How I Waste My Precious Time

Sean Haefeli has just released his latest album, a 4 track EP featuring cover art by me. Check out some samples of the tunes at his website. The album shipped in a sleeve, so the art is just a front and back image. No inserts or anything extra.

The best looking part actually turned out to be the disk itself, but I can take no credit
. The disk is printed in just three colors, which was a reduction of my original artwork done by the disk printers. It looks sweet on the silver disk. Props to Disc Makers for doing a nice job on that for me, although some type on the front cover is a little jagged for an unknown reason.

The current theme, Gray gets Green by Fred Banuelos, started with this image up top, which is gorgeous:

I hope it’s not too plagiarist to steal the idea and colors and rebuild it with my own imagery. I decided a Chicago skyline would give it a nice local touch, and this resulted:

I think it is pretty apparent that it’s a rush job, but it also captures the intent completely so it’s fine for starters. Seeing the rough edges up there gave me the idea that I could just build up better versions over time, which appeals to me completely, I’ve already added an estimated outline of the under construction Trump Tower, and I expect subtle enhancements will appear frequently.

A link to the source image, a photo taken by my buddy Josh Lane and used without asking his permission (yet), clearing violating the Copyright which does not permit derivative works.

I’ve been cooking like never before during the year 2006. That’s a relative measurement, but I’ve also gone out for awesome brunch/breakfast more than any other year to date. Today I made that expense irrelevant by cooking up this masterpiece:

Breakfast potatoes have always been one of my favorite dishes, due to growing up eating the best ever from Santa Fe Restaurant in Glen Ellyn. I’ve never been able to reproduce theirs, but I find if I boil the potatoes for a few minutes before I fry them they are similarly soft in the center.

Most of the nerds I hang around with are obsessed with computers but can’t code at all past a webpage. Yesterday I found a free PDF at CocoaLab about programing for OS X that doesn’t assume you already know how to program.

They’ve also started up a Wiki on the topic.

It’s hard to beat John Gruber’s opening clause here:

I’ve been up to my ears in jackassery lately, ->

but it’s nice to see someone in the media effectively acting like a watchdog these days. It’s not just Gruber, either. Lately there seems to be a lot of independent but popular writers in the Mac media calling “bullshit” when they see it and parsing said bullshit with highly logical retorts. Even MacWorld stood up for decent journalism recently when they were linked to a sensational piece published under their own umbrella corporation: so it’s not just the bloggers.
The sad and scary thing is that this watch-dogging is of the major media, which is itself supposed to be watching over the government and all else that is powerful and potentially dangerous to normal citizens. I can’t decide if the trend of independent people checking up on the large media organizations is a sign of hope that a technology may finally be helping the common man and the cause of equality, or a portent of doom that our major media institutions are not fulfilling their social task at all.

In the meantime, I’ve found a new iChat status message.

Also, go use Apple’s new .Mac Webmail. It’s gorgeous. Turn on Keyboard shortcuts in the preferences.

I can’t decide which is better:

I also think that this zune logo is almost cool, but it doesn’t make sense in three dimensional space. What are those vertical lines right down the center? Are they supposed to be diagonal cross bars on the top and bottom horizontal planes, or are they vertical supports on opposite corners and if so why? I don’t think any structural engineer would sign off on this icon design: the slightest weight on the top would likely result in an immediate racking, shifting, and collapse of the whole thing. Which sounds like a plausible future for the Zune, actually.

It should actually look like this, if you want to see the Z:

Or like this if you don’t want it to turn into a pile of web 2.0 colored rubble:

(those are on me Microsoft, I know your designers are hopelessly lost)

Which brings up another point: no one will ever accuse this product of having timeless design. While the 5 year old iPod looks a little clunky (compared to todays iPods, it’s still more elegant that the Zune), it’s white and polished metal appearance still looks brilliant. This brown turd Zune box with neon highlights will look as old as day glow yellow leotards in 5 years. Admission of internal contradiction: I actually like the box colors, they’re just not timeless.

I got WordPress going apparently, so I now have a respectable blogging engine. Now then for something to say …