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Yellow meets yellow

I don’t know what happened. One day I was fine, the next, I was totally obsessed with yellow. Did it sneak up on me? I have no idea… All I know is that all around me that color is being used in fantastic, lust inducing ways.

Here are just a couple:

Nixon’s latest Rubber Player

Selk Bag 1, Selk Bag Sleepwear System (As seen in Moon)

Judy Blue skinny jeans

Agent Provocateur’s Yellow lingerie

I need to remember to keep on the lookout for more yellow…

I produce a lot of content online. Most of it in the form of images. Whether they’re desktop wallpapers at MyBestDesktops.com or photos I post to my Flickr and JPG accounts, I like to think that the copyright information that accompanies them would deter folks from ripping them off to use for their own financial gains. Of course, that’s super naive of me, and TinEye.com reverse visual search is here to help track down the offenders.

Basically, what TinEye does is take any image you submit to it and try to find wherever it’s being used online. The easiest way to use the service is by installing the Firefox extension.

So, with that out of the way, let’s check out some of the thieves using my imagery without permission:

MintProperty.com used my Empire State Building desktop for a party flyer:

Before

After

My Dark Sky desktop wallpaper is getting used quite a lot. Here are a couple examples:

Before

After

After...

After Again!

My High Voltage desktop from Hong Kong used for the Zap Stick 800,000 Volts Pink Stun Gun:

Before

After

And my Manhattan Bridge desktop used also for a party flyer (extra funny because I’m in the lower left of the image):

Before

After

These are just a few of the ways unscrupulous folks online have been ripping off some of my images. Not a ton that can be done about it, but at least with TinEye.com, I can stay up to date with some of the offenders.

I should remember to visit that site often…

I’ve been looking for a new lamp for my work office for some time. Being the designy guy I am, I thought I’d stop by Design Within Reach and pick me up something fancy. The only problem, is that the place sucks. The people who work there suck. The rate at which they bring in new merchandise sucks. Basically, the whole shopping experience is terrible.

It starts when you walk in (my DWR is at the corner of 20th and Broadway) and no one working there can be bothered to even acknowledge your existence. This continues as you walk around. All the employees simply sit in front of their computers doing what appears to be completely nothing. Being that I was the only person in the store walking from lamp to lamp, you would have thought they might have given a shit, but nope. Lucky for me, there are only a couple of lamps stocked at DWR, so even though I was interested in the Tolomeo Mini Lamp, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt the employees and their effort to avoid politely selling me a lamp.

Of course, this wasn’t my first time in this outpost of snobbery, so I was amazed that after a couple years, all the products carried hadn’t changed almost at all… and of course, neither had the sucky attitude.

I walked out…

…Down the street to A.I. Feedman and purchased the same damn lamp from a nice guy who chatted about motorcycles with me to help me understand why a chrome base costs so much.

I should remember to never bother with DWR.

Last April, I posted some Spring Flower desktop wallpapers to MyBestDesktops.com and they’ve become the most popular designs on the site. In the past few weeks their traffic and downloads have increased dramatically, so it seems like there’s a demand for some nice, flowery, desktop designs for Spring.

To help, I’ll be posting 5 new Spring desktop wallpapers over the course of the next 2 weeks. Hopefully, people will download them and the world will be a better place. Of course, the RSS feed would be the best way to stay up to date.

I need to remember to enjoy Spring as much as possible.

“That was quick” was the first thing my woman said when the credits started to roll at the end of my digital parkour experience: Mirror’s Edge. And she was right, it was a short game. Also, it was an extremely difficult game that found me constantly plummeting from the rooftops to my death or getting beaned by cops… also to my death.

Then there was the issue of the 2D cutscenes seemingly rendered in Flash by an intern during his lunch breaks. Why no full CGI cutscenes? Or at the very least, in-game? Was Dice trying to make a stylistic point? Or, as it felt while playing, did they run out of money?

Those two big issues aside and your left with the real reason I bought the game: the art direction. It’s fantastic. This is the most stylish and beautiful game I’ve seen in a long time. Making the decision to render the city in subtle light blues over white with high saturation accent colors… then actually sticking to it, was very brave and worked wonderfully. The runnervision which turns items in your path red worked great. Plus the soundtrack added quite a bit to the presentation. So, on the occasions when I was making quick progress through the rooftops, it looked and felt wonderful.

Unfortunately, the genius of the presentation doesn’t completely save the game. Not when it has one of the most unsatisfying endings I’ve witnessed in a game for a long time. I don’t remember when developers started writing their stories as though every game will become a massive franchise, but it sucks. A little closure would be nice.

Anyway, the bottom line is that despite some major flaws, I really loved playing this game when things were going well… I’ll remember to look out for the next one.

After way too long, I managed to complete a new site for composer, and my friend, H. Scott Salinas. It’s a dark, somewhat moody affair with some interesting design elements. Check it out now at hscottsalinas.com.

I should remember to occasionally exercise my build skills if only to keep up with the latest methods…

MyBestDesktops.com launched one year ago with Halloween desktops, so it’s exciting to once again be in the season of drinking and being scary! So far we’ve had a cute jack-o-lantern and a scary ghost… what’s next?

I need to remember to keep uploading stuff!

Well, seems like I’ll be going to Seoul, South Korea on business next week.

I should remember to see as much as I can… including their neighbors to the north.

California Literary Review: North Korean Propaganda Posters

Although I don’t personally do a lot of the traditionally accepted activities to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I do like the sentiment of being a little nicer to someone for whatever reason. So, to help get in the spirit, MyBestDesktops.com will be posting what I hope to be a whole slew of lovey-dovey desktops over the next couple weeks.

Today, we kick it off with Valentine’s Red Rose 1. Keep checking MyBestDesktops.com for the latest and greatest in sweet desktop wallpaper goodness.

In the meantime, I’ll try to remember to keep updating the thing…