many moons

it has been a long time since i have made a post here on this blog. unfortunately, the frequency at which posts occur will not increase here. mostly because this blogging thing has become a bit of a “meh” thing for me. well, i’m lying… but not really… you see, that whole “i am jealous” thing has my blogging focus by the short hairs and doesn’t look like it will let up anytime soon. speaking of…


iaj is doing something a little new for this week (i meant to post this yesterday, but some things had me otherwise occupied): themed jealousies. every first week of the month will follow a theme that all those jealousies will share; this week being “science”. so for the next 6 days (this week's started yesterday, obviously) all the posted jealousies will be somehow related to the general topic of science. i am constantly trying to figure out how to draw more traffic to what is, essentially, a clever link-dump. this was the best i could come with so far. please feel free to leave any comments regarding iaj here or on the site itself.

i don't know what else to write about right now. not like there are really more than a couple people that will actually read this.

set one

i got a button maker for my birthday. finished the first go of it last night. i have plans for these little guys. more on that later.

for abby

my 10 year old kitty, the sister of allie, a forever kitten, passed away today. the mouse entered the bedroom earlier this evening to find her at the foot of the bed.















she never grew up. she played like a kitten every day. she made you smile the instant she walked into a room. she had the most beautiful purr. she was incredibly soft. she was my baby kitten and she kept her promise to always be a kitten.
















i ran this evening. a day later than my normal schedule. i ran for abby. she would have still beat me; chortling the whole way.




i am jealous of your serenity

i am jealous

trying a new thing i began last friday. it started out as a joke/compliment to a thread made in a forum i frequent quite a lot. specifically to an announcement by daniel davis that he had released his new book, klawberry. he’s a talented fellow and self publishes his work. i do wish i had the patience and talent to pull such a thing off, but i simply don’t right now. so as a way to say “congrats!” and show my “inspiration,” i posted, “i am jealous of your talent”.

this made me give a little chuckle at the absurdity of the statement on a forum. i wondered if there was any way to make this seem even more absurd. what followed was a posting spree of “i am jealous of your…” comments where i was “jealous” of some facet of the thread posted in. there were some 25 posts on that single forum made in the span of about 20 minutes. i then moved to the threads on iconbuffet and did the same thing. it was received with the appropriate amount of humor i thought it would garner. luckily, no one got offended at the mass postings.

then it hit me: i should totally make a blog about this. not just a post about it, but a whole damn blog. a way to post daily news (i find interesting) but with a very small slant. a slant of jealousy. thus, iamjealous was born. i’ve since done a post a day on that blog (due to its incredible simple premise for content) and am considering an actual branding to go along with it.

mentalism drunk

so mr. kersey is making another go of his online project: scoab. in so doing, he’s asked me to also get specks back up and running. admittedly, i have been sorely lacking on the motivation needed to do any side projects; specks included. but this is my year of design (or so i’ve tried to tell myself). i am doing more things design related outside of work and specks should actually be on the top of that list.

for those who are unfamiliar with specks, please direct your browsers to the first issue. there you will be introduced to bob and patrick – the heroes of the show. neither of them are really hero material, but i use the term figuratively. anyway, based on how much of a task it was to put together those issues, i might have to change the format of the comic. as of yet, i have no idea what that means. i can say that i will be trying to post some specks related thing once a week (if your lucky, more often, ya).

to prove i’m serious…


“mentalism” – shpongle (nothing lasts… but nothing is lost)
“drink to get drunk” – sia (momentum vol. 1)

i, heroes

so… the last time i posted, i hadn’t run 3.1 miles for elvis loving taco eaters. since then, i participated in an annual 5k race put on by elvis loving taco eaters. it was my first “organized” run that i’ve ever done (outside of middle school) and it was actually rather fun. hey… fancy that. guess that’s why they called it a “fun run.” anywho, i ran it in 29'33". i wasn’t doing the timed race and i really have no idea how good that is in the grand scheme of things, but my wife seemed pleased. after crossing the finish, i grabbed a couple of powerades and intercepted her to walk the remainder of the course and watch her cross.

this gave me a bit of a bug; and by bug, i mean my wife signed me up for all kinds of runs. next up is the livestrong challenge (which is featured in the banners kicking off this post and the one that will live in the “outside” well). i am not going all gung-ho on the fundraising part because i don’t really know the first thing about fundraising. but if you feel inclined to donate, i have a modest goal of 100 dollars (i think that is the default) to which you can contribute to by clicking on the banners. this is obviously going to a good cause because… well… it’s cancer and cancer sucks and is due for a good ass kickin’.

elsewhere: thanks to all you folks that have signed up to iconbuffet under my referral. i have a really awesome foundation there, but it is always great to get more stamps to spread the icon love. if you sign up, do leave a message in my box to tell me who you are (hopefully they’ll eventually add a feature that notifies me who referrals are as they sign up).

i have also taken part in the wonderful satire that was started by barb carneiro relating to “sniping” deliveries. a small group formed and came to be known as the pirates. it has since grown to some 28 confirmed members. i, however, decided to create a competitive group. the obvious and clear choice was ninjas. the ib shinobi clan boasts 24 confirmed members and has a cumulative point total of 124,410. pardon me whilst i shine this apple upon my shirt.


“i know it’s you” — the crystal method (legion of boom)
“heroes” — dj tiesto (parade of athletes)

my fortuna

iconbuffet is really kicking it up a notch with their new ibid feature. this little gem allows a member to display a good assortment of badges on their website/blog to advertise sets, profiles and even grab referrals. as you will notice, i have already included two versions of the available badges on this blog. the first is my profile at a glance (vip status, number of points, avatar) and will link you to my profile page on the site. there you can bask in the glow of my many badges and see just what sets i have to offer. the second banner will take you to a sign-up page where i will get credit for the referral. eventually, iconbuffet plans to roll the referral state into both the profile and standard banners.

“my weakness” moby (play)
“o fortuna” orff (carmina burana)

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unfortunately, until iconbuffet can fix some of the site-load issues, the scripts for the badges have been removed from this blog. it simply hangs the blog and can’t load it entirely. i will replace the badges with the simple img link i had before.

iconic promotion

make me an iconbuffet god!

sign-up now!

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100 deaths

this past weekend, i attended the design ranch. i truly regret not going to any of the previous 6. a complete retreat/camp for designers; totally worth every penny (and a pretty one at that – for me). this year is my year of finally getting off my ass and being a designer and not just playing one on tv. so far, i think i am doing pretty well at meeting that goal.

i had been interested in the design ranch since its inception, but couldn’t justify the expense or time to attend. my first internship was with marc english about 2 years prior to his creation of this sleep over camp of genesis, connections and inebriation. the straw that finally sucked me into going to this year’s incarnation was mr. stefan bucher himself.

i suspect many of you that might have stumbled on this post have no idea of my history with the daily monsters. i penned a few stories, you see. those stories led to a great online relationship between stefan and i. months pass and stefan mentions his coming to austin in april. as it turned out, he was one of the magnificent 7 putting on a workshop this year. well, the horse head stared me straight in the face. a flip of the credit card and a click here and there, and i was set to meet an inspirational person.

his workshop was, unsurprisingly, a study in illustration. i have a hand. i have skills. i barely have any hand-skills, however. i very much want to be able to draw what i see in my head, but by the time i can sketch out something that could be mistaken as an illustration, the thought has left and the motivation to continue is gone. i took the first offering of the workshop at 9am on friday.

“100 truths” was a study in drawing 100 things either repeatedly or based around a theme on a poster. as in, you could draw a hundred eggs (which someone did - and did very well, actually) or draw a hundred items relating to a theme (vacation, nature, hairstyles, cross-polynomial variants in genetics). my choice was incredibly ambitious. i had no idea how lofty at the time i thought of it, but by the end of the 2-hour session, i was thoroughly daunted. ultimately, the free moments of the weekend were spent finishing the poster.

you know how hard it is to come up with 100 ways to die? after about 30, it becomes incredibly hard. throughout the weekend, other attendees would come up to me to watch me work and I would wrangle a death out of them (in word only, i didn’t actually kill anyone — this time). stefan and petrula vontrikis (“the lost suitcase” workshop) were very helpful. it was pleasantly creepy. i even paid tribute to stefan twice (one of his monsters eating the victim and another depicting death by toxoplasmosis).

i managed to get it done and i think it is one of the best pieces i’ve done – illustratively speaking, of course. clicking on the image at the beginning of this post will show you a larger, clearer version of the poster so you can make out the various methods one can cease to be. i’ll likely frame it sometime in the future to keep it safe.

a little extra: there are actually 101 deaths showcased in the poster.

smile athena

wikipedia’s daily featured article really sucks today. but that’s my plan for these haikus, so… here goes.

one diva’s power
would wipe alexander’s rule
ottoman too slow

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post title
“smile” lily allen (smile)
“athena” dj tiesto (parade of athletes)

young velveteen

while not officially a part of the motodiva birthday haiku challenge, i thought i’d slap some words together. using the subject of wikipedia’s daily featured article:

with pashtun prowess
she attacks another year
not a scratch on her

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post title:
“young lust” – pink floyd (the wall)
“velveteen” – yoko kanno (ghost in the shell - stand alone complex o.s.)

murder 3000

a quick post to talk about the new link in the sidebar over there. the one for iconbuffet.

i have been a member of the free delivery service for as long as i can remember the “service” being put into action. the fine chefs over at ib have since come up with a new system and site to accompany. it looks really great. works cleaner. uses ajax. seems more community-centered. free delivery is a fun little ditty that i highly recommend to anyone who is into free icons, so please join the program. it’s absolutely free. the icons are fresh and can be used just about anywhere for any reason. and if you join through my blog here, i get points for the referral. what those points do, i have no idea.

will write a better, more complete entry about everything that has happened in the last week later.

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post title:
“murder in mairyland park” – sarah brightman (fly)
“storm 3000” – leftfield (leftism)

sxsw – day 04

some kick-assery panels today. i can tell, however, that the conference is winding down. they’re starting to lose their luster.

i did end the day with likely one of the best experiences from the event: getting strangled by douglas sarine. that’s right. a ninja. but not just any ninja. the ninja. he so looks forward to killing all of us soon, i had no choice but to oblige. who knows how many attendees were saved by my merciful act of sacrifice. or frisbees. pictures to come. i need a flickr account.

tomorrow is, of course, the last day for me. this means that it’s also the last chance to snag some of those swanky uhad buttons. and who got one today? why these lucky folks (again, in no particular order):
lance willett
andy clarke
dorian ramirez (film chum of james kersey)
chris mills
mark lentzner
glenda sims
mason wendell
douglas sarine
nick vahalik
sara taksier
naomi greenfield
brian sullivan
spencer nutting
dave maestri (plural for maestro)
john romanski

maybe i passed out more, and i really feel dumb if i lost a business card or forgot to right it down. also, if for some reason your actually checking this blog, see your name and don’t see a link – email me and i’ll update it.

elsewhere: the poor mouse and bug were home, feeling under the weather. if i don’t get better sleep soon, i might suffer the same fate. thanks for being the super mom, mouse!

sxsw – day 03

just a real quick post for now. gave out a good collection of buttons today (in no particular order):
jay west (was actually last night while in line – staff photographer for sxsw)
dave amos
maximo stephani
emily pepperman
dan cederholm
john marstall
brian brasher
cameron adams
paul mckey
stuart constantine
brian fitzgerald
ian lloyd
patrick lauke

on a side note, i had a really great talk with brian and john about iconbuffet and just what are the best sources for buttons. we agree that buttonbiz.com has the best diy kit/device as well as cafepress likely being the best price route for one-offs. i look forward to firewheel design and/or iconbuffet buttons soon.

ze frank at the 10th annual web awards tonight was incredible. the internet is losing a quality, daily (well, semi as of late) vlog.

sxsw pics - day 02

none of these pictures are posting worth a damn. at all. so... uhm... just imagine the pictures with my ever so helpful descriptions of them.


me. zeldman. motorola startac.

the masterful, kevin cornell.

flat hicks. i forget why he couldn’t show, but damn if this wasn’t the funniest thing to see on stage during a panel (which was jason santa maria’s and rob weychert’s panel on inspiration -- note: cameron moll had the flu, so it was just the two on stage).

the mouse and bug join me for lunch at katz’s.

me. ze frank. i look like an idiot, but ze’s head is really that big. yours would be too, if you had all that funny crammed up in there.

sxsw - day 02

day 2 here at south-by. much better. incredibly better. the panels are really working for me here. first one at 10am: writing, better. great tips, advice, general knowledge on what one can do to just write better. i really felt like i got something from this panel.

next up: after the brief. another really informative panel. there is a lot i need to do to improve getting inspiration. some great tips here.

then it was a good long lunch with the mouse and the bug. it was awesome. katz's had some really great food today (not that their food is horrible on other days, just was really good today - maybe it was the company). the poor bug might be coming down with something, but the mouse is the best woman for the task of taking care of her. i'm having a great time, but i sho'miss 'em.

after lunch it was back to panels: mark boulton and khoi vinh talking about grids. i struggle with grids. grids are hard for me to figure out. i think i got it figured out - at least enough to actually work with them to figure them out. just another great panel. no ill-will towards friday's panels, but there was clearly a reason they were on the registration day.

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uhad is spreading the peace with every passing hour. the buttons are really serving well in meeting new people. not to say i wouldn't have tried to shake the hands of these people without some bribery, but a little token of gratitude is a great ice breaker. so, here's a list of the lucky winners of a uhad button so far, today:
kevin cornell (aka: bearskinrug)
shaun inman
jeffrey zeldman
greg storey
derrick featherstone
ethan marcotte
jeff croft
jason santa maria
dan rubin
rob weychert
josh williams
mark boulton

don't worry, i gotz lotz. just try to find me. it is really great to put faces to a lot of these websites that i visit so frequently. makes me want to get off me arse and finish mine.

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just met sean maggard. walked right up to, quite randomly, and started a conversation. it was great. i'm a nobody, so having anyone just come up to me out of the blue to just talk was really cool. thanks, sean! a button to you!

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went to the frog design hosted opening party. incredibly boring. the music was ok, and despite the free booze, i opted for water (was actually thirsty). then it was over to the buzzfeed/ze frank shin-dig. after a ridiculously long time, ze finally took the mic and comedy gold poured out of his mouth. of course, airlines are always a good source of hilarity for ze. and all i had was a button to give in thanks. pics to come.

while in line for the ze thing, i met three guys from dc (the capitol, not the comic books) who do stuff for the army. chris clarke, eamonn bourke and daniel drinkard (kick-ass last name, drinkard). good conversation all around. my house would be like 500k in dc. buttons were, of course, served fresh. on the way back to the parking garage, i ran into marc katz (of katz's deli & bar - 6th and rio grande). gave him a button. kewl guy, katz.

sxsw - day 01

friday is day one for the interactive festival portion of sxsw. so far, it's kinda boring. maybe because the actual "party" doesn't get started until tomorrow (all the panels that have the important people start saturday). i mean, this is just the sign-in/registration day, after all, right?

so, i made some buttons (it's my thing) to pass out at the event. mostly to yh!ers and those whom are part of sites that i visit on a daily basis (a post made over two years ago, my dailies have grown). if you happen to see me (knowing what i look like), say hi and you get a sweet uhad button. and speaking of; i've already given out 4: jim coudal and 3 folks that gave me a lift back from the carver library (daniel, nicole, sandy -- thanks!!).

with a internet accessible computer about every 5 feet, i should be able to post regularly on the panels.

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as you may or may not have noticed, the title is not the "usual" song title combo. well, duh. i'm not on my computer with my itunes library.

space angel

iconfactory is one of the kewlest icon sites around, pwning just about anyone on mac interface design. they have icons, desktops and even software available for your consumption. i was overjoyed to finally get a copy of iconbuilder and i dare say i haven't disliked a software package coming from their ingenius workers. enter frenzic – the first game from iconfactory and artis software.

“a frenetic journey that will heighten your reflexes and get your pulse pounding. Minutes to learn and months to master, Frenzic is an all new puzzle-based game for Mac OS X.”

ladies and gents – this game is addictive. this game is visually awesome (just look at the icon). this is a game born and bred for os x and it shows. and starting at $14.95 (with some hella-kewl features at $24.95), my wallet is likely to open.

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“space shanty” :: leftfield
“angel” :: sarah mcLachlan

herculean angel

wow... 4 stories i haven’t posted the links to. man, i suck at blogging. used to, i would blog every day. sometimes twice a day. just to throw something new up. either i’ve become very boring or blogging isn’t as exciting as the multitude of other websites i visit in a day. like the daily monster.

Monster 70
Monster 71
Monster 72
Monster 73

uhm, that’s it for tonight. i’m going with i’m boring. i have to get up early in the morning to do some video work.

ps: noticed ‘story’ is getting a tag workout over in the cloud there… blah. will see what i can do about posting some actual design stuff next time.

pss: ‘herculean’ by the good, the bad and the queen. 2.5 stars.
‘angel’ by massive attack. 4 stars.
sweet crap, i love the title to this post and the content totally failed to deliver. what a waste.

battle soul

what does that title mean? well, i decided to play a little experiment. at the beginning of generating this post, i selected to randomly shuffle through a personal smart playlist in itunes (songs with 3+ stars, limited to 60 minutes and no song played within the last 3 days). the first song to play was "battle without honor or humility" by tomoyasu hotei (of kill bill fame). using the first word in the song’s title gave me the first word for this post’s title. when i finish making this post (and just before posting it), the last word in the title of the song playing at the time will comprise the second word. ya… that sounds ridiculously complex. i don’t even know how that popped into my head as something to do.

i actively participate in too many forums/websites. yayhooray!, virb, twitter, to mention but an extreme few. many have some heavy design reason for my belonging there. each serve to distract me without fail. i have no idea how to stop. i’ve forgotten more websites than most will ever visit in their lifetime. speaking of which, thewebmachine.com is no more, it seems. sad day. was a nice tutorial resource. the mouse joined twitter, too. sorry for the distraction.

i always seem to sneak under the wire on monster stories. of course, being that mr. bucher is in california, and me in texas, posting at 1:50am cst has me beating his daily deadline - mwahahahaha - ’cept that one day, damn. so, ya, monsters 68 & 69. enjoy!

ps: the song playing just before posting? "birdhouse in your soul" by they might be giants.

quick stop

monster 67

super typo

monster 66 gets a tale.

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on feb. 6, 2005, i made a post titled super bowel. the ‘e’ in bowl was intentionally added to describe my thoughts on the year’s commercial offerings (being that the super bowl is supposed to be the king of commercials). i thought i was being clever. as it turns out, at least once a week, i have someone do a search on the super bowel. however, they mean bowl. they misspell bowl. one of the (if not the) largest, yearly sporting events this country puts on and there are people who don’t know how to spell bowl when doing searches related to it. now, i could attribute these errant searches to the fact that the letter ‘e’ is right next to the letter ‘w’, so i will give the fat-fingered of the world the benefit of the doubt. but i don’t think that is the situation for the majority of the searches.

so, if you searched the following terms/strings:
where will the Super Bowel air this year
super bowel pepsi
super bowel winner by year

you might have better luck with taking that ‘e’ out. i will edit that previous post with a front-end disclaimer to make people aware.

tardy tales

failed to post monster 64’s story yesterday, but posted it today along with monster 65’s.

back to work.

two-fer

monster 62’s story went up late last night with monster 63’s just being posted (imagine this post isn’t some 45 minutes into the 20th).

i am seriously considering what it would take to get me to design ranch this year. my wife says i should go. stefan bucher even has a presentation and workshop this year. my first “boss” might even be there — he did create the thing, afterall.

twitterific seems odd. in many ways, it feels more convenient than twitter’s own site, yet i only get the top most poster’s comment in the display (leaving the others requiring a physical click to view, which then renders the updater from not displaying the latest comments) and for the last two days, it has consistently failed to receive/access twitter’s “feed”. if the flash badge that resides on this blog had an entry field (like twitterific’s), i would just use that. for that matter, if twitter’s public page would auto-update on its own, i wouldn’t even need twitterific.

festival attendance

just found out i am gonna be able to attend sxsw interactive this year. i have lived in austin for quite some time and have never made it. well, this year is my year. finally get to see all them faces to the blogs i read/post to.

cold literature

austin is frozen. been so for the last two and a half days. might get better tomorrow afternoon. last night, our power went off at around 11:45 pm. normally, this isn’t a bad thing, actually it is quite exciting and can be very fun. however, this time, i happened to be in the middle of playing ffxi with a party (that included my brother-in-law) and was thusly disconnected. moreover, i had yet to post monster 60’s story. luckily, the power came on just long enough for me to make the post using my wife's laptop.

also: posted monster 61’s tale just now.

.fm listing

my last.fm deal down on the right doesn't look good. looks too simple, a little stupid even. the customize tool for it sucks. really sucks. i don't want to waste time figuring it out to make a decent track listing image. but i have to change it. it's killing me.

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have been messing with the plug-ins on the right sidebar. last.fm tool is better. twitter tool is too tall - doesn't look i can change that, already tried. none of the invites i sent for twitter seemed to work. would like to use and modify the party tool they offer, makes more sense than the self-tool.

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fixed

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for the last 41 days, i have been following the daily monster series being posted by stefan g. bucher. i am not sure when the first comments to these monsters were actual stories about them – creatively birthed by mr. bucher's readers – but i decided to contribute my own, starting with monster 31. since then, i have written stories for 26 monsters (27, if you count the kaltookens separately). some are long. some are short. please feel free to post your own stories. in the meantime, monster 59 gets to the root of the problem.

uh… ya

this blog is looking a tad better than my website. why?

chonsom is having a grand opening, which is different from their soft-opening from last year. nice menu.

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it’s apparently national delurking week. no one posts here. feel free to keep lurking.

New Switch

i switched to the new blogger.

we’ll see how this shakes out.

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a couple of changes right off the start. i write dates as follows: 110|7. this is today’s date. january (1) 10th (10), 2007 (7). so the list of posts are listed first via year (which unfortunately slaps a needless zero in the tens place) and then the drill down shows the months via number.

i changed the color of the "template" to better reflect sitetamashii.com.

a “---” represents an addition and/or edit to a post already made live.

i am still playing.