The DIY arts and crafts website ArtsCow.com is having a great promotion right now – you can purchase one-sided personalized dog tags at only $0.99/each with free shipping. Just use checkout code 99DOGTAG (expires 11/20/2008) to effect the promotion.

I got to thinking, instead of the fairly lame portraits people have been putting on theirs, why not use a military dog tag as the design? After some quick research on the font used for this purpose I came up with a list of simple instructions:

1. Grab the TrueType font “Kredit” from 1001Fonts.com for free (local mirror).
2. Unzip the ZIP file you downloaded. Right-click KREDIT1.TTF and select “Install”. If this option is not available, navigate to your Control Panel, select Fonts, and select “Install New Font” from the menu.
3. Create a new 1500 x 900 (W x H) image in Adobe Photoshop. Yes, I know that the dimensions are reversed – don’t worry about it. We’re going to rotate the image when we’re done.
4. Lay out the personal information onto the image using the Kredit font – I recommend the font size of 120px. For an accurate representation of a real tag, refer to this page on ArmyDogTags.com. Finally, rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise. Alternatively, use this Adobe Photoshop PSD file I’ve created as a template.
5. Save image as a JPEG. Upload to ArtsCow.com. Purchase!

I’ve enclosed the sample image ArtsCow.com provided me after I followed the five steps above and uploaded the design to their site. Pretty neat, isn’t it? You can order about a dozen for your twelve closest friends and still end up spending less than twenty bucks total for a personalized gift that people will hang on to for months to come.

Written in conjunction with Christabel Jackson. Original review appears at The Panic Manual.

Toronto – With my New Year’s resolution of making 2008 my busiest year for concerts ever fresh in my mind, when I found a pair of tickets to Goldfrapp at the Danforth Music Hall offered to me at cost price, I quickly made an offer. One round trip to Royal York subway station and $90 in cash later and the rights to potentially see Alison Goldfrapp wear a horse’s tail on stage were mine.

I’ll tell you right now: The horse’s tail thing didn’t play out. Sorry. It’s history for real. It was still a good show though, and a polka-dotted muumuu made its appearance, so keep reading.

The Danforth Music Hall is a pretty ideal venue to watch a show like Goldfrapp. It’s large – slightly below the capacity of Massey Hall – but with far more comfortable permanent seats. Aside from the orchestra seating area, there’s a balcony for latecomers to use, as well as four box seats that are probably strictly for show. Seating was unassigned and first-come, first-serve, so my concert-going partner Christabel and I quickly established ourselves three quarters of the way back on the right side of the orchestra section. A well-stocked bar in the lobby ensured that drinks of every type were available, but bringing anything other than water bottles into the seating areas was restricted. I wasn’t in the mood for anything other than Dasani-branded Brampton tap water anyways. Shortly thereafter we were underway.

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I’ve mentioned this technique to a number of people I know and referred them a couple of websites for an explanation. Most of the time I need to then discuss what those explanations meant. This is my attempt to create a simplified explanation of the technique known was “exposing (to the) right”. I thought I’d share it here as well – and create a discussion of its pros and cons.

Introduction

So you’ve become a pretty competent photographer with your digital SLR camera. You know how to balance shutter speed, aperture and ISO to capture the kind of scene you want in your photos. Now it’s time to start looking for efficiencies. How can you capture more detailed, less noisy images with the equipment you already have?

One technique that’s made inroads as referred to as “exposing (to the) right”. The term is named thus because use of the technique leads to the histogram representation of the image being shifted to the right on the X axis (which is mapped to the brightness level of the photo). But to understand why we would want to expose to the right, first we need to learn a little more about how your digital SLR camera captures that image.

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An English professor gave his class an assignment. He said, “Today, we will experiment with a new form of composition called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students, Rebecca and Gary.

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My given name, I’ve always felt, makes me sound overly serious. Now, this next part is very chicken-and-the-egg: I’ve thought that while I used that name, I subconsciously acted in an overly serious manner. Whether I acted that way first and thus the name took on a serious tone to me, or whether the name sounded serious and I simply fulfilled its expectations – that’s a tossup.

I think everyone who knows me today is quite aware that I’m distinctly not a very serious person.

What changed? Well, when I went off to university, as a dramatic test of this theory I shortened my first name to Sully. The results were dramatic: People’s initial perception of me had immediately changed. Again, however, it was a chicken-and-egg situation: Did their perception change because of my new first name, or because I was now acting in a manner that I thought befitted it?

Most of us are pretty quick to jump to skepticism of the former – the name doesn’t make the person, the person makes the name. I wouldn’t blame you for this. I’ve repeated the idea, dubbed my First Name Theory, to many people over the years only as a joke. (Most of the fun is derived out of the examples I would give to illustrate: “You see, Johns act this way. Bruces act that way. And Michelles, don’t get me started on Michelles…” Bonus points if you don’t know the person that well and his wife turns out to be named Michelle.)

But I’ve always quietly hoped that my theory would somehow triumph over logic. Today, a British poll showed that the FNT may not actually be that crazy!

Check out the link for a list of the top and bottom five first names in the categories of success, luck and attractveness. Apologies in advance to those who now know people immediately think less of them (though those effects could possibly be avoided by not living in Britain).

No Sullys seemed to have made the lists. I think I’m happier not knowing.

“You’ll never make any money out of children’s books, Jo. Keep your real job.” — Bloomsbury Books editor to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, after purchasing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (for $1,910) in 1996.

The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy

What happens when you take an postal/zip code to geographical location database and relate it to one of the greatest ongoing debates the world has ever seen? An interesting ten minute diversion of a website, that’s what.

I added one for ‘pop’ for the downtown Toronto area.

I’m giving serious thought to a purchase of the watch in the centre (click to enlarge):

Now let’s see if the watch store I spotted this fine piece at will make a deal. $450, take it or leave it…

Update: My bargaining couldn’t net me a deal better than $690 final as their best offer; I walked.

Update II: I returned to the scene of the crime on November 19, 2007. After some yet further bickering I made the purchase for a significant amount less than the number quoted above. It truly is in incredible condition and is slowly becoming my daily wearer (the Kenneth Cole’s battery keeps dying prematurely).

I’ve included an expanded writeup on this particular watch below. There’s also a fantastic article about the Omega f300 series of watches over at DeskDivers.com that’s worth reading.

Everyone who makes the big jump from a point-and-shoot to a SLR camera comes face-to-face with an unfortunate reality: There is no such thing as a high quality, do-everything lens. The camera powerhouses of Canon, Nikon, Olympus and the rest have yet to produce a lens that will take wide-angle shots and, with a twist of the barrel, reach out and touch someone with a deep zoom. While my trusty and rather aged Canon PowerShot A70 had a very usable 35mm – 105mm range (3x zoom), a prosumer is typically looking to double that to something along the lines of 10mm – 200mm.

Unfortunately, if a quality 20x zoom lens is out there, it’s the world’s best kept secret.

Today’s solution? Pack multiple lenses in your camera bag: Two, maybe three. But before you commit to potentially spending thousands of dollars on a set of lenses that do it all, take a moment to consider the type of photography you’re likely to undertake. In the process, you may not only save yourself a load of cash, but also realize something about the kind of photographer you’re destined to be.

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Down with Pronger for undisclosed personal reasons.

It takes a hockey fan to get it (here’s a fair roundup), but that’s one of the funnier signs at a hockey game I’ve heard of in a long time.