February’s Random Thoughts

February 27, 2006, 10:05 PM | 0 Comments

February turned out to be a much busier month than I was anticipating. Despite being extremely busy though, I did manage to find time to work on the site. For those of you who subscribe to the RSS feed - you’ll notice that I’ve added the Recent Links section of the site to the feed. A lot of the other things that I’ve been working on will be launched soon.

Getting back to February, there were a lot of ideas I had to post about, but never got a chance to actually write them. Plenty of ideas, but not enough time right now. So here’s a few of the things I’ve had on my mind over the past 27 days.

Torino 2006

A big part of February was obviously the Olympics. So here’s my take:

Out on the Ice:

The Swiss bobsled team members all have their portraits painted on the backs of their helmets. This makes for a slightly creepy photo-op.

Canadian women own Speed Skating, especially Cindy Klassen who won 5 medals.

The Canadian men’s hockey team was an embarrassment. The story in Canada is that nothing short of gold will be accepted. I don’t subscribe to that theory, but having said that, I don’t think our team should go into action without the goal of winning gold. Complacency is never a good thing, so we should always go in expecting the best. The problem with the team this year is that they didn’t even make it interesting.

Team Canada is not supposed to get shut out in 3 of their final 4 games, it’s just not right. I’m sure that Canadians would be proud of our team if they lost in a hard fought battle and gave it their all; I know I would, but that just didn’t happen. They got dominated, never played as a team, and they couldn’t score when it mattered. Here’s to hoping that they’ll be back on track at home in Vancouver in 2010.

On the other side of the gender gap, team Canada’s women absolutely dominated the tournament. Canada’s women’s team was only scored on twice during the entire tournament… that’s pretty good.

Good times were had by all in Newfoundland and Labrador - the province virtually had a holiday to watch the men’s curling team win gold. Way to go guys…

On the Slopes:

Canada’s Freestyle Ski team needs some work. We used to dominate those sports and it seems like we’re not even contending anymore. Yes, we got one gold courtesy of Jennifer Heil in the moguls, and that’s quite an accomplishment, but it’s nothing compared to what we did back in the ‘Air Force’ days.

Bode Miller. I don’t understand the pre-Olympic hype (or his Nike website), but he’s gotta be one of the biggest choke artists in recent history. He may even be bigger than Mike Vanderjagt.

Snowboard Cross is the coolest Olympic sports ever. Skeleton comes second.

The ‘Good Design Award’ goes to:

In my opinion, Torino 2006’s design team did an excellent job with the branding and consistency of their Olympics. I couldn’t see any shot on TV for longer than 15 seconds that didn’t contain the tag line ‘Passion Lives Here.’ I also really liked their logo and use of colour.

The ‘Bad Design Award’ goes to:

HBC (the Hudson’s Bay Company). Seriously… what were they thinking when they designed some of Team Canada’s Olympic gear?

Nice boots team… nice boots.

You can’t tell me that this is the best they could come up with for our ‘medal acceptance’ outfits. Please, bring back Roots next time. Hopefully by 2010 they won’t sell out like HBC did (effective today, in case you’re keeping track).

Web 2.0 = Horticulture?

A lot of people are still confused about the whole ‘Web 2.0’ thing. Others know that it’s just a fancy buzz word. One thing we know is that marketing always follows trends, and with those trends come new buzz words to overuse. Design also follows trends. A colleague of mine recently pointed out that a number of progressive internet companies (who some would call Web 2.0 companies) appear to be following their own trend. Lately there seems to be some sort of leaf or similar vegetation turning up in several ‘Web 2.0’ designs.

Now, I’m not saying that these designs are bad in any way. Actually, I happen to like several of these 2.0 foliage-infused designs that were created by designers with far more talent than I. I’m just taking notice of the trend.

Brett Favre

With free agency starting up soon in the NFL, look for Brett Favre to announce his plans for next season - probably within the next 2 or 3 weeks. Please Brett… one more year.

More Randomness

Jones Soda’s Cream Soda tastes like the fluoride you get at a dentist appointment.

Thank God for DVR’s. A busy TV season is about to get busier tonight with the season premiere of The Apprentice, and tomorrow night with the Amazing Race. Is Monday the new Thursday? 24 and The Apprentice on the same night!

Why is The Apprentice not in High Definition though? C’mon NBC! If you can broadcast the entire Olympic Games in HD, you should be able to extend that same treatment to one of the most popular shows on television. Get it together!

It’s ‘Roll Up the Rim to Win’ time again at Tim Hortons. One thing I noticed right away is that for the first time (at least that I can remember) the vehicle that Timmies is giving away is not a GM. It’s a Toyota RAV 4. Nothing against Toyota (I actually don’t mind the Rav 4) but is the North American auto industry in that much trouble!?

Posted in: Design, Reinspire, Sports, Web Development