Started well

As I said earlier, home and happy. Quite oddly happy, somehow: I was in a great mood all week. I do definitely like Hamburg, it's a very nice city. It reminds me a lot of London (England): lots of brick and trees and broad streets, all of which are rare in Stuttgart because of its tight, steep valley setting.

Ingrid and I spent the first three days deciding on a strategy: enabling ourselves to "do the job" by redefining what the job is. We established a list of types of display system (freestanding display case, hanging on the walls, built into the walls etc), and decided on a system of presenting the necessary minimum of information for each of the exhibition's themes. I drew preliminary detail designs for most of the types of cases, while Ingrid tried desperately to get the curators to make some decisions. I think it's going to work out well, but will be very tight to finish this on schedule. Especially if the curators keep on farting about.

Too tired, more tomorrow. But before I go: Paul Graham writes well about stuff:

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. [...]

I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff I left in my landlady's attic back in the US. And you know what? All I missed were some of the books. By the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic.

And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone? I might need that one day.

Go read.