Like tweets, but with grammar.
Behold: ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and the new Photoshop Logo.
I gotta hand it to Adobe. They really knocked this one out of the park. I mean, look at that gloss. It just screams OS X Aqua circa 2000.
Yes, yes. The logo is old news, but it’s newly interesting now that you can host this ass of an icon on your iPhone.
This morning I learned that I might need to start dosing myself with caffeine before starting my daily bicycle commute. While traveling in a pack of bike commuters I realized I was pretty zoned out, which isn’t exactly the safest thing when biking in traffic. Things can turn gnarly in an instant, and it’s imperative that I stay in tune with my surroundings.
Nevertheless, I have learned a few things. While the working-class Mission hipsters like myself typically commute to downtown on Harrison, the hipster-class Mission hipsters commute on Valencia. Truly, the flow of bicyclists represent two totally different demographics depending on what street you take.
Tonight Chris and I grabbed some falafel goodness at Ali Baba’s Cave, and took in a late showing of Pixar’s Up, which was surreal, touching and absolutely beautiful. The story was heartfelt and lovely, and I couldn’t stop geeking out over the texture of everything. From paper to glass to fabrics to embroidery, everything had this complex richness to it that made it believably tactile. Incredible.
Cloverfield is the most terrifying movie I have ever seen in my life.
The entire film was shot with a handheld camera, and edited as though the tape was pulled directly from the rubble. As a result, your own knowledge of the story is absolutely limited to that of the main characters, resulting in a myopic claustrophobia that forces you to exist right alongside them, in the moment.
I was unprepared for the heightened realism that this technique would convey. It was extremely disconcerting to watch firsthand footage of the fictitious destruction of Manhattan, only to know that six years ago we all experienced it for real. Cloverfield has been criticized for its echoes of 9/11, and while I haven’t decided yet if there is any true fault in this, all I can say is that it worked.
The film has also gotten some criticism for its loose cinematography, and there have been unconfirmed reports of outright nausea, but fortunately my gut found it to be no problem. I am the kind of person who considers reading in the car to be a damn good time, however, so your mileage may vary.
That said, midway through the movie I was ready to throw up, not because of vertigo, but because my body had reached its physical limit for processing terror. My palms were sweating, my heart was racing, I was shivering uncontrollably, and I feared that if I didn’t get a break soon I would completely lose it. To put it plainly, I was so scared I almost threw up.
And I would do it all again in a heartbeat, too, if they weren’t still so damn close together.
Dane Petersen is a one part interaction designer, one part design technologist, and three parts troublemaker. He enjoys playing outside, talking loudly and waving his hands around.
Dane has worked as a wilderness guide, snowboard instructor, windsurf technician and envelope stuffer. He loves space, airplanes, saunas, running, backpacking and homebrewing.
At GE he designed diagnostics apps for monitoring jet engines, at Filament he built cross-platform apps for managing industrial IoT sensor networks, and at Adaptive Path he helped companies like PG&E, Sunrun and Nike strategize great digital products.
His portfolio is at thegreatsunra.com.
You can email him at
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