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.”
This celebrity (Kyra Sedgwick) was talking on Conan a couple of nights ago about how she doesn’t understand text messaging in general, specifically the acronyms in use by today’s youth. (As a side note, I do note understand text messaging for two reasons: (1) cost of it stateside and (2) the absolutely atrociously horridly awful method for entering in words using a keypad designed for dialing numbers. Both problems have been solved over in Japan (who is generally about 14 months ahead of us in cell phone technology), so I would expect text messaging to seem like a more viable option for real communication in the next couple of years). Anyhow, this actress said that she always thought that the abbreviation “lol” stood for “lots of love.” So, she’d send a text message to her kids using the abbreviation her way. For example: “great job at the soccer game tonight! lol.”
While we’re on the topic of text messaging, I should point out a recent “Tip of the Day” in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, titled “Netlingo.” Naturally, having a fair bit of experience with the internet (intertubes) since ‘round about 1998, I scanned the short article. The idea of it was to alert clueless parents to these apparently ridiculously arcane acronyms. First, the reasonable ones: “If you are lingering, your child may end up being forced to use these acronyms instead: POS (parent over shoulder), PIR (parent in room), P911 (parent alert)… ” Now, POS is more commonly known as “piece of shit” — as in, “my car is a POS.” And P911 could simply be a bathroom emergency. Then again, those were the good ones. The article goes on to outline risque abbreviations, with the undertone that online predators will be using them to lure children: IWSN (I want sex now), NIFOC (nude in front of computer), and this gem, NALOPKT (not a lot of people know that).
Now, I am 150% in favor of parents combating online predators in absolutely any way they can. But if they’re at the point where they are trying to decipher dialog between some random online person and their child, they missed a few steps along the way. Furthermore, these acronyms are ridiculous. Who in their right mind will find they need to abbreviate “not a lot of people know that”? Who would even understand that? What the heck? It’s not an acronym worth knowing if nobody knows about it. Matt and I, when we were quite young, used to make up these acronyms all the time, and not to alienate parents… it was poking fun at the proliferation of abbreviations at the time. For example:
amicek 6/8/2000 9:48 PM what if we used abbreviations for everything? - so my last statement would be like this: wh w usd abbrev f ev? - s m la sta w b li dis
d r o g e 6/8/2000 9:49 PM i wo ge cnfs ng
amicek 6/8/2000 9:50 PM i dn ink dat u wou gt cfsed - its ju hd t wte ds wy
d r o g e 6/8/2000 9:50 PM ok can’t read it, let’s type nrml
Enough of the acronym wars, kids are always going to be differentiating themselves from their parents using their own words, phrases, abbreviations, tools, dress, and etc. Whatever is going on with the acronyms, it doesn’t merit a sidebar in the paper.
Rarely do we come across a word that can be applied, with lust aforethought, to either sex. A physically attractive male can be called a stud, and if cuddly to boot, a stud muffin. I can retrieve, from the far reaches of my brain’s hippocampus, a memory of once being called a dreamboat. An especially masculine type is called a Barney, and if tall, “a long drink of water.”
Female endearments range from baby doll to arm candy, peach to fox, quail to chick - I could go on but don’t need more infuriated e-mail from people who consider any lip-smacking characterization to be an insult to the intellect.
Few terms, however, are applicable to a sexually attractive person of either sex. Hottie is not spelled with a y because -ie, the lexicographer Grant Barrett informs me, “is a classic diminutive or hypocoristic ending used for terms of endearment.”
