Be A Design Group.
Community design blog (that is, a blog about design by a community of designers.) Good reading. This one goes in the favorites.
We just finished the first season of Six Feet Under last night. Apparently, this show came out in, like, 1999 or 2000 or something, and totally flew right over our heads. It could be that we don’t have HBO and that I waited three years too long to open up a Netflix account, or it could be that I’m just a cheap bastard. Whatever the case, we love the series (or, at least, the first season of it.) I think that the first episode kind of took us by surprise, and then we were immediately hooked. Now, I’ve heard varying reviews of the next couple of seasons (and don’t go telling us what happens, people), and I think we’re looking forward to Season 2, but we’ve decided to take a break on it and switch over to something different. Like Trainspotting. And then, Shaun of the Dead.
We made it through the Baltimore Blizzard just fine, although heading out to see Miss Lis at Molly’s did not happen—my apologies, Lis. There’s about 12″ of fresh snow down here in Catonsville, and for whatever reason shovelling it yesterday was a lot easier than the last snowfall we had—the last snowfall was that dry blustery kind that just blows all over the place, whereas this was the kind of snow that made big white drifts stick to the side of the house. I decided that cookies were in order if we were getting snowed in, and made them better than last time (something about packing the brown sugar.) The neighbor’s son came out and helped me clear the driveway with his snowblower, and breathed whisky fumes downwind to me while we chatted. It’s good to see some things don’t change.
Finally, I inherited another iMac last week, this one a slot-loading model (the date stamped on the CD-ROM is October 1999), and slapped a 120GB drive into it on Saturday. Most of Sunday was spent watching HGTV and a freaky Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Duvall (WTF??!?!) and loading my backup music files onto the machine. Purple, the old reliable warhorse I’ve dragged from home to work and back again, will be retired, and the new Bondi Blue machine will take its place.
I posted the “K” entry in the Alphabet Project this morning (technically, this afternoon.) Let me know what you think.
Does anybody have a basic sewing machine my wife can borrow? I promise she’ll give it back.
(she’s looking at the chair in our basement and thinking about reupholstering it.)
Woodworking Tools.
This site has a ton of nice products, but the stuff we’re looking at is the veneer.
PR Flack Resigns From NASA
Dude was a 24-year-old Bush appointee, and was trying to squash NASA’s global warming scientists. Oh, and he never graduated college. (via)
I just posted the entry for J on the Alphabet Project. Now, I have to go press my pants for a client meeting tomorrow morning, and pack an oh-shit bag for another client whose laptop just blew up.
But first, I’m treating my beautiful wife and I to some Ghirardelli hot chocolate.
I know I promised weekly updates to the Alphabet Project, but I haven’t been able to get “J” done (well, actually, off the ground) this week. I spent the better part of Tuesday at a client’s house, and yesterday I fought Darwin Streaming Server to a draw, attempting to simply hook up a streamed video for a client. Little did I know that Quicktime’s method of streaming is somewhat arcane, the directions are oblique, the tools confusing, and the results questionable. I’d blame Apple (shakes fist in the direction of Cupertino) but as far as I can tell, they open-sourced the thing years ago and it’s sort of been languishing ever since. (Exhibit A: dig that Garamond Condensed in that last hyperlink. That’s so 1999.) Along the way, I booted up Keynote for the first time and fought with it to build a pair of presentations for a client meeting tomorrow morning. My review: I’d say it’s pretty, and it works well, but there are some major changes I’d make to the interface and the functionality to extend the program and reduce frustration.
One bright spot: We hit the library yesterday, and I scored a bunch of new (well, new in 2005) music: some Broken Social Scene, some Ted Leo, some Sigur Ros, some Wu-Tang. I also scored a copy of Charles Burns’ new hardback, called Black Hole. I’d just have to say, damn. Remember reading Big Baby back in the day and being sort of freaked out by the bugs and weird people and stuff? Now imagine a story about growing up in the 1970’s and a bunch of teenagers who have this strange virus that mutates them in different ways—and the way they get the virus is through sexual contact. Add in the social pressures of being in high school, first love, and lots of drugs, and stir. The book is absolutely beautiful. The pages are heavy, the printing is perfect, and his illustrations are incredible. I started it at 11:30 and finished it at 1:15, completely riveted. Check it out. And, while I’m at it, props to my local library for carrying it.
P.S. New illustration coming this evening—I’ve got it laid out and ready to go.