Creative Advertising

I've been messing around a bit lately with a bit of super simple, creative advertising for my Furious Designs. Below are some of the results:

It is fun (and time-consuming) to work on the graphic designing and promotional aspects of product marketing...it can be overwhelming sometimes, especially when you are also the sole person designing and manufacturing the goods. Fotor is a free and super convenient photo-editing website, and I used it to make the above Furious Design's promos. 

I've also started messing about a bit with the free photo-editing program, GIMP. It is a lot more complicated to use than Fotor, and so not as user-friendly. But unlike Fotor, you can continually edit and change your picture, using layers. A few examples I made using GIMP are below:

GIMP is free but very close to Adobe in its photo-editing capabilities. However, this makes GIMP a little more complicated to master. I'm sure I'll get better as I continue to explore the possibilities and learn GIMP better.

Myxomycete Mania

Maybe its just me, but I love myxomycetes, more fondly known as slime molds. 

 A quick video introduction to slime molds from NOVA

Perhaps its because I grew up in the era of Dungeons and Dragons, perhaps its their strange somewhat freakish mobility, or maybe its just their super funky life cycle, but I find the slime molds to be such alluring and charismatic organisms, so...imagine my delight when I encountered this intricately gorgeous Physarum species in my yard moving through some leaf litter.

When I checked on it again the next day, not even 24 hours later, the beautiful, veined, brilliantly colored yellow network of the streaming plasmodial form was gone, and the stalk-like sporangial phase had begun. These stalks of sporangia contain the spores of the Physarum, remind me of whimsical miniature balloons.

Not only does this rather ubiquitous species of slime mold exhibit a keen ability to navigate its environment, it seems able to find the shortest route between itself and a perceived food source. Scientists have observed this species of slime mold solve mazes, anticipate events, regulate nutritional intake, and simulate highly efficient road-like networks. 

It turns out we have learned a lot from these single celled model organisms. <3

NaPoWriMo 4/10/2013

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt is to write an un-love poem...and I'm thinking...hah...too easy.



To the Person Who Ate My Plums

This is just to say
That I am feeling really bummed
Having come home
From a long tiring day
To find
You raided
My ice-box
And the sweet cold plums
I'd been saving
In all their delicious ripeness
Were gone
The only trace
To reveal they once existed
The half cleaned pits you left
Still glistening
With pulpy plummy flesh
Slimy on the cheap Formica counter.


This is a response to the popular poem This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams, as you might have figured.