published 9 months ago (29.01.2009 12:06)

Moleskine thoughts

The Moleskine notebook is a classic, as the leaflet that comes with it explains: »Moleskine is the legendary notebook, used by European artists and thinkers of the past two centuries, from Van Gogh to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin«.

I have a couple of them. I like them because they are simple, well made, beautiful, easy to carry around, and the inventors paid attention to detail (the back pocket for loose notes, for example. Mine is full).

In the last years, I bought and received a couple of variations of it: small and large, thick and thin, regular and travel version. Checking the Moleskine website and Amazon, today there are over 50 variations of the original. Moleskine sponsors city blogs to promote their City Notebook, have special editions for museums, you can have it branded with your logo as a business present, and there even is a Japanese Pocket Album version, whatever that may be. Next time we check, the notebook will be available in pink, designed by Philippe Starck and Karl Lagerfeld,
and pre-deep-fried.

Today, Moleskine is not the notebook of »artists and thinkers« they praise in their leaflet. It’s a brand. A brand with a company and heavy machinery behind it, living off the original idea. The notebook has become an arbitrary item, like the thousands of other consumer products around us. But it fits our times well. We like things that are “retro”, and have been around and used for a while. They offer us depth, and we trust, without us having to get engaged too much.

Today, it seems to be mandatory that things successful in the small have to be scaled to the large, although the original spirit may get lost on the way. Ordering the notebook by the thousand, a single one still costs €10. How many »artists and thinkers« will buy them today?

P.S.: I’d be happy to give away my unused travel version (in the picture on the right) to someone who will use it. It has a register that divides the notebook into travel-relevant sections, like “Bed”, “Food” and “People”. Like many things I have, it seemed a nice idea at the time, but I never used it.

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published over 3 years ago (21.05.2006 10:49)

going to RailsConf Europe!

rails_conf << phillip

i’ll be in london for a good week in september, mainly to attend the first european conference held on ruby on rails.

i’m excited about meeting the people behind ruby/rails in person, and to experience the rails community! from what i’ve learnt by reading blogs, books, documentation, emailing, viewing videos and listening to podcasts, and visiting sites created in rails i believe they are the most “human” and broad-minded of all programming communities i know. so i believe it will be a pleasant and fun experience, too. beside the obvious – getting a much deeper insight into the tech side of things and learning about rails’ future.

another reason i’m going is to commit myself more to the technology. having been a php guy all my developer life, today my brain says “use rails, it’s superior”, but habit and some lazy parts of my brain sometimes still respond “hey why bother – you already know one very powerful web development environment really well, and have invested a lot in it”. i believe the experience of attending a rails conference will provide a breakthrough and convince all of me, and only a warm and fuzzy feeling will be left.

since i’ve been to london only once, i’ll stay there more than a week. the conference is on the 14th/15th, but i’ll be in town from the weekend before the conference to the weekend after it (9th-17th). i’m looking forward to being in london again, too. i’m really curious – the last time i went was in the early 90s.

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