Power of opening lines in grammar images

Pop Chart Labs have come up with a very cool poster of 25 famous opening lines. The twist... they are written using the Reed-Kellogg system.

As they say..."From Cervantes to Faulkner to Pynchon, each sentence has been painstakingly curated and diagrammed by PCL's research team, parsing classical prose by parts of speech and offering a partitioned, color-coded picto-grammatical representation of some of the most famous first words in literary history. "

Check out a bigger image of all the sentences here.

Gingerbread men

By chance as I was nibbling away at my morning tea I came across this picture that made me smile.

Not only is this image enough to make me smile on its own, but that's what my little snack happened to consist of... a cup of coffee & a gingerbread man.

These are some of my gingerbread men. Not my best decorating job, but yummy nonetheless :)

If you're looking for a good spicy gingerbread recipe try this one from Greggs:
I'll admit upfront though that I do make a couple of tweaks :)

First I replace a 1/4 of a cup of the golden syrup with molasses, I also add a 1/4 teaspoon of ground chilli powder. Chilli you say? Don't worry it doesn't taste hot, it just seems to bring out the ginger, making it extra zingy :)

Ingredients

• 125g butter
• 3/4 cup golden syrup
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 2 Tbsp Gregg's Ground Ginger
• 3 Tbsp Gregg's Ground Mixed Spice
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp milk

Method

Preheat oven to 170°C.

Melt the butter, golden syrup and sugar in a large pot and bring to the boil.  Boil rapidly for several minutes and stir as it boils. 

Sift the flour, Gregg's Ground Ginger and Gregg's Ground Mixed Spice into a large bowl.  Pour melted butter mix into the dry ingredients and mix to combine.

Mix baking soda and milk in a cup and pour into the dough, stirring until it is well combined.  Rest dough for 5-10 minutes covered in cling film.

Roll out on lightly floured board (2-4 mm thick).  Use cutters to cut various shapes.  Put onto baking paper and bake for 10-15 minutes.  Cool.

Evolution of the brand logo

Things change, we know that, but how do things change when there is "marketing" behind them. More specifically how do brand logos change? And what are the people who change them trying to make us think or feel? Do they reflect anything about the society they're trying to interact with?

Take a look at these logos and see what you think...

The first logo is uses a busy font and is hard to read by today's standards. It doesn't take long for a bolder more readable font to be introduced - something that can be read better from a distance. Then we get the introduction of colour, and by the '60s a very simple font. By 2008 a very bold move is made - the assumption that text is no longer necessary, that this brand is so well recognised a simple tri-colour circle is all that is needed.

I think comparing the changes in Coke to Pepsi is very interesting. This brand has been a lot more consistent image wise, colour being the only real change. Yet despite not having the readability of the short '80s font has I doubt there is anyone who doesn't recognise this logo. Coke has also made an assumption, where Pepsi said they didn't need text at all, Coke has said everyone knows our logo, it doesn't matter if our font is super easy to read or not, people know us. 

Apple: such a change from the first logo! But then they find something that works and sick with it. The colour changes they only reflection of changing times.

This is an interesting one because it is such a reflection of the history of the company. Four separate entities join with each logo reflected. Then things are simplified, we lose the logos but we keep the linking image. 

 Okay so the first three logos don't quite count as it's only by the time we get to the forth logo, "International Business Machines" with a globe, that we hit the present company name. Nonetheless like Apple there is a big shift from the globe logo to the simple IBM. Again staying with what works.

I've got to thank Bored Panda for these - to see more go to Bored Panda

Food Art Death

No, you didn't read that wrong. Food, art & death - what could they all have in common. Food & art - sure, any great chef will tell you food is art. Food & death - sure, any great poisoner will tell you food can lead to death. Come to think of it, a lot of doctors will tell you the same thing. But all three together...

Tasha Marks, a food historian makes edible art. The piece that caught my attention was a chocolate skull. There you have it, food, art & death.

Not that she limits herself to death, she makes marzipan bees and frankincense sweets, ambergris lozenge and...  well you get the idea. Ms Marks runs a boutique food company called Animal Vegetable Mineral.

She talks about using food as art as combining the silly with the cerebral. To see more about her food adventure check out the BBC interview with her.

Make your life easier

I came across this list and I just had to share, after all who doesn't want to make their lives easier? The compiler of this list calls them life-hacks, which I also rather liked :)

There are 99 on the list but here are a few of them:

And I think I really better stop there :)
I just wish there was a quick & easy way to get a book to write itself - sadly no smiley face tennis balls are going to do the job for me.

The head of a pencil

Last week we had a post about time consuming art, but that ain't nothing on this.

Pencil stubs left over, planning to throw them in the rubbish, not  Dalton Ghetti. I was only going to add a few pictures but they're so great I struggled to stop. However you can see even more at the link.

2011 auto correct fails

Okay, I know we're already several months into the year, and I'm sure most of you have read these already but they cracked me up so I simply had to share them. Sorry for the long (picture) post.

Okay, I had to finish on the last one - TMI rather than auto correct fail :)

Punctuation - it can save lives

Today a topic close to many writers' hearts: punctuation. I'll be the first to acknowledge its importance even as I admit it's really not my strong point.

A few fun pics that tickled my fancy punctuation-wise this week:

 And I think we'll end it there this week :)

Technology

We've all got things we love. Stories that inspire us.

But when it comes to being inspiring, I can only hope that one day I get a fraction as inspiring as this next image. This guy not only loves the story, he loves the gadgets. On top of that he has skills a lot of us simply don't have to make stories come to life in our lives. Except, what's even more inspiring - he learnt a lot of those skills simply to bring his dream to life.

When it comes to famous cars this one's special because, well, it's not real... except now it is. This is a replica of the Batmobile from the latest Batman movies. Bob Dullam built this cool car from scratch over the five years.

And when it comes to cool tech this next invention is awesome.

Researchers have developed a universal robotic hand - they call it a gripper - but that's just fancy science language for hand  :)  Except that by thinking of another term they progressed further. Language can take us beyond the bounds of our minds, or this reality, it can also trap us. When we use the word hand, we think of a specific thing. That limits us. It limits us to fingers etc... By not using the word hand these researches weren't limited to fingers, and they came up with a new concept.

The gripper is actually a balloon which conforms to and grips almost any small object strongly enough to pick it up. To grip an object, the gripper creates a vacuum in the balloon, later it's then  to let go of the object just by releasing the vacuum.

Very cool. The power of ideas and of language.

Fun images

I thought some fun photographs this week because,  well, that's what I feel like :)

Okay, one of the reasons I've feel like fun photos is because my day job is being a complete pest. However, seeing this photo really puts it into perspective. Even on a day day my job's not this much of a balancing act, nor do I have this much risk hanging over my head.

Why this photo you ask? Well I've never seen a cat's tongue up this close, kinda fascinating. Also I couldn't help thinking of all those paranormal romances with cat shape shifters (I've just finished Nalini Singh's new one so that could be why).

These two cracked me up. These two are probably the baddest, bad-asses on their block. Look at the stance, look at ht menacing glare.  If they were people they would have leathers, big bikes, scars and gang patches. 

Not sure why I added this one. I'm not sure if it's funny, or creepy, or weird, or some combination of all three - or something else entirely.