So, I’ve been working hard at it, and I’ve finally gotten my photography site off the ground – a few days ago, actually. I’ve just been so busy with it, that I haven’t had a chance to notify all of you dear readers yet.

Anywho, it’s a totally rad, completely awesome, one-of-a-kind, beautiful site, if I may say so myself. Check it out: asburyphoto.com.

So, in thinking about the possibility of building myself a new website, I started to wonder if it would just be easier to find someone to do it for me. I searched high and low, and I think I found the most impressive web design firm out there – and they’d probably do it for pretty cheap. I feel like I’m being mean, but c’mon, just look at that picture. I’m pretty speecheless. If you want the full immersive AAAWWW experience, head over to their site and check it out. Then go wash your eyeballs with industrial detergent.

I’ve just started work on a new website, but haven’t really gotten much done yet. I have so far had a conference with myself and, after much debate, decided that the website was a good idea and that I would hire myself to build it. But you know, bureaucracy and such, has prevented anything more than that from getting done. Oh, except for the above graphic that I put together yesterday. Which is, really, the only reason for this post – just an excuse to put my new little lens icon online. Anywho, the new site will not be bloglike, but rather a simple sales tool for my photography as a means to further my optimistic hope that there might be enough people out there willing to pay me for pictures to make a separate site worthwhile. So, I wouldn’t hold your breath, but with any luck, I might have a new url to hand out at some point in the coming months.

Image courtesy of: http://www.thefringething.com

In keeping with good ‘ol user-commanded interactive online adfotainment (a là Subservient Chicken – which is amazingly still live), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has launched a micro-site with a curious eggish-looking object the begs the user to poke and prod at it with various typable instructions. Two gentlemen (presumably?) in full-on bunny suits take your instructions and apply them to this thing. It’s lovely, hilarious, and incredibly fun.

The Fringe Festival itself is an annual Edinburgh venue for hundreds (really, hundreds) of troops putting on thousands of un-vetted, wildly artistic, and often brilliantly comical performances at makeshift stages throughout the city. It was formed in 1947 to provide organization for the 8 uninvited theatre troops who showed up to the Edinburgh International Festival, but were not able to perform under that umbrella. According to the edfringe.com website, “The Festival Fringe Society (commonly known as the Fringe Office) does not produce any of the shows, does not invite anybody to perform, does not run any venues and pays no fees to performers. We do, however, help performers every step of the way.” So, talk about free range and organic.

Which is what this object seems to be- an endlessly fun (well, at least until you run out of commands) egg to play with for no particular reason at all. Well done, well done indeed.

Johnathan Jarvis has created a beautifully animated explanation of the current economic crisis. Check it out!

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The good ol’ New York Times is one of the few papers, I think, that’s really doing a bang up job of creating specific web-content to make up for what they might be loosing in traditional subscribers. In particular, their interactive features have always been rather shiny and engaging. Today, in a story about gas prices, they put up a standard example of one of their charts. I just wanted to share it with you, because I just love the way it’s presented: nice, tidy, informative. And, it kinda makes you gulp about going to the pump, too. Check out the graph here, but hurry, as their online content never lasts too long.

I got slightly bored tonight (hey, it happens) and decided to play around with Illustrator. It’d been a while since I’d gotten my vector on. In a total free-association draw-fest, this is what I came up with…wonder if something was on my mind. Hmm. Anywho, I quite like for a first shot at cartooning.

[[Image:For Art/wandbaldie.jpg|200]]

Well, this is it. We drove over 3800 miles (I know, I still haven’t done a tally of the real miles) for this day. I’ve got all my stuff put together, and I’m ready to go. First I’m going to shower, though.

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This is the biggest I could find this image, but as you can see, it’s a rather nifty representation of a sports tournament bracket in the form of a hoop. Sometimes the NYT really pulls it together with cool stuff. If anybody has a copy of today’s paper, let me know how it looks in real life. Cheers!

[[Image: For Art/securitycamera.jpg | 400]]

Out of boredom, I decided to play around with an Illustrator tool I’d never used before. It’s the “3D” tool that always seemed limited and cheesy, but I decided to put it to the test, and I discovered that I’ve long overlooked it. It ain’t real 3D computing, but for simple shapes it did wonders. The camera was Illustrator, everything else was thrown in in Photoshop, and then a bit of touch-up. I’m happy with the results.