Yearly Archives: 2006

Reviews

On-Off Alarm Clock

New Alarm ClockEngadget has a post about this, and I couldn’t help writing one either. This looks like a pretty cool alarm clock, and the price is very reasonable given that it’s made by a designer. The clock is angle shaped, and it has two positions. One side is for alarm-on, and the other for alarm-off. I have to ask the same question Engadget did. Is there a Snooze functionality?

Here’s the link to the designer’s site (Nina Tolstrup), and here’s the link to the Engadget post. Photo courtesy of Nina Tolstrup and GreenerGrassDesign.

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Thoughts

Just designed two new websites

My wife teaches piano lessons to children and adults, and has also started to do primer music camps for children, so I designed two websites for her. The first is Fun Piano Lessons and the other is Fun Music Camps.

I want to point them out because I’m using the WordPress CMS to drive the sites, yet you won’t be able to tell that at first look. I designed completely custom templates for each that hide the usual WordPress functionality, so the sites look like normal websites, yet everything on them can be updated on the fly. Of course, I used pure CSS to drive the layout, styles, colors and graphics.

The other cool thing is that it only took me a day to do each site. That’s the power of leveraging the WordPress CMS platform! One can focus on the design aspects and the content, and leave the back end to WordPress. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

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Thoughts

Disney recycled animation frames

Cartoon Brew has a post linking to a Russian site, where they do side by side comparisons of frames, to show you how often Disney animators reused animation sequences. The site is in Russian, but the photos are readily understandable, so I encourage you to visit it. This is pretty interesting. I hadn’t known about it, but it makes sense. Hand animation is very hard and tedious work, and if one can use shortcuts without taking away from the viewer’s enjoyment, why not? Here’s the link.

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Events

Apple Introduces 17-inch MacBook Pro

Hot diggety! Today Apple unveiled its 17-inch MacBook Pro, and boy, is it a beauty! Check it out!

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Thoughts

Scientists debunk astrology

Discovery News has a great article detailing a large study done to see if there’s any connection between astrological signs and personality traits. The result: no such thing. I had a hunch this was true for some time now, and I’m glad to see scientific proof of it. Here’s the article.

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