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Paul Kiesche is a talented friend and colleague of mine and has seven paintings entered in this contest, the winners work will be incorporated on billboards to be displayed along the Palisade.  There are lots of great paintings and photos...I encourage you to vote (go to view & vote) for your favorite, but give Paul's work a close look, his landscape series is impressive, more of his work can be viewed here. Enjoy the art.

 
 
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Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, sent a cipher (coded message) to his friend Thomas Jefferson in 1801, recently it was solved by a math professor in Princeton, NJ containing a message referencing the Fourth of July. Happy & Safe Fourth! Read more about the message.

 
WolframAlpha 06/04/2009
 
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OK, WolframAlpha may look complicated, but it's easy to use when looking for statistical information, measurements, stocks, music notes, what the weather was like when you were born, and other interesting facts. Type in a question in plain language and it will interpret your question. Some info can be quite obscure...type in your name and find out its rank in popularity and how many other "Gerards" are in the country, 44,710 in case you were wondering ;o) Check out the overview video to see what else you can find, I think you will find it useful...at least the dataphiles should.

 
 
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New album from Coldplay, free download. Live concert with a couple of new songs. Enjoy!

 
 

Perhaps the wisdom of the crowd can help me identify this commemorative event and what these people are known for. I can't find anything on the web to help me identify the event or what these gentleman are famous (or infamous) for...I think they may be composers, but collectively there must have been some 30 year anniversary that escapes any reference that I can find. Please let me know if any of you can help me.


Some hints include: 1) the years 1929 -1959; 2) the names: Emeric, Albert, Armand, & Zoltan. Also the the cities: New York, Paris, and Grenoble (France) repeat around the outside perimeter, the back has a logo of a deer with the logotype of "Dofan". This 3/4 lb Bronze medallion measures 3 1/2" in diameter was purchased for $3.00 at an auction in NJ...which makes a great paperweight until I find out more information.

Mystery Update (5/14/2009): Thank you all who contributed to help solve the identity of the medallion. The most comprehensive explanation was supplied by Ulysses Grant Dietz, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts at the Newark Museum "Dofan was a high-end handbag manufacturer in France that had a shop in NY as late as the early 1960s.  So this medallion was clearly an anniversary moment for the company--which obviously was founded in 1929. My guess is that the four men were the founders--perhaps even brothers (given the use of first names)."

Several contributors also helped identify (with photos) that Dofan was a handbag manufacturer (now vintage and apparently in high demand) and the logo was in fact a calf and not a deer as I first suspected (Thanks Cheryl). The calf represents the material that makes up the handbags. Thanks go to Rich, Andy, Bruce, Brett, Cheryl, Melissa, Matt, Doug, Marilyn, Jody, Rick &
Ulysses for their contributions. I guess I'll have to keep looking for some new puzzles...stay tuned.


 
 

As much as I love Photoshop, its an expensive program, however, there are lots on online photo editing tools available for FREE...here are 28 of them. Each tool offers a variety of tools to edit, distort, and have fun with. I used "Picnik" to do some color correction on a photo of Alex (my son) sneaking up on an unsuspecting sea urchin (no worries, no sea urchins were harmed while filming) Jeffrey Eckhardt (14) was the photographer...nice shot.

Photoshop Express (from Photoshop)and FotoFlexer are online tools that weren't mentioned in the list (but should have been). If you use these tools for anything you can at least crop or reduce the photos before emailing your friends a super enlargement of their face you took with your 11 Megapixel camera ;). Check them out and have fun!


 
 

This Tweenbot (a small robot that can only move forward) was able to make it from one corner of Washington Square Park to the other in 42 minutes...with a little help from his friends (29 of them). This was an experiment conducted by NYC student Kacie Kinzer who built the robot.

“One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”


 
Font Challenge 03/14/2009
 

Deep Font Challenge, is a shooting gallery like game testing designers skill in identifying and distinguishing font families, good luck typophiles!


 
 

Here is a Periodic Table of Typefaces a list of 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious (compiled from several sources noted on the poster). Grouped by classification it includes: family, rank, designer and year created...very nicely done, and a great reference, enjoy.