Moving!

Yup, we're moving our home and our business. Between the dates of July 3rd, 2008 - July 9th, 2008 our internet service might be spotty at best so my ability to help clients and new customers might be limited. Please email me during this period anyway, I'll be checking email via my phone and respond where I can. Any emergencies, please just call 808-781-9529

Snow Globes

A couple of artists developed these series of cool yet disturbing snow globes. Kinda neat how they that. Wouldn't these make cool gifts for that special someone?

Moving on up

I still want that camera.

I know, I know, I've been talking about this damn thing even before this model came out. I wanted the 30D. Now my wife is saying, "why don't you just wait for the 50D!" /sigh.

It's just so hard to justify when I'm not really making direct money off of this hobby and there's so many other financial things coming up that we have to tackle. But little by little I've been saving up for this on the side....one day IT WILL BE MINE! Bwaahahaha.

I was just "hired" recently to do some portrait shots. Considering I went with absolutely no equipment at all beyond just a camera and a tripod, I don't think I did that bad do you? I'm sure some full time pros would have a world of advice for me, but meh, I'm happy I got this far with my abilities. Whatever I've earned taking photos goes straight into my camera fund. I'd say that's fair enough don't you?

So I've been finally reading this book people have been encouraging me to read called "Rich Dad Poor Dad". It's a good philosophy. In a nutshell it basically reinforces the idea about not buying any liabilities until you're making money off your assets. Like DUH right? I guess the challenge isn't necessarily knowing it but actually practicing it is the challenge most of us face.

Applying some of that rule to this camera, I figure if I can at least make up the money off of my existing camera to pay for a new one...it's worth it. I'm not sure if that's what the author Kiyosaki intended but that's my modification to the rule and I'm sticking to it.

Speaking of assets, or in Kiyosaki's terms "liabilities", my wife and I will be closing on our first home today. One year to the day we got married well be moving into the new condo / office. It's exciting to be sure, but now more then ever I better stay on track with business and keep it growing. After the house, you know what often comes next........ /shiver

I think it's a good start though. 4 or 5 years from now, the market will turn around again, we rent this place out -- truly turn it into an asset and then we move on up. "Finally get our piece of the pie!" We'll get there Kiyosaki damn you!!!!

Firefox 3

Well, on the subject of Web Design, knowing when a major release of a new browser is a big deal. What's an even bigger deal is an update to a browser that might soon overtake Microsoft's Internet Explorer for marketshare.

Yesterday Firefox 3 was released for free download. I think they were going for some kind of record download on the first day I'm not sure if they accomplished that yet.

With this release comes a bunch of new features that you may or may not use depending on how much of a web surfer you are, but what IS immediately noticeable to me is how fast it downloads websites. Even upgrading from Firefox 2 to 3 I saw noticeable results.

I know this isn't directly design-related news, but speaking from the perspective of someone who hated dealing with browser compatibility for the past 12 years, this is welcome news. Web designers have always hated dealing with different browsers...especially one that chooses to do things their own way and totally screw up any standards *cough* IE *cough*

If any of you are STILL using IE at this very moment to read this....do yourself a favor and try downloading Firefox 3. You'll love it.

Pake

It occurred to me this past weekend how very stereotypical "pake" I'm becoming now having married my wife from Hong Kong. It's a bit funny and yet sad at the same time.

For those of you not in the know - "pake" (pronounced PAH-KAY here in Hawaii) is a term often labeled for Chinese folks, normally associated for the fact we're tight with our money. Yeah it could be used derogatorily, it could be racist or prejudice. But WTF, life is short. Lighten up and have some humor folks. My growing years would have really sucked had I grown up in these politically correct years...now more violent and humorless around the world then ever. I grew up in happier times when those like Rap Replinger could joke about our differences.

ANYHOO, here I was sitting on a Friday morning brunch with my wife eating dim sum at the Chinese Culture Center in Downtown, Chinatown. We were eating juk and chicken feet. (don't knock it till you try it) Sharing a table with another bunch of loud Chinese people. We drove there in our car with "888" license plates.

Now if this isn't Pake I don't know what isn't.

Ironically I had grown up avoiding every one of those things. I used to HATE eating juk (rice porridge) that my dad made every Sunday morning. "What? Juk again!?" God it was just like eating rice & water. Blaaah. But somehow things have changed now that I've been out of my parent's house for so many years...things I used to be so sick of have turned nostalgic. Juk is like comfort food now.

I used to HATE going into stinky Chinatown when my dad used to go there to get cheap groceries. Why do Chinatowns always stink? Dirty as hell too. That still hasn't changed. Before meeting my wife I don't think I had gone into the Culture Center once every 7 or 8 years or so. Now we're going to this one place down there called "Tai Pan Dim Sum" which is pretty damn good...but the crappy part about it is that it's such a small place you often have to just sit at someone else's table. I'll never get used to that...you just pull up a chair at a table already occupied by someone else. The table occupants never look too happy about it either but nobody says anything. I think I've watched enough Kung Fu Theatre growing up to know you don't piss off an unassuming Chinese guy with a bowl of juk in his hands.

I used to laugh at cars with "888" plates. 9 out of 10 times you spot a car with multiple "8" on it, you'll spot a Chinese driver. I asked my 2nd mom in the C&C to get me plates that I could remember easily...she delivered. "8"s apparently sound very similar to the word for "wealth" in Chinese. So naturally it's very pake to slap as many 8s as you can, everywhere you can. Hey, I'm open to trying anything to get a few extra bucks in my pocket to pay for gas these days.

Try look in the car the next time you see a bunch of "8"s, you'll see. Now I'm just another Chinese statistic. Keep on the lookout for triple 8 plates you just might spot this pake waving back at you on my way to eating more dim sum.

Lego Droid

You know, as a kid...before I really geeked out on Atari & Commodore 64 and all that video game stuff, there were a couple of things I really loved. There was LEGO and then there was anything that involved Robotech, like mechs and droids. To me there were no better characters then C3PO and R2D2 in Starwars either.

Today I caught a post on Engadget where they found this guy that made a mech droid out of LEGO...it even opens up to reveal a lego figure inside! Holey moses smell the roses.

You know it's been so long since I've touched any LEGO I don't recognize any of those pieces. All I remember are the square blocks. "Hmm...I got a 2 piece, 3 piece, or a 4 piece block, what can I make?"

New Logo

We completed a new logo concept for a client above. It's an investment corporation so they wanted something pretty bold and regal. The treatment above has this gold effect for the obvious reasons but it actually works quite nice in silver as well.


This one above was one of the half dozen concepts I came up with during development of the logo. I just wanted to show it because I really liked it. I'm happy to deliver final concepts to my clients that they really like of course, but it's sometimes sad to see other ideas I really like never get to see the light of day.

Somehow I just really like the look of the "2" in the design. I think it just gives it more of an edge because of the "curviness" of the number. (yeah I know that's not a word, you don't actually read my stuff expecting good grammar and spelling do you?)

Anyway, they gravitated towards something more simple and I'm cool with that.

Best of luck

My brother got "secretly" married just recently. No it wasn't that he eloped or anything, it's just that the new couple was planning to migrate (is that the word to use? Sounds like they're birds or something) down to Australia so they figured they might as well tie the knot first to make it easier.

Good for them, I think that Australia has a lot of opportunity right now...especially since the US will be a bit slow for the next few years. Maybe once my brother gets established down there he can help me get some investment property down there!

So I drop them off at the airport this morning for their one-way trip down to Oz. Wish you best of luck bro!

I'm actually a bit jealous...that's going to be such an adventure for them. It's not that my life isn't without enough adventure lately, but being grounded this year myself makes their trip feel a little more bittersweet.

Woe is me. "oh get over it Raph" (shut up inner voice)

Spitting it out

You have no idea how many times I've written posts lately only to wipe it out before publishing... I just can't get my thoughts in order lately. Too much stuff going on. So... I'm not even going to try. Let me spit it all out somehow. Bear with me, I need to purge:

1st time home buying - We might be getting one. Despite forecast of gloom & doom, an opportunity came up for us that just can't be overlooked. I'm very excited because it's a bigger place (I'll actually have a true office), and it's our first foray into a real giant investment.

home buying experience - sucks. Numbers. Too many numbers. I hate it, my wife loves it. My wife goes to work and gives me a whole bunch of numbers. She gives me telephone numbers to talk more numbers with more people who then in turn, gives me more numbers to confirm with my wife.

married life - good, but takes practice. Little things can fuel disagreements that much easier...I'm thinking it's because the my wife's opinion means so much more to me then anyone else's. Just gotta step back and look at the big picture every once in a while. Can you believe it'll be my 1st year anniversary coming up next month? Only it looks like we'll be spending our anniversary day moving house...

travel - none. I'm grounded this year. I've gone from being able to fly away every 3 months or so while I was dating my wife to being completely stuck on this island for this whole year. My parents are going to see the Rockies this year, my brother is migrating to Australia, & my wife will be taking her 1st visit back to see her family around October. I'm not going anywhere because it's possible I might have a part-time teaching position this coming Fall. Sucks! I love traveling. Next year I'm going SOMEwhere you better believe it. All these family suckers going away and leaving poor me! Yeah I'm salty about it. Sue me.

exercise - none. After 4 years of religiously running and going to the gym, I've virtually stopped these past couple of months and I'm totally guilty about it. I'm just too exhausted from all this other stuff. Or I spent my normal exercise time in the mornings doing my wife's homework and talking numbers. Yet I've lost weight...how did that happen?

fun - a little here and there. Kung Fu Panda was great. Looking forward to seeing Batman and Wall-E. At least my wife is interested in seeing Batman with me. It's not that she hates watching movies but she doesn't like the theater experience here in the States. Back home in HK she can reserve seats and I guess people are less noisey. I wonder why we don't have reserve seating systems here in our US theatres...they seem to have them in both Australia and HK?

band - just as we were getting to the point I liked the direction the music was going and we sat our arses in a recording studio to put down some music, there's some internal situation and now we may be losing our drummer. I'm too old for this crap so I've stayed out of the ruckus. But here we are now with all this good music, a small following of people who always come out and see us, paying gigs if we want them...and now no drummer. Dunno what's going to happen here.

Whew! I did it...I spit out everything in a nutshell for my life right now. Ugh. OK....back to doing numbers.

Hairy Balls

No seriously... apparently NASA has found a way to actually see magnetic fields and they come out looking like hairy balls. I can imagine the designs that might be influenced by looking at these colored fields...



I don't know who's hairy balls these things looks like but it sounds like some of these scientists needs to work on personal grooming...

If you can't see the vid search for "Magnetic Movie" on YouTube.

Get yer Lightroom now...

For those of you who've camped here a while and stuck with me through all my nonsense random posts and rants, you may have heard me tout about Adobe Lightroom more then once. Quite simply if you do any photography at all, this is the first software you should get hands down.


I mention this again because Adobe has a Beta version of their next release version 2.0 if you want to check it out for free. I've downloaded the thing but having had a chance to check it out yet. But the promises for multi-monitor support along with new tools for non-destructive localized photo touchups is sounds very exciting.

I took the photograph above just this past weekend of my lovely wife. She loves watching "Top Model", so as the sun hit that golden moment I told her to go do her "top model moment". She went ahead and walked over but then she gets all shy. Tsk tsk...go study the episodes again babe! I thought the photo came out cute...almost like a shopping mall catalog shot eh? Not quite Vogue magazine material yet but we'll get there!

Anyway, 90% of the workflow on this photo was done in Lightroom with just some minor tweaking later in Photoshop. Maybe I should do a simple tutorial one day? There's a billion tutorials on this workflow if you're a NAPP member. But for those of you who aren't maybe I can show the basics when I have the chance. Tune in.