Keith.truong

Gotta vote them all! Utah-based designer and illustrator Brandon Dayton has created a series that finally gives us a reason to say ‘aww’ to politicians: Pokemon U.S. Presidents.

In the series, he uses a mix of puns to reimagine presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, George Washington, and Jimmy Carter.

You can purchase prints of the series over on his Etsy page.

The post This is what American presidents would look like if they were Pokemon appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Designed by CODO Design | Country: United States | Pair with: Miansai

“We first met Dave and his sons back in 2012 when we helped to brand 450 North Brewing Co. That first project was foundational, ending with a visual identity system.

Earlier this year, we were excited when Dave called to have us design packaging for their 4 house beers; Scarecrow IPA, Copperhead Amber, Ironman English Ale, and Honey Kölsch. We got to dig back into the same Indiana farm aesthetics we explored initially and developed a fun package design system that they can grow into as they continue adding seasonals and specialty beers.”

- lovelypackage.com occasionally receives vendor/brand sponsorships for mentioning their products and services.

The work of kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe never cease to amaze with their simplicity of movements. What’s even more amazing is that they are set in motion when there is the slightest of wind present, setting off their rotating blades as sheer poetry in action. For each piece, Howe worked with some specialized software to produce an initial digital mockup. Only upon its successful testing would the individual components be then fabricated from metal and installed.

The post These wind-powered kinetic sculptures by Anthony Howe may just hypnotize you into a deep trance appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Ben Gibbard knows what you're thinking about the new Death Cab For Cutie album, their last to feature founding member Chris Walla. He's thinking it too. "Oh, there is undoubtedly a line in the sand here," he says. "The position we're in – it's a blessing and a curse – is......

Today, Seoul hosted the League of Legends world championships. It's a big enough event that it occupied the outdoor soccer stadium built for the 2002 World Cup. The New York Times has a decent 40,000-foot overview of the rise of professional gaming in South Korea.

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Peyton Manning broke the NFL touchdown pass record tonight, and we get this. What is this shit? This isn't clever! Someone just figured out that a "1" and "I" are similar enough, and didn't care about the rest. Manning made HIBTORY tonight. Cool.

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‘Archer’ Drops ISIS Spy Agency Name:

Come January during the sixth season premiere of “Archer,” the show’s central spy agency will no longer be called ISIS. The creators of the hit FX animated show have eliminated all use of the acron…

Nope, you are not seeing a pixelated image of Norway’s new currency. That is the real deal right there! Last spring, the central bank of Norway, Norges Bank, held a nationwide design competition to replace their look of their currency. Their theme: ‘The Sea’.

Instead of choosing just one winner, they chose two – one design for each side. The front side features a series of artworks from design studio The Metric System, called ‘Norwegian Living Space’. Beautiful and timeless this front design might be, it doesn’t hold a candle to the attention the back design is getting. The back side features an abstract motif of pixels called ‘Ripple Effects’ by Enzo Finger.

‘The obverses from The Metric System are very well suited to the incorporation of necessary security elements. The expression is open, light and typically Nordic’, says Norges Bank. ‘Using the pixel motifs from Snøhetta Design as the reverse will give the notes both a traditional and a modern expression’.

The bank notes are set to be released in 2017. What do you think of the classic/modern design? Yay or nay?

The post In 2017, this is what Norway’s money will look like appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

You might not be able to fire blanks from this Gunblade recreation like Squall does, but that sure doesn't make the weapon any less deadly. It is, after all, still a sharp blade!

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Oh God. Ohhhhh God. I hurt all over. I hurt all over and I want to die.

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The Wallkill Mighty Mites (which has to be the best name ever for a Little League football team) began their season innocently enough.

Coaches had created a banner for the team to run through to inaugurate the new season. The players eagerly ran straight at the banner, ready to tackle a brand new season with all the gusto that only six and seven year-olds can manage. And then the mean banner refused to cooperate, clothes-lining some players and causing a pileup of little bodies that is more reminiscent of a loose ball scrum than a banner celebration.

The best part though? How the little cheerleaders respond as if nothing went wrong.

[Bleacher Report]

Article found on: Next Impulse Sports

SMU’s Der’rikk Thompson almost unintentionally ran over Texas A&M mascot Reveille, but a quick-thinking cadet was not about to let that happen. Watch the Texas A&M cadet throw a solid block to protect the pup from a possible collision.

According to SB Nation, the corps member who protected the pup is Mascot Handler, Ryan Kreider.

Article found on: Next Impulse Sports

Get your craft on and catch a game at Barton Springs Beer Hall! 16 different brews to choose from + 16 oz. Fireman’s #4 cans. We’ll be showing the biggest NCAA and NFL games both weekends on the jumbo screen. Great music, big beers, and football season. What else do you need?

Which beers will be available in the Craft Beer Hall?

• Fireman’s #4 16oz Can
• Real Ale Hans Pils
• Real Ale Devil’s Backbone
• Real Ale Four Squared
• Alaskan Freeride APA
• Alaskan White
• Odell 90 Shilling
• Odell IPA
• Stone IPA
• Brooklyn Lager
• Harpoon UFO White
• Woodchuck Hopsation Cider
• Lagunitas IPA
• Victory Prima Pils
• Breckenridge Agave Wheat
• Original Sin Hard Cider
• Left Hand Milk Stout

At Lost At E Minor, we’re old enough to be fans of the original hit by German band Nena. Well, at least some of us are (no names, no packdrills). But this version of the 1983 anti-nuclear protest song is even catchier. [Watch the awesome video here]

Somehow Andrew Huang has replicated the staccato rhythm and distinctive thudding bassline of the original using just four balloons. Four! But why not 99, we ask? ‘Thought about using 99 balloons but it worked with 4 so mehhh’. There you go.

The post Watching this guy perform the song 99 Red Balloons using JUST red balloons has blown our minds appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

The past couple of weeks have seen a spate of confrontations among air travelers over reclining seats. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as flying has become a somewhat stressful undertaking. A cramped, pressurized room full of cranky people is a recipe for quibbling over anything.

The social contract involved in flying is nebulous, and one potential source of the strife in the skies could be that people vastly disagree about what’s considered rude.

To find out what people actually consider rude, we ran a SurveyMonkey Audience poll Aug. 29 and 30, and asked air passengers what’s cool and what isn’t. We had 1,040 respondents, 874 of whom had flown.

Let’s first tackle the question of reclining seats. Of 858 respondents, 16 percent always recline, 20 percent usually do, 14 percent recline about half the time, 30 percent do only once in a while, and 20 percent never recline.

This is a remarkably even split. Half of respondents recline half the time or more, half of respondents do it once in a while or never. So, we’re at a bit of an impasse here. Only 41 percent of respondents thought it was very or somewhat rude to recline your seat during a flight.

Most people (70 percent) said they would not eliminate the option to recline seats on flights. But most people (64 percent) also said passengers should not recline if the flier behind them asks them not to. The rest of them said a passenger has no obligation to the person behind them.

We also asked people about common aggravating behaviors on flights to determine whether those actions were very rude, somewhat rude or not rude at all.

Waking up a passenger so you can leave your seat can be interpreted as either very or not really rude; it’s about intent. Only 37 percent of respondents thought it was rude to wake a neighbor if you need to use the bathroom. But if you’re just trying to stretch your legs, disturbing someone’s slumber is considered impolite.

And while it’s not considered super impolite to ask to switch seats, more people are OK with it if you’re moving toward a relative than a buddy.

I was surprised at how many folks thought knowingly bringing unruly children on a flight was rude — a whopping 82 percent. Passengers were much more charitable to babies. Interestingly, people’s responses to questions about kids depended a lot on whether they had children younger than 18. Only 21 percent of 188 parents thought bringing unruly children on a plane was “very rude,” compared to 47 percent of the 657 people without kids. Passengers without children under 18 were three times as likely to consider bringing a baby on a plane very or somewhat rude than people with kids.

We also asked who should have control over the middle arm rests and the window shade. (The obvious correct answers to these questions are “the person in the middle seat gets both arm rests” and “the person by the window controls the shade,” but you really screwed up on these questions, America.) Only 14 percent of fliers said that, in a row with three seats, the person seated in the middle got both arm rests. Ten percent of respondents are fascists who said whoever puts their arm on the arm rest first gets it; 2 percent are sadists who think the people in the aisle and window seats get both arm rests; and 67 percent are socialists who think they should be shared. Five percent responded “other” and wrote in responses such as “whoever is largest” or “the youngest child” or “me.”

Forty-two percent of respondents acknowledged that the person in the window seat should control the shade, and 58 percent thought everyone should have a say in the shade’s status.

A full 16 percent of respondents had used personal electronics during take off and landing in violation of the direction of flight attendants. And settling an age-old question I’ve always had — do people actually smoke in bathrooms? — seven respondents admitted they had illegally smoked there.

There’s opportunity to break these responses down further. You can find the raw data on GitHub.

A good product designer should develop products that contribute to our lives, helping us as we try to make the best of it. At least, this is what I think so I am puzzled with product designers whose creations leave me scratching my head. Are they laughing at my expense? Take the case of Katerina Kamprani, an Athens-based architect and 3D modeller who, I am guessing, has an unique sense of humour.

She has created a series of everyday objects called The Uncomfortable which has succeeded in making me feel exactly so. What she did was consider each object’s useful function and then set about rendering them absolutely obsolete.

I don’t know about you but after viewing The Uncomfortable series, I am now very interested to see what sort of buildings Kamprani has designed. Do their doors even open or can their roofs shield the inhabitants?

The post These products are specially designed to make them unusable appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Austin City Limits is excited to announce new tapings for our landmark Season 40: Jenny Lewis on October 1, Sam Smith on October 2, The Avett Brothers on October 6 and Spoon on October 9th.

Jenny Lewis last appeared on our stage in 2005 as part of the now-defunct Rilo Kiley. Prior to her success with that band, she had been an actress from a young age, appearing in films and TV shows until 1998. That year she and Blake Sennett started indie rockers Rilo Kiley, who went on to success with four LPs, the last of which was 2007’s acclaimed Under the Blacklight. Lewis had already begun her solo career by that time, starting with 2006’s Rabbit Fur Coat, which found her working in a rootsier vein. The classy pop of Acid Tongue arrived in 2008, followed by 2010’s I’m Having Fun Now, a duet album with singer/songwriter Johnathan Rice under the name Jenny & Jonny. This year she released The Voyager, a Ryan Adams-produced LP about which Drowned in Sound remarked, “[The] balance of frothiness and fearless introspection make it something pretty special.” Join us Oct.1 as Lewis preps for her ACL Festival appearance with her solo ACL debut.

This year Sam Smith came seeming out of nowhere with his massive hit single “Stay With Me.” The London native is an alumnus of the program Youth Music Theatre UK, having studied under British jazz musician Joanna Eden. He made his musical and chart debut singing lead on electronic group Disclosure’s U.K. hit single “Latch,” following up with a featured appearance on English DJ/producer Naughty Boy’s “La La La,” which hit #1 on the British charts. In between those hits Smith launched his solo career with “Lay Me Down,” but it was his post-”La La La” followup “Money On My Mind” that pushed him to the #1 slot on his own. In the Lonely Hour, his debut LP of danceable pop/soul, arrived in the spring, along with his third single. “Stay With Me” broke Smith wide open on an international scale, earning him a third charttopper in the U.K. and a No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200. Now, in anticipation of his debut at ACL Fest, Smith makes his debut Oct. 2 on our show as well.

The Avett Brothers last joined us in 2010, appearing in support of their breakthrough album I and Love and You. The North Carolina roots rockers haven’t been idle in the five years between slots, however. In 2012 the quartet released its Rick Rubin-produced The Carpenter, which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The LP found the Avetts expanding their sound beyond their folk and bluegrass roots, with Rolling Stone calling it the “sound of a band pushing past an old identity and toward something bigger.” The band quickly followed The Carpenter with 2013’s Magpie and the Dandelion, a record made mostly of songs recorded during the previous LP’s sessions that hit No. 5 on the Billboard charts. Under the Radar wrote that the band “have filled Magpie and the Dandelion with taut, unaffected verses that dredge the past, weigh damage against possibility, and seek emergence through selflessness and emotional responsibility,” while American Songwriter remarked, “The Avett Brothers are (very wisely) growing their sound, while remaining true to their core principles and what listeners like about them to begin with.” Join us on Oct. 6 as we welcome back The Avett Brothers.

The Austin band Spoon is certainly no unknown quantity for Austin City Limits – the modern rock act has been on the show three times, in 2003, 2005 and 2010. The last time they were here was in support of their hit album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and its hit single “The Underdog.” The band followed up with the equally popular Transference, after which Spoon took an extended break, allowing leader Britt Daniel to work with the group Divine Fits and drummer Jim Eno to produce albums for the Heartless Bastards, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears and Phosphorescent. But now Spoon is back with They Want My Soul, a record that proves the extended time off did nothing to diminish their power. Rolling Stone described it as “an immediate grabber on par with the group’s best work to date,” while Exclaim called it “a bold and swaggering declaration that Spoon have undoubtedly still got it – in spades.” We’re thrilled to welcome Spoon back to the ACL stage Oct. 9.

Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before the taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings.

 

On January 19th, 2014, Many A True Nerd started a new playthrough of Fallout 3. Not just any playthrough, though: his goal was to eradicate everyone from the capital wasteland.

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They're three-wide down the Hanger Straight at Silverstone, and one Mazda MX5 Cup racer pull up closer and, well, see for yourself.

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[Photo: Justin Barbin/ECHI]

One of Chicago's most iconic deep dish institutions is headed for Texas, according to a hiring notice. Breastauranteur Doug Guller's ATX Brands has partnered with Gino's East to bring the chain to Austin and several other Texas cities. Gino's East is a Chicago institution with franchise plans in the works, though currently their only locations are in the general Chicago area.

The Texas locations of the restaurant are currently hiring general managers in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Woodlands. ATX Brands operates trademarked breastaurant Bikini's, as well as Austin restaurants and bars like Pelon's and Scoot Inn. The hiring notice emphasizes that Gino's East is "family friendly," so perhaps this is an effort to diversify their portfolio.

Update! Here's a few more details from Gino's East's Noah Himmel: the restaurants will feature Chicago craft beers, the restaurant's signature sausage, and Texas barbecue pizzas.
· General Managers - Gino's East [ATX Brands]
· All Gino's East Coverage [ECHI]
· All Bikini's Coverage [EATX]

UPDATE (4:02pm): It's official: Amazon has purchased Twitch, following months of rumors that Google was looking to buy the video streaming company.

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Austin Beerworks rechristened their Peacemaker beer as "Anytime Ale," and by "Anytime" they mean "All The Time, Like Every Hour, For Days." To celebrate the release, the brewery released a 99-beer multipack to select stores around Austin, retailing for only $99. It's legit. Austin Beerworks explains on Twitter, "Is it a joke? Yes. Is it real? Also yes. "

Austin Beerworks – Peacemaker Anytime Ale from Beef and Pie Productions on Vimeo.

· Anytime Ale [Official]
· All Austin Beerworks Coverage [EATX]

[Photo: Players/Facebook]

Time to revisit the late night drunk burger destination of your youth: longtime campus restaurant Players will shutter in November. After Reddit rumored the move, CultureMap confirmed the closure with Players co-owner Carlos Oliveira. The University of Texas purchased the land in 2012 for nearly $4 million, and has now decided to terminate the restaurant's lease.
· Players Hamburgers to Close November 30 [Reddit]
· Iconic Campus-Area Burger Joint Players Forced to Close [CultureMap]
· UT Acquires Players Restaurant in $4 Million Deal [Statesman]
· All Players Coverage [EATX]

If Homer and Mr. Burns' terrifying bout of cabin fever didn't scare you from spending days trapped inside, prepare to enter heaven: The Simpsons' 12-day marathon on FXX begins at 10 a.m. EST, sharp, on Thursday, August 21st with "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," and ends 25 seasons, 552 episodes and one feature-length movie later on September 1st at 11:59 p.m.

Uproxx has compiled an exhaustive exact schedule, for anyone interested in making sure they know exactly when their favorite episodes will play. Of course it goes without saying: Do not stay up for 12 days straight, and please......

One of my favorite political scientists is Stephen Ansolabehere at Harvard. I greatly admire his scholarship on elections, politics and the media, and political economy. But there is another remarkable — and almost certainly underappreciated — fact about Ansolabehere: His last name is six valid two-letter Scrabble words in a row.

AN. SO. LA. BE. HE. RE.

Two-letter words are the nucleotides of Scrabble; they compose its DNA. They allow long, high-scoring words, including bingos, to be hooked onto the board. They also allow potentially high-scoring “overlaps”: Words played next to each other, creating other two-letter words. (For an extreme example, suppose the word INTONER is on the board horizontally. TUATERA, a reptile, could be played right above it, forming seven two letter words in the process: TI, UN, AT, TO, EN, RE and AR.) They also provide convenient, and often high-scoring, ways to get rid of big-point tiles — ZA, QI, XU, JO and the like are some of the most-often-played words in the competitive game.

An aspiring Scrabble player is extremely well-served to learn what serious players call “the twos.” There are only about 100, depending on the Scrabble dictionary you use, and you probably already know at least half of them. The rest can be learned quickly — on the subway, in line at Starbucks or in a staff meeting.

Scrabble expert John O’Laughlin has developed the metric of “playability.” For the sabermetric-minded, think VORW — Value Over Replacement Word. By having the artificial intelligence Scrabble player Quackle play itself many, many times, he’s calculated, essentially, which words would hurt your score the most if you didn’t know them. The vast majority of the words on the top of the playability list are two letters long.

In North America, the governing list for competitive play is the Official Tournament and Club Word List (OWL). Elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom and at world championships, it is Collins Scrabble Words (CSW). Even the popular Words With Friends app uses a slightly different lexicon (WWF). Using Scrabble word-study software Zyzzyva, I’ve mapped the Scrabble genome:

North American Scrabble’s DNA is about to change — as language evolves, the game evolves. The North American word list OWL is expanding, for the first time since 2006, and the new words are set to take effect Dec. 1. For all the clamor in the press about the update — CHILLAX! BROMANCE! SELFIE! MOJITO! — most of the stories bury the lede. The biggest effect on the game will be thanks to the new, very short words. There are four:

DA: (n.) dad

GI: (n.) a martial arts garment

PO: (n.) a chamber pot

TE: (n.) the musical note ti

Although this may not represent quite the sea change that the previous expansion did (when QI, an essential life force, and ZA, short for pizza, were added), it will transform the game. (These words were, however, already available for play outside North America.)

Because of licensing issues, the body that governs competitive Scrabble tournaments in North America, the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), hasn’t released a complete list of the additional words to the public. But some enterprising Scrabble players — including the Seattle Scrabble Club and others on Facebook — have taken it upon themselves to construct such a list by hand, by combing through the hundreds of thousands of words in the hard copy of the new dictionary, first made available for sale at the recent National Scrabble Championship, and the website of Merriam-Webster, which works with NASPA to create the official word list.

For similar reasons as the two-letter words, three-letter words are also important for scoring in Scrabble. According to the Seattle club, there are 66 new threes. The new big scorers (with the letters J, X or Z) are AJI, CUZ, MUX, REZ, SEZ, TIX, TIZ, WUZ, XED and YEZ. There are apparently no new three-letter words containing a Q.

There are reportedly 185 new four-letter words as well, and about 5,000 new words total. A work-in-progress list is up at the Seattle club’s website.

Can’t handle this dialectal deluge? You’ve got three months to learn the new words. Have a mojito and chillax.

Death Cab For Cutie's show at the Rifflandia Festival in Canada will be guitarist Chris Walla's last with the band, according to a letter he penned to Seattle's Stranger blog earlier today...

Despite being out for nearly three years, Skyrim continues to be played and well-loved by tons of folks—especially by those willing to dive into its bewildering modding world.

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[Photo: Slab BBQ/Facebook]

Pulled pork, brisket, sliders, and massive meat sandwiches are now available in North Austin. Food truck Slab BBQ's new restaurant has officially opened in the former Texas Rib Kings space according to eagle-eyed Chowhounders. The early word is good, too. Chowhounder BT Austin says they have "great pulled pork."
· Hard Hat XII [Chowhound]
· All Slab BBQ Coverage [EATX]

Wikipedia refuses to delete photo as 'monkey owns it' - Telegraph:

The case of the monkey selfie

In 2012, we featured some awesome paper stained-glass window designs from artist Eric Standley. And just when we thought his artworks couldn’t get more complex and mesmerizing, he shows up two years later with these!

The Virginia-based artist improves upon his previous creations by adding more geometric shapes and patterns – typically found in Gothic and Islamic ornamentation. What might look like stained glass from afar, are actually a hundred sheets of paper meticulously stacked together to form the stunning pieces. One can only imagine the number of hours it took to make these things!

You can see more of Standley’s works on his website.

The post Stacks of laser-cut paper are intricately arranged to form these stained-glass windows appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.