Sketches of Frank Gehry

Sketches of Frank Gehry

We watched “Sketches of Frank Gehry” by Sydney Pollack (DVD rental) the other night, quite an inspiring movie with the sole except of the “gush and awe” campaign unleashed Sydney towards Frank. One critic put it this way … “Pollack is too friendly with his subject (almost to the point of having a man crush on Gehry), so the theme of Sketches of Frank Gehry is reduced to, ‘I think Frank Gehry is super awesome, and you should, too'” which is going as bit far – but I was not alone in feeling that way to some degree.

That said; the movie is well worth watching. Some of my favorite shots are of his smaller projects including his own home in California. Frank has a good attitude towards his critics and the films contains one viewpoint critical to Frank’s vision – although it’s not a very well presented one as it feels a bit dry and non-detailed. I felt it really tried to get deep into that wonderful line that Gehry’s mind/hand draws when he’s creating …

“One of the hardest places for a movie — or anything else — to go is into the mind of an artist. You can point the camera at the work that is the tangible product of how that mind operates, and you can record interviews that try to explain and interpret, but the creative process remains a durable mystery.” (source – NYT)

Trailer | NYT’s review

Pantone Fall Color Trends

Pantone Fall Color Trends

Useful for designers and friends in the clothing industry, the pantone fashion color report fall 2006 ..

“Just as day turns to twilight, Fall 2006 colors are a subtle deepening of the world around, lit with the final glow of the turning horizon. New York designers have found themselves in a sanctuary of color, filled with the constancy of nightfall.

Neutrals take center stage as a soothing reminder of life’s many reassurances: from frost gray, evocative of a quiet winter morning, to apple cinnamon, the essence of freshly brewed tea. The neutrals, while simple, provide a landscape for complexity. The touches of rich tones in the palette add an exotic dimension to the neutrals — especially relevant as accessories continue to prevail. The combination of pale khaki and red mahogany tells the story of a classic book, bound with a velvet ribbon. Vetiver paired with purple magic is a plush couch decorated with a silk pillow.

Warmth and vibrancy have found a way to harmonize. This season’s orange, golden ochre, goes to the warm side with an umber undertone and a touch of elegance. Mineral red adds an inviting sense of intrigue when used against a background of simply taupe, a basic yet comforting neutral. ”

Download the PDF | More info

OpenDNS

OpenDNS

Videotron has been acting very flakey here at the office. The past few days have been frustrating at best with up and down service that seems to have no rhyme or reason. The problems seem to be only on our end with Videotron’s DNS – some other people we know who use Videotron verified some issues. I’d heard about this service a while back, and decided to give it a run. It acts as a complete DNS service for your internet connection, and supposedly uses a large cache to speed up frequent requests, although I wonder about getting outdated data due to this?

I had a little discussion with Boris this A.M. about the business model that seems to be in place behind this. I’m sure he’ll have something interesting to say about this.

Matt (of wordpress fame) wrote a bit about it and got quite a few comments back,

“OpenDNS is a great idea, well-executed. They took something basic and ubiquitous, DNS, and improved it by adding spell-checking and phishing protection (usability enhancements). They provide the service for free in exchange for monetizing typo search pages. The typo search pages are simple, fast, and generally useful. What I was looking for is usually the first result. There is no software to install, just two settings to change, and they provide a registration-free way to set preferences on their site. John Roberts is a friend from my CNET days and gave me a preview a few days before they launched, I’ve been using it full-time ever since and it has been invisible in all the right ways.” (source)

We’ll see how it works over the next couple days. So far, so good.

http://www.opendns.com

Benefit Show for Emergency Communities

The United Steel Workers of Montreal

Tuesday August 29, 2006 at the Saints Showbar (Address is 30 Ste-Catherine O. Montréal, QC – 7 PM $20) there’s a rockin’ benefit concert for Emergency Communities in New Orleans with The United Steel Workers of Montreal, Kodiak, Colectivo, People’s Gospel Choir of Montreal, The Cockroaches, Dibondoko and Lo and the Magnetics. There will also be a special preview screening of inTENTcity by Montreal filmmaker Saroj Bains. Definitely worth it just for that.

Emergency Communities is a new kind of disaster relief organization. We seek to fill gaps in traditional relief models by working to rehabilitate communities, not just individuals. We are a grassroots, on-the-ground relief effort using compassion and creativity to provide for those affected by disasters. Our first major project, the Made with Love Cafe and Grill in St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, has already served over 150,000 meals to thousands of returning residents. We provide nutritional, logistical, and emotional support for residents returning to rebuild their lives. Most importantly, we provide a safe, warm space for the community – a space filled with compassion, love, and hope as we work together to recover and build anew.”

Some more info… | inTENTcity Trailer

Roadsworth at Palais de Congres

Roadsworth at Palais de Congres

I haven’t gone down to see it myself, but Roadsworth’s new piece at Place D’armes metro outside Palais de Congres looks kinda cool. Well conceived idea using a large amount of space. Good to see the city finally coming around with the obvious choice to support this local artist instead of jail him.

“Roadsworth rehabilitated Peter Gibson, the 31-year-old Montrealer stencil graffiti artist formerly known as Roadsworth, is now officially in the city’s good books. Gibson was arrested in late November 2004, putting a sudden end to his three-year creative outburst of surreptitious, amusing and anonymous street-level guerrilla art, which included painting owls, candles, fake bike paths and the like on city streets. After fulfilling his court-mandated 40 hours of community service, late last week he picked up a city contract to beautify the sidewalk at Viger and St-Urbain, in front of the Palais des Congrès. Gibson’s new painting is inspired, apparently, by Lego. Financial terms are in the negotiation stage.” (source)

Here are some photos from one of the guys who worked on it with him (it was a team of 3 artists) …
http://www.urbanambush.com/index2.php?content=legolog1 | Roadsworth via Flickr

Shaping Flickr Group

Shaping Flickr Group

My friend Johan has started a surfboard shaping group on flickr. Amazingly there wasn’t one already. Considering how shapers and surfers seem to love taking photos of their creations and rides. I expect once the group gets linked up at Swaylocks and some other sites – it will really take off.

A shaper is ….
“Sub-species of surf culture,superior sense of feel and curve continum in three dimensions to high aquitty… refinement of surfboard forms a driving force in survival mechanisms.Incapable of averting glances when surf forms pass in field of vision …can Identify board styles and types at a distance and discern abnormalities of foil and plan with ease…cape a bull of invisibility and only possible to observe outside enclosed close quartered dusty habitat…” (source)

Flickr Surfboard Shaping Group

Photo Number 3000

Photo Number 3000

My 3000th photo (full size) uploaded to Flickr. This photograph was taken driving home last night by myself from Krista and Eric’s wedding. It’s not a great shot by any means … it is fun though. I was coming down from Mont Royal crossing over Parc. I perched my canon on my dash while stopped at the light — setup with a 15 sec exposure and tried to shift into gear as gently as possible to get a “steadier” shot. The rain and the lights made for interesting effects. Probably not the safest way to take photos either.

Flickr has become my favorite tool on the internet. It really has made taking photos fun. I don’t even save photo’s offline – unless they are an important set or event that I might want to revisit in original format.

“Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, Canada-based company founded in 2002. Ludicorp launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp’s Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved. Early incarnations of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room with real-time photo exchange capabilities called FlickrLive for sharing photos; the successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr’s back end systems evolved away from the Game Neverending’s codebase.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr

I have also started a set with some of my favorites from the past 3000, which will be a work in progress. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevey/sets/72157594242226212/

Photo Number 3000 – Lovely Lights

The Storms are coming

Gouge during Katrina

It’s been a dismal August in the Atlantic so far. Very hard to justify the 5 hour trip to surf 1 to 2 foot waves (if you’re lucky). Not that I’m an amazing surfer — solid 4 to 5 foot waves are around my comfort zone so far – at least the range that I can take advantage of and not fully “kook out” on. Funny that Ed posted about his feelings on small waves today also. Everyone is feeling the pain.

Some promising news from Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog – his predictions call for everything to start up in a week or two. With our new 4/3 Excel suits/gloves we should be able to last until mid October. It’s go time … get on those morning pushups and get some solid skills under my belt.

“The relatively quiet hurricane season we’ve been enjoying is not going to last. A very active period will start, as soon as the atmosphere destabilizes a bit more. If one believes the long-range 2-week outlook from the GFS model, the current quiet period should last another 4-12 days. Around August 21, I expect it will appear that a switch has been thrown, and the Atlantic will be very active indeed. Expect our first hurricane in the Atlantic by August 26, and a very active September. However, I do expect we will get many recurving storms that will miss land, and that this hurricane season will be similar to the ones we experienced in 1995-2003.”

http://www.nesurfari.com/blog/2006/08/18/august-tropical-outlook/ | Above shot of Gouge Surfing a Hurricane Katrina Wave

La Chatte Bottée

V and Carole

A huge congratulations to V and Carole for this. They made the cover of this weeks Hour … V told me about it last weekend – so I’ve been anxiously waiting to see how it looked ! I’ve known both these girls since just after high school and they are awesome, creative and deserving of this press ….

Walking the walk

Vintage shoe schleppers Nika Novi and Carole De Gagné kick off our Hot Shots issue, an annual look at some of Montreal’s most inspiring up-and-coming innovators and entrepreneurs

La Chatte Bottée is definitely an idea whose time has come. Hard-working career girls and best friends Nika Novi and Carole De Gagné were both in the market for an avocation to go with their vocations when the idea hit them to do La Chatte Bottée (loosely translated, it’s, ahem, Puss in Boots), an invitation-by-email monthly shoe party where savvy sabot-eurs can come to browse the best shoe hits of the ’40s to ’90s.”

keep reading at …
http://hour.ca/news/news.aspx?iIDArticle=10055

50 ways to become a better designer

50 ways to become a better designer

Some nice little tips .. things I read and know but that haven’t come to mind in a while …I’ve been trying to expand my horizon on this, painting a bit, shooting more photos, and sketching (personal and work) a lot more…

“The way you work can have a huge impact on your creative success. We present the best advice from leading designers on every stage of the creative process, so that you can keep clients satisfied and make the most of your talents

What is design? Design is both the process and the final product of an endeavour to fulfil a personal or professional brief. Whether you are creating a piece of graphic work, a website, or a design for a new product, the underlying principal is the same – the creative process is everything.”

Computer Arts > 50 ways to become a better designer

Big-O … Not without a fight

Big O at Night

Seems some people have taken up the “Big-O Skate spot Cause” … actually quite a few people. Look for potential reports in the mirror/hour/ctv/cbc, the french language media and much more over the next few days. It’s also getting press far from Montréal. It’s really is funny how few people in Montréal realize how famous that place is and how many people have played skate tourist there from all corners of the globe.

“Designed as an entrance for torch-bearing athletes for the ?76 Olympics, The Big O is a tunnel with perfectly tight transitioned walls that open up into one of the best “natural” miniramps on earth. It took the initiative of local skaters to make the spot what it is today. It?s got a good vibe. One of the more fun things to ever skate.”

Links so far,

Save the pipe blog (turn on guest comments!!) | Metro MTL paper | La Presse | Canada.com | Radio Canada | Skatedaily industry blog

Secrets of the Pirate Bay

Pirate Bay

A very interesting story…

“…barely a month after Swedish police raided their server room and carted two administrators and their legal help off in handcuffs, the lanky co-operator of the Pirate Bay — the most popular and hunted piracy site in the world — settles back to watch a pirated copy of Spanglish.

Harbored by a country where 1.2 million out of 9 million citizens tell the census that they engage in file sharing, the Pirate Bay is as much a national symbol as it is a website. Protected by weak Swedish copyright laws, the Bay survived and grew as movie studio lawyers felled competing BitTorrent trackers one-by-one. Today it boasts an international user base and easily clears 1 million unique visitors a day. New movies sometimes appear at the top of the site’s most-popular list before flickering onto a single theater screen.”

Continue reading at …
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71543-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

Andi State’s Parc Photos

CDP

My good friend Andi State attended the last night of the Cinema Du Parc. She took some absolutely wonderful black and white shots. She was the manager of the Cinema for a couple years around ’97 or ’98 – back when she was my roommate. Her time there lead to the hiring of many people I knew, which afforded me free entry for years to come.

I haven’t heard much more about that final night. I’m sure more photos and stories will start turning up.

“We can say what we want about our cultural superiority vis-à-vis other Canadian cities, but come the end of July, Montreal’s world-class-city status will suffer a massive blow – cinematically, at least. On Aug. 3, the projectors at Cinéma du Parc, this city’s only repertory cinema, will darken for the last time, leaving us with no rep cinema to call our own.” – hour.ca

Go check her photos, they really do capture what was the CDP.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77925391@N00/sets/72157594238230088/

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey

PBS had a nice little piece about Black Star ship-lines which was owned by Marcus Garvey in the early part of the century. Interesting man, with some questionable practices and beliefs. The name Black Star piqued my interest due to the album Black Star by Talib and Mos Def.

“Garvey is best remembered as an important proponent of the “Back-To-Africa” movement, which encouraged people of African ancestry to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, who see him as a prophet. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to “redeem” Africa, and for the European colonial powers to leave it. Although Garvey was raised Methodist, he became a Roman Catholic.

Rastafarians consider Garvey to be a religious prophet, and sometimes even the reincarnation of John the Baptist. This is partly due to Garvey’s statement in the 1920s in which he said, “Look to Africa, for there a king will be crowned,” but his beliefs are deeply influential over all elements of Rastafari.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey

End of the Big-O Spot ?

Eric at the big O

O no … this is terrible …

“Plans by mondo cheesemakers Saputo to build a soccer stadium out by the Big O may destroy a skate park known well beyond our borders (from MTL blog) —

La plus réputée des rampes de planche à roulettes de Montréal pourrait être détruite pour faire place à l’Impact et à son nouveau stade. Et ni la Ville ni Saputo n’ont de plan pour la sauver, au grand dam de plusieurs planchistes.

Le célèbre Tony Hawk y est passé. Le magazine américain Skateboarder la classe parmi les 10 lieux incontournables de la planche à roulettes. Des inconditionnels se déplacent des quatre coins du monde pour y rouler. Mais la petite rampe de béton, appelée «Big-O», est aujourd’hui menacée de destruction.

«Ça fait 22 ans que des gens font du skate ici, explique le planchiste Marc Tison. On a vu le Big-O dans des dizaines de vidéos et dans des magazines. Quand on pense à Montréal, dans le monde du skate, on pense au Big-O.»

(badly translate to english)

Full article at http://www.cyberpresse.ca