The Most Common Item An American Can Own

Probably the most common item for anyone in America to own is (drum role please):

A wallet.  Truly the wallet is an ingenious design.  Look at the design of your wallet - is it a trifold?  A bifold?  Does it have a space for a license that flips up or down?  Either way a wallet is a modern marvel that almost everyone should own.  It contains a small space for your coins, a large opening for your cash, and slots for credit cards, debit cards, business cards, and any other cards you can think of.  No space for those grocery store receipts?  Stick them in your wallet.  Tired of your black wallet?  Then buy a grey one, make one out of ducktape, or buy a cellphone case that also acts as a wallet.  There are 100's if not 1000's of designs (and it's hard to argue against the shape and design of them).

Hey, Listen!!

We all love listening to music.  It's a simple statement but considering the impact that music has had on everyone throughout the ages... who can argue with it?  So the question becomes, "Are you wearing something that is comfortable around the ears, or a rickety pair of earbuds that are painful every time you stick them in."

Enter Bose Audio.  One of the most comfortable pair of headphones I've ever warn, they definitely take 1st place in design.  Developed with comfort in mind, these headphones are wrapped in a fine foam padding that protects the ears from any discomfort one might experience.  The headband has also has a bit of foam padding at the top that makes them a delight to wear.  If I had one complaint (and would consider a design flaw) it's that the cable going to your audio device to the headphones is detachable.  The headphones get a little awkward because it's easy for the cable to pop out when you walk too far away from your audio device.  All in all, I really enjoy these phones.

Focus... Focus... Done

Something a little different today.  I saw this car while a friend of mine (and myself) were driving to Northern California.  It's a Lamborghini!

I wish I could have taken more pictures of the car as it was driving and all.  Yet sadly it was too fast for me to snap another.  But I must confess that I love the angular design that Lamborghini implements into all of there cars.  The look of there cars, the way they design them so that there are very few seams or sharp edges from front to back has always allured me.  Plus they're bloody fast as well.  All in all, I've always though Lamborghini were very smart in the design of the bodies of there cars.

Some Cheese with that Wine.

Sadly the wine walk has ended, its time has passed.  The poster (however) still exists.  The design isn't terrible: it's very striking with the red wine against the light yellow back drop.  And surprisingly the text isn't terribly confusing on the eyes... But damn if the placement of the text isn't horrible then I don't know what is.  Its all over the place with everything set off to the right side of the poster (the heading is slightly centered but not a lot).  And, instead of keeping a consistent font size across the board the designer gradually made the text smaller and smaller as you go down, making it difficult for anyone to read if they wanted more information about the event.  And, to top it off, most of the extra information isn't that important.  It could have been moved to a website, freeing up the poster for additional artwork (or a cleaner layout).  Don't know what to say about the poster (other then the wine was good).

3D is all the rage.

So, you may or may not know this but I've been spending a lot of time at a local hacker space, MagLabs, down in the Pomona area.  It's fairly knew, it's only been open for a year now but it's a pretty awesome place to hang out and just work on stuff.  But this little guy...

This is the first thing I've ever 3d printed, and off a 3d printer that I managed to fix as well.  It's a neat little guy, just a simple memory card holder.  Quite handy and pretty useful.  It's a pretty ingenious design that could be improved just by obtaining a better 3d printer (the one we're using is a RepRap model, one of the originals).

ROAR

Hahahahaha, I saw this at the movies and the child in me screamed in excitement.  Apologize for the photo quality (it's not great I know).  But that being said, I have to admit I was impressed when I saw this poster.  If I was 10 or 12 years old I would be begging my parents to take me to see this movie.  I even added a version that I found off a google search.

 

The poster is pretty self explanatory - the first thing you would probably notice is the group of dinosaurs depicted on it.  It's not meant to be fearsome or terrifying, calming and relaxing.  It's just meant to be an awesome photo of, well, dinosaurs.  The title though... honestly it might confuse some people.  Walking with dinosaurs started off as a BBC show where the viewer was shown a depiction of the day to day lives of different dinosaurs at the time.  If would usually follow one dinosaur at at time and, to some extent, played on peoples perceptions of certain dinosaurs.

But take a look at this poster for the movie.  The premise of the movie becomes much clearer: we have a little dinosaur aimlessly wandering around, oblivious to the dangers around him.  Compare this to the movie poster shown above, which do you think makes more sense for the viewer.  Let me know in the comments below.

Aggravations Over A Sign

Going back to an early post where I discussed a set of slippery stairs over the art building I wanted to point this out.  This is a sign for the said stairs and, even though I had noticed it in the past I had never actually red it until now.  The reason is because the sign is about 5" by 11" and is a descent 4 to 5 feet away from the stairs.  Unless you are actively hunting for it, you wouldn't really notice it.