gaudy gaudhi house

(click to enlarge)

i never heard of the architect Gaudi until i was sent some pictures from Spain.

omg - can this be real?

someone must have recreated his buildings in Second Life -- that's what people love to do.

sure enough, i found a recreation of gaudi, and even some copies of gaudi buildings for sale. 

here is one installed on a friend's plot of land.

American Tea

she's from London.  just visiting the USA.  

so of course we had the tea conversation.

me: "oh you are right, americans just don't know how to make tea. you can't get a good cup of tea in a restaurant!'

she had her own electric kettle she brought with her to use in her room.

how many times have i had this conversation?

i think i will not have it again.  i hereby declare that there is such a thing as American Tea!

you make it by pouring hot water over a tea bag.

we are busy people! we won the war, remember? (otherwise, we'd all have health insurance *ahem*)

she also said something i found very telling.

she is British.

her mother is German.

i said my father's family was German.

she said it is so nice to be in a place where that doesn't matter.

ah, America!

why is this film blank?

we've been wondering if vampires show up on film. 

this wasn't an issue in bram stoker's day, and i don't know if anne rice ever addressed it.  but i was sure google would show me the consensual reality here.

HOWEVER it turns out to be a complicated question!

what kind of camera?  does it rely on a mirror?

-- which leads to the whole problem of vampires and reflections.  it turns out that there are theories on that too -- is it light bending, or is it mind-clouding?  or is it just a myth (LOL), some scientific minded folks say if a vampire is corporeal, it will reflect light and therefore cause reflections.  HAH

then there's digital vs film.

if you want to amuse yourself for say 10 minutes, just google "do vampires show up in pictures."

whatever the TRUE ANSWER is, i will still avoid looking at mirrors at night.

Frustro the typeface was a jolly happy soul

if i meet someone who is involved in anything related to printing, i ask them about Comic Sans.
i do this because i like Comic Sans.
the answer is always the same
"DON'T USE IT."
so mostly i don't.
jeez.

here's a bit of an interesting font.. or typeface as they call it (is it not the same?) named of "Frustro" !

it reminds me of that thing i first saw in Mad Magazine, (and subsequently drew many times during the looong loong days of school) -- which later was called a blivet, even tho that word used to mean something quite stinkier.

luckily there is the World Wide Web so i followed the trail to -- ta da! - Wikipedia, which thinks it might be something like "In its most common usage, the word "blivet" refers to an indecipherable figure, illustrated above.[citation needed] It appeared on the March 1965 cover of Mad magazine, where it was dubbed the "Three-Pronged Poiuyt" (the last six letters on the top row of many Latin-script typewriter keyboards, right to left), and has appeared numerous times since then. An anonymously-contributed version described as a "hole location gauge" was printed in the June 1964 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, with the comment that "this outrageous piece of draftsmanship evidently escaped from the Finagle & Diddle Engineering Works" (although something else called a "hole location gauge" had already been patented in 1961)"
Wikipedia also explains other uses of the word if you are interested.

Frusto was apparently inspired by the Penrose Triangle, which i never heard of but recognized when i googled it. Frustro seems not to be available as a computer font.

read more about it here http://www.behance.net/gallery/FRUSTRO-typeface/2525513