I can’t hear you because my ears are shouting

It’s been a year since I did a logo appraisal. Last Easter I had a great logo for you and the one before was not so great. Let’s maintain the balance and look at a bad one.
I have to walk past an Australian Hearing office on my way to work and as I do all I’m hearing in my head is the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.

So, where do we start?
We have the generic dancing, arms out person. Usually used for joy, freedom, carefree nature-loving, and of course dancing. Not sure what it has to with hearing but we can assume he is happy because he can hear better. What makes me think the person is male? The face. There’s no need for a face at all, especially one with such an ambiguous expression. T0 me  it looks like a confused bald man. Also, thanks to the face, the sound waves seem to be aimed less at the ear and more to the back of his depilated head.

OK. The sound waves. We have conventions. And we follow conventions because everyone agrees on their meaning and we don’t have to relearn everything as we go along. Imagine I drew a map and put South at the top. If I was being particularly pro-antipodes and saying that we need to right a terrible wrong and that the southern hemisphere should be the top and the northern hemisphere should be called ‘down under’, it would be acceptable. If I was simply drawing a map, it would be a stupid mistake. It’s alright to break convention if you have reason. It’s always fun to bend and play with conventions. But you are not allowed to ignore them.
With this in mind, have a look at the sound waves. They are radiating out from his head. He’s not receiving, he’s transmitting.

I’m not even going to bother wasting typing,backspacing,retyping time on the typography. I got stuff to do.

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Dragging my heart around

I was poking around on bandcamp today and was struck by this album art. It’s by Annie Hardy aka Giant Drag. Click on it for a larger pic.
I can’t think of any way to improve it. Does that mean it’s perfect?
Beautiful photography. Don’t you love the backlighting? And the pose.
Then there’s the composition. That lovely expanse of starry sky.
The title is great in itself. But I love the way it sits at the top not trying to intrude with the understated G and D.
But what about the actual music? Here’s a sample:

Soundtrack

My son gave me some quality headphones for Christmas. Coupled with my daughter’s hand-me-down (or up?) ipod, they have turned me into one of those zoned-out-on-public-transport people.
But I was slow to convert. I’ve always agreed with the people who made these signs
and don’t want to become this guy
although he is a very snazzy dresser.

But the sound.
It’s like a warm blanket on a cold night or a cool breeze on a hot night or a drug fuelled rave party in my head.

Anyway, here’s a brief look at what my morning commute is like.

Sorry for the quality (phone).

The little things

This morning I was on the train in a semiconscious state. I was facing the stairs but not looking. Then a five dollar note fluttered down the stairway like a diver doing a pre-bellyflop lateral twist. It was followed by a man who picked it up and crilley runned away.
It made me smile.
Footnote:
crilley = quickly. The phrase “crilley runned away” has been adopted by my family since we read it an early piece of creative writing from one of my daughters. More.

Merry Christmas and God bless us every one!

One year – don’t ask me when – one of my children – don’t ask me which one – suggest that a broken Ken doll’s head could go at the top of the Christmas tree.
Then it became a tradition. So Ken and I would like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a great new year.
To quote Tiny Tim: “Tiptoe through the tulips with me.”

Thank you, Mr Zombie Policeman

Last night I was driving home from the annual extended family Christmas picnic known as Aunt’s Party. Daughters#2 and #3 were with me. We had crossed through most of Sydney and had begun the easy part of the trip on the F3. A police car sat himself behind our car and just tailed us for a bit. Then he put his lights on and signalled for me to pull over. I was instructed to follow him to the Berowra exit. While I did so, the girls and I were wondering what could possibly be the problem. Then we noticed the date on our registration was 29 November.
Sure enough, that was the problem.
Let me say here that the car is in my wife’s name and it’s her job to keep it’s rego up to date. Just want to get that bit clear.
The police officer said we should fix up the green slip and the rego online before driving any further. He took my license and returned to his car to write me a ticket. So I rang my wife who was with Daughter #1. Daughter #1 works in the same local area command and asked who the officer was. When he came back to the window I misread his name tag and told her it was Senior Constable Brainwhite. Despite not knowing anyone with that name, she had a little chat with him after which he dropped the agro and was very pleasant. He still gave me a massive fine but he was so nice about it that I thanked him.
After he drove away we pulled out the folding chairs, opened the esky and got to work on the picnic left-overs. The girls pointed out that his name was actually ‘Branwhite’ and that by adding that extra ‘i’, I made him sound like he might be a zombie.

Senior Constable Brainwhite explains the importance of road and traffic regulations.

We sat there while my wife made her way home and got the green slip and registration sorted.
Daughter #2 mentioned how odd it was that I thanked the zombie police officer for a fine. I said that, even though I would rather not get the ticket, I was kind of grateful. If I had been involved in an accident or, worse, injured someone, the cost could have been significantly more than our $595 fine.
And I saw that side of it pretty well straight away.
People often tell me I’m easy going. I don’t see it. Seriously, you should see things from in here – it’s frantic, crazy at times. But then sometimes – like this one – I surprise myself.

Split infinites

Please excuse this short self-indulgent post. I just need to clear my name here.
One or two people are getting excited about the clever bagel cutting method demonstrated in this video:
Sadly it is often described as a “Möbius bagel”. It’s not. It has two surfaces and should be described as a split torus.
Don’t care? Too late – now you know (but feel free to stop reading).

Hi fellow nerds, [conspiratorially] I was starting to think they would never leave.
Below are some sculptures to help illustrate the distinctions:
The first two are recent works by Keizo Ushio as shown at Sculpture By the Sea. The first being a split torus and the second a split möbius. The third is a true möbius by the versatile Bauhaus genius, Max Bill. It is from 1961 and is called Unendliche Schleife (infinite loop).
Class dismissed.