interesting

first thing i’ve seen in awhile that really got me geek out excited…

http://www.creationonthefly.com/

things i will enjoy purchasing/quick hits

the stuff that i usually like to talk about (drinking, carousing) isn’t really happening in full force right now, though i will soon have a post about the new theatre thing that i’m doing which goes up in a few weeks. should be fun. i’m writing music for it now, and it’s going great in a sort of black crowes “write the album in a week” workflow… some of the ideas are terrible, some are totally fetch.

first, the quick hits:

1. I looked again and found that shawshank was actually only given 3 stars by comcast. so it’s, in their eyes, as good as star wars 3. i just don’t know what to say about this, but the next time someone wants to know why i can be an elitist, this is why. other movies that are “just as good” as star wars III include: Anchorman, Ghostbusters, and The Last Samurai

2. Meetup.com needs to stop sending me emails every time someone joins a group that i’m in. it never did that before. now every time someone decided they also want to meet other NYC graphic designers, i get to hear about it. I would like that to stop WITHOUT me having to go visit their site.

3. It looks possible that i will be playing on 3 softball teams for the months of July/August. So if you’re wondering what i’m doing during those months, the answer is most likely softball related.

4. it appears that one of my favorite shows, futurama, is going to get 13 new episodes made, the same way that family guy did. i’m incrediblly excited about this. If you don’t watch futurama, and are interested in this, i highly recommend the dvd’s. sheer genius.

5. Here are a list of things i would like to purchase soon. if you have any recommendations about any of these, let me know.

a. HD large screen TV
b. portable drum kit
c. digital delay guitar pedal
d. new flatscreen monitor? (could possibly be the same as a)
e. Cleats for softball

ok. that’s all i got.

there’s a “new” math

I always was pretty good with math and numbers, so i was very interested when i saw this post off of slashdot about a UNSW (my study abroad alma mater) professor who has come up with a totally new framework for trigonometry that doesn’t include angles, sines, cosines, or any of that jazz. basically it’s a redefinition of all those concepts using mostly point distance formula and relationships between triangles. the first chapter is posted here, and i think it looks pretty good. it woudl be interesting to take all these formulas and see if writing a flash program with them made it run any faster.

looking down the barrel

of a really really stressful and long september. the rodale quilt project is 1 month development time for what could be an absolute monster of a project. databases, user login, all that other shit. could be a long month.

plus there’s the html website for the consensus project, which is a little more flexible on date, but could be a real monster if i don’t code it right.

oh, and LW is about to get really stressful i feel like. awesome

at least i’m going on vacation at the right time…

design idiocy moment of the day

i’ve been making a new portfolio, and it hasn’t been looking right. the background is a faded back grid, and everything in the foreground is squarelike etc… it’s been looking sloppy. until i realized today that the problem was that i didn’t have the elements in the foreground lined up with those in the background, so i was showing an established grid, and then breaking it, but only just enough to make it look like i didn’t know what the hell i was doing. i’m an idiot.

freelance blues

what really makes me crazy about freelance is the same thing that used to absolutely torture me as a graphic designer: the cold, endless criticism that i can’t help but take personally.

some excerpts from recent days:

“I don’t love the way he’s laid out the text on the circ promo there…looks a bit under-designed. ”

“Please make sure his spacing is consistent.”

“The … organization is very clunky and doesn’t work.”

“Right now it just doesn’t seem to work for me.”

this is just a small sample. nothing makes you question your career and purpose in life than a few hundred of these all coming in succession.

interface design goodness

interface

Interesting work being done in sony japan on interfaces etc…