escapee!

my first stop motion

one small step for design...

So on Saturday, Simon tweeted that he'd come across some pretty obvious design rip-offs in a well-known SA store. Not on the side of the street or in a dodgy flea market, but in YDE of all places. Young Designers Emporium. 

"Out shopping & came acros this BLATANT RIPOFF of the @TokiDoki brand @ YDE Canal Walk! pic#1 pic#2"

Those of us who follow and enjoy Simone Legno's work (Tokidoki) were pissed off and seriously disappointed that a large store who claim to be centred on original design would carry something like that. A tweeting crusade ensued. Well, I say crusade, but mostly Simon tweeted @YDEtweets and @Tokidoki a lot, and we re-tweeted everything he posted. The more eyeballs the better.

Today, he got his response... 

“@YDEtweets: @TokiDoki @HelloVinyl After further discussions, the designer has made a decision to recall the bags.”

 

How fabulous is that? It shows the power of twitter and the power of our opinions. If three of us had walked in to a YDE store and complained about the bag to a store manager, I doubt much would have happened. But using a tool like twitter that has the potential to spread far and wide puts the brand in your hands. You now have a say in a brand's PR.

[as an aside, let's protect our designers and their hard work! tweet fakes whenever you find them!]

grow, garden, grow!

After our failed attempt at a veggie patch, and the garden not surviving as beautifully as we'd hoped after our wedding, we decided to get someone in to help. We have a beautifully spaced garden, but a tricky one with complicated soil thanks to the biggest tree in the neighbourhood standing in the corner leaking alkaline onto everyone around him. But he's gorgeous, so you work around him.

Anamaria arrived, took one look around and told us our garden didn't suit us, and it was too old fashioned for a young couple. All in broken Spanish. She's great :)

It's been a lot of fun watching it all go out, then all go in, and seeing things through someone else's eyes - someone who can explain to you what's really going on. 

My favourite piece so far, and the section I was weeding this weekend, is the cactus garden (though if Anamaria heard me calling her succulents cacti...). There are loads of pics to come from this project, but here's the start...

dunny doppelganger

My new dunny arrived in the mail this weekend - woo-hoo! And it's quite a curious one. It's from David Horvath's 2 Faced dunny series, which does two things I've not seen before - a) the artist has included himself and partner (Sun-Min Kim) in the series as dunnies, and b) there's a story to the series. This is David as he sees himself dunniefied:

@samthepenguin (a fellow dunny collector) has his very own custom dunny of himself, created by @lunarseablythe and it's too cute! Would love to see a series where the designers put themselves in to dunny form.

my top ipad apps

I figured it was only fitting to draft my post about my favourite iPad apps from within a blogging app. First time using it, so this should be interesting.

The iTunes store is filled with thousands of apps for iPhone and iPad, some extraordinary, some useful, some entertaining and some downright useless. It can be quite time consuming browsing through this vast library and I think people mostly rely on the "featured" pages to guided them on what's worthwhile. But a little peer suggestion also goes a long way, so this is my list of my current favourite/must have apps on the iPad for those of you out there lucky enough to be playing with one:

Blogshelf: follow your favorite blogs in a neat, bookshelf styled rss feed with images. It is $5 but I've found it well worth it. $5
iBook: this is an obvious one, and to me as given as the iPod app is on an iPod. Kindle competitor allowing you to read digital books from the iBooks store, much like iTunes. Slick, organized, user friendly, and people I've asked have said much better than Kindle app. Only waiting for the store to be stocked up now. Free

Converter: simple, well designed units converter, including currency. $1
Jumbo Calculator: free calculator based on the apple calculator on iPhones and dashboards. Free
Marvel/DC Comics: reading comics on the iPad is awe inspiring. Suffers from the same issue as iBooks (not enough material has been digitally converted yet), but an iPad without a comic book reader is nekkid I tell you. Free, with in-app comic purchases, $2 an issue
xkcd: everyone needs a good daily giggle. Free
Google analytics: keep track of your blog and site stats. Free
All subway HD: I have an unusual love of subway systems and riding trains. I love this one - every subway map in the world,  from Adelaide to Zurich. $1
eBay: with my recent vinyl toy hunting, this has served to heighten my addiction - beautiful layout of your watched items, clean easy communication with your sellers and lovely browsable search. Still missing some key features (saved sellers, saved searches), but there's little I go to ebay.com for now. Free
Flipboard: presents your personal Twitter and Facebook accounts in a magazine layout - like reading a mag of your favourite people - beautiful, if a little unreliable at this stage. Free
Twitter: the free, official app for twitter - best app I've used for managing multiple accounts. Free

So what are your favourite apps?

(While I used Blogpress to write the bulk of this post, I did find it a bit cumbersome. Look forward to the day Google/Blogger develop an actual blogger app. Better suggestions welcome.)

scavenger hunt

Since I discovered Kathie Olivas in Paris (yay for Artoyz!) I've been determined to find more of her figures. But they've been quite a rare species, bordering on extinct, with all online stores sold out of everything she's ever made.
In my recent eBay obsession though (which I'll elaborate on another time), I've managed to pick up some gems! (and at excellent prices, for those who suffer from shopping locally too)
These are the two latest additions to my collection: a rare (200 pieces worldwide) pink Masao (i like pink!) and Daisey from series 2.  

I'm also waiting on a limited edition blue Beaumont, and an orange Cosmic Penny.  *excited*