There is not much to say, as a custom bamboo case for an iPhone pretty much tells its own story …
The case is made by a small and highly energized team at Grove in Oregon. They started from the intersection of Joe Mansfield (laser engraving) and Ken Tomita (contemporary Japanese furniture); then add in Chris Rizzo (CNC industrial design). Along the way they also managed to enlist nearly every member of their extended family and friends. The result are machined bamboo cases with a high degree of accuracy, fit, and finish … and customizable with laser engraved artwork.
The cases are very nice, very different from the mainstream, and are a bit more expensive than some injection molded polymer. All of that is just fine by me.
An interesting side note – even their packaging has their high level of attention to detail – part of the packaging used to ship the case is actually the cut-off waste from the CNC process; sanded and finished so it can be used as a small picture frame ! (AIGA presentation here)
Given the case is made from bamboo *and* I have done a lot of work in bamboo (dining table, kitchen, other, …) I ordered my case even before I ordered my phone. The question then became "plain", "artist", or "custom". I had always loved the stained glass artwork titled, "an Bradan Feasa" or "the Salmon of Knowledge" by Oisín Mac Suibhne.
I wanted to use Suibhne’s artwork or something similar but did not want to infringe on his intellectual and artistic property rights. I was able to contact him and he was very kind to allow me to work with his sketches to transition it into something that could make the transition to laser engraving.
It took some time and about four attempts. I used GIMP and my Toshiba M200 tablet for the graphics work. My reference layers were a combination of the original sketches and the stained glass photos. On my fourth attempt, I was able to reproduce the two key elements of the fish and the "eye" of the window. The "title" at the bottom is my own hand writing, using a pressure sensitive stylus and the tablet.
The result is unbelievably fine detain and wonderful to look at.
Many thanks to Oisín Mac Suibhne for allowing me to use his artwork and to the entire Grove team for creating such tangible art with their bamboo iPhone cases!
The title says it all. These are not at all related other than they are all images that caught my eye over the past year and I happen to have a camera with me.
For the curious, "Dark Sunrise", "Blue Sky", "Mocha Swirl" and "Holly" are cropped with little or no adjustment to color. "Wheat" received some warming. "Helicopter" was bland because it was an overcast day so I did a lot with levels and in the end opted for a B&W finish. "Deer" has the most work because I wanted to make the animal to be accentuated so I did a layer and dulled the surroundings.
click to get 640×960 (suitable for the iPhone 4 and will work nicely on the 3G and 3GS)
I’ve had the iPhone 4 for a couple weeks now. At some point I’ll do a a few posts about how I use it, what apps I’ve installed, what I miss about the Blackberry (yes, the iPhone is not perfect), and I’ll explain why I’ve already visited the JailbreakMe website. For now, I’m going to talk about the camera.
The iPhone is the point-n-shoot I knew I wanted. It’s not the best camera in that category. For my needs, that would be one of the diminutive Canon units. So why the iPhone? Because it’s the camera I’ll actually have with me most of the time and not feel it’s a “hangar on”.
Take this moon shot. I saw it. Thought it was nice enough to photograph. So I took a picture.
I wasn’t planning to take a picture. I didn’t even know the moon was up when zen and i went for a humid walk.
The image posted was taken with the Camera+ app partly because it has a trick of using the volume button as a shutter release in landscape mode. But more so, I use it because it has some good quality post production features which I use for most of my blog posts. I have other apps but if the photo is pretty good to start, then Camera+ has everything I need in z single workflow – take picture; color, vignette, blur focus, border, publish – all done but the blog text or Facebook title.
Case in point; I’m still outside looking at the moon as I finish and post this.
I blogged a few months back the I created a knife drawer for the farmhouse kitchen. No sooner was it installed did I realize it had room for improvement.
The bamboo block that holds the knives sits low in the drawer and I thought that was waisting space.
I removed the block and shortened it by 1/8th inch which was enough to allow for a small piano hinge to be installed at the back end. (BTW: it’s easy to use a good quality hacksaw to cut piano hinge so do not worry that you can’t buy a really short one.) I measured and install the block so it was low enough to allow my largest knife to fit below the top of the draw. I installed a small stop block under the front.
Now the knife block has plenty of space under it for the steel and even a heavy butcher’s knife if I choose to add one to the arsenal.
With last night’s rain, the sand indoor the patio bricks was nice and wet so when the ants dug out from their “flood”, the grains of sand piled high.
The resulting sand castles will not last long but make for an interesting sight.
Simple things to amuse and catch our attention as we consider the start of another day – with an espresso in hand, of course. (hmmm … I wonder what would happen if ants liked espresso ?!
Given the case is made from bamboo *and* I have done a lot of work in bamboo (dining table, kitchen, other, …) I ordered my case even before I ordered my phone. The question then became "plain", "artist", or "custom". I had always loved the stained glass artwork titled, "an Bradan Feasa" or "the Salmon of Knowledge" by Oisín Mac Suibhne.
