iconolith

Happy Fasnacht Day

Its that time of year again, Fasnacht Day, or Fat Tuesday. Years ago Pennsylvania was settled by a large number of German immigrants, a group now referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch. They brought with them their tradition of Fasnacht Day (also spelled as Fauschnaut Day or Fausnacht Day) - celebrated the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday when fasting for Lent begins.

No matter what you call it or how you decide to spell it, who would pass up the right to celebrate a day with a donut? Of course there are no fasnachts to be found in Alaska as far as I can tell, so I think I’ll celebrate with an apple fritter - which just happens to be a bit more tasty than a plain cake donut.

Baker’s Edge Recipes

While I can’t help but make fun of novelty bake ware, the Recipes page on the Baker’s Edge website all sound extremely tasty right about now…
Ganache and Peanut Butter Layered Brownies
Rocky Road Brownies
Friendship Bars
Bailey’s Cheesecake Bars with Chocolate Crust

Comparisons Using the Universcale

The Universcale, a comparative visualization of the size of objects in our universe, strikes me initially as a combination of concepts similar to the old Eames Powers of 10 movie and the Starship Comparison chart. The interface uses flash to easily move through nano to light-year scale.

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.

Things Her Boyfriend Says

Alright, this website has been circulating around and I’ve seen it mentioned on a few of my regular reads. Things My Boyfriend Says posts hilarious snippets of conversation between a girl and her boyfriend, and I’m sorry I didn’t visit it earlier because I fell off my chair from laughter.

In related news, there is a similar blog for designers, AdVerbatims, that is a collection of exchanges between creatives and their clients and management. Priceless because we have all heard them before (and shame on you if you’ve actually said them).

YouTube Nostalgia

It occasionally happens that I find myself sucked into YouTube, hopelessly lost down multiple rabbit trails wasting hours at a time. There is no longer a need for TV. Somehow, this past weekend I landed on episode one of Saiunkoku Monogatari. Back in the day, anime was cool [to me], but the last shows I remember watching are Vampire Hunter D and Fist of the NorthStar, so that kinda gives you an idea for how long ago that was.

Between Friday and Saturday nights no less than five hours were lost watching the first 17 of 39 episods of Saiunkoku Monogatari. It has a suprisingly complex plot and fantastic character design that caught me off guard - so when I got to episode 17 and realized there were no more fan subs my heart sank a little. Hopefully, more are in the works.

Back to YouTube…since I couldn’t get my Saiunkoku Monogatari fix I tried searching for my favorite cartoon of all time - StarBlazers. I can’t even remember how old I was when it was on TV, maybe five or six, so long ago I can hardly place that point in my life. Since then, I have run into a total of two people who remember this series and I have learned that allusions to Captain Avatar, Nova, or Wildstar are usually followed by a blank look or an uncomfortable silence in the conversation. To my surprise there is a plethora of episodes to be found there. Hooray!!!

Come on, how great is a show where the ship’s doctor is always wasted and the starship is equipped with its own weapon of planetary annihilation - the Wave Motion Gun? YouTube, is there anything you can’t do?

Design as Evolution

This site has gone neglected too long. In fact it has been overdue for a redesign ever since I moved to Alaska over two years ago. It seems there has been no lull in work long enough to complete a conventional redesign of the site - and there isn’t any time to set aside on the horizon so I am resorting to unconventional development.

This site is officially in the process of Evolutionary Design. No, not the “Intelligent” kind, but the sort of design that will evolve over time - whenever that time can be found. And since I suffer from the Syndrom of Eternal Tweaking as many graphic designers do, this sort of development is right up my alley.