Brian Feeney
1

Bowie on the Internet 1999

This interview with David Bowie from 1999, in which he talks about the future of the internet, is reminding me that I haven’t tackled thoughts like that in a long time. I only read think pieces on the Internet now. I’d love to read more about art vs. the Internet vs. culture … I miss my brain being tickled in that way. I’ve got to get back to reading those books which really challenged me. Got to find them first.

January 12, 2016

blog


RIP Bowie

David Bowie died yesterday. I woke up this morning at 4am, went for a glass of water, glanced at my phone and saw the news: an NYT notification confirming the death. It took me at least a half hour to fall back asleep. I cried a little. Bowie meant a lot to me in a way that’s hard to describe. His effect on me was more channeled through the artists he inspired who more directly touched my life: Blur, Suede, B&S. Of course I discovered Bowie’s music early on, and connected with it deeply, but I believe I haven’t made it all the way through. There are still records I’ve only heard, and not truly listened to. Bowie’s music will have new things to share with me the rest of my life.

It’s been a weird day. Hard to think of much else. Rest in peace, David Jones.

January 11, 2016

blog


Insta Ads

Too many advertisements in Instagram now. It’s like every four or five posts. I feel like I’m flipping through a coupon book and a not steam of friends and artists. Putting it away for now, like I did with Facebook a few years ago.

Never went back to Facebook.

January 09, 2016

blog


Journaling and Blogging

For the last few years, I've written a lot in a personal journal. The journal alternates between private and public-worthy content, and I find it very hard to pull out what should be published at this site and what shouldn't. It's a design problem I want to solve. I want one place to write which allows me to push to public view if I choose. 

There aren't any apps or CMS's out there at the moment which do exactly what I want. So I've been designing my own. How I build it is another question, but I'm enjoying playing with the constraints and the possibilities. 

What I've come up with is a combination of an iOS note taking app and dropbox-hosted static site CMS. The hope is to construct something which is very easy to set up and use, and reduces as much friction as possible. 

I'm designing something for myself. And maybe I'll build it for myself. Shipping something along these lines is a goal for 2016, and I'll try and document my progress here.

December 19, 2015

blog


July 25, 2015

blog


Blur at Music Hall of Williamsburg

Absolutely incredible to see Blur up close and personal. They played through new album The Magic Whip, plus a few songs in an encore. Trouble in the Message Center was so rocking.

May 01, 2015

blog


Darkroom

darkroom-presskit-16x9-3screens.jpg#asse

Yesterday, Matt Brown and Majd Taby released their new app, Darkroom. It's a remarkable new standard in the photo-editing app category, completely deserving of all the praise it's been getting. Both Matt and Majd are photo lovers and Darkroom shows it. They've built a tool that lets you get inside your photos and photo library in all the ways you wish you could on your phone. And quickly. And easily. And beautifully. I love this app.

For well over a year, I was a heavy user of VSCO Cam. In order for Darkroom to become my default photo-editor, it really needed to do everything better. Or at least just as well. When I heard Brown was working on a photo-editing app, my first thought was, "Shit." What if it's terrible. (Brown is an old friend.) But I'm happy to say that since using Darkroom (I was a beta tester), I've barely opened VSCO at all. Darkroom is simply better. Granted, it's missing all the great filters VSCO has wonderfully curated, but in Darkroom, you can make your own. You could even spend a little time copying the look of your favorite VSCO filters if you were so inclined. I did for a couple, and I'll probably copy a few more. In any case, it can't be long until I reach full filter saturation. How many do you need, really?

One of the things I missed from VSCO Cam was the imported photos feature. For me, it acted as a To Edit Later list, a place to keep all my better images and save them for another day. Turns out there's a great work around in Darkroom, and it's even better for a couple important reasons. The iOS Photos app lets you mark your favorite photos with a click of a heart icon, which are then collected in a Favorite folder. Darkroom gives you access to all your different Photos folders, which means without any fuss I can quickly jump into Favorites and start editing from there. And because I'm not importing images into the app, the app itself isn't growing in size, which was a big problem with VSCO Cam. Right at this moment, on my phone, VSCO is at 313MB in size. Darkroom is 6.1MB. Darkroom wins.

Aside from custom filter creation, the other big selling point for Darkroom is its Curves feature, which you can purchase for $2.99 (the app itself is free), and it's awesome. It's handsomely designed for touch, allowing you to run quickly through each curve and end up with a nicely tuned image at the finish. There will be other features for sale soon, which will add even more functionality to an already great app.

My iPhone is the camera I use the most because it's the camera I always have with me. Apps like Darkroom makes it even better.

February 13, 2015

blog


Cushioning

Though I'm employed full time by the Brooklyn Museum, I also take freelance work. I do this for a few different reasons. 1) The extra income. 2) For keeping both my design and development skills in practice. 3) To help out friends. 4) Because I love making things .

Because of number 4, I say yes to just about anything that comes my way. This sometimes becomes a problem because I tend to make terrible assumptions about my time. Namely, how much of it I actually have to work. 

This is one of the reasons Jonnie Hallman has created Cushion. It's a web app with two very meaningful purposes. One is for tracking your income as a freelancer, making sure you have enough work scheduled to be financially stable. The other is to help make intelligent decisions about scheduling the work so that you're not doing too much at once. 

Since I have already have a sustaining salary, the income tracking feature is only a nice-to-have for me. It's great to see in one glance, though, and if I ever did go fully freelance, it would immediately become a need-to-have feature. But the scheduling view -- that is a feature which really pulls its weight for me.

Two things Cushion has shown me so far:

1) I did a pretty good job scheduling my freelance work in 2014:

Screen-Shot-2014-11-20-at-5.16.40-PM.png

2) 2015 is starting to look a little top-heavy.

Screen-Shot-2014-11-20-at-5.27.47-PM.png

I'm really glad to have seen this displayed so clearly. Seeing my time commitments in this way makes me feel empowered. I have a better grasp on how much work I can handle and what kind of promises I can and cannot make to current and future clients. This was definitely worth the cost of joining the paid beta.

There's a paid beta. If you're a freelancer, I'm already prepared to say that Cushion is worth it. And Jonnie is a good dude. Much respect for building a great, very useful thing.

November 20, 2014

blog


Monument Valley

I've only played a handful of iOS games. While many are fun and well designed, Monument Valley is by far the most beautiful. It's especially engrossing on the iPad. I fall right into it. That's not even mentioning how much fun it is. Great little mind-bending puzzles all over the place. I highly recommend it. The second set of stages was released yesterday, as an in-app purchase. 

November 13, 2014

blog


Blogging for the Brooklyn Museum

My first post for the Brooklyn Museum Tech blog went up October 20th: The Design Spin Cycle. In it, I tried to explain what it's like jumping into a huge project which had already gained strong momentum with respect to research and purpose, but hadn't yet found it's shape. We knew the goal for what we would eventually build, but we didn't yet know what we would end up building. I also tried to hint at how much I'm designing -- as in, the size and scope of it all. There are a lot of different pieces, some much larger than others, some public facing while others are for internal use, and I'm trying to be very deliberate about how I'm approaching it all at once. I'm very aware of being the sole designer on the project, and I want to be sure my design process includes the rest of the team as much as possible. 

I might repost it at brianfeeney.us at some point, either in this blog or some other page for posterity.

November 03, 2014

blog


8949