via squidspot

upstairs and downstairs redefined by FRENTE
Apparently this module moves below and above ground depending on the weather.

Architects: FRENTE / Juan Pablo Maza
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

via archdaily and notcot

"Frosting" by Carolyn Mason. There's more images at the link, but they aren't loading for me at the moment.

So, who gets to clean that up? But boy that looks like fun.

via Design Crush

Dear President Obama,
Please help fund my blog so I may place the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act logo on my site. On second thought, never mind. I'm not crazy about the two stars touching the edge of the blue circle. That's an awkward space, Mr. President. And the text, recovery.gov, looks like an afterthought. It's a nice logo otherwise.

Projects funded by the economic stimulus package will be stamped with this logo.

I was visiting one of my favorite sites, notcot.org and one of the featured items was a red dinosaur sculpture. It looked pretty slick and I was curious what else would be on the site of the dino's creator. Much to my surprise, the link went to Etsy. I immediately snatched one of them up. I've been wanting to bring something new into my new cubicle at work. This CanRex will be guarding my cubicle's entrance.

The official website for CanRex is at Canbot.com

Here's a wild bridge. There's about 6 photos at this link. It looks like something out of Fisher Price. It certainly has a presence. I can't decide if its clunkiness is charming or dumpy. It's located in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Clearly the Dutch know how to build bridges given their geographic conditions. I wonder what the Dutch think about it.

The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has a meteorite you can touch. That's my brother up there in the photo experiencing the awe-inspiring power of a meteorite. It is my wish to rub my ear on this meteorite so it may hear my ear infection.

Can you believe it? Finally there's an SLR camera with an articulating (swivel) LCD. I've been waiting years for this.

Of course only relatively recently has preview capabilities been available on SLR LCDs. So that was a critical step one. Last year Sony came out with the A350 SLR which has a "tilting" LCD. (Scroll down this link to see the tilting LCD). It's a nice try, but still lame. Why couldn't they just put it a swivel? Maybe it's a patent thing.

On Tuesday, Olympus announced the $700 (body only) E-620 which sports a dreamy articulating LCD. From engadget.com:

The E-620 is a mash-up of Olympus' semi-pro E-30 and entry-level E-520 in a compact body approaching Oly's own E-420 (the world's smallest DSLR when launched). The resulting cam brings a 12.3 megapixel Live MOS image sensor with sensor-shift image stabilization.

So why am I not buying this camera since I'm in the market for an SLR? Number one: It's an Olympus and it doesn't play with my Nikon lenses. Number two: I want minimum of 16 megapixels. 12 megapixels ain't gonna cut it for me. Number three: I want a full frame imaging sensor.

Sleeping Bear Sleeping Bag by artist Eiko Ishizawa.

via swiss miss

Recently I've been doing some artwork with Rembrandt's numerous self-portraits (40 in all) from rembrandtpainting.net. It's a great site to review his work.

Here's Kaffe Matthews' Sonic Bed. It has a "network of loudspeakers including six very large subwoofers that produce very low frequencies that penetrate the body". I didn't know that Dracula was such a fan of subwoofers.

via architectradure

What exactly is behind that wall you may ask.

Pravdoliub Ivanov's "Confusion"
via notcot

Yesterday's blog post came about as I was searching through official documents on the GPO site. You can buy the official president and Vice Presidential portraits are available for purchase in two sizes (8x10 and 11x14) starting at $9. It was easy finding an image of the official President portrait. Heck, I was even able to find the EXIF data for Obama's mug. But nowhere can I actually find the image from Joe Biden's portrait. Poor Joe.

About a month ago, the official portrait of the President of the United States was released. Engadget dug into the EXIF data and provided the vitals.

camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
lens: 105mm
aperture: f/10
exposure: 1/125 second
ISO: 100
flash: none
photographer: Pete Souza (official White House photographer)
date: 1/13/2009 5:38 p.m.

It's very interesting that the Canon EOS 5D Mark II craze has hit the White House. Part of me is bummed that the White House is using only a 35mm equiv digicam. I'd think they'd be using a medium format digicam like the Hasselblad H3D. The H3D's image sensor is 48 x 36 mm compared to th 5D Mark II's 24 x 36mm. That's exactly twice as big. It's all about image sensor size nowadays. Because the H3D's double image sensor, it can rightfully claim a 39 megapixel size which is almost twice the 5D Mark II's 21 megapixels.

Perhaps the economy has hit the White House as well. No H3D for you, Obama.

Joestein Alvestad (light blue shirt with hat and medal shown above), of the Elmhurst Fire Department, won the 2009 annual Tackle the Tower competition held at the Oakbrook Terrace Tower in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. In 3 minutes and 25 seconds he ran up 680 stairs which comprises of 62 banks of stairs which form the 31 story building. That's amazing.

I worked in the Tower for 10 years and occassionally, okay rarely, I would walk down the stairs for some exercise. Sometimes i would jog up 5 floors and walk back down. I can't imagine running UP the stairs in under 4 minutes. I can't imagine going up the stairs in under an hour. It's a really tall building; the tallest in Illinois outside Chicago.

So way to go, Joestein! This was the fourth year in a row that the Elmhurst Fire Dept has had the best overall time in the event. That's good to hear.

Visit The Art Institute of Chicago for free during the entire month of February. I was just trying to plan a potential trip around their normally scheduled free day of the week and came across Free February on their site.

ITEMS OF NOTE AT ARTIC:

They've been working on the Modern Wing for seemingly forever. It's scheduled to open May 16, 2009. That's only 3 months away. more info on the Modern Wing here.

The complete Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings went on a 6 month hiatus to Texas and returned to new, expanded digs in December. All your old favorites are back along with some new friends. full story here.

Here's a list of all the current exhibitions. Personally I think "Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago" is the most intriguing of the bunch.

Here's a list of future exhibits. I am very very excited about the upcoming exhibit of the latest works by Cy Twombly (opening May 16). I had planned on doing a blog post about him soon. At the moment, I can't recall how exactly I came across his work in the last week. I think it was a google image search. Then I find Cy on the back of Art in America. His painting/drawing style is very intriguing. I'm stoked.

photo of illustration courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.
artist: Claude Monet
"Mario Uchard"
c. 1855-1856
Graphite, on tan wove paper
320 x 243 mm
Not signed
Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection
Digitally altered by Erik Maldre

Get over to your local Borders NOW! It's that time of year for $1 calendars. I was at the Borders in Oak Brook and they had TONS of calendars. The weird thing is that I was there a couple weeks ago and the calendars were $4 and there was a very, very small selection.

Some themes off the top of my head include: cats, countless varieties of dogs including four different pug calendars, dolphins, tigers, turtles, chickens, Star Trek ships, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals (wtf?), William Wegman dogs, soccer, surfers, skateboarders, LOST, Desperate Housewives, Hannah Montana, SI Swimsuit models, hunks of TV Soaps, tiki girls, Spider-Man, Incredible Huk, Iron Man, flowers, light towers, and more. I didn't look at the day-to-day tear-off calendars cuz I never have that high of a level of commitment to keep up with those.

Unfortunately the only art calendars they had was Van Gogh. And they had one opened calendar of Spain and no other travel calendars. I got my hands on the very last pop-up Marvel comics calendar and the very last antique maps calendar.

My 6 megapixel SLR is showing its age. I'm itching for a full frame 16+ megapixel SLR. Problem is that the only such Nikon that currently exists is the D3X. 8 grand. ouch.

I've been keeping a close eye on nikonrumors.com especially considering that the big PMA show is coming in the first week of March. It's the big camera show of the year.

A couple weeks ago nikonrumors reported that a German website listed a Nikon D400 book. The D400 will essentially be the replacement to the $1800 (retail) D300 (13 megapixels, full frame). Now nikonrumors is reporting that a Swiss site has the same D400 book and that the D400 could be coming in the next couple weeks. I'm giddy. I wasn't quite sure if the first report was exactly accurate, but now that a completely different second site is listing the same book. So it appears that rumored D400 is an actual reality.

Then again, none of this really has any value to me because the budget ain't there to be buying any sort of SLR right now. But it's fun to think about.

Yesterday Nikon released the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G lens. It's a fixed focal length lens. That means there's no zoom. Because there's no zoom, that means the lens body is more shallow allowing for a better maximum aperture.

And get this. Its maximum aperture is f/1.8. Sweet shallow depth of field beauty! I'm stunned.

What's this mean to joe six-pack consumer SLR user? It saves your butt in low-light situations. You can more easily avoid noisy higher ISOs with this bahama mamma. And you can get some fantastic limited depth of field shots (what you focus on is sharp and the area in the shot further from the focal point will be more blurred).

So if you're out shooting somewhere and really aren't happy bumping up your ISO because it's too dark, then you could consider whipping out this bad boy. It's a small lens that can be easily squeezed into a camera bag. Or you find an awesome shot, but don't like something in the background, then this lens will do the most to blur out that background.

The standard lens on my SLR is the Nikkor AF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D IF. I can only shoot a max of f/4.2. (The name of the lens suggests it can do 3.5, but I've never been able to get it to 3.5). There's a big difference between f/1.8 and f/4.2.

I forgot what a common max aperture for a standard point-and-shoot digital camera is. So I grabbed my wife's Canon PowerShot SD500 Digital Elph (gotta love the Elph series for point-and-shoot). I was shocked to see its max aperture is f/2.8. That totally kicks the butt of my Nikkor AF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D IF. Hmph.

$200 for the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G.

International Architect Partnership, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, have won a competition to design a new performing arts centre in Taipei, Taiwan.

And look at that giant egg thing coming out the side. It's pretty wild. Some people will call it cliché. But it does create conversation about the role of architecture in our lives and I love that quality. It enriches the human experience.

More architecture should do that. Take Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art for example of the exact opposite. It's an incredibly sleepy building. I understand it follows the theory that gallery/museum should be a neutral environment to let the art become the focus. However Julian Schnabel once said that if you're art isn't good enough to compete with the widly imaginative and pioneering Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain, then it doesn't deserve to be there. I agree 100%.

So let's grab some diamond-tipped circular saws and put a giant egg in the side of the MCA.

One reason I don't do my graphic contrast illustration style too much nowadays is that I get tired of people telling me that I used Photoshop's "Cutout" filter (Filter>Artistic>Cutout). It drives me crazy. It's insulting. I enjoy when people have constructive critiques of my work. I have pretty thick skin and can take most comments. But the old "you used the cutout filter" really gets under my skin. I'm sure Shepard Fairey has received the same comments about his famous Obama poster.

The "Cutout" filter is just plain nasty. Yesterday I posted about how the AP wants $ for Shepard Fairey using their photo as the basis for his illustration. Well, I ran Photoshop's "Cutout" filter on the AP image just to show how much better Fairey's illustration is. The cutout filter doesn't come close. It's pure trash. And yes, I know about the trick to play with the Curves or Levels palettes first to get a nice contrast to the image before running Cutout. That's what I did to the image above and still looks like junk.

I think the AP needs to see this comparison just so they know how much interpretative creativity was used on Fairey's part in making this illustration.

The AP (Associated Press) is now saying they're not happy about their image being the inspiration for the uber-famous Obama poster by Shepard Fairey and they want Fairey to show them the money. Fairey has acknowledged that the illustration was based on Manny Garcia's 2006 photograph.

Sounds a bit greedy to me. I'm quite biased on this issue. Since my high school days I had an illustration style that is very similar to Fairey's. It's not uncommon. It harkens back to the old propaganda posters from WWI and WWII. So I'm squarely against the AP trying to cash in here. I believe there's enough artist difference in the Fairey's illustration. The illustration is a strong graphic constrast representation. It's not realistic enough to rip-off the photograph. The illustration is more about Obama and the illustration technique itself than it is about the photograph.

Sorry, AP you're just trying to cash in on what's become one of the most popular American icons. It's funny they waited this long to do so. It just more evidence pointing to their wishful greed.

Now just what would I magnify first if I got my hands on the Nikon Fabre Photo EX? It's a stereoscopic microscope with up to 66 times magnification. It hooks up to any Nikon DSLR. Now that's velvet. It looks like it's only available in Japan for now. surprise, surprise. About $1200.

Can you believe nowhere on the internet does someone say, "something really cool in Copenhagen"? Well that ends now! BearatoneSEA on Flickr took this photo of a sign in City Hall Square in Copenhagen. And I must say it's something really cool in Copenhagen.

Can you believe nowhere on the internet does someone say, "something really cool in London"? Well that ends now! A blogger named Qype found this chocolate tank at Rococo Chocolates on Marylebone High Street in London. And I must say it's something really cool in London.

While I was job hunting, I came across landor.com, the website for one of the world's juggernaut branding agencies. They designed the Super Bowl XLIII logo. It's rather appropriate that I came across this page a day before the Super Bowl. They offer up some insight into the logo. Here's a snippit:

The Super Bowl XLIII logo expresses a colossal, bigger-than-life event and makes a strong connection to the NFL. The perspective of the lines leading up to the letters creates a dramatic stadium effect. The colors blue and red are important because they represent the two divisions—the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC)—and tie to the NFL brand. The green represents more than a field; it symbolizes the meeting of land and sea in Tampa Bay.

Chief Strategy Officer, Russ Meyer, provides some insight into the logo as well.

If only the Ravens defeated the Steelers for the AFC Championship. I played around with the Ravens' and Cardinals' logos before the NFC and AFC Championship games hoping the Super Bowl would be the Baltimore Ravens and the Arizona Cardinals.

onthedash.com has done extensive research to discover that Barack Obama wore a TAG-Heuer Series 1500 Two-Tone Divers watch from the early or mid-1990's until late 2007. (It's not the watch shown above. More on the above watch later.)

I'm not a big fan of the TAG watch. The triangles on the dial's frame are clunky. The variety of shapes (dashes, triangle, and circle) which represent the hours on the dial are cartoonish. The black outlines on these shapes only add to their Bugs Bunny appearance. There's dashes on the debeveled surface of the dial frame and then the exact same dashes appear on the dial itself. That makes no sense.

I'm glad to see that the United States Service Service gave Obama a better watch for his 46th birthday on August 4, 2007. It's a Jorg Gray JGC6500 Chronograph. I wonder what James Bond features this watch has that none of use know about. It is a gift from the Secret Service after all. Realistically though, there's probably no crazy James Bond features integrated into Obama's watch. It's just fun to think about it.

In fact, I did some digging around and the Jorg Gray JGC6500 Chronograph is simply JUST A PROMO WATCH! Y'know those promo catalogs where you get your company name printed on pens. So the United States Secret Service gets their watches from the same place where you get your company logo printed on stress balls. Kinda deflating to think about.

Though it's a nice-looking watch. I'd wear it. It's the exact same watch that Barack Obama wears. I would totally buy this watch if I had the budget for it. My current watch loses a minute every couple months. It's annoying (and it's not the battery). However, my wardrobe is more earth tones and not black.

You can buy the watch for about $160. Search "JGC6500" at Google Products. That's an incredible price for the exact same freakin' watch worn by the most powerful man on the planet.

Since this is a promo catalog watch, you can get your own logo printed on it. The Secret Service got their logo printed as seen in the image above. You can create your own spin-off of the Secret Service logo and away you go. The first promo site I found that sells this watch has a minimum order of 12. So you'll either need to get your buddies to buy in or you'll have to do some marketing online.

In fact, barackswatch.com is already cornering the market. They're taking advantage of the fact that Obama's watch is from a promo catalog and they created their own simulation of the Secret Service logo and they are selling the watch for $325. They're gonna clean up.

I was looking for 3" wood discs that are at least 0.25" thick. I found the secret keyword to search on the internet. It took me a while to find it. I searched craft supply stores, woodworking stores, and ebay. I searched for discs, disks, circles, and toys and the biggest size is 2.25". Home Depot's largest circle drill attachments are 2.375", so I can't cut them myself. It's too cold out anyway to be doing woodworking. I also came across 3" wood discs that are .125" thick. That won't cut it. And plywood isn't an option either. I did find 3" dowel rods, but I'm not forking over $45 for a dowel rod. Sorry.

So the secret is to search for wood wheels; slab wheels or flat wheels more specifically. It makes sense. Crafters and hobbyists need wooden wheels for their wooden car projects.

Casey's Wood Products has 2.5" diameter x 0.75" thick wood for $0.40 a pop. Not quite to 3", but not bad. Casey's also has 4.5" diameter by 0.75" thick wood for $0.90 each. 4.5 inches! That's a little too big.

American Woodcrafters Supply sells twelve 3" diameter by 0.75" thick wheels for $12.99. Though they're not slab wheels which I prefer.

Cherry Tree Toys has 2.75" diameter by 0.75" thick wheels for $0.85 each, but the edges are treaded. The same goes for their 3" x 1" wheels ($1.07 each). They have 2.5" x 0.75" wheels like Casey's for $0.65.

Here's my wad of cash that is my fantasy football championship winnings. It's mostly two dollar bills. I had it rolled up like this and realized it made the letter "e" for "erik".

flickr has the higher-res version.