Me: “I hate Internet Explorer. It can’t even handle large tables.”
Me: “Can a table get that large?”
He: “No, but a zucchini can.”
Me: “Dude, WTF?”
I turn around to see what he is talking about and BAM!, there is a big fat zucchini in my face. Shocked and awed at the sight of this thing, I could only pick it up and try to quell the thoughts that any man would have when faced with something this big.
Ok, comments are open. Let me have it. I know you will anyway.
PS For those that care, the ladies around here named him “Zucchy” and promptly took him home and made bread from him.
Subliminal marketing, a term that has taken a lot of flack from those that think that companies are twisting our arms into buying their products by sending mumbled messages and flashed images in radio, print and TV advertisements, is an interesting topic for discussion among marketers, developers and anyone that ever plans to buy something. I am not that big of a marketing guy myself, but there are times when things just catch my eye (and for my wife, no, I am not talking about beer babes and bouncing boobs in bikinis bobbing around the beach).
Take the case of FedEx and their logo. Their identity is essentially wrapped up in this little five letter image:
The FedEx Logo
There really is not a whole lot of fancy smancy action going on there. In fact, an interview with the designer of the logo reveals that it was a big task to design it but ultimately the simplicity of the logo rang loudly with the executive in the deciding chambers of the company. One of the things that sold this logo was the little nugget of an arrow between the “E” and the “x”. Can you see it? If not, here’s a little helper for you:
The arrow leads the way
A while back I remember reading something about this arrow in the FedEx logo. In fact, Rebecca Bollwitttwittered:
I just realized the white space between the E and X in “FedEx” makes an arrow :-\
@todmaffin @miss604 the fedex arrow thing is intentional. branding have a friend deep in the comms dept in Memphis.
Wanting to look deeper into the discussions that have cropped up about this arrow, I did a Summize (now search.twitter.com) search for fedex arrow and found that there has been significant chatter about this. Subliminal marketing score for FedEx right? Sort of.
As I looked closer at the logo I began to see something that I have not ever seen anyone talk about. Can you see it? The FedEx spoon, strategically placed between the “e” and “d” in Fed (what better a place for a spoon?). If you need help, well, I have a helper for that too.
Not only delivering arrows, but spoonfuls of them, too
Oddly, a search for FedEx Spoon turned up no results at all. How does this happen? How can such a noticeable symbol of feeding service go missed for this many years? I mean, it is a spoon, inside of Fed. How can anyone miss that. Subliminal marketing score for FedEx? Not quite.
Although every time I see a FedEx logo, whether it is a truck, a billboard, an airplane or whatever, I always look at the arrow and think “FedEx is heading in the right direction”. But I also stop and think “What exactly are they feeding me with this logo?”. Yes, I get my packages overnight. And yes, I can track packages I send easily and quickly.
But to think that FedEx spoon feeds me too. Well, they have secured my business for the rest of my life I think. Or at least until they change their logo again.
In 1985 I got really into skateboarding. I am not sure what it is that got me so into the sport but I really got into it. I also had gotten some of my friends into it with me so that we could all have something to do together. It didn’t take long for all of us to become enormous skateboarding obsessed fanbois.
I also became a huge fan of the Bones Brigade. So much so that my little clique of friends actually emulated the them down to my friend Jason Theil taking on freestyle skating a la Per Welinder and Adam Green skating in a lanky, gangly fashion like Tony Hawk.
The reason I was thinking about that is because of a totally raw out video I saw the other day. It is a video of Tony Hawk tearing it up on a freakish ramp doing things that really only a skater like Tony Hawk can do. What stood out the most to me was that I got into skating 23 years ago.
Side note: there is no way in hell I am old enough to have picked up a hobby 23 years ago.
Whatever the case, Tony Hawk was only 17 at the time and had just turned pro a few years earlier. He was bad as all get out back then, doing things that no one else was doing, including preparing for the 720 and doing a sick number of consecutive 540 McTwists. I remember watching Bones Brigade Videos and watching the guys skating streets, launch ramps, quarter pipes, half pipes and downhills.
In fact, the most memorable moment I had of the gang was the end of the Search for Animal Chin video when they finished up the movie on that sick back-to-back half pipe that had the inner cut away taken out for a spell and allowed pretty much the whole crew to skate at the same time while some were catching air over others skating through. It was sick.
The ramp had half pipes on the deck too, and the entire thing had to be 60 feet wide. It was awesome. Have a look:
Then along came this little gem. And I am taken aback. I knew Tony Hawk kicked butt. I never knew he kicked butt licked this. Prepare to have your mind blown to bits.
I so want to be this rad when I am Tony Hawk’s age. And if not… well, hopefully I can still find videos of him.
The following piece graciously donated by my mother-in-law via my wife.
Anyone that has ever been to the south knows that you can always count on a few things when you are there. One is the hospitality. I mean you can literally have a two hour conversation with a complete stranger and actually feel at home doing it.
Another thing you can count on is the food. It will always be fattening and it will always be delicious. No matter what you are eating, it will just be good eats. Its the south, so you can count on it.
One thing that I can speak of from experience is the state bird of Louisiana. No, I am not talking about the Brown Pelican. I am talking about the mosquito.
Those little buggers are the size of the airplanes that fly you from Fort Worth to Lafayette. They are big, strong, aggressive and relentless. They don’t back down and when you finally smack one of them into oblivion, five of his cousins come back for you.
So it was no wonder that this footage spoke to me as loudly as it did. I have never seen this before, but it does not surprise me. How much farther will this torment known as the mosquito go?
Every now and again someone gets a truly original idea. Sometimes these ideas leads to huge amounts of fiscal wealth. Other times these ideas lead to improvements in living conditions, or perhaps positive changes to our environment.
The following idea is certain to have an impact on everyone’s personal life. I personally hate being disturbed by incessant phone calls at all hours of the day and night. But short of using electroshock defense mechanisms that pulse through the phone, the only recourse I have had until now was to screen my calls or let the machine answer them for me.
Like I said, until now.
Without further introduction, I present to you a video that will forever change how you handle telemarketers and cold callers. Enjoy this lesson.
Many thanks to my colleague Jason for providing this excellent find.
A few days ago I was working on some image stuff when I ran across a built-in Linux file system utility that allows you to sync images with Picasa. I used it to upload a few images then went about my other business.
A few days later I tried to find it again and was completely without luck. Not to be left unable to post pictures, I quickly began searching for a Linux Picasa app that would let me push my images to Picasa. At first all I found were pages that said “Google does not officially support Picasa on Linux”. Then I found something cool.
I am not sure where I got this link from but I found a Picasa for Linux app provided by Google. How cool is that? Now I can manage my Picasa photos right from my Linux desktop.
Now all I need is a way to sync my iPhone to iTunes on Linux without using Wine and I am golden. Anyone got any links?
Sandi had a therapy appointment yesterday in San Jose and I, with kids in tow, had an hour to kill. What better use of an hour than to find undicovered roads and learn a little bit at the same time?
It started out innocently enough. I took a right turn where I would normally take a left. It very quickly got exciting from there.
We were on North 1st street heading North. That takes you right into the heart of Alviso, a tiny little, almost forgotten town at the northern most end of San Jose and Milpitas. As we drove we were captivated by the style of the homes in the area. They were very turn-of-the-century, Southern Victorian style homes in the style of a hurricane infested residential area.
As we continued I noticed a few very old abandoned buildings. Then something caught my eye. It was a sign for the Alviso Yacht Club. Yacht Club? How could this be? There is not really a place to yacht around here. To prove myself correct, I drive just a little bit further.
I came to a court that had what appeared to be an entrance to a parking lot jutting out from it. Being in the mood for new discoveries I let my curiosity get the better of me and drove in. I am so glad I did that.
What we came across was the Alviso Marina County Park. Now I have known about Alviso all my life. I grew up in Newark and have lived in Fremont for quite a while. But I did not know that Alviso was this cool. And I specifically did not know that Alviso had this cool county park.
Since I had an hour I decided that the kids and I would get out and check this place out. And we were not disappointed. Though it is still a little early in Spring the poppies were out. The animals (squirrels, herons, pidgeons, lizards, etc) were out. The sun was out. It was perfect.
We hit the path and started looking, reading and snapping photos. There was a lot to look at and, even though it was a little warm, we managed to pretty much take the entire loop in about 45 minutes.
Here are some of the pictures we fetched while we were there.
A little history on the Alviso Marina County Park
Hey girls, wucha find?
A view of the salt flats, the marsh and the mountains
Benny, the no tail having bearded dragon
I wonder what the rent is on a place like this?
As you can see we had a great big old time in this little park. I am amazed that I have never heard of this place before. The kids already want to go back. So do I. And I would love to take Sandi with us next time.
I would also like to spend a few minutes wandering around old town Alviso. I think it would be neat to see the little town and eat at some of their very cool looking, small town type restaurants.
When my wife took me to dinner for valentine’s day we each had a glass of wine. The wine we chose that night was a 2004 Roth Estates Cabernet Sauvignon. I fell in love that night.
This wine absolutely exploded with flavor. It worked brilliantly with bread, bread and butter, shrimp scampi, steak, vegetables and potatoes. There was nothing about this wine that I didn’t like. Except the price of at the restaurant. It was listed at $54 a bottle or $14 a glass.
