Oscar

I have a hard time explaining exactly what my company does. They call it "rich media" which is exceedingly vague. And if I talk about demos or presentations, people seem to think I'm talking about Powerpoint. And it's not a "design firm" in the usual sense either.

In any case, the demo for the MacBook Air featuring me (for about 1/2 a second) is online now. Just click on the "Watch" button under the photo here. Skip to about :45 if you're impatient.

Go here and marvel at the sexy new designs for British coins. Then cry at the sight of the newest $5 bill, designed by an imbecile.

So I just watched Bizarre Foods: Bolivia and it was certainly interesting and entertaining. The funniest moment came near the beginning of the show, when Andrew met up with a local chef who was to be his tour guide/companion. Lee was about to sarcastically ask the question anyone gets when they say they're from some obscure (or small) place - "do you know her?" Before she could even say it I said "Wait a minute - I know her!"

Much to my surprise, he did not eat rostro asado. That would be "roast face" - an entire lamb's head thrown in the oven.

If you want to get a glimpse of the obscure place I still consider home, there's a repeat episode next Monday at 9.

I IM'd someone I knew from high school who I'd been in touch with a few years back and she goaded me into a) joining Facebook and b) attending my high school reunion. I hadn't really done the math, but sure enough, it was 1988. I had been resisting Facebook, since I had already grown weary of myspace, but she was so insistent...

So I did, and I'm pretty sure I'm going. And it's weirder than weird. I can't believe that much time has passed.

It's also charming and a little odd to suddenly get bombarded with long-lost friend requests - names that are incredibly distant yet somehow familiar. Never mind the fact that most of my high school days were spent being on the weirdo/loser end of the spectrum.

So I've been a little too paranoid and vague about my job. I still would prefer not to state their name on the incredibly slim chance they'd find my journal and read about how much I enjoy working there.

Anyways.

The super-thin notebook I keep alluding to is the MacBook Air - it's not like I'm in on some top-secret Apple product or anything. The demo is not live yet, so I can't point you guys to it to witness my 2 seconds of glory. But I'm in there, video chatting in iChat.



On an unrelated note - I finally bought a Domo-kun! You know - the guy in my icon right there.

A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time.

I can't believe it's snowing out there.


I saw the VeryThinNotebook video. I had forgotten that while I was chatting a did a "salute," which made it into the final video.


The bacon finished curing last week. I smoked it in a homemade trash can smoker (yes, for real), and it tastes fucking fantastic.


I got a new camera! It's tiny and light. Although after perusing the camera section at Best Buy yesterday it somehow managed to look bulky in comparison to the even tinier and slimmer cameras they had. Finally sprung for a "Pro" account at Flickr too.

Kids in the Hall! In Seattle! New material!

Here's a classic from Season 1:

Friend and needle-felter extraordinaire Moxie made this insanely oversized replica of a Fisher-Price toy.

This is a must-see: a talk from the TED conference in which a neuroanatomist suffers a stroke and gains incredible insight into the workings of her own mind. It's 18 minutes long, and worth every second.

I love this Google Map oddity - three seasons side-by-side.

There is a magazine unironically called Kids Today.

Not quite sure what to make of this spammy email:

"Hi! I am contacting you on behalf of a web design company based in DC regarding a partnership opportunity. We have been in business for over ten years and are looking to expand our operations through partnerships with graphic designers. We specialize in Website Design, SEO, web application development, web branding, and quite a few other activities. Our body of work is substantial and include Websites for both Elle magazine and Disney. I am interested in setting up a referral agreement to encompass either trading of work (we do the web incorporation and you do the graphic work) or a financial arrangement. I would be willing to pay out a 10% commission for any referrals that could conceivably escalate as volume increases. What do you think? I would love to chat for a few minutes when you get the time!

Thanks!"

Got my bacon-to-be yesterday. It's stlil defrosting, but I think they left the bones on. So I guess I'll be slicing those off myself, despite not exactly knowing what I'm doing.

So work has been good. I got a tiny DVD player and am currently catching up on Freaks and Geeks, which is brililant and underappreciated show. I have to try and stifle my laughter because I guess I kind of laugh loud and don't notice it with headphones on.

Work has been great. I don't have a lot of "creative" work, which is probably my only lament. We recently got a Very Thin Laptop from a Fruit-named company. One of the things they needed to film for the demo was the built-in camera. So I was the chattee, which means my face was full-screen on the Very Thin Laptop. Of course, this is for the web, and it'll be slightly bigger than a YouTube video. And no audio, which is good, because we were just rambling about all kinds of dumb shit.

Went to the Tacoma Library the other day. It's quite nice, actually. I found a couple of books on HTML and CSS, and finally one that explains it in exactly the way I've been wanting it to be explained to me. I bought a pretty good book before, but couldn't read it because of the typeface it was set in (sure, roll your eyes and then go read this essay/screed if you must know why).

Besides those books, I picked up a book called Charcuterie. It is all about meat, glorious meat (sorry, vegetarians). Specifically the cured kind - bacon, salami, prosciutto, confit. The list goes on. Some are quite easy to make, like bacon. Some are much more ambitious, like salami.

Now to find a pork belly...

The new job is great. I have a huge monitor and a screaming 8-core Mac Pro with 3 GB of RAM.

Okay, so it's only for a month. The new machine is destined for video editing, but took a detour to my desk. Turns out it runs Leopard, but one of the key programs still only runs on Tiger. So, since you can't just go buy Tiger and downgrade a new machine I get to use it until the software gets updated, at which point it will go to video editing and I'll get that machine.

Seriously though, work is great. I don't have that vague feeling of dread I had at the old job. I actually like being there, and I also like being in downtown Seattle.

I've been doing all kinds of stuff. Designing email newsletters, prepping images for "rich media" demos, building parts of said demos, designing and printing CD labels, etc. There's still something very surreal about fabricating something in Photoshop, like changing the color of an appliance we shot into several color variations, or making a thin stream of water from a faucet look more (ahem) substantial.

This may be sheer lunacy, but in addition to an album in a month, I also signed up for Thing a day. It's pretty much what you'd imagine - create something every day in February, and document it online. Each day.

The way I see it, I will have created my album art by the time I need it for the RPM Challenge.

I encountered my first clashing ego bullshit at work. I don't know why I'm still so pissed about it. I spent the good part of a day trying to trick a new Mac Pro into running older system software - something that Apple not only discourages, but actively impedes. The video guy was pissed because he insisted that reformatting the drive would miraculously do the trick, and was annoyed that I didn't agree and "didn't even try".

I knew what would happen. I added a blank partition, installed Tiger on it and watched as the machine refused to boot.

But no, he would have made it work.

Of course I should have told him to fuck off, or at least leave me alone since he isn't in any position of authority over me. But I didn't.

The upside is that for the next month I have a screamingly fast machine to run Photoshop on. At that point the incompatible software will work on the new machine.

This scientific analysis of "double dipping," is both hilarious and edifying.