When I launched The Combustion Chamber in the beginning of 2001, it was a portfolio site for my design work from college as well as some animation experiments I began in Flash. Yes, back in 2001 ‘Flash’ wasn’t a dirty word. It was a way for creative people—designers, digital artists, developers—to express themselves with sound and motion. To this day, HTML can’t match it’s easy of use and flexibility for non-technical people. No, I don’t think Flash has a place in today’s mobile world, but it’s important to give Flash it’s due and proper.

Over the last 11 years, TCC natural evolved into a showcase for my ‘professional’ work. Client work I did at the various studios I’ve worked at.

This week I’ve relaunched TCC with all new work. I’ve opted to not include client work. I’ve put all my client work on Behance.

The projects I’ve posted this time around scratch creative itches my agency work hasn’t been able to scratch. These new projects get me excited and they represent a return to making things with my hands again. Specifically, silk screening.

As much as I love my work as a web designer, I’m also tired of my job getting the best of me. Getting all my creativity. Sometimes I feel like the podlings getting drained of their essence in The Dark Crystal.

It’s time to start making things for myself again.

Top Gear has released a new DVD, The Worst Car In the History Of The World.

The 2013 season can’t come soon enough.

via CarScoop

Steve Ballmer is reminding me more and more of Lex Luther.

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time is a new book by Jeff Speck:

The General Theory of Walkability explains how, to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. Each of these qualities is essential an none alone is sufficient. Useful means that most aspects of daily life are located close at hand and organized in a way that walking serves them well. Safe means that the street has been designed to give pedestrians a fighting chance against being hit by automobiles; they must not only be safe but feel safe, which is even tougher to satisfy. Comfortable means that buildings and landscape shape urban streets into ‘outdoor living rooms,’ in contrast to wide-open spaces, which usually fail to attract pedestrians. Interesting means that sidewalks are lined by unique buildings with friendly faces and that signs of humanity abound.

One of my biggest issues with Los Angeles since moving here in April is the lack of walkability (combined with a lack of decent public transit-ability). There’s a ton of great culture to be discovered, but it’s hard to get to if you don’t have a car.

Having lived in NYC for 12 years I’ve become spoiled with walkability.

via Brain Pickings

There’s a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art showcasing all sorts of artifacts from his movies:

The exhibition covers the breadth of Kubrick’s practice, beginning with his early photographs for Look magazine, taken in the 1940s, and continuing with his groundbreaking directorial achievements of the 1950s through the 1990s. His films are represented through a selection of annotated scripts, production photography, lenses and cameras, set models, costumes, and props. In addition, the exhibition explores Napoleon and The Aryan Papers, two projects that Kubrick never completed, as well as the technological advances developed and utilized by Kubrick and his team. By featuring this legendary film auteur and his oeuvre as the focus of his first retrospective in the context of an art museum, the exhibition reevaluates how we define the artist in the 21st century, and simultaneously expands upon LACMA’s commitment to exploring the intersection of art and film.

Now I know what I’m doing this weekend.

via Steven Heller

via Instagram

I’m loving the new profile pages on Instagram. Here’s mine.

(although they seem to be a little buggy when you click on an image)

While Tesla wins Motor Trend’s 2013 Car of the Year with their battery-powered Model S, there’s (still) work being done to improve the combustion chamber by a six-year-old startup called Transonic Combustion:

Transonic Combustion is creating an efficient fuel injection system for an internal combustion engine that minimizes heat waste. The system involves heating fuel to a “supercritical” state before injecting it into the combustion chamber, allowing it to combust without the need for a spark. The company uses software to precisely adjust the injection based on the engine load.

The system can run an engine that uses both gas and diesel as well as biofuels, and it is supposed to create an engine that is 50 percent more efficient than standard engines. About two years ago Transonic Combustion showed off a demo vehicle with its engine tech that got 64 miles per gallon in highway driving.

Breakthrough innovations are amazing. They captivate us. They push technology forward. But I also find love when people push existing technologies to their limits, to find out what’s possible with what we’re already using.

There’s no way around that fact that we’re going to run out of oil on Earth, but while we are still using it, why not continue to strive to perfect our use of it, while we search for replacements?

Apparently people a handful of states want to withdrawal from the United States of America, including Texas, and have signed a petition:

To which the awesome city of Austin responded:

It’s incredible how many petitions are on the White House’s website. There’s even a petition for my home state of New Jersey to secede.

via Ars Technica

via FBU

I love simple solutions to problems. Solutions that are often staring us right in the face.

Like using a rubber band as a phone bumper:

Over at GigaOm, Eliza Kern on the roots and rise of Airbnb:

First the roots:

“Airbnb was born out of necessarity. Our rent went up. It was born out of a problem,” said Joe Gebbia, the company’s co-founder and chief product officer at GigaOM’s RoadMap conference in San Francisco Monday. “By inflating the air bed, it began that design process.”

Then the rise:

“We started with airbeds,” he said. “And people have listed private rooms, and then… boats and treehouses and castles and villas.”

When someone listed their island in Fiji on the site for relatively decent prices, that’s when Gebbia realized Airbnb had reached a new level of business.

Yeah, I’d say the island-in-Figi-listing is a good indicator of hitting the next level.