New At The MoOM

Collections Department

The Fall 2010 exhibitions are now up at our Museum of Online Museums and include The Gallery of Monster Hornets Nests, Las Onomatopeyas Galeria de Batman and The Library of Dust, among dozens of others. Plus, our three-part "MoOMumentary" entitled The Curators, is now showing too. Consider joining our quasi-prestigious Board of Directors. There are virtually no benefits, snootiness or responsibilities, and it isn't even tax free!

Vermouth and Beauty

Remixed and Remastered

Trust us, we don't take this lightly. With the holidays upon us we felt it was of the utmost importance to let you know about an important change we have made to our Perfect Martini tutorial. Perhaps you've seen that there have been significant changes to the formulation, color and packaging of Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth. The issue is outlined quite well in this Journal article by Eric Felten. (Thanks to John Gruber for the link.) You'll also notice that the article is almost a year old. So WTF? Why did it take us so long to update the holy scripture? The answer is simple. While essential to the martini, vermouth is used in very small portions and we tend to stock up on things. So, we had been mixing merrily along using our reserve of the "old" Noilly, and thinking that all was right with the world.

But the plain truth is that things were very, very wrong and it pains us to think that during the past year we have likely steered more than one person to a sweetish and yellowy end. The Noilly you buy in the states now is unacceptable. Full stop. Unless, like us, you have a reserve, you'll need to find a substitute. We have tested many brands and are now happy to include Dolin Dry Vermouth de Chambéry. It's every bit as good as, although not by any means identical to, the old Noilly. We find it has just a hint more bitterness and is less "wine-y." Those are good things. Our apologies for the delay in making this announcement and remember, "Repeat as necessary."

We're not sure why you'd want to, but if you'd rather order up something different from the bartender, you'll find a ton of ideas in our huge collection of Friday Drink Links. Happy Holidays.

Layer Tennis Post-Season Tourney

Match Point

Congratulations to Mig Reyes, who prevailed in the Layer Tennis Season 3 Championship Match against Noper. We'd inscribe his name on a big pixely cup right alongside Shaun Inman's and Jason Koxvold's except we don't have one. Yet.

Thanks to all the players, commentators and fans who made Season Three of Layer Tennis a big success. And thanks to the crew at Goodby Silverstein & Partners and all the folks at Adobe Creative Suite for making it all possible. Sign up for Season Tickets or follow LYT on Twitter for news about some special exhibition matches being planned and about Season 4.

Innovation From The CP Labs

Never Not Find
What You’re Looking For Again

We've been working on this new project in secret, keeping the window shades drawn tight and shredding the paperwork along the way. And now we can finally announce it. Say hello to the next generation of search, a new product that promises to change the way people find things on The Internet. Plus, Peppermints! "Never Not Find What You’re Looking For Again." From CP Labs, the folks that brought you The RinseCam 9000™, so you know it's good.

A CP Film

Press Check

Think of it as "How It's Made" with much cooler music, awesome people and hot, nasty, metal-on-paper printing action. Our new film on the making of Field Notes, Wings. There are just a few Colors Subscriptions starting with Raven's Wing still available. So you know.

Stuff About Stanley Kubrick

I Am Putting Myself
to the Fullest Possible Use, Which Is All I Think That Any Conscious Entity Can Ever Hope To Do

For the last ten years we've been collecting links and tossing them into various categories. As you probably have noticed, we're a bit of obsessed with a certain film director. Check our big, messy "Stuff About Stanley Kubrick" archive.

A Very Short Attention Span

Passing Fancy

Are you better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them? Yeah, us too.

This Plus This Equals That

Megadeath of a Salesman

This is the sort of thing that Twitter is especially good for, but a washroom full of chalkboard walls works too. A while ago we hosted a quick contest called Booking Bands in which we asked people to combine the name of a book with the name of a band. We received thousands of entries, posted a ton of them and then randomly selected three and sent those people the book and a CD from the band that they mashed together. The process of coming up with funny or unexpected associations in this contest became a central part of JC's presentation at SXSW, A General Theory of Creative Relativity.

December Guest Emily Taylor

The Whole Package

Emily Taylor (ems) is a Chicago based industrial designer who works in package design and at her co-founded company, Po Campo. It's there where she designs and develops their fabulous and functional bike accessories for women; all made in Chicago. In her condensed spare time Emily volunteers for community based projects including serving on a Park District board and aiding in developing public art projects. We're expecting a diverse range of links from bikes to green design to cats, as Emily always has her toes in everything.

A list of all the brilliant people who have helped us by guest editing Fresh Signals can be found here.

Other recent features are listed on Page Two.

Fresh Signals

If you're short on bar supplies for a toast tonight, here are four drink recipes containing mayonnaise. Yum. sd-yesterday

FotA and Layer Tennis battler this season, Jessica Hische, explains: Mom, This is How Twitter Works. sd-yesterday

Watch the New Year's celebration in Times Square in 3-D. ms-yesterday

Ring in the New Year 24 times over, drinks around the world. ms-yesterday

Making the case for backing up information on microfilm. sd-12.30

Trailer for the recently unearthed Tron Holiday Special from 1982. sd-12.30

"Four hundred tons of train, 25 mph of snowstorm and 625 volts of electricity." Via Doobybrain. sd-12.30

Afghanistan, December 2010. ms-12.30

The USPS will release Pixar character stamps next summer. ms-12.30

"In the late '60's I worked for Bell Labs for a few years managing a data center and developing an ultra high speed information retrieval system. It was the days of beehive hair on the women and big mainframe computers. One day I took a camera to work and shot the pictures below. Via MeFi. ms-12.30

What's your state good at? Way to embarrass us Illinois. ms-12.30

Gorgeous work from artists Robert and Shana Parkeharrison, Architect's Brother. ms-12.30

Lifehacker gives us the best explainers of 2010. Huh. Wish I read this before I paid 20 bucks for a HDMI cable yesterday. Hello return line! ms-12.30

So you know, bad science in movies. ms-12.30

Look what Skipintro found in Amsterdam. Thanks a million for that. jc-12.29

Ebert picks his best feature films of 2010. ms-12.29

Snowflakes under the microscope. Via Make. ms-12.29

Jamie Stuart's short film Man in a Blizzard, an homage to the classic Man with a Movie Camera, shot during New York's recent snow storm. sd-12.28

Skylights over Libya. ms-12.28

Vienna Christmas Lights. dw-12.28

The diaries of industrialist J. Paul Getty are now available online. I'd like to think that if they were available at the time, Mr. Getty would have fully appreciated having a Field Notes notebook handy to record all his ambitious endeavors. ms-12.28

Trailer for the newly restored 1925 masterpiece by Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin. ms-12.28

A short film in paper, Train of Thought. ms-12.28

The Pizza Pi cutter. ms-12.28

Taha Al-Hiti, a professional calligrapher, explains how letters were originally based on the shape of the human body. ms-12.28

A time lapse video of yesterday's East Coast blizzard as seen in one backyard. ms-12.27

So you know, how to build a hockey rink in your backyard. ms-12.27

Tilt-Shift Disney Parks Christmas Parade. ms-12.27

When parents text. ms-12.27

Fairs & Expos, snapshots from Brussels 58, New York 64 and Montreal 67, collected by ElectroSpark. Via Mefi. jc-12.24

A simple act elevates all. ms-12.24

Star trails in the North. ms-12.24

Apple V Google. ms-12.24

Remember that show, "Night Music," where David Sanborn would have amazingly hip bands like The Pixies, but at the end of the show, he'd come out and ruin a Sonic Youth or Pere Ubu song with his cheesy sax? Well, it was all worth it for this clip of Bongwater and Bob Weir (!) covering "Three Sticks" AND Roky Erickson at the same time with Screamin' Jay Hawkins (!!!) on vocals. bb-12.23

Currently out of stock but that gives me time to try to talk JC into getting one of these for the studio. Fab. ms-12.23

Page Two contains the previous 35 Fresh Signals, recent features, a key to the icons and the categorical archives.

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A Thing We Made:
Field Notes

Field Notes Brand memo Books and more. "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." A CP/DDC joint.

Some Other Things We Made:

We hated the options available for custom packaging DVDs and CDs so we created a brand that gives creative professionals and hobbyists the tools to make great stuff. Here's a bit from the latest Jewelboxing weblog entry:

"Now he's apparently passing on his well-honed casing skills, as we see in his latest Flickr post of his daughter's first Jewelboxing design." Read the entire post.

Pinsetter: Spell with buttons.

The Deck Network. Interested in getting your product or service in front of millions of savvy, curious remarkably good-looking people? Give a shout.

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infrequent mail

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