Just found out that Nick Dewar passed away recently. He was only 36. I’ve admired his illustrations in many magazine annuals, his work was amazing, simple yet always quite creative. Please take a minute to check out his amazing work at nickdewar.com

Nick Dewar illustration

On his site he posted a really in depth discussion of his illustration process.
http://www.nickdewar.com/nick_dewar_illustration_buthow.php

Google search results, by default, are designed to personalize your experience when you create a search in google. in my experience with search engine optimization, or SEO, it turns out that these personalized searches are not optimal to gauge how your websites are found in a google search.

There is a solution. According to the Facesaerch website, to depersonalize a google search result you have to type &pws=0 at the end of the web URL that is related to your search. This will turn google personalization off.

For example, here is the URL of a search for apple computers:

Google search for apple computers

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=apple&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

And here is the revised search URL with the &pws=0 added:

Depersonalized google search for apple computers:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=apple&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&pws=0

Some great examples of Logo designs from Fuel Your Creativity.

I recently found this Flickr pool from a guy named Oily Moss, and I love the idea. So much so that I joined the group. And you should too. Note: Only 1 post a day, and each piece cannot have taken more than 1 day to complete.

via Yah Hooray

Also, have you seen Oily Moss’s re-designs for covers of classic video games? Check it out here:
Videogame Classics

Absolutely hilarious. I need to study their cool chart to learn how I can be cooler…

Attractive Girls Union Refuses To Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman

Often, when I web search, I tend to tangent off to different hyperlinks, or links, which lead me all over the web. Often this time takes away from the work I am in process of doing, which is not usually a good thing. This one, however, was actually worth it, as it gave me a glimpse into another person’s life, which I thought was worth it.

today’s tangent:

I was looking into time management software, and am currently testing out Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/), which seems pretty good so far. I was reading comments about this program, and did a search comparing productivity programs for the mac. Which lead me to the Put Things Off productivity blog (http://putthingsoff.com/), which was showcasing the OSX Task Manager Showdown – iGTD2 vs Inbox vs OmniFocus vs Things (http://putthingsoff.com/osx-task-manager-showdown/). As I believed, or hoped, Things was the winner.

Anyway, Putting Things Off has a nice design, so I looked into the designer of it, which is Goburo.com (http://goburo.com). On their showcase page, they showed a site they had designed for Tim Brownson, a life coach based out of Florida. His site is A Daring Adventure Life Coaching (http://www.adaringadventure.com). I had read that he was a certified life coach, and wondered how one becomes certified in life coaching. According to his About page, he is certified in the UK and US. I then scrolled down to see more info on life coaching, and saw that there is a site called Coachville (http://www.coachville.com/home/index), which is an online coaching community and online training program. I read some stuff on here and went back to Tim’s site, and noticed that there were some testimonials for him. One that caught my interest was from Jason Cunningham, who went to some Anthony Robbins events and decided to try out a Tim as a life coach. I decided to google Jason Cunningham and noticed that he has a wikipedia entry, but in turn it was not for that Jason Cunningham, but rather an Air Force pararescueman who died while in battle in Afghanistan. Here’s his wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_D._Cunningham).

What a terrible way to die, choosing to be more of a healer of soldiers than a soldier, being injured while saving another comrade, and dying from that injury while waiting for a chopper to rescue him. It’s a nice posthumous record of someone’s life, although it doesn’t list his life before the air force.

There is a link at the bottom of the page to an Air Force magazine article about him, of which I went to here (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1102/world.html). On this page below his photo is a caption about the training he undertook to become a “PJ”, or pararescueman. The grueling details of that training, an example of which is that you have to actually drown in a pool and be revived, are in an interview with Jason entitled “Superman School” (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0200/pj.htm). His response: “Once you pass out the first time, you get used to it,” said the 24-year-old from Camarillo, Calif. “It’s like — it hurts, it hurts, and boom, you’re asleep. Then you wake up, some-body’s slapping your face, and you’ve got this oxygen mask covering your mouth. It’s really not that bad, no big deal.” Amazing.

And I suffer over getting out of bed and going to the gym…

As some have been saying, this is a rip-off of the Pet Shop Boys-style. Not sure about that but I’m loving the video. You can even buy the song on Amazon.

“ Ideas are abundant. Practice giving your ideas away. If you hold onto ideas too tightly, you can convince people (and yourself) that you may not come up with any new ones.” — Alex Bogusky

Herman Miller's Thoughtpile

thoughtpile.org

Very cool interactive website by Herman Miller, in which HM asks a question and viewers submit ideas on ways to solve it. An example of the questions asked is today’s, which is: How can technology become more human?