Currently doing some Photoshop work. Making impossible things as probable as I can. Meanwhile, The Decemberists are playing on iTunes, keeping me mellow as I work. “The Engine Driver” came on and reminds me of the tattoo I want.

There just isn’t quite enough time to get everything done is there? I think I’ll just give into the fact that I am bad at doing this right now. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, just not feel guilty about being sporadic and neglectful. This is supposed to be fun, after all…

Some links I’ve not posted here while I’m at it:

• If you have never read Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, you should. It’s been on my mind lately. It was the paper* I did my senior seminar talk on, and 5 years out of school, I find it more relevant than ever. (* It’s more a list than a paper really.)
• A beautiful book of prints from the filmaker of Style Wars (Not the highest quality, but Style Wars on Google)
• “I Can Read Movies” a gallery of covers for imaginary books.
• AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com If you haven’t been, just go there now! Check this one out for sure!
• SilhouetteMasterpieceTheatre is pretty punny
• I know it’s sorta older, but animated Quimby the Mouse rules!!!

Now back to work.

I’ve seen these a couple of times, but their second postcard pack just came out and I had to share. These are posters designed by graduates of University College Falmouth, originally intended to be given to first year students entering the program. For their second year, they seem to have now branched out, and other schools are participating. I think these little gems have advice and inspiration for just about anyone.

They have all the posters available for viewing on Flickr. Here’s a link to the Flickr set for Postcard pack #1, and Postcard pack #2

I have to include to a couple of my favorites:

Collaborate by Carys Williams	Hold Your Nerve by Luke Tonge
Br Yourself by Jane Laurie	Look Lively by Oliver Sutherland
Look Beyond Your Environment by Robert Evans	Everything is Possible by Lee Basford

If you’re interested in purchasing either of the packs:
Postcard pack #1 is available for £5.99, and Postcard pack #2 for £6.99. Prints of most of the posters are also available, most of them are £5 ea

I’d post this to FB as well, but it’s possibly NSFW, and definitely a little deranged… The most bizarre ads for home pregnancy tests…ever? Just… wow.

Not too much interesting to link to this week. Quickly:
1) deepleap.org. It’s like scrabble-tetris. Letters drop down every 3 seconds and you have to make words with them! Great fun.
2) Font Game from ilovetypography. I’ve managed a 17 out of 32, but only played the once. Damn this is hard!
3) CopyPasteCharacter is useful for all those odd characters you need and can never remember the key combo for.
4) Tweet Necklace. Want!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading and should be posting reviews on LibraryThing soon. I’ve plowed through AIR and Cairo by G. Willow Wilson and M. K. Perker, Channel Zero by Brian Wood, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse (Vol 1) by Ben Templesmith, Fell by Warren Ellis, The Escapist by Brian K Vaughn, as well as a couple of short-form books, Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell out by Adam Koford and Notes Over Yonder by Scott Morse. I also bought Classics for my iPod and read The Metamorphosis by Kafka and am in the middle of Paradise Lost and The Hounds of Baskerville. And I still need to sit down with Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey (especially since it’s an early reviewers book! Bad Kat) and Local by Brian Wood. So yeah, lots of reading lately…

I’ve also been helping a friend out with a web project. I have to say, really re-learning website design is kinda breaking my brain. But it’s good, because I’m all too ready to make do with my own site, and this is pushing me to really learn what I’m doing. Hopefully it will be in a place I can share in a week or so. And once I’ve banged his site into some kind of order, maybe I’ll take a good look at my own and give it some more purpose… I really do love it when I’m in the thick of a project, when you start to see the form of it all appearing from the pieces you’ve pulled together. Beginnings are always a bit awkward, but once you’ve found your footing in something, everything just clicks.

Meanwhile this week should be an interesting one. Marathon Monday tomorrow, which means getting up at 4:30 am to work the 5K checkpoint. Mostly I’ll be watching two cameras that are set up there, and making sure they are running and no one bangs into them. It’s fun but a long day. Then Tues and Weds I’ll be going to Bruce Springsteen concerts, and hopefully I’ll see the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the ICA with a couple of friends on Thurs. I think I’m reserving Fri night for collapsing in a ball!

What’s the use of a blog you never update? So sorry to anyone who’s still kicking around here from time to time. Life intervenes as it will, and sometimes when you have the most to say, you have no time to say it. I’ve found I’m more likely to post a 140 char Twitter, or fire off a short FaceBook link than bother even attempting something as “long form” as a blog post. Yes, we have gotten to a point where two paragraphs is considered long form. My high school English teacher must be rolling in his grave as we speak!

I did a bit of housekeeping the other day and found that my biggest sin is starting posts and then abandoning them half-way through because I felt there wasn’t enough content to deserve posting just one or two things. Needless to say, months later half the links no longer work, and the ones that do seem pointlessly outdated. So I will try to post at least once a week, even if it’s a small post of a link or two. Just because I don’t have time for a novel doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share the bit and bobbins I find around the web.

So here are some things I posted on FaceBook that bear repeating here. Hopefully there will be more in the way of content soon!

(Time sensitive!) If you like Maurice Sendak and happen to be in the Philly area, there’s a great show of his work going on, and if you need a little motivation, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (one of my fav indie retailers) is having a competition to win tickets to the show, along with a copy of There’s A Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak, the companion DVD documentary. But hurry, since the show is only around until May 3rd!

Bathtub IV is an amazing video that uses tilt-shift to make the footage look like it’s of dolls or toys. There are a few other good tilt-shift videos by the same user, but this one is particularly good.

Here’s a first look at the stamp Dave McKean created for the UK Post Office. They are, of course, hella cool.

Speaking of Dave McKean, Seven Impossible Things has a great interview with him. And it’s chock-full of amazing illustrations and graphics, so even if you’re familiar with his work, there are some great gems in there.

Lastly, to be filed under font geek, an amazing periodic table of typefaces. Damn!

So, I have just discovered that none of the items I have posted in the past few weeks have made it onto the blog… (I guess it pays to actually go to the front page every now and then) Not sure why, and can’t really deal with it this weekend, but you might see a flurry of back-dated posts next week. Maybe it has to do with the fact I need to update Wordpress, or some connection between my iPod updater and the website, but something is amiss… More info to come

I hate to whine, so I’ll be brief and just say work has been nuts. There have been a number of weekends worked and excesive overtime clocked. I’ve been worn down and the last thing I’ve felt like doing when I get home is blogging. I’ve stopped uploading to Flickr, and recommending on ThisNext. I’ve all but fallen off the web these past two months. I’ve been twittering though, when I think of it, so that’s one way to stay in touch.

I’m really proud of the work I’ve been doing, but it’s been taking a toll. So I won’t say I’m back, because life promises to be hectic through the new year, but I don’t want to forget the cool things that have been happening of late as well.

It was a busy few weeks, concert-wise. I saw Ted Leo & RX, who was opening for Against Me! I probably should have stayed for more of the headlining act, but Ted Leo were really good and I was tired from a long couple of weeks so I packed it in early.

Then all of two weeks passed before I went to the Who at the Garden. That started a string of shows I went to over the course of the coming weeks. As stressfull as things were at work, at least I had that release!

There was Of Montreal and the next night David Byrne (for Halloween!). By the way, if you ever get a chance to see David Byrne live, take it. It was such a blast, and I loved how they incorporated modern dance into the show. He’s one of those people who you wish you could crawl into their heads for 15 mn, there’s just so much going on in there!

I got to sit in the 6th row for the Decemberists show the following week. And I got *this* close to getting up on stage for the last song. Damn you security man! Why was the person before me the last one you let up? Was I not hipster enough for you? But it was still lots of fun. Then Sunday was the Hold Steady with the Drive By Truckers. I saw a bit of the Truckers, and they were good. The Hold Steady were a ton of fun, although I do wish the crowd was a bit more into it.

Along the way I also got to see John Hodgman do a reading from his new book at the Coolidge Theater (where he used to work incidentally). He’s hilarious! Also, much more dashing in person. Stopped over to the signing but the line grew exponentially while we had a two mn conversation with someone a friend of mine knew, so we opted out and instead snagged some good Vietnamese food.

Other than that, it’s been work work work. Oh, and my birthday is Friday. Go me! I’m older! :)

So I just got home from the Decemberists show and I should go to sleep since I have to be at work early, but I can’t, so I installed WP on my iPod instead. Brilliant, I know. Will it help me blog? We’ll see!

More to come tomorrow, but we made it home!

So yes, that was the eye of the storm that we were experiencing the other night. Since then things took one heck of a turn for the worse. We had limited power and no water soon after I posted. Then night set in, and the winds picked up. Around 10:20pm I had to wake my mother up, since the winds were moving the patio set and I was worried they were going to blow through the sliding doors. Then we felt the doors straining inwards against the winds… Rain started to be pushed through the closed doors and winds, making the ground slippery. Then, bang, we lost all remaining power. We gathered our things, lit a candle and headed for the one room without windows. We spent the next 8 hours locked in the bathroom, with towels shoved under the door to keep the water out. It was stiflingly hot, and we barely slept, but we made it.

The next morning we were happy to find all doors and windows intact, but lots of puddles around. There was sand everywhere, broken branches, and gutters ripped from the roof. They told us there was a 60% chance we’d regain power and water, but they couldn’t promise, as we were at the end of the island, and 10 mn down a dirt road. We opted to head closer into town, where there was still power, to the Grace Bay area, where we could.

The roads were flooded pretty badly. The ground is mostly limestone, and the water doesn’t seem to go much of anywhere but pool into small lakes in the road. Our little car didn’t stall thankfully, and we made it safe and sound. There was a bit of a break in the storm, so we didn’t blow about too badly, and it only started to rain again once we were in the room. Of course, the power went off as soon as we got settled, but they managed to keep the water on. I don’t think I have ever been so excited to be able to take a shower in my life.

We’re a bit more protected from the wind it seems here. At least if feels that way. Last night we were able to sleep a lot better, although I did keep waking up. They kept the restaurant open last night and this morning. We’re in the eye of the storm (again) right now, and are contemplating a trip to the supermarket to stock up. We’re hoping that Hanna is starting it’s trip north finally, and that the airline decides to send more planes down once the airport re-opens. Right now we’re booked on a flight out on Monday… right after Ike is supposed to have hit. So we’re hopping we won’t be here to see him!!

I know we’re safe, and I know we will make it home, I just wish I was there now!