I have been working hard over the last two days helping a colleague with some design work. The icons above are related to the project. I did all of the illustrations for them from scratch and I am pleased with how they turned out. They are intended to represent the many different categories of crafting – beading, photography, sewing, paper crafts, etc…
What do you think?
My new lens arrived last night, but I haven’t had much time to try it out. The picture above was one of the first with my new toy and captures Crusher somewhere he probably shouldn’t be. I have lots to learn with the new lens. The shot is focused more on his body than his face.
On a very exciting side note, the record in the background is the newly re-released Anodyne from Uncle Tupelo. I picked it up tonight on my way home from work and have given it a complete listen. Anodyne contains one of my all-time favorite songs, New Madrid, and many other classics from a great band. I have enjoyed this album on CD for years and finally get to experience it in all its 180-gram vinyl glory!
Last night, I went on a girl date with my friend, Emily. (Emily works with Travis and she is completely brilliant, and into literature, and has lived in the city for a year longer than I… so she is pretty much way out of my league. Thanks for hanging out with me, Emily!) We had planned to just go out to dinner, but picking restaurants in New York City is difficult! There is everything from mom and pop deli’s, to Applebee’s, to super-expensive, elite-only places, and everything in between. I don’t go out often, so I wanted to make the night count and chose two extremely trendy and popular spots: Bar Jamon and Momofuku Milk Bar.
Bar Jamon is a Spanish tapas (appetizers) bar in the Union Square neighborhood created by Mario Batali. I have been intrigued by Batali ever since watching Spain – On the Road Again and wanted to try out one of his many restaurants in the city. I thought a tapas bar sounded like a fun spot for girl chat and light snacks – I must have been right because the place was packed exclusively with women. You stand in Bar Jamon around counter-height tables and order from a menu that is heavy on cheese and thinly sliced, cured ham – i.e. jamon. We had the waiter/manager/host suggest three items for us to try: Pan con Tomate, jamon, and a mild, cow’s milk cheese. All three were delicious, and I was afraid I would not really like the jamon (which is kind of raw-ish). The Pan con Tomate is a bruchetta-style garlic bread and it was awesome. Next time, I want to try out Casa Mono, Batali’s sister, sit-down restaurant right next door. (You can read a real review of the two restaurants from NY Mag here.)
After the appetizers, we walked over to the East Village to check out two of the five different restaurants in the confusing Momofuku family, the adjoined Momofuku Ssam Bar and Momofuku Milk Bar. The wait for dinner at the Ssam Bar was longer than we had hoped, so we headed next door to the Milk Bar, which is pretty much a bakery/dessert bar. Like Jamon, you stand in the Milk Bar around tall tables. The place was packed, but I had anticipated that since the young Momofuku restaurants are pretty much the hottest things going on the NYC foodie blog scene right now. The crowd turned out to be fine, though, because the order line went fast and our Pork Buns, Chocolate Malt cake, and Crack Pie (seen above) came out almost immediately. The Momofuku Pork Buns have a cult following, and they lived up to their hype. I definitely recommend fighting the crowds to try them out. Yum… Pork Buns. I could definitely see myself getting addicted to them before the Crack Pie, which was very good, but not quite what I was expecting. (Don’t worry, it does not contain any real crack cocaine. Supposedly, it is a type of pie they made in the Depression with condensed milk… or something like that. For more info, here is Martha Stewart visiting the Milk Bar.) Emily ordered the Chocolate Malt Cake, which was delicious, but extremely rich. I definitely want to go back to the Milk Bar to test their other desserts and try out the other Momofuku restaurants. I hear the Noodle Bar has the best ramen in town…
It was a really fun night. It reminded me that I just need to have the courage to go to the super-trendy places even though they totally intimidate me. Maybe I’ll even try Minetta Tavern someday!
I have been using Vim for a few months now and have found a few plugins that I can’t live without.
NERD tree makes it super-simple to browse and open files from your filesystem. I’ve mapped the nerd tree toggle command to control-c and then use “j”, “k” and “enter” to find and open the file I want to edit. You can also open the file with “i” and open it in split-screen mode.
I am still learning to work snipMate into my daily use, but when I remember to use it I love it. snipMate copies the most powerful feature from TextMate – snippets – which allows you to type a “snippet” of code, like say “input” when in an HTML file, and then it will fill out the input tag for you. You then can tab to each of the parts of the code that you need to fill out.
Today I downloaded and installed NERD commenter and matchit. Commenter makes it easier to add comments and comment out code for easy testing and matchit extends vim’s ‘%’ operator and makes it possible open and close HTML tags and much more.
I have also been developing on a few different machines and needed a way to keep my plugins and .vimrc file in sync. I decided it would be easy enough to create a git repo at github for my ~/.vim directory to easily share plugins and settings across machines. Feel free to check out the plugins and settings I am using and please share any other good tips and tricks that you have found.
This post is the first in my new series of NYC Cupcake Reviews. Since reviews require taste-testing, I hope to publish many more honest and objective cupcake reviews in the near future. Check back often!
Pictured above are the six cupcakes I bought at Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery, which is located in the Lower East Side on Rivington Street. I loved the name of the bakery when I found it online and was super-excited to visit. I was a little bit let down by the exterior of the shop when I arrived, but the inside was cozy and the woman behind the counter was exceptionally friendly and patient as I picked out all of my different flavors. I purchased a variety, including chocolate-peppermint, pumpkin, vanilla, chocolate, lemon, and red velvet. It took Travis and I a couple of days to finish all of the flavors, and the last ones were a bit dry by the time we got to them – they were definitely best on the day of purchase. The pumpkin flavor was our very favorite. The cake was moist and the cream cheese icing was very good. Sadly, Travis found an egg shell in his cake, which sort of hurt his overall impression. The peppermint-chocolate was our second favorite flavor, but the cake was not as moist – even on the first day. The vanilla and chocolate cakes were topped with chocolate-almond frosting, which was overpowering, and the red velvet cake’s icing was way too buttery.
The cupcakes looked sweet in the bakery case (below), but they did not travel well. Overall, I would describe these cakes as a little above average, and would recommend trying one if you visit Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery and plan to sit and eat it there. One of the best things about these cupcakes is that they are only $1.50 a piece. Next time I go, I will make sure to order their seasonal or special flavor.
A few weeks ago I decided to buy a new lens for my camera. I wanted a lens with a larger aperture so I could take pictures with a shorter depth of field. I did my research and settled on the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. It has gotten good reviews around the web, is pretty light and not too expensive.
After deciding on the lens I needed to find a place to buy it from. I found an auction on eBay that had the lens priced lower than anywhere else I could find it and the seller had good reviews. I purchased the lens and waited the 12-13 days for the lens to arrive. After not hearing from the seller or getting my lens in the time promised I went back to eBay and found the following postscript at the bottom of the product description:
On occasion, eBay will run auctions to test various functionality on the site. This is one of those auctions. These are always titled “Test Item; Please Do Not Bid” or some variation of this. These auctions are not selling anything – they are merely tests of the site or system. Please do not bid on these auctions. Thanks for your cooperation and support!
I either bought my lens from someone at eBay testing things or from a scammer. Either way, I don’t think I am getting my lens. I haven’t tried too hard yet, but have not been successful at getting my money back from the auction.
This morning I tried to find the lens on eBay from a different seller at the same great price, but was unsuccessful. I went ahead and purchased the lens from Amazon and should have it by the end of the week.
I haven’t done one of these magazine collages in over a year (the last one was posted in September 2007). They are just fun little pages where I glue all of the things that catch my eye from a single magazine issue. I don’t usually hang on to old issues of fashion mags, so this is a way to digitally archive the things I liked.
Recently, Cookie magazine shut down and they replaced my subscription with one to Lucky. I don’t mind. (Well, I do mind that Cookie is gone – I liked that mag.) I have fun looking through fashion magazines; I just never felt quite right subscribing to Lucky, the self-proclaimed “magazine about shopping.” But, now it is here, so I might as well enjoy it!
My favorites:
Gap chambray down vest – Man, I love this denim puffy vest! Sadly, I can’t find it on the Gap website… (p. 99)
CupcakesandCashmere.com – A new blog I will check out. It is about shopping… (p. 30)
Philosophy Divine Illumination- This moisturizer claims to disguise imperfections and brighten your skin tone. It is new, and I am always game to try something new! (p. 69)
Lavish crochet and glass bead cuff bracelet – crocheted gold wire with beads – very cool. (p. 84)
Coach Kristin Bag – I really like these new handbags from Coach. I am thinking about a black one… (p. 58)
Fresh Strawberry Flowers Eau de Parfum – I like the fresh brand and this perfume sounds really pretty… I guess I would need to smell it first to confirm. (p. 75)
Romeo + Juliet – So, this isn’t really a fashion item, but Romeo + Juliet was referenced as an influence for one of the fashion spreads in the magazine and it really took me back. The movie came out when I was a sophomore in high school – back when PG-13 movies were still quite cool in my mind – and I was just blown away by it. I don’t think any other movie could be more cool to a 15-year-old girl! I need to watch it again asap! (p. 39)
Aveda Pure Abundance Hair Potion – Intriguing. It is a powder that transforms into a lotion that claims to give your hair body and texture. (p. 26)
Cropped, pleated pants- These usually wouldn’t be something I would go for, but they are coming into style for spring and I think I could pull them off. Maybe. (p. 88 & 110)
That is about it… I picked out more beauty products than clothes this time. Maybe January isn’t the best time for fashion – it is too early for spring styles, but winter clothes no longer have any appeal… What has caught your eye this month?
New year, same work. Productivity is my goal, but my mind keeps flitting around between all off my different projects and duties. I like to have variety, but sometimes I wish I was better at staying on task! Today I fit in some design work for Swap-bot and set up an email newsletter system for the Swap-bot blog. Sweet. (You can sign up for the Swap-bot blog emails here. I know you want to get the latest news and info about the ‘bot!)
I have almost run out of the 500 one-inch Swap-bot buttons I ordered at the beginning of last year. (I have been sending them in all my swaps and handing them out at all sorts of crafty events.) So, I reordered the two original designs, plus created this new larger button. It is going to be metallic! Pretty awesome.
Some other good Swap-bot news: I am going to be hosting the Etsy Labs craft night on Monday, February 1st! I am really excited about it. If you are in NY, come make adorable matchbox Valentines with us!
I got quite a few great gifts for Christmas this year and it caught me really off guard. I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted so it surprised me so much that my family was able to find perfect gifts.
I received many non tech related gifts, but tonight I wanted to write about two gifts that were given to the electronic enthusiast in me.
My parents gave me a pair of winter gloves that allow me to still use my iPhone when worn. The gloves have tiny metallic nubs that allow me touch, tap and swipe on the phone while keeping warm in the winter. My mom saw these gloves featured on the Today Show and they are a great replacement to my previous iPhone gloves – a pair of knit gloves with the finger tips cut off (or rather not knit closed). I have only used the gloves sporadically so far, but with the temperatures here dropping am going to start using them fulltime.
My father-in-law, also known an P1 around these parts of the internet, gave me an Eye-fi with Geolocation. An Eye-fi is a special type of memory card for cameras that has built in wi-fi. When you snap a picture and are in range of a wi-fi network the card knows about, the eye-fi card will send the image to the Eye-fi servers. From there, I have the picture sent on to Flickr. I have all the pictures marked as private on Flickr so you don’t save to see all the bad ones I take. In addition to sending to Flickr, the Eye-fi is also set up to download the photos and import into iPhoto for me. I no longer have to ever worry about syncing the photos off the camera with my computer. The Eye-fi also geocodes each picture when it can. I haven’t had amazing success with this feature yet, but it seems to work pretty good. It knew the location of the photos when I took them at my parents house, but can’t get the location of my apartment. I am hoping the reason for that is not an error in the way I set up the Eye-fi.
Also, while it isn’t exactly tech, my parents gave me the first two seasons of Burn Notice, a show about a quirky spy trying to get back into the CIA by finding who burned him. It is one of my family’s favorite shows, but I hadn’t seen it yet. Since getting home, Rachel and I have been on a tear to watch every episode. It’s a great show and getting me ready for my favorite spy drama/comedy – Chuck.
