Ten Things I Am Thankful For

Seattle — If the rest of the world knew that we actually have more livable weather than Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Arizona, Atlanta, and even most of Florida, everyone would live here. When it rains, it only mists, and when it’s sunny it’s one of the most beautiful places in the country. If you like to waterski, hike, bike, run, snowboard, climb, boat, golf, shop, parasail, or just about anything else outdoors, you owe it to yourself to visit the Puget Sound region. Come during the summer months and you’ll never leave.
Google Reader — Google Reader may be the most useful app on the internet. If you’ve been putting off using an RSS newsreader because you don’t want to deal with yet another application, try setting your home page to google.com/reader and setting up a profile of news feeds. Unlike client side newsreaders, Google Reader is automatically in sync no matter what computer you happen to be at. Even if you’re in a remote corner of the world on your cell phone, you can check your news and blogs through the genius that is Google Reader.
iPhone — It is the world’s best portable device ever, period. Beautiful form factor, great feature set, and sexy as hell. If you have a few bills to burn, I highly recommend partaking in the glory that is the iPhone.
Series 3 Tivo — More than any other product I’ve ever used, Tivo is the one thing you don’t know how much you need until you get it. Unlike the mixed opinions people always give you about their VCRs, I’ve never heard one person tell me they don’t love their Tivo. And if you’re going to take the plunge, I highly recommend the Series 3 High Definition Tivo. The built-in two tuners let you record two shows simultaneously while watching a third.
Boomtown Merlot Wine — I’m not a wine snob. I probably can’t tell a $10 bottle from a $10,000 bottle, but one thing I do know is that I like my wine mild and smooth. Boomtown Merlot wine from Dusted Valley Vintners in Walla Walla, Washington fits that bill perfectly and I tend to buy it by the case these days. If you’re looking for a smooth, buttery red without a trace of oakiness, this could be your wine.
Adium — Simply the best multi-protocol instant messaging client available. Incredibly thoughtful and flexible interface.
Trader Joe’s Frozen Pizza — Ok, let me get this straight. Someone in Italy handtosses a pizza with fresh ingredients, someone else packages it up, someone else ships it across the Atlantic to the east coast, someone else drives it across the country to Seattle, someone else delivers it to my local Trader Joe’s store, someone else sells it to me at the register for three dollars, and somehow, someone is making money off of this??? What? This is quite possibly the best pizza I’ve ever had outside of Italy and yes, it’s three dollars at your local Trader Joe’s. Make sure you buy the large flat one which says “Made in Italy” and you won’t be disappointed.
Taylor Made Driver — Drive for show, putt for dough. Just about every Taylor Made driver I’ve ever owned has been money off the tee. Current weapon: Left-Handed R7 driver with a 9.5 degree loft, a stiff shaft, and a bad attitude.
Haagen Dazs Caramel Cone Ice Cream — The best widely available flavor of ice cream in the United States.
Laceless Shoes — A couple of years ago, I gave up wearing shoes with laces. Besides running shoes, it’s all slip-ons for me now. Since making the move, my life is that much simpler, I have an easier time at airport, and I don’t imagine looking back anytime soon.

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Great article on the ins and outs of three dimensional imagery. Still doesn’t change my opinion that well-shot conventional cinematography is more impressive than the novelty that is Avatar.

The Importance of Removing Features:

This is one of the most useful articles I’ve read in a long time. As we work on focusing, strengthening, and simplifying Newsvine, the concepts discussed by Lukas ring true. “Saying no” has never been a strong suit of mine. It’s very helpful to remember how important of a quality it is. (via fullstopinteractive)

Newly released video of the space shuttle Challenger disaster: It was 24 years ago, I was in 5th grade, but I remember it like it was yesterday. School was stopped immediately and they wheeled out televisions in every classroom for us to watch the news footage. It’s great that this video has been released, but holy crap, how do you tuck something that away for two decades???

A nicely done british parody of 60 Minutes style video journalism. It’s easy to miss how formulaic our news is sometimes. (via B-Tizzle, originally via E-Chizzle)

Colosseo: This is why Cameron is a king and we are all just pawns in his world. I can’t wait to get my hands on this poster. I will point out, however, that the outro credits on the video need some kerning. Someone is going to lose their right hand for that.

Spezify:

New ways of searching are almost never as useful as old ways of searching. Spezify is pretty awesome though. It’s a visually interesting, never-ending, horizontally and vertically scrollable, topic explorer. I don’t think I’d use it for digging deep on anything, but to get a quick visually rich sampling of a topic, it’s quite fun (via tiff, a long time ago actually, over email).

Realism in UI Design:

Reminds me of my favorite logo design advice: “Never waste a stroke”. (via gruber)

The best hockey team intro ever: Or as Tyler says “The Alaska Nanooks are my new favorite hockey team”.

jimray:

Rachel’s right, this is the best thing ever. At least, once you get the joke. Being the old fart that I am, I had no idea why this was funny until I spent about 30 seconds figuring out what a Team Jacob was and and then it was only a matter of time before, well… it would seem this poor girl confused Pat Robertson, douchebag supreme, with teen heartthrob and Twilight “star” Robert Pattinson.

Interesting. I just assumed “switching to Team Jacob” meant converting to judaism.

AWP Express:

I have no idea if these guys are any good or not, but this is the best example of a design agency site I’ve seen in a long time. It’s clean, extremely readable, very well-written, friendly, free of fluff and hyperbole, and contains clear calls to action. If you own your own agency and are trying to drum up work, you could learn a lot from how these guys present themselves. (via CSS Beauty)

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg Makes me want to skip the whole 3D thing and support the Canal Street cinematographer’s guild.

Why Are Europeans White?:

According to Frank W. Sweet, it all goes back to cereal.

How to use CSS @font-face:

Very thorough writeup. It’s almost time to walk sIFR peacefully into the sunset. (via oxygensatchel)

A great HDR Tutorial from Wolfgang Bartleme (aka “The Austrian Wolf”). One of these days, I’m going to start shooting this way… probably after it’s an automatic function of the camera though.