[infographic] Eat Sriracha Or Slowly, Slowly Die

2810I have been recruited to the Rooster Sauce side of the Force since some time ago. There's very little that can't be improved by Sriracha.

We all know what The Oatmeal had to say about the Rooster. But did you know that it was just so damn' miraculous? I didn't. The skinny … and there is some skinny … on a long, skinny infographic, perforce.

Clicky to embiggenate. You are the Embiggenator.

Created by: CookingSchools.net

Via here. 

[teh_funnay] The Premiere of the 3rd Season of You Suck At Photoshop. Here, Now.

2809The big fishies at MyDamnChannel haven't yet released the premiere of YSAP 3.0 as a stand-along ep, but you can see it if you load up this episode of MyDamnChannel Live and go to 5:48. It runs to about 12:50.

Here's the video cued-up to the starting point for you all. Click on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mux_Rhh24&t=5m48

You got your Donnie Hoyle coming to you after all this waiting. You're going to get him good and hard.

[art] A ZKT Exclusive Interview With I've Been Framed's Newest Employee

2808I'll say it until I can't say it no more: Local art stores rock and there are two that are instrumental in putting the cream in our coffee, the art supplies in our bag, and taking the money out of our wallet. One of them is I've Been Framed.

We like our two favorite stores for mostly the same reasons. They're both staffed and owned by local Portlanders who are passionate about art and sincerely love their customers. They both have different approaches that mean you get a ton of good out of them and the prices are seriously affordable. They care about what they do and almost everyone who works there are artists themselves.

When you walk into IBF you get the idea that you've walked into a delightful collage that will also sell you art supplies. They not only have brands that you look for but they also sometimes have insanely-discounted clearance lots. IBF has a nice little framing department in the back, which is where they get the idea for the nam.

The employees at IBF, as I intimated, really make the store however. Really friendly, really care about the art. Really care about making your experience there a good one. A new employee has been added, and he's a sweetie. I understand he works really cheaply … mostly for Little Friskies. You can get a good idea of who it is when you enter:

He, like all great artists, goes by a single name … Jordie. He's still settling in, but he's got a warm charm all his own. After asking Mark for an introduction I was shown into Jordie's office, where he was busy at work, holding down the Adorable department, as well as some of the inventory.

Actually, he may have been on break. With a kitteh, it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure if he was up to a hard-hitting interview about the ins and outs of being the only known art-store cat in Portland, but I wasn't about to back down. Here was a story that needs to be told, and in the wake of the loss of Powell's Books' legendary store cat, Fup, the position of Dean of Portland Store Cats is still up for contention. The public wants to know if Jordie can make the grade. And I wasn't about to be swayed by purring and cute looks.

Oh, heck, he's a cute cat. Of course I was. But on to the interview:

The Zehnkatzen Times: Jordie, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us.

Jordie:

ZKT: You have the opportunity of working as the store cat in one of the two most awesome art supply stores in the Portland area. How did you feel when you realized that you're the point kitty here? Particularly honored?

Jordie:

ZKT: Indeed! A great opportunity. Now, you're settling in, getting used to the crush of customers coming through … they're very creative types. Do you find the artists that come in for supplies particularly inspiring?

Jordie:

ZKT: That's a great story. You never know who you'll run into here … I just helped an artist who was working on ancient methods for making gessoes figure out how to come by the circumference of a circle so he could lay out some calligraphy. You don't have to work here to learn something new! You do work here though … do you feel that you're luckier than most kitties?

Jordie:

ZKT: Yes, it is a special place. That's why we keep coming here, especially with personnel like yourself that make the experience so nice.

At that point, Jordie had some important item on his kitty agenda to complete and had to end the interview, but not before there were skritches and pettin's and purring. But, withal, it looks like Jordie has all the chops to be a great art-store store cat. He's still got some settling in to do, learning the ropes of a very important position, but it looks like he'll grow into the position just fine.

So, visit yourself some I've Been Framed … local art stores are cool, and local art stores are awesome. Also stop by Muse. Support your local sources. They matter.

And pet yourself some kitty when you can. It may not make you rich, but it will make you happy.

[PDX_liff] LOLBurgerville At SE 11th And Hawthorne

2807Burgerville USA, the only burger joint worth visiting, indeed, the only burger joint anywhere, has good news for this particular kitteh:

Yes, you can haz that cheezburger. Might I suggest the Tillamook Cheeseburger?

Of course, the injunction is delivered with a smile. Because that's how Burgerville USA rolls, yo.

[teh_funnay] Donnie Hoyle is Back … and You Still Suck At Photoshop

2806Got something for you all …

Today on MyDamnChannel's YouTube channel, during the daily broadcast of the MyDamnChannelLive web series, something happened that I'm betting you didn't know you wanted but you did in your heart, oh dear yes you did.

Remember You Suck at Photoshop? Remember how much Donnie Hoyle went through to train us on how not to suck at Photohshop? And remember how he seemed to go out in a blaze of … well glory, or something like it?

Well, friends, he didn't die. He's just been hidin' out. And rocking CS5, of course. Today, MDCLive premiered Volume 21 in the series, which illustrates Puppet Warp and Content-Aware Fill, which are awesome of course.

The videos aren't up in their own channel, of course, but you can probably see it as part of today's MDCLive, which are in this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/MyDamnChannel. If you go there nowish you won't see it, but if you do it, say, later this evening or so, it should be up.

For now, this should hold you.

Maybe.



Oh, you are in for it people. You really really are.

[OR_liff] The Popcorn Machine Has Been Cleared Of Blame …

2805Not long ago, word broke that Silverton's magnificent Palace Theater, a fixture for most of a century (and as an opera house, even longer) at the corner of Oak and Water Streets in the center of downtown, suffered a tragic fire.

At the time, one of the theatre's owners, the famous Stu Rasmussen, guessed it might have been the popcorn machine. The lobby suffered a remarkable amount of damage, and the estimate went as high as $300,000.

Good news: a message on the marquee has proclaimed that WE WILL BE BACK, and word is the business is on the mend: fully insured, saith this article at the Statesman-Journal.


Good on Stu and his crew. I always figured him for a smart cookie.

And the popcorn machine is off the hook for the blame. 

[OR_liff] The Perfect Sister City For Boring, Oregon?

2804Why, that would be Dull, Scotland, of course.

No, seriously. Really.

I mean, here it is. Right next to the Dull Wood, in fact.

Why would anyone bother to make this up?

(Via)

[liff] I Tried Out A ChromeBook … At The Multnomah County Library

2803This is a thing I just stumbled on. It's a good thing.

For a while I've wanted a crack at a Chromebook. The way things go round me, chances were hard to come by. But I saw this placard in the Midland Branch of the Multnomah County Library that said something about Community Chromebooks.


I was intrigued, and asked about it. Google has apparently provided Chromebooks for checkout to certain branches of the County Library, and I asked one of the librarians about it.

They're spiffy new machines, so there's a fair amount of rules to follow. You can check one out for two hours only, and if you keep them out after two hours, it's a $10 overdue fine per hour. They'll give you a sheet to read and sign; read it carefully. Take good care of that Chromebook while you have it; if you break it, you'll pay to fix it. Resist the urge to go all hacky on it, and keep your latte off to the side.

All I'm sayin' is, be careful. They have to take good care of them, so others can check them out too.

What you'll get for your trouble is a spiffy little Samsung Chromebook, and you can check out for yourself what they do. And for what they're intended, they work pretty well actually.

When I go out or go to the library, I'll want to check in online, see what's going on. As long as you're near a public WiFi network, you get signal, and all the net's bases are belong to you. If you want new apps, you download them from the Chrome Web Store, just like on your Chrome-equipped laptop or desktop. I don't know how much you can get done without net access, but you can apparently do some things; but essentially because the experience is basically a Chrome browser with a really nifty case, and you'll be using the Chromebook in situations where you're connected, this'll probably not be too much of an issue.

The machine boots up quick, just like they say it does, and runs really pretty well for what it does. Sort of the ultimate netbook really.

If you want to try out a Chromebook, your chance may be as close as your nearest Multnomah County Library. Like you needed any more reasons to go to the Library, Portland.

[comic art] How To Draw A Male Manga Face

2801Mark Crilley has an approach to manga that results in a look I like quite a lot … a face with realistic aspects but that visually-addicting manga style. This is from a series of very easy-to-follow manga tutorials on his YouTube channel.

[comic art] Creating A Dystopian-Future Comic Book Cover

2801 (Via Dark Horse Comics at the Book'o'Face) The Massive is a dystopian near-future comic series coming soon that is supposed to take place in an environment where the the race between global climate change has ended, and global climate change has won. There are previews available here and about.

The cover art, like any great comic cover art, hooks you in.

In this article at iO9, Brian Wood takes us through the creative process that led to that cover.

[comics] Archie Comics #636, Where Girls Will Be Boys, and …

2800You can probably finish the title yourself.

I'm amused that, amongst all the people or things that are bravely (or accidentally, even) leading us into the future, Archie comics would be one. When I was growing up, of course, Archie was fun, but conventional, safe … and rather boring. While the visual style has always been engaging, as time went on the impression I got was of something that didn't require too much skill. I imagined that Archie characters weren't so much drawn as assembled.

But within the last year, Archie has taken what is, for me, an unexpected place at the front of the changing times. But then, what does popular art do but reflect the times, if it does anything worthwhile at all? So, last year, we had two important supporting gay characters get married, something which stirred up its own controversy. And now, Archie's going all Freaky Friday on us.

According to this article at gay.net (http://www.gay.net/hot-reads/2012/04/19/archie-gang-goes-gender-bender), as the story apparently goes, the male side of the gang and the female side of the gang get into a big argument about who has it easier … so Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (and her kitteh) decide to change everything up so that each other gets to see for sure.

What got me about the whole thing though was the art. There's something subtly different about the cover art (see the link). The standard Archie kit is all there, but it's somehow more accomplished. Of course, Veronica is adorable in that cute mini-dress (that said, I've always been a Betty partisan. I liked Mary Ann over Ginger, for what that's predictably worth), but one of the keys to a winning comic is drawings you like to look at (as Charles Schultz alluded to when he commented on Calvin and Hobbes) and these two cover arts are comic arts I enjoy looking at. The burger-munchery on the part of Jughead was a little gratuitous, and I still wonder how Archie gets those grid-prints in his hair, but the indignant look on Betty's face is one for the books, and the irritation between Archie and Veronica is the most real emotion I've seen in a long time from any Archie comic.

Despite the adventure, some things remain ere the same; on the cover of the swtiched (see the link) identities, "Archina" (argh!) is still the meat in the "Ronnie"-"Billy" sandwich. But that's all they're tipping thier hats to.

Archie #636 is scheduled to hit the newsstands in August, so we'll all have to wait until then.

[branding] Whither And/Or Whence Oak Grove, Oregon?

2799Seen in The Oregonian today:

The sign just appeared. If anyone knows where it came from, they haven't come forward. But there it was -- the white and green "Welcome to Oak Grove" sign nailed below the green state signs on southbound McLoughlin Boulevard alerting drivers to the next towns coming up.  

That was April 4. Two days later, Milwaukie crews took the sign down because it wasn't actually in the unincorporated Oak Grove area, but one-third of a mile north, inside Milwaukie's city limits. Instead of trashing it, Milwaukie staff turned it over to Oak Grove resident Fred Nelligan. 

As it would happen, Oak Grove is a community laying roughly in the northern part of the unincorporated area of Clackamas County between Milwaukie and Gladstone. It doesn't include the whole of that area, of course; if you go to the corner of SE McLoughlin Blvd and SE Oak Grove Blvd, right by the Oak Grove Fred Meyer store, and draw a circle about 1.5 miles in radius about that point that'll pretty much take in most of the community. While some definitions have it between the Willamette River and Oatfield Road, others are a little more generous going east. And I'll be frank; I don't know what the neighborhood association's definition is.

But it's a pleasant enough place. I know several people there and they're very happy with the area; there's always been a banked fire of pride about being from Oak Grove. But never a strong sense of that thing we can't do without any more, 'brand identity'.

What is Oak Grove? Well, it's a bit of land in Clackamas County with a community that has a shared identity. It's got all sorts of incomes and lifestyles, from high to low; its axis is one of Oregon's oldest highways, State Hwy 99E, also known as McLoughlin Blvd, named for Oregon's most notable European pioneer. Follow that road south just a couple more miles and you land in Oregon City, where Oregon (and most of the organized American West) began. There are prosperous middle-class residents off either side of McLoughlin, even if some of the properties along that old road seem rather distressed. And there's a panoply of opportunities to spend your money on the main drag; chances are, if you can't find it along McLoughlin, you can get by without it for a little while. There is some local history, if one considers the famous "Bomber", which has a quirky history of its very own.

What Oak Grove is really doing right now is growing an identity. Up until now, that identity was pretty much a place you passed through either just after leaving or just before you get to Milwaukie. There's bound to be some basic human "you had to be there" silliness, like an unknown signster putting up a "Welcome To Oak Grove" sign up on a state milepost sign that's actually 1/2 mile inside the Milwaukie city limits.

But Oak Grove is a nice place with a whole lot of nice people, and community is a good thing, and they have a right to be proud as they build that community.

More power to them.

Just put the right sign in the right place, next time. Remember, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, as someone once said.

You should probably try getting permission next time though.

[teh_funnay] This High School is The Fastest Hunk Of Junk In The Galaxy

2798Those who designed Parkland High School, Allentown, PA, claim they didn't intend to make it look, from the air, like a certain Corellian freelancer's ship …

Well, OK, we'll buy that. But so what? This is the most awesome HS campus ever.

And it made the Kessel run in less than 1.3 parsecs. Can your high school say that? I'll just answer for you: NO.

I'm reasonably certain that you won't find the droids you're looking for there, though, budgets being what they are.

Even more injustice: the sports team are the Trojans, not the Falcons.

[pdx] Urban Archaeology: At SE 42nd And Hawthorne, Where They Once Sold Ice Cream

2797This was a pleasant find to stumble upon, all the more so because we weren't looking for it and it concerns the continued success of peoples we are quite fond of.

I have exulted the charms. of Muse Art and Design before. Along with I've Been Framed they are the two art supply stores you must know if you need art supplies here in town. Local, passionate about what they do, and won't break your bank wide open.

Last we, me and The Wife™ slid along to the corner of SE 42nd Avenue and Hawthorne Blvd, upper Hawthorne, and we were amazed to see this:

Muse's current location is one address east of this (more on that allusion perforce). Until recently that location was a quirky, cool vintage shop called Shadowhouse Collectibles who, via the vicissitudes of business these days, had to quit the location and move on (we don't know where yet – if you never visited, you've missed out, my friend. Keep up to date with them here, as they say they'll be back). Shadowhouse has been good to us, as the vintage KATU sign will attest.

Alas and alack, for now Shadowhouse is gone. This has opened up an opportunity for Muse to move into a bigger space, which can augur nothing but good; but until then, remodeling of the space happens. And that has uncovered and unexpected visual treat.

The building on the corner SE 42nd and Hawthorne has had her makeup removed for a newer application, and we find that this used to be an ice cream shop.

The Portland Ice Cream Company, to be precise. I don't know whether they made it there or had it brought in, but the old hand-painted typography on the facade brings up memories I didn't know I had (mostly because I wasn't alive in the 1940s).

The old paint work itself shows signs of revision. We peoples, we just can't leave things along, can we? I'm guessing that the half-covered signage probably said something like Farmers Ice Milk and Cream, but we are certainly guessing there.

Old-fashioned ice-cream parlors. Doesn't that just speak 'small-town America'? One wonders what the then-denizens of upper Hawthorne would think of the current, with the ironic bars and the organic markets and the incense-and-peppermints shops and whatnot. Probably think they were on another planet or summat.

It would be far amiss if I didn't mention something about the remodeler. The job is being done by an outfit called Michael Cordes Remodeling, and we met the man as he was cleaning up at the end of what was obviously a long, productive day of work. There are all sorts of builders revising Portland at the present time but I don't think I've ever run into one that has this keen a sense of history. Very, very affable fellow; had a few minutes to talk and we had a fairly fun chat. But, you tell me … what remodeler would care enough about history to post a picture of the building in its heyday? I'm not sure what year this was, but the old-style street-blades on the corner suggest the 1940s.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who formats his business card and sign in lovely calligraphy is probably a cut above the rest. He can be contacted at mcremodel@rconnects.com, if you're of the bent.

He's said he has some more historic PDX photos to share after I post this, and i can share some, I will.

Keep your eyes open, peoples! History is right in front of you betimes.

[teh_funnay] Zooey Deschanel in a Post-Copy-Editor World

2796We always knew that Zooey Deschanel was a special woman of poise and good qualities.

Therefore we were not surprised when she divorced Death Cab for Cutie.

We never much cared for that group anyhow.

[pdx_liff] Mattress World - Again, It's Not Too Late To Sleep Like A Baby

2795Mattress World is back, at least in spirit, and, at several locations, in fact as well.

Sliding in somewhat under the radar, the business, now under new ownership (Sean Hathaway is mentioned as the owner) with Sherri Hiner along for the journey, boasts a new website (http://mattressworldnorthwest1.tru-m.com/) and seven locations, including Salem and Clackamas, and an evolved name: Mattress World Northwest. 

We wish 'em well. It was heartbreaking to watch Mattress World go down like that.

We hope the get a new URL soon though. That one? Not particularly memorable.

[art] It's Gamblin Torrit Grey Time!

2794The spring is sprung and that means grey, but in more ways than one. Of course, there's that particular Oregon gray, the sky that never stops giving us its water, but for some years now, Portland's own Gamblin Artist Colors does a singular thing.

Gamblin's Torrit Grey is a unique pigment. Every spring, they collect the pigments that are captured by the shops Torit® brand air filtration systems. When you mix all colors together, you don't actually get black … they neutralize and you tend toward gray. And the sum total of the color of all the pigments collected by the Torit are just a little different each time round, depending on what sells, how much of what gets made, and suchlike.

Well, Gamblin has just announced the game is on with the announcement of this year's Torrit Grey contest. Each year, Gamblin distributes tubes of Torrit Grey to art stores throughout the area, and is complementary with purchases of Gamblin products, just for the asking. You create some amazing value-based art with Torrit Grey and enter it in the contest.

Information is available here:

http://www.gamblincolors.com/torrit.grey/index.html

Game on, peoples.

[PDX_Liff] 61 Seconds At Denny's

2793We couldn't get by without our weekly visits to the Denny's at SE Stark and 105th (you know, the one closest to Mall 205). We love the staff … Cherisse, Samm, Mario, Robyn, Lisa, you know who you are … and when you can't get artisanal coffee in Portlandia, amazingly enough, we do what everyone everywhere else does. We go to the Denny's.

This, then is sometimes the most important 61 seconds of my week.

[art] Muse Art and Design-Earth Safe Finishes Demo at Milepost 5

2792So, yesterday night, The Wife™ and I took part in a demo/workshop put on by Muse Art and Design at the Milepost 5 complex. The subject of interest is a line of art supplies by Earth Safe Finishes (http://earthsafefinishes.com), and we found the whole thing nifty as a rule.

Earth Safe Finishes is a company working in the field of 'green'; the line is different, they say, for two main reasons. First, they're made in the USA, which is always a plus these days, and second (and maybe more important to an individual artist) they boast that they're free of VOC's, or volatile organic compounds. These are the chemicals that allow the paints, mediums, etc to dry quickly by outgassing. For those who are chemical-sensitive they are an active concern.

If they are a concern for any individual, then Earth Safe Finishes products do indeed provide an alternative. They are all non-toxic. They include mediums (including a titan called Fabric Magic, which can do just about anything, it seems) and a line of paints (called colorants but now called pigments) that are very very concentrated. A few drops do go a loooong way.

I used very small amounts of Phthalo Blue, Red, Yellow, and Lampblack to produce this Mona-Lisa-esque work over the two-hour workshop:

The colors are very rich and vibrant and enjoyably workable. The right side of the picture was me playing around with colors and a medium. 

A good time was had by all, and the Musers Marcus, Peter and David were there, and did their own works; I found all three to be skillful artists … albeit with visions running toward the comically disturbing. Good thing I don't have clown issues … and let's leave it there. Susan, led the demo had a sure and informative hand over the proceedings, and the people who showed up were all very affable and friendly.

In short, fun.

[branding] Dollar Shave Club Proves Cheeky Humor Still Sells

2791… well, at least it still sells if you pitch it just so.

In a conversation last night, I overheard someone talking about Dollar Shave Club, that it was apparently a dotcom that sent you just your basic, two-bladed razor for a dollar a month. Skeptical? You bet. But I've seen sillier things sold seriously (Artisanal Pencil Sharpening, anyone?) and anyone who's been on the intertubez for any length of time knows that it really does allow you to fuse things that weren't really 'fusable' before into something that works.

According to this article at Huffington Post*, the entrepreneur behind it, Michael Dubin, was able to mash up direct importing form China and Korea** with the savings that strictly-internet commerce can provide to deliver a free handle, five blades/month of a basic two-bladed men's razor for $1/unit, or $3/month.

What really gets this over-the-hump, however, is the cheeky, dry humor that seems to borrow as much from the sensibility of The Daily Show as it does Saturday Night Live with a dash of National Lampoon. The video, of course, has gone viral. Touching on such things as the quality-price-value proposition, men's grooming over the 20th Century (you're handsome Grandpa just used one blade, and he had polio) lampooning of some trite ad-speak, and even works in how he's improving the economy. Just watch.



The three models offered show a similar wry humor. The DSC's basic model, 'The Humble Twin' boasts that it 'does not front'; the middle-range model, 'The 4X', is good enough for you and your girlfriend; the Cadillac of the line, 'The Executive', 'comes from the future and lives in Outer Space'.

But this startup does exist and will send you blades at prices that make buying your shave at the variety, grocery, and drug store look kind of look a little extravagant. And I enjoy the humor.

Even though I wear a beard. Makes me wish I preferred being clean-shaven.

*I refuse to call it HuffPo. I cry and die inside whenever anyone I know does.
** I, too am a bit conflicted about importing from China and Korea but, on the upside, Alejandra wasn't working last month, and this month, she is. So that's something right there. 

[maps] Dido Albert Federowich: The Greatest Living American?

2790There's a practice in mapmaking known as copyright trapping. It is set by laying copyright traps. 


Creating maps is something of an odd competition. They usually wage war over features such as design, readability, completeness … the sources of many maps is a matter of public record. If I decided (and many of my friends over time has said I should) to create and publish a map of Portland, I could do so by referring to public records as to what streets have actually been built, historical records which have fallen into the public domain, and, in the case of this town, my extensive street-level experience in it.

That's one way.

The other way would be to buy a Rand McNally map and create my own hand- or digitally-drawn copy. And, since it's the city of Portland, a thing that's open to all, and maps strive for accuracy, it'd be essentially impossible to discern that I got the idea that 82nd Avenue crosses Burnside Street from any freely-available source.

They have called this editing the competition as well, back in the days when maps were distributed through gas stations. Isn't it nifty?

But how to create a map in such a way that lazy cartographers can't get away with stealing your data? Easy. Put a little street it, that people are vanishingly likely to visit, in some out-of-the-way place, and give it a tell-tale name. It pops up in the competition's map and, bingo, you got 'em.

Blogfriend Ben Lukoff (@lukobe on Twittah) who shares a similar Address Nerdery, alerted me to a street named after someone I'd never heard of before … Dido Albert Federowich. I don't know who he was or what he did, but he's important enough to have a street named after him … or did he?

Anyway, as I was scrolling around the west side of the city, the map displayed a rather unusually named street: “Dido Albert Federowich Memorial Drive.” Uh, what now? So, naturally, I googled the name…and discovered that, oddly, there are similarly named streets in several cities…or at least, maps of that city indicate streets of that name in several cities.

I put the string Dido Albert Federowich Memorial Dr into Google maps, and I got 4 hits:

1. Omaha, Nebraska: A driveway into a park that has baseball diamonds.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia: An entry road into a subdivision. If you go into Street View, and position yourself just-so at the intersection with the cross-street leading into that subdivision, you'll see that the street blade calls it Savannah Trail, which is the name of the backbone street of the subdivision, which it presumably is actually an extension to.
3. Knoxville, Tennessee: an access to a parking lot that apparently serves a park-and-ball-diamond arrangement on the city's southwest side
4. Pollock Pines, California: a back-road's back road in the Sierra Nevada east of Sacramento

My Google Maps search only turned up those four; the author of this blog posting found several others. 

The presence of DAFM Drive doesn't in and of itself excite so much as finding even one more of them in some other city hundreds of miles away … and I came up with four. What's up with that? Have I just inadvertently inducted myself into a secret society of DAF-followers and soon receive attendant power, prestige and wealth?

Gosh, I sure hope so.

Is it a copyright trap? Or just some pro-cartographers' inside-joke? That is a mystery that I, mah babies, cannot crack. Maybe someone someday will. I'll just enjoy the absurdity for now.

Anyway, Dido Albert Federowich, great unknown American, we salute you, whoever … or whatever … you were. Are. Is. I don't know, really.

[logo] Rivergrove, Oregon: The City Of Happy Little Trees

2789If you've never heard of Rivergrove, Oregon, then you're just like almost everyone on Earth, slim. And Rivergrove probably likes it like that.

Rivergrove is a very very small city on the north bank of the Tualatin River and on the border of Clackamas and Washington Counties here in Oregon. It's scarcely a mile long and, at most, four or five blocks wide. It clings to the river and both sides of SW Childs Road; there are three roads in and no roads back out (if you don't count the three roads that took you in, of course). If you use I-5 in the area you might go through it every day, but are only in that town for a heartbeat.

It's obviously a city of neighbors; even the city's website is unofficial and volunteer-supported. And it has a logo, or perhaps a sign, that, in its use of simple forms and Peignot as a font, is so datedly-charming that it's gone full-circle into retro:

Of course, I took one look at those trees, and I made an immediate connection:

It looks like them, don't it? Bob Ross inspired those trees. Had to. 

Rivergrove, Oregon; where happy trees go to retire.

Thank The Wife™ for finding this one. She thought it delightful, and she's right; it is.

[net_liff] The Girl Whose Feet Never Touch The Ground

2788Natsumi Hayashi is a young Japanese woman, who puts her super power on display for all the world to see.

Now, as far as polls go, attractive young women are right up there; Japanese moreso. The reason I make that tortured statement is to perhaps overmake the point that, while Natsumi Hayashi is very easy on the eyes generally, what will really make you fall in love with her is her delightfully skewed view, which she can make real and share with you:

She's pioneered what she calls levitation self-portraits, and there are quite a few. They make her seem in her environment, but not part of it. Something entirely un-Earthly and surreal and very wonderful to look at. They amuse the eye and lift the spirit.

She has many of these, whose secret is actually hard work; she sets her camera for auto-fire or has a friend squeeze the trigger, and really just jumps up and down. Out of the up-to-300-and-more photos taken on such a session, chances are, there'll be a few good ones.

It's reality, curated, really.

Her blog is Yowayowa Camera Woman Diary: http://yowayowacamera.com/. Come for the adorable young Japanese lady; stay for the sense of absurd wonder.

[comic] Adeiu, "The Elderberries"

2787Thank you, Corey Pandolph. And that's sincere.

A comic strip we've all been very fond of around here is winding down. The Elderberries, a strip which, more or less, has the same surreal and genuinely-funny take on being old as Cul De Sac has on being young, is ending.

I actually wondered about that a few weeks ago, when suddenly the gigantic Japanese conglomerate decided to sell off and close Elderpark (tagline: A great place to park your elder). In fairly short order the stern Russian cook, Ludmilla, was splitting to run her own retirement home, taking the Professor and the General with her; best-friends Dusty Winters (the eternal cowboy) and Boone (the retired UPS drive who bled brown) were hieing off to New York to share quarters; Evelyn was off to live with one of her ever-neglectful kids, and the ever-beleaguered Miss Overdunne was being sprited off to Italy to live with her now-no-longer-unrequited suitor, who ran the nearby tavern.

Everyone was going places, but we weren't sure where the comic was going and … well, now we know.

We'll miss those characters.

Whereever you go, Mr. Pandolph, we wish you'd of continued the strip … but we do wish you well.

[design] Multiple Tools? The More, The Abler

2786This graphic I found interesting because it reinforces some things I've conceptualized about the practice of graphic design and digital tools:

1. Photoshop is teh awesum:
2. Adobe is massive:
3. QuarkXPress is the minority platform.

I don't think a designer should be necessarily counted out because he or she doesn't have skills in, say, Illustrator as well as Photoshop as well as InDesign. But the skills required to use all three at a basic level of proficiency are pretty transferrable from one to the other: the Beziér-based Path tool works the same basic way, and the difference between how a vector and a pixel conspire to make your .ai file different from your .ps file are quick to learn and become intuitive soon enough.

An enlightened teacher or mentor in the art and practice are essential, of course. 

But if one's going to learn one, one should get into the others. Being a triple-threat Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesigner says more than you know how to use three important tools – I think it also shows that you're willing to rise to a certain challenge.

The biggest surprise? QuarkXPress isn't mentioned at all.

(via Pariah Burke's repin of Calvin Lee's pin at Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/pin/124974958379513909/)

Show off your graphic design skills with business cards from UPrinting!

[OR_liff] Fisher Scones, A Taste Of The Real Northwest

2785A few days back, I celebrated finding a KATU artifact and bringing it home. The KATU 2 Sign sits, overlooking the living room; when the light is on, we're either all looking at it and admiring it, or I'm down in the studio wasting time doing design or creative work.

The name of the company then, Fisher's Blend Station, Inc, as I remarked then, seemed a mite awkward name for a media conglomerate, and indeed, the company's mission has moved on. In my reading, however, the company only spun off its flouring enterprises as late as 2001. While I have no evidence, I do know that for a great deal of the early part of the 20th Century, in the Northwest, Fisher's Blend flour was the flour, at least it was Fisher's most popular product. And when the Fisher family decided to start broadcasting, with radio station KOMO, it seemed reasonable to advertised Fisher's Blend flour … on 'that Fisher's Blend station', as I also read elsewhere (and can't find the reference, sorry … you'll have to take my word on that). When a holding company was founded to nurture the burgeoning broadcast business, it must have seemed natural to call it just that.

This story at Historylink.net has a more big-picture overview of the history of Fisher.

It did not distance itself far from its flouring origins, and that chapter of the story we look at today. Anyone who's been to a state fair in the Pacific Northwest during the last several decades will surely remember a Fisher's Scone stand. There's surprisingly little to a Fisher's Scone; A hot, just-made (or very very recently-made) triangular biscuit made of Fisher's flour, butter, and raspberry or blueberry jam.

It's a hot biscuit and jam, is what it is, which makes its pervasiveness in PNW culture all the more a triumph. By marketing them at state and county fairs in Oregon and Washington, Fisher made a genius move that will forever have them linked with what is really part of the PNW frame of mind and frame of reference.

Hell, I want one right now. Those babies are magnificent.

Last year, KING-TV in Seattle celebrated the Fishers Scone (amusing that this story is from a FisherComm competitor, but you gets your gold where you finds it) with this report:

Either way you look at it, the Fisher companies have been influencing Pacific Northwest tastes, for better or for worse, for more than a century. I count this in the better column.

[logo] Before and After: Banfield Pet Hospitals Logo Redesign

2784Banfield Pet Hospitals went from one modest office on NE 82nd and Broadway (that we once patronized, Back In The Day™) to a far flung pet clinic archipelago with literally hundreds of branches, some as far away as Great Britain. It's heart is still in Portland, as to say: the NE 82nd clinic is across the street from world headquarters, a nicely-done brick building with a public dog park in front.

When it originally expanded to PetSmart stores, it called itself VetSmart but eventually moved all those clinics to the Banfield brand. And when they did, it looked like this:

… and I enjoyed this. It was dead clever. 

It's hard to really be distinctive when designing a logo for a vet. Judging by what I see, it's usually some combination of kitty and doggie, with a human hand sometimes offering encouragement, comfort, or maybe just a scritch on the head. And this does that.

But where it really excels is in the lower left, on the back side of the kitteh's leg and the underside of the belly. Notice that those lines are absolutely straight, where as the rest of the cat has natural contours? Now add those to the frame of the cross, which is thereby preserved, and you have a tiny little fillip that really kicks this one up to the next level. 

That's the sort of little detail that makes an aspiring designer say wish I'd have thought of that one! and sets it apart, though in a very subtle way, from all the kitty/doggy combos out there. The rest of the display is kind of clever, though they couldh ave done without the cross as the tittle on the 'i'; it moves the crossbar on the f and the main part of the i down making the whole word look undone. However, I'd always read the bevelling on the l and the d as a nod to the freeway that gave the clinic its name; it makes the word Banfield resemble FHWA signage lettering.

Recently we've seen a new version of the logo emerge, and this is it:

Gone are the cat's body breaking the cross's frame, and the cross has a sunny aspect to it in the color. The human's hand is gone, leaving Fluffy and Fido looking into the distance for their pal; the type has been refined and polished. 

But the polished type has lost the quirkiness of the original, and the cross, while more compact and easier to design to, has also lost its quirky attitude. It retains the interest of the old logo because of the similarity to it, but has dropped a great deal of its charm for something more buttoned-down, more slick. 

That's not to say it doesn't have its own cleverness. The dog-cat profile that proceeds in from the lower-right is formed by one artfully-carved strip reversed out of the cross. And the sunny yellow color does feel cheerful.

But this is just mere cleverness, while the earlier version was cleverness which bespoke genius.

The revision isn't bad, but I'd of preferred they just left it alone. The new isn't bad, but the old was a first-place winner.

And the babies are probably missing their friend something fierce. Pets are like that.

[pdx_liff] The Bits Of PDX Broadcast History You'll Find In Hawthorne Junk Shops

2783We are now the proud owners of a sign. But this is not just any old sign.

Portland's Channel 2, KATU-TV, signed on in 1962. It became an ABC affiliate in 1963.
The wooden shadowbox backing up this bit of translucent plexi (or Lucite, maybe) denotes it as having a vintage of 1958, though that's when Fisher Broadcasting (then Fisher's Blend Station, Inc) received a construction permit for KATU. Don't know if they knew that was when they were going to get the network affiliation. The provenance for the objet is still rather shrouded in the mists of time.

The sign looks like thus:

The translucent plastic sign can be slid out because of the missing bit of metal frame on the right. A small 40-watt appliance bulb lives in the box and looks about as old as the rest of the sign. The crafting and cutting out of the plastic forms used to create the logo's forms is as precise and immaculate as you'd want to see. This was a labor of love.

This appears to be a sign that could have hung in an office window or been mounted on a wall somewhere. How this might have occurred is far from evident. The only idea of provenance we have is the sticker, whose date must be held in some doubt. However, the design of the sign looks identical to the logo design on the television cameras I've seen in historic shots of it. It might not actually date from 1958, but it could easily have dated from around 1963 or so.

The station, KATU, is owned by Fisher Communications. Back in The Day™, it was known as Fisher's Blend Station, Inc. Kind of an awkward name for a media conglomerate. As I understand Fisher's history, though, the company that evolved into Fisher Communications began life as the Fisher Flouring Mills in Seattle, circa 1910 or so. Their most popular product was Fisher's Blend Flour. If you had a Fisher's Scone … a yummy little number made of a piping hot biscuit made of Fisher's flour with warm jam spread inside … at any Pacific Northwest State Fair through the sixties and/or seventies, then that was from the same company. And, early on, Fisher's Flouring Mills apparently realized the value of broadcasting in spreading the word about their signature product … Fisher's Blend Flour …via the new medium. One thing probably led to another, and the next thing you knew, Fisher's Blend was a broadcasting company too.

Fisher Communications have come a long way from their flouring beginnings. Fisher's flour is still made and Fisher Fair Scones are still served, but they do not seem to have a connection to the communications company any more. C'est la guerre, mon cher. 

On the way home there was some discussion over where it might go. Being broadcast graphic design, I felt very possessive about it and thought about some way it could come to the basement to live in the studio with me. But The Wife™ made an excellent gestalt case for it living upstairs in the living room, where everyone we'd have over might see it. And we'd get a chance to brag, of course, thought I to myself, thought I.

So it now occupies a position of honor in the main room upstairs, less than three feet from the TV screen, on which we watch KATU (well, as long as the digital signal will let us). And, in the dark, why, it looks so very warm and nostalgic …

Warms my heart to have this under my own roof, it does. I am a lucky person, in a way.

While I was writing this, The Wife™ sent me a link to a picture of DX reception of KATU from about 770 miles distance. The newsman in depiction is Rick Meyers, a newscaster I liked quite much, when I was a little tiny guy: http://www.johninmontana.com/oregon/katu-id.jpg.


And, as long as Shadowhouse's loss is my gain, might I suggest that you all keep an eye on http://www.shadowhouse.net, Shadowhouse's web page. They still got great stuff there, it's almost all half-off to reduce the wear and tear of moving it, and when they get a new location, that's where you'll find out about it. 

[logo] Four Blue Screens: The Windows 8 Logo

2782Software brand identities, they be funny things, yarr.

Software enthusiasts tend to fly these things like flags and they begin to feel as though, merely by looking at a symbol and identifying it it becomes, in a certain real way, theirs. I remember the minor uproar when the icon for the Mac Finder got changed just a little; the big collective point-and-laugh when Quark debuted a logo that was all but exactly identical to that of the Scottish Arts Council; and the wistful sigh of regret when Apple shifted from a rainbow to a cold, glossy sheen.

Didn't know so many people felt that way about Alar. So 1980s.

Anywhoozle, it struck me as odd that Microsoft should even want to update the Windows logo. I thought it rather keen. The original logo, back along about Windows 1, was very straightforward and functional. Showed what it did. Didn't mess around.

Yup. Pretty nifty. But it went from that, evolving, to this:

The accent for me isn't so much on the type (though I enjoy it muchly) but the evolution of the graphical representation of the idea of windows. It was obvious up top, and here in the middle it has the flag-like wave the world has come to know and love in the design. 

There is a thing in design called dynamic tension. Anything squared off and balanced or aligned or symmetrical expresses a sort of 'locked down' feeling … all energy balanced, all bases covered. Giving something a slant visually suggests unbalance, and we all understand potential energy on a primordial level, so we imbue the unbalanced logo with a sort of energy. Dynamism. Tension. Dynamic tension. And despite it sounding like a damnation, in Logoville, dynamic tension, artfully managed, can visually energize a logo.

But MSFT has a habit of not leaving well enough alone. And thus, and so, and here, courtesy of the design giant Pentagram is the new look of Windows 8:

The four blue screens. 

I don't place a whole lot of emotional value into the Windows logo, actually; there are other logos I care much more about. But I thought, in its 7 incarnation, with the warm color and the reduction of the wavy-flag look, it had arrived at a certain good place. And then MSFT took it elsewhere.

I don't think it's a failure, per se; Windows 8 is going to live and die on whether or not it's a great OS. I can't believe that MSFT doesn't have a few more tricks up its sleeve; with the formerly-beleaguered Apple now well resurgent and on its way to the top of the IT heap, MSFT isn't the computer-gawd it once was, but is still a Titan, with human experience worth, as the MCP might have said, worth 'millions of man-years'. The personal computer of today isn't the same as the personal computer of 2003 (or even 1993) and that's where the battle is to be waged.

But in the side-skirmish that is graphic design, the Windows 8 logo is kind of blah. Nothing to get too excited about. Flat. A bit uninteresting. But it does synch-up nicely with MSFT's Swiss-influenced "Metro" design language, emphasizing simple, clean typography, simple shapes for thumbnails and straightforward design. 

In that way, it is a success.

But the logo? I think they should have left well-enough alone. The flag? It was kinda cool.

[OR_liff] Mount Hood Is Good … Boringly Good

2781I've declared my love unending for that beautiful Multnomah Indian maiden sitting on our eastern horizon, Mount Hood, or Wy'east, as the original natives called her. She gives Portland a backdrop that other cities would kill for (I know, I've asked Jacksonville, Florida). Smooth in profile on the south, rugged (but not too rugged) on the north, the mountain, the highest one in Oregon, seems to reflect beatifically upon the city that looks back with a highly-photographed, come-hither expression.

Of course, she's one of the Cascade Range's famous sleeping giants, who could (and have) erupted violently enough to lay waste to multiple square miles and throw entire states into darkness before noon. It's like living with a gorgeous killer next door, a femme fatale like no other.

Or is it?

I was transfixed by an article in The Big O that attempts to explain Hood's comparative quiescence. While Rainier sits in majesty, intimidating Seattle and threatening to unleash lahars as far west as Puyallup if they get any more uppity, Hood hangs out in the distance like a mellow fellow traveller, at ease with her surroundings.




It turns out that Mount Hood is good … boringly good.

After analyzing crystals embedded in lava from relatively recent eruptions, the researchers found that hot magma from deep below Mount Hood consistently mixes with cooler, mushier magma nearer the top weeks to months before an eruption.  

The heating makes the magma less viscous, or more runny. Potentially explosive gases can harmlessly escape the thinner mixture -- think of the bubbles that stream to the surface when you open a can of soda, Koleszar said.  

And that prevents a high-powered explosion that blows the mountain's top. 

The entire article at OLive is here: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/02/mount_hood_unraveling_the_myst.html.

Bottom line here, a so-called "Plinian" eruption … which is what Saint Helens had, and what almost every other volcanic mountain can expect to have at one time or another, is, through the chance of the process described above, extremely un-likely to ever happen with Mount Hood.

That's not to say, of course, that an eruption at Hood wouldn't cause some level of catastrophe. And lahars … mud, ice and rock flows that can scour out a river valley … are still a likely thing with our peak. Actually a lahar can happen because of an out-wash of glacial ice or an avalanche, not necessarily triggered by volcanic activity at all. So wariness of the volcano next-door is not to be discouraged.

But it is reassuring to know that the Mount Hood we're familiar with isn't likely to change much even if she erupts, and moreover, we know why.

The geologic province that the eastern reaches of Portland is embedded in is named for a pioneer community that's received a lot of ribbing over the years for being Boring.

Turns out, majestic Hood is the most boring volcanic of them all. 

[pdx_liff] Why Portland's Eastsiders Point And Laugh At The West Hills

2780Today in our Dept of Fighting-The-Man-Against-Gentrification Dept, who would think that the cozy residents of Hillsdale … a place one might describe as 'tony' … would enlist in the cause. According to The Big O, here's a First-World Problem for you, two blocks of a street in that nabe, Southwest Sunset Boulevard, is wanting for curbing, sidewalking, and a bike lane.

The neighbors along those two blocks? DO NOT WANT!:

Those who live on the two blocks in question worried that their "rustic"  street would be turned into “a hard urbanscape” with the installation of an "ugly concrete" sidewalk and bike lane. 

… and, I'm sorry folks, no disrespect intended, but I just had to laugh. You see, my turf is out around Southeast 122nd Avenue and Market Street. This is a part of portland that people west of César E. Chávez Blvd (or, 39th Avenue to the unreformed) still haven't completely realized is within Portland city limits. People see our streets and furrow their foreheads over how 'distressed' my corner of town is. The fact that the property owners (according to the story) have been using the public right-of-way for landscaping (or something) enters into this not-at-all, I'm sure.

What the hassled residents of Sunset Boulevard call rustic is what many of my neighbors call the street in front of our house. 


If you ever thought there wasn't an east-west divide in Portland, or wonder why the east-side regards the west-side with such suspicion … well, here ya go, Scout.

Just what the hell is a 'hard urbanscape' supposed to be, anyway?

[art] If Shepherd Fairey Had Met Bob Ross …

2780.Maybe agitprop history might have been a bit different:

Inspired by Shepherd Fairey's OBEY GIANT;
Image of Bob Ross rendered from BRI Logo (via BRI):
above image intended as homage only and is
not for sale.

[print] Charlotte Brontë: The First Zinester

2779.Here in Zinelandia producing zines is second nature; a little-known section of the municipal code stats that you have to either be creating one or planning one or you have to move to Gresham.

Fortunately, the Zine Police will let you off if you just say you're planning a zine. It's like having a screenplay in Los Angeles; the default position is that you're going to doing one any day now.

Written circa 1830, when the eldest Brontë sister was 14, a very tiny, handwritten volume, one of a series of "Young Men's Magazines" (the mind is intrigued here) is smaller than 1.5" x 2.6" but packs 4,000 words and a setting in Glass Town.

Big deal. I was perusing similar volumes in the zine stacks at the Multnomah County Library just last week.

But if you wanted it, you'd of have to had ponied up about $1.1 million at Sothebys.

If Charlotte were alive today … well, hell, she'd be scratching at her coffin lid demanding to be let out. But still.