It's been a while since I've played music up in front of other humans, but next week THIS WILL CHANGE.
On Jan 23 I'll be one of the openers for Family Fun at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn ( 43 3rd Ave ). As you can tell by their name, they know how to have a good time.
Will I remember how to play the guitar in time? Do I have the facility to express cogent ideas through song? Has the grim specter of time weathered away all but my most basic of functions? Come find out!
I'll be playing songs about slinging code, sandwich spokesmen, italian plumbers, lonely mascara enthusiasts, and MAYBE whatever you want.
What do YOU think I should sing about?
Posted 1.15.2010 12:45 am by RevolvingDork ( permalink )
As Kellbot and I are spending the rest of the year decompressing, we've attempted to drastically cut our "staring at a computer screen" time. Like all good addicts, however, I lapsed to assemble this Christmas card post-mortem.
Leading Internet enthusiasts agree that mouseover comparison images are a delightful way to spend 12 seconds before ravenously clicking on something else. Utilizing this sage wisdom bestowed by the hive mind, please enjoy these comparison images of our Christmas card sketches. Mouseover them to see the finished product!
Check me out, in all of my ruggedly handsome glory! The eyes ended up being a bit too low in the sketch, so they were surgically raised for the final version.
Kelly looks quite pleased despite the fact that the buttons on her coat did not make the final cut.
Here's the whole card in it's final layout. I originally intended to use a landscape aspect ratio, but decided midway through that portrait would better allow the characters to stand out against the background.
This was my first large-scale digital painting and I learned a great deal about stylus use during the process. It felt quite a bit like using real-world colored pencils, and I think this is because I ignorantly used the paintbrush tool almost exclusively. If anyone has any sweet illustration tips, I'd love to hear them!
Posted 12.27.2009 7:27 pm by RevolvingDork ( permalink )
I've never sent out Christmas Cards before, but this year seemed like a good time to start . Naturally, I figured it'd only be worthwhile if I designed the cards myself.
There are still some shading and effects to fine tune, but it's just about there!
Posted 12.11.2009 11:51 pm by RevolvingDork ( permalink )
I am amazed by how rumors about the "Apple Tablet" continue to endure, particularly among high-profile members of tech journalism. Folks are getting paid to over-analyze job descriptions, argue about the price point of the device, and write press releases about their company's future support for the device. This activity, by the way, is all centered around a product that Apple has never so much as hinted at existing.
The irritating thing about this unwarranted nerdlust is that the imaginary product in question doesn't even appear to be useful. The general consensus of the imaginations of budding product designers and bloggers is something like an Elephantiasis-afflicted iPhone. The mythical tablet is thought to be completely touch driven, with few or no physical buttons.
Believers propose that this device could launch a cunning attack on both the netbook and e-book markets, pairing a near-desktop experience with a slim form factor. This suggestion betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about the appeal of both netbooks and e-books.
Netbooks are highly portable computers that come close to providing the full functionality of larger desktops. Netbooks live and die on two factors: Their battery life and their keyboard design. Elements like processing power and storage space are lesser considerations; they don't factor into bread-and-butter tasks like web browsing and document creation. Keyboard design, however, plays a tremendous role.
A touchscreen-driven interface would simply be an unacceptable alternative to a physical keyboard. Users of portable devices may decry this supposition: they've been using touch-driven typing interfaces on their phones for years now! They're right, many folks have adapted quite well to composing text messages and short emails on touchscreens. Have they, however, written full-length articles on their phones? What about spreadsheet creation? How about programming, with its proliferation of symbolism and punctuation?
Let's talk about e-books. When it comes to hardware, three things matter in an e-book: size, readability, and battery life. The imagined tablet designs introduced thus far completely ignore the latter two factors. A backlit LCD screen cannot offer anything that comes close to the legibility and power efficiency of the e-ink display technology used in all e-book readers. They have been designed to replace ink-on-paper books and magazines, neither of which have ever had to concern themselves with display resolution or the time between battery charges. Only the most hardened of technophiles are able to read full novels on LCD screens, and it is likely at the cost of their future ocular prowess.
Is Apple developing this tablet with the hope of competing in these existing specialized markets? Are they hoping to create a new market entirely? Is the whole thing a product of tech media feeding off of itself in a tempest of speculation?
It doesn't really matter. It's a bad idea.
Posted 11.28.2009 1:03 pm by RevolvingDork ( permalink )
