Graffiti On a Whole New Level - Meet Banksy

I found out about this guy while listening to a Rob Bell podcast. He is a notorious graffiti and street artist, and nobody knows who he is except his manager. He goes by the name of Banksy. While his work has appeared all over the world on public streets, in zoos, portable toilets, and live elephants, he's never been caught in the act. There is one photo that claims it may be him, but it can't be verified.


In addition to the attention his art draws due to the elusiveness of the artist, it is fairly ironic and satirical. It makes the 'crime' all that much more of a message, making it seem not so much like pointless vandalism. Banksy also does art for sale. Brad Pitt reportedly paid about $1 Million for a Banksy original. The next day on Banksy's website, he said that only morons pay that much for his work.

While most of his stuff takes place in Europe, I think it would be fantastic for him to make a trip to the States. Lord knows there's plenty of satirical content here. If I owned an office, I could only hope that he would hit up my brick wall.

XOXO,

Launchball Game

The stuff that people are doing now with Flash blows my mind. A couple months ago, I found this site through Adobe's Edge newsletter. After playing just one level I was hooked. I stayed up for hours playin the thing and didn't even realize that time was passing. Interestingly enough though, I realized that it was sharpening my problem solving skills. It would be very difficult to spend any amount of time trying to figure these out and not get your solve on. And unlike Sudoku or crosswords, this thing is incredibly engaging from an interactive standpoint. I know action scripting is complicated, but Lord have mercy on the person that figured out how to apply Newton's law to it!

Make it Fluid

I fell upon this nifty little tool yesterday called Fluid. It's created just for us Mac users to turn our most commonly used web apps into their own app in our dock. I just set up three of them and it's working great so far. I did one for my Backpack site, my blog, and my Google Analytics account.


For some reason, I've not succeeded in setting up Gmail. Fluid keeps shutting down with an error. I'm sure I'll come up with plenty more uses for it though. I also like that I can create my own icons for it as well. I just did simple little PNG images quick in Photoshop and saved them to my desktop. Then when setting up a new app, plug it in, and then delete it. The other nice thing is that if your browser freezes up for some reason and you have to force quit, the app runs independently of it, so it won't be automatically shut down.

The Repeaters

So everybody goes through those phases where there's songs that you just keep listening to over and over and over. Just for kicks, I put together a playlist of those guilty pleasures I find myself wearing out on a regular basis. Click on the photo to see all the song info if you're lookin' for some fun new tunes.

Old Fashioned, New School

Brand New School has given their website a face down since last I saw it. I'm diggin the black and white simplicity. These guys and gals have got some serious names in their book. Check out this little ditty they did for a eyeglass outfit. It's similar to the whole Jimmy Neutron feel, but much more growed up.