Uncategorized – Page 9 – blog.bjones.net

I like that Siri can read notifications, but it went 0-for-2 on a message from my TV that “Southern Eel” is about to play “Illinois Street”.

A bronze plaque with raised letters. It displays "The Journalist's Creed" in full. It is hanging on a wall, shot at an angle, with sunlight and sharp shadows falling across the wall and the plaque.

Ten years ago today I was at an IRE boot camp at Mizzou in Columbia, Mo. learning how to be a data journalist. The Journalist’s Creed was written by Walter Williams, founding dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, in 1914.

An image of some text from a newspaper. It is in three columns. In the first two columns, the first line of a paragraph is the last line of text. The last one has a single word on the last line.

I know page design is handled at a hub and very quickly by people with too much to do, but this sort of thing still snags my brain when I look at a paper. Three stragglers at the bottom of three columns, and one of them is hyphenated.

“Today, an overwhelming majority of @stlpublicradio’s on and off-air staff are taking a historic step in becoming the first @NPR radio station in #Missouri to form a union… #WeMakeSTLPR (🧵)” @stlprguild on Twitter

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation but tonight it occurred to me that walking to bed in a dark house with your phone flashlight is the modern-day equivalent of using a chamberstick.

Nameplate I traced out of an old Sanborn fire insurance map, then inked and colored. Turned out ok for a first try.

Traced from an old Sanborn map and inked.

More experiments. A Mondrian-inspired note card, much globbier than intended.

Trying to kick the habit of needing to feel like I’m decent at something creative before attempting it. How much potential joy has that robbed me of over decades?