It’s been a whole twelve days since we started the yeast a-going in the first ever batch of Snapstag Cider. Yesterday I racked it, taking it from the fermenting jug and siphoning just the drink part out into a new container so it doesn’t taste yeasty when it cures. At this point it’s entirely drinkable, but if you leave it there will be some mellowing over time.

Normally a very patient person, I threw that aside and bottled one for myself. Note: for the brewers who actually know what they’re doing, I’m not bottling anything else in twist caps – this is just for me and I’m aware it’s bad practice. I just wanted a temporary vessel to keep in the fridge for a while. The cap itself was dipped in my new favorite Zissou Blue (which we just watched again the other night – a brilliant, brilliant film) and stamped in basically the same treatment as the hatchet.

It should also be said at this point that I am a completely unprepared taste tester of alcoholic beverages. I’m young and haven’t really developed that palate yet. So please bear with my utter naivete as I try to review this drink.

I’m not sure if it’s bias because I know exactly what went into it to begin with, but I do think the result is more ale tasting than commercial ciders tend to be. We used Nottingham Ale Yeast under recommendation and while it’s not bad by any means, it’s just more reminiscent of a pale beer than a true cider. Perhaps if one had mixed Strongbow with Corona or Trad Ale in a 3:1 ratio.

But it’s good, overall. I mean, I had no expectation for the first batch – honestly, I was half sure it would be an undrinkable mess that would end up down the drain – but it turned out surprisingly well. If this was a drink in the bar I think I’d order it again, for whatever that’s worth. The light beer hues make it pretty perfect for sitting on the patio in the sunset with good friends and a juicy burger / onion rings. Strongbow the exception, I don’t find many ciders are good with food; so that’s one advantage to mine, I guess.

So, considering this is the “harsh state” just after racking I’m pretty pleased so far. I’m excited to wait a few weeks and try tasting again. In the meantime we’ll probably get one or two more brewing with some slightly changed variables and see how they compare. I have no idea what we’ll do with it all, haha. We’re makers, not consumers.

By now you’ve probably all seen this: the new $70 Kinect-like interface for your computer.

And by now you’ve probably already figured out what I’m going to say.

The problem with spacial interfaces isn’t accuracy, it’s the fact you’re going to have to hold one or both of your hands up for extended periods of time. This is why touchscreens, when presented as direct replacements for monitors, are almost never used after the initial gee-whiz factor wears off. Mice are actually pretty fantastic. I can very accurately point to anything on my screen quickly and by moving maybe a few centimeters at most. Muscles used: just whatever’s required for my first two fingers and thumb. You want to sell your product on the basis of efficiency when you have to move an entire arm (or two) (which are slower appendages in that context) farther and then move the wrists and fingers to work the interface? I just, it doesn’t make any sense.

Now, are they inherently useless? For now, maybe, but I look at the touchscreen example: would I ever want a touchscreen monitor? Nope. Never. Would I want a mouse to control my iPad when I’m curled around it reading emails / ebooks or browsing Flipboard in bed? That’s just silly. Or when using your phone on the train: your thumb’s scrolling up and down is ideal for that size and position (unless you have the Mammoth LTE X4 G6 911 Slim Xtreme Android Envy Prime, in which case your thumb can’t actually reach that far).

We changed our posture to fit the technology better and it works.

Can I think of any posture where a spacial interface would be ideal? Not at the moment, but hey, that’s where the touchscreen started too.

So with the technology becoming smaller, cheaper and more accurate (and hopefully non-laggy, which even Wacom struggles with) I am excited to see where this goes. Until then, I won’t be buying one.

Via every blog in the world right now.

There was an eclipse in Calgary yesterday and it was cloudy. Whatever, weather. Just. Whatever.

So, here’s a picture from Tokyo of the same event; credit going to Kazuhiro Nogi who has a very, very diverse portfolio and no official listing of it. Odd.

We did, instead, as we’re apt to do, go and eat ridiculous amounts of very excellent food.

via

So, it’s been exactly one year since I started writing here after the move from IceCalibre.

Also today: the birthdays of both Dieter Rams and my own grandmother, a solar eclipse, and it’s the day Shakespeare’s work was first published in 1609. I have a full itinerary of long boarding, iced tea drinking, favorite burger eating, axe shopping and eclipse photographing watching. It’s going to be a most excellent day.

Of course, we’ve got the new livery up and running; the reception to it has been positive so far, so that’s good. I do want to streamline the background a bit to load faster – it’s pretty huge right now and I recall that really annoyed me about the old Kitsune Noir site: the load times for the giant image backgrounds were atrocious. So, that’s still in the works.

Some statistics:

Posts: 564
Words in posts: 182,233
Avg: 47 posts per month
Avg: 1.57 posts per day (w/ 30 day month)
Avg: 323 words per post
Std dev: 404 words

In loose numbers, the total traffic through here has been, in one year, roughly equivalent to IceCalibre’s traffic over three years. It’s a curve of course, so it’s not that big deal of a statistic, but it’s sort of cool to see where I’ve been and what it’s grown into. So to all twelve of you: I love ya.

Nah, but I really do appreciate all of my readers. It’s been awesome to hear from you and I’ve had the privilege of teaching and learning alongside you over this past year. So, thank you. I don’t write for you, but I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it so far.

Here’s to the next year!

As always, you’re fully welcome to contact me – I do my very best to reply to everyone.

Summer soundtrack time.

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.