Sunday, October 25, 2009

Taylor's drawer II - Cheese or font?

Just found out an ideal time waster for rainy Sunday afternoon: Cheese or font? This game tests your knowledge of fine cheeses and fonts. You are given a name, and you have to decide whether it is a font or a cheese. It is not so easy as it might seem...

Oddly enough, the same website offers a link to Monotask, a simple attention management program. Still in preparation, this program will allow you to lock down internet, and create create productive blocks of time to work on the stuff that is valuable to you.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Of olive oil drips, a naive kid and an almost perfect object

The world of olive oil bottles is divided in two - the ones that drip and have their outside walls covered with a sticky and oily film, and the beautiful and almost perfect Marquina bottles.
Spanish architect Rafael Marquina knows only too well how badly designed the olive oil bottles can be. When he was a kid, his mother used to ask him to pass her the olive oil (¡pásame el aceite, niño!). Rafael would invariably pick the bottle by its handle, oblivious that it was resting on a dish that protected the table from oily stains. The dish would invariably stick to the bottle, and it would invariably fly until it ended up crashed on the floor much much to the despair of his infuriated mother. Just imagine: she would give me one slap for every dish, and every day she would ask me to pass the olive oil - said recently Rafael Marquina in an interview.

Probably still suffering from an aching cheek, in 1961 Rafael Marquina created a bottle that would forever end with the drip and tray problems. These glass bottles feature a flared neck that prevent prevent dr
ips from running down the outside. The neck acts as funnel that forces the drips inside the bottle, and the ground glass of the opening and stopper keeps them firmly together. The large bottom provides enough stability, avoiding the bottle to tip over. The stopper is easily extractible and has a small ope
ning that allows you to control the quantity of liquid you want to use.
The Marquina bottles suspiciously look like an Erlenmeyer, a glass flask that is widely used in every lab. They share the same large flat base, the conical body, and the cylindrical neck, and they both were designed to solve the similar challenges. But, the inspiration seems to have come from the work the of the Finish designer Tapio Wirkkala for Arabia.

Rafael Marquina claims that these bottles are far from perfect. The grind glass of the opening and stopper have to be hand made, making it unsuitable for industrial production. And this according to the arch
itect, is not in agreement with two of the most important premisses of design: low pr
ice and economy of procedures. Regardless, this
iconic object have become a symbol of Spanish design and possibly its most copied object









Image taken from the book 'Cocos, copias y coincidencias' (Editorial Electa)

Friday, October 9, 2009

The Soundtrack of My Life V -Your love is the place where I come from by The Teenage Fan Club

Truth to be said, before making its way to my iPod, this song was actually in someone else's soundtrack. I discovered it in Nick Hornby's 31 songs a while back, and rescued it from oblivion a few days ago while dusting my CD collection. Before I forgot it again, here it goes.


It is just great, isn't it?

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Partly Cloudy

Everybody knows that storks deliver babies, but.... where do the storks get their babies from?


Thank you, MJP!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Soundtrack of My Life IV - Dusk by the The

I bought Dusk a bit by accident in 1993. I just bumped into it during a shopping spree, without even knowing the The had a new CD, and put it on my cart without too much thought. The CD had been released earlier that year, and I remembered the The as a sort of band that always had been close to my heart and had great songs. After only a couple of hearings, Dusk became one of my favorite CDs ever - one of those that found room in the shelfs of 15 flats in 3 different countries. It is flagged with a VV, initials for the Portuguese Vai e Volta. Meaning, it is outbound and inbound. When I borrow it, I demand to have it back... Needless is to say that it has always found its way back home.

The the was founded in 1979 by Matt Johnson, who has been the only constant member of the band. Matt Johnson takes his time to create his master pieces. In 30 years, the The released 6 albums: Soul Mining (1983), Infected (1986, Mind Bomb (1989), Dusk (1993), Hanky Panky (1995) and their last one NakedSelf (2000). But, all of them were worthwhile the waiting. A seventh album was announced as forthcoming in May 2007 (The End Of The Day). As yet, it is still unreleased.

Choosing just one song from Dusk is not an easy task. It is one of this albums that is more than the sum of its songs. I was not able to find any video produced for my favorite song in Dusk: Bluer than Midnight . But, I can offer Dogs of Lust and an anedoct about the shooting of this video. Matt Johnson, being the perfectionist that he is, was not totally happy with the results of the shooting. There was not enough tension, he argued. At his request, the studio temperature was set to a most unbritish 38oC and the video shot again. Matt Johnson was right - you can almost feel the heat and lust when you watch the video:


And, a bonus song: Uncertain Smile, played live during the 1993 Reading Festival. This song was released in 1983, as a single of the Soul Mining record. It seems it was just yesterday....