www.publicprintlab.com

Sorry I’ve been out of touch recently. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on. For a while I thought I was going crazy, there was so much to do, but I made it through.

Things have been really busy at work. We’ve got a bunch of big contracts in the works, and I’ve been working overtime on a bunch of Flash/Actionscript stuff. It’s really cool when its working, but extremely frustrating when it isn’t. I’m going to be some kind of Flash guru one of these days if I keep this up.

I forgot to mention it, but I relaunched Beatbots a few weeks back. I’d been working on that for a few months, and in one crazy week (while I had a bunch of crazy work stuff going on too) I got it launched. I’m happy with how it turned out and it seems like other people are liking it too. There’s a lot more activity on the site now, which is really cool.

Last week / weekend I spent most of my evenings working on my toys for the Vinylmore DIY toy show (opens this Friday). Disaster struck on Sunday morning (deadline day for my toys) as I was assembling them. Because I was dumb and painted over the arm and neck joints (learning what not to do for next time), it was really hard to get them put back together. When I did get them together, after much forcing, I went to pose of of the arms and it totally snapped off! I was freaking out! Thankfully I had another blank Munny in the apartment, so I stole an arm from that, did a quick paint / coat job, and pieced him back together again.

Here’s how they turned out. A jolly riff on the native Hampdenites. :)

Sneak peek at all the Vinylmore Toys

This week I’m starting on an interactive media art exhibit that’s opening at the Creative Alliance on March 15. It’s collaborative project with the dudes in Post Typography, and I’m really stoked on it. Here’s the details …

Post Typography: Public Print Lab
Minstallation Gallery

Mar 15-Apr 26 Opens Sat Mar 15, 4-6pm
Free

Presented by artist/impresario R.L. Tillman, the newest addition to Baltimore’s cultural landscape has already staked its position as the region’s most vibrant miniature installation space. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to spread their wings in this intimate yet ambitious gallery, with 225 square inches of floor space and generous 14 inch ceilings.

Avant garde design subversives Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, aka Post Typography, convert the gallery into a miniature, quasi-automated, open source publishing house. Images emailed to a given address during the run of the exhibition will print out in the gallery and be bound and published as a book at its end. Making waves nationally since 2001, Post Typography has received numerous fancy design awards and been featured in such publications as Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type and D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, The Art of Modern Rock, Metropolis magazine, and Taschen’s Contemporary Graphic Design. They specialize in conceptual typography and custom lettering, with forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work and vandalism. Technical assistance for Public Print Lab provided by Justin Blemly of beatbots.com, DIY media resource for Baltimore, DC and beyond.

Next Tuesday I’m having a Beatbots Launch Party at the new Vice club (old Fletchers). Raven and I will be DJing with one more person TBA, and we’re trying to screen a bunch of video by Beatbots contributors Ann Everton, Kris Anchor and others. More details on that a digital flyer coming as soon as I can get it worked out.

I’ve got some other stuff on the horizon too, but I’ll hold off on that for now. So remember Blarg, even though I haven’t seen much of you lately, I haven’t forgotten about you.

Your pal,
Justin

Bloc – Modular MP3 Player

Check it out! Beatbots is breaking new ground!

http://www.beatbots.com/boards

Oh yeah, and we released Cellblock today. Go check it.

I’m starting with the databases. I’m planning to change the entire schema, so I’ll have a more flexible system in place for further site development down the line. Now that I’m going back and revisiting the code I wrote for the site two years ago (it was this time two years ago, to the month, that I started Beatbots) I’m seeing that what I put together is far from elegant. It reprents my design abilities at the time, and it got the job done, but it’s not worth building on. I’ve decided to take the slash and burn approach instead.

Beatbots V2 Dev Stages (to be released in stages):
1. Database redesign, refactoring / redesigning php+mysql code to match the new schema
2. New site functionality, refactoring general layout php code + move to (mainly) css driven layout
3. New graphic design, big push to update the look of the site / increase interface feedback

If I give myself a month for each stage (which may be too conservative an estimate), I won’t be done with this lifecycle till October/November. Wish me luck …

Gloto

Some of them are books, some of them are lecture series (Oxford, Brown, etc), all of them are high nerdery. So excited!!