Seriously, how awesome is it to randomly find this in your girl’s notebook?

Back in late 1997, Gabo Mendoza single handedly changed the course of interactive communication forever when he unleashed Gabocorp.com (archive removed!) upon an unsuspecting design world. Flash had been around for a short time, but nobody had ever built an entire site with it. In fact, I’m not sure anyone had even thought to…except for Gabo Mendoza.

If you were designing back then, I’m sure you remember Gabocorp. TechRadar lists it as one of the 20 websites that changed the world – right up there with Wikipedia and YouTube. My team and I were working with Authorware, Director, and After Effects in those days, so Gabocorp’s super-smooth vector goodness blew our minds. I mean, it blew everyone’s mind. We wanted Flash. Badly.

By January of 1998, we finally convinced our manager to order a copy of Flash 2. When it arrived, my dear friend Tim Sisco and I huddled around my PC and began to play. We naturally tried to build something similar to Gabocorp, and spent about 30 minutes making what was basically a Flash doodle (turn your speakers on and see below). Don’t get me wrong, it’s horrible – but this new platform had set us free. Tweening from color to color, mixing multiple audio tracks on the fly, and running things full screen felt like magic. It was crazy. The world would soon grow tired of Flash sites, but you gotta give Gabocorp credit for propelling the Internet several giant steps forward.

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The snow came, and the snow went. It was that simple, but it helped to make what I’m sure will become one of the most memorable weekends in our family’s story. Charleston’s first snowfall in over 20 years crashed the party on Friday, blowing everyone’s mind in the process (look at that frozen marsh below!) Our kids hadn’t really ever seen snow before, and are still recovering from the madness. On Saturday, Jen performed Serenade with the Charleston Ballet Theatre, which was her first time on stage since 2002 (what a rock star!) Sunday was Valentine’s Day, and Monday was Presidents Day. Seriously, I need another weekend to recover! But hey, what did Ferris Bueller say, “Life moves pretty fast…”

First off, a huge happy new year to you all!

Today at lunch, Jen, Cooper, Graham, Zoe and I sat around our kitchen table, writing down all of our favorite things from 2009. It was fun reading them out loud, hearing what we had in common, and telling stories from throughout the year. Being a huge geek, I naturally thought a word/tag cloud might be the perfect way to visualize the year’s goodness, so I went to Wordle.net – because  they rock.

Here’s the 2009 Norman Family Favorites Cloud:

Have you ever seen a purple Lego brick? Seriously, think about it. Have you ever seen one?

A couple of years ago, my friend Rachel gave us a big box of Duplos. We love Duplos, and this batch came with a few regular Lego bricks trapped in the nooks and crannies of the box. I happily integrated the entire lot into our family stash, and went about my business.

Over the next few months, this 8×1 purple brick kept turning up, and eventually it caught my eye. We have thousands upon thousands of Lego bricks, but only one of them is purple. How could this be? Lego bricks are some of the most creative, thoughtful, brain-growing toys out there. Had they simply neglected to make purple bricks? How rare are they?

Apparently, purple Lego bricks ARE very rare! As this Yahoo Answers thread indicates, the missing color has definitely been noticed by fans. I’ve learned that most of the purple bricks in existence probably came from a Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Bus Set. One observant brickhead noticed the purple cone lampshade in the Sunshine House Set. The color is noticeably absent from the Lego online store, so clearly there is some kind of concerted effort to keep purple bricks oppressed – right?

Hey Lego: Set the purple bricks free!!! People want purple Lego bricks, so why not make it happen? I mean, look how happy this woman was when she found some in a Chicago store.

Until Lego can make it happen, feel free to bask in the glory of my 8×1 purple Lego brick:

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I certainly collected my fair share of hilarious baseball card photos. All those mustaches, blue uniforms, weird hats, and funky locks are half the reason I’ve kept them around all these years.

The other day I found some of my old football cards, and they all seem to have less-than-ideal photos as well. Like the baseball cards, the photos all seem to be casual snapshots from games and practices.

Today’s cards all have perfect photos, and I imagine designers have quite a library to choose from. But not back in the day. Nope, they were just looking for a semi-decent photo that showed the player’s face and number. Whatever was found first, worked.

That’s how I imagine poor Arthur Whittington ended up huffing and puffing for his 1981 Topps Football Card. Instead of busting through the seam on a 3rd and 3, the Raider’s running back was featured sucking oxygen on a hot Oakland afternoon.

Do you think he cared? I mean, today’s players flip out if their Madden player rating dips below 90…can you imagine what would happen if their card hit the shelves with something like this? Publicists would get eaten for breakfast!

Last week I spoke at the 2009 Conference for Nonprofits, and one of my presentations was called 50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits. Organizations often have social media channels developed, and are just looking for ideas they can use to engage their followers. This presentation is a roundup of 50 things nonprofits can do on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, StumpleUpon, etc.

Over the weekend, the boys and I were at our favorite old climbing tree near the observation tower at Palmetto Island County Park. That day we were joined by this little red mushroom, who was pretty happy to see us. Anyone know the species?

Since the ’80s, I’ve been using the primitive Campmor catalog as my defacto guide to outdoor gear. In recent years, my purchases have moved online, but I still love getting that tissue-papery off-white zine. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see a giant callout to the @Campmor Twitter account, but there’s still something that doesn’t feel right about it. Should we really be plugged into the Campmor marketing machine when we’re on day three in Bryce Canyon? Hmmm, on second thought, this Twitter addict thinks maybe we should. Have a great weekend everyone!

I totally dug this massive aisle of bobbleheads in Chinatown, SF.

I still have not read Chris Anderson‘s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, most likely because it is still sitting in my Amazon cart. The book examines the economy of free, and how it is evolving in today’s market. Whenever he speaks on this topic, as I saw him do at SXSW, he always gets grilled about why the book itself is not free (pssst, it is if you want to read it online). It’s not free because Chris needs to feed his family, who are apparently eating really well – Check out the price increase for “Free” that awaited me when I logged in today:

And yes, I’ll probably still buy the book!

My friend, who has a sweet job at the local NOAA office, sent me this sea level analysis of my house and immediate vicinity. I’ve always wondered exactly how low our property sits, especially when high summer tides roll into our backyard. This color overlay shows elevation, with red being lower, and green being higher.

My house is dead center in the image below, and the elevation of our lot ranges from 4.3 to 6.5 feet above mean sea level.

Things are still getting back to normal after an inspirational trip to the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. I spent 4 amazing days learning, talking, and building relationships with my fellow social media hipster doofus web geeks – oh yeah!

I got my photos uploaded to Flickr last night, so I went ahead and made an Animoto clip for the photostream impaired (music by Lake Trout). Enjoy!

I took this shot during a family game of hopscotch in the driveway. 

This shot came from a set taken about 2 months ago, but I never posted it here. Not totally in focus, but still showing off some of the features that make mantises so sci-fi.

Ahh, another vintage odd-shaped children’s book – and only 29 cents! I found this morsel in the same stack as my Golden Shape Books, and it’s got a whole different vibe and style. This is probably because it was published in 1970, and was printed in the Netherlands (so how did I end up with it in Indiana?). It seems rather rare, as Google is only returning 10 results.*

*UPDATE: Now I’m the #1 result. Nice.

Each March for the last few years, I’ve been throwing down with some of the best designers in amazing PhotoShop battle modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament. I looooooves me some PhotoShop tennis, and adding a format like this makes it extra fine.

This happens over in The Arena at Flashkit.com, where the rest of the year you’ll find typical PhotoShop tennis-style battles happening. The regulars are incredible designers, and this tournament brings out their best.

A pool of 32 entries is seeded into a bracket by reputation, and designers share stock and go head-to-head in a battle of PhotoShop skills. The community members vote on each pairing, and after 4 elimination rounds, the final pairing competes to become the champ. Bragging rights and mad respect are the bounty, but the experience is always where it’s at.

These are my images from round one and two…not even close to my normal output and I pretty much got routed. So as usual, I was in way over my head (I’m 6-4 overall), but that’s what makes it…um, educational!

You can see some of my past March Madness entries here and here, and a couple of other battle images here and here.

I recently found an old stash of Golden Shape Books with my childhood stuff. These books were everywhere back in the day, but there is a suprising lack of info online. I really dig these covers though…the art has that distinct ’70s vibe (muted palette, no CG, simple). Very cool. I need to get some shots of the interior next…

I have terrible equipment for capturing celestial phenomenon (a 17-40mm), but my not-so-inner geek always pulls me out into the yard. I’ve caught meteors, rainbows, and even the northern lights (rare for SC), and tonight I got two more — a lunar eclipse and a moonbow — only 90 minutes apart.

It was pretty cloudy in Mt. P, so I quickly snapped the moonbow shot at about 7:45 thinking that was that. I caught brief glimpses of the eclipse, and then at 9:15 there was a relatively clear patch. I took a few shots with my wide angle gear, but focusing was nearly impossible. Still, the moment was captured, and along with the moonbow record a wild 90 minutes up there.

Driving north on I-75, the tundra of Western Ohio is pretty bleak. Rows of harvested corn fight off sticky snow, and the sky already has that gray winter glaze. This is why so many Ohioans move to SC…can you blame them?

Somewhere south of Dayton, a giant red logo caught my eye. LORD. Not just any lord, but LORD in big red uppercase techno typography. I drove on, slightly tickled and more than curious. Turns out to be innocuous, but you always have to keep an eye out…

BTW – how cool is it that they own LORD.COM? Swank.

After reading Dr. Seuss’s “Oh Say Can You Seed” all summer long, we welcomed Fall as a great opportunity to do some collecting. Over a two-week period, my oldest son and I meticulously sought out all the best seed caches for our collection. In the end, it looked pretty cool:

Here are the details (from top left to bottom right):

1. Unidentified Weed – This bean-like seed came from a head-high weed that produced dozens of pods, each with two seeds in it. They kind of smelled.
2. Crape Myrtle Tree – We collected these seeds by swatting at our crape myrtle with a plastic baseball bat. The seeds floated down like mini-helicopters and landed on a Frisbee. They are now known as the Frisbee seeds.
3. Wild Blue Aster – I love this wildflower, and it grows under the power lines near our house. These seeds came from a wildflower bouquet we picked for Jen.
4. Live Oak Tree – These acorns are abundant in the Lowcountry this time of year. The big surprise was the larvae that crawled out of each of them. One by one, I picked them out of the container and took them outside, where I assume they wanted to burrow into the ground.
5. Pumpkin – These are the only non-wild seeds we included in our collection. They were so plentiful and unique…we just had to have them.
6. Unidentified Berry – I should know the name of this shrub, as they are everywhere in Charleston. They have thin,  yellowing this time of year, and are covered with red berries.
7. Palmetto Tree – These seeds are everywhere right now too. It’s so cool thinking that each one of them can grow a giant Palmetto tree.
8. Unidentified Weed – This weed produces long, slender pods that contain about 25 seeds each. The seeds remind us of the food we feed our Beta fish.
9. Unidentified Weed – These seeds came from a weed that has 3-inch pods with 8 seeds in each. I like them because they look like tiny Chinese throwing stars.
10. Redbud Tree – I love redbud trees, so I planted one in our front yard – they remind me of Indiana. Similar to the live oak seeds, each redbud seed had a very small insect larvae living in it. They had all hatched before we started the collection, but we saw them this summer.
11. Ornamental Grass – Not sure what species this is, but it’s variegated and is about 4 feet tall.
12. Jelly Palm – These seeds appear on the ground after the fermenting orange fruit decomposes. We like to crack these shells open to get at the three beans inside.

Had I not been taking the stairs, I would have missed this hilarious opportunity to ingest some irony.

You know, I got out of the habit of actually writing here despite that being one of the objectives for this project. My main focus was to create a repository for 100% original work. Because of this, I’ve been leaning on my photos…which is fine. But I totally forgot to post the 1990 video!

Huh?

Like all passionate skaters, we practiced self-documentation in ritualistic fashion. We filmed and we shot. We developed, edited, and screened. Guys were forever making sponsorship videos, and we analyzed contest films like fiendish hoops coaches. It was all part of the life.

Every year, my friend Todd and I would boil down a years worth of footage into “The Video.” We had two VCRs, one of which miraculously had an audio overdub feature, and we would spend hours getting our dub-on. After the segments were compiled and the hand drawn/written graphics were added, we slapped some tunes over the top.

I’ve been digitizing and posting these on YouTube for the crew…you can see the 1988 video here (Almost 20 years ago…gulp.) I had some flexibility when I worked on the 1990 video, because we hadn’t yet added the audio. I was able to mix the sounds of the skating with a the music, and this gave it a production quality that was unavailable back in the day.

So in writing this painfully long intro and posting a twenty-year-old video testament to skateboarding’s timelessness, I have pushed myself a little farther along. You poor soul. Here’s the video.

And for the record, the slams video gets watched the most on YouTube.

We have wet, warm winters down here, and it’s common to see all kinds of celestial activities. On December 2nd, I caught this circumzenithal arc in the late afternoon sky.

Though past it’s peak in the photo, you can still see the tell-tale bending towards the sun, with the red band on the outside. It makes me want to kick back and think about this crazy physics experiment we call home.

Five weeks on crutches changes the way you see things. Everything from architectural accessibility to time management becomes an issue.

Other things are just annoying, like the sore armpits and the loud crutches. My family and coworkers quickly noticed my click-clack as I hobbled around, and I soon found the adjustable bars of my ubiquitous gray crutches were the source.

After some thinking, I realized a quick application of masking tape could solve the problem. Once around at the base, and again at the locking button – then repeat on the other crutch. It worked better than I thought, and remained in use for the duration of my need. A better look could be achieved with duct tape, or perhaps go festive with colored electrical tape.

The important thing is to be creative, and enjoy using your crutches in silence.

Happy modding!