Artistic Food For Thought - March 28, 2009

State of Creativity & Big Idea Thinking - March 27, 2009

Ahhh…the world of advertising, what is it really about, who does what, how is money made, when are great ideas born, etc, etc, etc.

DDB San Francisco (soon to officially be DDB West) just launched the Official Internet Report on the State of Creativity and Big Idea Thinking. It’s a fantastically sarcastic point of view on how the innards of the ad agency actually thinks.

My personal favorite revealing question, “What’s the dirtiest term on the web?” Email blast, pinging the router, poke, or upload. To find out, you’ll have to check out the site for yourself, but in the meantime, here are some screenshots:

Bacon Infused Vodka - March 16, 2009

Bacon lovers (and maybe even haters that secretly love bacon), I've embarked on a journey to combine some of the best things in life; bacon and booze. The whole idea was to take Bloody Marys to a whole new level by giving it a bacon flavor, and how else might one do that but through a vodka infusion.

Check out the Instructable I wrote up for the project. I swear, it's actually delicious, but be careful, as too much of a good thing can be bad.

Why Is This So Damn Mesmerizing? - March 11, 2009

It's so simple, yet I never seem to tire of it!!!

A Secret Place in the Bay Area - March 3, 2009

A few weeks ago, Hip E and I were cruising the Bay Area, and stumbled upon a secret little harbor that probably next to no one knows about. The locals called it Pirate Bay, but historically it’s known as Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor. Our wanderings into this rural community weren’t exactly an invited one (perhaps we should have been clued off by the skeleton hanging from the fence). Upon our entrance, a rugged fellow who was touting a screw in his mouth like one might with a toothpick quickly met us. After quickly defusing the situation, he left us alone, as I certainly didn’t want to end up with a gun pointed at me, as he inferred through his stories about how he has dealt with strangers previously.

Here’s a picture of him looking slightly less threatening:This little harbor village is home to a few dozen individuals, and is located on the east side of the far end of Point San Pablo. This Point is just north of where the Richmond Bridge meets Richmond. Inside the tiny community is a small cove where the marina is protected from waves, in addition to a breakwater. It even has a café. It is surrounded by many small and undeveloped hills that give this place a very secretive feel. To make this place that much more intriguing, the village has spectacular panoramic views of the undeveloped coastlines of southern Napa, Sonoma, and Solano counties and eastern central Marin County.

Here is the Pirate Bay’s location:



Just another secret place in the Bay!

Transformers Jazz Dance - February 26, 2008

NYC Art - February 25, 2009

I was in NYC for a little over a week recently, and I took some time to meander to one of my favorite parts of town, the Chelsea Gallery District. Here are some of my favorite tid bits (sorry for all the pictures, but I really wanted to share them with you):

Coworking (Now a Reality?) - February 20, 2009

To save myself a bit of awkward explanation, I'm going to briefly defer to the almighty Wikipedia.

Coworking is an emerging trend for a new pattern for working. Typically work-at-home professionals or independent contractors or people who travel frequently end up working in relative isolation. Coworking is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.

I first heard about coworking at the San Francisco PSFK Conference back in July of 2008, when speaker Amit Gupta (founder of Photojojo) was talking about his recent venture called Jelly. Jelly invites strangers to meet up at a person's house for a day. They provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. Sounds interesting, right? Given today's terrible economic climate and the fact that people are losing jobs left and right, having a communal space to work together is a brilliant remedy. It immediately reminded me of Likemind.

I recently explored this whole idea of co-working by checking out Citizen Space in San Francisco. Unlike Jelly, which happens once or twice a month, Citizen Space is open everyday for people to come in and work. They have a simple list of rules to abide by:

GROUND RULEZ for Citizen Space

1. we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. if a key holder asks you to leave, you need to skedaddle
2. no bittorrent, no pr0n
3. clean up your garbage and recycle (blue bins are recycling, dude)
4. you break it, you buy it
5. coworking is an extreme sport, don’t sue us if you break a blood vessel in your forehead dealing with windows, apple’s DRM, or anything else
6. don’t be a dick

I had a great time checking out the space. It was full of energy (but no heat), and had plenty of tools at hand (printers, wireless, chairs, scanners, etc). Here are some pics:



I highly recommend that anyone who is currently unemployed or is off doing their own thing to consider coworking once a month. It's a great way to meet other intelligent and creative people, and maybe a few soon to be internet pop sensations.