Period Three Blog » 2007

Jun282007

There are hippies and then there are hippies….

Posted by Jay in Random Stuff

What’s a Freegan? Freegans are people “employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.” They’re also people who subsist solely on foraged items. Because they hate The Man so much they’ll gladly live off of his trash.

On July 13, in NYC, of all places, you can show up for their “monthly dinner, held at a rotating series of homes of New York City freegans, is an opportunity to plan, prepare and partake in a delicious dinner made with ingredients from Thursday’s trash tour, plus our labor and love.” Mmmmm, that’s good trash.

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Jun282007

Sign of the apocalypse #31 or proof that man is not king…

Posted by Jay in Fire Ant Death

So you may have heard about the current floods in Texas. Well, they also have fire ants in Texas and when a fire ant colony gets flooded they will form a raft around the queen and float until they find dry land or a tree or something. So basically it’s a floating raft of fire ant death and it looks something like this.

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Jun252007

Midlandsbiz.com - New Client Launch

Posted by Gene in Our Clients

It’s not necessarily new news, but Midlandsbiz.com has recently launched their new website.

Focusing on local business news and timely press-release generated information, you can signup to post them on their site for free right now by the way, the creator Alan Cooper, seems to have a real knack for hitting the nail on the head for what makes good content and a website grow users/viewers.

We wish you luck Alan & Team!

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Jun222007

The Keywasher

Posted by Jay in Random Stuff

I used to have a bit of a reputation for going through keyboards. The telltale sound of me cursing while sliding away from my desk to avoid coffee pants. My grimy fingers don’t help either, guaranteed to add a nice patina to any surface in no time. The folks over at Coudal have found a way to resurrect that old grimy, coffee stained keyboard. The Keywasher.

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Jun212007

Star Wars flash drives

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

Stumbled across these pretty neat little flash drives by mimoco based on your favorite Star Wars characters… I want the Darth Vader one…

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Jun182007

Paul Rand

Posted by Gene in Design

As famous designers go, Paul Rand is probably my favorite, his humble attempt to bring grace and style to the ordinary is at the heart of why I (as i’m sure most of us) got into all this graphic design business in the first place.

From Impressionism to Pop Art, the commonplace and even the comic strip have become ingredients for the artist’s caldron. What Cezanne did with apples, Picasso with guitars, Léger with machines, Schwitters with rubbish, and Duchamp with urinals makes it clear that revelation does not depend upon grandiose concepts. The problem of the artist is to defamiliarize the ordinary.

I recently stumbled across this great lecture/interview of Paul Rand at an MIT event. It’s a pretty good read, here’s a quick preview:

What is design?
Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple defintions, there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.

What is the difference between a designer and an artist?
There is no difference between a designer and an artist. They both work with form and content. I try to create art, whether I make it or not is not up to me, it’s up to God.

What is the difference between ‘good’ design and ‘bad’ design?
A bad design is irrelevant. It is superficial, pretentious, … basically like all the stuff you see out there today.

What are the fundamental skills of a designer?
The fundamental skill is talent. Talent is a rare commodity. It’s all intuition. And you can’t teach intuition.

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Jun142007

We are 4 today, kind of

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

It’s not the official day we incorporated or anything, that’s for September, but today is the day we officially filed to form Period Three, LLC way back in 2003. Its hard to believe when you think of the adversity and how far we’ve come since then.

Take a look at this picture, this was our first server, we aptly dubbed him “wee-man”, he ran our first client’s system and performed like a champ. At least until the cleaning staff accidentally unplugged him. Sheesh…

Humble beginnings. Here’s to good times ahead! (and keep those fingers crossed…)

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Jun132007

Mr. Wizard

Posted by Jay in Random Stuff

Don Herbert, known by all as Mr. Wizard, passed away today at 89. If you were at least slightly nerdy and grew up in the 80’s and had cable, Mr. Wizard was probably one of your favorite shows. It was definitely one of mine and he inspired countless children with the wonders and fun of science. And also lighting things on fire. Obituary and Metafilter thread.

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Jun112007

Apple ditches aqua ‘bubble’ tabs for new look

Posted by Jay in Design

According to archive.org, Apple rolled out the tabs around the beginning of 2000. Today, with the WWDC conference and subsequent website updates, Apple has finally lost them. OS X has undergone significant use interface changes over the years, from the release of the first edition of OS X, yet the tabs remained remarkably the same. Why would they change them now if they were reluctant to in the past? What is it about Leopard that sealed their fate? Perhaps it’s a signal that the UI is actually completely consistent? Currently in Tiger, iChat, iTunes and Safari retain the brushed metal look, while apps like Mail and iPhoto have a flatter, gray appearance.

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Jun102007

FedEx - subliminal effect…

Posted by Gene in Design

I know those of us who are designers have noticed this before, but i’ve had too many conversations lately about the FedEx logo in particular and how the designer (Mr. Lindon Leader) intended for the negative space between the upper-case E and the lower-case x to form an arrow. My conversations are usually a response to “hey, I never noticed that” or “do you think they did that on purpose?”…

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