100 posts on svbtle, the good or the bad & the ugly

theGood #

Writing isn’t one of my strengths but still I pursue. Have to engage in the activity as it’s the only way to disseminate research, mostly findings from the various arbitrary quests in pursuit of modelling a design practice. It’s been about two years in making of this process, with much push and pull a milestone of sorts is stated as an achievement. Several earlier attempts were pursued, testing all earlier platforms none of it were reached any fruition. Boards were studied and customised. Content was published. Mostly because of frustrations with how sites functioned none of the plots sustained itself. With the introduction of medium, a new era publishing came to be, where focus was as much about the user interface at the back as how it displayed when posted. Blogging application therefore in addition to just publishing your content also played role to encourage writing. Thus began my writing session. Medium, when I got in was about creating texts and collecting other pieces of work. Around about that time, a bit into medium svbtle came about with again a minimalist interior production environment. While medium was a nonlinear, mostly curated exercise, svbtle encouraged the linear dump. Over this period, work produced is mostly a mess of sorts. Most planned exercises didn’t take off and those which did didn’t come out all that well. An essential disparity was how work should find itself distributed between the two platforms. That in itself is the good in the process or understood as such to a degree.

theBad (probably there is some good here and there) #

Now minimalist writing environments is a thing. It’s got to give you a more dedicated space to get an act in place. All that in principle seems alright till things get too sparse. That is case with svbtle. It doesn’t come with an archive. No tag clouds. Just you and the work. Making up for the loss of an index is the assembled list. A sum total of posts from date of login to current engagements the following is considered an access point to content produced. Bearing in mind aspirations of linearity, texts produced over time is systemically published. What should have been ideal is clarity of subjects covered, but this is effectively missing. Overall mandates which govern interests are architecture, curation and urbanism. Texts found in the list would therefore be aligned in either of the three knowledge spheres. Some method to make up of the svbtle bad via medium is well still under works. What the exercise has encouraged is concentrate writings, in all its varying iterations under a single domain which now is the only attribute of clarity worthy of mention. The rest is a meandering lot of events wherein structure is a dedicated pursuit and like this list enforced. Projects which have emerged are on a city development planning process, list ideas and writing exercises for clog. Should they have played a major significance? To present a convincing case for the same seems futile. What it has enabled is take post sets as projects, wherein a project to close for a later date of submission is a sum total of texts curated from a cluttered archive.

11022015 thinking on tumblr

11022015 ideas on the internet, all my sites from tumblr to linkedin

11012015 publishing architecture, a working list

10312015 revisiting a project _ 02, mumbai museum

10312015 revisiting a project _ 01, house for the malhotra family

10312015 picture books of buildings

10232015 recruitment@oma

10102015 places in bandra

08292015 fifty-five architecture firms I like to follow but do not

08132015 staggering beauty

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06302015 gis website for urban collaboration

06292015 of information and data, edition 1.01

06222015 more observations and anticipatory upcoming updates

06132015 online architecture research plots

06112015 parts of a repository

06112015 observing other repositories

05232015 ten things i learned building a virtual city information repository

05232015 mumbaiopendata.org edition01

04242015 dear isaac

04242015 hello isaac

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02272015 social amenities; imagining a mumbai cultural policy

02232015 method for comments

02222015 mumbai24hours

02202015 saving the worldport

02202015 how we preserve?

02132015 design research, mumbai field notes

02012015 working in mumbai

01162015 what happened to the architectural manifesto?

01042015 design research vs01

2015
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12292014 method of a review

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12232014 excavating in youtube vs02

12192014 imaginary practices

10062014 the helsinki model

10032014 building as a collectible

09092014 what is tad? - quote edition

09052014 case-study: tjfree design lists

09052014 what is tad? - lite edition

09032014 dear debashree

08262014 draft 01 _ subject to abstract

08252014 riddle’s model

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08152014 machimach vs04.03

08092014 yuva _ unorganised sector

08092014 tiss _ formal housing

08062014 udri _ urban form

06282014 ram’s ten principles of “good design”

06242014 169 responses

06232014 excavating in youtube vs01

06202014 fundamentals at wikipedia

06132014 rem-research-vs04

05282014 predictions of gupte & shetty

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05192014 #thecityweneed

05172014 impractical competitions

05142014 found 09 - a plan for, of and by the people

05142014 found 08 - 63 questions

05142014 found 07 - early minutes

05132014 found 06 - revising the development plan

05122014 found 05 - 10 guiding principles

05122014 found 04 - mumbai vision 2015

05102014 found 03 - manifesto united mumbai

05102014 locating the archive

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04282014 writer’s retreat

04282014 rem-research-vs03

04262014 city guidebooks

04212014 krvia _ gaothan, koliwada, adivasi

04212014 design without drawings

04172014 blogger mumbai architects

04162014 culture in the plan

04152014 at hanuman theatre

04132014 reading urbanism

04122014 contents _ unpublished

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04102014 blurry times

04092014 a virtual city archive

04052014 rem-research-vs02

04042014 100 events of oma

03242014 exhibition archive

03212014 approximately a year on facebook

03202014 inspiring design in #india

03202014 rem-research-vs01

03122014 thesis framework

03062014 list 04: museums & collections

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03062014 list 03: geography of the kochi biennale

03062014 list 02: london, precincts, 1960’s nostalgia

03062014 list 01: data visualization, infographics, ted

03052014 joshi vs unni

03032014 krvia, tiss, udri, yuva

02282014 mumbaiopendata.org

02282014 1500 words, probably a bit more

02262014 colors in the plan

02232014 contents to the dcr’s

02222014 mumbai plans

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02212014 restructuring a post

02142014 mail 02, research collab

02142014 mail 01, publication collab

02122014 found 02 - open/ equitable/ efficient

02122014 found 01 - introduction to reader ‘08

02122014 ideas draft 01

02112014 walking in a mumbai village

02102014 editing discrepancies

01292014 historiography

01292014 post on starting day

&theUgly #

Messy and unclarified is the bane of the writing exercise. Though cool at the time of its introduction to have markup formatting giving a better control of publishing content worked at its early stages. The issue which messes up the already messy state is lack of access to a ready markup index. Something done at stackedit.io should be implemented for reference within the platform itself instead of a redirect. Well ideally. The next gripe is about the network. All blogging platforms are touted as networks of collaboration. Somehow I can’t seem to get part of any of them. Medium there is more hope as the platform takes, or claims to take effort to make you part of a collective. Svbtle proves to be completely narcissistic as there is only a faint recognition of who or what the network comprises of. Even if it exists again projects itself as a club with access to it only via its gate keepers. Brower extensions too don’t play nice with the platform. Such is the case for grammerly which, completely/ or ideally to a degree kills the drafts interface. These aside, the general hope is minimal would clean up over time i.e. polish to a degree of refinement. May be because the blog got in during the early adoption period it still works the same way. One thing which broke along the way and not fixed is the publish button. Instead of staying in unpublished mode like at earlier instances, post gets published and stays hidden. This error because of its minimal UI glares out and becomes an irritant tick. Help from concierge@svbtle is at most instances non-existent. Even if anyone has to pay to use the service, it’s not clear if payment is for its design or for any other features which in under development. Svbtle was defiantly a novelty which now is dated. There are avenues on how to extend the minimal theme over time, possibility encourage a tad amount of customisation tools, favouring personalisation is definitely welcome. If the creators of the platform don’t like their templates tempered with then at-least they should on an interim basis update their platform to keep up with the temperamental shifts in design trends.