Friday Fancies

Who’s ready for a long weekend? We are! In honor of Earl, please have yourself a Dark n’ Stormy while checking out some things that caught our attention this week; in honor of us, please keep your fingers crossed we don’t get washed away en route to Maine.

I was enamored of Mark Khaisman’s work before I realized what the primary medium was; when I realized his portaits are comprised entirely of packing tape, I couldn’t get enough.

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Ever Evolving

We’ve been working on some substantial changes to the Union Jack Creative site, including a pretty drastic switch from dark to light and some added features to make our content easier to navigate.

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Learning Linux

This weekend, Jack installed Ubuntu for netbooks onto my Eee PC; it turns out, running Windows on 4GB of memory is not the most efficient option. I had been hesitant to make the change; I’m not the computer-savvy half of our team, after all, and “Linux” was one of those terms that had always been an indicator for me to leave a conversation when it came into play.

Jack found my trepidation comical; he made the change, showed me the ropes and let me play around for a few hours before checking in.

Jack: How are you liking Linux?

Kate: It’s fine, easy enough.

Jack: Much faster, right?

Kate: Sure…and, it’s purple!

[Silence.]

Of course, Linux itself is not purple, and I am well aware of that at least; but look at that home screen! It doesn’t hurt that the Ubuntu interface is incredibly intuitive and an easy transition. Thanks, Jack!

Friday Fancies

I was about to start this post with a comment about how quickly Friday sneaked up on us; then I realized that that’s becoming a bit of theme, and that’s pretty boring. Perhaps we just need to adjust to the busy-ness of business, and reevaluate our norm.

On the plus side, it’s Friday! We’re staying in Boston for the weekend, helping Jack’s sister settle in for her first year of school and looking forward to a lazy (but project-heavy) Sunday. With waffles.

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B(re)aking Bread

Disclaimer: some may argue that this post has nothing whatsover to do with UJCreative’s typical interests in art, design and general creativity. That’s a fair claim to make. But, the ladies with whom I dined earlier this week insisted on the recipe, and really, who doesn’t love some pictures of tasty, tasty bread?

Not me, that’s for sure.

I would argue that break baking has its creative moments, and requires some level of dexterity similar to handicraft. Most importantly, though, every hostess should have this loaf up her sleeve – and so, I share it here. Click through for more photos and the recipe.

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Big Bambú

This weekend, we finally made our way to New York to see Doug and Mike Starn’s Big Bambú exhibit at the Met.

It was delightful.

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Friday Fancies

Oh, hello Friday. You caught be by surprise there, totally snuck up on me. 

This week has been a whirlwind of new art  – I found a few new blogs, a few new Tumblr friends and a few new sources, and suddenly my monitor overfloweth with visual stimulation. So, for this Friday, it seemed only fitting that our fancies reflect our new finds. 

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Wise Words

A favorite passage from When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver. Read more

Reflections on Rune

Norwegian artist Rune Guneriussen has apparently been assembling and photographing these haunting, alien landscapes for quite some time, taking veritable herds of everyday objects widely presumed to be intended for indoor use and making it seem as though, in fact, we’ve got it all wrong; they should be set free. Globes, chairs, books, tables, lamps, telephones, chocolate bears – all have a chance in front of the lens, with positively stunning results.

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Shedding Light

The living room of our rental was afflicted with a space lamp.

Really, I assume the light fixture (which we’ve had it out for from the get-go) was from the early 90′s, and not the future, but it was difficult to tell the difference. Aside from being oddly shaped, it cast a terrible, harsh light from above that made every guest to ever grace our sofas look ghastly, tired and old; it was the kind of light that made the circles under my eyes exponentially worse in photos, and the worst possible light to have at parties.

So bad, I didn’t even take a before picture.

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