Kingston’s faces
Kingston’s deep into his terrible twos. He’s really good at throwing tantrums now. He finds little nooks around the house to hide while he soils his diapers. And he has a terrible habit of reaching up to slap your face when he gets super frustrated at something. I’ve been very systematic in trying to find out what methods seem to be most effective in teaching him….positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, timeouts, having him look at my moods, smacking his hands… so far nothing has been all that great....
read moreLion upgrade
Because it’s inevitable that clients, friends, and family will ask (I’ve already been sucked into doing free family tech support lately), I thought I’d offer some tips for those of you Mac users thinking if it’s worth it to upgrade to the lastest “Lion” OS. I’m not going to go into a full review. Lion has been out for a few weeks now and there are an endless number of reviews on it since. The best of which is this Ars Technica review. I can’t begin to reach that level of scrutiny on my computer...
read moreMobius sculpture
Apparently this stop-motion sculpture was set up as a giant installation in Melbourne. My brother lives out on that side. /sigh. Jealous. Looks neat…my first impression was that it moved itself kinetically somehow. But no. Just a bunch of people lugging the pieces around in a very systematic fashion. Again…the only art we have here in Hawaii is the tagging I see on the walls of Safeway. You’d figure maybe we’d have sand-castle competitions or something here? Nope. Maybe the warmth of the sun robs local artists of any...
read morePreschool germs
“Pre-school” is code-word for a giant human germ culture. Every visit I take to either drop off or pick up my kid from pre-school I see running snot, drool, ass-scratching, and sneezing kids. My doctor warned me that it’s only a matter of time before I start catching a lot of illness. Sure enough, our first round of the flu hit us these past 2 weeks. Both my wife and child were taken out with coughing and runny noses. I drowned myself with Airborne and vitamin C every day and I volunteered a couple nights sleeping out in the...
read more1 year later…
One year ago today, we got the scare of our lives when we received a call from the nanny that our boy Kingston wasn’t responding. So started a several month long struggle watching our little 1 year old deal with brain surgery and trying to fight his way back to doing what he had already learnt. So what really happened? I’ve been a little closed lip about it since there is technically still a case-open about it. But now a year later, it’s likely it won’t ever get resolved so I might as well give some details out to the...
read moreNew GK amp
I received this Gallien-Krueger MB200 bass amp in the mail yesterday. I haven’t been excited about playing music in a while…the feeling reminds me of the “old day”. (God, did I just say “old days”?) I guess I shouldn’t make pretend anymore – my best friend once said we are now “old guys with expensive stuff” as opposed to being “gigging musicians”. Why so excited about this amp? The sucker is 2LBS! The Hartke amp I’ve used for the past 10-15 years is close to 50lbs....
read morePassword nightmare
Being a “webmaster” for a growing number of website clients is frustrating. Besides having a ridiculous title that feels like I should be growing a beard and rolling 20-sided dice, it’s getting downright crazy just accounting for all the setup and password information I have to keep for each person. Just 1 client I keep can have a handful of passwords: 1 password for the domain registrar 1 password for the domain host 1 password for the website host admin 1 password for the FTP account 1 password for any databases And this...
read moreCinema-graph
A nice little photography shooting challenge posted on Gizmodo this morning got me interested in looking into Cinema-graph (Cinemagraph?) work. Any old school ’90s web developer remember those animated GIFs right? Basically the same type of work but just done with photoshop masking as well. I personally think this effect works best when people are are frozen in the frame, OR when there’s just really subtle movement that makes you think, “Did I just see that move?” Jamie Beck’s work shows some mastery of this...
read moreArnaud Beelen
Something about the simplicity of this thumbnail inspired website by Brussels artist, Arnaud Beelen, really sings to me. Not hard to do…which makes it one of those “oh damn why didn’t I think of that” moments. Love the fact that a concept like this looks good no matter how the browser window is drawn out.
read moreSmelling the roses
A lot of shit going on in the world lately. I’ve been trying to keep perspective and doing some self-reflection over the past few weeks. As I discussed with my best friend recently, I’m in a good position in life right now — my family are safe and happy (despite the fact mom and child are tucked into bed early tonight because they’re sick), we’re in a decent financial situation and slowly getting better, the weather is often beautiful, and I’m thankful every day how many good friends I’ve found over...
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LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching