Icons
The Hear Me site redesign continues. We needed some nicer looking icons to designate story types, and I drew these up in Illustrator – and learned that making something legible at about 20 x 20 pixels is tricky. It’s basically video, audio, photo/visual, and written stories.
The two on the end are for stories that we’re doing through the Can Pals program. One of the ways we’re disseminating audio stories is through our Can Pals and Story Boxes. The guys down in the CREATE lab made these tin cans that house a computer chip, with a speaker on top, so that you can listen to a story when you tilt the can. You can see one in use on the Hear Me blog. The Story Boxes, we’re putting up around town, and in our gallery exhibits. The Can Pals program is like having a pen pal, but with audio. Students record their story and decorate a label for the can, then send it off to another school. They respond to those kids, record their own message, and it’s off to the next school.
I’ve also gotten our Hear Me Twitter page looking a bit more presentable. We’re working on getting all of our media in line with the new site. It’s a huge project, but we’ve got some really good people on it.
Pork Dorks ’11
So this past Saturday, we roasted a pig in our backyard. (Note to concerned parties: contains photos of said pig. So, do what you gotta do. Also contains photos of beer, guns, and shenanigans, so… you know, an average Friday night in West Brownsville.)
Planning for this started months ago, but first shift for set-up showed up around 1:00 in the morning on Saturday. Actually, I got a text around midnight that the boys were out in the pavilion fishing and listening to Anti-Flag, so I headed out a little early.
The spit was mostly constructed, since we’ve done chicken roasts before. It took a little bit of custom welding, though, and some extra set-up.
We also needed Adam to MacGyver together a holster for the thermometer.
I had my ISO set to about one billion.
Set-up’s dirty work.
Since roasting an entire pig wasn’t enough, they went ahead and stuffed it with brats and sauerkraut.
I didn’t know there would be hammering involved.
I think you’re a bit late on that one. The boys informed us that you just don’t come to West Brownsville at 3:00 in the morning NOT strapped. Good to know.
Getting it from the truck to the spit was a bit of an event.
Once we got everything set up, it was mostly just a matter of baby-sitting the spit. I made mountain pies for the crew, and went to bed sometime around 5 a.m.
The roast itself was a blast. There were already people showing up when I got out of bed, and I spent more time running around, greeting folks, and trying to get food than I did taking pictures. Plus, once the rest of the band showed up I was busy playing fiddle. We never did an official count, but John thought we had around 90 people there over the course of a day. The boys got shirts and chefs hats made for the occasion.
Abby has a new BFF.
It was a good time, and for those that missed it, the boys are already planning another one.
Vintage Baseball
I mentioned that John was growing his ‘stache out for Vintage Baseball. I wasn’t able to go, because I was hanging out at 21st Street Coffee with some awesome clients. But my camera did tag along, and our friend Tonia was nice enough to get a few shots of the ‘stache in action.
Back off, ladies, these boys are taken.
Huzzah!
More photos, as usual, on the Facebook.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Oh, yes he did.
Around Thanksgiving last year, John announced that he was going to grow a handlebar mustache for vintage baseball. He’d been growing out the full beard since then, and just shaved it down to the ‘stache yesterday. I’ve been mocking him relentlessly ever since. Because I’m a terrible wife. Our friends are concerned he may tie me to some railroad tracks. It’s cool, though, the guys in his Judas Priest cover band really like it. Okay, seriously, I’m done.
I also did a few portraits for him, since he’s decided that he’s never, ever doing this again.
Sadly, I had to miss the exhibition today, but I did send the camera with John. Hopefully, he got a few shots of the guys in action. I’m sure the ‘stache looks awesome with his uniform.
There are, of course, more of these on Facebook.
You guys like free stuff, right?
If you keep up with me on Facebook or the Twitter, you’ve probably seen me pimping this year’s WMC Fest in Cleveland, OH. It’s a conference, it’s a design show, it’s concerts. It’s a bunch of people in a room talking about and showing off things you’re interested in.
You can see the whole line-up here, including Miss Stephanie Rexroth. We graduated from Cal’s Design program together, as well as Cal’s Honors program. It’s gonna be cool.
Onto the freebies! Since I backed WMC Fests on Kickstarter, they’ve been kind enough to hook me up with a weekend pass. And since I already bought mine, I’m giving it away. You want it? Tweet this:
Win a free pass to @wmcfest from @mooreclick: http://tinyurl.com/3arxyvu
I’ll put everyone’s name into a hat, and on May 21st (that’s next Saturday) I’ll pick a winner.
Bad Religion at the Nautica
My Gram asked me today why we like Cleveland so much. It’s not that we set out to spend so much time there, it’s just that bands we like tend to play there. Although, this is the second anniversary that we’ve sort of accidentally celebrated by going to shows in Cleveland, because we’re terrible at anniversaries.
This is the first time we’d been to the Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica, as they’re apparently calling it now, and it’s a pretty cool spot. We found it easily enough, but got hung up on parking. There was a bridge closed, and my GPS insisted we jump it Dukes of Hazzard style, as it was not suggesting an alternate route. We had to get around the old fashioned way, by looking with our eyeballs. Like cavemen! We made it just in time for Bad Religion, and this is probably the only shot I got where you can see much of the venue:
A few words, about this camera. As it turns out, free cameras aren’t the most durable, and in the course of carrying it around in a purse, the LCD screen on the back busted. Half of it is just black, and the other half has a sort of rainbow effect going on. Now I can shoot without checking the LCD to see how it turns out, I shot film for a long time. What I have a much harder time with is shooting with no viewfinder. It’s a miracle there are any identifiable humans in any of these shots, is what I’m saying here.
Do I need to mention that Bad Religion was awesome? We drove three hours to watch them open for another band. They mostly stuck to the new album, but managed to fit in a few older tunes (Jay: “We used to be good!”). The Nautica… Jacobs… whatever is right on the river, so during their set, a boat went by with some kids at their prom.
Rise Against also mostly stuck to their new album, which I haven’t gotten around to picking up yet. We’ve seen them a few times now, and they still put on a good live show (although, one of the speakers on our side seemed to be blown, so the sound was a little sketchy). Also, we ended up behind the drunkest bros in all the universe, and spent most of the show dodging them.
Nice venue, great show, some of the crowd I could have done without. Escaping the venue was a whole other story, and we spent awhile in parking lot limbo. On the plus side, I stayed awake for the ride home (I’m the worst at road trips). Apparently, the trick is to blast Metallica as loud as possible. Good to know.
