lifecycle

The old and busted.

Today I bid farewell to my LG Chocolate II phone.  So long, old friend.  You served me well. Except for the miserably short battery life and lousy signal strength at the end. I'll let it slide, and just remember the good times.

Welcome into the household, the new iPhone 5. I got the black one.  It's oh so slim and sleek, and lightweight.  Very impressive.  The screen is quite sharp and a joy to stare at.  I've spent a good portion of the evening loading it up with apps, music, and pairing it to my cars.  Even paired to the stereo via Bluetooth and played a few songs.  I haven't had a chance to try out the new ear pod headphones yet though.

The new hotness.

I guess you could say I've finally joined the 21st century by giving up the basic phone and picking up a smartphone.  Though technically I've been carrying a smartphone for a while, the Blackberry I have for work.  I never used it for much more than checking my emails and the occasional photo though, it just wasn't all that appealing to me as a smartphone option.  I think in this day and age a smartphone needs a touchscreen, without it you are just not able to interact intuitively with your data and apps.  Just my opinion.  It works for other people I suppose.

It was a natural pick for me to go with the iPhone since I already have an iPod Classic and an iPad.  Since I've already poured dollars into the Apple iTunes and App Store, it didn't make sense to go Android.

Of course that didn't stop V from recently buying the latest hot Android phone as an upgrade to her old HTC smartphone.  She got the Samsung Galaxy S III in white.  We spent a few minutes on Skype video chatting each other from opposite sides of the house.  What a pair of dorks we are.

knockoffs

The new 2013 Porsche Boxster features a new design, and while it's quite attractive and a great update to the iconic Boxster style, it does look a little familiar to my eye... what it is?  Somehow it looks like it may have borrowed a few styling cues from... the lowly Toyota MR2 Spyder?

Porsche Boxster

Toyota MR2

What,  you don't see it?  In the shape of the doors and side vents, and in the shape of the headlights?  Maybe it's just derived from the common shapes that all mid-engine sports cars tend to share.  Or maybe it's an attempt on my part to justify somehow keeping my little MR2 instead of trading it in for a sexy, newer model like the Toyobaru.  Certainly as more of the new Boxsters start to hit the streets, my MR2 will look a little less passé.

decolletage

I've given the blog a design makeover, starting with one of the standard "simple" templates but of course tweaking it with my own style.  I guess you could say it's a fresh look and a reflection of my current sensibilities.

Design and style have been on my mind lately... thinking about things from cars to photography to landscaping.  One of the sites I stumbled upon has been great inspiration and is appropriately named, linxspiration.  The tagline currently reads "Look Classy - Live Classy".  It interestingly enough, intermingles images (usually with very little or no accompanying words) of things like technology, cars, fashion, architecture, and women.  Usually very scantily clad women, which makes me sort of question the "Classy" tagline.  Though perhaps the absence of total nudity is what keeps it classy.  I'm tempted to finish this off with an image of Ron Burgundy, but at the risk of being a hypocrite I will instead feature one of the hotties spotted on the site.

hubba hubba.

designs

The design and style of cars, and particularly sports cars, has been on my mind a lot lately.  Let's take a visual look at some of the beautiful design ideas that have been swimming through my head lately.  I would love to own any one of these cars someday:

Acura NSX

Alfa Romeo 8C

Aston Martin Vantage

Audi A5

BMW 507

Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic

Chevy Corvette Stingray

Ferrari 458

Ferrari 250 GTO

Ford Mustang

Lotus Esprit

Lotus Evora

Porsche 918

Toyota 2000GT

And if I were to design my own sports car, I would probably borrow heavily from the shapes and lines you see above.

demolition

December is here once again.  Two trials, and a whole year in our new place now behind me.  I've decided to take the rest of the year off (sounds so much more grand than saying I'm taking 2 weeks off, right?) and started telling people at work, I'll see you in 2012.  Some of them seem a little put off by that.  Most satisfying.

And just as I return from Washington DC and settle into my comfortable routine of staying up late watching movies and playing video games, and sleeping in ... what is this cacophony outside?  Oh that's right, I have an army of workers outside digging, hammering, pouring cement, building walls, and bringing my backyard designs into fruition.  Can't believe it's finally happening.  We got our city permits, HOA approval and everything.  Months of talking about design ideas and choosing stone materials for pavers and tiles and moldings, actually turned into something really being constructed!  It's very exciting for us, not to mention costing us most of the remaining savings we had left after purchasing the home, so we are of course monitoring things very closely and taking pics of everything that goes on.  Oh, Mauro is going to move a pile of dirt from one side of the lot to the other with the Bobcat?  Hold up, let me go get my Nikon...

Can't wait to see it all when it's done.  Firstly, because it's going to be awesome.  Secondly, I can start sleeping in again.

architectural

It's been a year since we moved into our new place at Stonebrae. And we still haven't started landscaping in our back yard. Not to worry though, I have been hard at work designing and visualizing what our back yard will look like, and we've selected our contractors for the project. So we'll be getting that started soon and we're very excited about how it will turn out.

2D drawing, my layout overlaid on top of plan drawing of our lot.

I started out sketching designs and ideas on the iPad using Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro, which is a great 2D sketching tool. But when I started to use photos and try to visualize the outdoor kitchen and pergola in 3D, it wasn't cutting it.

Top view of the lot in Sketchup.

 So I found out about Google's free 3D drawing tool, Sketchup, and started playing around with it. It's pretty easy to learn by watching the various tutorial videos they make available, and you can't beat FREE! So I started out by sketching the kitchen area, and next thing you know I had added the pergola, and then the whole backyard design. And then to take it to the next step, I started drawing the outline of the entire house, and before you know it I had a complete 360 view of the property. So I went ahead and did some redesign in the front yard too. This stuff is addicting! One of its primary purposes is for architectural and landscaping design, so it was very easy to take the real world measurements I had and input them to make my drawing to-scale and as realistic as possible.  

Kitchen and pergola area, with measurements using Sketchup.

In addition, Sketchup can pull in real world imagery from Google Maps and Google Earth, so you can actually render stuff and see what it looks like in real locations.  And you can build and share objects (called components or models) with everyone else in the Sketchup community, so you don't even have to draw/create everything yourself.  If you need a pre-rendered palm tree or a chair, chances are someone has already done it for you, and you can just drop it into your project and move/rotate/scale it around to your taste, or even tweak it further.  Data just wants to be free...

Plants, furniture and pergola from the 3D Warehouse.  House, walls and fountain design by me.

We're still in the process of getting approval through the HOA but our contractor is on board and we are ready to make this jump from virtual to reality very soon. Stay tuned for real photos of the finished project and we'll see how true to the design it turns out!