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Boxed in

March 13, 2010 · 1 Comment 

I’ll admit I’m a gadgethead, love ‘em to death. But when did gadgetcool become “couldn’t open it with an IQ of 265 and a sledgehammer?”

Apple’s famous for making gorgeous-but-difficult packaging: Both my MacBook Pro and my iPhone came in boxes with no visible openings. Don’t even mention Microsoft; Office 2007 for Mac came in a clear acrylic puzzlebox that took as long to open as the software did to install.

But Motorola just won the dumb packaging of the year award with the Motorola Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth headset.

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-Latest glass-

Glass makes the news

March 10, 2010 · 2 Comments 

Hey–just a fast note for Ernie lovers: Ernie’s mom is in the news.

Brenda Griffith, the powerhouse GlassValkyrie wonderwoman of Atlanta, is doing her best to convert the South to kilnforming (and beadmaking and glassblowing and, apparently, nude dates at the gloryhole, but that’s another story).

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-TechBiz-

Sow’s ear

February 26, 2010 · 2 Comments 

Got into one of those interminable art vs. craft debates once that wound up in my usual “Medium is irrelevant–you can make art out of butter” declaration. Not an hour later I ran into a picture on YouTube, made out of soft drink cans. Not sure it’s my kinda “art,” but it might make the point.

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-Restaurants-

Cassidy’s (American/Northwest)

March 3, 2010 · 1 Comment 

She stopped and turned beet red. “Wait a minute–you’re not my friend! This is so embarrassing–you look like my friend and she drives the same kind of car…I’m sorry…”

“No problem,” I said, and went on into Cassidy’s, a restaurant that appears to have been a PDX fixture for maybe centuries (actually, since 1979). My friend Lyn waitressed there in college, had a hankering to see what the old place was up to and so we met at this old saloon-style restaurant for dinner.

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-On art-

Dayjobs, realjobs

February 16, 2010 · 1 Comment 

She was about as far from my mental image of a wildlife painter as you can get, the classic nerd-in-glasses. Her work called to mind tramping up mountains, crampons in one hand, paintbrush in the other. Her work glowed with life but was only a cherished hobby. In real life, she designs quality control processes for embedded operating systems.

In other words, world-class nerd. And she set me to thinking about people who only get in bed with their art at night, when they get home from work.

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-Photography-

Undo-it-yourself

October 8, 2009 · 7 Comments 

Paul hesitated. “Do you really need the stands for these pieces?” he asked, “I think they’d be more effective if I shot them on the table…”

So he laid a pate de verre panel down on the sweep instead of the neat metal stand I’d brought. He adjusted the lights, climbed up on a stool to take the shot, and transformed the entire piece.

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