Rawr!

I have been on DSNLG for a while now and one of the better dudes that participates on the site is Kevin Cornell. He also has his own wacky site, Bearskinrug (also his alter ego, online persona). However, there is so much going on with Mr. Cornell, that it is just a wonder if you ever see it all. After a visit to one of my Dailies, I discovered ’ol Bearskinrug has one of his sketchbooks online. It is just awesome. Sometimes, I wish I had that kind of illustrative talent. I guess I will just have to make due with drooling all over myself in awe of other’s talents.

Personally, I have 2 sketchbooks already “completed” and am currently on page 202 of Sketch III. The first two (while not completely cover to cover full of stuff) are basically archived on a bookshelf. When I complete S3, it will rest beside them. Thus will spawn Sketch IV. I have been working in S3 since November 1st, 2001. And -it- is quite full. It will be my first cover-to-cover sketchbook.

There’s a new Orisinal game available. High Delivery. Very beautiful.

Haunted GUI

I'm a little slow, but better late than never. I visit the Iconfactory whenever I remember that it is the number 1 resource for all things GUI with regard for your Macintosh. They are the best. This is a fact and am sure they have a patent on it somewhere.

Anyway, they have updated their website to reflect the holiday season — that being Halloween. I love Halloween. And when I say “love”, I mean in the “scare the crap outta da kiddies” sorta way. Icons are the best way to decorate your computer's desktop and Iconfactory never fails to deliver. Currently, their entire site has new icons on the homepage for each section as well as some new freeware icons in the Scareroom (Showroom, hehe) available for download. I am really digging on the Snappy Hour stuff by Mindy Weaver. The original artwork, for Snappy Hour, was developed by Derek Yaniger of Mister Retro fame (as mentioned in a previous post regarding the worn look). At any rate, please visit the Iconfactory to see the latest in greatest in spooktacular icons!

Long Time…

I haven't written to this blog in a while. Quite a while actually. Probably the longest I have gone - perhaps not, who cares. The reason is rather simple. I was (and still do when I think of it) use this blog as a sounding board. Well, me and my wife are communicating on an outstanding level now and she is serving as that sounding board. This place is just a diary of sorts and doesn't offer much actual communication between the poster and the readers. It's one-sided.

I suppose that means I need to just talk to myself more. Or not, as I often don't care what I have to say in the first place. I need to reinvest in DSNLG. I miss the pleasures of just designing.

Shelving Mementos

Earlier last week, I had purchased the Promise statue (a Willow Tree Figurine) for my wife as a show of my wish to be with her forever. That Friday, I came home to my favorite flower in a color I didn't know it came in. Red. Red calla lilies are rather gorgeous. And they just crested above the white gerber daisies, my wife's favorite flower, set in a tall red vase. Very elegant. Very beautiful.

On Saturday, we made a decision to really tackle our entertainment center problem. That being, we didn't have one. We have an unruly TV. Simply ridiculous, actually. It is oversized, overweight and couldn't be more non-standard. With that said, finding an entertainment center to hold it was nigh impossible. Solution? Build it yourself. Skandia will do. So we bought a good bit of Skandia's wonderful shelving system and put it together. Now our entire wall looks fresh out of a catalog and I love it!

My blog has officially been visited by 20 separate countries now. The twentieth country to visit this blog was The Netherlands. Lelystad, Flevoland, Netherlands, to be precise. They visited this blog from the link provided on my own website, accessed from the Portfolio section. There might be an issue with StatCounter's flag database, as it was displaying the Nigerian flag. However, accessing the analysis of the click-thru revealed all the information for The Netherlands.

1+1=3

Coming June 12th, 2005.

I love you, Melissa.

Blog Problems

Having issues accessing my blog. Had to email this one in. Will try and figure out the problem later today.

6 Months

A really nice site that I thought was clean and rather impressive looking was LiveStrong.org. It is the online presence of Live Strong, an educational program of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It uses nice color and has a clean layout. I could go there with no problems what-so-ever.

Now, however, it seems they have modified the site in some manner. I use FireFox 0.9.1 and never had a problem with the site before but now the site apparently no longer supports my browser. I get a redirect page that tells me to upgrade my browser to IE 5+ (how is -that- an upgrade?!) or to Netscape 7.1 — of which I will do neither. Moreover, even if I did sacrifice the quality of the browser to view the site, I still can’t because they say the site no longer works for Macintosh users. WTF?!?!?! What moron recoded the site and thought that was a good idea? Why would you change something that was clearly working before?

Last night, we went to Austin Park & Pizza for my niece's 8th birthday. She is becoming her own little person and it is rather weird. Anyway, one thing they have there is LaserTag. You wear a vest that people shoot at and you get points for "killing" them. So, we start out and I am doing really well. I was managing to "kill" off people before they could "kill" me. It was neat, until I decided to be kewl to my niece and have her shoot me. I didn't "die". Ooookay… My mother was there playing as well and she was getting frustrated because I wasn’t dying as she shot me in the back — that’s humorous just by itself. So, I start asking everyone to shoot me. I won’t die. I was INVINCIBLE!!! I walk to the front and, along with my sister, explain to the attendant that it seems I am immune to laser attack. The employee shrugs and says, "Ya, looks like it." I start giggling with glee and begin my rampage of laser carnage!!! Once everyone realized I was unable to be "harmed" they started having fun by just trying to avoid me.

AP&P also has video games. One such game that my wife and I really enjoy is beatmania. It is a DJ style game similar in play to DanceDanceRevolution except with piano keys and a turntable. So it is all finger work and the wifey is pretty good at it. Now all I gotta do is scrounge up 1300 dollars!

Oh, and by the way, I have been at my current job for 6 months now (unofficially). Yay me for not getting fired!

Info On Info

On October 7th, next Thursday, I will be attending an Information Design seminar/course given by Edward Tufte. This fine gentleman is an artist, a designer and information architect, as it were. I believe I had the pleasure of being at a design show that featured him as a speaker, but that was back in college and am not sure if it was, in fact, him. I made a right fool of myself during his talk.

The good news about this “course” is that I get stuff. Three books and a poster. So even if I am caught up in a whirlwind of confusion during the course, I can always review the books afterwards. And I like posters.

Elsewhere: Hexstatic is a group that dishes up some nice grooves. And their website is pretty groovy too. I loved my View•Master (or Master•View, or whatever the hell it was - clicky=piccy). I personally recommend the Salvador video for your viewing pleasure as well as Chase Me (also featured in the Toons section of Weebls).

Weekend Update

This last weekend was pretty “action-packed” as it were. Friday, we went over to a friend’s house for a movie night gathering of several people. The wives (including my own) got their hair cut whilst the men watched Empire Strikes Back. I think we were more interested in poking some good fun at ESB more than actually watching it. "Daddy? Really? Boy, have you got some back child support to make up for!"

Saturday was to be a lovely trip to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, but with a bit of rain, it was thought best not to go. Mostly because the butterflies wouldn’t be out and while walking along a path of wildflowers during a light sprinkle would be nice, the intent was to see some butterflies as well - for the whole package. So that will have to wait until this next weekend, I imagine.

Yesterday, we did the usual grocery shopping and such. We got my niece some nice birthday gifts (that’s coming up) and we also bought some new sheets that reminded us of the Wilderness Lodge, our hotel during our honeymoon. After all that, it was off to the office to get a little extra work done. The best part? My wife was there with me. It really kept me on track (oddly enough) and I really appreciated her company. We were having such a full day, I didn't want it to end with me spending 4 hours at work hammering out stuff alone.

Animated .GIFs can be so damn cool sometimes. Stick figures are apparently quite versatile.

Parchment

Today, I got my “new” diploma in the mail. As many of you know, I graduated from Southwest Texas State University. Well, gone the way of the dodo is SWT(SU) and it is now known, simply, as Texas State University. Now, fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with that, I actually quite dig it - except I didn’t graduate from TSU, I graduated from SWT. Sure, it is the same buildings, same city, same colors, it just doesn’t seem like the same school anymore.

Because of the name change, Texas State is offering (I imagine they still are, at least) new diplomas with the new "Look, Feel and Name" of this inevitably prestigious university. I love my old diploma. It is class. It is refinement. It is TSU. But, I won't have people giving me confused German shepherd looks when they see it, so I buckled under the pressure and got a version of the new one as well. Like the school traveled back in time with the new name and issued me the diploma like it would had I walked today.

A couple of differences:
1) Obviously, the name. Duh… So now it says Texas State University. Yeah. Interestingly enough, however, the city locale is treated differently. San Marcos is more pronounced, some 10 pts larger at least, maybe more. And they removed “Texas”. Of course, I am not sure why they really needed to identify the state Southwest Texas State was located in, but hey.

2) No color. On my old diploma (I graduated in ’98 during the centennial celebration) there is this gorgeous 4-color logo mark at the bottom. Sure, the school’s seal is absent, but my diploma celebrates 100 years of higher education. So, with the new one — seal. Foil stamped in gold. Nice. Elegant. I think foil stamping is cheaper than 4-color (it’s just one pass through the press).

3) My name. Ya, I’m pretty sure they screwed this up. On all my official documents I go ahead and accept my middle name and show it off. Old diploma = Full name, all spelled out. New diploma = middle initial. I know for a fact I put my full middle name for something such as this. Aside from that - it is a slightly different font. Same Old-English style, but just enough of a variance to be distinguishable.

Overall - I like it. It really is nice. The font is bigger across the board for all elements and the foil is a nice touch. 50 years from now, I will be just as pleased with my old diploma though. There’s something about getting your bachelor’s that makes a single piece of parchment worth more than anything else. My wife’s on the other hand is, hands down, cooler than mine. St. Edward’s has a regality that completely overshadows any state school.

PS: In the envelope containing my diploma, there was also another “new” diploma. One for Mindee L. Thweatt, BS – Computer Science, ’92. Summa Cum Laude even. Nice. Congrats Mindee! Now I just gotta figure out how to get it back to the university.

That’s A Moire!

Today, we shall discuss the moire (pronounced more-ray) print effect. This effect is basically the result of the halftone screen process used in modern printing where patterns of small dots are overlayed to produce color and shading. It can also be the result of poor scanning. Ultimately, for my job, it is bad. I don't think there is a time I would approve of a printed piece that is suffering from a moire pattern. An example can be seen below:



A more mathematical method of showing this effect can be seen in this sample. It is catchy and neat, but when I am trying to have a very important program printed, I do not want my block colors and photo images to have this pattern. To me, it is poor craftsmanship to even show a proof with this effect all over it.

Now, my wife and her adorable missy-isms (or so we call them) might consider it very pleasing to have an eel on your print. It is sea-animal friendly! While I’d agree that sporting aquatic life in my work would give it a certain “fun factor”, this particular piece might not benefit from it as much. I will work some morays into my next project…

Woo

Sometimes in life, things can happen that will change you forever. This weekend, I found my wife again and, thusly, my life again. I love her so much and will do anything for this woman. She is the very reason I go on. My wife is exceptional. She always has been and always will be. I can adore no other as I do her.

Saturday was the start of a new day. A new opportunity. We went to the Pottery Barn and purchased a little night light that looked like a mini-lamp. Very nice color. I won't be lost at night anymore, stubbing my toes, running my face into the hall divider. We had Chick-Fil-A for lunch. My wife is on a diet that has a core-foods list. She was spot on the entire day which was just awesome. Her lunch was better than mine, but I could not eat mine. I did have some of her fruit bowl, however. We tried to get Virtual PC for her laptop, but had no luck at the Apple Store. We -will- get it though as she needs it for her CPA courses.

Sometimes, printing companies are a bit messed up…

Gmail Is Good-Mail

Gmail. What's it all aboot? Well, the big bonus to Gmail is the searchability of all your emails, and with 1Gig of storage, deleting them isn't necessary. Can't remember the birthday of your 3rd cousin, twice removed, but got an email of his birth notice 9 months ago? Search the little bugger's name and Gmail will pull up the email for you. There are a bunch of other features that I have obviously yet to examine, but, who knows, this may be my new means of online email checking!

So, ya, I got that going for me now. Thanks to my good friend for hooking me up with a little Gmail action! To get a hold of my new Gmail addy, leave a comment or something. Or email me at my other email with Subject: n3w! (so it doesn't get deleted if you are not in my Address Book).

Our friends over at Orisinal have a new game. More fun than a barrel of monkeys, it’s Sliding Monkeys!!!

No News Is Good News…

Sometimes… what I mean to say is… well… crap…

…here, watch this instead — Salad Fingers, EP4.

Dark Gorgeous

Quite a long time ago, I found myself at a rather hauntingly beautiful website. This was some four years ago. Recently, I stumbled onto this little game concerning scarecrows and the crows they must scare to continue living. Well, I immediately recognized the art in the game. I traced the site back to MyPetSkeleton — a portfolio site, of sorts, for Vincent Marcone. I was soon reminded of the beauty that is this man’s disturbingly delicate designs. Of course, he is also a part of Johnny Hollow, a group of artists that make exceptional music together.

In support of the “band”, I am posting a banner-link to their site amongst the menu items to the right. I recommend the purchase of their CD. I await my copy’s arrival in the mail.

Catch Up

Sit back, grab a cup of whatever, let's discuss shall we…

So I haven't posted in a while. Ya, I have been really busy. There is a lot going on at the office. And I mean a -lot-. I have felt that I have had more of a design mindset lately, however, so that is good. I have paid more attention to font combinations (Bembo and TheSans work well together). Finding good type is always a challenge. What font best fits the feel you are trying to convey? Which combinations balance or challenge each other? Do you want contrast or consistency? I went to a couple typographic related forums, read articles, did a bit of study to figure out some “best practices” on type selection. I feel a little more like the designer I want to be.

One of the design elements that give me the most grief is color. Trying to figure out good color combinations is a bit daunting at times. But I came up with ten combinations for one project and though only one will be picked, I think all of them actually work and look forward to using them on future projects. Again, I did some research before I chose the ten sets to be “judged”. A great resource in this was Jim Krause’s Color Index. I personally recommend any and all of the Index books by Krause. They are excellent resources, if nothing more than to activate those juices.

Questions are important. Unfortunately, for me, I sometimes forget to ask myself any. I will be staring at my sketch book, just sitting there, like I am expecting the page to magically expose a solution to me. “Here, Terry, wouldn’t this be neat looking?” That’s never going to happen — on blank paper, that is. I have seen a lot of design inside of other things, but never on a blank page in my sketch book. Maybe it’s broken, I don’t know. Anyway, I find that if I ask questions I will often come up with a solution much faster. Ask yourself simple questions and when you provide the answer, you feel accomplished and challenge yourself to a harder question and so on and so forth. Sometimes, however, I will just be staring onto that blank page asking question after question with no solution at all.

One of the things that I have discovered about myself is that I am useless without my pencil. It isn’t a special pencil. I didn’t get it as an heirloom from my 18th Century Great-Uncle on my mother’s side, or anything. I got it in college. A Sanford Pro Touch II - 0.5mm. The ink on the side is rubbed completely off leaving only the slight deboss of the printing. I can not find a replacement for the eraser. The silver chrome has worn off most of the metal parts, leaving behind a dingy bronze color. Despite all its imperfections, it has a certain something that “helps” me work. Without it, I feel insecure and confused. Even if I don’t use it, knowing where it is and having it close is comforting. I don't even remember when I bought it.

SPeCks has, once again, taken a back seat to the “real” world. Oh… so you’ve noticed. No you haven’t. Liar. But at any rate, I miss those little guys and feel bad that I can’t bring them out to play right now. I suppose, eventually, I will have a better schedule for dealing with the little buggers, but for now, it’s too much for me to handle. I think the fact that it is so story-driven makes it also difficult to maintain. I have thousands of short stories in my head. And when I mean short, I mean really really short. 700 words short. For perspective, this post is up to 668 words. 669 if you count ‘words’. Turns out a short story is no longer than 7000 words (according to Zoetrope All-Story). That’s a lot of words for a short story. Granted, All-Story has contests with submission rules for stories no longer than 5,000 words, but still, that’s long to me. Hell, last year’s winner, “A Year Above Christmas Tree Lane,” was 6,449 words long. Cheater.

If you are interested, you might have noticed that my flag collection to the right has grown, steadily, over the last couple of months. There are now 17 countries represented in the graphic. For those that have forgotten, I have a stat-counter that has a nice feature telling me where someone is, in the world, when they view this blog. The internet is an awesome thing.

How have I never heard of Ken Jennings?!?

Last Call For Spam

Alright folks, starting September 1st (that's this Wednesday) my super email filter goes live. Basically, if you are not in my address book, I will -not- get your email. I have made a pretty diligent effort to include all those emails that “matter”, so hopefully this will all work out. I will be including a rule for emails that new people might send or in the event of a change in your address. Please include the following in the Subject: portion of the email if you are sending from a new address or are unsure if I have you in my address book:

n3w!

Ok, now that we have that sorted… SPeCks - erm… ok, so, uhm, look I have a full-time job and some other projects going on that kinda put personal hobbies on the back burner. I miss the little guys too, but they will just have to wait to come back out and play.

Rule #11 says it all.

Bleep This

No more dreams. Pack up your imagination. Forget about trying to be humorous. Scared and paranoid idiots belonging to, apparently, powerful groups have put their big, fat thumbs on your commercial viewing pleasure. America has some of the biggest bankrolls to make the coolest commercials — but the best commercials are seen in foreign countries or are labeled as ‘spec’ and will rarely, if ever, see the light of day (and even then, it is only on the internet). Why? Because there are groups out there that would like to control what you see in this ‘free’ country. First Amendment be damned when a remote is involved.

Recently, since the start of the Olympics, GM was showing a commercial for their new line of ‘Vettes. A little tweak on the body style of these cars, I don’t think there is anything new under the hood, but that isn’t what this post is about. Anyway, the spot is a ‘dream sequence’ of this kid rippin’ it up on the highways and through a construction yard. Directed by Guy Ritchie (Snatch, BMW short film, various music videos), this bit of 30 second goodness is pretty nice to watch. It ends when the kid snaps out of the day dream holding his skateboard and looking at the car across the street. Then it’s back to the drudgery of being a child without a license to thrill. Wanna see it? Jumpin’ Jack Flash. “The all new Corvette. The official car of your dreams.” Until we slap you awake with spiked gloves so you can’t see this obvious travesty of public safety.

To me, this has just gone a bit overboard on saying what is appropriate for viewers. What we, as a civilization and society are capable of determining to be right or wrong. They say kids are getting dumber every day, that their lives are softer and more fragile in this crazy world. I think that it is complete bullshit. They are getting that way because of censorship. Kids aren't degenerating into soft lumps of meat naturally, they are being molded that way. A friend of our’s is pregnant. In a book of her’s, it says to not drink herbal tea. Well… erm… what do you think the Chinese were drinking 1000 years ago when they were pregnant?

Detectiooooooon - YA!

Tripin’

A while back, I got an iPod as a birthday gift. It is awesome. Being able to carry your entire digital music library from one computer to the next is amazingly fun. Wanna know what’s better than that? Listening to it in your car.

Enter iTrip. This little gizmo plugs into the top of your iPod and allows you to set a station and then listen to your library through your car’s radio. The default station is 98.9 and in Austin, that is no good. It just cuts out too much with bleed from more powerful, real radio stations. No worries, the makers of iTrip (Griffen Technology) provide helpful software to find radio stations in your area that are most likely free — meaning they only have static and no signal. I changed the station my iPod would use to 97.5 but that turned out to be sketchy at best. You know how in some sitcoms/movies/funny stuff, they show a person standing in a weird pose so the reception on their TV comes through? Ya, I kinda had to do that with my iPod. While driving. If I wasn’t at least touching the iPod, it would fuzz in and out of clarity as it competed for the station broadcasting from -Houston-. So, for the last week I had been testing several stations (while still having 97.5 set) trying to find one that is predominately static for the entire day. 94.1 was looking good for a while, but then I noticed something odd. When on my street (and on my street only) the station would lose it's silent nature. It isn’t that there is another station bleeding into it that is odd. It’s that there are -three- competing for it. A Tejano station, a country station and a general mix station. It’s just bizarre, and it only happens on my street. Anyway, I have finally discovered a station - 91.5. It worked all the way to work and we shall see how it does all the way back home.

Erm… nothing else for today… go home.

More Olympic Rambling

The Olympics are rife with sports for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately, unless you are actually there or get cable, you can only watch whatever event NBC decides to show in their 8-hour block. So you will most likely see tons of gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, and perhaps some martial arts. What you are less likely to see are the air rifle finals, badminton or handball. Oh sure, you might get highlights like the game winning slam in table tennis or the calculated bullseye shot in any of the shooting competitions, but never the lead up and stories behind the competitors.

However… some “sports” just beg for media attention. They are either so fun or “neat” to watch that the network can’t possibly deny airtime. One such event is Trampoline. OK — who hasn’t jumped on a tramp and loved it (no pun intended)? Trampolines are seen in several backyards, these days, and I am soon to get one of my very own. I’ve always wanted one and it looks like I might be able to finally bounce my way to euphoria and health soon enough. Anyway, this event is only in its second Olympics but it has proven to be a tough sport indeed. Remember those games of Add-On you used to play? Someone would do a trick and then the next up had to do that trick followed immediately by another trick (often times a bit more difficult than the first to weed out the lesser jumpers). Well, imagine being the 10th person to go after 9 other gymnasts/divers/insane people. That is trampoline in the Olympics. You have to perform 10 consecutive tricks (10 “bounces”) and your first one sets the height to which all others must reach lest you be deducted for the loss of altitude. You are also deducted for traveling across the rectangular shaped trampoline. You are also deducted for obvious things such as form breaks. Control is king in this sport and any lack of it could result in your hurling body some 50 feet -away- from the mats. Oh, and a deduction. I think this could be called a sport just as much as diving is a sport. I mean, in diving, you fall off a platform and twist and flip before piercing the cooling waters of potential victory. In trampoline, you are doing the same thing, except you are going the opposite direction and you have to do it ten times in a row. It is an amazing thing to watch, these men and women who literally jump at the chance for gold. Bounce!

Watching some other sport in which Chile was participating, I couldn’t help but notice their flag. Anyone been to Texas? Chile’s current national flag was established in 1817. Texas’ 2nd (and current) design was established in 1839. Charles B. Stewart of Montgomery County is credited for the “Lone Star State’s” flag design. Perhaps Mr. Stewart took a trip to Chile, no?

The first flag, approved by the President of the Republic of Texas (Sam Houston) in 1836, was a golden five pointed star centered on an azure background. I love our state’s flag. It’s strong and there is no denying what state it belongs to. However, I think I would have preferred the original “National Standard of Texas”. We’re bigger than most countries in the world and a good many Texans would like to see Texas return to being its own nation (fantasy such as it is). If that were to happen, perhaps the old flag would be hoisted once more. Imagine -that- at the Olympics.