New (hopefully weekly) column - the coolest things I saw/read/heard/did this week

Well the title says it all. I do intend to post this every week, but we'll see. I'm going to try to keep this at least relatively design related, but will not hesitate if something is just too cool to ignore. I think I also probably won't rank the items, so in no particular order, here are the coolest for this (now last) week:

1. The tallest Lego Tower

Just plain cool.

2. That Lovely Glow Effect tutorial on dooce.com
I consider myself to be pretty darn proficient at Photoshop, but I feel like there's always something new to learn. Sometimes it's something brand new, sometimes it's just a much more efficient way to do something I already knew how to do, and sometimes it's just a technique it never really occurred to me to try. Falling under that last category is this trick playing with a duplicate layer, gaussian blur, and transparency. Heather Armstrong describes a really simple technique to get photos to look "fuzzy or warm and mashed potato-y". I gave the technique a quick try myself with a photo of Willa from our apple picking trip last weekend. I'll definitely use this technique again in the future. Here's a before and after:

beforeafter

3. I became a Print Design Affiliate on shineboxprint.com
It remains to be seen whether or not this will actually turn out to be one of the coolest things I did this week, but it can't hurt. I could get a project or two from it, and I think they've got some really cool looking products. I first read about shinebox on uncrate. It's listed as 'The Buyer's Guide for Men,' but I would definitely encourage women to check it out too. There's some cool stuff on there.

4. The E Ink Esquire Magazine cover
I had seen a video of this a few weeks back and was totally intrigued. I hadn't really looked into how it worked, but this week I saw a video of it all taken apart, which is pretty cool to see. I still want to see it in person. It is cool without a doubt, but it does seem pretty wasteful/unnecessary. What's going to happen to all that stuff? I can't really imagine this sort of thing becoming commonplace in these green-conscious times.