Sometimes, when you’re job searching, you are looking up businesses and their locations in your area. Then, you find yourself Google Mapsing Hawaii, specifically the spot where you vacationed last…
Yes, there it is, 484 Kuhio Hwy, Kapaa, Kauai, Plantation Hale: Best Western. For being a Best Western, the place was very very clean, had a great view, and a very good concierge service. The thing that was coolest for me, coming from Minnesota, was that the hallways had no walls at the end. It was just stairs protected by the overhang from the roof. So, each morning when you stepped out of your room, there was a gentle Hawaiian breeze blowing through the hallway.
I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Alex, how do I get business cards that don’t stink?” Well, first you’ll want to design them in Photoshop, using a high DPI (300 or so), preferably in a vector format, should you want to resize that beautiful logo you just made for your burgeoning business. Now, I can’t make vector art (I haven’t had the time to learn), so you can get away with a 300 DPI version of whatever your logo is. I cheat a bit and use elements of type combined in a novel way to generate my logo, which makes it “vector” in a way. However, the “wicked worn look” has to be redone at each resolution. Anyways.
You have two options. First, you can have your card printed out by a good printshop. I used Overnight Prints when I first tried business cards (they weren’t really for a business, but for practice, etc.), but I have heard really great things about 4by6.com. 4by6 sends you a free sample of their different paper finishes. This way, you can judge if you want double sided glossy, single sided glossy, or a matte finish on your business cards. I’d go this route if you want simply want nice cards. We’re working on this for Mykala right now (professional-level choreographers such as herself need professional-level cards).
However, if you want to go over the top with fantastic, blow ‘em away business cards, then it’s not a matter of photoshop wizardry… oh no, you’re going to have to emboss them. There is precisely one shop I know of who does this, and boy are they committed to quality. Here’s SimpleBit’s business card, which was printed by this shop. The name of the place is Dependable Letterpress.
I specialize in fine, digital letterpress printing, catering to graphic designers and design professionals. I like to approach a job with a collaborative frame of mind and an artisan’s sensibility. I choose to strictly be a job printer so I can focus on printing efficiently and at extremely high standards.
I haven’t gotten a quote from them, nor will I do so any time soon, as I’ll need a legitimate reason down the road (say, a dental practice ;) to merit superfine quality business cards. Hopefully, though, this will inspire someone to try out the letterpress method. People will keep your business card just because it is so great. (Oh, and don’t forget the paper).
Improving the 2012 Olympic’s logo - One look at the London Olympics logo, and you’ll understand why it could use some improving. This little summary showcases an idea that combines the visual identity of the Royal Air Force with that of the ubiquitous olympic rings. It won’t be used, but it’s brilliant.
On a whim a couple of weeks ago, I decided to ratchet up my running distance. I’m doing ten mile runs now at around eight and a half minute pace. This isn’t bad, though I recently heard my cousin Tim threw down a half marathon (the Gary Bjorklund) in 90 minutes, which raises the bar. Anyhow, the first time I got back from this run, nearly dead, I drank a lot of water. But that’s not the point of the story. I then went to the basement and mapped the run out on Gmap-Pedometer.com. This yielded the picture below.
Now, I continued running this route for the past few weeks, but only recently noticed something incredibly useful. The distance from my house to a nearby intersection (at top left) is exactly 1 mile. Why is this useful? Because of the way the country roads are set up (on the right side of the run map). Between each road, it’s one mile. So, on that big country mile square, there are mile markers built in at the corners, and at the midpoints on each side of the square. Now, I haven’t started carrying a watch or anything (I don’t own a suitable digital running watch), but if I did, this simple fact would make mile clocking incredibly easy. As an added bonus, the hills on this course above have a great swing to them, giving the run an interval feel. That is, for every couple of miles, there is a 100-150m vertical change, giving ye olde leg strength a workout, in addition to endurance training. The biggest downside to this route is the location of the only public bathroom along it, which intimately factors into a tale for another day.
Over at Unicorndog - This made me laugh out loud: “Happy Father’s Day to those of you who are dads, or have dads, or may be dads but are waiting on paternity tests.” We should engineer a commenting system over there.
Edit: This was originally titled “Over at Unicorncob.” I have no idea why.
Not too long ago, June 9 to be precise, the daily photograph journal at tumbledry passed 2 years of daily photos. For the approximately 730 pictures posted, about 7,000 pictures have been taken. So, a little under 10% of the past two year’s photographs are represented here. I believe an evolution in style, subject matter, and especially post-processing is evident. One can also see the devolution of my lens—it is a very cheap “kit” lens, and after two years of service, it is beginning to show its age through not-so-sharp imagery. My idea, however, is that I should be able to still get good pictures with a bad lens.
Specifically, I would like to delve into people centered photography. Landscapes are great for practicing technique—they don’t move, and are patient with countless exposures. My idea was, once my technique (specifically speed and proficiency in accurately setting ISO, aperture, flash, and shutter settings) had been honed on landscapes and nature, I could move onto people photographs. There is, however, an unanticipated obstacle in photographing people that is entirely unrelated to technical skills or equipment: I am shy. This personality trait has been the number one obstacle in my attempt to jump from plain old trees to plain old folks. For example, I went to the State Fair last year thinking that was the time to break into photographing people—but it didn’t work out. I was quite self-conscious and retreated into my shell, partly because I was there with my family. I knew that, even if I had the courage to do it, they wouldn’t appreciate me running off talking to strangers and photographing them during our outing together. So, even though I didn’t shoot one frame of people I didn’t know, I did learn something: photographing people is best done alone, or in pairs. Any more, and you lose the freedom to flit about from person to person.
Finally, with regard to the recent drought of daily photos: I forgot my camera in Steve’s car and only recently got it back (I kept forgetting to pick it up). I picked it up before Steve left on his post MCAT celebratory trip to Mexico (congratulations, Steve!). So, we’ll get the daily photographs started up again in the coming days.
Fulfilling a promise in an extremely late manner (it’s been almost a year, sorry!), I have made Mykala’s own website, complete with archives of her previous two websites officially available online at http://www.unicorndog.com
The site will be changing a bit over the months in terms of design and features (still considering comments at this point in time), but it’s all there for you to read. Right now. Go! Read it! Mykala will be blogging there as she sees fit, so she is the sole proprietor in terms of content. I am simply the maintenance guy. I make sure the water isn’t leaking too much, the toilet flushes, and that sIFR, which dynamically replaces the header tags, does so in such a way that the kerning and leading of the rich typography in the flash document matches that of the text rendered (yet hidden) by CSS.
Bonus: Mykala doesn’t write about computer code! Enjoy, world! Remember: “unicorndog, because it’s funny.”
