February 2004
Friday, February 27, 2004 11: 22 AM
I've died and gone to color palette heaven today:
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ColorMatch (src)
"This utility will help you select a matching 6-color palette for your website."
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QuickColor (src)
Flashlet version of ColorMatch (above).
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moreCrayons
"Most internet users have monitors that can display more colors than the 216 that are used in the traditional "browser-safe" palette. moreCrayons is a bigger box of crayons; 4,096 colors for the web."
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Color Blender
"Pick a color value format, input two valid CSS color values in the format you chose, and pick the number of midpoints you'd like to see. The palette will show the colors you input as well as the requested number of midpoint colors, and the values of those colors."
Friday, February 27, 2004 11: 09 AM
Color Match / QuickColor (src)
Friday, February 27, 2004 11: 05 AM
Animals On The Underground (src)
Thursday, February 26, 2004 04: 49 PM
Medium Footwear
Thursday, February 26, 2004 04: 47 PM
I heard about Medium (or more specifically Medium Footwear) several months ago and have eagerly watched their budding concept grow. Very interesting philosophy at work here: A business focused on the creative process as much as the end product with marketing that promotes the process, creativity and creators behind the product. As opposed to marketing that couples pretty models with pretty product in fake situations. Here is a little more...
MEDIUM is a collective of individual designers selected to express a modernist design philosophy with a commitment to quality, detail and style. By giving individual designers under the MEDIUM brand creative authority, we promote the concept of a "design collective," where as much importance is placed on individual creativity and style as it is on the notion of a shared vision. MEDIUM is a designer's movement. MEDIUM is about design.
Now if I can just find these shoes and bags somewhere in Phoenix. Don't even know if they are out yet.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 05: 32 PM
Trailer for a movie out of Japan. Some amazing, amazing visuals in this one.
- Title:Shinzo Ningen Casshern (Casshern - Robot Hunter).
- Trailer 1: Quicktime Streaming
- Trailer 1: Quicktime Download (Right click, save as)
- Trailer 2: From Apple Japan
- Official Website: Casshern.com (Japanese Only)
- Director: Kiriya Kazuaki
- Overview: "Live-action adaptation" of an "Anime TV show from the 1970's."
From Vinay, "If I remember correctly, the basic story goes something like this: A robot was invented by this scientist to help mankind (forget how) and something went wrong and it started to go about restructuring human society (read: enslaving humans for their own good). The scientists son merges with the robot and becomes an android to fight these robots."
- Sources:
Yewknee
Jean Snow
Vinay
Ordinary Life
Monday, February 23, 2004 11: 32 AM
The Starsky & Hutch movie was good fun. We saw the sneak preview on Saturday night and I probably haven't enjoyed that many laughs in a movie since Jack Ass.
Between Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Snoop Dog, I just sat there with a constant smile on my face. Toss in the car, great music, classic technology (Snoop getting fitted for the wire was hilarious), and I was ready to go back to the 70's for good.
If you're looking for a serious take on Starsky & Hutch, then this is not your movie (but that was never the intention). If your not familiar with the TV show, then it may not be as entertaining or engaging, but it's still fun. However, if you go in with a laid back attitude, have an idea of what the show was about and just enjoy the ride, your rewarded with a modern take that honors a classic with a comedic twist.
A few quotes from Rotten Tomatoes Production Notes:
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Casting Owen Wilson: Wilson said, "I think Ben had the idea that I would be good for Hutch because I have blond hair. I don't think it was anything more complicated than that."
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Ebay a good source for car parts: "To outfit the two main hero cars, Walsh researched and bought all N.O.S. (New Old Stock) parts, snatching up everything eBay had to offer. "Every time somebody would see my user name, they'd just quit bidding, because they knew I was going to bid all the way. I found shifters, consoles, moldings, taillights, emblems, weather stripping, you name it. Since these were the cars that were going to be shot close up, I wanted them to be perfect."
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On Stiller's driving: "Stiller is of a different mind. "I'm trying to figure out what the problem is, because I feel like I'm a competent, good driver," he puzzles. "But other people seem to be frightened. We shot a scene where I rounded a corner and did a skid stop, and I looked over at Owen and he had this skeleton-face look. And Owen's not that good an actor that he could do a look like that and make it convincing, so I knew it was real. And everybody applauded and said, 'Wow.' And I said, 'Look, Owen, they said 'Wow,'' and he's like, 'That wasn't a 'Wow, cool,' that was a 'Wow, thank God we're all still alive.''
Final Review:
8.5/10
Seeing more than once in theaters? YES
Buying DVD when is comes out? YES
On that note the
Starsky & Hutch Season 1 DVD set is coming out March 2nd.
Friday, February 20, 2004 02: 47 PM
Quizno's new capaign is a great departure from the same old craptastic promotions coming from most marketing agencies.
Talked to a Quizno's manager about the commercials last week. She had mixed feelings. She told me she was at a salon and an asian girl doing her nails said, "rats and food...no good. No good!"
I personally love the campaign though, even if it isn't the best combination of elements (rodents and food). It's just so offbeat, crazy and totally unexpected that it makes you go WTF in a good way.
And people are talking about it, which of course equals more free press for Quizno's.
Matt just sent me these links:
Plus, how can you beat their other promo. Bring in ANY coupon for anything and get $1 off a sub. Makes me want to go out and find totally bizarre coupons to turn in.
Friday, February 20, 2004 12: 16 PM
I am on a BIG prefab/modern housing kick right now.
The endless surburban landscapes of the Phoenix area are really depressing me. I mean, they really do. My wife and I built a house and spent three of our young, childless years in the suburbs with white picket fences. Literally. We commuted. We commuted a lot. We found we pretty much had to commute everywhere. Nothing was close by. What was the benefit? A cheaper house with more space? We weren't using the space. We wised up. We sold. Got out of dodge before another neighbor asked when we were going to start having kids (I think it was actually in the Home Owners Assocation policy manual, "resident must have a minimum of 2 children to reflect the family focus of the neighborhood, so that home values stay high.")
We moved back to the city and nature. We now reside in a much smaller place at the edge of a desert mountain range at the Phoenix-Tempe border. We discovered an eclectic location that is suprisingly close to nature, without sacrificing the convenience of urban amenities.
Looking back on the whole process I am amazed that we found ourselves so wrapped up in the concept of the perfect American suburban neighborhood at one time. That view of the world seems to throw out issues concerning the environment, innovation and urban planning when it comes to housing and growth.
Stucco covered houses creating endless rows of uninspired architecture are contributing to the environment of uninspired conformists within our society who simply settle into this seemingly predestined pattern of life that we call the American Dream. You grow up. You go to school. You buy a car. You get a job. You get married. You buy a house. You have 2.5 kids. You get overweight. You diet. You die.
If that makes someone happy, then I am not going argue with their chosen direction in life. But I don't want that pattern. I want to explore. Create. Live. Take a risk or two. Raise our future kids with an innovative and intelligent view of the world. My interest in prefab/modern housing is just one extension of my growing discontent with the traditional patterns of American life. Innovative architects are surfacing and putting more time, money and energy into really finding ways to reinvent the American home (and by extension, neighborhoods and cities.) These architects are seeking ways to produce unique, architecturally stimulating housing that conserve space, are environmentally friendly and can be built in a fraction of the time, compared to traditional housing. Sign me up. A few links that have inspired me recently:
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fabprefab: Great, great resource on the current trends, design and people behind many prefab and modern housing projects.
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Resolution: 4 Architecture - Custom Modular Homes: Incredible modular homes. At the top of my list. So many different configurations. They are also doing the Dwell Home.
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The Dwell Home: Dwell Magazine is sponsoring a modern home being built for $200k. Still too pricey. But the prefab, modern living approach is great.
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Building a Small Town: Example of how rapidly the Phoenix area can generate a community in the middle of nowhere, seemingly overnight. Urban sprawl at its most blatant, boastful self. Interesting how planners are realizing people aren't going to move to BFE unless they fabricate a main street to create a faux urban environment for the buyers. I am officially creating a new term for this trend in master planned communities: Faux Urbanism - creating the illusion of an urban environment within the construct of a new neighborhood.
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The McMansion Next Door: Newsweek's call to modernize housing architecture.
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Fast Company post on prefab with some more links.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 05: 08 PM
Ben Frost (src)
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 01: 49 PM
Gallery of Network Images (src)
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 04: 39 PM
Kottke's 52 Magazines or Bust commentary was too good to pass up. Jason called for magazine suggestions and readers responded with 350+ magazines. I wanted just a list of the magazines. So I made one. Here they are, listed by title without the commentary*:
* Numbers represent the mulitple instances a magazine was mentioned in commentary.
2003 Flashback:
Kottke's Music Playlist (over 400+ artists listed).
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 11: 05 AM
Dual
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 10: 01 AM
Monday, February 9, 2004 11: 54 PM
Having soy protein burgers for dinner? Here's a recommendation: Buy Gardenburger not Boca Burgers. Gardenburger is a classy, well branded underdog who is focused on making one family of products really well, while Boca is the product of that really big company, Philip Morris/Kraft, who makes a seamingly endless list of products with a bottomless marketing budget. A few other details:
- $50 million/year in revenues (Gardenburger) vs. $30 billion/year in revenues (Kraft).
- 1 factory supporting 180+ employees (Gardenburger) vs. Many, many factories and 109,000 employees (Kraft).
- A great story of a chef and a restaurant in Oregon growing into 20 years of innovation in making a family of products great (Gardenburger) vs. A bunch of VPs sitting around a table selecting the next market they can penetrate and overwhelm with their size and distribution channels. From there, they map out in cold PowerPoint driven meetings how they will cut prices, own "x" percentage of market share and ultimately take out the little guy - who really put their heart and soul into helping define the space (Kraft).
My mind is made up. I'm sick of this Wal-Mart, "own every market mentality" of these "conglorporations". Putting my mouth and money on Gardenburger.
Oh, and Gardenburger, just to stay competitive, had to relocate a few months ago out of Portland to somewhere in Utah in order to control costs...as Gardenburger CEO Scott Wallace put it:
"All of us at Gardenburger will always consider Portland, Oregon our home. However, this action will lower operating costs and improve efficiencies going forward. As the market for meatless products has become increasingly competitive, it is essential that we redouble our efforts to improve our ability to compete."
Sunday, February 8, 2004 08: 58 PM
Sorta of stumbled into watching the Grammy Awards tonight while working. A few observations:
- Presenters Part 1: Anyone who presents at an awards show should either: 1) Memorize their lines. 2) Learn to read a teleprompter or 3) Just wing it.
- Presenters Part 2: They should not: 1) Vacillate back and forth between monotone teleprompter reading and wildly inconsistent free thought or 2) Make jokes. What ever you do, do not try to say something funny. Please.
- Writing: While on the topic how presenters present. Who writes this stuff? Award shows are notorious for lame writing coupled with exceptionally lame jokes. This year's Grammy Awards were no different.
- Sunglasses: No matter how cool you think you are, there is still no reason, no reason what so ever to wear sunglasses inside...unless, of course, your doctor strictly requires it.
- Commercials: There is an increasingly distinct gap in American marketing circles between the companies that know how to market their products and those that don't. Perhaps, it is more appropriate to assign this gap to the actual agencies companies are using. Example: Despite what your commercial says Gillette, using your razor doesn't make me feel like I have an "angel by my side". Your razors have one job - shave my face (and legs) without cutting me up. They don't help me achieve some higher level of performace, sexuality or manhood. I bike just as fast with a beard.
- The Details: The show seemed to have quite a few technical hiccups. Perhaps they intentionally gave Celine Dion a microphone that didn't work?
- Outkast: "Hey ya!, where are ya!? You have an award waiting on stage."
- Trends: The "official" trend that we should all be ascribing to for early 2004 is "funk". Don't forget it. It will probably go from bandwagon to backlash over the corse of this year. So jump on now.
Back to the banality that is the corporate entertainment machine.
Sunday, February 8, 2004 11: 16 AM
The Race for the Nomination
Sunday, February 8, 2004 11: 09 AM
National Political Map
Saturday, February 7, 2004 10: 55 PM
- Americans are consuming more calories than ever.
- We are familiar with the basics: If we consume more calories than we burn we gain weight. If we burn more calories than we consume than we lose weight. If we maintain a balance, so does our weight.
- I decided about three weeks ago it was time to lean up to help me be more competitive with my road cycling. My goal: Go from 176 lbs. (18% body fat) to 166 lbs. (11-12% body fat) in a span of about 12 weeks (4 months).
- I needed a tracking tool and found a great online web service called Fatburn.com to track caloric intake and workouts. With something like 25,000 foods and a hundred or so exercises in it's database, it is pretty convenient.
- Quick observations from tracking religiously for three weeks:
- Junk food has an incredible amount of calories (Dr. Pepper, candy, etc). I knew this, but never really cared before.
- I was eating a lot of junk food. It was weird seeing this as it was tracked. Actually caused me to eat less of it.
- Intense excercise kept my weight balanced (countering the effects of the junk food) up until the time I started the program.
- Now I'm eating smarter and not really missing the junk food.
- Intense exercise, together with longer fat burning (moderate) workouts are now bringing consistant weight loss.
- A Chipotle burrito can have anywhere from 1000-1300 calories or more. Solution: Chipotle burrito bowl.
- Starbucks packs in the calories big time (nutritional info). Especially my Chocolate Malt Frappuccino with a whopping 610 calories for a grande.
- Results thus far:
- Started three weeks ago at 176 lbs. The past few mornings I've weighed in at 171-172 lbs.
- My cycling has improved.
- I am eating a much more balanced diet with less caloric intake than before.
- But I'm chopped liver compared to this guy (John Stone)! Check out his transformation through monthly and daily photos. Amazing to see a human body change form so dramatically. (src: kottke)
Friday, February 6, 2004 05: 14 PM
The past year saw the blogging world become highly saturated with both content and media coverage. I stepped back for a while to survey the landscape and see if it was still worthwhile to publish a blog. Now that I've taken some time to consider what I would like to do, I have pulled myself out of retirement...dusted off the keyboard...and am going to be putting more thoughts out there.*
* Yep, this is that "I'm going to start blogging again" post you see on every other blog that promises daily content oozing with stimulating thoughts and dialogue. Yep. Bet you can't wait. How exciting. I'm tingly all over. We'll see how long this actually lasts.
Friday, February 6, 2004 05: 09 PM
Dynamap (src)
Friday, February 6, 2004 05: 07 PM
Stephen Bliss
Friday, February 6, 2004 05: 05 PM
Basecamp from 37signals
Friday, February 6, 2004 05: 01 PM
Robot Johnny
Friday, February 6, 2004 04: 59 PM
Tycho Music
Friday, February 6, 2004 04: 58 PM
ISO50
