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Designing Obama

Jun 19, ’10 3:07 PM

2010 06-18 Obama Book

ObamaSeveral months ago I pre-ordered this cool book called Designing Obama. I got my copy in the mail on Friday and I really like it.

It came in a beautiful de-embossed die-cut sleeve, it’s cloth bound and foil stamped and it’s filled with some really cool images and stories about the design produced for the campaign.

The book was published with money collected in a novel way. The book was purposed on this cool website called Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an escrow between hundreds of small doners and some project that needs support. So my pre-order directly funded the publishing of the book, which feels pretty cool. From the website:

We believed the Obama-like fundraising model is the perfect way to ensure the book’s integrity and quality. People supported this project; funded its creation, and changed way we think about traditional publishing. We were happy to see the community support our approach.

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The Fairy Slipper

Jun 17, ’10 6:50 AM

Orchid

These beautiful flowers are called Fairy Slippers. They are a native Montana orchid my mom pointed out on a beautiful birthday hike two Sundays ago. Montana has, get ready, thirty native orchid species. This list of all of them has some beautiful photos.

Many people are surprised to learn that orchids grow in Montana. They associate the plants with faraway, exotic places. While it’s true that most orchids live in the moist, hot tropics, they also show up in many other environments. They inhabit every continent except Antarctica and are found in nearly every type of terrain except true desert.

Orchid season in Montana begins in late April, when the first pinkish purple blooms of fairy slippers emerge in moist woodlands and mountain foothills. It ends when the spiraling flowers of ladies’ tresses begin to wither, usually in August.

-From a good essay on wild Montana orchids.

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Flipper Bridge

Jun 15, ’10 7:29 AM

In Hong Kong, cars drive on the left while in the rest of China, they drive on the right. If you’re building a bridge between the two, you’ve got to come up with a clever way to switch lanes without disruption or accident. Behold, the flipper:

FlipperFlipper 2

The only way that could be more cool is if one of the lanes went into a tunnel under the water or corkscrewed over the other lane in a rollercoaster/Mario Kart fashion. Lots more on the NL Architects site.

From kottke.org

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Lake Geneva: Video Journal

Jun 12, ’10 11:21 AM

I assigned myself the project of making an edit of some videos my sister took with her new flip video camera. The edit was easy, the rendering was impossible.

My laptop runs Mint Linux so there are a lot of free video editors for it. I chose to use PiTiVi because it seemed so simple. The edit was simple, but the render was taking hours and hours which seemed wrong to me. Turns out that that software, as simple as it is, doesn’t render flip generated video. So after a few blind alleys I converted all the clips to a different format and edited the xml file in a text editor was finally able to render this thing. Black bars, squished faces, low res. But you get what you pay for. Next time I think I’ll go a different route.

Enjoy the show!

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Bannack Relaxing Poolside

Jun 11, ’10 9:50 PM

IMG_3770

I was out most of today with weird allergy/humidity/wimpyness related symptoms but Bannack didn’t stop for a second. He didn’t exactly LOVE floating in the frog Pete and Mary Ann got him—he’s got that skeptical look—but he got used to it. That was until his big boy second cousin (twice removed?) tossed a squishy football right in there with him. He has a low tolerance for splashing and therefore was out of the giant floaty toad shortly after that.

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