Notes

As someone who uses Netlify’s Starter plan to host this site, the following situation is the kind of nonsense that keeps me up late at night…

Tutorial for building cheap alternatives to Turntable Revival’s wooden back spacers.

Hugo has ruined me. Other static site generators that rely on community plugins and copypasta to fill out their gaps don’t cut it anymore…

Today I learned how to automatically add last modified dates to Markdown files used by static site generators like Jekyll and Gatsby.

This is the post where I talk about neglecting the site and pledge to blog more… wait, wasn’t I suppose to do this on January 1st?

First time doing a year in review post. The statistics contained are just for fun as there’s nothing to compare them against yet.

Using CSS Grid Layout Module to redesign a Jekyll site and further improve performance and accessibility.

You know what sucks? Maintaining two separate branches of an open source project, just to host its source code and documentation together with GitHub Pages.

Not to overstate the obvious here, but oil pastels do not behave like colored pencils…

Playing with the new Depth Effect (aka fauxkeh) on my iPhone 7 Plus got me thinking about Gaussian blurs, and how to improve their use on this site.

In my never ending quest to micro-optimize the hell out of my site, I ran into a snag when trying to use SSI directives to improve the loading of critical CSS and cached stylesheets.

Like previous years, I started out with the best of intentions for Inktober and then quickly lost steam…

To create profile images that look like they’ve been run through a television set with poor reception, I use DECIM8. It’s available as both an iOS and Android app.

Methods used to capture time-lapse videos of drawing and painting on an iPad, to show an artwork’s progression.

Long story short, if you have an iPad Pro do yourself a favor and get an Apple Pencil. If you have an older (or non-Pro) model below are all the styli I’ve had experience with.

How did I git gud at drawing and painting on an iPad? The answer that no one likes to hear is “practice, practice, practice.” I wish there was some magical shortcut for learning how to draw, but there isn’t.

If it wasn’t obvious from the artwork on this site, I draw, paint, and create on Apple’s iPad. My current model is a 12.9″ Pro (256GB) with the Space Gray finish. Before I took the plunge and upgraded to the larger screen I had an Air 2 and the first retina iPad — both of which I’ve handed down to my kids.

I’ve been drawing with traditional tools and materials — on and off for the last 20 years. And drawing with digital tools on iPad, the last 3 years.

Enter to win a portrait of your choice drawn by Michael Rose in his signature PaperFaces style.

Finding inspiration from the faces of strangers on Sktchy for iOS.

It was only natural the two little rosebuds would become early adopters of technology.

Year one of my 365 day portrait project may be over, but I’m just getting started.

An experiment in humanizing the web — drawing a portrait everyday on iPad with the app Paper.

Two years ago on this day, I proposed to my wife Wendy by leading her on an Easter egg scavenger hunt.

My favorite thing about this Corn On Macabre 7-inch record is the use of vellum and metallic inks in the sleeve.

How 5 minutes spent creating an About.me profile nabbed me free Moo business cards of my own design.

Glad to see improvements in the May 2011 Urban Outfitters catalog. Especially since I took a few issues with their typography last month.

I couldn’t begin to tell you what the artwork in this emo record means. But silk screening lyrics on fabric scrapes is kind of cool.

How the hand crafted aesthetics found in DIY released emo and hardcore records started my collecting addiction.

The typography in Urban Outfitters latest catalog has some serious readability issues.

Exploring what it means to develop a grid system that helps facilitate strong design with purpose.

As a designer we’ve all been there. When was the last time you got bored with a design and decided to just burn it and start anew?

The following are some of my experiences and observations transitioning from Palm to iOS after nearly 10 years of baggage.

Looks like I might actually get two iPhone 4s on launch day.

Apparently there is a bizarro version of me in Niagara County using scammed credit cards.

The Eviltron device, when setup properly, can land some convincing scares.

Quick impressions of the Palm Pre from a long time smartphone user.

Put a bird on it. Photographs of Wendy’s bird cage tattoos and some ink splat trees on my arms.

Using Blurb’s BookSmart software was painless and having it printed was equally enjoyable.

Tutorial and time-lapse using the Rasterbator web app to print and assemble a wall sized poster of an owl.

Quick impressions of the film, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

Musically — RRIICCEE is fine, but not something I really want to see live again.

What I went through upgrading an iMac G5 to Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).

Quick impressions of the new iPod classic 60GB.

The film Sunshine directed by Danny Boyle is science fiction without the big bang.

My quick impressions of a Korean horror flick that gives off some serious Fatal Frame vibes.

My quick impressions of La Moustache — a French film about a dude shaving his mustache.

A short update on the status of my iPod 3G battery settlement claim.

My impressions of the film Half Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling.