It wouldn't be a contest without rules and regs, so here are a few:

• Polygonal and nested hearts count, implied hearts do not
• One entry per person
• Send e-mail to jim(at)sporeboy.com--or you can use the contact form on the sb site
• If no one gets the exact heart total, the people with the closest three totals (without going over) win
• Postage (USPS priority mail) will be free to winners in the contiguous 48 states
• All T-shirts are moss green and XL--that's all I have left after the cat's recent hairball-induced seizure
• If no one enters (a distinct possibility), the shirts go to the first three people I see in the Publix parking lot
• In case of a tie, all entrants must send me a T-shirt
• Contest ends February 15th
• Sorry Mom, even though you're 97% of all my site traffic, you can't enter (I'd have to run out and *buy* your birthday present...)

You know, if this works out, maybe there would be other contests on the horizon--like "guess my favorite Smurf" or "how many licks does it really take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop"...

That's right, there's "a personal color that corresponds to the real you"! It's Colorstrology, brought to you by the fine folks at Pantone. (Yes, the same guys who charge insane money for color chips and swatchbooks.) And you can find out all about yourself at www.colorstrology.com.

If you'd rather find out what kind of cheese you are, give this quiz a try!

It's because of the time warp.

The time warp is sucking up all my spare hours and minutes--not to mention the hours and minutes I can't spare--and leaving me with a sleep-deprivation hangover and feeling of general loser-ness.

I have a lot of half-baked ideas for the site: new content, downloads and the like. But work and family take just about all my time right now--so what can wait does. And sometimes these things have to wait a while.

A publisher in the U.K. needed spot and color illos for some of their upcoming titles. Part of the gaming industry, they regularly require illustration, and I was referred by someone familiar with my work. I knew compensation would be low, but it sounded interesting--and maybe I could roll the images into other projects... So I looked at my schedule to see if I could slip-in a couple drawings here and there.

I traded e-mails with an art director, and the pay was indeed low--pitiful even. O.K. then, what about turnaround and usage rights? Bad too: the publisher had tight turns and got all rights. So I had to say no thanks.

It turns out the publisher had a stable of off-shore illustrators happily agreeing to the terms and--here's the kick--producing very good work. There's no real problem here. The publisher wins (cheap labor), the illustrators win (relatively big payday).

The thing in the back of my mind is when is the commoditization of creative services going to seriously erode my earnings potential.

No big deal... for now...

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But this is about Spam of the 'blog-comment' variety. I had a mini-attack over the past couple of days. Nothing major, but I had to wipe a few comments. If anyone had a legitimate message bumped--sorry, and please write again. If someone is expecting to add to their Google juice--sorry, to you as well. The built-in URL-redirect keeps Google from seeing the link to your Polyurethane Lip-Gloss Emporium!

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...

Dizziness in moderation is a bit of fun. Having the room pitch and reel when you're quite sure you're still goes from weird to disconcerting to nauseating pretty darn quick.

Well, its more like the "trigger" for vertigo is the mystery. The cause is this: little bits of flotsam floating in the semi-circular canals of your inner ear bump around and fire off nerves that report to your brain where you are in space. Its a little like the bubble in a carpenters level only you have six of them: X, Y and Z on both sides. With vertigo, the itsy-bits in you ears have sunk or they're bopping where they shouldn't.

This is enough to overcome, but there's more. The worst vertigo has to offer is the result of the discrepancy between the ears--the organs of balance--and the eyes--the organs that trump all others. The ears say "We're rolling," the eyes say "We're not." This lack of corroboration leads to:

> nausea (think seasick...)
> headaches
> confusion
> inability to concentrate
> sensitivty to light and noise
> painful urination (wait, that's from something else...)
> and all manner of bumbling, fumbling and stumbling when you try to get around

Like a lot of illnesses, vertigo is self-limiting. Eventually it just goes away--or rather your balance is 'recalibrated.' Your brain spends a few days to a week trying to make sense of the mess coming from the inner ear, and eventually it figures out (almost literally) which way is up.

There are drugs you can take, and there are exercises you can try. I got a kick out the warning label for Meclizine, "May Cause Dizziness." And the exercises were like hopping onto the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. "Turn your head this way, then flop back fast. Repeat until incapacitated." I had to opt for the therapy of least resistance: lie down and wait.

The prize for enduring the least fun one week on your back can offer: a newly acquired predisposition to... Vertigo!

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I feel a lot like a guy who's never seen a elephant, but he's going to size the thing up just seeing it's toe.

Well, I think I'm beginning to see a bit more of the elephant. I'm starting to move past the idea of 'blog-as-publication'--specifically I've stopped seeing Web logs as tradtional publications like magazines and Web sites, with their defined domains and demographically narrow clientele. Now I'm cultivating the idea of blogs as voice...

Being in what I broadly call the communication biz, I've produced my share of sanitized happy-talk. Features and benefits to go with a heaping helping of service, quality and value. (Not just products! Solutions!) I mention rather regularly in client meetings that people are more and more marketing-resitant; that difference is key to standing out. Part of my spiel usually includes a dose of 'branding as personality' and the importance of genuine messaging. These concepts usually play like a revelation in the first few strategy sessions. Then 'snap-back' occurs and the project reverts to the safer--usually blue--coprporate prototypes.

My clients want to 'connect' to their customer base, but they can't keep from ducking back behind the facade of marketese. All the while, I'm thinking people are sick of marketese.

Blogs, I'm beginning to understand, are raw communication uncensored by committee and unsactioned by gatekeepers. Web logs haven't been subsumed into the big, grey din of happy-talk spewed by our consumer-based economy. Some are rough or flawed, many are pretty darned slick, but for the the time being, blogs are real, human voices etched in electrons.

I think I see a bit more of the elephant. I sure hope that's a trunk...

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Version 2.0 took me some seven months (working off and on) to build--and even then, a couple of big pieces missed opening day. Keep an eye out for sporebot! and the new-and-improved junkola! They'll be up soon.

The first thing I did after installing MT was blow up all the templates. I'm just like that: not happy till I've broken something. It seems like it's working at the moment, but let me know if you run into anything weird (all three of you). I'll be tinkering with things for a while...

Is there a more optimistic piece of propaganda you could stick under a designer's nose than a "Call for Entries?" All the year's projects spring immediately to mind, dancing circles, doing cartwheels, all saying "pick me." Surely this year's crop will land you some senior design position in Minneapolis or California.

Like most workaday design-types, I quickly fell to earth when I reviewed the fruits of the last twelve months' labor. This was a start-up year for me, returning to idependent status after six years as an agency art director and CD. Most of my projects were small and unsophisticated, with small budgets. But I did do a ton of logos...

Sporeboy pre-dates the anthrax scare by just a few months--it all came out of a pneumonia-induced delerium. Spores factor only incidentally--just a theme really. I had ideas of some kind of Web-facilitated social experiment, but that concept fell victim to 80-hour work weeks. I have tried--and will continue to try--to add bits and pieces when I can.

For now, sporeboy! is as you see it. Kind of my own private soapbox--and judging by the stats, it's very private.

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One of the sad realities of today's design biz is the dominence of "royaly-free", digital stock photography. Like every other designer on earth, I spend hours or days looking for "just the right image" only to find that the stock houses have some odd, overly-PC view of the world, and a search of 10,000 pictures will often yield a result of zero.

1) People who use computers in isolation are either confused,
enraged or bathed in a strange, colored light.

2) Perhaps to combat the above trend, people have begun to use
computers in groups of three to eight. One group member seems
to be the designated "pointer."

3) Despite being a point of anger or frustration, most computers are
either doing nothing in particular or aren't even turned on.

4) People who use laptops dress well and work mostly in hotel lobbies.

5) Despite being only half the total population, minority groups
represent 88% of all computer users.

6) The only subset of computer users truly happy with their machines are
the remaining 12%--white guys who talk on the phone when they
should be working.

7) Businesses have abandoned their Wintel notebooks for utterly unstyled
Tibooks and iBooks. And the humongous Apple logo stuck on the lid of
Mac laptops seems to have kept an army of retouchers very busy.

8) And last--despite being charged with the maintenance and
problem-free operation of thousands of networks and millions
of computers, IT guys are the only people on earth who do NOT
actually use computers.

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The following is a kind of 'reprint' from an e-mail sent to seniors graduating a design program. A whole lot of hooey (love that word) disguised as words of wisdom. But it's not like you could tell a senior anything anyway. They'll find out all by themselves.

> Good clear communication (and design is communication) is good clear thinking.
> Don't show the client anything you don't want approved.
> First, determine the parameters.
> You're young, and you're a designer--one more strike and you're out.
> Know the elements and principles (of art and design).
> Do things for a reason.
> A few great ideas beat the hell out of a ton of filler.
> Your client doesn't know the item above.
> Go North.
> Drawing is seeing. Learn to draw, learn to see.
> The good projects are the ones you're not working on.
> At least you're not a copywriter.
> Digital design: things look finished before they look good
> Get samples.
> Account people are not rodents; rodents have spines
> Use fewer elements, make better choices.
> Nothing is original; everything is synthesis.
> Craft counts.
> Pull, don't push.
> If your looking for self-expression, knit on the weekends.
> Do simple things well.

...and the class favorite

> Not everything you do won't suck.

If I were any more sage, you'd find me in the self-help section of Books-a-Million."

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