Missing the Meaning

Once again, another Palgrave cover. I didn't think they'd go for it, but they did. I was playing with making the title easy to misread, and thus, miss the meaning (ooo, how high concept!) The grey will print in silver metallic, so the large letters are both the most prominent item, but will also, depending on the light, recede.

Eros

Advance word on an anthology of films by Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai, and Steven Soderbergh. Soderbergh seems like an odd pairing, and in fact he was called in to replace Pedro Almodovar (who is still working on the framing of the three films). Read more about it here.

Ratchet and Clank

Remember Iron Stomach Gebo Gebo attack? Well, there's another game online based on the same principle. You can find it at Ratchet and Clank Gadgets. Once you choose your country and get the popup window click on the middle box (it'll be called "Challenge Clank"). From there it should be self-explanatory. Courtesy la la land.

Conceiving Carolina

The latest in the series of covers I'm doing for Palgrave. It's perhaps a little red; I should use a browner color perhaps, but then I'm afraid of the entire cover looking a little too dusty. Though I guess that's the point in the end. If it were matte, it might take a little of the sheen off. . . . The type was hand-kerned, incidentally.

Secret diaries of Cassandra Claire

Here is a link to some Bridget Jones Diary style entries in the diaries of various Lord of the Rings characters. Simone liked them a lot. And Celvyn apparently. Note that they should be read in order.

O Canada

While surfing around the web I found toothpaste for dinner, where they're selling t-shirts with the above. The middle shirt says "If I had a dollar for every time I had sixty cents I would be Canada." I just got got back from Toronto, actually.

The Guardian 40 best living directors

The Guardian posted their list of the world's 40 best living directors. I was surprised at who topped the list. One great thing about this is that I finally know what Terrence Malick looks like. Though I think I'd probably still walk by him without noticing, which doesn't really say anything. The biggest star in the world could run right into me and I probably wouldn't recognize them. Anyway, it's great to see Tsai Ming-Liang on the list. He's definitely one of my favorite living filmmakers. You can find the list here.

Welcome Elaine!

My cousin Elaine's joined the legions of bloggers! You can read about her exploits here.

Shanghai Online

Remember this game? A solitaire game with Majhong tiles? Now you can play it online! I can't remember where I found this now . . .

End of the world

A funny little low budget flash cartoon. Note that the Japanese seem to have taken over China in the interim. http://www.mycatsboots.com/endofworld.swf

International Dunhuang Project

Dennis sent me this link to the Dunhuang Project, which is an "international collaboration to make more than 100,000 manuscripts, paintings, and artefacts from Dunhuang and other silk road sites freely available on the internet with top quality colour images." Check out the searchable database.

[x-woods]

X-woods is a site showcasing flash games. I'm not sure who made them, save that they're in China somewhere from what I can gather. It's a little slow loading sometimes, but the games are well produced and made. Well, at least the worm one is. :-)

Excercise your chicken

Becca sent me this link: http://www.chikinramen.com/exercise/exercise43.swf. Maybe they should have this on airplanes instead of the exercises they currently have. For some reason, setting it as a link doesn't work so you have to copy and paste it into your address bar.

Armenian people from ancient to modern times

  As some of you know, I have a running side gig doing covers for Palgrave, the scholarly and reference division of St. Martin's Press. It's interesting because there are so many constraints leveled on the designs. It at once makes it easier and harder. The above were two books in a series I did over the weekend as a rush job. One was to look more modern. I was probably too subtle on that couse. The left cover uses Penumbra, a somewhat ancient looking serif font, and the right uses Futura, a modern sans-serif. I wonder if anyone noticed the difference? It's probably hard at that size.

Evasion in English

NPR had this segment, which describes the use of language to evade speaking directly. Maggie Balistreri, author of the The Evasion English Dictionary, defines the many subtly different ways Americans pepper our speech with euphemisms and oblique references. Like, wow!