The Vostok blog

It’s no secret that we make a big deal about eating well at Vostok. If there’s one thing Javier, Ricardo and I have in common is just that. Sure we try to eat healthy but, what really rocks our boat is good, hearty, unpretentious food.

The correlation is quite obvious once you get your mind around it because the same reasoning that guides our design principles, guides our eating habits. Or at least, what we –with more or less luck– aspire for them to be. In other words:

In this comparison we’re not taking into account food à la Ferran Adrià. Not because we don’t consider it food or we don’t like it, but basically because it can’t be separated from Art*. In Adrià’s own words: food at El Bulli isn’t meant to nourish you (though it does), it’s meant to be an emotional experience, an event. And we don’t consider Design to be that. For Vostok, Design (with a capital letter D) is, to quote Mr. Eames, a method of action: a tool to solve problems. And therefore something that can only be compared to basic, hearty food. Food that is useful, that has a purpose. That has no artistic aspirations.

At a first glance this appreciation might be quite banal but if you take a closer look, you’ll realize it all makes sense. Because these principles aren’t just our design principles, or our food principles, they’re the principles that guide who we are and what we do.

What about pleasure, you might ask? Eating good food for the mere pleasure of it? Well, to quote Charles Eames again, who would say that pleasure is not useful?

*There’s a wonderful exception to this: La Comida de la Familia, a recipe book that has been recently edited and that includes most of the dishes the team at El Bulli had for lunch before the action started. These are all good, traditional, hearty and timeless recipes. A little gem.

Time Out Barcelona has granted Filmin (the VoD service we designed last year), the People’s prize for Best Innovative Project. A very much deserved prize indeed.

As ‘Gabriela who works at Vostok‘ this is pretty much what I have to say. But, as ‘Gabriela who loves movies and doesn’t know what she would do without them’, I would like to say a few more things about Filmin:

1. It’s one of the best online video services out there. It’s run by people who love movies, it’s simple, it’s efficient and it has a great catalog. Sure there are a few things I wish they could do better… but hey, I also want my man to be handsome, intelligent, sensitive and understanding…everyday, at all time…so hey, who cares?

2. It’s one of the few bridges between –and I’m gonna be intentionally simplistic here to stress my point– the two sides of the Spanish film industry today: the more “internet is the devil” side Vs. “internet is our savior”. There are millions of caveats, trillions of nuances and loads of things one cannot talk about unless one’s there, working at it and sweating it but, I can say this: we need middle-grounds, we need fresh air, we need companies, people, organizations and production companies that realize film distribution (and exhibition) has changed and that the new change will only bring good things for cinema.

And that’s it.

So congratulations and in Monsieur Tarantino’s own words:

So here it is, the best video of the volcano, by Sean Stiegemeier. It’s the only one that truly captures the beauty and fierceness of Eyjafjallajökull at the same time. In his words…

So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.

Here is the video, (best in fullscreen mode)

Sean declared that he’d come back to Iceland to do some more shooting if he had a sponsor. We commented on his vimeo page suggesting him to open a Kickstarter project page to get the funding. Raise your hand if you’d donate a few bucks to fund his project.

I’d suggest that you go to the Vimeo page and watch it full screen.

Some outside the US also feel the hope:

I will be in San Francisco (USA) during the next week (from Sept 30 to Oct 5). It’s neither my first nor my second visit but I am always open to any suggestion on where to go or what to do after work. Besides, if anybody feels like having a cup of coffee, send me an email at javier@programavostok.com

A must read if you are somehow thinking about location independent living (in any of its flavours): 24 Things We Wish We’d Known Before Becoming Location Independent

Yahoo totally screwed it up when it requested people to have a Yahoo ID account to be a Flickr user. It’s like you need 3 different identities to be able to post some pictures: your previous one, the yahoo one, and then the flickr one, all of them with its email accounts, user passwords and all that.

Totally wrong.

But today I found something unbelievable:

In order to complete registration, you must provide a valid credit card and billing adress to indicate you are over 18.

Way beyond stupidity.

Some are extracted from the talks I attended while some others come from my personal-internal reboot:

1. There is a world out there, go reach it.
2. Your shit is someone else’s food (metaphorically speaking, ok?).
3. Own no more than 5 things you use, or else things will use you instead.
4. Leave your shit behind, it will serve others and make you more free.
5. If you reinterpret space and use it in non-conventional ways you are on advantage.
6. Courage is one of the most important things in life.
7. You can design your own life.
8. Do-ers are better than thinkers (in case you had to chose).
9. Conferences on a far away city are great for putting thoughts in order.
10. Web2.love is still the only strategic approach that makes sense when creating things.

I would love to see some more of these shared by other atendees. Please, let me know if you happen to post yours.

As some of you know, I’ve spent the past days at Reboot10. Now I can confirm what people usually say about it: there is something special at reboot that empowers you and insipires for new things.

I made a few decisions while here in CPH. First one is going back to posting in English. I feel sorry for those who prefer Spanish. I know the blog may lose a bit of freshness (if it ever had that) but hey, the world is huge and ther are so many amazing people out there who I couldn’t reach otherwise.

Personal stuff may come in Spanish sometimes, so don’t expect too much consistency. As chaotic as life, I guess.