YTO: cut&paste

15 minute rounds of pure short-key brawn. You got your CMD+C, then of course CMD+V. Mistake? Quick, CMD+Z! Now with a bit of CMD+A, C, CMD+D, B, SPACEBAR, Z, ALT-CLICK, and before you know it, the round is over. Cut&Paste spent its first time in Canada at the Sound Academy on Saturday night. Not seeing too much press around town and feeling an overwhelming responsibility to "represent", I rounded up a small group of ID'rs to hit up this first-ever event in the land of tundra.

For those unfamiliar with Cut&Paste, C&P is an international competition where 2-D, 3-D and motion graphic designers compete against each other in a series of timed rounds, cheered on by large audience, pumped by the sounds of a live DJ, and of course, a full bar. Participants are limited to a bag of props that they may or may not have packed that day and photographs that were taken that day during the event. The prizes included Adobe software, Wacom-products, Pantone colour guides, and similar design-related miscellaneous loot (which seemed somewhat minor since most of the people competing probably own half of the prizes already). The main prize of the competition though, was bragging rights and a trip to compete in the international finale at NYC in June.

Standing a little tired and shaky after a impromptu night trip to Ottawa, I was witness to three hours of pure visual pornography and chaos. I saw defrosted bacon, ketchup, and fish, flinging about their juices alongside a row of 21" Cintiqs (*droooool...for the tablet, not the food). I saw defeat and conquer. I saw embarrassing hasty typos ("Never enogh"), I saw nervous competitors sit helplessly as their renderings appeared pixel by pixel with 1.38 minutes to render, but only 8 seconds left in the round. I saw Apple iLife ads pop-up when participants were uploading their photos to iPhoto, and watched their confused faces as they, in dispair, tried to close the Apple trial-ads in pure haste. I saw 2D vomit, and saw what looked like 3D vomit on the huge projection screens.

All in all, the Cut&Paste competition, for the first time in TO, was pretty good. The announcers were....okay, is WACOM pronounced WAAH-COM, or WAY-COM? Maybe WAY-COM is a Canadian thing? Strangely, all the competitors were all male, so next year my goal is to compete in the 2D section. Excuse for a Cintiq purchase? Most definitely.

NOTE TO READERS: My birthday is coming up this weekend......if you happen to have Cintiq laying around?

major apartment renovation and celebration

Never thought that it would be possible for a less than 300 square foot apartment, but I spent the weekend installing a dance floor. It's a dance-off, everybody!


I also made muffins to celebrate the new installation and to fuel the dancing.
Carrot, coconut, and apple-deliciousness.

photo i say

A photo essay of items around/laying around the apt.

zoologic

Click vid for link.

Really nice animation and simple sketch/ink work in this video. Also, flamingos and penguins, which complete the equation for a wonderful video to watch while you're at work and I am...still not really (ha ha).

teaser

coming soon!

marking your territory

From No One You Know

Fun bedsheets hailing from Australia! Available in reverse configuration (for those that sleep on the other side of the bed) and in miscellaneous configurations.

I want one where there's an outline of a cat (or dog) hogging half the bed, causing the girl + boy to squish to one side of the bed. Ooooh, a silkscreening project coming up, perhaps?

I CALLED the ULTRA-WIIIIIDE!

Going through my early morning ritual of blog-news, I came across something new and upcoming that made my jaw drop on Engadget.


That looks familiar.....

Lenovo is introducing a new UMPC called the Pocket Yoga. Looking uncannily similar to my thesis project from last year, the Pocket Yoga is a pocket-internet device with touch screen capabilities, covered in a leather (faux?) casing.


ADA appearance model.

Ultra-wiiiiiiiide! I so called it in 2008. Who knew?

"Fit for the Pit"

Three inferior items that I came across in the last week:


Canadian Tire Eames Lounger @ Yonge and Dundas

Canadian Tire now sells the Barcelona chair and the Eames Lounger. A sales associate asked me if I were a "hardcore gamer" as he pretended he had an invisible remote inbetween his hands. Apparently a lot of people were purchasing the Lounger for gaming because it had a good lean back. Sorry Eames and Mies.......so so sorry.

Up close these chairs were really, really, poor quality reproductions. The bent plywood was chipped everywhere on the Eames, and the "leather" piping was everywhere except where it was supposed to meet on the Barcelona chair.

I heard a rumour that the Maple Leafs emblazoned Eames chair are to arrive in the store next week. (kidding, but if it does happen, I called it first!)




Another Canadian Tire find: a 10-cup Stainless Steel Coffee Maker with.....CONCEALED HIGH-TECH CONTROLS.
Who knew that concealed controls were a selling point for coffee makers?


And finally the best for last.....for the martini lover that is either far too busy, or far too inebriated to bother wasting calories/time shaking and stirring:

For a low, low price of $75.99 (or just three low easy payments of $25.33), you can be the proud owner of this beautiful 20oz electric martini shaker!

Seriously, who would buy this? Whose idea was it to put this thing to market? And how many martinis would one have to drink in a day to warrant "martini-elbow" to justify this item?
Remember the PIT in Street Cents back on CBC back in the 90's? The Electric Martini Shaker is clearly fit for the PIT.

Poster Girl

Modern Toilet - "Un restaurant peu conventionnel"

So I was going through some of my flickr stats, and I randomly came across a French blog that posted one of my photos from a poo and toilet themed restaurant in Hong Kong over the summer. Slightly embarrassing as I'm giving the thumbs up as I drink what looks like green sludge from a ceramic urinal..... yet slightly hilarious at the same time. I imagine I feel like what a cat feels like when they are caught with their paws in the toilet. I digress....

NEW WEBSITE LAUNCH

I did it! I finally hacked my way through Dreamweaver and learned a bit of html (or just enough html?) to create a new site. This time around, I've tried to keep the layout to a minimum and I want to focus more on the content with more updates (coming soon).

Anyone pro or anyone con the new site?
(Besides my brother who is clearly "con" site)

Sumobots + A Lack of Dancing

Last weekend, the 2009 Sumobot Competish went down at OCAD. Amazing! There is something weirdly exhilarating and nerdy about cheering on burning-smelling, 5/8" galvanized steel contraptions push each other out of a circle surface area.

I noticed a few things during the 3.5 hour competition:

1. The underdog-bots were always the crowd favourite. There were certain robots that were actually pretty well-designed and hardy, but for some reason the more nice welds a robot had, the more villian-like they became to the audience. In fact, so villianous, that the ref had to request that the audience stop throwing debris at "E is for Epsilon" bot (even though he deserved it).

2. The heavier the Sumobot, the more sumo-force. I guess this applies in real life sumo-wrestling, but its a factor that is also helpful in bot-life (although fast maneuveurability and strategy is also helpful.)

3. TRACTION! So many bots had trouble with traction on the plywood ring, they had the heart and the lube, but just not enough traction!

4. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! Many of the robots were either one of two forms : a cheese-wedge form or a cube on wheels. Although both forms have their sumobot-ing advantages (where a wedge form was good for getting under the opponent's wheels and pushing them out, and a cube was good for brute force and hiding wheels against the wedge), it would have been nice to see more interesting forms that counter-acted these popular sumobot forms. (Although I do enjoy how the cube is basically a sumo-bot in its purest essence.)
..
5. Carnage is a crowd-yes. There was only one sumobot last weekend that had the right guts/gears/idea to cause damage to their opponent. Especially 'tastic when the opponent was a huge hundred-something pound wooden wedge by the name of "Splinter". Splinter indeed....

Unfortunately, no one submitted an entry for the Dancing Bot competition. If we had known, we surely would have brought Mr. Roboto along for the trip.

Next year, there will be dancing!

Chinatown finding alert!

$1.29 Thai Red Bull!
(slightly expired, yet still tasty)

I will post an update if it gives me a stomach ache later.

UPDATE: No tummy aches and still have my vision....!