Nermo

Here’s what’s held my attention of late:

While home for the holidays, I spent some time with my dad in the carpentry shop, where I made a french rolling pin for a dear friend who is starting her own cookie business, and a muddler for the guys behind the bar at Anvil Bar and Refuge in Houston.

Oh yeah, I drove through Texas over the holidays, starting with ten days in Vermont and 36-hours in NYC (one great night at Prime Meats and Bourgeois Pig). I was supposed to spend New Year’s in Manhattan, but I got a call at Christmas asking if I wouldn’t rather celebrate in the middle of nowhere, than attend the usual fete at Death and Co., so I flew to San Antonio, where I was driven through the night to a little town called Marfa.

We spent New Year’s Eve in a little honky-tonk called Padre’s watching Jimmy Dale Gillmore and Butch Hancock play to a sold out house of about 120 people, then David Byrne walked in around 11 o’clock. He seemed like a nice guy! He said hi to me when he walked in and waited in line for a drink like everyone else.

From there, we drove to Austin to see friends and Houston for a couple nights to visit the above-mentioned Anvil, to experience “Fancy Cocktails in Plastic Cups” at Fitzgerald’s and to linger well past closing with the gorgeous ladies behind the bar at Grand Prize.

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What else? I got a new glass water bottle from Takeya that I love.  Drinking from glass is great because it never tastes off, and this model is slim enough to fit in any cup holder and has a wide mouth.  I also think their glass tea makers would be great for infusing spirits and making liqueurs.

Caligraffiti
The Skitch clothes hanger design opens me up to the idea of a hangar that holds a whole outfit, but rather than the creepy punk skeleton motif, I’d like to see something classier that holds a pair of pants, shirt, jacket and even socks, boxers and an undershirt.  The idea of just grabbing one hanger in the morning seems amazing to me, and it would save space too, so I may prototype my own design soon.

Strelein Warehouse by Ian Moore Architects

I would like to live here, or build my own little modernist hide-away. I’ve been into very small homes of late and wish I had a tiny plot of land on which to build.

This video amuses me, even if I don’t wear scarves.

So, in avoiding other obligations, I decided to find more subtle ways to post a barcode.  The newly-ubiquitous QR codes are hard to miss, being all blocky and checkerboard-like, but traditional bar codes are easier to disguise.  I’ve got a fistful of ideas for how to do this, but here are the first three. After this, I am thinking of a ray gun blast, integrating it into a wood grain pattern, water from a shower head, and an urban skyline.

You can click on any of the above to get a larger image and which can be scanned with any barcode scanner app.

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.

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).

This isn’t about ideals; it’s about abbreviations.  I kind of hate myself for the title grammar, but I’d rather be awkward than wrong.  Wait, I’m not sure that’s true.

Anyway, I’m at a nerd conference and at this and other moments when I’ve worn my URL on a name tag, people ask me what Nermo means and I create an elaborate, absurd fiction.

The truth of the matter is that I found it by searching expiring web address registrations with 5 characters excluding numbers and dashes.  Let’s face it, all the real 5-letter words are taken, so I was happy to find something that looks like it could be a word.

I’m calling you all to suggest a good meaning for Nermo as an acronym. Maybe the letters N-E-R-M-O can acquire meaning actually relevant to the site.

Alright, start submitting those comments.

Booze Reviews:

• I’m a big fan of the Nirvino community of cocktail reviewers.  Mine can be found at mquinnsweeney.nirvino.com
• 97 Bottles is a new brew review site.  I haven’t explored much yet, but it seems like a straightforward review site
• Snooth offers a full community experience with links to online wine merchants to score the best prices

Design Contests:

• Going with the Grain: design a flat pack object from one sheet of plywood and minimal hardware
• Hugo Awards Logo: create the logo for the annual sci-fi lit awards.  Be recognized by nerds across the world!
• The 4th Bin: design an e-waste bin to help NYC keep old computers off the curb

Stuff I don’t actually want, but briefly desired:

• Snow White MacBook made me want to mod my MBPro. Garden of Eden or roasted pig with the apple in its mouth?
• My own TV show or video podcast. I don’t want to be famous, but it might be the motivator to get me in better shape
• Moleskin is now letting you customize your little black notebooks.
• Skinny LaMinx offers a great view of her process creating cut paper designs, but who has time for that?

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’ve been distracted of late (spring is always so busy for my “real jobs” and so my passion projects tend to get the red-headed stepchild treatment), so I haven’t done much in the realm of designing furniture, but this morning I had an image in my head that I need to get on paper.

Actually, paper was the tough part, so I ended up using 3-D modeling software to “sketch” the dresser I was picturing. It’s a chest of drawers that swing on a pivot rather than sliding out, and the outside of the dresser is a rhombus, rather than right angles, but the inside spaces of the drawers are regular rectangles. Take a look at the pictures to get the gist. I realize I need to do a little structural work, but this is just a concept. Thoughts?

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.