It's another Blog Off: do social sites like Facebook connect or isolate?

So today's another Blog Off, an event where bloggers of all stripes weigh in on the same topic. This week's topic is "Do social sites like Facebook connect the world or isolate people?" The topic was spawned by a flawed scrap of research that the mainstream media pounced on like vultures on road kill. Never mind that the research in question amounted to a poll conducted by an undergraduate of her peers in a  psych class. What mattered was the finding that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and self-haters equally. Because no one seems to understand statistics or how to construct a logical argument, headlines exploded in August. Within days, the conventional wisdom had jumped to yet another flawed assumption. Namely that Facebook causes narcissism.

From the Telegraph

Facebook provides an ideal setting for narcissists to monitor their appearance and how many ‘friends’ they have, the study said, as it allows them to thrive on ‘shallow’ relationships while avoiding genuine warmth and empathy.

From the Toronto Star

Compelled to tell your 500 Facebook chums every time you can’t find your sunglasses? Want the world to know you look like Robert Pattison? Post new Photoshopped pictures every day?

You, my friend, are narcissistic and insecure.

I could go on and list quotes and back links for days but you see my point. The mainstream media seems to be threatened by social media, the new kid on the block, and the results are predictable.

I have my share of problems with Facebook. I think of it as a cul de sac on the World Wide Web. It's the new AOL I tell people all the time. Facebook is a duplicated, smaller version of the web and despite the fact that it connects people from their respective pasts and presents, the only thing it isolates is people from their futures. I'll get to that in a minute but I love having a site where I can catch up with my nieces and nephews, my siblings, old friends from high school and college and the rest. But my past is my past for a reason. It's pleasant to hang out there from time to time but it doesn't help me get to where I want to go. I think that's Facebook's Achilles' heel by the way and it will be what does it in. It's all but impossible to meet new people there.

I don't know about anybody else, but my life has been completely and utterly transformed by social media. I document most of it on Facebook, but none of this transformation starts there. For me it started with Blogger.

Two-and-a-half years ago I was an unknown designer in a second-tier city tucked along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to the kick start I got from my Blogger blog, here I sit as some kind of an industry thought leader (I hate that term) with a network of peers, colleagues and friends that spans the globe. My involvement with Blogger, and later Twitter has brought me face to face with a good number of these colleagues and friends. From the first half of 2010 alone here are a few of my personal/ professional connections.

Kelly Morrisseau writes the blog KitchenSync. She is the first designer/ blogger who ever reached out to me as a new blogger and we've maintained a a strong friendship ever since. Here we are in New York last February.

This is the community of design bloggers as it looked last winter. That photo was taken at a cocktail party in New York hosted by Brizo faucets and Manning, Selvage and Lee Public Relations last February.

Here's Saxon Henry, me, Sabrina Velandry, Paul Velandry, Johnny Grey, Chuck Wheelock and Andie Day. We met on Twitter and we're sitting in the first and second rows of a Fashion Week fashion show. We've been brought together by Brizo because we're design bloggers.

This is me speaking at the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Chicago last April. I got to that spot because a year-and-a-half ago Google itself found me via my blog and pulled me out of the scrum. They recommended me to Masco and fast forward a few months and there I am speaking at Kraftmaid's KBIS booth.

This is Zoe Voight and I hanging out in the press room at a trade show. I'm in the press room as a credentialed journalist because somebody at Veeder + Perman Public Relations loves me and loves my blog.

Here's a bunch of design bloggers at a seminar sponsored by @brizo.

Here I am giving another talk at another trade show, the Southeast Builder's Conference this time. Masco is paying me to deliver a talk on how much my blog has changed my life. Pinch me.

Everything that's going on in those photos, all of those personal connections, were made possible through my social media presence. When I hear claims that I'm further isolated I laugh at the absurdity of it.

As my travel schedule starts to take form for 2011 I just shake my head. On the inside I still think of myself as that unknown designer in a second-tier city. Based on the events where I'll be speaking, it's pretty clear that that's no longer the case.

Social media sites make the world a smaller place. They present an opportunity for real, personal connections that transcend geography to a degree and with an immediacy that's never been possible in the whole of human history. Social media generally and Twitter in particular, is where I find my future.

As is the case with anything, thew only thing social site offer is a set of tools. By the time sites like Facebook grow to the size they are (they claim 500 million members worldwide) people are bound to abuse those tools and some people can find themselves more isolated. But just as is the case with anything, it's not automatic. Facebook doesn't cause anything but compromised privacy. People who are thrown to narcissism or isolation are going to be those things with or without social media sites. All of that is a distraction from what's possible though. Better than anything I know, social media takes what's possible and makes it what's probable. As I look forward to the career shifts, adventures and challenges headed my way in the next few months I can't help but say that I owe all of it to Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, Posterous and yes, even Facebook. Me isolated? Don't make me laugh.

As part of a Blog Off, you can go to the official site and see the links to all of participating bloggers' posts. As the day goes on, I'll start listing them here as well.

A logical next step in shower design

Back in the day, this was glamor when it came to shower design.

Gold-tone shower frames with opaque glass were once objects of great envy as hard as that may be to believe. The bathroom post I ran last week has had me mulling over ideas on how to strip down what's expected from a bath design while keeping it elegant and efficient. I'm not alone in that quest for a streamlined bath by they way.

At some point in the last ten years, we lost the metal frame on a glass shower enclosure.

Shortly after we lost the frame, we lost the curb and well-designed showers these days bury the shower pan under a subtly pitched floor. But there's still something  off here. There's one last thing to remove from center stage.

I'm talking about the drain of course. Being able to keep the drain from drawing the eye down is a logical next step.

Enter Infinity Drain and their linear drain systems.

Linear drains first came into use in the deck that surrounds an in-ground pool. A great idea's a great idea and it makes sense that linear drains from Infinity should migrate indoors.

The bathroom I wrote about last week will have an Infinity Drain, mark my words. Linear drains are the logical next step in the evolution of the shower, spend some time on Infinity's website and learn more.

Late-summer rerun: From the land of the shoo-fly

This post ran originally on October 3rd, 2008. In an effort to reclaim some part of my life, I'm dipping into my archives on weekends for the time being.

I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; and no, I'm not Amish. I've been away from those gently rolling hills for a long time but Thanksgiving makes me nostalgic. I may not be Amish, but it doesn't take an Amishman to appreciate pretty countryside and an urge to make things by hand.

Arguably, Lancaster County's signature dish is a little something called shoo-fly pie. Shoo-fly pie is one of those things that everybody's heard of but never encountered first hand. Shoo-fly pie is one of my favorite things to bake and it can't be the holidays in my house without it.

The first time I ever made one for a party, everyone thought it was so exotic and cosmopolitan. That is funny on so many levels at one time I can't stand it. Anyhow, here's my recipe for cosmopolitan and exotic shoo-fly pie.

Pie dough for a nine-inch pie
1 cup of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup of firmly packed, dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter (softened)
1 cup light molasses
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup boiling water

Roll out pie dough and turn into a nine-inch pie plate. Trim and flute the edges. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar and softened butter. Mash with a fork until it reaches a consistent, crumbly consistency. In a separate bowl, beat together the molasses, egg and baking soda with a large spoon until blended. Stir in the boiling water and mix thoroughly (this will begin to foam). Stir half the crumb mixture into the molasses mixture and pour into the crust. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the top. Bake a 400 degrees, on the center rack, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake until the pie filling has puffed around the sides and is firm in the center, about 20 to 30 minutes more. Cool on a rack.

Late-summer rerun: A faux education

This post ran originally on October 3rd, 2008. In an effort to reclaim some part of my life, I'm dipping into my archives on weekends for the time being. 


I had a conversation about faux painting with a client the other day. She wanted me to refer her to a painter who could paint some columns in her entry way so that they looked like they were made from marble.

Now a year ago I would have done everything in my power to dissuade her from this faux marble idea. There was a time when I couldn't separate the idea of faux painting with its most obvious and bad expressions. All too often, people take a page from HGTV and attempt to faux paint (poorly) things that have no business being faux painted. Stuff like this:

I mean really, what are the odds of a contemporary house having walls made from entire slabs of identical marble? The first test these kinds of techniques have to pass is a logical one. Ask yourself, does this application make sense? In the case above, the answer is a resounding no.

But in the hands of a professional artist, a faux marble or trompe l'oeil effect can be cool as well as a compliment to the structure of a room. That said, well-done work of this kind is the exception rather than the rule. Unless you have a fine arts background, do not attempt this on your own or you'll end up with something that looks like this:

Man! That burns my eyes.

The idea of faux marble and trompe l'oeil painting got its start in Ancient Rome believe it or not. I had to see it first hand to believe it and here are some photos of what I saw. Some friends and I were treated to a walk through the excavation of the Villa San Marco in Castellmare di Stabia a couple of months ago. The Villa San Marco was a 28,000 square foot (that's not a typo!) Roman villa on the shores of the Bay of Naples. The Villa San Marco was the home of wealthy Roman family and it was buried by ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. The villa is an amazement and to walk through it today is to get a real feel for the people who lived in it.

The Roman empire had a leisure class, probably the first such leisure class in human history. This leisure class had enough time and enough money to develop the idea of decorative art for their homes. It makes my heart beat faster to think about people two thousand years ago living lives that had an awful lot in common with mine. Now, I don't live in 28,000 square feet of house but I do like a nice paint job. Besides, so much of our cultural stuff --from birthday parties to wedding rings, from exchanging presents in late December to the Superbowl --we got from them.

This is a detail of a trompe l'oeil fresco on a wall in a bedroom in the Villa San Marco. It wasn't until I saw this with my own eyes that I realized that the Romans had mastered perspective. Perspective disappeared from western art for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome.

Here's a detail from a similar fresco.

This is another fresco from the same room. Now bear in mind that this fresco is around 2000 years old and survived the explosion of a nearby volcano. My mind reels when I think about how this must have looked when it was new.

I thought my head was going to explode when I stood in front of this wall. My photo doesn't begin to do it justice. The room itself was small, probably twelve feet wide by ten feet deep. But even after all those years, this fresco made the walls disappear. If you ever find yourself anywhere near Naples in southern Italy, you owe it to yourself to track down a guide who will get you into the Villa San Marco.

Just inside the main entry and in the peristyle courtyard of the Villa San Marco the the shrine to the household gods of the family who owned the villa. It's made from cast concrete and I was amazed that so much of its original paint job had survived the years.

When I looked closer though I realized that the whole thing had been faux painted. The marble that this faux marble is imitating is all over Italy on ancient as well as in contemporary structures.

Here's an even tighter close up. Un-be-liev-a-ble.

So seeing those Roman paint effects was really something. I learned that the faux marble I'd always mocked had a real history and I started warming up to the idea of it. Ditto trompe l'oeil painting. So I decided to get over my biases and just accept it as another decorative art. So long as it's done well that is. Done well by a master like what I saw at the Villa San Marco.

Well about a week later I was in Rome and I was walking down the Corso d'Italia at 7:30 on a rainy Sunday morning. As I now know, rainy Sunday mornings are about the only time when Rome's streets are quiet. I heard a church bell and decided to go to mass. I mean, when in Rome, right? So I ducked into the first church I came to, the San Carlo di Corso. It's also one of the largest churches in Rome. It was built in the early 1600s and it is massive. The entire interior seemed to have been made from marble and granite with a whole lot of gilt for good measure.

So about 20 Italian senior citizens, me and a handful of pilgrims from the world over sat through mass and despite the fact that it was in Italian, I surprised myself with how well I could participate in it. Even after all these years, a mass is a mass regardless of the language it's said in. So I followed along between major bouts of distraction by the incredible building I was sitting in that is. Then, after mass, I couldn't restrain myself any longer and I walked over to the side of the church to get a good look at the stone work.

Wouldn't you know it, every inch of marble and granite on those 400-year-old walls was faux painted.

Martha Stewart commits another offense

The Home Depot just launched a new line of cabinetry and it has Martha Stewart's name plastered all over it. I mean that literally.

One of my favorite people in all of Bloggerdom is the ever delightful Raina Cox from If the Lampshade Fits. Raina likes to poke me with a stick through late night, one-line e-mails that she knows will get a rise out of me. Her latest arrived on Sunday night. The subject line read "Thoughts?" and the body of the message consisted of "Martha Stewart kitchens from Home Depot" and then she included a link to an LA Times article announcing the product launch. Predictably, Raina's message set off a flurry of internet searches and a round of back and forth messages that consisted of my bile venting.

Listen, I don't begrudge Martha Stewart one thing. In fact, I admire everything she's managed to do over the last 30 years. Our tastes diverge shall we say but aside from the taste thing I'm in awe her ability to turn every aspect of the character she plays on TV into another branded product.

With that said, she may have crossed a line here with The Home Depot.

From the LA Times:

Using her own utilitarian kitchen as inspiration, Martha Stewart has released her first special order line of cabinetry, hardware and counter tops.

Sold exclusively at the Home Depot, the cabinetry features clean lines and comes in 11 door styles and a variety of wood finishes. It also offers thoughtful accessories that show Stewart is in charge: cookbook pop downs, roll out shelves and pegged dish organizers.

From the sound of that press release regurgitation, somebody'd would be led to believe that Martha herself was very intimately involved in this project. That would be wrong of course.

Again from the LA Times:

Inspired from authentic all-American homes with enduring charm, these designs are rooted in classic styles and crafted expressly for the modern home.

Just like the Thomasville cabinetry sold at the big orange box, this is a licensing deal. Home Depot pays Thomasville and Martha Stewart for the use of their names. And just as is the case with Thomasville Cabinetry, Martha's are made by MasterBrand Cabinets. Masterbrand Cabinets itself is a division of Fortune Brands. This doesn't make them a bad product. It does however explain that they are a relatively inexpensive, mass produced cabinet. The brand names like Martha Stewart and Thomasville are there to distract people from the fact that what they're buying is not actually a premium although they're priced as if they are.

If you find yourself at a home center for cabinetry, and this pertains to a lot of people, just know what you're in for and adjust your expectations accordingly. Oh and by the way, cabinets aren't sold by the foot so don't believe the linear foot costs home centers like to scatter around their kitchen departments. real prices are somewhere between three and four times the prices on the signs.

Oh and by the way, the images scattered around this post are from Home depot's Martha Stewart Cabinets. The first photo's door style is called Mount Desert. It looks like a cheesy, home center, oak cabinet and that exactly what it is.

So whattya think gang, would you let Martha into your kitchen under these circumstances?