Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe

Was planning on hitting up the Guggenheim on Saturday with Retardo, Natisha, Jake and Malasa (and probably Sergio and Bea). That plan got shot down this morning when my boss 'suggested' that I come in on the weekend to work.

Anyway, the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition will be up through May 28th so I'll have plenty of time to visit. The first and only exhibition of his that I visited was underwhelming, Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument. From what I've read so far, the Guggenheim exhibition should be way better.

So, no idea who Cai Guo-Qiang is? He's my favorite contemporary Chinese artist. I'll post a review when I actually visit.

One dense post, hope you find something interesting.

Another delayed post, started this post in mid-February. The only reason I'm mentioning this is I wish I got it out sooner, over at Ain't It Cool News, they had a clip of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. It's been yanked, no matter, apparently they are making major changes to the movie so much of the project is being redone and I think it's been pushed back a year.

Fables. Jeez, I can't believe I waited until now to get into the series. And to think I only started reading it because of James Jeans' covers. You can download the first issue at DC's Vertigo website. It starts out slow but give it a shot. The last story arc was amazing (issues... late 30s, early 40s). If you are in a hurry, there's a torrent of the majority of the issues out, including the spinoffs. But remember, show them some love and buy the graphic novels or the back issues. I'm waiting for the entire set to pop up on eBay so I can snag it all in one go.

Freak Angels, a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield. Not only is it free, I'm totally digging the art. And Warren Ellis has given us Global Frequency, The Authority, and Transmetropolitan, need I go on? The plot is still relatively thin (don't have that much to go by), but the setting seems to have been done to death... still for a free comic, I'm a fan.

I forget who sent this Youtube video to me originally, it's a Batman: Gotham Knight preview. Haven't heard of it? Well this description was posted on IMDB. "Anime-inspired direct-to-DVD anthology film. Comprised of six short stories, from diverse creators, including Academy Award-nominated Josh Olsen (A History of Violence), Batman Begins writer David S. Goyer, and comics scribe Brian Azzarello. It's planned for a release window of two to four weeks prior to the release of The Dark Knight, and would bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight."

This article gives me hope for my architecture degree. Care to know who designed the majority of the Air Jordans (including the very first one) in Nike's lineup? An architect named Tinker Hatfield. Found that out while I was watching the CNBC special, SWOOSH Inside Nike.

Firefly will never die, or hopefully it'll get revived on the small screen. I've already professed my love for the short-lived series on this blog. Now an established author has one upped me by writing a Firefly novel. And guess what? It's totally free!

Daily Monster. There have been similar projects in the past, but not many of them includes a video of every single monster! Great stuff.

Saw a photo of this Target promotion in this month's Fast Company. Thanks to Cathy for the article. Too bad I missed it, what the hell was I doing at the time? I was working a block away...

I really should get started on the knitting. This R2D2 knit beanie is FREAKING AWESOME.

Resources:

How to Speak, a lecture given by MIT professor, Patrick Winston. I think MIT pulled the video from Youtube, but check the comments. There's a link to a video hosted at Harvard. Going to be honest here, haven't sat through this one yet... And Chip Kidd presents The Learners. Haven't sat through this video either. Subject matter sounds like fun though.

Wokai.org. I guess it's similar to Kiva.org, but this microfinance site is concentrated on China. My little cousin is heading over to Beijing this summer to intern for them. Very exciting! I don't know when I'll be over there for a few months of study, but I'd love to get involved when I'm there.

Core77 has a link to three great rendering tutorials. I swear I'll sit myself down one day and go through them. I really need a studio I can go to.

For a time I was hooked on pudding tea. More recently I started going back to Whatever, a dessert joint in Chinatown my brother introduced to me a few years ago. Check them out for fresh fruit drinks, and they aren't that expensive! Prices are similar to pudding / boba tea.

IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad love fest

Some of the content in this post may be a bit stale, started this post on the 16th of January and never finished it until now, just after Lenovo's official X300 announcement. There seems to be some sort of love fest between Business Week and Lenovo. In January, Business Week had a nice reflective article on Richard Sapper, designer of the IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad. If you would like to dwelve more into the history of the ThinkPad's design, Tomoyuki Takahashi, Yamato Design Center Manager, has a great write up here. Some of the hardcore fans will be familiar with the bento-box story.

More recently, leading up tothe X300 launch, David Hill divulged that a BW journalist had been allowed access to the team that designed the X300 early in the design phase. That resulted in this interesting article, Building the Perfect Laptop.

Yearning for more IBM / Lenovo ThinkPad information? Check out a book titled IBM Design from Japan. I had to order my copy from Japan, fortunately the book is in English as well as Japanese. Came across the book in 2004, finally got it in the middle of last year. Some of the images in the book can be found in this PDF from MIT (thanks to Gator from the ThinkPad forums).

So what of the X300? Looks great, though I was disappointed with my T61, the difference in build quality is noticeable compared to my T42 (prior to Lenovo's purchase). The plastic covers on either side of the keyboard don't give when you press on them, saving you from the annoying popping sound I always get from my T61. Anyway, I suppose I'd pony up the cash for the SSD on the X300, but I've been thinking for a while now that the next laptop would most likely be a tablet. The idea of purchasing a desktop has been dead for a while now, I'd say in five years the same thinking will apply to just regular laptops. Tablets or bust! Loved the amount of attention and thought that went into the rubber feet for the ThinkPads. Just fondled mine, yup they are lovely.

And before I end my IBM/Lenovo post, will someone please tell them to make TrackPoints standard on everything. Not including them on the IdeaPads line was dumb dumb dumb. The screen and hinge as well as the finish looks great on that line, but it'll never sell to individuals like me who almost NEVER use the touchpad.

And as for other laptop builders? HP's marketing has gotten better over the years though the talking bodies of celebrities are beginning to wear thin. This HP Office Orchestra is new to me though not as impressive as the Honda Acapella commercial. Then again, not many commercials have approached the level of Honda's marketing efforts in the U.K. Not even this funky Ford commercial.

Fun with CSS3

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I haven't been following CSS3 much, didn't even realize some of the functionality is already implemented in a few of the current browsers. Heck, I have my hands full just trying to figure how to get things working correctly in IE.

Came across the 'Fun with highlights' experiment earlier in the day. Go ahead, try selecting the text up above in FireFox or Safari (blech). Cool huh? Erik used CSS3's ::selection pseudo-element and PHP to get the effect. For more information about CSS3, check this blog out.

Update: Guess Blogger does some weird things with the HTML when I publish. Had to dump the generated code in a separate text file and use a PHP include. Stop stripping the includes damnit! Thundercats GOOOOOOOOO!

Update 2: Took a longer look at the CSS3-Selectors document, check out 6.6.5. Structural pseudo-classes, don't have to alternate the color of the table rows via PHP and CSS anymore, you can do it just within CSS!

Newspapers (Khoi Vinh, Design Director for NYTimes.com, I'm looking at you) are going to go crazy over the ::first-line pseudo-element and the ::first-letter pseudo-element. Rather than having to enclose each first line or letter with the CSS tag, the first line or letter will automatically adopt the styles!

Orange cheats on orange with banana

Carnegie Mellon in the news, and some art / design items.

How sick is that shot from Mt. Baker up there? We are getting similar snow up here in Whistler. But the jacket is the sickest thing, the black and white dots are crazy trippy. Need more snowboarding related reading? Check out Snow Broader to see all the products coming out next year.

Carnegie Mellon made it onto Core77. Ironically it wasn't the work of a CFA student that caught their attention.

Another article on some developments coming out of Carnegie Mellon. This time some 'smart' LEGO. Guess those Clay-Mation animators can put their skills to work on some CGI films. Perhaps a return of Celebrity Deathmatch? If they ever figure out a way to shrink it all the way down, imagine embedding clay particles with this tech? Those car clay modelers could have their work in digital form without any scanning!

Fredrikson Stallard: Check out the following vases: Dragon, Bolt and Ming #2 and the Chandelier #1.

BIC pen drawings by Juan Francisco, incredibly skilled, photo-realistic.

Chung Dha Lam's exploration in animated business cards are producing some crude but very cool results. Where have I seen this stuff before? Probably some cereal insert eh?

Resonate Ink Illustrations by Si Scott, and other tidbits

Si Scott's Resonate ink illustrations are filled with swirly goodness. And get this, he does it all by hand! I wouldn't even be able to pull this off in Illustrator which is much more forgiving. It's rare that I devote so much space / bandwidth to one image in an entry, but I'm so infatuated with the work that I am demanding all of you to check the site and look at the other work in the Resonate series. Interested in a print? Checked with Soma Gallery, no luck. If you don't read anything else in this post, please go and check out his site.

Hand knit silk / wool biology frog. Seems like knitters these days are having a lot of fun with their craft. As you can probably tell from my previous posts I intend to join in.

Wonder if Drawn ever thought of this concept, Artist A Day, simple site showcasing one artist per day. It would be nice if they had thumbnails next to each artist on the list (from the previous days). Lot of painters... didn't see anything too interesting so far.

Mozilla hires developers from Humanized, great. Now that you have some UI experts on board, and have proven that you can return FireFox to v.1 speeds (v.2 was so damn sluggish), could you please make v.30b2 not crash as often in Vista? Or is it Vista's fault? I'm assuming it is...

Humanflows by Miguel Cabanzo is a project that intends to visually map global migration year by year. The prototypes give an example of migration taking place starting in 1991 based on two factors so far. I'm impressed that they were able to track down the data behind the numbers and organize them into such a simple interface. Two things that came to mind, wish there was a graphical representation of how many individuals immigrated into a certain country rather than having a bunch of numbers count up. How about heat maps, higher the number of immigrants, the brighter a country gets? The other thing that I was looking for which is probably more dependent on the data than the interface... was the preference of the Chinese. Would have been nice to see if the Southerners preferred America or if the Northerners preferred Australia, etc. Currently, all emigration sprouts from the label of the country, guess it would have been too unwieldy to zero in on the exact regions or cities. Whether or not you are interested in the data, watching the prototypes is pretty mesmerizing.

Vinny forwarded this list of 10 underhyped webapps a few days ago. Quick notes on the list. Qipit, sounds great, wish my phone's camera was better, going to save that for my visits to B&N =T. Think lighting is always an issue. Ning, heard about it before, not for me, Facebook is enough. Jott, know some people would love using this app, I just hate talking in general so it's quicker for me to email / text myself on my phone, besides I keep everything on Netvibe's Webnote. Anywhere.FM sounds awesome, I just need to set aside some time and bandwidth to upload my harder to find songs. I'm assuming I'll be able to share my music? Sorta like Shoutcast but without the damage to my bandwidth since everything is stored on Anywhere.FM's servers. Doodle, is this incorporated into Evite? Need to remember to use this next time we set up some event that requires consensus building for the date. Netvibes, they should make me Chief Evangelist. I've been banging the tables (or my buddylists rather) extolling the features of Netvibes. My main draw? Speedily checking all my POP3 email accounts at a glance. Previous start-up pages never stuck, this one has been on my first tab ever since I discovered it, I <3 features ="T." href="http://speedracerthemovie.warnerbros.com/">Speed Racer, trailer is out. I'm not really digging it. There was such a big deal made about the new camera developed for the movie (keeping everything in focus, just like a cartoon) but I guess it's one of those things that was cool in the mind, but not when executed.

Supermandolini, a pin celebrating the uber player. I'm assuming it's not officially licensed by Nintendo. Would go nice with an NES controller belt. I can think of a few individuals worthy of this pin...

On the subject of gaming, for a limited time, Steven Poole released his book, Trigger Happy, under a CC license. Grab it while you can! The PDF will is DRM free and will work on any device capable of reading PDFs. The book was originally released in 2000 and is about the aesthetics of video games.

Does free sound good to you? How about a few books by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and the founder of Creative Commons. The Future of Ideas, Free Culture, Codev2.

While we are at it, this new site (to me anyway), PDF-Mags, collects over one-hundred
free PDF mag’s focusing on art, design, illustration and culture. Right up my alley! Oh if you want a free snowboarding magazine, check out ISM, it's flash based so it's not listed in the directory.

So much to read.

AIR is MEH

What's with Apple punishing their early adopters? They are Apple's most ardent supporters, lining up hours if not days before a product release, paying full price and at times creating the artificial demand (iPhone) which garners even more free publicity for Apple. Yet they are treated like crap, e.g., the iPhone price-drop fiasco and now the $20 software upgrade demanded by Apple for the iPod Touch. Did Apple really need to make another $20 off each of their Touch early adapters?

Followed Jobs' keynote earlier today via MacRumorsLive and came away a bit disappointed. I'm glad I didn't fly out there to attend it in person. I had my MacWorld tickets all ready since last fall, thankfully my employer would've never given me the vacation time. Saved me the round trip airfare. I'm not a big Apple fan, the only Apple product I own is the Shuffle, but the rumors about a tablet caught my interest. I've been diligently following every Mac site since then and was totally let down today. At the end after Randy Newman's performance, Chewy and I were hoping Jobs would do his "and one more thing" bit, hopefully for the tablet... but nope.

The MacBook Air is a bit disappointing. Jobs boasted about the size. My Toshiba Portege 2000 from 2002 had similar dimensions. In fact, I think the thickest section of the Portege 2000 is still thinner than the thickest section of the new MacBook Air. In addition, the Portege had a ton more ports. Progress? Sure the Air has the LED back lit display, nice full keyboard that automatically illuminates, the integrated iSight and the multi-touch touchpad (still with one damn button), but what it doesn't have is the wow factor that is expected of Apple's products.

Now let's talk some design. Gizmodo has a great write up comparing Dieter Rams/Braun with Jonathan Ive/Apple. An impressive post given that it's not a design-driven site. Another sign that times are changing, design permeates through everything!

The MacBook Air has lines that remind me of the first generation iBook that came out in 1999. I had to use one at times during my D.A. shifts at Carnegie Mellon and they weren't pleasant experiences. I would have preferred that they kept the clean blocky lines with smooth corners from the existing MacBook lines, but they had to taper in the bottom half of the case to make it look thinner. It looks like a flying saucer.The mock up that circulated the web showed a screen that went right up to the edges, obviously that didn't come through. The MacBook Pros have screens that go almost up to the edge, leaving a small bezel, I'm assuming they couldn't get away with that because of the thickness of the screen here.

Leaving the optical drive out and including an option for the SSD drive, it's obvious Apple wants to move forward, but it's sort of doing so without really doing anything revolutionary. Snore. Let's hope the tablet PC is still in development and rather than dressing things up, it better be truly revolutionary. Still out of the Apple camp for now.

A little bit of design, a little bit of snowboarding...

Missed this announcement back in December. John Maeda will take over as the president of RISD in June! Back at Carnegie Mellon I attended one of his lectures and came away disappointed and even though I've been having issues finishing his short book, The Laws of Simplicity, his CV is still pretty stellar and I'm sure all of design academia will look closely at how he affects RISD. Hope it won't just be a rehash of NYU's ITP. I don't think RISD has anything to fear since it has such a strong identity, they made it through Brown's era, who didn't posses a design degree; if anything they can just learn what they can from Maeda and boot him if things don't work out.

As a child, I collected pretty much everything. I think that's what made me into the pack rat I am today, though I've been getting better since I moved back to Brooklyn (when you don't have space, it kinda forces you to start dumping stuff). Way back when, along with my sports card collections, sticker collection, and comics, I also collected stamps. I went the whole nine yards getting the tongs and separating out the stamps from the envelopes my relatives would send from Malaysia. It was a pretty lame hobby and I don't think I did it for more than a year.

Fast forward to a year or two ago, Jammer bought the DC Superheroes stamp set from the USPS for me, a few months ago, I purchased the Marvel Superheroes stamp set and I thought that would be it. Now comes the Eames stamp set, set for release later this year. If I can't have the real Eames Lounge Chair, I shall have the 41¢ version.

I need a laser cutter. And a 3-D printer. But laser cutter first! Check out this take on the red-envelope package. Lunar New Year is coming up! And while paper-cutting isn't new, laser-cutting should definitely allow you to do some new things with it.

Quick hit, a look back at the 2007 logo trends and a behind the scenes look at the spreadshirt logo design via the Open Logo Project 1.6.

I'm usually so lazy about preparing food that I prefer to eat boiled eggs than fried eggs. That may change if UrbanTrend actually finds a distributor for the Gun Egg Fryers. I'd take an Uzi and some spam please.

Tim Gallagher is living every snowboarder's dream (jerkme@hotmail.com / bogustoyou via www.bugmenot.com, I hate these registration sites). Well I suppose it would be better if the house was actually slope-side, but 15 min. away from the slopes isn't an issue. As a total package, the house isn't very impressive. The massing itself doesn't seem to come from one concept, and that was the point. The house was dictated by the need to shield the inhabitants from its neighbors, and to open it up to the mountains as much as possible. The front entrance which draws your eyes through a narrow chute towards the mountain must be breathtaking when you stand there looking up. The bedroom windows also afford you plenty of privacy while framing a beautiful view of the mountains. Go check out the photo gallery!

Check out these photo skate decks with LEDs embedded into them. I've been wishing for snowboards with LEDs for a while, ever since I saw the fluorescent colors from the bottom of some of the Ride boards reflect off the snow. You know what would also be awesome? An OLED screen at the nose of the board. It would have GPS, show trails and where your buddies are, even give you the temperature and level of congestion at various lift lines. Come on Burton, you have the money to make it happen! You partnered on the creative side so far (Warhol, Kidrobot), how about hooking up with some tech companies? Those lame Burton Ronin Espionage jackets and Motorola team ups don't count!

The Ride Contraband bindings look like a simpler implementation of sister company, K2's Auto bindings. I imagine they would be lighter and less likely to malfunction. Color scheme might not be for everyone, but with the release of the new Batman movie later this year, it might spark a green and purple revolution. They're just forecasting ahead...

If you thought those bindings were ugly, check out these haute couture bindings by Balenciaga. At least they tried, I just can't imagine any ladies wanting to rock them, they aren't as sleek, low-profile, elegant as regular shoes... snowboarding equipment in general isn't very sleek.

Voltron Found!

A killer find! Earlier in the day, my coworker was looking for a place to safely store some custom frames that were delivered. Since she had no room in her office / guest bedroom, I look a look around my office / guest bedroom and looked underneath my Andover Secretary. I never explored the drawers there and was stunned to find several boxes of Japanese robot toys. Among them, the Golden Idol of 80's mecha, Voltron (or a really good knock off). And this wasn't the lame Vehicle Voltron (of the Near Universe), this was the Lion Voltron (of the Far Universe).

As a kid, I remember frequently sitting in a dingy basement in the outskirts of Chinatown after school. There I would try to entertain myself as my father and his colleagues chain smoked Marlboros and played mahjong after a long hard day of work. My most vivid memory of Voltron was in this basement, using spare mahjong sets to build up green and white environments for my lion to romp around in.

I'm pretty sure I had the entire Voltron set at some point, but it was unwieldy so I would only carry one lion around with me to play with. Most would assume that I favored the main, black lion but I felt that it was bulky and didn't look much like a lion at all. The green and red lions which formed the arms were small with no presence. Kids like big. Remember the Fortress Maximus of the Transformers? Or the Turtle Blimp from TMNT? That left the blue and yellow lions forming the legs. Since the female character, Princess Allura, took over for Sven when he was injured, I wasn't too thrilled to be seen carrying around a female-piloted lion. Perfect proportions, cool looking head (loved the side panels on either side of his head) and the fact that he was piloted by the 'muscle' of the team made the Yellow Lion the default lion-on-the-go.



On a related note, Transformers Animated, the series started airing in case you missed it during the holidays. I wasn't too thrilled when I first saw the character designs and the animated sneak preview, but after watching the first episode / special, I'm impressed. They don't look much like robots (what's with the freaking humanoid mouths) but I love everything else about the series so far. The story line, pacing and even the dialogue doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence. Derrick Wyatt who was also the character designer for Teen Titans, Legion of Super Heroes and one of my current favorites, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is on a roll!

Click on the image above for information on the toys coming out with the series. Pretty cool stuff.

• Cybertronian mode Optimus Prime looks great with a very heroic looking pose. Earth mode, not so much, especially with the blue lips.
• Bumblebee looks cute with that two huge missles hahah.
• Does Bulkhead bring back images of Mega Man for anyone else?
• Grimlock's Tyrannosaurus mode looks great! But why did they get rid of Snarl? I love Stegosaurus'!
• Red, white and black color scheme looks AMAZING on Megatron. Why don't they just give him an H emblem and a Type-R decal and be done with it? Megatron Type-R. He might not have a V-8, but he can rev like no other.
• Soundwave's alternate mode actually sort of works. Actually it's Lazerbeak that totally pulls the package together. My favorite character, too bad the cassette action is gone...
  

And now with all this salivating out of the way, I wonder if I should just drop everything, get a portfolio together and enroll at FIT. They are one of two schools with a Toy Design major. Close to 100% placement and the tuition looks like a drop in the bucket compared to Carnegie Mellon's.

Splendid! SPLENNNNDID!

Remember the Bearded Cap by Vík Prjónsdóttir I featured two months ago? My sister surprised me earlier in the evening with a belated Christmas gift.

I sort of ruined the surprise. She left the Scandanavian Grace website up on my laptop at home along with the MTA website. When I got home and saw that she had gone to Williamsburgh, I promptly called her to ask her to track down the Bearded Cap for me. Fortunately she hung up on me because if she had told me the price I would have walked away from the cap.

Still, as a gift it %)$ rocks. I need the weather to get cold again quick so I can rock it. Like how the courtyard light from outside looks like a light bulb going off atop my head. Dig the scroll bar scarf?

I mentioned before I wanted to get into knitting. Susan bought me a set (need to pick it up from her) and Christine linked me to this cool Mohawk hat. Looks like a fine start point for my Spartan helmet.

Update: Check out this Mario Scarf. It's hefty at $150, I'll consider it if it gives me invincibility or doubles my size every time I touch a star or mushroom. Curious as to why there are no Fire Flowers.

In my hands, one of three Calvin and Hobbes volumes by Bill Watterson. Never gets old! I have three fine links for you C&H fans. First one up, his commencement address at his alma mater, Kenyon College shedding some light on his college days. The next two are somewhat similar, they both link to non-C&H work by Bill Watterson. Rare Bill Watterson art and Bill Watterson's RAREST.

Splendid! SPLENDID!

Quick hits: Wanted, Whale Hunt, Designers Accord

Wanted, read about this movie a few months back in an issue of Wizard. At the time all the hoopla was about the Iron Man movie (aftermath from the fan trailer that was released at the Comic Con). I was amazed that even with a pretty star-studded cast, the Wanted movie still slipped under my radar. It was one of my favorite mini-series during college and as with most popular comics since the 90s, the series took forever to finish. I think the last issue of Wanted came out a full year after issue #5. Though the Fox character was based on Halle Barry (Catwoman), looks like she didn't get the call. Instead Angelina Jolie filled in beautifully, so badass. I was a bit peeved that the story line was modified, but after checking up on the movie's synopsis, looks like most of the original elements are still there, just not in your face. Excellent rework! Check out the trailer. (credit: Mass)

The Whale Hunt, a photography journal by Jonathan Harris. Beautiful photos and several amazing GUIs to view them with. The GUIs are so well thought out, they fade into the background focusing your attention on what Jonathan saw and felt during the nine days he spent with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Alaska. Every five minutes, one photograph, or sometimes up to 37 were taken depending on Jonathan's heart rate. Incredible story telling... there's more to Alaska than just the stuff we saw in First Descent. Oh, Jonathan did in fact read Moby Dick (check his FAQs section). THIS IS A MUST SEE!

Designers go green... right that's old news. What's new is The Designers Accord. Looks like the designer's version of LEED accreditation but for firms rather than individual projects and without any accreditation. Okay, guess it's not like LEED at all =T.

Colorblind

Over dim sum on New Year's Day, my friends and I chatted briefly about color blindness because one of them was colorblind and his girlfriend was wearing a dot test shirt (similar to what is pictured). Yeah I guess she was trying to stick it to him heh.

I mentioned to one of the other guys at the table that there was a recent blog post that covered the subject very well, providing examples of what color blind vision is like. Check it out at Critique Wall.

Vischeck, a site mentioned in the article, simulates colorblind vision. Even better, Daltonize corrects images for colorblind viewers. The images will still look different compared to what we see but colorblind folks will be able to discern that there are different colors in the images. "The 'true' color of something may be irrelevant but the fact that it is different from its surroundings is very important."

Snowboard Art Contests

Dropping a quick note for the few that are interested and the fewer that will actually have the time to put something together. May not have the time to enter Artec's and Burton's contest but you should have plenty of time for the Salomon contest. Ride's contest is already done...

Ride Snowboard Art 6 Contest
Artec / Sony (01/07/08)
Burton Art-O-Photo-Tron 13.000 Design Contest (01/25/08, must be one of the weekly winners)
Salomon Snowboards Art Contest (starts on 01/07/08, deadline is 02/28/08)

Thoughts on LED clothing applications

The LEDs developed by Osram employ thin-film technology, making them less than 1 centimeter tall. I think there are very few instances where you can cluster LEDs and make it look presentable and this piece obviously isn't a success. Light bulbs and flashlights are fine, you hardly look directly at the light source. The same applies to the Audi R8 though the look may bother some individuals when the headlights are off. So while the idea of integrating lights into ski clothing is great for foggy days and twilight riding I'm unsure of the execution; as much as Osram wants it to be about technology, fashion still comes first in clothing.

The issue probably stems from the early applications of LEDs when they were used one at a time in media equipment to signal a power state or to illuminate a small screen. Since then, I expect LEDs to be used individually in light-emitting applications which is the case for most of the jacket. The only instance where it makes sense to bunch them up on the jacket is on the front of the hood assuming that large cluster of LEDs is for illumination purposes in addition to light-emission.

So what should be used for the rest of the jacket and pants? LED tubes / strips similar to this. Osram needs to figure out how to diffuse the light into an even glow in such a flat application. It should be a natural progression from reflective tape to light-emitting tape. This adidas shirt shouldn't have a bunch of individual LEDs dotting it in the future, the design should remain the same, the reflective area should just become light-emitting. After all what fashion forward individual would want to wear around a Lite-Brite screen?

Returning to the illumination aspects of the jacket for a moment, wouldn't it be great to have pop-up lights mounted on the shoulders? Harking back to the 80s when most cars had pop-up headlights, it would be a borrowed method to hide unsightly LED clusters when they aren't in use. It could just be a piece of fabric that you pull back snapping or velcroing it in place. Better yet, how about developing illuminating lights in the palm of the glove! Instances where you need something along the lines of high-beams, you could just raise up your palm and point towards the dark area. I'm obviously referring to the laser-guided particle beam emission units mounted in the palm of Ironman's gloves, no need to call me out.

I hope by 2036, we will be much further along than the ski jacket and pants presented here. But you know what? I'd still rock that piece right now even with the tight pants. Hook it up!

Art in the Lower East Side, the eh, yeh and jeaaaaahhh

Eh.
Sam and I met up with Tran yesterday after dimsum and made it into the New Museum without having to wait on line; thanks to tickets provided by Tran and the nice ladies manning the entrance who allowed us to slide in. That was fortunate because I would have been pretty peeved if I waited on line for the pieces making up the Unmonumental Exhibition. Not only were the pieces unmonumental, they were unrefined, uninspired, and most importantly underwhelming.

Designed by Japanese firm Sanaa, the New Museum offers up a run of the mill interior gallery space highlighted by a slightly unnerving set of stairs in the back, great for days without many people milling about, awful for a crowded opening day. The museum serves its purpose by taking a back seat to the pieces they exhibit, but for the Unmonumental exhibition, I wish the architects had done more to stimulate me when perusing the interior. The perforated aluminum clad exterior is striking, especially when set against a bluebird sky. Wonder when some idiot will try to scale it. I want to toss magnets at it. The rooftop terrace offers great views of lower Manhattan with a limited viewing of the north, befitting of the museum's mantra to focus on the edgy creativity, new ideas, rather than the established scene up north and in SoHo and Chelsea.

Anyway there were a few passable pieces, if you visit, take a look at Urs Fisher's pieces, one which reminded me of Zelda/Link. Another one to watch out for is Marc André Robinson's Myth Monolith, which reminded me of some of Cai Guo-Qiang's pieces except the tigers were swapped with chairs.

Yeh!
Disappointed, I left to pick up a replacement wall control unit for my Minka Aire Artemis while Sam, Tran and some of her friends spent additional time viewing the video installation. When I got back, we went around the block towards Sam's car, on the way, Sam glanced into one of the buildings and pulled us all in. Turned out to be Chelsea-based Lehmann Laupin's satellite gallery. Currently exhibiting? None other than Do Ho Suh (I'm always tempted to call him SoHo Duh). First saw his work back in 2005 (the piece is actually from 2001) when he constructed an entire apartment interior out of nylon and stainless steel tube. Also thought his army men side table was brilliant. Might have to borrow that idea.

Anyway, the piece on display was called Reflection (image to the right is the same piece but in a prior exhibition, different gallery) and it was the first time I ever saw his work up close. It's even more amazing because the execution is flawless. Maybe it was the contrast from the stuff found at the new Museum that added weight to Do Ho Suh's piece. Compared to his apartment piece, it looks like he's tightened up his style, the fabric isn't so droopy anymore. The title Reflection not only describes the piece literally (two arched gates made of nylon and stainless steel tube reflecting each other on a sea of matching fabric), but also conceptually. The gate it is modeled after is the same gate located at his childhood home in South Korea.

While at the gallery, we spoke to fellow viewers and met a person starting up Monster Hoodies. Tran was enamored with the hoodie so I thought I'd give it a shout out. Looks very crafty, even more so than the scroll-bar scarf I'm rocking. Another viewer also showed us a clipping from the NY Times which highlighted a walking tour of a few galleries in the LES. Didn't have the time to really check out the other places, but I better do it soon before the exhibits change.

Amazing. I was born and raised in the area (Broome and Allen) before moving into Brooklyn and then Jersey. Things were different back then. The area looks the same, but beneath the covers everything has changed. Go visit!

Upcoming!
Banksy is coming back to NYC! Actually, he's here now, until the end of the month. Vanina Holasek Gallery in Chelsea.

V Water by Jennifer Chen and Sara Leal for 20:20 London

There's Something In The Water - video powered by Metacafe

When I first saw the Mentos commercials in the early 90s I thought commercials in the U.K. were all campy. They were the corniest, non-flashy marketing pieces I ever saw. Then came the various Honda commercials including the Rube Goldberg inspired one. Since then I've admired the spots airing across the Atlantic. While we get the flashy in your face heart pounding theatrics, the Brits are privy to subdued, intelligent commercials. I don't know what the hell V Water is, but I love the commercial above.

Fort Greene's Watch Owl

Introducing our Watch Owl, w00t!. My first vinyl wall art, going to find some more, this stuff can get addicting! Located right above our motion sensing light switch for the hallway. He's watching you... Want your very own? Get it at Etsy.

If you are unfamiliar with wall vinyl's, check out this blog post Engly sent me. It has examples from an assortment of wall vinyl sellers, my owl is featured in one of them too! Next up? Probably going for this Panda, and maybe some Space Invaders. Preventing myself from buying more t-shirts from Threadless, but it doesn't mean I can't dress up my walls now with Threadless inspired decals.

Out of the blue, thought this article, Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock, was pretty awesome. Finally saw most of National Treasure a few weeks back and I thought it was great. Looking forward to the new one, though I'm not sure I'd go to the theaters to see it.

Nice photo-feature on the NY Times on the manhole covers of NYC. Check it out, From Ladles of Molten Metal. Unfortunately the NYC Sewer Cover Rug isn't a faithful reproduction, neglects the Made in India tag. Maybe I'll just go with the barcode doormat. You know how a lot of doormats have "Welcome" written on there somewhere? I want a custom Bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong doormat...

On the topic of walls (well, my Gunmetal gray walls with white trim), looks like I was ahead of the curve! In the current issue of Metropolitan Home, they have a feature titled, Gray's Anatomy (how creative). Quoting two designers in there:

Gray is the new beige. It's a good color for a room with northern exposure, where the light is much cooler and diffused. -Philip Gorrivan, interior designer

Nothing is more sophisticated than gray walls with white trim. Gray has a crispness that you cannot get with yellow-based neutrals, and it's far more modern. - Kara Mann, interior designer

Though from all the photos in the feature, I'm assuming my Gunmetal gray is much too dark and not what they had in mind.

"Sit on my lap. It's ergonomic."

Stole that line from Core77's Hack2School. I just read some of their posts and it brought back a lot of great memories. Wish it was around when I was starting out in school. I left so many projects undocumented or just didn't know how to document them correctly. You spend a bajillion hours on a project, yet you can't take that one day to correctly set up the shots to record your portfolio pieces. In the back of my mind, I thought every successive project would get better and better so I wouldn't need my current project. I was so wrong, my two most memorable and exciting projects were museums in the second semester of first year and first semester of second year. I was in the zone...

In my second semester in the 'Money' Studio, I was reading an issue of Metropolis that someone left in studio and came across an article on the just released Humanscale Freedom chair. That issue and subsequent issues were also littered with tons of Humanscale, Steelcase (man I love the Think chair), and of course, Herman Miller ads. I ripped out a Humanscale advertisement showing off the side profile of a Freedom chair with the headrest and pinned it to the wall behind my desk. That very day I made a promise to myself that I'd purchase that chair when feasible. At $800 - $1300, it's not a purchase to be taken likely.

Designed by Niels Diffrient, the Freedom chair and Steelcase's Leap chair were both introduced at around the same time in an attempt to piggyback and steal some of the Aeron chair's success. Additional information on Niels can be found here and here.

A month back (maybe longer) I finally got my hands on one. Though it wasn't a fully decked out chair with the headrest, I couldn't pass up the deal. Scouring Craigslist I finally snagged an almost new (legs and casters were still wrapped up) Humanscale Freedom chair for $220! Insane deal. I didn't need an office chair since I still had the $50 Staples chair, but really...

We also needed some office chairs at work so after missing out on some Think Chairs on eBay (I was instructed to keep the price as low as possible, but at the same time I didn't want to come back with offerings from Staples or OfficeMax), I went back to Craigslist and came upon a posting by Designer Seating. Went to their Brooklyn warehouse and picked up two Freedom Chairs for $375 each. They were in a little worse shape than my almost new Freedom at home but still a terrific deal at $375. The warehouse was interesting. I saw Aeron pieces stacked to the gills, tons of Leaps, a few Freedoms and hordes of other modern pieces (some real and many others imitations, I'm assuming all the Barcelonas were fakes). There was also one Knoll Life chair, but it had a blue backing, I was told to purchase all black chairs.

Anyway so that's my office chair story. If anyone is looking for an office chair I'm here to help! I didn't exactly get the chair of my dreams but my current situation will do. Next up? Eames Lounge Chair... I just need to find a really beat up one, I intend on replacing the leather anyway.

So I have my chair, need to find a suitable desk, any recommendations? It would be great if I was working in these types of environments, looks like fun huh? While we are on the subject of offices, check out this USB Putt Returner. I wonder if Corwin is going to get it for another SASI Putt Putt Challenge. Sure beats the USB Humping Dog.

New hobbies / addictions / money drains

Thinking about getting into knitting. That's right. Knitting. Came across this today and it looks like I'll be making a trip to Williamsburg. Scandanavian Grace located at 167 North 9th Street carries Vík Prjónsdóttir's products. Can someone teach me how to pronounce that? I wonder how much that Bearded Cap costs. It'll go great with the scrollbar scarf Jane got me last year.

Who else wants to take up knitting with me? I want to knit a fu-manchu version but the first thing I want to knit is a wool Spartan helmet! Not very functional but I think it would be pretty bad ass on the subways. Jane told me to watch the 'English knit' videos on Knitting Help.com but it would be much easier if I had a knitting partner to start out with.

In addition, with so many of my friends knee deep in photography I finally jumped in. A few months back, my father showed me the Sony A100 DSLR he purchased and I basically scoffed at him. I was pissed he didn't consult with me before making the purchase. Especially since I despise Sony so much (though I almost broke down and got the PS3, Gran Turismo is just around the corner). My dad does it all the time, especially with cell phones. Anyway, turns out he bought two of them for no good reason. My mother found the second one in one of the drawers at home so I promptly snatched it from her. It isn't that bad of a camera according to some of the established sites. It's too bad i won't be able to borrow any lenses from Zan, Boon or Teddy. Just for my records, two nice portfolio-like sites to browse through sometime in the future. Ellis Island Ghosts and Joe's NYC.

Argyle Gargoyle... gonna name my bike Gargoyle =D

Never really found the pattern all that fascinating so I was surprised when Elmo told me the pattern was 'in' since last year. Looks like it has some staying power because everywhere I look, it's as if the pattern just came into vogue recently or maybe it's just because I'm paying more attention to it.

Skewed parallelograms viewed on an angle. What really got me into it was the 12k weave on the new bike frame. The very bike frame that made me run around like mad trying to find the not so ubiquitous 30mm seat post collars. Also dropped $100 for a $50 front dérailleur so I could have it expedited to me. The exact same front dérailleur on my old with a different clamp size. What a waste of money, I didn't get the other two parts I needed so I couldn't get the bike completed anyway. Well that's a story for another time. The cheaper 12k weave is much more noticeable than the 3k weave which looks like regular carbon fiber, the stuff that you see in golf clubs, car interiors and the like. The top sheet of any carbon fiber piece is really a cosmetic layer that lends nothing to the structural integrity of the piece (I'm just trying to make myself feel better since I didn't drop the extra money for the 3k weave).

The bike was in the shop for a month, finally picked it up last week. Need some cold weather tights before I complete the century I promised for the MS Bike Tour. Tried riding it yesterday and without my gloves, had to turn around pretty quick because I had issues holding onto the handlebars with the cold biting through. The build ended up costing quite a bit more than I estimated. Still cheaper than getting a brand name stock bike with the same components but not as much as I was hoping for. Looking back, I would've done things differently... should have just bought a quality expensive bike right off the bat.

I paid $125 on eBay for the saddle, now it looks cheap compared to this bottle cage. I can't imagine paying $125 for something that really doesn't affect your riding... read the review, it's hilarious. Love Bike Snob's writing.

While we are on the subject of bikes, check out the sweet furniture created by Andrew Gregg using bike parts. Was made aware of it through this WSJ article, additional information at Inhabitat or just go to Gregg's site, Bike Furniture.

Look around you: If God didn't create it, AutoCAD did.

Happy 25th birthday AutoCAD! That quote above belongs to Autodesk's former CEO Carol Bartz, and their anniversary actually occurred on Thursday so I'm a bit tardy with this post. Read more about it at Wired or at AutoDesk. My first experience with AutoCAD? The summer of 1998 when I interned for a small firm in NYC. The most exciting thing I worked on that summer (aside from stairs) were the placement of a few windows to frame views of the Manhattan Bridge. Fun...

At Carnegie Mellon, software wasn't really taught, it was expected that you spent the time to learn on your own. We did have Form-Z taught to us during our first year. Buggiest piece of crap I ever used. It was easier to pick up than 3DSMax or Maya, but I felt as if our entire class and those before and after us were just used to beta test the software. I hear the faculty dumped it and moved onto proper tools like Max. AutoCAD was offered as an elective.

Unlike other majors, rankings for Architecture schools are relatively hard to find. Here's a recent one from Architect Online. Interesting enough this is the first time I've ever visited the site so I wonder if it has a substantial audience. Sounds credible based on the types of people they polled, did not realize half the programs listed actually offer NAAB accredited programs. Virginia Polytechnic? I find it amazing that it beat out Princeton, Yale, UVA and Syracuse in the Graduate programs category.

Additional coverage on Carnegie Mellon's design programs can be found at BusinessWeek. A student / project from CM won a bronze IDEA award. I think architecture school would have been more interesting if we structured our studios around international competitions. I think we were allowed to enter one or two but they all seemed like they were completed outside of studio time. I remember seeing a lot of posters for competitions in Maggie Mo for the CD and ID majors.

John Maeda is wack (when it comes to architecture). In his blog, he defended Gehry! I'm not upset that he is defending Gehry, but he has the gall to compare a painting and a logo to a building. In essence we are supposed to look at a building, where one spends most of our waking hours, the same way we look at a painting or a logo Incredible.

Public Service Announcement (Public Transport Planning): Need to get from point A to B via public transportation? You now have three options. The trusted HopStop, the government's attempt, Trip Planner, and the newbie with a marketing budget (saw a commercial for this during a college game), Public Routes.

Melting Pot Post (just catching up)

Catching up on the many 'draft' mode entries I have saved. But before I begin, a notice for all those versed in Photoshop, want to win some sweet Apple products? Enter this free contest (4 different contests requiring you to collage some photographs creatively, or naughtily for the first one round). The Crestock Photoshop Contest 2007, thanks Mike.

NYC Taxi logos, aren't they awful? We didn't need a logo then, we don't need one now. Especially if it's this crap coming from Smart Design. Obviously the city meddled with it too much and the designers at Smar