Green Label Design

Got back on the Heckler and took a ride on some trails in the wicked Wissahickon today. Was another perfect day for a ride, and a great chance to snap some photos with the new camera. Saturday I took a leisurely but extended ride along Forbidden drive, today I decided to do the real stuff and get on the trails. After a few lung buster climbs I would stop to compose myself and take some snapshots. In addition to some of the most beautiful natural scenery in Philadelphia, I was fortunate enough to see a rather large mule deer, which I’ve never seen there before. Saturday I saw a family of wood ducks in the creek. I had seen them earlier in the season when the young ones were just small ducklings. The foliage isn’t quite all turned yet, still a lot of green, I’ll be sure to post more photos in the coming weeks as the leaves change.

Some more photos here.

A lot of my ideas seem to come when I’m driving around in my car, I have a love hate relationship with driving, as it can be a mundane task - getting from point a to point b, especially if it is a daily commute, and it can be annoying - other drivers, traffic jams, bad weather, etc. But it can also be relaxing, sometimes even fun on a nice sunny day with a good cd cranked in the stereo.  I almost always have something on my mind when I’m driving, sometimes diving too deep into my head, and sometimes diving deep for something I wouldn’t have found otherwise. As of late I find myself thinking a lot about the user experience, in many contexts, as us humans are almost always using something, and usually that something was designed by someone. Why is that so fascinating? Most people probably never think about it, unless it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to in which case it’s design becomes blatantly obvious as we curse the object and wish it did what we wanted it to do. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching the Cowboys/Buffalo game tonight, I started thinking about the NFL Game Center on nfl.com. They developed a nice little application in flash that lets those who aren’t able to watch the game follow the action in nearly real time. I marveled at this little app the other week when I was following the Broncos game which wasn’t televised. Shows a visual history of the current drive, as well as providing other data like weather, game clock, current down and yards to go, all wrapped in a cool, interactive flash interface. Not to mention the rest of the page contains every game stat you could imagine (if you’re in to that sort of thing).

I have to give the NFL props, great use of an interactive technology, providing a real time option for those who can’t watch the game. Unfortunately, the Cowboys somehow managed to pull off a win tonight…

One of my favorite things about the coming of fall is of course the beer. Welcome the harvest with some good traditional German beer, my recommendations would be the real thing - Hofbrau Oktoberfest or Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen. If you prefer a domestic rendition of the style, try Flying Fish’s Oktoberfish, or Victory’s FestBier, Sam Adams also makes a respectable Oktoberfest. Not in the Oktoberfest vain, but a must try for the fall is some pumpkin infused goodness, which of course I would recommend Dogfishhead’s Punkin Ale.

Prost!

If you’re reading this, I’ve obviously decided to go live with the new blog, so if things don’t look quite right please forgive me as I’m probably still tinkering with wordpress and tweeking the look of this custom theme, so things may move around a bit until I settle on the layout, etc.