iconolith

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Stephane Tartelin’s portfolio - I don’t think I’ve ever seen gesture drawings exude so much attitude.

Twiddla - An quick online white board app with chat and a few extra surprising features.

Honibe - One teaspoon-sized serving of dried honey per lozenge. Who knew it was possible to dry honey?

YETII - Yet Another Tab Interface Implementation. If you need tabs on your web page this is quick and easy to customize and has a few extra features.

UCSD Podcasts - Recorded lectures from UC San Diego. I’m exploring the cognitive science-related ones now.

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

There is a lot of cool stuff I came across this week, but no backstory. The University took the day off today for spring break, which meant I didn’t have to go to work. I did go, however, because like a genius I forgot to bring the power cord for my laptop home with me when I left work Thursday. Fortunately, I set off the office security alarm and had to call the campus police - otherwise no one would have ever known I showed up on a day off (a Friday no less). On with the links:

• Logitech diNovo Keyboard - They must have know I’ve been looking desperately for a thumbpad for the PS3 to surf the internet from my couch.
• Phun - and it is! This little program adds some physics to your drawings. Sodaplay is somewhat similar space for creative experimentation and is a little more social.
• Plates from Owen Jones’ book The Grammar of Ornament can be viewed as a set on Flickr. EricGjerde, who posted the set, has a few other (sets) that are equally as interesting. [via]
• I also picked up a copy of the latest release by [dj] Cheb i Sabbah titled Devotion (his website - warning, it is Flash and frustrating). Yes, I did it because I heard that piece on NPR. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for the tabla.

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

A couple years ago my parents came up for a visit to Alaska. Part of the trip involved some campground “camping”. The kind with those giant bath houses that have concrete floors and many shower stalls. One night while I was in there brushing my teeth, mom walks in and asked what I was doing. Of course, I immediately flashed back to childhood and tried quickly to think what I was doing that could possibly be out of the ordinary. She asked why I was running the water while I was brushing my teeth - like I don’t pay for it at home. At that moment I realized I had - for all my years, been running water down the drain the entire time I brushed my teeth. I had never even stopped to think about it to that point. This video illustrates the potential impact my simple act of changing that one aspect of my routine could make.

• Beautiful posters at ISO 50 - particularly this one
• Charis Tsevis’ “small pieces” mosaic illustrations. Amazing attention to detail.
• PicLens - yes, it is cool. Magical? I wouldn’t go quite that far
• Hacking Flickr - Add refferer information to comments you make on Flickr with this GreaseMonkey script. There is also a Flickr Hacks group I never thought to look for

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Actually on a Friday this time. Hell just might freeze over today.

• Piwik - Weird to say, but cool in concept. This is a web statistics tracking project aimed to develop a open source competitor to Google Analytics.
• jQuery Tutorial - Think jQuery can do cool things, but don’t think you’re up to par? This tutorial is a good place to get started if haven’t yet gotten the hang of it (like me).
• Custom laser engraved stuff from moleskines to laptops. The laptops are particularly beautiful. Too bad these Flickr photos aren’t organized into a set of all this guys engraving or I would link directly to it. [via Brian Faust - who also has an awesome Friday list]
• The wiki dictionary of Obsolete Skills
• GlassBox - Vista-style api with translucent borders and fade transitions. Released under the MIT license. Might try this for presentations.

Super Happy Funtime Friday

I’m seriously thinking about changing the Funtime Friday post to Super Silly Saturdays seeing as how I have rarely managed to actually make a Funtime Friday post on a Friday. On the other hand, Fridays are becoming fun again now that we’ve made it through the really busy season at work. Maybe I’ll give it a little more time.

60+ Places for Design Inspiration - a great collection of sites, magazines, and books. While there are many things on this list that I already read regularly, I some new sites and book recommendations that are great.

Superuse - A site dedicated to reuse and recycling. [via]

If you’re into reuse design you may also enjoy Emotionally Durable Design (isbn: 1844071812) - my best read yet this year.

The Serif - A design inspiration blog that is heavy on typography.

I’ve often wondered if the characters on those futuristic shows like StarTrek ever enjoyed Fridays or if they simply didn’t follow the convention of the traditional “Earth” calendar. I’m not much of a fan, but it seems I can’t really recall them ever making reference to weekly events, and why would they need to with star dates and all that? So, do they just relegate themselves to living at work and committing their lives dutifully to some remote federation light years from their duty stations? Are their crew quarrels over those who hog the holodeck schedule? Maybe I’m just not idealistic enough for intergalactic space exploration yet.

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

del.icio.us Network Explorer - A visualization tool written in Processing that allows you to explore common connections among you, your network , and networks of others on del.icio.us.

Macro.scopia - Another Pipes-like webapp tha allows you to mash data together by using “blocks”. There is also a developers wiki available.

Abstract Background Tutorial - I’m not as up on all of the Illustrator tools as I should be and this tutorial outlines how to use the Blend Tool to create what I poorly describe as a warped ribbon effect. I’ve actually wanted to create something like this before.

Becoming an Evil Overlord - Things to consider before undertaking your transformation to evil overlord… or the good guy… or auxiliary evil characters.

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Links that should have been posted 23 Mar:

Sphelar: A spherical solar cell with the ability to utilize indirect light

Koral Content Collaboration: Share documents with a group and manage versions. [via]

Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp: A research paper (PDF)

Moleskin Reloaded: Resurrect your sketchbook with this comprehensive tutorial on (re)binding a book by hand

Japanese Papercraft Box: a tutorial for making decorative boxes [via]

Mad Descent

Heidi sent me a link to a video of a snowboarder who is absolutely mad. The video is of his decent on Peak 7601 here in Alaska. Major intestinal fortitude.

Noteable: TutorialBlog

TutorialBlog has notoriously resource-rich posts, and the latest one is no exception. If you have an eye out for vector resources for graphics then look no further.

There are similar posts on this site for things like Photoshop brushes and fonts, so it’s worth the time to dig a little deeper on this site.

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Things that have caught my eye today that I wish I had time to look at more, but will probably have to wait until I get home because of all the things that need to get finished before the weekend starts. LTMS (Laughing to Myself… after hearing the word weekend).

Imitating a Scanner Darkly: A tutorial on how to create this style of illustration from photos. Potential for creeping out your friends here.

FastStone Screen Capture: A little app that adds screen capture options to your context menu. I haven’t tried this yet so I’m not sure if it makes your system explode.

The Pixel to Em Calculator: If you don’t know what this means then you probably don’t need it.

GlasZone: Only because I like glass and love architectural glass.

Bus Tales: An interesting concept for a site. Now there is a place to tell everyone about the crazies you meet on the bus.

UNKL Brand Stuff: Cool fun things with lots of style.

When I get home my dog will be ecstatic, but that is because she has an IQ of 5.