dirty laundry

congrats lauren!

Huge congratulations to my friend Lauren Verby.  She had her amazing photo of an old time SF street car featured on the sfist today.

Yay!  So exciting.  This is just the beginning.

these are a few of my favorite things...

Not counting my favorite people, here are some of the things topping my faves list lately...

Google Notifier -- a seriously cool little program that runs in the menu bar of my mac and tells me when I receive new email.  Notifications are complete with a little pop up window containing an excerpt of the email.  There is also a calendar notifier, intended to ensure I don't miss appointments, but more useful in seeing my day/week at a glance without opening a new browser window.  I [heart] Google.  Oh... this is also available to Windows (bleh) users.

Wall Mounted Hand Sculptures -- cool & functional!  If you know me, then you know how much I love functional, practical, yet unique gifts.  Just say no to useless ceramic figurines and snowglobes!!  Anyway, I first saw these hanging in the deYoung Museum.  I remember thinking WOW(!!) I want a set of those.  That particular set had the hands holding vinyl records.  This set by Harry Allen is more about holding keys, coats and flowers.  If you're wondering what to get me for my birthday and you happen to have a spare $75 laying around, this is the perfect gift.  By the way, I found this and many other fabulous things on the Elsewares blog.

Rehabilitated Dishware -- two things: 1. this is brilliant and 2. I would love to learn how to make my own.  I think the process is a little something like this... buy used dishes at the thrift store, re-glaze, re-fire.  I lack access to a kiln, so it might be hard for me to accomplish this on my own.  Oh well.  My favorite thing about this favorite thing is the whole idea of recycling otherwise ugly dishware into something quite a bit more modern and desirable.  The patterns are also a fun alternative to classic motifs.

Lumen -- Maybe it's because I work in lighting design and am currently obsessed with gobo patterns for weddings, but whatever the case may be, the Lumen by Adam Frank is pretty neato.  I suppose it almost violates my just-say-no-to-useless-things statement above.  None the less, its artistry makes up for what it lacks in practicality.

Other quick links to current obsessions:
* Silversun Pickups -- amazing band out of LA.
* Flickr -- if you take digital photos or scan your prints, you need a Flickr account to share them with the world.  There are far too many neato features to describe, including privatizing your photos to be shared with only the people you wish (for those more discreet among us), and a full fledged membership is only $25/year (or free if you only need 20 MB/month of upload space [that's about 5-10 high res. photos or a gazillion low res.]).
* Environmental Footprint Quiz -- on the heels of yesterday's rant about global warming, here's a little quiz to figure out how many Earths it would take to sustain life if everyone on the plane lived just like you.  It would take 2.7 Earths if everyone lived like me.  Clearly I have some work to do.  If everyone lived like the average American: 5.4 Earths.

free photoshop brushes

While doing my daily cruise of photoblogs, I came across a link on hchamp which led me to another link to something spec-freaking-tacular... Designfruit's Free Photoshop Brushes.  Yes, I'm a total Photoshop nerd and if you're one too, you simply must have these brushes.  Below was a brush test of the Fresh Foliage set.

I think I may just be in love.