It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I’d done one of these, until I remember I spent all of last December moving and painting.

I’m just getting to this now, but a few weeks back I made it out to the James A. Michener Art Museum to see Jim Henson’s Fantastic World, a traveling exhibit that will be in Doylestown until November 29, 2009.

It’s not a large exhibit, though I found the video worth watching–a rarity when it comes to me in museums. Yes, they have Bert, Ernie, and Rolf encased in glass. No, sadly, they don’t have Jennifer Connelly or David Bowie present (though I’ve been meaning to rent Labyrinth). Despite the “timed entry system” stated on the museum Website, they were pretty laid back.

I was most surprised by the fact that Jim Henson worked extensively in graphic design and advertising. Sadly, the YouTube video is gone, but I never knew that Cookie Monster got his start in a 1971 IBM training video (BoingBoing has a photo).

I figure I’d post this since I reached out to the Twitterati for reinforcement. I wanted to avoid the cliché of a red label and a character with horns, despite this being TorchBearer’s hottest sauce. Apparently my Twitter friends agreed, and I was able to convince the TorchBearer crew to go with something else.

As for the sauce itself, I have a bottle in my office, but haven’t touched it. Even I have limits

Okay, the kerning is off, but it’s still pretty cool.

During last month’s Central PA Tweetup I ran into a few friends that I hadn’t really seen since we were part of a group visiting Rome in 2002. The encounter reminded me of a Website of my Rome pictures I’d built shortly after the trip.

I posted the site to share the photos with friends (pre-Flickr, mind you), and I remember being scolded by people that were offended of a bunch of Penn State students hitting foreign bars so close to 9/11.

Apparently I’d taken the site down years ago, but I decided to restore it in its table layout, 800×600-supporting glory (you can check it out here).

The way I built the site and formatted the photos reminds me more of my age than any old picture of me ever would (Ugh, I’m getting old!).

Apparently, I failed to mention to a few people that I was in Colorado Springs for a week and a half. I was out there to assist on The Big Game class at Colorado College (think alternate reality game, not hunting elephants). Yes, it was cool.

I must say that I didn’t anticipate missing the Mrs. and the boy as much as I did, although I did have fun out there once I got over a temporary stomach bug. I took a brief trip to Denver to visit an old high school friend, and took a detour from the airport to spend roughly a half hour at Garden of the Gods (above). I wish I’d have had more time, as well as my tripod. Sigh.

Here’s a Thank You card illustration I did for Daphyn for her Baby Shower. It turns out my wife is a pretty easy client. Now, if the baby’d just arrive .  .  .

I pretty much swore off print in college after realizing I was killing too many trees during the design process, but I made a rare exception for my friends over at TorchBearer Sauces. They’re introducing a new, taller bottle for their products that makes it much easier to pour their sauce. I took a quick stab at scaling the characters from the existing bottle designs but ultimately convinced the guys at TorchBearer to let me redraw all of the labels from scratch.

I picked up a few of the newly-labeled bottles at the last Vidian (hot sauce party). Judging from some of the pictures I took (like the one above), I discovered I still have a lot to learn about my Flashbulb and white balance.

It was a fun assignment, as I don’t often get to draw really wacky characters, plus no paper was harmed in the making of the bottles (thanks to my trusty Cintiq). There are a few older bottle designs still out there (as well as a few new ones that aren’t yet out), but the new bottles should be hitting Giant Food and Whole Foods in the near future.

It’s still a little weird to see my handwriting on labels when I go through the supermarket aisles . . .

I recently found Nexus for Facebook (via Flytip), a pretty cool social networking visualizer.

The graph it generates looks like something straight out of Clay Shirky’s class, and the lower sphere definitely serves as a testament to how well connected ITP alums are.

I have a Facebook friend over at Microsoft and I just viewed their graph–which looks like it has about 7000 more connections than mine. I definitely need to get out more.