The Goodbye Mailbox

My First Threadless Submission

Derek — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:31:40 +0000

Half way home and my pager's still blowin' up

For those of you who have never heard of Threadless.com, it’s an online apparel company that get’s it’s designs from a vast community of designers who submit their own work to be voted on by others with hopes to get their design chosen for printing. It’s a great concept that seems to create a wealth of awesome shirts and hoodies. If you’ve never been to their site, you should check it out.

I’ve been a non-active member of Threadless for about 5 years now, but up until last night, I had only purchased shirts from them. A few weeks back I had an idea pop into my head to create basically the design you see above, but then thought that maybe it would work well as a shirt design. After a lot of procrastination I finally got around to making it last night and I submitted it for approval. If it is approved, people can start scoring my submission, and the higher the score it gets, the better it’s chances are of getting printed. So check it out if you have a sec, and if it gets approved you’ll probably end up hearing a lot more about it from me in the coming days.

Inspiration: Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day

Criss Angel Looks Like A Dong

Derek — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:56:19 +0000

You be the judge.

iPhone 4 Camera Off Axis

Derek — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:44:19 +0000

That's just because you're only wearing one shoe

It seems like the hits keep coming for Apple’s latest product. Maybe this is an isolated incident, or maybe it’s been like this for all the previous models, but I’ve never noticed it on my prior iPhones.

My iPhone 4’s camera appears to be off axis by 2.4 degrees. I laid the camera on it’s right side (the side without the volume buttons) on a flat surface and took a picture of the back of my keyboard which was also laying flat on the same surface and there was a noticeable slant to the resulting image.

Is anyone else having this same issue?

Casey’s Pilot

Derek — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:17:51 +0000

A while back, I submitted a tv show treatment to my boss and the girl in charge of development at my work. The basic concept stemmed from an email conversation I had with my friend Casey about an article I found online that was about Ashrita Furman, the man who holds the world record for most world records. I showed Casey an image of Ashrita in a heated sack race against a yak and Casey responded with his disapproval and overall distaste towards this man and his feats.

Casey has never been known to hold back his opinion, and after seeing the pictures of Ashrita competing for his titles, he basically called Ashrita out and said that he could demolish any of his records. Knowing what a stubborn competitor Casey is, I thought it would be a fun and hilarious show to watch Casey attempt (and fail) at breaking as many of Ashrita’s 100+ records.

After a short while, my boss and producer told me that their agent requested a quick and simple homemade video reel of Casey to see how he was on camera. So rather than shoot a basic video on an iPhone, I decided to toss together an impromptu demo reel for Casey. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to beat any records, let alone come close to breaking any records. Here is the video that made. There is probably around an hour or so of unused footage of Casey acting the fool, that if I ever find enough time and motivation, I might toss online.

Los Angeles Crime

Derek — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:45:08 +0000

At Least They're Honest

As I was driving down Sunset Blvd the other day, I saw this filming location sign hanging on a street light. It said “CRIME” and had an arrow pointing right. Maybe it was for CSI or maybe there’s a movie filming called “Crime”, but I thought about all the people who might not know what the yellow signs around LA are for, and all the tourists that probably saw that sign and thought to themselves, wow, I guess I won’t go down that street.

Jesse Is Like A Modern Day Robin Hood

Derek — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:17:34 +0000

3 x 2 = 6

A modern-day Robin Hood with bad aim. However, he did manage to throw a few darts at a dartboard and practically split one of them in half. The picture you see above is the actual outcome of two consecutive throws and was not set up manually or altered in any way. The tip of the second dart struck and wedged itself into the plastic fins of the first dart. The only thing that would have made this more awesome is if it hit any number higher than 3. At least he’s consistent.

Farewell Mike

The Sandwich Social

Derek — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:49:24 +0000

Imma-eatchoo

I don’t know a single person who doesn’t enjoy a good sandwich. They are simple to make and delicious to eat so I decided to throw a Sandwich Social to celebrate the best lunch entrée ever in the company of friends, old and new. Everyone brought different items to craft their perfect sandwich. There were all sorts of breads, meats, cheeses, and produce to choose from. One of the highlights included a Grilled Cheese Truck tribute which was a grilled cheese with provolone, swiss, cheedar, Kraft Easy Macaroni and Cheese, and Trader Joe’s Pulled Pork (pictured above).

Here are some pictures of the event for you to salivate over.

The Sandwich Social Flickr Set

iPhone App: Cross Process

Derek — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:14:31 +0000

Cross Process iPhone App Test, originally uploaded by GBMB.

Nick from GreyScaleGorilla released a new iPhone app today called Cross Process. If you were a fan of his other app ShakeItPhoto, you will probably dig this one. It emulates the look of cross processed film and adds a nifty little white border. It has settings to choose which colors to process and also allows you to process new pictures or photos from your photo library, much like his last app.

Here are a few more examples of pictures from the app when used in daylight, night time, and tungsten lights respectively.

Katrina’s Medieval Birthday

Derek — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:11:00 +0000

Let the games begin!

The night started off very promising when a girl scout came to Mike’s door selling cookies. We bought out her entire supply that she had with her and she had to go back to her mom’s car to get her reserves. We eventually made our way up to Medieval Times and were promptly ushered into the lobby and handed our Black & White crowns.

There was an hour of hanging out and drinking until we were allowed to go out tables. By then, most of us were feeling good and ready to enjoy the dinner and tournament. Our confidence led us to begin chants of “Red Knight’s going down! Down, down, down.” Believe it or not, you can’t trust movies from 1996 to predict the outcome of a fixed fight. B&W Knight was the first to go down, and Red Knight was the victor. I call bullshit.

Flickr Set: Katrina’s Birthday at Medieval Times

Back To My Mac – Practical Use/Joke

Derek — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:55:52 +0000

Smile, You're On Camera

Today at work, I was killing time during a render, when I stumbled across a great use for the Back To My Mac function of MobileMe. Essentially it is a feature that allows you to remotely connect to your Mac over the internet and see your files as if they were attached to your local computer as an external drive, or see your screen and control your computer from within a window. It works great when it works, but there have been several times where it won’t work due to incompatible routers or networks. I’ve actually read a few stories online about how people have recovered stolen MacBooks and MacBook Pros by watching the thief log into various sites and then reporting it to the authority. But that’s all besides the point of this post.

Since I knew that my roommate Jesse was home because I had just spoken to him on IM, I decided to play a little joke. I launched MobileMe’s screen sharing option and opened up iMovie and launched the capture window and set it to record from my built-in iSight camera. Once I had that set, I opened up my iTunes library and picked a song that would be funny when played at a high volume. The theme song to Family Matters seemed like it fit the bill. (Don’t ask why I have that song). Next, I launched Text Edit and typed a quick message to Jesse. I wanted to make sure it was large enough and obvious enough for him to see when he walked in so he knew it was a joke, and not my computer malfunctioning. The final step was turning my volume all the way up on both iTunes and my computer and pressing record on iMovie and play on iTunes.

In hind sight it would have been more funny if I could have figured out a way to hide the capture window and then just kept doing this over and over again until Jesse figured out what was going on.

The image at the top of this post is a screen capture of the whole set up, and if you watch the video, you can actually hear the screen caps firing off. I was quite pleased with the over all performance of Back To My Mac. I am sure I used it for the opposite purpose of what they had intended when adding this feature to MobileMe, but there’s nothing wrong with stumbling onto an accidental feature. They should turn this into a selling point. Anyhow, here is the video. Enjoy.