The Design Disease. While I am by no means a graphic designer AT ALL, I do think I exhibit some of the symptoms of this malady. Bad kerning, fonts, and colours definitely bother me. I have been known to rant about really bad logos (like the new one for Freedom). I definitely pick wine based on the labels, and I’m drawn to books with eye-catching covers. I wouldn’t say I actively collect good design (yet) though…
Month: February 2007 (page 3 of 6)
Death to Spammers
The comment spammers are driving me nuts today. I may have to escalate the war. Possible options include forcing you to use a Captcha (which somewhat annoys me when I have to do it on other people’s sites) or requiring commenters to formally register (which REALLY annoys me and I never do it on other people’s sites). Any other ideas? Would either of those strategies keep you from commenting here?
Afterthought: Hmm, what about putting a time limit on how often you can comment? Would, say, an enforced one-minute wait between comments suck too much? Might even cut down on some of the double posts, I guess…
How much do I love my friends? This morning Eva e-mailed me a link to the forthcoming High School Musical videogame. SQUEEEE! And it’s going to be for Wii! And then Bex sent me a link to a pattern for a drawstring Wiimote carrying bag. Fun Monday so far!
Thanks to my mad e-mail responding skillz earlier this week, the Snook and I had free tickets to a sneak preview of The Illusionist today. (Thanks, Kinokuniya!) While I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Prestige, it was still an entertaining – and air conditioned! – diversion on a hot summer day. Jessica Biel actually impressed me with her acting, and Paul Giamatti was awesome as usual. Edward Norton just somehow leaves me cold though. I can see that he’s a great actor and all, but I’ve just never really connected with him in any role. (Plus in this movie he has one of those beards that I hate, the ones that come right up to the lower lip all the way across. *shudder*) The opening credits were annoying though, and the first 40 minutes of plot were completely ripped off from The Princess Bride. The big trick reveal at the end was pretty anticlimactic too, as most of the audience had figured it out an hour before. Still, I’d call it a worthwhile DVD rental.
I had meant to make this weekend a Flurry of Finishing (with regards to my knitting) and I guess I was moderately successful.
Okay, first up is Argosy, which is a scarf I started a couple weeks ago as a way to use up the leftover Noro Silk Garden from the Cabled Jacket of Doom. It’s a fun little pattern to knit and it grows pretty quickly. I was nearing the end of it at the TC SnB Thursday night when Kate asked if anyone had any scrap wool to use as a stitch holder. I gave her about a foot-long piece. Would you believe that twenty-four hours later I ran short by EXACTLY THAT AMOUNT? D’oh! Rather than frogging back and making it shorter, I laboriously trimmed down all the tails from my joins and then spit-felted them all together. Yes, I spit in my own hand and rubbed the yarn in it til it joined. This scarf is riddled with my very own DNA. Hence, I’m not giving it as a gift to anyone. It’s pretty though, right?
Next is my entry in the perpetual Best Sister Ever Sweepstakes. My little brother Joey loves the Indianapolis Colts (who just won the Superbowl). So as a surprise, I made him this hooded vest. The pattern is from this great new book and I drew the intarsia graph for the logo and name myself. (It’s here if anyone wants it.) Very cute, huh? I knitted it out of Heirloom Easycare 8ply. Mom predicts he’s absolutely going to love it.
And lastly… I’m thinking of renaming it the Zombie Cabled Jacket That Just WILL NOT DIE. I had planned to finish the damn thing once and for all, but nothing with this project is easy. I did manage to get it steeked though. What’s more, I actually had one whole side of the zipper sewn in and the other one halfway done before ripping it off completely. The little cut ends were poking out, you see. It bothered me. I can’t get them to lie down nicely so I can trap them beneath the zipper. I’m thinking now of possibly ironing on some sort of interfacing just to keep them smooth. Any thoughts?
A Tale of Two Bloggers
We went to Nick‘s surprise 30th birthday party last night. He just got back from a trip to Kenya where he was asked to provide live Internet commentary for Cricket Europe for a big cricket tournament over there. He did such a good job, they’re considering sending him to the West Indies to cover the Cricket World Cup.
Me? I took a funny picture of my cat recently.
Startling Transformation
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Big time. I felt sluggish, tired, annoyed… and then I got to work and discovered that we were down two staff members. (One has been sick all week; the other resigned.) Then Albert had a go at me for my slack marketing efforts. (Slack? HELLO? I’ve already pre-sold more than half our initial order of Knit Picks and made sure that every knitter in Australia associates them with our store!) Argh. So I said “Stuff it” and decided to work in the shop all day. Pretty masochistic, really. But get this: I had nothing but wonderful customers! There was the older lady who was thrilled to find out that we could match the wool she got in Tasmania last year to allow her to finish her jumper. There was the businesswoman who wanted yarn to sew up a blanket that had been intended for first her friend and then her mother, but both had died of cancer before she’d finished it. (“Eh, it’s not the blanket’s fault,” she said.) There were the three Asian design students who oohed and aahed over everything I showed them. There was the American lady who needed something to knit on vacation and found the perfect Australian wool. I even had someone who wanted to return yarn without a receipt, but she was so nice about it that I happily helped her out. Even the presence of my Knitting Nemesis couldn’t deter me. I’m on fire! So my crap Friday turned out to be a good end to the week after all. Sometimes I think I get caught up in the idea that I’m somehow too important to be serving customers… but it’s nice to be brought back down to earth every now and then. This is why I got into this business in the first place.
Walk to Rivendell. What a neat idea! I’m not even that big of a Lord of the Rings fan, but there aren’t that many books where characters take a long journey by foot. So far my Nike+ has recorded 106 miles… which means I’ve just left Tom Bombadil’s house and I’m about to be attacked by Barrow-wights. Greeeeeat. Only another thirty miles to the Prancing Pony though!
Bee Mine
Happy Valentine’s Day to my best friend. Not that I need a special day to remember how lucky I am. (Did I mention I got a foot rub after my homemade-from-scratch chocolate mousse?) Snookums is The Best.
And lest I sound too much like a Smug Married, much love and commiseration to all the single folks suffering though this Celebration of Coupledom. I’ve been there. Rock on, drink up, and hopefully hook up (if that’s your aim.) Man, I wish Eileen‘s party had a webcam…
How Not to Talk to Your Kids. Wow, that article really rings true for me. I was always the smartest kid in my class in school, but I was never particularly ambitious or energetic towards my studies. I developed a lot of lazy habits and I never really got good study skills. I deliberately avoided doing things that I feared I wouldn’t be good at. (Remember my Hermione Granger experience in ceramics? That’s why I didn’t take any art classes in high school or college.) I dropped out of the Honors Program at ND just so I wouldn’t have to write a thesis my senior year. Nowadays I look at friends who are nuclear physicists and lawyers and artists and I regret that I didn’t push myself harder. Relevant quotes from the accompanying MetaFilter thread:
- “If you skate through school you just might get the impression that you can skate through life.”
- “I felt (and still feel, to some extent) that I was gonna be ‘found out’- that I really didn’t know shit from Shinola.”
- “Self-discipline is built; you aren’t born with it.”