In my search for a topic for today’s blog post, I came across this great kitchen island created from one of my favorite childhood toys, Legos. I’ve built tiny Lego kitchens in my past, but can’t imagine the time put into creating this huge masterpiece. Designed by Munchausen, a duo formed by Parisian designers Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosetti, the island was built around a standard Ikea kitchen cabinet . The project took over a week to assemble the more than 20,000 individual Logo pieces. The design is smart, because it functions as a beautiful art piece for the room, but also serves the functionality of a standard island. My favorite part is the Lego head cookie jar on the counter, which is just the icing on the cake. I just hope they were able to get the Lego blocks on wholesale, because each 2×6 block is about $.26, making the island a whopping $5,200 dollars just in Legos. At that price, I don’t think I’ll be building any Lego furniture in the near future. 
Archive for September, 2010
Cooking with Legos
Thursday, September 16th, 2010-=Washi Tape=-
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010I’m glad our Blog-Mistress lets me write about whatever strikes my fancy, because let me tell you, my “Fancy” got struck pretty damned hard this week by a fairly new (or just new to me) craft item.
Washi Tape Extravaganza!
Thinner than traditional masking tape, and semi opaque in many cases, it can be used to wrap packages, decorate cards, letters, journals, picture frames, or any interior flat surface. My current plan for this is to use it on some lampshades that need a refresh.
Oh, and look what else I found for those of us who have taken the Sacred Vow of Organization 2010:
Washi Tape Dispenser from Happy Tape
Reminder: Someone has a birthday on 9/25. Washi Tape can be found locally at Collage.
Happy Crafting!
Mrs. Knightly
Android Game Development
Monday, September 13th, 2010
As you can probably tell, my recent obsession has been with the Android platform. I’ve been doing a bit of research on different libraries to make things easier on Java developers, like myself. Here’s a collection of things that I’ve been working with, some with great success and some with less than stellar results.
- andEngine
AndEngine is an Android game engine that has very little documentation. It has a bunch of examples that help show you the use of the engine, and has many games and apps in the market that use this library. - Rokon
Rokon is a 2D game engine that I am currently using to try and port a flash game I wrote last year. I will be blogging about the success of this over the next few weeks. - Shiva 3D
Shiva 3D is a 3D development engine, IDE, and tool set that helps you build full 3D apps and games. - Mages
Mages is a multi-player platform that helps developers make apps that work over the internet. A chess game is included in the source to show how player turns are handled, and other features.
There are many other libraries and platforms available for Android development, with new ones popping up all the time. With the growing number of Android devices, these libraries are going to mature and develop into real tools to help with app creation. Leave a comment if you’ve used these tools, or any others that you’d recommend.
Download The New Google Image Search
Friday, September 10th, 2010Just kidding. That’s an inside joke here at Zoom. You really don’t have to download anything to see the Google Image Search makeover. It is already in effect on the Google.
Here is what the old Image Search looked like:
old search
Here’s what’s new in the refreshed design of Google Images:
- Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
new search
- Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
- Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
- A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
hover pane
- Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
- Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.
-=Mercury, Schmercury=-
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Mercury, retrograding.
Pragmatists may scoff
this retrograde is for real
nine twelve – please come soon!
Okay, perhaps not my best work, but it’s not my fault. Mercury is in retrograde. People blame all kinds of things on poor Mercury, like dropping I-phones into the loo, poor performance reviews, break-ups, lost E-mails, broken nails, lack of organization and chronic chaos. Fortunately, it only happens a couple of times a year.
In the meantime, let’s focus on the magic of Pop-Up Books! (Note: My internet connection has reverted back to an unknown IP address twice this morning).
From my Happy & Safe Hiding Place,
Mrs. Knightly
Are you obsessed with the right things?
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010The Breast Cancer Foundation of Singapore wanted to get to the heart of the matter when it comes to breast cancer. They realized that women spend a great deal of money, time and effort making sure everything is in place: hair, makeup, clothing, complexion, toenail polish, eyebrow waxing, leg shaving and the list goes on. But the reality is that women do not spend enough time performing self exams and looking out for the warning signs of breast cancer. Just a few minutes a month could save hundreds, probably thousands, of lives.
It was this realization that birthed the latest ad campaign for BCF-Singapore. I feel that they did an excellent job of creating an eye catching, aesthetically appealing series of print ads that clearly communicated the importance of spending time taking care of the areas that don’t show, too. With that being said, enjoy the ads and don’t miss the message!
Itty bitty, teensy weensy ART.
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Dalton Ghetti is a carpenter by day and an artist at night. His art, however, requires a needle, magnifying glass and a razor blade. Oh, and pencils. Lots of pencils.
For the last 25 years, Ghetti has been creating intricate sculptures on the tip of a pencil by carving the lead. He’s responsible for carving a giraffe, the entire english alphabet and a chain link that took nearly two years. He says, “I do it from my heart, I do it when I feel like – and I pretty much do it for myself,” he said. “It’s my own interest in the small things in life that drove me to call people’s attention to them.”
You can read more about Ghetti and the source of his inspiration here. In the meantime, however, enjoy the photos and marvel at the detail.
Top 5 Free Resources For Business Tweeps
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
As of the writing of this post, there are 7,682,986 registered users on Twitter. Once your business has made the leap in to the Twitterverse, you’ll need to have some resources at-hand to monitor and contribute to this additional way of sharing yourself. Your adoring customers, clients, fan-boys, and industry peers will begin following you. How do you stay on top of the flow of followers, and keep everyone engaged?
For businesses to grab a share of those potential customers, they need tools to research, track, and position themselves correctly. Here is the short-list of business-oriented resources you should be using for Twitter.
TwitterGrader
Find out what your business rank/grade is on Twitter. Great tool to start your research.
TwitterCounter
Register for this free tool to begin tracking your subscribers, get weekly reports, predictions, and advice on who you should be following. You can also overlay your competitors in the graph to see how you compare.
HootSuite
The “do-it-all” tool for business tweeps. Register and set up scheduled tweets to be posted days, weeks, and months in advance.
LocaFollow
Geo-located Twitter happenings in a specific area. Set it up to track your city or neighborhood, and keep an eye on what is trending near you.
TweetScan
Similar to Summize (AKA Twitter Search), get reports on topics which affect your business. Sign up to generate email alerts. Find out who is talking about your business or brand instantly or report daily and become aware of how your brand is viewed by the Twitter masses.
If you incorporate some or all of the above resources into your Twitter endeavors, you will definitely see better results than if you hadn’t done any at all. How much of a difference will it make? No one can say for sure, but at least you’ll be able to see how your numbers and metrics are being affected and what measures you’re taking that seem to be paying off. Happy Tweeting!
Options for Online 3D Content
Thursday, September 2nd, 20103D movies, 3D TVs, 3D cameras and camcorders, 3D cell phone displays… The 3D craze is well underway. So here’s a list of my favorite 3D development apps.
3D in Flash – Since Flash CS4, Movie Clips could have 3D transformations (position and rotation, but not scale). It’s a primitive 3D engine. In fact, Adobe calls it 2.5D. It’s more than 2D, but not quite 3D.
There are also 3D libraries such as Papervision3D and Away3D that can be imported into your Flash project that will give you a real 3D engine. These are great if you need to use Flash for your project, but you’re still limited to bending a primarily 2D program into 3D. Also, Flash comes with a lot of overhead and it is not the most efficient or fast solution for 3D content.
Virtools – Virtools offers a unique coding experience in which the programmer adds functionality by linking together behavior blocks in a schematic drawing, similar to a flow chart. It’s a very fast way to get basic functionality on your game assets. For example, to make a box rotate, just drop the box model in the 3D view to add it to the scene, then drop the Rotate behavior on it. In the schematic view, draw a link from the output of the Rotate behavior back to its input and you’re done. There’s not a single character of code to write, and it only takes about 5 clicks of the mouse. Of course, this is a pretty simple example, but most of it really is that easy. If you want more control, you can click a few more times to specify how fast it rotates and in which axis. You can also create your own behavior blocks if the hundreds that come with Virtools doesn’t have what you need. The downside to Virtools is that it is ridiculously expensive. Seriously, Virtools, offer a free version and lower the price to build your install base. You’d make up for it in volume.
Unity3D – Like Virtools, Unity is an integrated development environment (IDE) for building 3D games and simulations. I just started playing with it, but so far I like it a lot! Programming in it is not nearly as easy as in Virtools, but it is about the same as coding with Actionscript. It beats Flash with Papervision or Away3D when it comes to everything else. It’s a pain in the neck to get 3D models into Flash. In Unity, just save your assets in the Assets folder. They’ll now show up in your assets list in Unity. Also, because Unity is a real 3D engine, Flash can’t compare in visual quality to what you can do with Unity. Unity comes in a free version and a pro version, plus add-ons for developing for iOS or Android. And Unity 3.0 is coming out soon!
So there you have it; 4½ 3D development solutions (Flash by itself only counts for ½).
Papercuts – The Good Kind
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
While perusing Design*Sponge, one of my favorite blog sites, I came across another blog called PAPERCUTS by “MrYen” that posts about design finds and his own papercut artwork that he sells on Etsy (I am loving the whale papercuts shown). Paper cutting is as simple as it sounds, the art of cutting designs out of paper, but the process, however, is extremely meticulous, time consuming and involves an exacto and a steady hand.
I’ve done some simple papercuts of my own, and it’s always more difficult than it seems, especially when your goal is to get a perfect edge, while avoiding a ripped mess. Did I forget to mention that it is time consuming? I think the precision and detail of papercut art is so beautiful. Designs are delicately filled simple silhouettes, amazing textures and depth that you wouldn’t be able to achieve from plain printing. Below is just a sampling of what papercutting has to offer.
To learn how to create your own papercuts check out The Heart of Papercuts, who offer an introduction on how to start paper cutting. And for more inspiration and variations on the style you should also check out these amazing artists, Yulia Brodskaya, and Julene Harrison.
