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This past year, Cowie and Fox created a reusable, colourful, yoga bag for Semperviva. The dual sided artwork has been quite eye catching all across Vancouver. I’ve seen it on almost every bus I take and even in the local grocery store.

Recently the bags have been spotted on the other side of the world in Greece.

If you’re wondering why the bags have recently been spotted in Greece, find out more information here

It was 1977 when I first saw this movie poster and even at the young age of eight I knew that it was going to be the greatest movie ever. And it was!

I lived the next several years being a full time Jedi. I was so stoked when my mom got me my blue Star Wars shirt with this same poster graphic on it. Yes, I thought that I was pretty cool on my first day of school, but new clothes for the first day of school is another story. The more Star Wars branded merchandise one had the cooler you were. Yes, I was only 8 and given the times it didn’t take much to blow our minds, but even still I think that this poster creative is just as cool today as it was 32 years ago.

There’s 2 movies coming out in the near future, that are sure to be amazing. The art direction for both of these films look so divine, in fact, I actually haven’t felt this excited to see a blockbuster type of film in a long while.

Where The Wild Things Are

Alice in Wonderland
You’ll have to wait until 2010, but i’m sure it’ll be well worth the wait, below is the preview and some character portraits.

On the weekend Vancouver had some amazing weather. Perfect sunshine, blue skies, then suddenly rain and clouds came out of no where along with a really intense thunderstorm. It’s been a very long time since i’ve seen fork lightning in this city, and for so many hours too! Too top that all off there was this intense firey sunset which ended with the HSBC Celebration of Light Fireworks.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to take any photos or video, but I did find this wonderful little timelapse showing just how crazy the day was.

It’s full on into the Summer season now and one of my favorite ways to enjoy it, is to sit on my patio. When I come home from being at C&F, there’s nothing like lounging on my deck with an ice cold beverage, watching the people pass by and having a little BBQ too.

It took over a year for me to finally get my patio the way I wanted it to look, plants wouldn’t grow, chairs were too big, but now it’s just right.

I recently got my place featured on a website called Apartment Therapy.

Check out my tiny little oasis on Apartment Therapy

Since then, i’ve managed to build a large cedar bench (with the help of my boyfriend) to replace my previous seating.

The bench ended up costing half of what i’d pay for one in a store and the benefit is that I could customize the length to fit my patio perfectly. Most quality wood benches in the store are anywhere from $100 – $300 and my bench was about $50. All the wood was untreated cedar which was all pre-cut at the hardware store to the sizes that we pre-measured before hand. We also purchased some extra long screws, some boat varnish to finish the wood, sandpaper, and the decorative cushion for the top.

You can find this cute cushion at Canadian Tire for around $35

To top it all off, I found a retro style Coca Cola crate to store all my BBQ accessories in and next to that, the little BBQ fits right in just so.

My best friend is always introducing me to new music. In fact, I practically rely on her to keep my music collection fresh. We went to the Decemberist concert last night at the Vogue Theater. I never thought a mix of Rock n’ Roll+ bookish indy pop+Opera would leave you so refreshed the next morning.

Apparently the album-The Hazards of Love was written as a screen play and ended up as a rock album, which gives the performance last night a Phantom-of-the-Opera-ish tone in the beginning. It was an outstanding concert, and the crowed loved the opening band too…Blind Pilot from Portland Oregon.

I’ll buy both the CD’s to support the bands and add it to my official summer tunes for my road trip on the August long weekend!

Check out the tunes here.

Photo credit:  here

One of our programers here just asked me about this, so I thought this would be a good candidate for ActionScript 3 tip #2: How to access a variable in the Flash embed code.

In AS 2 it was easy:

_root.variableName

Now, you need to use the loaderInfo class. The loaderInfo class provides information about a loaded SWF or image. You can use it to access things like the file size, dimensions and url of the loaded content. Using the parameters property, you can access those variables that you pass to the SWF in your embed code:

root.loaderInfo.parameters.variableName 

Here’s a fleshed-out example of how to load an xml file who’s path you define in your embed code, from within a class:

package
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.net.URLLoader;
    import flash.net.URLRequest;

    public class Test extends Sprite
    {
        public function Test()
        {
            var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
            loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,
initXML);

            var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(
root.loaderInfo.parameters.xmlPath);

            try {
                loader.load(request);
            } catch (error:Error) {
                trace("Unable to load document.");
            }
        }

        private function initXML(event:Event):void
        {
            var loader:URLLoader = event.target
as URLLoader;
            if (loader != null) {
                var data:XML = new XML(loader.data);

                trace(data);
            }
        }
    }
}

I recently found an interesting article that seems to explain that there is financial success behind the usage of social media for marketing.

“Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.” – ReadWriteWeb.com

Read for yourself

Also check out this rather blunt, yet informative slideshow that visually explains social media.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

This is an animated video explaining the credit crisis that’s currently all around us. It’s a very visually appealing piece of work created with simple graphics and sounds. Of course the subject matter isn’t most pleasant, but the presentation still stands out.

Check it out!

If there’s one thing I love the most, it’s lounging in a park on a blanket, or spending a few minutes on my lunch break sitting on a bench in the sunshine. Each day I try my best to take a few minutes to have a peaceful moment somewhere away from the daily grind.

I discovered these amazing lawn installations in a park in the Netherlands. It really makes me wish Vancouver had unique things like this.

The playful chairs are designed by Lisette Spee in a collaboration with Tim Van Den Burg the seats are part of a series of lounge chairs made for public spaces in Valkenberg Park in Breda, Netherlands.