So it seems I’m tracking at about a post per month on average. I fully intend to blog a bit more but right now I’m involved in a lot of time consuming activities. The biggest of which is a project I’m working on for SAP. It’s been a lot of late nights, frustrations and stress but it’s really coming together and I can’t wait to share it. Other than that I’ve been working on freelance as well as my own visual identity system. My ultimate goal is to get things well wrapped up by June on all fronts so I can spend some time away from the computer screen. I’m actually thinking about traveling a little.
But I digress. Onto the substance. Last weekend I thought I would work on my karma a little and participate in some charity events. I have never been into the community service kind of stuff but after pushing myself to take part in all of that last weekend I felt really good about what I’d done. Friday I went to a cancer benefit put on by my company at the record bar. Saturday I got up and drove over to the Historic North East in KCMO and volunteered with AIGA to help design a chalk square with the Restart homeless youth art program. Sunday I got up early and ran the Trolley Run to benefit the Sabates Childrens center for the Visually Impared. I ran what I think might be my record Trolley Run time, in fact. Four miles in 27 minutes. A blisteringly fast 6:49 pace (maybe not blisteringly fast but pretty good for me anyway). I felt very fulfilled after it was all over.
I don’t have photos from it all but I do have photos from the chalk walk. Here is our square in construction. I will note Chi Hiu, my partner, and I were less concerned with design fundamentals than we were with making sure the Restart Kids had a great time. They were both a little reluctant at first but after we got started they really got into it.
They decided we should do a giant Pooh for our “growth” theme:
Other people had some really nice designs. Some of the local design shops/agencies were represented. Here are a couple that were pretty gnarly:
Willoughby design
Barkley Evergreen
Many many more photos are up in a flickr set.
Politics
Among other things I’ve spent my money on in the past week or two, I donated to Obama’s campaign. I guess I felt compelled to do something other than voice an opinion and vote for the guy. A friend at work has been trying to convince me that my vote didn’t count. This may have been what motivated the decision. I just feel that that sentiment is fundamentally wrong. A vote is a voice and without a voice we’re stuck with another dumb-as-mud pandering politician who will snake his way into the White House. Sure there are levels above the popular vote that we as US citizens cannot control. There is certainly no guarantee that your state’s delegates or electoral votes will go with the will of the people but to me it seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy to eliminate the possibility of that happening from the beginning by not voting. Where is the optimism? Maybe it is cynicism I’m hearing every time someone tells me my vote doesn’t count. I can’t really hold it against the cynics. Al Gore lost the election even with the popular vote. It’s certainly happened a number of times. We have the right as citizens though. Why not exercise it? Vote for whoever you want, but please vote.
Music
So I was working on some freelance tonight when my itunes shuffled to some tracks I’d composed about 4-5 years ago. To my surprise they still sounded descent! It made me want to dabble again and maybe polish them up but it’s probably one of my lowest priorities at the moment. I thought I would share one of my favorites for now. I used to put these together in my free time. Most are about half finished and pretty rough. They’re all instrumental and electronically composed. I got a lot of inspiration from movie scores so a bunch of them are a little slow and moody. I used give them whatever working-title name popped into my head as I was listening and on that note, here is one titled Riptide:
Riptide (mp3)
Cheers!
I hope to catch up again here before June but until then, see you around, internets.
