The Office — Crime Aid (S05E05)
- Oscar: Great, they stole my laptop.
- Kevin: Yeah? Well, they stole my surge protector.
- Oscar: How does that even compare?
- Kevin: Oscar, I’m now going to be prone to surges.
October 2008
31 posts
Pepsi’s atrocious redesign
This is just sickening. In a move to stay relevant after Coca Cola’s highly successful brand redesign, Pepsi followed suit with their own brand “realignment.”
Not only did they wreck their fabulous decades-old blue and red circular logo, they ruined their silhouette with the worst looking bottles I have ever seen in my life. It looks like the bottle was run through a heat lamp and partially melted.
Even more atrocious is what they did to Tropicana. I didn’t know Tropicana is a PepsiCo product, but I’m now sad that it is. Tropicana had one of the best looking orange juice cartons, with a deliciously juicy orange and a cute straw poking out of it. I especially loved how the Tropicana wordmark (and even the orange background fill) had a slight arch to them, mimicing the natural curve of the orange in the middle. The colors and execution were perfect. Throwing it all out and coming up with a brand new design is nothing short of wasteful, tasteless, and horribly sickening.
The new cartons look generic and unfinished. They look like unpolished Photoshop mockup, which I’m sure they are at this stage—but even when sent to production, they’ll look horribly amateurish. The mind-numbingly boring geometric typeface bore me and lack the slight flair of the original.
Overall, this whole forthcoming redesign is absolutely ghastly and I wouldn’t go as far as to say I will completely stop drinking Pepsi just because their packaging makes me ill, but it will definitely be a discerning factor for years to come.
Obama is such a BAMF
I’m risking looking like a hyper-liberal fanatic—even though I’m not—by devoting another post to Obama, but I can’t help it; he’s such a BAMF.
“You’re just upset because the whole time she was with you, she was thinking of my huge, throbbing… diagnostic skills.”
—Dr. House to Thirteen about her bisexual one-night stand’s sudden interest in him.
The wonderful works of Roald Dahl
- Spawning from a earlier conversation I had with Shelley, I realized although I’ve read most of these books over the course of my early childhood, there are so many wonderfully different and varied stories that I have trouble remembering them all vividly. It’s a shame because these are fantastic stories—a shame I will rectify by rereading them soon.
- The Gremlins: 1943
- James and the Giant Peach: 1961
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 1964
- The Magic Finger: 1966
- Fantastic Mr Fox: 1970
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: 1973
- Danny, the Champion of the World: 1975
- The Enormous Crocodile: 1978
- The Twits: 1980
- George’s Marvelous Medicine: 1981
- The BFG: 1982
- The Witches: 1983
- The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me: 1985
- Matilda: 1988
- Esio Trot: 1989
- The Minpins: 1991
- The Vicar of Nibbleswicke: 1991
“Limerence is a term … used to refer to an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person. It has been described as the ultimate, near obsessional form of romantic love.”
—Wikipedia. Beautiful word for a beautiful feeling.
The Office – “Baby Shower”
Last night’s The Office had one of the best scenes in recent seasons. If you have yet to watch S05E03 “Baby Shower,” stop reading! Consider yourself warned…
Pam’s off at art school in New York City so communication between the newly engaged couple is strained with unlucky timing and poor scheduling. They called each other at the exact same time and reached their respective voice mailboxes. You can almost hear Jim and Pam’s hearts breaking as they struggled to remain cheerful and upbeat while leaving their messages. The scene is heartbreaking yet sweet at the same time—as they recount the same laundromat story about a crazy guy that yelled at Pam and pushed Jim around, they seem able to read each others minds. I myself was (and still am) in a long-distance relationship so I can attest first-hand to the difficulties and frustrations that come with one, and it’s great to see the writers of The Office handle Jim and Pam’s situation so realistically.
The rest of the episode was great too: the cold open with Dwight simulating a childbirth for Michael with a watermelon, Andy mistaking Angela’s baby picture for Phyllis, Creed’s line about the tide at Omaha beach, and Michael and Holly’s heartwarming hug. Season 5 is shaping up to be one great season.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li →
kotaku.com
I’ll be the first to say how much I love Kristin Kreuk, but even I have reservations of the quality of her latest movie. These leaked posters don’t help assuage my fears.
Blu-ray vs. DVD →
amazon.com
Unbelievable. The Blu-ray three-disc special edition of WALL-E is selling better than the DVD three-disc special edition on Amazon. Even more astonishing is that the Blu-ray version only sells for two dollars more. Coupled with $200 Blu-ray players, 1080p content is looking more affordable everyday, and it will only get better.
How Design Can Save Democracy →
nytimes.com
I have yet to see a ballot in real life—my first time voting will be in this upcoming presidential election—but if they are anything like the composite example, it will not be a pleasant experience. Not only is it annoying to read and look at (the party icons are atrocious!), but it can also be downright dangerous because poor design may lead voters to vote incorrectly.
The proposed solution is nothing short of excellent. Unfortunately I don’t have faith in our government to do what is right, but rather stick with what is already implemented, so I foresee very little change in ballot design for the upcoming election.
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“I look at myself in my full-length mirror. I’m horrified. I have disappeared and somebody I don’t recognise is looking back at me. I cannot tell how old she is, how much she weighs, whether she has a kind or a sad face, whether she has long or short hair, whether she has any distinctive facial features at all. I’ve seen this person in black on the television and in newspapers, in the mountains of Afghanistan and the cities of Saudi Arabia, but she doesn’t look right here, in my bedroom in a terraced house in west London. I do what little I can to personalise my appearance. I put on my oversized man’s watch and make sure the bottoms of my jeans are visible. I’m so taken aback by how dissociated I feel from my own reflection that it takes me over an hour to pluck up the courage to leave the house.”
—Muslim journalist Zaiba Malik wears a niqāb for a day.
Thoughts on color
While prepping the previously posted picture in Photoshop CS3, I realized a couple of things: color calibration is absymally poor in Windows XP, my ViewSonic VP171b has terrible color reproduction, and Photoshop has serious problems handling .png color.
Photoshop’s ‘Save for Web & Devices…’ wreaks havoc on color reproduction—the nice blue color Tumblr uses turned into a deep, garish turquoise. ‘Save As…’ didn’t have this issue. What causes the dramatic difference in color reproduction? I’m sure there’s a way to either avoid or solve this problem, but it’s too obscure and difficult under Windows XP. Quick research shows Vista solves this problem with OS-level color calibration. It almost goes without say Mac OS X had it since Mac OS X 10.0 Public Beta back in early 2000.
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The search for the perfect NYC cheesesteak. →
jasonsantamaria.com
Ever since I ate at the Cheesesteak Factory on Bell Blvd. in Bayside, I wondered if the cheesesteak I was served was a rare dud: the bread was stale and greasy, the meat dry and bland, and the cheese hard and gross.
Jason Santa Maria along with friends went to go find that perfect cheesesteak in New York City, and on the way, confirmed my suspicions that the Cheesesteak Factory is among the worst destinations for cheesesteak. Wogie’s Bar & Grill in the West Village ended up with the best overall cheesesteak, a place which is now on my must-visit list.
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