So, lots o’ things:

1. I went to the dark side and got myself a full time design job, which has been really good so far; week one is complete. More information on that in due time.

2. It’s May long and Alberta had to go and put out a fire ban, so our camping plans have been deviously foiled. Alas!

3. As a result of the first two, I finally got around to buying Skyrim, so Steam is downloading that for me as I speak. The blog was lonely enough this past week without that… But, fear not, I’ve never been very good at playing games for more than an hour at a time, so there should be at least some curation / writing this weekend.

4. I ordered this a long time ago and just realized it should be here sometime next week: I bought a nice microphone with which to make podcasts. I’ve been mulling over it’s format since Acrylo itself started and I still haven’t really decided, but I think it’ll sort of take the place of my longer writing bits on the more introspective topics. So, halfway between an alog and a proper podcast show. I’ll dress it up of course, so it’ll probably wear a more professional show’s clothing and editing format, but content wise it’ll probably be the monologues of some curious, passionate nerd. I have been thinking that since I talk out loud while I drive anyway and since I’ll be driving a lot more to and from an external workplace it might work out to make them sort of stream-of-consciousness (which my writing tends to be anyway) narrations. In any event, that should be starting in a few weeks and I look forward to what it evolves into.

5. Sunday is Acrylo’s one year birthday and I’ll be alone eating cake. If you’d like, I could live stream that but I warn you it could break down into bitter crying and soul crushing existentialism. Nah, who am I kidding, I’ll be busy with Skyrim.

Okay. So. That’s the update and I do apologize for being a bit light on the content lately. Lots of things happening at once. Fortunately: good things.

The photo above is via Tumblr and as such, sourceless. To whomever owns it: thank you; you’re awesome.

Good news, everyone!

There were some mediocre interim banners up when the redesign went live and they’ve been officially replaced.

To enjoy: 15 fresh photos, taken by yours truly over the past few summers. Some abstract, some less so. I hope to add another batch into the mix towards the end of the month for your collection and trading fun!

If anything comes up that requires stamping I am all over it.

Ordered from Simon’s Stamps it was reasonably priced and was at my Canadian door in like, two weeks. Build quality is what you’d expect and the rubber imprint is flawless. I wasn’t sure if my ring lines would be too thin but they turned out really well.

If I had any other custom logo stamping needs I’d definitely go back to them, yeah.

The good and bad news is the ink doesn’t stay on Apple products. That means you’re free to stamp them and then wipe it off later, which is both nice and sort of unfortunate for those looking into more permanent adornment.

Neat. I’m excited.

The Verge came out this morning with one of their longest articles to date, and it’s a gooder.

As a personal aside, I do really appreciate the more journalistic investigations that they do occasionally. It transcends tech-blogging as a reactionary publication and moves into proactive story getting simply for the sake of interest and coolness. So, for that I really hold them highly.

I won’t go over the article in it’s entirety – just go read it yourself – but I want to illustrate what really bothered me:

As a maker, there’s this disconcerting gap where success in life, as defined by the material and wealth related types, is easier to get by being a scammer. By laying down those morals and ethics that I hold so dearly not for the people, not the dubious legality but for the product. Is it sad that I’m more concerned about shipping a mediocre product than ruining the finances of innocent people? Perhaps. But my ethos point that way naturally; I am a perfectionist and for things that people pay me to do, it’s going to be the best possible thing I can do.

And I think we all get a little bitter about the success stories of people who simply ‘cheated’ their way to the top (I say cheated, but I won’t ever claim that what they did wasn’t a lot of work – just in a different, less honest method) because we feel robbed as honest people. We’ve been wronged somehow.

I feel wronged because they’re allowed to ship a rubbish product and still succeed monetarily. We as makers have to ship the best possible product and still may or may not ever make it in the finances department. It’s a reverse meritocracy. Not inversely proportional, but reversely acceptable.

So I wonder what makes up that space in the graph between the two: is that what we call selling out? Or is that, perhaps, what we call entrepreneurship? Accepting things won’t be perfect and in the meantime trying to make it as good as possible, while still operating a profit margin?

It’s a rhetoric – I don’t know the answer – but an interesting thought: to take something so utterly complex as not only market theory but personal and business ethics and try to distill it into two axis of variables.

Because there’s this concept of value: we should get back what we put in in order for it to be a good deal. Scammers are the disparity between that equation. But there’s motivational speakers, and that’s where value returned gets hazy. The hypothetical He could be an entirely honest man putting on an event and people, if they already knew what he was saying, would feel cheated because they didn’t get value back in proportion to their money spent. Is he a scammer?

If you haven’t already, go read the Verge article

Acrylo will be one year old next week and while we’ll have the usual celebrations the present will have to come a bit early to help alleviate some real-world work I’ll be busy with then.

Makeover time!

So, the CSS will be sketchy for a few days here and the graphics will probably be a good hodgepodge of things since I like editing live and in real time. Enjoy the show, and thank you for your patience.

This is a test block quote:

“Beef pork loin pork bresaola meatball prosciutto bacon. Ground round pig shoulder boudin. Bresaola ribeye ham flank. Kielbasa brisket andouille, cow spare ribs turkey bacon frankfurter filet mignon speck chicken ribeye. Ham corned beef meatball rump, pancetta pork sirloin biltong pork belly beef ribs. Shank pork belly filet mignon meatloaf, chicken tongue ham hock chuck meatball short ribs. Pork loin turkey ground round chuck, sausage pork belly beef ham hock bresaola drumstick frankfurter.” – Bacon Ipsum

“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

I’ve been writing to myself a lot on this topic lately. It’s one of frustration and strife in my new freshly graduated world. But also: hope. I’m not afraid at all.

There’s two things that come to mind when I look back upon myself. One. Two. They sum up nicely: knowing that life is finite, how do I choose to spend each hour?

I’m not sure industrial design is my answer. It’s awesome, yes, and I love it with incomparable passion, but I’m also attracted so deeply to the artisan ideals. Wabi-sabi. I want to make things for people. Sometimes there are things that are supposed to reach a lot of people – this is where industrial design is used – but sometimes I just want to make one of something for someone and know that they’re using it and probably will continue to as long as I know them. If they stop, of course, I will never live it down. Just jokes. But seriously. One knife. One chair. Maybe a handful of lamps or guitars. I want to make things for people. That, in whatever form it takes, seems to be the resounding root of my self worth and ‘success’ in life.

As best as I know right now. I mean, the older types would argue I haven’t even begun my life yet.

And now, to begin.

Hand carved linotype stamps on Etsy. I love the geometric shapes. via

In related news, I ordered an Acrylogo stamp last week, so it’s in transit as we speak. Then: stamp ALL the things!

So that’s exciting. I’m not sure when I’ll ever use it in the day-to-day but sometime it’ll be needed and I’ll pull it out in triumphant victory to the dozen trumpets of preparedness.

As we know, Portal 2 is awesome. It’s been a little over a year since it’s release and next week Valve is laying down the community driven map system with editor and I have to say, the UI looks slick. I was worried – there’s a lot of complexity in a test chamber and 3D editor interfaces are generally sort of terrible at intuition. My fears have been quelled, replaced by sheer excitement for the release. May 8th. Ask Siri to mark your calendars.

In other gaming news, a trailer that caught my attention:

A trailer of enigma no doubt. But gah! That’s in game footage. They wrote the graphics engine because they didn’t like any of the existing ones. It’s first person puzzle single player co-op (whatever that is). The teaser art (also in game footage) looks like this. You can find that trailer song here. They’re writing a blog and making notes about all of the development. This is the sentence structure of Brennan Letkeman swooning. Consider me a fan of this indie studio and all that they’ve done so far. Even if the game release itself is utter rubbish, that trailer is something to be proud of.

So good, you guys. So good.

via

The video, first off, is fantastic. Product and everything else aside, it’s great. Clear, simple message. Story. Compelling enough to make you sit through over three minutes (which I would consider the average attention span cutoff).

The product, that is, the site / service leaves me somewhat dumbfounded. I won’t say disappointed yet because other than the three minute video and the time spent typing these words here I haven’t given them anything. It’s Habbo Hotel. That’s the thing people liked before Facebook was invented. That’s the thing that died when Facebook was invented.

Now now, I wish them the best of luck and all – it’s cool seeing non-North American startups dive in and try to take NA markets – but I look at the patterns and wonder why they’re trying to repeat what we already know: bringing the virtual abstraction that is avatars for people into isometric doesn’t really change the social ‘etiquette’ that the 2D FB already (and unfortunately) creates. That awkwardness he describes in the video is entirely true, but outside of MMORPGs where trading and interaction is a necessity to continue on your quests, wandering up to people is still weird in virtual environments. The alternative is the opposite: a chat room. A free-for-all of text conversation. Talking across a noisy bar. If we use the real life analogy, this isn’t exactly ideal for everyone. I personally, and most of the people I hang out with (and by extrapolation, would like to meet), are more of the quiet pub type. Personal conversation. That works in real life because the physics of sound allow for conversations to change dynamically as groups grow and sub-conversations take over amongst themselves.

But, I’m interested. I’ll certainly give it a try if I can. I’d rather see a digitally aided social device for real life instead of a real life aided virtual social device, but hey, let’s experiment and see.

I was driving to my hometown for the Easter long weekend and was passed by this; the Hyundai Veloster. It’s striking.

The lines are nice, like the lovechild of a Juke and an Evoque built on a Mini chassis. The three door thing is different and honestly, makes a lot of sense. Who needs symmetry?

The front is a wee bit gaping for my tastes. I liked the Audi look and I’m actually sad that they’ve been moving away from it recently, but the front on this hot hatch is just a bit… remora. Though I do love those side dams that move into the lines of the headlights.

Overall, I’m excited for this kind of car because I think it’s exactly what our society is looking for and previously found in more massive SUVs. These are smaller, sportier and better on fuel. Living in the land of pickup trucks with lone drivers and empty beds, it’s a welcome sign of things to come.

Photos via