RKNet Blog... Thing

I was putting together a rather unexciting brochure, when I noticed that the capital Q in Arno Pro (Bold Caption) has a really elegant flow. Being familiar with the concept of typographical zoology, I decided to see what I could come up with. The tail-like nature of the letter of course lead me first to think of Felis catus, ye olde house cat. (A popular item on the internet these days, indeed.)

Enjoy!

Poking about as I am wont to do, I discovered this Flickr account chock full of vintage Valentine’s Day cards. User Valart2008 has procured (at the time of this writing) 58 vintage card designs from the good old days. You know, when children were all extraordinarily hydrocepalic and wore thicker eyeliner and more rouge than a room full of goths.

I believe I’ve also found the culprit behind the shortening of the word “you” into the letter “u”. It all started back in the 50’s, with a little girl and a lamb.

Enjoy!

I went in to reproduce the first wallpaper in a more common format and went and made a different one entirely. Luckily for you this one is in 1024×768, which is much more common than the previous one which I have yet to doctor into something more practical.

For this I found myself inspired by the age-old saying: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” - which is a load of crap, but somehow charmingly sentimental. Ah well. Enjoy the fruits of my blood, sweat, and tears you freeloaders… er, I mean, enjoy the wallpaper. Don’t forget to re-visit this and the previous post for more sizes of each. Card friendly PDF versions for easier printing will be generated on-demand.

Let it never be said that I throw complete disfavor upon arbitrary, stupid holidays based around the martyrdom of one of three possible guys in order to overwrite pagan tradition. Far from it, any excuse to get more color in my dreary winter, and of course free candy, is a good excuse.

That said I have prepared a lovely little something to give to the one you’d like to get all cuddly-wuddly with for this (contrived, commercialised) Valentine’s Day. It works well as a wallpaper for 1600×1200 displays. I may edit this later to include other, more common screen sizes, so be on the lookout.

Please enjoy! The majority of this was constructed using photoshop brushes located over at brusheezy. They’re absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend checking them out at your next earliest convenience.

Back with more handcrafted ideas for giving people stuff because of some holiday or another is EvilMadScientist.com as they demonstrate how to create Iterative Algorithmic Sculptures from Fimo!

I love fractals despite having only the wispiest of understandings on the mathematics behind them. The tutorial offers you a way to handcraft a physical model of the Sierpinski Triangle, with or without the math background. Although he does offer a few sources that explain what the Chaos Game is, which is worth learning about even if you really only appreciate fractals for their visual appeal. (I found a neat little flash version of the Chaos Game while poking around to find out more about the math portion of this project.)

There are a lot of great photos to go with this project, which is helpful since it looks rather challenging. Seeing this done, I could definitely picture someone making Triforce gear using some of the principles here.
My thought:

• Take iteration one and slice into desired size sections.
• Poke a good-sized hole through the center triangle before baking, as well as any desired holes for adding string or wire if making jewelry out of these.
• Bake per the clay’s instructions
• Once set and cooled, file away the center starting at the hole you poked before baking until there’s only just enough left to hold the outer triangles together. the idea is to make it look like they’re held together by only the corners.
• Spray paint gold or clearcoat, depending on how you want the color.

I’ve been meaning to get to slapping my holiday list up here - not so much in the hopes of getting the gifts that are on my list - so I can do some slobberingly glorifying reviews of some of my favorite things.

The first thing worth noting is this great article on the MAKE blog about DIY gifts. You’d figure that anything do-it-yourself would run on the cheap side, and for some of the items I suppose it is technically cheaper, but some of these projects are for those with cash to spare.

Nevertheless, nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the… workbench. Okay that’s lame. How about: Give the gifts that keep on geeking? Uhmm… Right, well, the overall gist here is that you can make all kinds of technologically inclined do-hickies for all the open source loving, raw part digging, LED enthusiasts in your life. It will cost you between $10 (for the LED menorah) and upwards of $3,000 (for a hardcore 3d printer).

Just think, for younger people on your list, you could get one of the kits and build it together. For the musically inclined nerd on your list, you could build the Daisy Open-source MP3 Player and build a sweet ass steampunk case for it out of an Altoids tin or a Weighted Companion Cube or something.

Any way you look, fun times to be had by all.

trendy livejournal shit: use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following

Your Name: Georgene

Famous Music artist/group: Garcia, Jerry ;)

3 letter word: gas

Color: Grass Green

Gifts/present: gravy bowl

Vehicle: Geo Storm. XD

TV Show: Gideon's Crossing (best serious doctor show, EVAR)

Country: Greece

Boy Name: Gregory (or Gaston, to fulfill my meme-nerd quota for the day)

Girl Name: Galatea

Alcoholic drink: Getaway Car

Occupation: Grief Councelor

Flower: Gardenia

Celebrity: Gabriel Byrne

Food: Garbage if you are a goat, or Goulash if you aren't

Something found in a kitchen: grater

Reason for Being Late: gastro-intestinal distress

Something You Shout: “GIMME!!”