Simian Design

These are my delicious links for December 2nd:

• Decandence, Sleaze and Excess; all in one shoe. – the Jeffery-West shoe collection—the work of childhood friends Mark Jeffery and Guy West—fall somewhere between a swanky gentlemen's club and Sweeney Todd's closet. Blood-red leather linings and handmade soles, inscribed with "Decadence, Sleaze and Excess,“ ooze with the kind of luxe horror that arguably only Brits can successfully pull off.
• The Unearthly Beauty of Antelope Canyon – The Navajo call it ‘the place where water runs through rocks’ and that is literally true. One of the most unearthly places on the planet, take a look at the astounding Antelope Canyon.
  The peculiar formation of a slot canyon can make for an eerie experience and certainly the Antelope Canyon, on the lands of the LeChee people of the Navajo Nation is one of the stranger places you might choose to visit if your budget doesn’t quite run to a space shuttle. The shuttle, though, never lands on alien planets – you can get the experience for very little here on the third rock from the sun. And it is the sun that makes this canyon extra special.
• Sietch Nevada – I like this. MATSYS took the idea of a Sietch from Dune, and created this project, Sietch Nevada, that projects waterbanking as the fundamental factor in future urban infrastructure in the American Southwest. Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life. Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, the Sietch is a dense, underground community.
• Spiral Staircases are cool. – I love spiral staircases. They easily are the focal point of a room, presenting graceful lines to the inside of a house. And they make a room feel ultra-important. Here are a collection of famous and fantastic staircases.

These are my delicious links for July 27th:

• Outstanding Public Parks – 10 of the world’s grandest parks that are loaded with things to do. From Hyde Park in London to the shores of Stanley Park in Vancouver, check out these one-of-a-kind destinations that may make you green with envy, but won’t cost you a thing to enjoy.

These are my delicious links for July 22nd:

• THe First Thru-Hiker: Earl Shaffer – In 1948, WWII veteran Earl Shaffer decided to "walk the Army out of his system" by hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. He was the first to do so.

These are my delicious links for June 24th through June 26th:

• Touched by an Angel – The story of how the Farah Fawcett poster came to be.

  "…t may be the most famous pinup poster of all time. Farrah Fawcett's smile is a row of impossibly white teeth so perfectly aligned they look machine-made, her hair a windblown blond tangle that swallows her slender hand.
  Then there is her nipple: a salacious nub straining against the nylon of her red one-piece. Its appearance marked the advent of "nippling." Whenever a model applies ice to her breast before a photo shoot, she's paying homage to Farrah….."

• The Bug, the Worm and the Death Star – As professionals, we prefer logo, logotype, mark, symbol, wordmark, icon, visual identity or signature. With this many choices it is no wonder others have settled on the irreverent bug. Incidentally, a long-time friend in Mumbai told me of some of the general names for logo in India include pintu (pint sized), chintu (tiny), dabboo (fat) and kaka (small one). (But depending on the specific region, language and even community in India, kaka also can mean poo-poo, as elsewhere. I guess context is everything, when calling a logo kaka in India.)

  But whether we designed it, manage it, or just live with it, having a name for the logo appears to fulfill some human need. Some companies provide a formal name, such as The Monogram (GE). Here are a few logos and their officially sanctioned names:

• How many colors? Wrong. – Richard Wiseman comes one of the best color optical illusions I have ever seen.
• Fun with a spray-gun, a field and perspective. – Nice project, doing POV Perspective on a field, the photos are quite nice.
• Volcano from Space; or how I would kill a man to stay in the ISS for a bit. – A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.
• 10 Ways to Instantly Increase Your jQuery Performance – Nettuts+ –

These are my delicious links for June 23rd through June 24th:

• Soviet Russian Album Covers – Amazing Hair Metal Records from the USSR. Fantastic stuff here.
• 10 Most Fascinating Mazes – The only real maze I've ever gone through is the one at Luray Caverns, and it was easy, yet I still got lost. I can't imagine the fun of a real large, actually hard maze. That'd be a fun afternoon.
• The Most Terrifying Mountain Bike Trail On Earth – The Emerald Isle’s legendary Cliffs of Mohan are just insane. INSANE. And these guys rode their bikes on them.
• Pentagram takes on Cigarette Marketing. – …"Marlboro filtered cigarettes can cause lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious health risks. Smoking by pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide…BUT WHO CARES.
• The Creation of a Russian Terminator. – Brilliant series of shots showing how the Russians are creating an army of Arnold Terminators. Just brilliant.
• Visual Decision Making – Another body of web user experience research shows that website users are powerfully influenced by aesthetics, and that positive perceptions of order, beauty, novelty, and creativity increase the user’s confidence in a site’s trustworthiness and usability. Recent design writing and interface research illustrate how visual design and user research can work together to create better user experiences on the web: experiences that balance the practicalities of navigation with aesthetic interfaces that delight the eye and brain.

  In short: there’s lots of evidence that beauty enhances usability.

These are my delicious links for April 20th through April 22nd:

• 10 of the world's most unusual places to spend the night – Tired of boring old hotels? With limited vacation time, there's no reason your lodging shouldn't be as fun as the rest of your travel experience!

  From converted train cars to converted prisons, here are 10 of the world's most out-of-the-ordinary places to stay.

  I'd most like to try the monastery I think.

• Firediff – In Case of Stairs – Firediff is a Firebug extension that tracks changes to a pages DOM and CSS.
• This is what 1000FPS looks like. – Here is the first SprintCam v3 showreel, made for NAB 2009 exhibition.
  Mostly 1000FPS shots, made during a recent rugby competition in the Stade de France, Paris

These are my delicious links for March 24th through March 26th:

• Alpine Hut – Gorgeous 6×11 Alpine hut by OFIS Architects. The hut is situated in a small Alpine village, part of Triglav national park in Slovenia, with very strict rules of construction and architectural design. The client bought the site together with existing construction permit for the generic project. Demand was not to change construction permit but change the elements of the house to suit his family, sustainable factor and open the windows toward the views.
• Rebuilding Spotlight's Index on OS X (Manually) | Walt-O-Matic – My spotlight recently got hosed, this is a good reference on how to fix that.
• Letter from an AIG Official; The Other Side of the Story. – The resignation letter of an AIG executive explaining his point of view on the bonus furor. The proverbial other side of the story.
• Fuck That. – Russian teens have now new fun. They dare trains.
  This is needed to be done fast, because if one is appearing before the train too long before and machinist could see him and start breaking, so they run on the rails just before the train so he couldn’t start breaking and fell down on the rails, then the train moves above the person at his maximum speed, just a few inches from his head and back.
• Top 10 Time-Lapse Videos Show Nature at Work | Wired Science from Wired.com – When a phenomenon happens very slowly, viewing accelerated footage helps scientists take a step back and see the big picture: At higher speeds, things that we regard as fixed take motion — even the dullest scenes spring to life.
  Here are Wired Science's picks of the best time-lapse videos of nature at work.
• Travel photography: The Wave – Los Angeles Times – The Wave is a red-rock stunner on the border of Arizona and Utah, made of 190-million-year-old sand dunes that have turned to rock. L.A. Times photographer Spencer Weiner captured the swirling drama of this little-known formation that's accessible only on foot via a three-mile hike and highly regulated. (To apply for a permit, go to the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona Web page.)

These are my delicious links for January 29th:

• What Makes Good Copy Good. | Blue Flavor – Tiffani Jones comes up with some very good guidelines on what makes copy good. (Making if 'funner' is item one). A good list, well thought out.
• Amazon.com: Free – Songs: MP3 Downloads – Lots of lots of free music from Amazon. Some real gems in here.
• The Big Picture: More of London from above, at night – In August of last year, theBig Picture was happy to be able to share some amazing photos of London, as seen from above at night by photographer Jason Hawkes. That entry continues to be one of the most consistently popular ones ever put together at The Big Picture, so its good news to hear that Jason has another 24 photos from 2008 to share.

These are my delicious links for January 19th through January 20th:

• How to Design the Perfect List – Lists are a beautiful way to display content and information in a very easy to scan, easy to read method. Lists are found on most blogs to list posts, comments, tags, or links. In this post we will be exploring the modern practices of lists as an element of web design and they will be showing you how to design better lists to add to the overall design of your site.
• Slave reunion photo from 1916 – Wow. This is a photo from 1916 of 4 former slaves. They're all over 100 years old. James Madison was president when they were born, and America was 36 years old. And here they are in a relatively "modern" photo. I'm blown away.
• Harry Eng – Master Bottle Filler – One evening Harry was in a London hotel and decided to visit the Puzzle Museum the next morning. When he and his friends had finished their bottle of wine, he took the bottle up to his room. He then filled it with a book of matches, menu, and the pack of cards as a gift for us. This is a particular favorite as he assured us that the only tools he had were a pencil and rubber bands.
• The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin by Elliott Kember – You know that page-curl effect you get sometimes on sites? This is how to do it with jQuery. Not bad.
• Coaches view of Madison Square Garden – Rangers Coach Tom Renney describes the view form behind the bench at Madison Square Garden.
• Stainless steel teeth – John Gilpin makes himself some stainless steel teeth. Quite amazing.

These are my delicious links for December 5th:

• 6 vertigo-inducing viewing platforms – These platforms are brilliant. Scary, thrilling and gorgeous. I'd go on them in a heartbeat. I think the one I'd like to see the most would be Aurland Lookout in Norway, but they are all just fantastic. Why we don't have more thrill inducing types of views like this I don't know.