Nermo

Along with CreateShareWear, my other 5 jobs and an active social life, another recent venture has been taking up a lot of my time, hence the lack of posting on this blog.

I created MobileDocent as a digital tour guide for gallery visitors to access to rich multimedia content (text, links, images, audio, video and more), enhancing their experience of the art and objects being exhibited in museums and cultural institutions through their web-enabled mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.).

I’ve been working with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to test my project and we have decided to begin piloting MobileDocent with the January Icons of Attention exhibition of work by Kamau Amu Patton, so stay tuned for updates on the progress of the program, and mark your calendars for opening night party, January 22nd, 2010.

For more info on MobileDocent, visit MobileDocent.com.

            

I’ve been neglecting this blog because I am deeply involved in a couple other projects, and this pesky day job keeps getting in the way, but I am very excited to announce that today is the official launch of the Picpoket, from CreateShareWear, a clothing/art/social media venture that I founded with a friend.  I’ve been coding like a madman all week trying to make the site perfect, and I am awfully proud of what I have built.

The premise is simple, but the overarching plan is exciting.  We are selling custom hoodies (and eventually other clothing and accessories) that hold your video iPod, facing out, so you can show your images and video to the world.  In conjunction, we will soon be launching a social networking site for our users to share their work with the Picpoket community to wear all over the world, and collaborate on collective arts and activism projects.

Check out the site, let me know what you think, visit our blog, and if you want to pre-order a hoodie now, we’re offering a special price, a bonus grab bag of art, and premier status on the social network!

            

Because I couldn’t just spend the weekend celebrating the 4th and packing for Tales, I:

1. made a batch of hot sauce from farm-fresh chilies
2. created a tincture of shiso
3. made a gallon of traditional umeshu
4. improvised almost a gallon of apricot/pluot “umeshu”
5. infused a bottle of Hendrick’s gin with cucumber and persimmon
6. devised the Tomcat Collins with the aforementioned gin (recipe posted soon)
7. hosted the “Squash Blossom” dinner party with the lovely TSB (we may not be together any more, but we still throw one hell of a dinner party), where I served the aforementioned cocktail the following hors d’oeuvres
8. deep-fried two kinds of cheese-stuffed squash blossoms (chevre and mascarpone) with 4 dipping sauces (southwestern salsa, spicy tomoato, lemony aioli and a green onion sour cream).

            

I forgot about an old project I played with in grad school. I dug up old images from a repository of ephemera on the Library of Congress website, and repurposed them into whimsical little things with no relevance to their original intentions. This photograph of a munitions storage area from the Civil War seemed dreary, so I livened it up a little.

            

TSB and I are renting a gorgeous house in wine country with two other couples this weekend, with the intent of getting out of the city, spending Saturday tasting wine and spending a few days just having fun.  The girls snatched up menu responsibilities for Friday and Saturday dinners before I had a chance to interject, but I love to cook for a crowd and I don’t suffer from hangovers, so I’m taking on post wine-tasting Sunday brunch.

I’ll be serving duck hash with poached eggs, a perennial winner, which can be prepped ahead and quickly sauteed in the morning.  In the news lately, science supports bacon’s hangover healing powers, but  I’ve already covered savory/crispy, so I’m making a braised pork belly, which I butchered myself in class over the weekend.  I still have a ton of marmalade, so I think I will feature it by offering crepes, toast and yogurt with kumquat marmalade along with mimosas and spicy bloody marys.

            

I made sausage, egg and cheese sliders on homemade biscuits with TSB this sunday.  Those towers were almost too tall to eat. I had her sample my marmalade with vanilla yogurt and got the nod of approval.

            

Here’s what I’ve been up to now that I am ready to teach at noon:

1. Picking out a weekend rental in wine country. I like Le Petite Olivet because it’s on a vineyard, but Mark West Retreat for the architecture.

2.Listening to DIEHARD, my muse Liz’s new band. I wish they had more than 3 songs up.  Catch them Tuesday 3/31 at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

3.Warming up for the opening night party at YBCA for the Nick Cave (not of the Bad Seeds) exhibition.

4. Working on some recipes for homemade bitters that I hope to make some time soon.

5. Playing with how to structure the new dresser that I am designing so that it is Ikea-easy to assemble, sturdy and visually perplexing.

            

I’ll recap BaconCamp soon, but for now, I need to follow up on the silkscreening.

I had a blast, printing about 20 BaconCamp t-shirts and then, upon refilling my ink bottle, the screens locked up and wouldn’t print.  I had to send away another 20+ unsatisfied baconistas, promising to print more in the coming weeks.

Making a Bacon T-Shirt for the Mad Meat Genius

If you want to order one, they will be $10-12 and all proceeds will still go to the American Heart Association.  Once I am done giving midterms today, I’ll figure out how to make this happen. In the meantime, just email me and I will reply to everyone with ordering details once I have them. Click here to order.

My sign photographed by Ekai

I also want to credit Pete Hottelet for the fantastic Bacon Camp logo that we printed on one side of the shirts.

Another satified bacon t-shirt customer by kveton

            

Here are the tutorials I’ve been skimming of late:

Craft

Handmade Detroit give us the Yudu How-To, which is poised to be the successor to Gocco. I need one.

Photojojo’s 12 awesome photography business card ideas remind me that I have a few new sets of cards to make.

Craftynest’s bamboo veneer flowers + Ikea Lack tables runs through a simple process yielding snazzy results.  I have other projects where I intend to use a similar application.

Urban Threads showed me how to make do manly embroidery.  The stencil bleaching part of the tutorial is most useful, and I think the little “punk” patch is a mis-matched design element.

My favorite Instructable that I am sure I will never get to:  The Paracord Bracelet.  Will someone please just make one for me?

Tech

Piclist is teaching me to be an engineer, because I didn’t listen to my father as much as I should have in my youth.

The Make Blog is giving me ideas for how to make my own photobooth and giving me the rundown on jigs, clamps and helping hands.

DealNews will tell you how to make spare cash online.

Plants

Apartment Therapy SF is greening my thumbs with articles on Fun with 4-Inch Succulents and  How to Care for an Orchid.

Food and Drink

The Kitchn has been telling me How (and Why!) to Preseason my Meat and How to Make Pasta, as well as planning ahead with how to make golden chocolate Easter eggs.

Jaime Oliver explains something he calls gingerbread.

The SF Chronicle offers a piece on do-it-yourself cocktail ingredients.

Eddie Ross teaches us how to set the table.