Compost food

So I spent the whole day at Compostmodern 09. The conference was really informative and entertaining. I'll be breaking up my posts about it over a few days since I took around 100 pictures and have lots to think about now. But first is the important stuff...Food. The above image is just some random liquor store I passed while wandering around looking for lunch. You see so little hand done type in SJ that this is actually nice to see now and then.


I eventually ended up here and am super glad I did. I stopped to check it out because of their sign, and once I saw the place was packed I decided to give it a go. I'm a sucker for holes in the wall like this. Glad I did.

This was part of their menu above the meat counter.


...and their drink list.


Anyways, their food was pretty damn good. When you order something they pull out the corresponding slab of roasted meat and slice it up for you. There were a ton of sides available as well as different meats to be had in both dinner or sandwich form.


I gave their beef sandwich on sourdough a go and added a side of some tasty chili. This and an IBC root beer came out to ~$10 which isn't too bad in SF. The cup on the side had their bbq sauce which was more sweet than spicy like you normally get. It was a little odd at first but was nice once I got used to it.

The tables are family style so I ended up eating with some guy in a suit. Turns out he was in town for a business conference and used to come here all the time when he worked in the area. We ended up talking for about an hour about sustainability as it relates to design. He, like many people, didn't really know what graphic design had to do with sustainability so it was a pretty good little talk. Interestingly enough...one of the lectures later that day had to do with talking to business people about just that issue.


Anyways, I left and ran back to the conference in time for it to start back up. This is one of the walls outside. Ridiculously cheesy but it sorta fits.


After the con we went to Sugar for the afterparty. Had a couple drinks and chatted it up. Met some new people, talked with some semi-familiar faces, and in general had a good 'ol time. I seem to be addicted to martinis after Eva's party so I drank one of them. Felt really bad for the bartender...This pic was taken after the place cleared out a bit. When we first got there it was PACKED and there was only one girl bartending. That had to suck. The coordinators apparently called and warned the bar we were going to swarm the place but I guess they didn't think it'd be that many people.


After all that drinking we got a little hungry so we stopped by this place for some mexican before going home. I forget just what these were called but the name started with a p and they were delish. Just the way to end a night.


Finally saw this place on the way back to the car and thought the sign was a little different. The picture didn't come out but oh well. Whew. Long day so I'm going to bed.

P.S. click the pictures to see them a little bigger.

Tofu?

Another mass of slightly nasty looking stuff for Tofoo Com Chay today. Seriously...this food tastes better than it looks. It is tofu, so it just tastes like spices and sauce which is OK with me. Most of it had a meat-like texture this time unlike the teryaki chicken from last time. I was hoping they would have their curry mess behind the counter again so I could try it but, alas, there was none. *sigh* I guess I'll just have to make my own.

I ran into T~ on my way to my eating spot. She reccomended the Basil Tofu and also said the Sesame Chicken tofu was pretty good there so maybe I'll get it next time. The girl ahead of me got that exact combination so there must be something about it...

Cards everywhere

Business card time! We had a crit for our business card, letterhead, and envelope yesterday. The instructor came in with a huge stack of business cards, etc. that he's collected over the years. The ones on the left are ones he made and the ones on the right were from his collection.

I had a fun time coming up with my cards. Too many crazy ideas bouncing around in my brain. I ended up just playing around with the card and forgot to make the letterhead and envelope. Woops!

He liked some of the stranger ideas I came up with so I'll probably run with them...Tho I also liked one my super simple one as well.


Because I rather liked the way it came out here is a screencap from our green screen exercise from Tuesday. You can't really see her face here so I should be OK. I had a little problem showing it in class. The file size was huge so I re-encoded it into an AVI to knock it down to a managable size (260 megs down to 5). My computer would freeze up on the original video but the smaller one plays great.

The problem is I have a whole bunch of codecs on my computer from watching downloads. Anime fansubbers are pretty notorious for crazy codecs and mine will play pretty much anything I throw at it now. The teacher has a new Macbook Air....and my video didn't play. He had me give him the uncompressed....and it didn't play right. *sigh* A classmate suggested using the mp4 codec so I'll give that a go soon.



And this is the video I used. Capsule is love.

Green Drinks

Eva invited me to a cocktail party that she was throwing last Friday. As soon as I walked into the house I knew it had to be a librarians...A card catalog! Haven't seen one in forever.

Getting to the party was an adventure in itself. First I took the wrong freeway. Which I did last time I went that direction. Then, once I finally found her neighborhood I started to walk into the wrong house. Hey, it was close to hers and they were having a party also so I don't feel too bad.

The party itself is pretty fun. I caught up with a few people I knew and met a whole bunch of new people. Drank lots of martinis, ate lots of food, and borrowed some good manga.


I forgot to take pictures of most of the food. There was a ton of it and all of it was pretty darned good. This was the cheesecake at the end of the night.


This was her 'to read' pile...and I thought I had a lot. Of course, mine isn't solid boyXboy smut. Gotta love being on DMP's review list. After seeing her shelves I really need to alphabetize mine. I'm super disorganized.


Well, that was the only exciting thing that happened this weekend. In class yesterday we played around with video cameras and green screens for out Movie Title project. I ended up not using this backdrop but other people in the class did. I had my partner hold a green sheet of paper and then placed a video over that in After Effects. After a second I had her fold up the paper and walk away. It came out really cool. I'd post it but I'm pretty sure she'd kick my ass if I did.

New smoked cheese

This is all over the place today. KyoAni promised a new episode preview of the new Haruhi series...Then trolled everybody with a (sorta)NICE BOAT.



Then, followed it with some actual content. (embedding disabled -_-;;)

『Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya』#1

『Nyoron Churuya-san』#1

I wish they'd stop toying with us...But at least we got some Smoked Cheese! Nyoro~n.

Serious business

In the future, this is what all serious designers will be carrying when it rains, kero. When she popped this thing open I couldn't believe my eyes. Way too much fun! Apparently she also had a duck one at one point in time.


Amazing frog umbrellas aside, we spent a good portion of today going over some of our old projects. Trying to decide what we want to put in the show, what we only want to photograph for the show, and what should never see the light of day again. These were our 3d time lines...which will probably be photographed since they have gotten pretty beat up over the last 2 years.


Some of our posters. The tide chart and a typographic 'map' from home to school. These ones almost always make it in because they were fun to do and look really nice. We had lots of really big posters so it should be fun making them all fit.


A very small sampling of some of the books we made. Scientific American redesign, experimental type book, corporate identity, and our animal/nature books off in the distance. We could probably build a library.

Aaaaand the Bach CD. Most people hated theirs but a few came out nice.

Transition tofu

Weedays are rough. I spend most of the nights only sleeping a couple hours in order to get all our homework done. Tuesday night was no exception. I went to school, made dinner, etc. then napped a few hours and got to work on this.

We're doing a movie title sequence in one of my classes. For homework we had to come up with a number of 3 panel scenarios that used specific transitions from one to another. Then pick an ad, change the slogan in one picture and in another change the picture but keep the slogan. Finally, we had to pick a common phrase, find a picture that fit it, then make a logo to represent it. I ended up having fun with it and took a bunch of pictures to make silly jokes. It was a good exercise, I just wish there were more hours in the day to finish everything properly. Thus is life.



On to food! I was looking for a place to eat lunch the other day and this place was suggested to me by a friend. It makes all sorts of meat-looking things out of tofu. There are a couple vegan places around here that do that...I wonder if it is a new trend of some kind?

I was feeling adventurous so I decided to give it a go. The place is one of the typical hole in the walls. Enough space down one wall for some 2 person tables, the counter, and the kitchen right behind the counter.


For my meat substitutes I got the Vietnamese sausage, terryaki chicken with sesame seeds, and some dango looking things that had an unidentifiable but pleasing taste. The sausage thing was ok but a little bland. The chicken was just fried tofu strips with terryaki sause on it. I kinda liked that one. I also liked the rice and lettuce because they put this clear sauce that had peppers in it. Mmmm, spice! It wasn't too bad for $5.

argh. I need to increase my food vocabulary a bit so I can talk about it better on here. More food manga? Reading Oshinbo las night reminded me how little I know about Asian foods.

Back on topic! Their menu basically just shows their soups and a few other things. Most of the rest of the food is just on display buffet style and you point to it. The problem I had with that is that it had been sitting there for a while and they nuked it before handing it to me. I'm going to go back and try out their pho. Maybe it is freshly prepared? I also noticed some curry in the back that I want to go back and try out. I wish I knew it was there before I ordered....