Thursday, December 18, 2008

places in the world where people do not dream

After browsing through bostom.com's first and somewhat depressing installment of "The year 2008 in Photographs," this book, written and illustrated by Dallas Clayton quickly lifted my spirits.

"There are places in the world
where people do not dream...
of rocket-powered unicorns,
and candy cane machines,
of magical watermelon boats,
and musical baboons..."

You can find the side-scrolling internet version (I believe in its entirety) here. You can pre-order a book to be shipped mid-January here!

Another image just because all of them are so totally awesome...

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

uh oh



Chrysler will shut down plants in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for at least a month starting Friday. This is kind of crazy, you can read about it here at Reuters (my favorite news source).

Save the World For Real


I've been trying really hard lately to see the positive side of advertising. Manipulating minds isn't always evil. I stumbled upon this awesome ad for the Lebanese Red Cross, designed by Leo Burnet.

REK Bookcase











DeZeen recently displayed this UH-mazing bookcase by Rotterdam-based designer Reinier de Jong. The piece consists of five parts that can expand and contract as the user sees fit.
“REK is a bookcase that grows with your book collection. The more books, the bigger the bookcase,” explains de Jong.
Not only does this solve space problems for smaller apartments, but it eliminates the eyesore of a half-empty bookcase. Very clever.

Audimat

Found this beautiful font at smeltry.net. It's free, so download it!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

I must have this bookcase/staircase. Almost anyone in immediate relation to me knows this by now. I figured that an item so essential to my happiness should be mentioned here.

I read about this brilliant idea on Apartment Therapy a little under a year ago. It resides in a London apartment, designed by Levitate Architects in response to a book storage problem.

I will color code my books as well.

I wish I lived in the shire

I HAD to post about this home in Wales. I've always wanted a hobbit hole home and I think this is as close as anyone's ever been to achieving the true essence of hobbit living.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

"It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats--the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill--The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it--and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the lefthand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river."

-- The Hobbit, pp. 15-16.

An estimated 1000-1500 man hours, two men, and about 3000 pounds and the family was moved into this lovely home within 4 months of its initiation. The fridge is cooled through air from the underground foundation and water is generated from a nearby spring through gravity.

Go here to find images of the site before building, the process, and ideas behind its construction.

free font!













Here is a free typeface from Thatcher Ulrich. He has released it into the public domain, so go crazy! Send it to all of your friends! Merry Christmas Carissa!

solar powered christmas lights!

I spent all day Sunday stringing lights around the front porch and landscape. This job is generally left up to me each year, so I try to make things look fairly presentable. I'm not going to lie, they look pretty legit.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of colored lights. Colored lights, if handled correctly, say gingerbread house/winter wonderland. They can say, "We're fun and entertaining, but well-mannered." The well-mannered part is obviously dependent upon presentation.

Anyways, I found these today. They're charged by the sun and come on automatically when it gets dark! They even gather power when it's snowing or cloudy.