’ve had business ideas. Maybe people have begun to perceive me differently, but I’ve had about 6 different people discuss business ideas with me in the past two weeks. Rather than it being me, I’d like to think that people are becoming more and more creative in their perception of what they can do to make money/support themselves. I think the greatest thing is that they’ve all been associated with the respective person’s passions. I just wish I had more time and more resources to help these people pursue these things. It’s really what I want my fake company Almost Relevant to be someday. Some sort of agile organization that can make an incredible, diverse array of interestingness. And that it’d finance that interestingness (read: businesses) of those people who I think have the passion but maybe not the completeness of skills to do so.

Hurray to a group of people who want to make things.

Weekly Notes 1

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:45:00 -0700

This blog post was suppose to talk specifically about design with bottles being an example. You can read it below. But I’m morphing it into a different idea. I’ve been intrigued by this idea of writing a weekly synopsis of what I’ve done and have been thinking about in the past week. It’s part expose, part journal, and part log of what I’ve been doing.

A few of the people who I read online do this. It’s typically associated with their work and what they think rather than an online journal of feelings and things they’re working on personally. For example, they’ll talk about an article they read rather than how their love life is going. Ideally I’d do the same. and be consistent about it.

It’s similar to what I’ve been doing with 8:36pm in terms of it periodical update and record. I like that.

This week was made notable by two things at work. One was the expansion of the technical team at VacationCandy. We brought on a new programmer. He’s a BYU student who has a wife and a kid on the way. Although I’m not new to being around the mormon culture, it’s weird diving back into it by having to be sensitive to language and actions. I’ve created a little non-mormon bubble here in Salt Lake City; it’s strange when it’s not the case anymore. Needless to say, I’m excited to have a capable programmer who can compliment my skills. I anticipate this working out really well.

The other thing is the idea that we’ve been talking about with more frequency is venture capital. We’ve begun to heavily consider the realistic possibilities of whether we should seek outside investment in the company. In that I did some research on how to come to a reasonable pre-money valuation of the company. It’s interesting that most investors look to sales as the basis for valuation. The idea is you take comparable public companies and take their market cap minus cash plus debt and divide that by total revenue. You do that with a few companies, find the average, and use that as a basis to figure out the valuation of your company. Revenue times the multiple. From some examples I’ve seen and some of my research, the multiple is typically between 3x to 10x of revenue.

It’s interesting that the investors look at revenue instead of profit. Although in high growth mode, profit should be close to zero, profit might be a better indicator of sales. Does a car dealership whose sales are huge but profit margin is small in comparison have high valuations for the sales that they make? Under the assumption of using the market as a basis, the car dealership multiple should be lower. However, a multiple is still a multiple and an interesting consideration regardless.

The multiple and valuation of our company is something very interesting but it isn’t the entire picture. We also have to consider the intangible, non-money related issues. A pressure to perform, a forced hand in some cases, and other problems associated to having someone else in the equation. To help us, we’re having someone come in and help try to get a feel of the field for us. Who knows what will happen. I’ve always wanted to be a part of a venture capital-supported company; in terms of what it would mean to me mentally is great. However, knowing what makes sense for this company at this time is a different decision than nerdy sex appeal of helping found a company with venture capital.

Friday night, we went to a new restaurant a block away from my house called Avenues Bistro on Third. It was great being in a place with such an emphasis on the neighborhood. I anticipate going their often, if not because of their delicious menu, than for the idea of supporting a very local business. They were in a soft launch and they are still definitely a work in progress. One particularly interesting thing is their tasting room/private room downstairs. I was able to get a peek into it and the walls are covered in empty bottles that people around the neighborhood donated. A very cool idea for a tasting room.

Looking through some of my favorite personal photos, I find that bottles are an amazing photo subject. With the lighting, the product design, and setting all create a very visceral sensation.

The product design is rigid. The bottles must consist of reservoir to hold the liquid and means to pour out the liquid. This cannot change. However, no one would argue that there is a lack of creativity with the bottles. Brands make strong statements and even the most minute details are attentively noted, critiqued and appreciated. Further within a brand, the product design between different products, such as Uinta’s new redesign of their 18 different beers, can be startlingly beautiful and gives each beer a unique character under the umbrella of a coherent brand. Once you focus on an individual product, the ability to maintain unique design fades with the need for scale. This doesn’t present a failure in design, but gives the opportunity for repetition and all the loveliness that repetition entails; recognition, familiarity, comfort, predictability. All things needed to sell something more than once. And, repetition as a design tool, can create a very sensory appeal. Beyond that, repetition of different brands but the same general idea (bottles) create a very interesting effect. Although each bottle is different they portray repetition due to the fact that they are roughly the same size, shape and color.

This idea can be taken on a much different, more serious consideration. FastCompany recently introduced two new websites beyond their home website. They now offer FastCo design, FastCo create and FastCo exist. Each site is independent of each other, but they are very much sister websites. The design of all the sites, including the original FastCompany website, is similar. They have their differences particularly when considering content. To tie this back to the bottles example, each independent website is a type of product under the premise of the same brand, FastCompany. There are certain restrictions that each site has, not unlike the idea that bottles need to hold a liquid and be able to pour that liquid. It’s also very much the case that each site needs its independence and dependence from the brand and sister products. Familiarity from the FastCompany magazine to the FastCo Design website is an easy transition while the product differentiation allows added affinity to a particular site. Having a different site, with a different logo and a different url makes more of an impact than a tab or page on the same site with the same logo and same design. I think FastCompany is successful in creating the right blend of unique, but similarity between these sites and the magazine.

I think I’ve written enough for this week. So I’ll stop here. The following is a (poor) picture of the tasting room in the Avenues Bistro on Third, also know as the room that inspired this blog post.

For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:30:37 -0700

For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such that it provides easier and easier access to its currents.

“WHY NOT DO SOMETHING I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT?”

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:59:00 -0700

The universal moral of the story:
It’s just about time
It’s just about hard work
There aren’t these phenomenal moments where everything changes

Bizarre

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:50:21 -0700

No idea how this helps anything? Time will tell.

But I did spend a dollar to do it.

Warsaw by Sharon Van Etten

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:28:02 -0700

Warsaw by Sharon Van Etten

3 generations of Stillwells

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:51:33 -0700

3 generations of Stillwells

SLC rain

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:33:41 -0700

SLC rain

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus"

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:40:48 -0700

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

cabinporn: Reader Submission from Stanley Tislavold: Cabin in...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:11:51 -0700

cabinporn:

Reader Submission from Stanley Tislavold:

Cabin in Tykostølen, Suldal, Norway

My attempt at subtraction design

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:07:04 -0700

My attempt at subtraction design