Chad Norman » Geeking Out

My 1980s G.I. Joe Graveyard

Chad Norman — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:16:40 +0000

I grew up in the 1980s, so my memories of playing with toys from that era are filled with Star Wars figures, Transformers, and G.I. Joes. In fact, I often cite the 1980s G.I. Joe line as my last love affair with toys as a child. By the time I was done with them, I had moved on to girls, skateboarding, and punk rock.

I was smart enough to hold on to all of my Star Wars toys, but I guess G.I. Joe broke my heart, so I gave away my collection without thinking twice. My entire stash ended up going to my younger cousin Josh, who lived three hours north of us – and that was that. Apparently he had a good time with them, and passed them along to our mutual cousin Brandon. After he was finished with them, they ended up back in Josh’s garage, where they sat for 20 years.

A couple years ago, my Mom, knowing full well how I feel about old nostalgic things, found them in a musty cobweb-filled box in my uncle Glen’s garage and brought them back to me. Opening that box after about 25 years was amazing! I couldn’t believe how many of the toys were still in decent shape, knowing full well my gender’s propensity to melt, burn, crush, and destroy anything and everything we can get our hands on in our tween years.

3 kids, 3 families, one G.I. Joe collection. Here is how it was returned to me, 25 years later. Not pictured is the Skystriker F14, which is upstairs in my son’s closet as I type this (not sure why I didn’t include it in the pic.). Enjoy!

Just A Few of Our Favorite Things from 2011

Chad Norman — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:34:30 +0000

Every year on January 1st, our little family sits around the kitchen table and talks about the highlights from the year that’s just passed. Then each of us takes a peice of paper, and writes down all of our favorite things from the previous year. After that, I type them up, upload them to Wordle.net, and create a tag cloud of the year. I keep saying I’m going to make t-shirts for us, but hey – we only want to look back a little. Onward and upward to a great 2012!

Check out the tag clouds from previous years…

Enjoy!

MacBook Pro Packaging is the Apple of my Sustainable Eye

Chad Norman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:04:04 +0000

When you have a MacBook Pro delivered, the nice shiny white Apple box comes inside a less shiny brown shipping box. In fact, the Apple box is suspended inside that shipping box by paper corner pads. While I’m stoked that these packaging pieces are recyclable (Apple does pay attention to the impact of its products), turns out they’re reusable too!

I noticed the spacing between the edges was the same width as Thomas the Tank Engine tracks, which are everywhere in my house. When I put the two together, they fit perfectly…then I thought about how I could use them. Sure enough, they are nearly the perfect height to work with the standard Thomas riser tracks. Very cool, and something new for the little ones to be creative with!

Purple Lego Brick Update

Chad Norman — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:38:33 +0000

We found another purple lego brick! In 2009, I blogged about how rare purple Lego bricks seem to be, so my boys were stoked when they found the single round piece above. We have always wondered why purple Lego bricks were so rare, considering they were one of the “main” colors.

When I did my original research on purple Lego bricks, I found many references to the Knight Bus from Harry Potter. I had always presumed my purple piece came from that set via a hand-me-down box we received from a friend. I recently saw the Knight Bus in a store (pic to the right), so purple bricks should be in circulation again soon.

Why am I blogging about this? I would like to see purple bricks included in basic Lego sets and elsewhere! I feel it’s grossly underrepresented in the Lego world. If you feel the same way, let Lego know!

Just A Few of Our Favorite Things from 2010

Chad Norman — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 06:46:24 +0000

We have a new tradition emerging here at the Norman house: on New Years Eve/Day we create our favorite things tag cloud! *here’s 2009′s* This year during dinner, we each wrote down some of the things we liked from 2010 (we help the little ones). Then I typed them up and sent them through Wordle.net, and whoop – there it is: a few of our favorite things from 2010!

Happy New Year everyone!

No Trespassing :: Strictly Enforced by Sign

Chad Norman — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 02:35:21 +0000

This can’t be a good sign…

I Heart My Geek Girl

Chad Norman — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:41:12 +0000

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

Found :: My First Flash Movie from 1998

Chad Norman — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:03:11 +0000

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.

Here it is, my first Flash movie from 1998 (sorry about the auto-play):

Also, here are some bonus screen shots from Flash 2. If you’ve worked in the platform, you’ll be blown away that there are only eight commands in ActionScript. And I just love that Macromedia icon – I miss that company. In fact, I still have the Flash 2 user guide and original CD – it meant that much to me!

The Great 2010 Charleston Snowpocalypse

Chad Norman — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:14:50 +0000

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…”

Just A Few of Our Favorite Things from 2009

Chad Norman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:25:36 +0000

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: