Yeah, I know. The blog has been a bit quite lately. The past two weeks were a complete whirlwind. Most of the stuff keeping me busy was family and friends related, but I did crank out two website builds in record time. I have also been avoiding taking any pictures in anticipation of my new camera. Now that it has arrived (after waiting for two months), I have plans for a lot of new Austin photos. Stay tuned. I should be back into the groove soon.
Embracing Meta Data
I love things to be organized and it’s time I finally make the effort. In 2000, I started taking digital images and created an organizational structure that I have been using ever since. I used a folder structure by camera, year, and then by event. This structure worked for me until my library reached 80,000+ images. The problem came when someone asked me for all my pictures of Austin. I realized at that point that I would have to do something if I wanted to maintain any kind of portfolio.
After discovering tagging structures like the one used in delicious, I came to the conclusion that this was the only way to go. Folder structures are quickly becoming useless. The only way to organize large quantities of data is to use meta data. Unlike most options, meta data lives inside each file and is therefore completely platform independent.
Adding meta data to 80,000+ files may seem impossible, but adobe bridge makes the process somewhat manageable. In bridge, you can create a set of keywords that you commonly use and then add them by checking the box next to the keyword. Here is a quick little video on how to use meta data in Bridge. (http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/bridge/articles/lrvid4013_bri.html)
As I complete the project, I hope to be blogging and posting a much stronger portfolio than I’ve shown in the past. I don’t think I have a lack of quality work, but simply a lack of ways to find it.
Post Bench
My dad tore down his fence and hauled all the posts to my house. I used a couple of them on other projects and then came up with this idea. This design would actually be quite simple and easy if the posts were new, but these posts were in the ground for 30 years. It took a lot of powerful clamps and a lot of sanding with 36 grit paper to get it looking half way decent. The posts are joined with half inch dowls and a whole lot of wood glue. The white stripe was Amy’s idea to give it a more modern look.
Cement Pot
After seeing the prices at some of these landscape places, I decided to try to make my own planting containers. Amy helped me by drawing up the design in CAD to get all the angles so I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time calculating them. I like math and all, but I wanted the thickness of the concrete to taper for strength which introduces a lot more angles and I was anxious to get started. The project ended up being a little trickier than I expected. I spent a lot of time making the mold real nice and smooth to make it release from the cement after setting, but all my efforts were in vain. I expected the cement to expand when it hardened, but didn’t realize the full impact on my mold. Two of the inner sides could not be removed with out cutting and prying. I have a couple of solutions, but haven’t made the effort to rebuild the mold. It doesn’t look big in the pictures, but it is a foot and a half tall and weighs well over 170 pounds.
The process is to mix and pour the cement into the mold and pack the cement while pouring to avoid air pockets. At the bottom of the pot, use a pipe to make the drain hole. Let it sit and dry for a couple of days. Remove the mold fill in any gaps or rough areas with mortar. Stain with concrete stain of your choice and then seal with a clear coat.
Materials:
- 2.5 80 lb bags of crack resistent Quikcrete
- liquid Quikcrete for patching
- concrete stain
- plywood
- screws
- short pipe 1.5 inches in diameter
Mainstreet Model Homes
Occasionally I get the opportunity to take photos for Mainstreet Homes. These are some of my favorites from this years Best Product Design entries. Thanks to my awesome friend Rachel, I used a 16-35mm f2.8 L for this shoot. It made the shoot go so much smoother to have the extra wide angle without the distortion. I think I just might have to invest in one for myself.
Sales Pitch for Wood Fired Coffee
If you haven’t heard of Summermoon’s Wood Fired Coffee then you are missing out! Some great friends of mine have started up a coffee roasting business and a coffee shop here in Austin and the coffee is fantastic! On the outskirts of Austin, they have built a coffee roaster where they hand roast the coffee over a wood burning fire. No electricity involved.
Texenza Coffee had recently bought up all the Seattle’s Best coffee locations in the Austin area and Wood Fired Coffee wanted the chance to be the coffee supplier. If they are successful, it will be a perfect fit. Texenza is named as a reference to an essence of Texas, but they currently brew coffee roasted in the northwest. Wood Fired Coffee would like to bring a little more Texas to Texenza.
Elm Stump Seating
Thanks to hurricane Ike, my Dad lost an elm tree in his yard. The tree was a good 18 inches in diameter, so I ask for some of the wood to make stump seating. I know I could buy stump seating from West Elm and other furniture companies, but these logs have a story. You will also quickly learn that I have a big problem paying for something I can do myself. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m crafty or just cheap. Either way, I have a lot of homemade things around the house.
There isn’t much to this project. I simply peeled the bark off with a chisel and used an old craftsman belt sander with 36 grit sandpaper to sand it down. And then I finished it with about 5 coats of exterior use poly-urethane and sanding lightly with 200 grit paper between coats.
Materials:
- External Use Poly-urethane
Efficient Web Design Using Web 2.0
Well, I’ve been changing my web design approach lately and I thought I’d share. There are a LOT of really great web 2.0 and social networking sites out on the web these days. And if you haven’t really jumped on board, you are probably thinking the exact same thing I did before I jumped in. You’re thinking, “How could I possibly find the time to update all these sites, keep my website fresh and still have a life?” Well, my solution is to never duplicate information. Instead of having photos, blogs, bios and bookmarks scattered all across the internet, I picked a tool for each and linked them all together. Here is what I currently use:
- Flickr – Photo/Video storage with fantastic APIs
- Delicious – Online social bookmarking
- Facebook – Micro-Blogging and social network
- Wordpress – Blogging engine
You can also add Twitter into the mix and set it up to replace your Facebook status, but for now I’m keeping it simple. Now for a little more detail into how I linked all these sites together to minimize duplicate data.
In Facebook, you can import data from all your favorite sites from the page where your “wall” lives. Find the down arrow on the right, underneath the tabs for Wall, Info, Photos, etc. and select Import. Just add your favorite sites, and they will stream right onto your wall and out to all your friends.
In Wordpress, I used a plugin called “Wordpress Flickr Manager” from tgardner.net. It handles all the Flickr imports and coding for you and was very easy to install. Wordpress has many other widgets for diplaying other social media, but I am sticking with Flickr for my purpose.
On my website, I used a fantastic little PHP include called SimplePie. Since all of the mentioned sites have an RSS feed, you can use SimplePie to display them as HTML anywhere in your site and make it look however you want. You could use fancy APIs, but why go to the trouble if all you want to do is show the latest information from each? To separate the different sets of photos, I used Flickr’s tagging.
And to make all this even less cumbersome, there are several ways to integrate these sites with your devices. Each of these sites have a great iPhone application for updating on the go. Flickr has an uploadr application to make adding and resizing photos as simple as drag and drop, and Delicious has an easy to use Firefox plugin to make bookmarking your favorite sites just a simple click away.
If you have found this useful, or have ideas of your own, let me know by either leaving a comment or sending me a message through my website. I’d love to hear from you.
Logo Design for Motocloset.com
I always wanted to try my hand at logo design, but I had always avoided it. I’ve learned over the years that logo design is probably the most critical asset to a company. I would put it right up there with a great business plan. A good logo provides a memorable image of the company and people do judge a book by its cover when it comes to marketing. I just didn’t know if I possessed the level of creative ability needed and my illustrator skills were a bit lacking compared to my Photoshop skills. But hey, isn’t that the purpose of Google? You don’t need training on everything you ever want to do. You simply need some common sense abilities and some good Google-Foo.
When I was approached about doing a logo, I decided to through out my lack of confidence and just do it. I’m glad I did, because I came up with a great logo and built some skills along the way.
Be Sure to Tune in!
I have a lot of great posts in the works, so make sure to grab our RSS feed and add it to your favorite feed reader. I have a back log of great projects that I’ll be writing about so that maybe you will be inspired to do some projects of your own.
