Dave's Blog

Happy New Year!

From Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it's been snowing so beautifully, we wish you a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2006!

Ice Candles

We got wintry weather for about two weeks before Christmas here in Minneapolis, then it got warm again, and the ice candle holders I made all died virgins... they never had candles burning inside them. As they melted, they briefly became a sort of delicate white lace, and then they were gone.

Cantilever

My daily commute takes me through downtown, past the new Cesar Pelli-designed public library. The building is starting to look good, with its cantilevered spire shooting out over Hennepin Avenue, but the diving board appeal of this thing makes me wonder what kind of suicide risk it presents. Whoever is reading this: For God's sake, don't do it! Everybody feels this way at some point during Christmas!

Carbon Fiber Revolution

If, like me, you are a cyclist, you already know all about the carbon fiber revolution; pretty much all high-end racing frames are made from this super-light, super-strong substance. My Trek Madone weighs 16 pounds. You can pretty easily lift it with two fingers, yet it's quite a bit stiffer than my steel bike (the average bike frame flexes quite a bit as you pedal, wasting energy that could go directly through the pedal cranks).

The other day I stopped by the bike shop hoping to check out the new 2006 carbon mountain bikes, but I was out of luck; production has been delayed by a carbon fiber shortage. Reason? The companies that make super jumbo jets and wind turbine blades are sucking up the supply.

The very next day there was a stir in the office; "Look outside!" my sister said. A train out back was hauling what I first though were a bunch of submarines, or sailboat hulls, or missiles. A closer inspection revealed that they were wind turbine blades, maybe a hundred of them!

Wonder how much each of these weighs? Less than 1000 pounds, I'll bet. Still, that's a lot of Trek Madones...

Another Place to Make Your Mark

Latte Etching

And speaking of, I just read in the New York Times Magazine that 70,000 new blogs are created every day (between 2 and 8 percent of these are "spamlogs" or "splogs"). That's a lot of clammor for attention! So, um, thanks for stopping by here. Now hurry along; you've got about 12 gagillion more out there to check!

My New Favorite Website

...is Boing Boing, A Directory of Wonderful Things:

Boingboing

Good God, there are a lot of interesting entries here (check out the archives)! I spent a couple of hours on this site before bed last night, and had trouble getting to sleep, 'cuz my head was a-whirring...

I May Be An Artsy-Fartsy Liberal...

...but I respect dudes like this.

Indoor Graffiti

Another variation on my graffiti fascination: I went to a party at my friend, Tom's, house, and he was allowing people to draw on the walls of one room. This one kid, Alex Kirwan, dashed off this little beauty. Turns out he's a boy genius who was once an animation student of Tom's, and has now been scooped up by Hollywood (he was recently the art director of a Nickelodeon show called "My Life As A Teenage Robot"). Talk about a visual imagination coupled with drawing skills! Like all great artists, he made it look easy.