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Same Sandwich Different Look and Polo's Adventure

My little guy was throwing up almost anything he put into his stomach, so we decided to give him only ham and bread sandwich, no milk.  Yesterday I asked him what he wanted to eat, knowing that I will only give him the usual ham and bread sandwich, he said "my pant".  "OK, that's what you will get" I said.  And he wondered :)  You should see his sweet little smile when he saw this, I gave him the same sandwich, only look differently, and he ate it all.  I wonder how many times this trick will work hahahah.

Same sandwich, different look

I made up a story too, while he was watching Disney channel.  He's been reading short stories without words by Régis Faller, in which the character is a cute little dog called Polo.  We both love the stories so much, I would "read" the story to him by making "noises" and he often giggles uncontrollably.  This time I made up Polo's adventure with a new friend called FroggyBird.  It was great fun when I read him the story last night.  You see the camera in the sky is really dumb in timing, it always release the shutter at the wrong count, so you can "imagine" how funny the photos look like.  Well, this also gave my son some exercises in counting and phonics.  In case you wonder, he is now feeling a lot better.

Afternoon Scrawl, Bedtime Story

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Friday Bokeh

Yes I was on leave on Friday taking care of my son who's having diarrhea and vomiting in the past few days.  I'm surprised I was only able to steal about 10 minutes to do my own stuffs, while he enjoyed my full attention the rest of the day.  What did I do in those 10 minutes?  What's better than taking a picture of my cup of coffee under evening sunlight and play with bokeh effects.  I was going to name the picture "another pathetic bokeh photo" :)

Friday Bokeh

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LCA Instant Back+ Photos During CNY

OK, here's the 1st day of shooting with this instant back and I got some tips for you.  If you haven't picked up your LCA lately, make sure you check the battery level coz without good battery you are bound to screw up any photos taken with it.  Press the shutter half way and see if the red LED light up responsively, if the LED flicks, change battery or clean up the metal connections.

LOMO LCA Instant Back+ photos

Secondly, get familiarize with your LCA's distance switch once again.  0.5m is approximately the distance from my finger tip to my elbow, so I am confident that distance is not a factor contributing to any of the blur imagery.  Finally, in lower light condition, make sure you don't move too fast after pressing the shutter, you should hear the second click sound then you are free to move.

I have to say the LCA Instant Back+ is a great product, once you are fluent with the above tips once again, you are free to explore other techniques such as double exposures without worrying too much wasting precious films.  This combination creates very strong vignettes, and in most cases they look great.  Applying a wide angle lens on your LCA will create less vignettes but the result is more distorted image.

BTW, my experience told me that using a flash at ISO 200 will probably create over-exposed image.  I suggest you to shield the flash with color filter or simply put a thin tissue over the unit.  I'll be interested to hear your stories and experiences.

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What Materials Age Well? Brass Products in Traveler's Notebook Line

Midori is releasing a series of new products relating to the popular Traveler's Notebook.  In an attempt to create the same aesthetic of the leather notebook, the development team chose to use brass as the material which radiates the same pleasing quality as it ages.  I think it is an excellent choice of material, it gives you the feeling of a trusted old friend, give it a little polishing it comes back to a shiny companion.

Brass clips, bullet pencil, rulers from Midori

The brass series includes 12 pieces of numbered clips, a 15cm ruler with raised edge for easy pick up, a solid brass pen case and bullet pen/pencils.  These bullet pen/pencils are available in white or brown barrels in addition to the brass ones.  The pens have a ring at one end for strap add-on while the pencils have a large eraser instead.

Nostalgic display - leather, brass

During the Midori private show I visited, I learned that they are preparing for a "Traveler's notebook & company" exhibition to be held in Spiral Market again this year around March/April.  I am glad to be invited to contribute some contents for their on-site newsletter in "what's in my bag" style.  

Traveler's notebook & company (friends) display

The large size Traveler's Notebook is far more popular than the passport size they released last year.  To promote the use of the passport size Traveler's Notebook, which can be used as an actual passport jacket with note keeping capability and kept close to your body, Midori is releasing more add-ons such as new refills, rub-on letters and 2 limited edition refills which looks like a real passport.  In the limited edition refill package, they thoughtfully included rub-on letters in passport looking font so you can personalize the notebook on the last page like it is a real thing.

limited edition passport notebook with rub-on letters

Finally, since document envelope with string closure is very difficult to find in Japan, "Kraft envelopes" are created.  It gives a crafty way to store your receipts or coasters collected from travels, either use them individually or make them handy by taping them on the notebook refill cover.

Traveler's Notebook display at Midori's office

Here's my 2 cents about material use.  I love the brass application on the hardware (pen case, clip, pen and ruler), while Midori is proud of its range of high quality paper products, application of tougher material on the notebook covers or even envelopes and document holders will add similar aesthetic and durability to this overlooked area.  I would recommend to use jean label material in the form of cellulose fibre in combination of leather and paper to create a new range of pleasing products under the Traveler's Notebook collection.

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Customized Lens Cover, Fever in L.A. and Tokyo

Hi all, I'm back from L.A. and Tokyo finally.  The craft and hobby show was interesting, I love what I found there.  Then there was the visit to stationery heaven in Tokyo, wonderful trip too.  Despite the great finds in these 2 trips, I had the most terribly fever all the way from L.A., to Hong Kong and Tokyo.  I was like a zombie when I was not working, luckily I'm almost fully recovered.

Customized lens cover

What I did today after last night's arrival back home was to unpack and look at all the treasures I found.  I will be updating bits and pieces here to share with you.  Some more rest is certainly necessary, but tomorrow is time to drag this battered body back to the office.

I was carrying my lovely Canon F1 all the time in these two weeks and took some great photos, one thing I realized was that I really hate the blank lens cover.  My son said I should draw something on it, finally I stamped something on it using Staz-On ink and he said "Wow, so cool!" :)

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Scrapaholic by Mark's - BTW any recommendation for nice stationery shops in LA/Anaheim?

I will fly to Anaheim for the Craft and Hobby Show from tomorrow, don't know if I will be able to update anything on the blog, but I'm excited.  Anybody will be there too?  Or perhaps Los Angeles?  I plan to check out some nice stores over there, any suggestions are welcome.

Before I go, here's a very very brief update for what I've seen yesterday.  Mark's came to our office and gave us some introduction of their upcoming products, many of the series are very attractive I can't report right now.  Mark's is doing exceptionally well in terms of business in Japan contrary to the current Japanese market situation.  I think they have over 10 retail stores alone in addition to their wholesale business.  They are currently exhibiting in Masion et Objet in Paris.

One of the series is called Scrapaholic, which features light weighted scrapbooking products.  They have some very nice notebooks, stickers and masking tapes beautifully done.  Seen here are just two of the new masking tapes and a Scrapaholic notebook.  I hope to show you more when I come back from Anaheim.

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Leather GTD Tabs - a Hack with Binder Clips

What I don't like about hipster PDA is basically because of poor styling and the ugliness of a binder clip.  That's why I created mind.Depositor (currently in version 3) and freely downloadable GTD index card templates.  However, after repeated attempts to find ways to group these different cards effectively, I finally settled back to using binder clips, except that I was determined to make them look better.

GTD Tabs - any type of clips works

These GTD tabs were finally made about a month ago borrowing the idea from Clip-rite, a company founded by Janet L who grew up in Brazil and later moved to United States.  I met her last year in Japan and admire her can-do attitude.  Her patented design is simple yet ingenious, solving everyday problem by combining 2 products into 1 (sticky notes and paper clips).  Without infringing her patent, I guess, I modified to replace the paper clips with binder clips for my GTD dream set.

GTD Tabs - Next Actions with binder clip

It is dead simple, anybody can do it with just a few pieces of scrap leather, cutter and some binder clips.  You decide the size and shape of the leather piece, cut a slit in the middle which should be measured to fit the width of your selected binder clip, or any other types of clip you find pleasing.  Then open and insert the binder clip through the slit, its done.

GTD Tabs - in action

I used alphabet stamps to make impressions on the tabs to create 4 different GTD tabs: Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For and Someday/Maybe.  In a more refined version, I added stitches and they do look a lot better.

GTD Tabs - alphabet stamped

These GTD tabs not only let me bind piles of index cards in groups, they are also handy for pulling the cards out of a storage case, in my case the mind.Depositor 3.  I'm so happy to have done this, solved binding and accessibility of index cards in one step.  Do try to do it yourself and let me know how it goes, love to hear your feedbacks!

 

Janet L - Founder of Clip-rite

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Hold That Thought Man!

Can you multi-tasking inside your brain?

I didn't know why I take this shot but now I can see the importance, I somehow captured the tiny text "hold that thought" from the book dart tin can label which explains a lot of my agonies over some of the meetings and discussions held in and outside of our company.  Thoughts and opinions flying around without being organized re-organized and re-created.  What a mess.

Book Darts and Stuffs

Alright, multi-tasking may not be the right word to describe what I meant, everybody has a lot of tasks that are in progress.  Tasks are things to *do* outside of your brain, we can have a lot of ongoing tasks and that's multi-tasking.  Thinking all over the places inside your head unorganized or time sharing your brain power into small chunks for different thoughts and tasks are not multi-tasking, that's incoherence disguised in multi-tasking, that's attention deficit.  Worse, when you spit out these thoughts as opinions without respecting the subject in discussion and nobody takes on the role of a moderator, it gets ugly, points noted but discussion heading nowhere.

Thank God I had implicit training in Scout when I was young to learn proper ways to listen and organize, to hold thoughts and relate thoughts, to assemble thoughts corresponding to discussion, to reflect and accept possibilities.  These skills should be formalized and taught in school, it can be great fun to play these brain exercises.

In 2008, a SAP pilot test was done to create an ordering system, comments were made.  Too many mouse clicks, too slow.  In Jan 2010, the system was launched, user complaints: too many mouse clicks, too slow.  What happened in between?  Attention deficit, lack of moderator, a lot of system integration bullshits.

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Strida Cream Edition on a Sunday Ride with Kids

We had a great cycling trip with kids from the neighbor on Sunday, it was an easy 5.4 miles ride and we enjoyed nice food afterwards.  I particularly love riding on such a handsome bike, a Strida Cream Edition with Brooks saddle I acquired as a Xmas gift to myself :)

Strida Edition Cream with Brooks saddle

Trying to work out with Strida Hong Kong to create a lower priced mini version, will see how it works out.

Sunday Cycling

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mind.Depositor 3 in the Making

A very brief update on my mind.Depositor 3 project.  If you don't know what it is, take a look at the mind.Depositor 2 post with GTD index card templates free for download.

 

My goal this time is to further enhance a small portable leather case to carry 2 pens elegantly (elastic bands holding the pens inside a leather surface), add a slit on the cover to have an input notepad easily accessible, and use leather tabs combined with binder clips to have each of the 4 stacks of index cards beautifully managed.  I can only do small steps at a time at very late night, so the whole process is a bit slow but got me into thinking and planning a lot.

 

One devilish thing I do in the process is to annoy people living one floor below us.  They complained my son and his friends running around in our flat making noises on their ceiling, and that was in a weekend afternoon!  They complained our air conditioner dripping water but refused to help locate which one, we offered to fix as soon as possible but we needed to find out which one, man.  They refused to meet, they refused to talk on the phone and they complained.  Anyway, I just needed to use my hammer to create holes on leather pieces for stitches in very short time slices, about 100 bangs in 3 minutes once in a while around 10pm, no later.  Extremely satisfying.

 

I'm very happy with this new one, hope I can find more time slices to make it better.  Small steps.  Will update bits and pieces here.

 

Follow me on Twitter for mini updates.

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