Bacon is NOT an Herb

Artichoke meal from
Bacon is NOT an Herb

Be sure to bookmark or subscribe to the blog Bacon is NOT an Herb — Exploring Vegetarianism in PA Dutch Country. It is filled with a growing list of well-written posts chocked with useful information for foodies, even if you are not a vegetarian. The recipes are spot-on, restaurant reviews are insightful and entertaining to read, and the rants expose the honesty of the writer’s soul. Join her as she shares, “what I am learning as I eat my way along the quest to find a personal balance, challenge the earth’s collective imagination & true indigo.”
Visit the blog here.

Women’s World Cup Final

Watch Japan’s goalkeeper Ayumi Kaihori save
the ball during the final match, here.

I spent most of the afternoon at a local establishment watching the thrilling final game of the Women’s World Cup between the U.S. and Japan. How utterly heartbreaking it was to watch the reaction of some of the patrons there upon the loss by the U.S. team. With their “us versus them” outlook and middle finger retorts, they ultimately disgraced themselves while giving Americans — as well as all men — a bad name with their poor sportsmanship and misogynistic attitude.

. . .

Please take a few moments to read the expertly written post by Ray Curren; Women’s World Cup – Things We Learned: Final Edition As Japan Is Crowned on the women’s soccer fan site All White Kit (AWK):

“The rules of athletics (at least knockout style) dictate that there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser.

Expert commentary, I know.

But (and I realize not everyone reading this is a United States fan, and I love that about AWK, so keep visiting) if you can take yourself out of your rooting shoes (or jersey) for a second and take the game you watched on Sunday for what it was.

A brilliant advertisement for women’s soccer, which saw the best the game has to offer. An underdog that everyone could root for, coming off an unspeakable tragedy in their home country, playing an attractive style of soccer, and exuding pure class and sportsmanship at just about every turn.

Of course, the rub is that this great story of Japan comes at the expense of the U.S., who lost the game in heartbreaking fashion, leading both in normal time and extra time before losing in penalties. It’s hard to imagine losing in a more painful fashion, actually.

But, perhaps the biggest lesson I try to get across to both the players I coach and students I teach is the ‘put yourself in someone else’s shoes’ lesson.

Can you be happy for someone else even if it comes at your expense? Can you put aside your pride to congratulate an opponent or adversary on a job well done?…”
Read the rest of this well written post here.

Paper Passion Fragrance

via green chair press
“The book-aholic has found the cure for everyone who misses the smell of paper in these digital times: a perfume that smells of books, thanks to a ‘fatty’ olfactory mark.” Karl Lagerfeld took his inspiration from the smell of both printed and unprinted paper...”
Read the rest here and here.  Another paper-inspired fragrance is Demeter’s Paperback. I wonder if they will ever come out with a Printer’s Ink & Toner Fragrance, which I already smell of most weekdays after 5:00 p.m.

Bike Type

via HOW
Scott Kirkwood creates T-shirts featuring bikes built of type.
Visit his Cranky Threads shop here.

Native American Language Fonts

via we love typography and Typophile
An interesting discussion on one of the boards over at Typohile. Scroll down to 25.August.2008 to see a “sample of the Cherokee syllabary, showing the handwritten forms followed by an early draft of the more familiar typeset forms. They are written in pairs, divided by a vertical zigzag bar.”
Thread can be found here.

The Color of: Oliver Sacks

via notcot
“Fung Kwok Pan has developed this slick little piece of code that allows you to enter a search query, then grabs 80 Flickr photos related to your query, then makes a composite of the photos, showing you the color of whatever you entered. It’s pretty neat to watch this thing work.”
Try it yourself here.

Harry Potter Graffiti

via death by kerning

See more images here.

Graphic Novel With Thought Bubbles Visible Only Under UV

via make
“Printed with a third ink — invisible without a UV light source — the comic book ‘SVK’ has hidden layers which are only revealed with a UV light source…”
Read a bit more about it here. I haven’t seen this graphic novel, but I do like this interesting use of printing and viewing technology.

Wood Type of the Month: Antique Tuscan

via International Printing Museum
“Read this month’s wood-type of the month here to learn what 1800s wood-type font was used recently for the title poster for a movie about a country music singer...”

Images from Old Books

via Brain Pickings

Detail of the title page from
De Studio Literarum (1536)

The site ‘From Old Books’ features over 3,100 high-resolution free images scanned from more than 180 different old or rare books, with extracts, by Liam Quin.
Visit the site here.

Business Cards of the Day

I really like that the Digimarc card utilizes their our technology of using an embedded imperceptible digital watermark. Learn more about Digimarc here.

AA Taxi — “[From one side of a fictional phone conversation] We need to keep the name and web address ABOVE the bricks in the stadium photo... no, no, no, you cannot crop the taxi’s wheels. I do not care about the photo’s proportions! Absolutely not,, we cannot reshoot the image so that it works, no one cares about proportions. Look, I do this all the time in Word — just stretch the image so that it fits the card, it’s easy! No one will notice that now the Joe Paterno statue looks like he is barely 5 fee tall and weights over 250 pounds or that our cab looks like a flattened low-rider. Perfect! Print ’em. Wait, you are charging me for these changes? But it is MY card...” Ah, taxi stories. They generally last just about two weeks and then fade away.

Every time I look at The Enchanted Kitchen card, I think of Bewitched. Which led me to this site of Mischa Ho’s font Witched. Even though it isn’t Mischa’s font, it still reminds me of it.

Hotel Manor was a welcome break at the end of a 26 mile bike ride. If you are up near Slate Run, be sure to stop by— they have a nice menu and a perfect location overlooking Slate Run and the rail trail. Their paw-print HM logo is just a bit too forced for my liking though.

Tattly: Temporary tattoo store

This one makes me smile — 5K1 N !!!

via swissmiss
“Tattly, temporary tattoo store for design-minded kids and kids-at-heart, is the brainchild of swissmiss and all of the tattoo designs are created by all-star designers…”
Read more about the designs here and visit Tattly here.

Quoins

Image from Brad Cornelius’s photostream.

via lawsonarchive
“In the past four centuries, very little tight logical change has been seen in the quoin, a simple item of composing room furniture used in preparing type for the press. The word itself, a variant of coin, has been used by printers since the 16th century. It is been discussed by the writers of printing manuals since Moxon’s treatise, Mechanick Exercises, first appeared in England in 1683….”
Read the rest here. Quoins are expandable metal or wooden wedges used by printers to lock up a form within a chase. More images of quoins can be found here and here.

July 12, 1960: Etch a Sketch Goes on Sale

via wired
“The technology behind this children’s toy is both simple and complex. Simple, in that an internal stylus is used, manipulated by turning horizontal and vertical knobs to ‘etch a sketch’ onto a glass window coated with aluminum powder. Complex, because the Etch a Sketch employs a fairly sophisticated pulley system that operates the orthogonal rails that move the stylus around when the knobs are turned…”
Read the rest here, and view a gallery of images here. As a child, I was fascinated by the silver powder inside of Etch-a-Sketchs.

1930s London Zoo Sign Writer

Looks like he painted a mean ampersand!

via buzzfeed
See more photos of Pauline Locke’s grandfather working at the London Zoo in the 1930s, here. He is using a Mahl stick!

AntiMosquito Fumigator App

via swissmiss
“The app claims to keep mosquitos away as long as you keep it running in the background. It emits a high-pitched sound that humans don’t hear but mosquitos do and not appreciate…”
I wonder if this app works!?!

The Johnson Box

Frank Johnson

I didn’t realize that this technique of marketing had a name until I was working on a PowerPoint slide last week.

via wikipedia
“A Johnson Box is a box commonly found at the top of direct mail letters, containing the key message of the letter. The purpose of it is to draw the reader’s attention to this key message first, and hopefully grab their attention, enticing them to read the rest of the letter. The Johnson Box is named after direct marketer Frank Johnson, who is credited as having first used the Johnson Box to improve response to his offers for American Heritage magazine. He does not claim credit for creating the device, claiming to have only popularized it.” Johnson died at the age of 88 on March 6, 2001.
See an example of a letter, believed to be from 1959, that contains a Johnson Box at the top, here. More on Johnson can be found here.

Image of the Day: Mt. Nittany View

People for Bikes

via freezethawcycles
“...We’re all united by a shared passion: bikes. Bikes keep us healthy, carry us from point A to point B, save us from high gas prices, and make our air cleaner and our roads less congested. Bikes fill our lives with adventure and excitement, relaxing our minds and energizing our souls. Peopleforbikes.org is dedicated to channeling that passion to improve the future of bicycling. Our goal is to gather a million names of support, to speak with one, powerful voice—to make bicycling safer, more convenient and appealing for everyone. Simply put, we believe that life is far more enjoyable when it’s experienced on two wheels. We believe that by coming together, we can make our world a better place to ride.”
Find out more here. 

2-Foot Hand-Cut Playing Cards

via cmybacon
“Paper artist Emmanuel Jose is working on a year-long project hand-cutting a 2 foot tall deck of transformation playing cards out of paper, 1 card each week for 52 weeks. When his deck is completed, Emmanuel hopes to get it printed as a regular deck of cards and have a show to display his papercut designs...”
Follow his progress on his Tumblr blog, Ncyclopedia.