Tag Archives: Design

Snøhetta Works

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IMG 1287 Snøhetta Works

This is a book that my architecture/design friend Jaime gave me last month. She likes architecture and she knows that I like pictures, so she figured she would give me a book of photographs of architecture by a Norwegian company called Snøhetta. As she was describing the firm and all their designs, and I asked if they were the ones who designed the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. (How I knew about that, I had no idea. I remembered learning about it somewhere.) And indeed, they had designed the library.

IMG 1284 Snøhetta Works

And guess what? The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has chosen Snøhetta to design the expansion of the existing Mario Botta structure to accommodate the Fisher Collection.

Added Lifestream Page

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somegirlwithacom web lifestream 1221713967636 300x300 Added Lifestream Page

Don’t know why anyone else would be interested in this, but I like having this documentation of my actions all across the web in one place. It’s like the newsfeed in Facebook, but it’s my very own web lifestream page. I used David Cramer’s lifestream plugin for wordpress. You can download it here.

There’s also an entire wordpress theme designed around this whole lifestream thing called Agregado.

If you want to connect with me using some of these tools, get your hands dirty.

Dark XP and Gmail

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For everyone who has followed me on the internet all these years, they know that I have a dark side. I absolutely LOVE dark-themed websites, for some reason. All my websites have been dark, save my very first Blogger template. I even wrote about the switch from light to dark back in 2002. Too bad I didn’t post a screenshot. I use dark desktop/wallpapers on all my computers, even the one at work. For my personal computers, I’ve been using a dark theme called Royale Noir. It looks exactly like Royale, the blue default XP theme, only it’s, uh, dark.

royalenoir Dark XP and Gmail

Download Royale Noir Windows XP theme:

Instructions:

  1. Extract files to “C:\windows\resources\themes\royale noir”
  2. Double click on “luna.msstyles”
  3. Select “Noir” from “Color Scheme”

Because this theme has been code-signed by Microsoft, No UXTheme.dll hack required.

More recently, I’ve been testing out a darkened version of Gmail. It requires the Stylish Firefox extension and the Gmail Redesigned user style by UneasySilence. Cool interface, eh? Has Gmail ever changed it’s look since it was launched?

darkgmaill Dark XP and Gmail

Oh, and I’m also trying out the dark Google web search. I wonder how many people out there are into dark skins/themes.

Just Launched: new Google Wake Up Kit!

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Just found this in my Google Calendar:

Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? We do, too. In fact this problem became so serious at times that it sometimes resulted in lacklustre attendance at team meetings. To help solve the problem we’ve created an innovative solution called the Google Wake Up Kit.

“I could never wake up on time to get to our team meetings. But thanks to the new Google Wake Up Kit, I’m always on time now!”
Pedro C.

In combination with the kit, you can receive a new type of notification from Google Calendar, called the “wake up” notification. This notification is relentless in ensuring your timely awakening from restful slumber.

The “wake up” notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters. Learn more.

Geek gifts and Bond

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Hmm, my page had a breakdown yesterday.  The only thing that would load was the background.  I contacted Dreamhost and they fixed it.  Apparently there’s some trouble with wp-cache turned on when you upgrade to PHP 5.1.2.  Now if only I can get my page to load faster…WordPress plays kinda slow with Dreamhost.

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Look, gifts under $77, courtesy of Core77.

Speaking of gifts, I like this guide for buying gifts for geeks.

  1. If a brand is listed and/or mentioned – name means everything. There’s a big difference between “any DVD burner” and “any Sony DVD burner.” Chances are, the geeks have done their homework – and they typically know what’s good and what’s not.
  2. Removable media was not created equal. Find out ahead of time what kind of removable media your geek wants, needs, and loves – because a Memory Stick port simply was not designed to accomodate an SD card.
  3. Anything less than a gig isn’t all that great these days. Sure, the corner store may be selling 32 megabyte CompactFlash cards, but that’s not going to do your geek much good. If you can’t score a geek.
  4. Unless otherwise noted, accounts and gift certificates are the suck. Here’s the prime problem with gift certificates: the only one who gets the gift is the store from which you purchased the certificate. Trust me, even if your geek hasn’t told you what s/he wants or needs, you simply need to dig deeper and listen longer.
  5. Form a gift guild. If many items on a geek’s wish list are too pricey for your pocketbook, instead of settling on a stack of CDs you can talk to other friends and family members and consider combining funds to get a single gift. One “awesome” thing is 100x better than three “okay” things.

Hehe…I like #5.  I seem to always buy “big” gifts for myself.  I don’t buy a lot of little things.

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Oh, I’ve been meaning to post about the latest Bond film.

casinoroyale posterbig Geek gifts and Bond

I saw it right before Thanksgiving. The film is a little long, but definitely worth watching, even if I had paid full price.  I must say that Daniel Craig is one buff bond. Haha.  Not as smooth as Pierce Brosnan, but I guess that’s the image they were after–the beginning of bond.  I did get a chance to do read up about the opening chase sequence.  It contains a lot of moves from a French discipline called Parkour, a sort of extreme urban sport, similar to the techniques of Jackie Chan.

Are you?

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For all my geeky friends (and much of my family)… 

How to determine if you are an engineer:

  • The only jokes you receive are through email (OUCH)
  • At Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string of Christmas lights.
  • Buying flowers for your girlfriend/boyfriend or spending the money to upgrade your RAM is a moral dilemma
  • If you find that you have to often explain how to use the gifts you have given other people.
  • Everyone else on the Alaskan Cruise is on deck peering at the scenery, and you are still on a personal tour of the engine room
  • In college, you thought Spring Break was metal fatigue failure
  • The Salespeople at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions
  • You are always late to meetings
  • You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling
  • You are next in line on death row in a French Prison and you find that the guillotine is not working properly, so you offer to fix it.
  • You bought your wife/husband a new CD ROM drive for her birthday
  • You forget to get a haircut (for 6 months!)
  • You can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie
  • You can type 70 words per minute but can't read your own handwriting
  • You can't write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines
  • You comment to your wife/husband that her straight hair is nice and parallel
  • You go on the rides at Disneyland and sit backwards in the chairs to see how they do the special effects
  • You have Dilbert comics/paphanelia displayed anywhere in your work area
  • You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance
  • You have more friends on the internet than in real life
  • You have backed up your hard drive
  • You have never bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married.
  • You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts
  • You know what http:// stands for
  • You look forward to Christmas only to put together the kids' toys
  • You own one or more white short-sleeve dress shirts
  • You see a good design and still have to change it
  • You spent more on your calculator than you did on your wedding ring
  • You still own a slide rule and you know how to use it
  • You think a pocket protector is a fashion accessory
  • You think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep
  • You wear black socks with white tennis shoes (or vice versa)
  • You window shop at Radio Shack
  • You're in the backseat of your car, she/he is looking wistfully at the moon, and you're trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite
  • Your checkbook always balances
  • Your laptop computer costs more than your car
  • Your wife/husband hasn't the foggiest idea of what you do at work
  • You've already calculated how much you make per second
  • You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio
  • Your four basic food groups are: 1. Caffeine 2. Fat 3. Sugar 4.Chocolate