m says: “i’d be interested in doing a meetup (dramatic, hesitant pause) uh, if I had to.”
Author Archives: j
Marathon
Very different menu than what I’m used to – lots of items I’ve never heard of before – will have to expand my horizons next time I’m feeling curious. Excellent yemisir wot (red lentils), yellow lentils, and awaze tibs (beef). The no-lettuce salad had spicy jalapenos in it. And the injera sunflower concoction was tangy and surprising. I still prefer the lamb at Messob but really enjoyed all of the vegetables – maybe even more than Rahel’s. Ethiopian cuisine craving satisfied!
Earthworm
When an earthworm tries to cross a sidewalk, does it know where it is headed? Can it “see” its destination grass?
design project
From One Kings Lane: “Using a cameraless approach, [Amanda] Means places objects inside her large, horizontal enlarger. Light passes directly through the objects to expose the photographic paper creating her dramatic, spectral black and white tableaux of leaves and glasses.” (photos below were screenshotted from onekingslane.com.)
when i first saw this, i thought: “this is what you can do with a softbox and a black background. i have a softbox and a black background. maybe i can achieve the same effect.”
fishmonger
i could be a fishmonger, but the fish are about as big as i am and the cleavers used on them are bigger than my head and i would smell funny. so maybe i couldn’t be a fishmonger.
i went to santa monica seafood today to pick up 7 lbs of fish bones. the fishmonger hauls out a huge box filled with *huge* halibut skeletons, hones his cleaver on a steel, and proceeds to whack away at the skeleton. i was mesmerized watching him prep these bones for me. it was amazing.
so 7 lbs and $6.85 later, we are making amazing fish broth with fantastic halibut bones. yum.
hot chocolate
m found this at whole paycheque: silly cow farms hot chocolate. it’s pretty good and i like the glass bottle. ghirardelli and green and black’s is okay, but this is the best that i’ve had (that didn’t come from a specialty chocolate shop in manhattan or at the ferry plaza market).
bookmark: logos
Webdesigner Depot’s article: 30+ Great Logos with Smart Concepts
just a friendly reminder that not all logos need to start with a font. it appears that most of these start with a sketch. these are clever. i like them. i aspire to create something like this.
anne morriss
“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.”
i hate to admit that this is a starbucks the way i see it #76. and i realize it’s cheesy. but i can’t help it – it speaks to me.
Retro
As I peruse web site galleries and learn more about html5 and css3, I’m amazed at how certain design elements are back in style. Background images have been stylish for a while. Fixed navigation a la frames are back (wireframes magazine, simplebits, envato). And now that css3 allows rounded corners on buttons and divs, it appears that in order to showcase this new feature, sites need to use them ad nauseum (envato again, daniel, django stars, easytasker, futuretap – quick google search to find these…it wasn’t hard. they are everywhere.). I suppose it doesn’t help that the iPhone has rounded edges and all the apps have rounded edges…
I’m not the best designer in the world but I was designing with rounded buttons and rounded divs since the year 1999 (seriously, no Prince reference intended). How about we up the ante and show the world something they haven’t already seen?
Scrapbooking
Have I written about this before? I keep lots of journals. A journal for what I read, for what I bake, for what inspires me. Heck, I even started a web bookmark journal once. How prehistoric is that? I suppose I could’ve been the mastermind behind http://www.delicious.com/ or evernote. In fact, I could still probably come up with an app if I wanted to. But that is not why I’m writing.
I’m writing because now that I’ve lowered my standards and acquired a twitter account, should I also make the leap and join evernote and zootool and take my scrapbooking to the digital level? Do i sign up for a tumblr account, too? I bookmark and save web clips of all sorts of things and it shows in the number of “design ideas” directories I have all over my computer and the design ideas directory in my firefox bookmarks. Speaking of keeping track of one’s bookmarks and inspiration, I also use firefox sync so I can keep track of my bookmarks on every device where i might surf the web. Syncing my safari bookmarks to my various iDevices is probably easier but I use firefox because they had better web developer apps in the beginning and when I only used a PC (gasp!). In fact, Chris Pederick’s web developer toolbar still isn’t available for safari. Why is that? I digress…
Anyway, I have a blog so I can keep everything here. And I don’t want to integrate my web apps with my social networking apps – I don’t want to share or like or be friended or followed. I think facebook and twitter and foursquare and all of the aforementioned companies are probably getting together every month for drinks and golf and to discuss how they can take over the world. In the meantime, maybe I’ll think of and develop an app that makes digital scrapbooking on my blog easier. Or maybe not…