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Inhaling Architecture

Over at BLDGBLOG Geoff Manaugh writes in “Inhaling 9/11” about the broad range of toxins inhaled by NYC residents during and since 9/11, and what has rained back down on the surrounding area to enter the soil and waterways. Reflecting on the amount of dangerous material [understatement] released into the air as the buildings were pulverized, Manaugh asks,

“Were different and earlier forms of pulverized architecture somehow safer to breathe? In fact, if I can be excused a brief moment of contextually inappropriate speculation, would it be possible to impregnate buildings with good things – with good chemicals: with vitamins and medicines and even seeds – so that future 9/11s release beneficial plumes and so that the inhalation of architectural smoke is no longer catastrophic?”

A thought-provoking question to say the least, seeing as how - in the end - don’t all buildings fall down either by design or by accident?

Image courtesy of slagheap on Flickr

Yo Gabba Gabba

While reading this month’s issue of Print, or some magazine of similar content, an article about the new kids’ show Yo Gabba Gabba caught my eye. Not being a kid, or even having any can be a huge disadvantage, particularly when it comes to keeping up with cool stuff - and this show looks pretty cool, which is why I’m just now hearing about it.

With the vibrant colors, high-energy songs, regular appearances by Biz Markie and Mark Mothersbaugh, and guest appearances by the likes of Tonk Hawk, The Aquabats, and the Paul Frank Monkey I can only imagine the uber-generation of future designers, marketers, and entertainers that are being brought up on this show right now.

It looks like a beautiful show. Thankfully, there’s YouTube to fill in the gaps for us oldbies:
Yo Gabba Gabba intro
The Party in My Tummy song
An appearance by the Aquabats

Best Chick-flick Ever

Death Proof is going in my book as the most entertaining chick-flick of all time, and my new favorite movie - hands down. Mind you, that I am not a huge Quentin Tarantino fan either - well I was until Sin City. I only wish now that I had gone to see it in the theater.

I won’t divulge any details for those who haven’t seen it yet, save saying that the story is skillfully told and unencumbered by excess baggage.

Image courtesy of florestan on flickr

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography - a collection of sites displaying informed treatment of type, collected by ilovetypography - another really great site. Yes, I know everyone is linking to this today but it is really good, so I am too.

Projekttriangle Design Studio - Work by a German graphic design studio. Beautiful.

Black Box Sculpt Studio - a Second Life in-world sculptie editor.

Particle Wizard - Create particle systems for Second Life without all the scripting. Buy in-world on Horowitz

Magento - Open source ecommerce solution for the web. Demo.

The Classic Mojo Shirt - from bearskinrug.co.uk. Because everyone needs an under enthused monkey hero.

Human Brain Cloud

Aside from having the coolest name, Human Brain Cloud is an insidiously addictive word association game that gratifies the information-lover in all of us by displaying results as an interactive word map. I guarantee that if you try it you won’t be able to stop…

The game, the visualization, and interesting stats.

Searching with oSkope

Oskope is a visual search tool that searches Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, and Ebay (though I couldn’t get the Ebay search to return anything). While searching Flickr I fist searched for images tagged Second Life and found a few really great images. As you can see below, my results were displayed in a pile that I could interact with and move around (and zoom in and out on). Fortunately, I was able to create an oSkope account and save those great images for later use.

The different search result views are really what make this an interesting interface. Next I searched for coffee, and decided to display the results on a grid. It is much easier to see all the results this way (duh).

The most interesting search I did was on Amazon for graphics tablets. I displayed these results on a graph by price and sales rank. Of course, there is some resolution lost on the accuracy of sales rank in this view, but for an overall view it is a faster way to evaluate results.

There are two things that I initially think would make this search better. The first - it really needs to be faster. The interface seems to hang occasionally which is frustrating. I’d also like to see the licensing information returned with the Flickr photos. It would be a good way to search for Creative Commons-licensed photos.

Results of searching Flickr for the tag SecondLife, displayed in a pile. I saved a few of the images in My Folder. Too bad I can’t create more than one folder for different searches

Search results from Flickr on the tag coffee, displayed in a pile

The same search displayed as a grid

A Search of Amazon for the term “graphics tablet”, this time displayed on a graph.

Arctic Firefox about:blank

For a number of months now I have been using Dark Firefox, a custom about:blank style. Used in conjunction with the Stylish plugin it replaces the basic blank about:blank page with a dark screen and blue Firefox logo. Very sharp, imho, and that’s why I like it. The problem is that when ever I encounter a web site that uses a javascript wysiwyg text editor, that about:blank page is used for the background of the editing window - and when it is, editing text is impossible.

To fix this I created a new about:blank style, Arctic Firefox, that is lighter while still maintaining the firefox logo goodness.

To install this you will first need to:

• Install Stylish, a plugin for Firefox. Stylish allows you to apply custom styles to web pages, or as they say “easy management of user styles.”
• Go to the Arctic Firefox page and click the ‘Load into Stylish’ button
• Click Save in the window that pops up and you’re done

Now every time you open a new tab you’ll see your custom about:blank page (assuming you have new tabs configured to open a blank page).

Super Happy Fun Time Friday

SkreemR - An MP3 search engine that has returned some interesting podcasts.

BM Custom WordPress Login Plugin - Create your own unique login screen for your WordPress installation. View Examples.

Name that Color - a color selector that returns the nearest named color swatch from a swatch you select from a spectrum. If nothing else it is a mildly entertaining way to find a little color inspiration. The author gathered the color names from places like Wikipedia, Crayola, and Color-Name Dictionaries like Resene.

Fall is here (in Alaska at least), and one of the great comfort foods of fall is zucchini. The Urban Vegan has posted a list 50 ways to stuff zucchini and all of them sound yummy. If my mom reads this she will fall off her chair - as a child I hated zucchini with a passion.

Dandelife Lookin’ for Some Love

If you think Dandelife is cool, then you should consider buying one of their t-shirts. The blogging platform/social network, set apart by its use of graphical timelines and convenient widgety things like a connector to Flickr, apparently has been a labor of love - and we all know how they can be.

That’s why Kelly Abbot is asking that you buy one of Dandelife’s t-shirts. Not because you want to walk around all day getting hugs from strangers, but because it is like one big green t-shirt-shaped hug from a community that started with a great idea. If that is too cheesy for you, you can just read the real story behind the “Free Hugs”.

If you haven’t tried Dandilife, it actually has some really great features that make it an engaging way to tell the story of your hum-drum daily life with pictures, a timeline view, a story view, and a widget with which to share your timeline in another blog. Definitely all good things, but even better are the other ways to use it… like Shauna Schullo’s class that chronicled the history of distance education as one of their assignments using Dandelife. This is their timeline below:

So back to the t-shirts - they’re just helping keep a good thing going.

OQO Cheaper with More

Not that I want to be an engadget re-blog weenie, but the news is too good not to share. It is always great when technology prices drop right along with form factor. The Model 02 of the OQO is touting a larger hard drive and SSD, improved wireless capability and a faster processor. Along with that, the base model pricing is just at $1299, cheaper than the previous version. I would really like to see the price drop below $1k before I would ever seriously think of buying one, but until then I’m happy to drool.

The OQO press release has more details.

Image courtesy of Josh Bancroft