You may not be familiar with Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™. Much of what you need to know can be summed up by him trademarking the phrase “painter of light”. He paints bucolic scenes, often of cottages that glow as if on fire, using a soft pastel palette. He also is frightened of hard edges.
Kinkade’s [...]
A while back I read a great tip on Parent Hacks. They suggested to let your kids fingerpaint in the bathtub and then just take a bath. You contain the mess and the kids. The kids get to have a great time, first painting and then a bonus bath. I decided that we’d try it [...]
Ever seen inside a prepared piano? I hadn’t either. Here’s what it looks like when you’re doing the preparing:
There’s a table in Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes that lists what strings you’re supposed to shove stuff in and how far from the bridge the stuff goes. Insert a screwdriver, twist to spread the strings, and in [...]
It’s almost Halloween time, so let’s build a Portal gun!
Two quick notes. One, if you’re wondering, “huh?”, and don’t think you’ll actually play the game Portal that the gun is from, you can read my dissection of said game or listen to me rave about it on a podcast. Two, if you don’t care about [...]
A few months ago I got on a Do-It-Yourself planner kick. I love having a paper planner even though I rarely ever use one for anything other than meal planning and grocery list making. But I had big plans for the one I was making. Surprise! I use this one for exactly the same things [...]
I am embarrassed to say that I was a little bit cocky when I graduated from college with my design degree. I didn’t understand why people (clients) wouldn’t listen to me when I would tell them what was best for their project. I thought that taking their input and making changes to my work was [...]
I started seriously paying attention to fonts when I was in college. I switched majors sometime in my junior year and began art/design classes. In one of my first design classes, I cut four Copperplate letter “T’s” out of Styrofoam so that I could lock them together, ink them and use them to make pattern [...]
This year’s theme: Stephen’s big ego.
First, I was recognized by so many people. I blame Brian Richardson. Sure, he’s had me doing videos for DCTV, but this year, in his role as director of videography, he started broadcasting panels on the DCTV in-hotel channel. Viewership jumped, and people began recognizing me and several other DCTV [...]
Since I was asked: why, yes, I can make an instrumental version of Boom Monkey available.
For Christmas, Misty’s mom got me a set of boomwhackers. They’re pitched plastic tubes — think handbells for people too nerdy to play handbells. After I got them, I had fun playing various simple songs for Eli. Then I started wondering: could I do something more complex with them?
The result, through a chain of reasoning [...]