It's a doorway somewhere in Paris. I wonder how they got that by the Historical Commission?
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Coolest Thing I Found Today
I was doing a search of house painting stock images and came across this.
It's a doorway somewhere in Paris. I wonder how they got that by the Historical Commission?
It's a doorway somewhere in Paris. I wonder how they got that by the Historical Commission?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
How I found Shame-on Flickr
Dollars5 is always good for a fun tweet and this link to an online display of retro propaganda posters did not disappoint! (thanks Hongkiat.com!)
Looking at the amazing array of pro and anti fascism art reminded me of seeing anti-AIDS posters in Vietnam a few years ago. Usually the tableau depicted was a gigantic condom-shaped warrior waving a sword at a cowering Gollum-like creature. Tried looking for an example on Flickr and came up with this awesome Flickr set which I am linking to just because the idea of creating a photoset that titles the page "Shame on Flickr" makes me smile
Monday, October 19, 2009
Not Your Mama's Fiber Optic Lamp
Any real '80s refugee has a suppressed memory or two involving Spencer's Gifts. My favorite obsession, which continued into early college trips to Boston's Chinatown, was the fiber optic flower lamp which would incandence into a revolving rainbow of hues over and over. These lamps are like the futuristic projections of a bygone era.
(plus, how can I resist passing on two of the best urls I've seen all month?)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
We've Moved!
Only down to about 12 square feet of boxes and a mysterious amount of space left over which I think is a good sign that we got rid of just the right amount of stuff.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Things I learned about Gorillas today
One of the perks of working on the set de-construction for Zookeeper is you get "behind the scenes" access to the exhibits. It's a little surreal looking up from dismantling a streetlight to realize that you are the main attraction for a herd of kangaroos, but it beats "cubicle world".
Went to the Tropical Rainforest exhibit on my coffee break and started talking to one of the gorilla handlers. We found out that:
1. Gorillas will adopt other gorillas' babies.
2. They regurgitate their food so they can digest it better.
3. Their diet is so low in protein that they eat their own poop so they can get as much nutrition as possible.
4. They love parties and opening presents.
5. You can bake a gorilla-digestible birthday cake by substituting ground monkey chow for flour, sugar-free pineapple juice for sugar and frosting it with frozen yogurt. Apparently they cannot digest sugar or fat, so that's why their muscle tone is so amazing.
Oh, and also, I let a capuchin monkey nibble on my earlobe during my afternoon break but don't tell my husband!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Re-Union (Kinda)
Since quitting my "regular job" about 2 years ago, I hadn't set foot in the Park Plaza Hotel. I actually ended up back there for "Zookeeper" at 5am to set up for a big wedding scene. In the five years I worked there I never had reason to set foot in the Imperial Ballroom and it was pretty amazing to see the place. Kind of felt like the ballroom scene in "The Shining". The photo above is what the room looked like from the stage after 11 hours.
I had to get up yesterday morning at 3:45am and I have to say, the lady who works the overnight shift at the Salem Dunkin Donuts is a riot and managed to make me laugh at 4am.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Strange Synchronicity of the Day
Went to a birthday party and while talking to (commiserating) with another mom over the frequency of Laurie Berkner videos on Noggin, I mentioned my surprise at discovering that the Iowa Rapper Story that's been on CNN.com the past few days is about "Leslie" of "RazzleDazzle" fame on "Yo Gabba Gabba". Turns out that mom's husband is the guy who started sending her videos to all his friends and sparked this whole frenzy. Thanks Kras! This story made my Saturday.
In other news...
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Um, the BBC needs to check its Adsense...
And, while we're on the subject, can we all agree that Tasers are going to be viewed by our great-grandchildren as a completely barbaric tool that "fell out of fashion" sometime in the early 21st century?
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Rebirth of the Cool
I don't know why this title jumped into my head. I've always associated with some half-remembered/half-imagined photo of Miles Davis. Plus, I found some interesting results when I searched the title one of which you can see here. (bonus points if you can actually navigate this site)
Anyway, I've been busy, really busy, but still kind of freaked out when I saw the date of my last post on this blog. Around mid-March, I started to really experience the trickle-down effect of the current economic cluster-F*%k and every day became a dogged hustle for new business. I learned a lot and have tried to keep a positive spin on things. Clients dropped off the radar due to being downsized, others became so pre-occupied with trying to keep their business afloat that they didn't respond to emails asking for feedback on projects. What's a good way to cope with MIA clients? Keep trying to contact them. I kind of feel like a cyber-stalker sometimes, but it's worth it when someone compliments you on being proactive.
What work I did get tended to be labor-intensive and a real exercise in customer service. An email at 6am frantically asking for help in figuring out a webmail dilemma? I'm on it! Wordpress-based site that needed to have 8 mini-sites all utilizing the same stylesheet? No problem, just let me brew another pot of coffee.
So why go back to this now? I guess the main reason is that I felt like I was starting to get stale. Even when the client is a company that makes low-impact stress gaskets for the aluminum packaging industry, I hate to feel like I'm just "phoning it in". Of course, surfing around the web for the latest design news is easy, but unfortunately I suffer from a deep-seated uncertainty of the line between "inspired by" and "slavish ripoff". So, I have been trying to turn away from the monitor and find inspiration elsewhere.
Unfortunately, when I did turn away, what I saw was a big alcove crammed with all kinds of clutter: programming books, cd-holders, project notebooks, binders full of downloaded articles and about 20 different varieties of kids' art supplies. The visual impact was one of messy, paint-splattered, stuff-I-wish-I-had-time-for, chaos.
So, after a week of 14-16 hour workdays, my husband knew it his turn to occupy Chloe for a few hours before mommy started buying Vicodin by the metric ton. I took a good long look at the disaster area and started to do triage. What was going to stay? What needed to be easily accessible? What was unused and creating clutter? I waded in. There was a deep bookshelf that held all my design books, cds and notes. That could go up to Chloe's room to hold toys and games and the contents could go in the shelves on top of the fishtank. The only problem was that removing the shelf exposed a big gap between the tank shelf and the wall that had been hiding 4 boxes of boxing videos (I'm not kidding). Luckily, I had some composite boards from an old enlarger stand that had been dis-assembled and between the boxes and one of the sides, I was able to create a little shelf-table that fit perfectly under the tank and could function as a holder for paint supplies and play-do. I pulled a couple of baskets of toys from upstairs to fill up the gaps and there it was, a bright corner for my daughter to play in that could also hold some non-essentials without clutter!
Anyway, I've been busy, really busy, but still kind of freaked out when I saw the date of my last post on this blog. Around mid-March, I started to really experience the trickle-down effect of the current economic cluster-F*%k and every day became a dogged hustle for new business. I learned a lot and have tried to keep a positive spin on things. Clients dropped off the radar due to being downsized, others became so pre-occupied with trying to keep their business afloat that they didn't respond to emails asking for feedback on projects. What's a good way to cope with MIA clients? Keep trying to contact them. I kind of feel like a cyber-stalker sometimes, but it's worth it when someone compliments you on being proactive.
What work I did get tended to be labor-intensive and a real exercise in customer service. An email at 6am frantically asking for help in figuring out a webmail dilemma? I'm on it! Wordpress-based site that needed to have 8 mini-sites all utilizing the same stylesheet? No problem, just let me brew another pot of coffee.
So why go back to this now? I guess the main reason is that I felt like I was starting to get stale. Even when the client is a company that makes low-impact stress gaskets for the aluminum packaging industry, I hate to feel like I'm just "phoning it in". Of course, surfing around the web for the latest design news is easy, but unfortunately I suffer from a deep-seated uncertainty of the line between "inspired by" and "slavish ripoff". So, I have been trying to turn away from the monitor and find inspiration elsewhere.
Unfortunately, when I did turn away, what I saw was a big alcove crammed with all kinds of clutter: programming books, cd-holders, project notebooks, binders full of downloaded articles and about 20 different varieties of kids' art supplies. The visual impact was one of messy, paint-splattered, stuff-I-wish-I-had-time-for, chaos.
So, after a week of 14-16 hour workdays, my husband knew it his turn to occupy Chloe for a few hours before mommy started buying Vicodin by the metric ton. I took a good long look at the disaster area and started to do triage. What was going to stay? What needed to be easily accessible? What was unused and creating clutter? I waded in. There was a deep bookshelf that held all my design books, cds and notes. That could go up to Chloe's room to hold toys and games and the contents could go in the shelves on top of the fishtank. The only problem was that removing the shelf exposed a big gap between the tank shelf and the wall that had been hiding 4 boxes of boxing videos (I'm not kidding). Luckily, I had some composite boards from an old enlarger stand that had been dis-assembled and between the boxes and one of the sides, I was able to create a little shelf-table that fit perfectly under the tank and could function as a holder for paint supplies and play-do. I pulled a couple of baskets of toys from upstairs to fill up the gaps and there it was, a bright corner for my daughter to play in that could also hold some non-essentials without clutter!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
What IS in DJ Lance's bag?
I've often wondered who the geniuses are behind Yo Gabba Gabba, a Nick Jr. feature that makes up for the sensual assault of shows such as "Toot and Puddle" and "Pinky Dinky Doo". And now I know! They have a blog! It's awesome, go add to your blogroll right NOW.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Pregnancy 2.0
Widgetbox has some cool widgets to track the progress of your own little "widget".
BTW, if you are looking for a fun way to share the news...
BTW, if you are looking for a fun way to share the news...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Somebody Call KRS-One!
See the BDP video here!
Found via the Huffington Post: Apparently the mayor of Los Alamanitos has sent out an email with an image of watermelons planted on the White House lawn to a local business woman and city volunteer who is African-American. No Human Stain style misunderstanding here. And no, it's not the same as those Bush-era broccoli jokes either.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
A Jennsweb Girly-Girl Moment
Found via Artfire on Twitter. Neon-hued vegan eyeshadow! Finally, a reason to stop smearing on that mixture of butter and food-coloring! (oh c'mon like you've never considered that while making xmas cookies)
Comedy: Society's Clearest Mirror
The Onion has a great writeup today on the Oscars. Which, due to childcaring issues, I wasn't able to watch, but apparently I didn't miss much.
Still, too bad, I really wanted to see Mickey Rourke win an Oscar. I love that "I think I may be living in an alternate universe right now" sensation.
Brought to you by the Jennsweb Morning Coffee series.
Bonus link here!
BTW, my three year old asked me for a cup of coffee for breakfast. Should I be worried?
Still, too bad, I really wanted to see Mickey Rourke win an Oscar. I love that "I think I may be living in an alternate universe right now" sensation.
Brought to you by the Jennsweb Morning Coffee series.
Bonus link here!
BTW, my three year old asked me for a cup of coffee for breakfast. Should I be worried?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wordpress Chicklet Hack!
My latest client wanted to have some RSS feed buttons in a sidebar of their company blog. Turns out, chicklets come in all shapes and sizes and they wanted everything to line up in a nice little grid. What to do?
Step 1. Get your chicklets
I found two good places to get feed chicklets. The client had a Feedburner account, so I signed in, and went to the feed I wanted to connect the chicklets to and then clicked on Publicize > Chicklet Chooser. Then, it was simply a matter of selecting the Feed Reader icons that I wanted to use and copying and pasting the code into a text file.
Another method for grabbing chicklets is to try Top Rank's chicklet chooser service. It offers a slightly different range of chicklets and helps you cover the bases.
Step 2. Put the chicklets on your blog.
The Wordpress blog I was working with had a widgetized right sidebar so I took all the various chicklet code snippets and added them into a widget, then wrapped them in a Div entitled "Chicklets". (Jenn Tip: Tables only work in certain browsers, Safari freaks out over tables and CSS mixing)
Then, since the chicklets were going to be in 2 columns, I created two divs inside the first one. Chickletsleft and Chickletsright. Then, it was simply a matter of assigning floats, widths and text-align.
Step 3. Customize your chicklets
Take a look at your blog and see how the chicklets look. Most chicklets are 16-17 pixels high, but the width can vary by 10 pixels or more. If you look at the code for each chicklet you will notice that some actually contain the image dimensions in the img src tag and you can change the width there. This works if you are only shortening it by about 3 pixels or so. Some chicklet code snippets only give you the image and no way to manipulate the size. Never fear, you can substitute your own custom-sized chicklet! Simply take a screenshot of the chicklet you need to resize and then create a new file in your image-editing program that is the "standard" size you want. In my case, 90 by 17 pixels worked. Then, copy and paste the screenshot of the chicklet into the new image file and save it. Now, you can modify it to your heart's content and then upload the optimized jpg, gif or png to your web site's images folder.
Step 4. Upload your custom chicklet
Using your FTP program, upload the image to your website in the images directory. If you have lots of images, you may find it worth your while to create a sub-directory called Chicklets.
Step 5. Customize your code snippet.
Now, all you need to do is replace the current img src file path with one that points to the custom chicklet image on your server.
For example:
img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif"
would become:
img src="http://jennmearswebdesign.com/wp-content/themes/anubis folder/images/chicklets/googlebutton.gif"
There you go. Pixel-precision control over your chicklets!
(if only the rest of my job were this easy)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Gmail Service Down For Hours
At least I wasn't the only one left staring at a blank hole in the middle of my Google homepage yesterday...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Bye Bye Corner Clutter!
I could see it out of the corner of my eye when I sat at the computer: a fish tank stand/utility shelf brimming with coloring books, art supplies, old greeting cards and boxes of photos. It was the living room catchall, a place where items that either weren't immediately useful or didn't have a place to go ended up.
Finally, I couldn't take it any more. My mother-in-law had given our daughter her 30th set of magic markers and they now spilled out of the cookie tin we had been trying to contain them in. Art supplies were overflowing everywhere and more continued to pour in with every outing to the mall.
So, I did the classic "clutter buster" routine. I took everything off the shelves and took every item that wasn't kids' art stuff upstairs to a closet. All the finished artwork went upstairs too, to be put in a safe place. The only thing left was fish tank maintenance supplies, which went up on the high shelf,and then crayons, paints, chalk and markers which went into either clear plastic bins (Market Basket $3 each) or baskets from A.C Moore ($4-$7). Paper supplies tucked in between the baskets and the tank, and a vintage 45's travel box on top and finally, a little peaceful corner instead of a cluttered mess.
BTW, found a great clutter-buster site this week: Simple Productivity Blog. Good stuff!
Finally, I couldn't take it any more. My mother-in-law had given our daughter her 30th set of magic markers and they now spilled out of the cookie tin we had been trying to contain them in. Art supplies were overflowing everywhere and more continued to pour in with every outing to the mall.
So, I did the classic "clutter buster" routine. I took everything off the shelves and took every item that wasn't kids' art stuff upstairs to a closet. All the finished artwork went upstairs too, to be put in a safe place. The only thing left was fish tank maintenance supplies, which went up on the high shelf,and then crayons, paints, chalk and markers which went into either clear plastic bins (Market Basket $3 each) or baskets from A.C Moore ($4-$7). Paper supplies tucked in between the baskets and the tank, and a vintage 45's travel box on top and finally, a little peaceful corner instead of a cluttered mess.
BTW, found a great clutter-buster site this week: Simple Productivity Blog. Good stuff!
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Lux Interior: In Memoriam
Lux Interior, born Erick Lee Purkhiser has died at a California hospital at the age of 62 and the world has lost an incredible artist and music legend.
The Cramps always had a great show whenever they played in Boston, or anywhere for that matter. Lux would push himself like Iggy Pop on crystal to give a performance that defied explanation, reason or good taste which is why he will be so sorely missed.
It's strange that just last week, another famous person that I met in a random way died and now another. I didn't actually meet Lux, as in introduce myself shake hands kind of way but when I worked in Newbury Comics back in the early 90's, the Cramps were enjoying an upsurge in popularity. They actually had a local stalker/fan boy that haunted the store, always salivating at the site of another obscure Cramps re-release lurking the the cassettes. He was such a rabid fan that it was amazing that he wasn't two feet behind Poison Ivy and Lux when they came into the store one day before a show.
They were very quiet and polite and came to my register with a few LPs and some other stuff. Ivy handed me a gold Amex card with "Ivy Rorschach" embossed on it. It was weird when I leaned over to get her a bag and saw the current CD cover which featured a photo of Lux full frontal in a thong and then stood back up to see the real Lux standing there looking tired out from being on the road all day.
They asked me where they could find a cool vintage shop in the neighborhood and I was happy to recommend Oona's since I knew the staff there would be thrilled to see the Cramps show up at their store. (Of course, they got there just at closing time and my friend told me later that he actually closed the door right as they walked up and THEN realized who he had just blown off!)
I think it was the first time I actually came face-to-face with a famous person that I really admired, but there was no urge to squeal or demand autographs and photos. They just seemed like they wanted to relax and shop and shake that road-exhaustion and I just wanted to let them be. Of course, they completely tore it up at the show that night, but it was nice to have that real moment with them and see them as people.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Creepiest Cast Credits Ever
So I have 2 different film magazines with big 2008 fall movie lineups both with big photo spreads on the Hillicoat-directed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". I figured they might be worth something someday because both covers trumpet the November 2008 release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" days before Warner Brothers announced delaying the film until July 2009 in order to have a "big tent-pole release" in the summer.(does anyone else feel the urge to giggle when they hear this phrase? Or am I the only one with the brain of a 12 year old boy?)
Anyway we're approaching February and still no big promo push for what promises to be an insanely powerful film. I mean, you've got Viggo Mortenson pushing a shopping cart through a post-apocalyptic landscape! It's "Mad Max" meets Demoula's on a Saturday! What's not to love?
Well- if you check out the cast credits on IMDB, maybe the studio powers that be think it may be a little risky to release a film with character names like "Baby Eater" and "Cannibal #2" in today's economic climate. Not exactly a date movie I'm guessing.
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