Timoni West is a web designer in San Francisco.
This is her blog.

Examine her portfolio here, find some new music, or follow her on Twitter, Flickr, or other places around the internet.

January 26th, 2012
The fact of the matter is I want everything we do–that I do personally, that our office does–to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or whether the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.
January 2nd, 2012
December 25th, 2011

My amazing boyfriend, Rob Villaneuva, got me a giant Wookie for Christmas. But first, he took it on adventures around San Francisco.

December 22nd, 2011

Current status.

December 17th, 2011

tylercoates:

Sady! 

Friendsgiving 2011 (by RobVSF)

December 7th, 2011

Tintype (by henrylyne)

December 5th, 2011

The best, most practical rundown of ways to get your point across in a work environment. Especially number one.

November 29th, 2011

Handy list of empathy blockers, or, never say this to a sad person

This morning I heard a hilarious story about Friend A trying to cheer up Friend B by calculating the number of hours Friend B could rightfully claim to be upset. It reminded me that not everybody knows about empathy blockers, the emotional equivalent of logical fallacies. Here’s a handy list from Robin Grille’s Heart to Heart Parenting. While the full article is geared towards parents and child-rearing, this list is really useful for anybody:

Downplaying
Oh, don’t cry. I’m sure it’s not that bad! It’s not the end of the world.

Denial
There is nothing wrong; nothing for you to be upset about. Everything is OK.

Reasoning
Don’t cry. Can’t you see that the other child didn’t mean to hurt you?

The positive spin
Look on the bright side. Can’t you see, this probably happened for a good reason?

Cheering up
Don’t worry. Here, let me tell you something funny I heard the other day. Here, have an ice cream. That’ll cheer you up.

Advising/giving options
Why don’t you try doing this, or that? I think you should just ignore that so-and-so.

The expectation
You should have known better. Get over it. Don’t let it get to you.

Put down
Don’t be silly. Don’t be ridiculous.

Diagnosing/labeling
You are being over-sensitive.

Distracting/diverting
Hey, have a look at the pretty puppet.

Stealing the thunder
Now you know how I felt when the same thing happened to me.

It’s natural to respond to a friend who’s hurting with an empathy blocker:

Sometimes we use empathy blockers inadvertently because we are anxiously trying to save our children from emotional pain. Ironically, the greatest salve for our children comes from being heard, not from us trying to change how they feel. For all of these reasons, we all use empathy blockers from time to time, quite automatically and unconsciously. You could say we are all quite skilled at blocking.

But it’s likely you won’t help your friend feel better. (Honestly if you go too far with some of these blockers, they’ll probably just want to punch you.) Instead, check out the rest of the article for tips on how to deal with painful—or even just annoying—situations.

—Timoni

November 28th, 2011
I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it’s true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I’ll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.

JWZ’s response to Arrington’s “Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining”, in Watch a VC use my name to sell a con. | jwz

In any case, Maus argues, these chord patterns that to us might feel redolent of John Carpenter soundtracks or dry ice and backcombed hair actually have a much older historical precedent: “When people say my record sounds 80s, what they’re really homing in on is this harmonic backbone that comes from mid-Renaissance and medieval pieces. For whatever reason, the pioneers of electronic music that came out of Sheffield and Manchester in the 1980s became interested in these ecclesiastical modes that, historically, were associated with the divine. So in my mind, it’s not about the 80s, it’s an objective musical phenomenon.
November 18th, 2011

Michael Sheen: leader of the vampires, werewolves, Great Britain, and the secret back alleys of Tron. And Liz Lemon’s super-annoying ex.

October 30th, 2011
October 24th, 2011

(Source: divisionxvi)