For his silly emails, goofy cat language, ridiculous impersonations, and love of odd words that just “sound cool,” how could you not laugh in his presence? Introverted, but polite, accomodating, and genuinely interested in our lives, even if unspoken. He read our blogs, looked at our pictures, and even listened to my stupid songs! I love that I got to jam on the harmonica while he played the piano at Christmas, especially since he was so damn good (though very modest).

A great man, great father, great husband, great friend. There will be an emptiness, and he will never be forgotten. On top of being a great man, he was also a great designer, so I thought I would share some of his logos below. I’ll miss you Mark.

Their live show consists of full on jams of their songs, basically using large soundboards with all their sounds being pulled in, and can be brought into any song they want, making for an awesome live experience. Furthermore, Karl Hyde sings and woos the crowd with his free-flowing lyrics, generally created for rhythm and can be non-sensical coming from sources such as conversations or observations. In addition to the heart-pounding musical excursions, they also include wonderful motion graphics consisting of typography for us design-junkies, random images from city life around the world, and live shots from the crowd. At leat that’s what it was like 6 years ago, hopefully we’ll see them here in the US once again.

Ah, typography! Such a lovely art, yet so under-appreciated. This page explains some fundamentals of typography, found courtesy of my friend Pablo. If you find the descenders of Gs and Ys to be sexy, or you’re hot for ampersands, you’re not alone (and don’t need therapy), but you should check out some great books such as one of my professor’s, Alex White Type In Use, among many more from him and other great typographers.

I can’t complain right? When should I come home ‘tired,’ relax in front of the computer or boob-tube, and think to myself “this is great!”? I start to feel guilty in some way. So now it’s September. Perfect time to kick it up. It stopped being hot, I started running with M again, and I’m planning to work on that damned website of mine finally (or M’s site? or both?). I also think I’m gonna take the bull by the proverbial horns and kick it up at work, hopefully I’ll pick up some interesting and challenging work. If not, well, there is that website of mine to change

Funny how happiness is such a balance. Stress, distance, companionship, work, sleep, love, and stars need to be perfectly aligned in order to really feel the joys of happiness. Like my dad says “without bad luck, there’d be no luck at all.” Same applies with happiness. So I’m about 80% there, hell, how could I have any problems with such a wonderful girlfriend, nice apartment to come home to, etc. etc. Just a few glitches to take care of. Ok, enough gushing my world, go read someone else’s blog now!

Very cool juxtaposition of design and writing, and very inspirational as I search the ether for new ways to look at things. All created from the pages of ‘feminine bibles’ as I.D. puts it. Check out his page as well: Graham Rawle

Check out this sweet concept for a new OS GUI, bringing familiar real-world concepts to your virtual desktop. I am very impressed with it beauty and functionality, but think it’d probably require a bit of a learning curve and much time getting used to such an odd way to see things after years of looking at such OS’s as Apple’s and that other (evil) company. Right. Kinda interesting to think that at some point our ‘virtual’ ways become more realty than our real ‘reality.’ Hmm… does that make sense? Another words, even though we’re all so used to real desktops and filing them with crap, staplers, those goofy lil items you get as stocking-stuffers, junk mail, etc.; our virtual desktops just become an extension of that, in a very 2D way. I personally find it easier to organize in 2D, if you saw my desk you’d know what I mean! Anyway, check out the site: BumpTop Prototype

For Flickr, I’m not sure if you need an account, but you can get a badge tagged with anything you’d like (i.e. typography for mine, but could be harmonica, music, love, etc.) at Flickr: Make a Badge Fun stuff! You can customize it like I did as well, if you know a lil css/html.

Oh, speaking of, I used the plain black template for my site, and tweaked it to hide things, and add a header. I also changed some colors and added some borders. I usually copy the whole template and paste it into a new HTML doc in Dreamweaver 8 (MX 2004 should have decent CSS support, anything before that ain’t that great), and just manipulate some of the code to my liking. I don’t touch any of the automatic stuff in the HTML, just the look and feel of the site. The templates Blogger has to me seem to be very clean and great to work with. Ok, nuff geek speak. Have a good night!

Amusing caption to go with: Behold Tall Mode! (Alpaca sold separately.)

This is from the new Honda Fit. Small car, but have some great options for space conversion inside. I love these new little cars, not amazingly sexy or anything, but fuel efficient and full of good features. Nice to see you can get something for your money. Not to mention with gas prices so bad, these cars can pack a punch with less bucks. I dig! Toyota’s Yaris is cool too, I think it’s a little sexier but smaller.