Nothing beats calling in sick to work only to strap on a snowboard and slash away all of your responsibilities for the rest of the day. This winter has been a great one for me and I have made it a priority to get up to the snow as much as possible. I’m usually the last guy you’ll find taking park laps, but when I saw this rainbow c-box go up in Forest Park I had to go check it out. I was lucky enough to grab a quick shot to memorialize the day.
The Coolest Thank You Card…Ever
Working with clients who understand and appreciate the creative process is always a delight. Several months ago I had the pleasure of working with Therese Murdza, a local Portland artist to help her promote a First Thursday event and some upcoming art shows. Just a few weeks ago Therese contacted me and wanted to reprint some of the postcards I created for her. A few days after delivering the new set of postcards I received the coolest thank you note I’ve ever received. Therese was thoughtful enough to include a small personal piece of artwork from here latest watercolor series and a handwritten note. This surprise gesture was greatly appreciated. Therese, I look forward to working with you again in the future!
November 07 / 2011
Kid Icarus
In today’s digital age I long for handmade objects and designs with a real human touch. I was really inspired by the work of this little two-person shop in Toronto and thought the video was really well done. Worth your time to check out and definitely inspiring.
October 21 / 2011
Mac App Spotlight: Alred
I’m always looking for ways to increase my productivity. I recently found the Alfred App in the Mac app store and thought I’d give it a shot. Alfred is a launcher application which allows you to perform all sorts of helpful tasks by entering commands on your keyboard. For example you can launch applications, empty your trash, define words or do simple calculations.
One of the most appealing characteristics of Alfred is that the program will learn your most commonly used actions and prioritize them over time. I have already noticed Alfred getting smarter after my first week of using the app. I spend a lot of time these days writing code and I find it really useful to be able to perform simple tasks without taking my hands off of the keyboard. So far I am really enjoying the application. Some commands that the application seem to be lacking are the ability to create new folders or move files. I think that might be a nice addition. I haven’t found the need to purchase the PowerPack which is the more full-feature version of the app which costs about $18.00 but if anyone has purchased the full version I would love to hear your feedback.
September 06 / 2011
Customizing My Macbook Pro Desktop
Lately I’ve seen some pretty ingenious Mac OSX customizations so I was a little inspired to do some customization of my own. I wasn’t looking to completely overhaul the OSX UI but I did want to make my desktop a little more useful. So after researching GeekTool, an application which lets you output simple data onto your desktop like system stats and and other basic unix commands I decided to give it a shot. The image above is the final product after following a few tutorials and demonstrations. The desktop neatly outputs the current Month, Date & Time neatly tucked behind a layer of sand. I was also able to convert the OSX menu bar at the top of the screen from silver to black. While doing so, I also chose to have the menu bar hide itself unless hovered over. This helped me squeeze an extra 20 pixels of screen real estate out of my 15″ MacBook Pro which I like – more on that later. I would highly reccomend GeekTool for anyone looking to add a little bit of extra customization to their OSX install if you are not comfortable with unix command line . You can also find all sorts of existing scripts and implementations of GeekTool here.
My next project will be a customized start screen for Chrome. I recently converted from firefox and while I like the simple start screen that come out-of-the-box I’m hoping to expand upon its functionality. I will post my results from that project soon.
September 01 / 2011
