02.28.10 CHARLOTTESVILLE CHINESE

What a heart-warming surprise to find our favorite local Chinese restaurant, Taste of China, and its chef, Peter Chang, written up in both New Yorker magazine and the Oxford American this week! We have looked forward to a regular Friday evening celebration with his food for several months now. My favorite is #44 Dried Fried Eggplant Szechuan Style with its mystery ingredient which alternately sparkles in your mouth like a carbonated candy, and then numbs your tongue, changing the flavor of the rest of the spices.

02.15.10 THE BOOK EVOLVES

It seems I have devoted my professional life to the design of books (and publications). It has given me the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about the idea of "the book" and what it means. Just now this is a topic of great interest in our culture. Who really knows what all of the technological innovations will bring, but one thing is certain, the book has made a huge evolutionary leap!

To participate in these recent changes and to allow me to easily access the masses of digital texts being made available on the web, I decided to create my own "digital book." I have not been comfortable with the size and interface of the digital books offered by Sony, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others. So I designed a format for my own ebook. It has several advantages; it is not locked into any one publisher's proprietary system - it actually accesses them ALL - and it already operates in color. Best of all, it fits comfortably in my hand, is a pleasure to hold, and easily fits in my shirt pocket! Now I can carry thousands of "books" around in this little device I have created from the ubiquitous IPod Touch.