COOL! My Instagram Snowflakes on CNET/Crave...

Big fat snowflakes in the city today!, originally uploaded by Adrian J.K. Shum, CGD.

On 8 December 2011, Apple released their App Store Rewind 2011 and declared Instagram as the iPhone app of the year. Following that, the Crave blog on CNET put out a call to all Instagram users to submit their favourite Instagram pictures, with the editors top picks to be published to an online gallery.

Well, I'm very pleased to say that my Instagram photo of snowflakes from 4 December 2011 was selected! Check it out amongst the other selected submissions on CNET/Crave blog.

Cheers!

Well Grown... Movember 2011 Ends.

Well Grown..., originally uploaded by Adrian J.K. Shum, CGD.

...and so ends the moustache growing for 2011. Serious props to my fellow Canuck Mo'bros and Mo'sistas!!! Go Team Canada!!! For those of you who care to witness the horror* of my Movember Mo' feel free to check out my end of Movember photo on my Flickr account, here.

*Don't say I didn't warn you. Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion...

I'm sure that this video, posted to Vimeo by John Carrera, has made it's way around the 'blogosphere' already, but it's just too cool to not post about. Like the folks over at GOOD magazine, I could watch this video, over and over again, and still be left in awe. Enjoy!

COOL! ThreeA Toys...

Well, it's no secret that I'm a fan of Ashley Wood. I've blogged about his work and toys on MUHSASHUM previously, here. Anyhow, as I had hinted, I've joined the 3A Legion - a forum/hyperboard for fans of everything ThreeA. This would be the first forum that I've joined in recent memory... where the members are all equally crazy (crazy fans of ThreeA that is). The forum has interesting contests for art and photos, which gives me a legitimate reason to 'play' with my toys (they're not really toys IMO, but serious pieces of functional art and design). ;D


Here is an image of my Ashley Wood book collection... it's constantly expanding. I think the lot of it is here... some may still be hidden amongst the other books on my shelves. ;P If you don't know who Ashley Wood is... shame on you! Go visit his blog now!


Finally, here is the image that I've entered into the 3A Legion's July Photo Contest - 'Dirty Deeds = Dirty Shadows?' I originally entered the group photo at the top of this post, but decided to go with this more humorous pic...

No Photoshop was used in post production, just for the crop. A whole lot of time was spent trying to get DDB's hands just right though... hopefully, you can see the same end result as Nom.

I'm looking forward to posting more photos and artwork to the forum and interacting with the members. Did I mention that Ashley Wood (the man himself!) also posts/interacts with members on this forum? Now, HOW COOL IS THAT? ;D

Cheers!

COOL! Rorschach Inkblots...

A recent article over on the Globe and Mail, brought to my attention the existence of Rorschach's original inkblot images on Wikipedia. These inkblots of the Rorschach test were printed in Rorschach's Rorschach Test - Psychodiagnostic Plates (Hogrefe, 1927, ISBN: 3-456-82605-2). They've been in the public domain in Hermann Rorschach's native Switzerland, since at least 1992 (70 years after his death), according to Swiss copyright law. They're also in the public domain under United States copyright law (based on when they were first created and published - before 1923).


The images were scanned and posted to Wikipedia along with the most frequent responses for either the whole image or the most prominent detail (according to Samuel Beck). This, as the article in the Globe and Mail details, has prompted some interesting response (like numerous websites/blogs now hosting the images + common responses) and protest... read the article over at the Globe and Mail - here.


What do you think? Was the poster of the images 'in the wrong' or should the protesters just deal with it? ;)

In any case, I think the inkblots are cool, and recommend that you check them out if you've never seen them before, visit the posting on Wikipedia, or check them out on my Flickr (Rorschach Inkblots set) - enjoy!

Busy, Busy...

I've been rather busy as of late... hopefully, I will have some interesting things (aka 'secret projects') to share with you all soon. ;D

Image: a busy bumblebee inside of a rose... from one of the rose bushes in front of my home.

Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla...

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Tesla was responsible for revolutionary developments in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... his patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems. Why is it then that so little is known about this 'forgotten wizard'?

I came across this video on YouTube while skimming through the related Google links on Tesla's birthday. I had no idea Tesla was responsible for so much... enjoy!

COOL! Compfight...

Compfight is a really neat, Flickr image search tool. Intended for finding images on Flickr for comps, inspiration or research, Compfight is not affiliated with Flickr but makes good use of the Flickr API.

There are a number of different settings you can use to filter your search results, try Compfight out for yourself and see what you think, check it out at www.compfight.com - always double check the image license before use (CC or otherwise) and respect the rights of the content creators... enjoy!

COOL! Font Game...

A little over a year ago I blogged about The Rather Difficult Font Game... well since then, the game has been updated with some additional fonts for you to challenge, as well its now being hosted on I Love Typography. Give the game a try for yourself and see how well you do, here - I still can't seem to manage to get them all, my best is still 33/34. Perhaps, I'll give it another shot later. ;)

Thanks for the link Beth!

COOL! Graphic Design - The Forgotten Web Standard (Video)...

Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard on Vimeo.

The following video was played as part of Mike Kus' talk at FOWD London 2009. It's sped up footage of Mike designing his slides for his talk. Mike thought that it would be interesting to show it because he thought it would interesting to see the design process he went through whilst making them. It also features a footage of slides being designed that never made it to the final slide deck... it's quite neat IMO.

You can view Mike's presentation at FOWD London 2009 , here - enjoy! Thanks to Davin Greenwell for posting the link to the GDC Listserve - cheers!

COOL! 1934 BMW R7...

Curious member of BMW's classic division were pleasantly surprised in 2005, when they opened a crate in the archives storage to find this gorgeous bike, 75% assembled.

Now fully-restored to showroom/working condition, this bike is a truly an object of beauty. Read the original story on Cool Hunter, here - cheers!

Recommended Viewing | How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology...

How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology.

Slowly-but-surely, I'm starting to make a dent in my '2B_Blogged' folder residing on my desktop. ;)

This little gem of an animation was sent to me a while back by my friend, Paul Kletke... I thought it was quite well done. Watch the embedded video above or check it out on http://www.5min.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks Paul for sending me the link! Cheers!

And (Ampersand)...

Ampersand... an experiment in ceramics - a collaborative, typographic, art piece made by the talented hands of ceramist Evelin Richter (What? Clay Art and Curios) and Circle colleague, Robert L. Peters.

From Wikipedia:
An ampersand (&), also commonly called an 'and sign', is a logogram representing the conjunction "and". The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and". Read more on Wikipedia...


Close-up detail...

Sweet. 'nuf said. Thanks to Rob and Ev! ;)

Cheers!

R.I.P. Shigeo Fukuda | 1923-2009

It's with great sadness that I learned today through Rob that Shigeo Fukuda (an internationally recognized Graphic Designer, Design Sensei, artist, sculptor, and master illusionist) has passed on. Long have I been an admirer of Fukuda-san's work, I love his poster work.



The international design community mourns, as one of its brightest stars (or a comet if you prefer) has fallen. There's an article in the Icograda eNews regarding his passing, here. You can view some examples from his prolific body of work, here and here - enjoy.

Rest in peace Fukuda-san. You will be missed.

COOL! HTML-Ipsum...

This one is for all you webbies, cause regular Lorem Ipsum just isn't good enough for your comps... along comes HTML-Ipsum... ;) I'm sure that this will come in handy... check it out for yourself at http://html-ipsum.com/ - or visit http://www.lipsum.com/ if you still prefer good ol'regular, Lorem Ipsum - enjoy!

Thanks to Jean-Sebastien Dussault for sharing this on the GDC Listserve - cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Enter the Serif...

Too hilarious not to share (at least for designers and typographers)... as described from the original post on FontFeed:

Enter the Serif... (a student film [1:54] by Johann Pascual | California College of the Arts, USA) combines typography with fragments from the classic Drunken Master – a mix of martial arts and slapstick comedy from 1978 which propelled Jackie Chan to mainstream success. The short film pits Univers Chang of the Sans Serif Clan against Sabon Huang of the Serif Clan. Excerpts of Drunken Master are alternated with dialogue screens that are inspired by the work of Jan Tschichold: his classic, centered serif period and his assymetrical neue Typographie period. Some bits are laugh-out-loud funny (via FontFeed).

I couldn't tend to agree more... ;) you should go and check out some of the other video highlights from the ATypI’08 | Typophile Film Fest 4 (there are some really nice ones...) via FontFeed - enjoy!

Thanks to Nancy Wu for sharing the link on the GDC Listserve - cheers!

Thanks Blogger Team!

MUHSASHUM was the Blogger Team's Blog of Note for Wednesday, December 17th, 2008. Thanks for taking the time to peruse my blog! I've definitely seen a spike in traffic, new blog followers and comments... ;) Cheers!

COOL! Optical Illusions...

Out of complete randomness while surfing the internet, I came across this cool site filled with neat optical illusions... view at your own risk of seizure/nausea/headache.


I think most of the optical illusions are self explanatory... check it out for yourself (if you're interested), here - enjoy!


Looking for a challenge? Count the black dots in the image above... ;)

*Note: The original website link stopped working, so I've replaced it with another one...

Operation Red Bull...

This past Tuesday, GDC Manitoba's highly successful, on-going, professional development Lunch Talk series saw Oliver Oike (MGDC, Vice President and National Representative for GDC Manitoba) along with the Manlab team present 'Operation Red Bull'.

This was a light-hearted lunch talk, where Oliver (and the Manlab team), shared their process for Red Bull's Flugtag, from early brainstorming, the development of a microsite (and mini-games to support their entry), engineering and transportation challenges, and finally the event itself – all to push a "human-powered flying machine" into the Ottawa River in front of 50,000 people...

Red Bull Girls were on-hand at the door, handing out Red Bull to attendees! In case you missed it, I've posted the pictures I took from the presentation to the GDC Manitoba Flickr group pool. You can check them out on Flickr, here - enjoy!

Thanks again to Oliver Oike and the Manlab team for sharing their experience - cheers!

Wicked! Poladroid...

A really neat link to share today, via Tina Roth Eisenberg over at swissmiss, from her blog post:

Poladroid - a polaroid image maker:
1. Download the free POLADROID application and launch it
2. Drag & Drop your photos
3. Wait... wait.... wait again... or shake the picture. Then look at or print your POLADROID picture.

It's an awesome little application IMO. You can even save the image in the various stages of 'poladroid' development. I've embedded the official demonstration video below. Go check it out for yourself at http://www.poladroid.net/ - enjoy!

Official POLADROID demo video - v0.9.5
Uploaded by paul_ladroid

Thanks for the link Tina! My first few 'Poladroid' attempts have been collected in a new set called My Poladroids... on my Flickr account. Check out what other people are doing via the be Poladroid! group pool on Flickr, here - cheers!

Image: 'Messing around with the Godfather', created from a picture taken at Madame Tussauds Interactive Wax Museum in Las Vegas... me thinks I'm going to have lots of fun with 'Poladroid'.