By Any Other Nerd

My Informational Design and Visual Literacy course provided me with a challenge this week to explore and discuss a company's logo.  Basically, to break it down and explore how it captures the company's message and purpose.  After aimlessly googling company logos trying to find inspiration, I randomly thought of the Playboy logo and what follows is what I wrote.  I should warn you that several people who read an excerpt on Facebook said they wouldn't be able to look at the logo the same again.  So enjoy! There's lot to cover with this logo and the more I think about it, the more ingenious I find Playboy to be with their logo.  This logo conveys much without actually saying anything formal and much of what it suggests is more risque without having to be blatantly raunchy--something that Playboy aspires to over other entities like Hustler and the like.  Playboy is a multimedia empire that largely caters to men’s sexual interests. What started initially as a magazine has

So if you haven't heard already, I ran the first marathon of my life this past week .  It's been an epic 2.5 year quest to achieve as I've chronicled within this blog .  This certainly won't be the last blog post on the subject matter as I'm not likely to give up running but will try for more and more accomplishments.  But before I go for more victory laps, I want to thank people.  While it is undoubtedly me who runs these races, I do not get there without some help from many people.  I've said before that I'm proud of my accomplishment, but there are many things that contribute to my success . Thus, I'm taking this time to thank all of the people who have been helpful in me achieving this.  Help comes in many forms.  With some such as my partner and friends, it means coming to races or providing me a hearty meal (before or after) a big race.  For others, it's the mere inquiry of how my training is going and genuine interest and encouragement of wh

26.2 miles in a single day is something I used to laugh at.  The line of thinking went something like this: "I don't run.  And even if I did.  I'd never run a marathon.  I don't care if a whole zombie horde was after me.  No way.  I can never imagine doing that.  That's crazy."  It's the same variation I have heard from myriad people over the course of this venture and shared with them my own goal to run a marathon.  I can certainly say I understand it from both sides of the experience. Anyone who has been following this blog (all three of you) knows that my trek to this has been long, mostly fun-filled, and chock full of insights and reflections . It has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life in that I worked hard and achieved something that I largely though was impossible for much of my life. So how did it go?  Well, like the blog title says, it was hard.  But in truth, it was awesome (in all senses of that word).  I hit challenges w

So if all is going according to plan, I'm about one hour into my first marathon.  This past week (like much of my experience), I have swung among many different feelings:  from a sense of disbelief to an overwhelming sense of accomplishment to some sense of dread (Mile #20--I'm looking at you!) to a nagging desire to think about what lies beyond (what new running challenge do I want to tackle next?) to whispering anxiety about getting an injury somewhere within all of this.  But such are the thoughts of many of the folks I will be running with. But in the end, I feel quite ready for this.  I don't think it will be a "jog in the park" as they say.  I anticipate the challenge of running 26.2 miles will be incredibly hard since I did not train as much as I should have (do we ever?) and running 26.2 miles in Vibrams may offer it's own range of challenges.  But I'm ready for this and I will do this. And that thought brings back the disbelief that I'm no

This post will feature some of the more curious finds on Librivox that I've come across in this entire series.  Some of these are quite random while others are just finds that I rather like or find useful to look at.  So has anyone been following this entire series?  What post did you enjoy the most or find most useful?  Let me know down below in the comments section.  If you have enjoyed or plan to enjoy any of Librivox, I highly encourage you to DONATE .  Like Wikipedia, it is a site largely run by volunteers and is a nonprofit.  We all substantially benefit from both which is why I regularly donate to both.  Please consider donating!  If this is the first one you're turning into in this series, check out my previous posts in this series.   Previous posts in this series include: Horror Part I   Horror Part II   Science fiction Part I Science Fiction Part II Fantasy Part I Fantasy Part II Ragged Dick - Horatio ALGER, JR. (1832 - 1899) http://librivox.org/ragged-

I finished the last race before the marathon in 2 weeks and it was indeed another resounding success.  I ran the Applefest Half-Marathon last year and came in at 2:25:48.  I was proud of that and proud of all the running I had done thus far that season.  Last year, running was solely a distance game with the major question being "can I make it?"  I proved time and time again that I could.  I proved that despite the repeated desire to stop, I could indeed make it to the finish line, time and again.   I have a lot going for me when I set out to run a race and I can't deny that it helps me immensely to get to the finish line.   I also find it mildly amusing that I started off this season with a conversation about asking about times and this has turned into a season of running that is very much focused on times. My timing for this race was 2:06:36, which was pretty damn epic in my book.  It was about 19 minutes off last year's running of the same race.  I was clear

This is the second to last post in this series.  Originally, I was going to go with six parts, but I figured I would dedicate an entire post to the strange artifacts to be discovered on Librivox--so that will be the final post.  In the meantime, here's the second part of free fantasy audiobooks.  Previous posts in this series include: Horror Part I   Horror Part II   Science fiction Part I Science Fiction Part II Fantasy Part I Just a note about the links and categories.  Not all links will open up a new tab.  If you want to open a new table with a link, either press the "Control" button when clicking or right click and select the "Open in New Tab" option.  As for categories, I've tried best to put authors on the pages that I think they fit with regard to genre but many of these authors cross the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy (sometimes within the same story), so they are not as clear.  So your favorite horror author might end up i