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LifeloggingI am Apollo Lemmon and this is my lifestream. I invite you to join me in my exploration of an integral life. I am focused on discovering what it means to live a life rooted in integral consciousness and I explore spirituality, art, community, technology, fitness and other aspects of a fully engaged life. I am now living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
I can always be reached at apollo@apollolemmon.com
For years, we’ve been stuck with the same old fonts: Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Times New Roman — web-safe fonts that a majority of web users have installed on their computer.
But lately, the web design community is abuzz — and the source of the excitement is around web fonts. "Web fonts" is a generic term that refers to the method of serving font files — the same type of files you have installed on your computer — to your website visitors so that you can guarantee they’ll have the appropriate type faces you want displayed on your web pages.
In this guide, we’ll discuss a way of implementing web fonts using free web services collectively called Google Font API.
Justin of Chicago's Craftsquatch handmakes these bold RSS Feed Icon Pillows. They're $20 at the Boing Boing Bazaar in the Makers Market. As Justin says, "It will certainly aggregate all your thoughts and dreams into order, giving you real simple sleep." RSS Feed Icon Pillow
Gardening’s gone guerilla - You’ve seen them, you may have looked away, but you’ve seen them. Those forgotten areas of the estate, left to fall apart and fall into disrepair. The municipal scrubland where nothing can grow... Or can it? Turn the concrete jungle into a wilderness with our compacted wild flower seed grenades.
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Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corporation has developed a series of bold architectural plans for the world of tomorrow. Here is a preview of seven mega-projects that have the potential to reshape life on (and off) Earth in the coming decades.
Anyone who needs to know the hot color of the season—designers, buyers, stylists—until recently had to go to one company, Pantone, and pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for color trend forecasts. The company is the undisputed authority on color, and they pretty much have the monopoloy on the color business. Pantone also holds the standardized numerical keys to color. By matching swatches with Pantone, everyone can make sure they're referring to the same hue. They're like a proprietary Dewey decimal system for color.
But the founders of a young internet startup are changing that with free color tools and an online community: Colourlovers. Pantone may not disappear any time soon, but Darius Monsef, the Colourlovers founder, is pleased to at least give color researchers another option. The site lets users not only explore which colors are trending, but anyone can create a virtual color palette or a pattern using Colourlovers' free software, or if they want to get a little more serious, they can buy the ColorSchemer software (screengrab at left) for between $35 and $50. more »
Podcasts present some of the best media in the world; the very brightest of our futures, the strangest notions and the most startling warnings make their way into podcasts. In my first two Podcast Selections posts I focused on fiction, personal development and spirituality; now I will showcase an assortment of the best podcasts that cover pop culture, geek culture, counter culture and other strangeness.
The Hour has become Canada’s best interview show due the superb interviews conducted by its host, George Stroumboulopoulos. The show covers a wide range of topics that include —but are not limited to— science, politics, arts and ethics. The Hour offers both video and audio podcasts, as well as full episodes, marking it as one of the most web-savvy major television shows.
Past guests of the show have included Eckhart Tolle, David Suzuki, Jimmy Carter, Larry King, Henry Rollins, Alanis Morissette, The Smashing Pumpkins, Richard Dawkins, Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Margaret Atwood, Levar Burton, Cory Doctorow, Naomi Klein, Blue Rodeo, Stephen King, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Morgan Freeman, Moby, Spike Lee, and Margaret Cho.
George Stroumboulopoulos is the host of The Hour, Canada’s late night talk show. Now in its sixth season, the program has won seven Gemini Awards (Canada’s equivalent to an Emmy Award), three for best talk series in Canada; three for best host in a talk program or series; and a Gemini for the production design of The Hour’s set. The Hour has also won a 2009 Gracie Award – the first international award presented to The Hour for Outstanding TV Show – Public Division, by the American Women of Radio and Television.
The Hour is unlike any program on television. It is a hybrid of news and celebrity, reflected through in-depth conversations and dynamic production. It covers politics, the arts, entertainment, the environment, human rights, sports and more. George is one of the most respected journalists in Canada, equally comfortable speaking with a world leader as he is a rock star. He has interviewed many of the most influential and recognized people in the world.
We may soon be planting marigolds on the moon, but right now we need to be sure we are using our existing technologies well on Earth to feed billions of people. Treehugger is bringing attention to vertical farming that could be used to make urban environments more self-sufficient. “Vertical (Diagonal?) Farm from Work AC in NYC” first takes a look at a proposal for transforming a lot in New York City into a farm that stretches up to match the vertical reach of some skyscrapers. The site also comments on a proposal for Toronto and some ideas for more mature versions of the concept. It has been widely proposed that vertical farming is the future of agriculture.
Most of the world’s population will be living in cities in the coming decades and meeting the basic needs of everyone on the planet will be unavoidable if we wish to flourish. It is therefore important that we recognize the possibilities for efficient, safe and elegant ways to produce food we have available to us. There’s no compelling excuse for not building a future where everyone is fed with the best foods we can grow and I imagine vertical farming has a place in any well-rounded vision for feeding the future.
This past week I watched Future By Design, a superb documentary that explores the vision of futurist Jacque Fresco. The film itself is beautiful and compelling, but it is the mind of the man it features that has me ranking it as the most important documentaries I’ve seen.
Fresco has invented countless features of a future he hopes we will choose to build, an efficient, elegant and finely crafted world in which we consciously and intelligently construct cities and societies that best facilitate the quality of life that can foster the best humanity can become. His attention to details in aesthetic, functional and cultural realms is uncanny, so much so that his models of future cities are striking in their comprehensiveness, viability and beauty. The cities he promises are inviting and grant hope that we can shape a future that fulfills our potential.
One of the insights that makes Fresco’s work so important is the recognition that we should soon be able to move beyond a world of scarcity into abundance. With more resources than we need to ensure high quality of life for everyone on the planet, our major stumbling blocks lie among our personal and cultural shortcomings that inhibit actualizing staggering good.
There may well be some shortcomings in Fresco’s designs and our own reactions to them, but at the very least he has a competency and coherency that most of the people behind the plans and visions for our cities and infrastructure lack. Piecemeal and foggy visions plague so much civic planning throughout the world and create needless problems that skillful design can remedy. In my own city there are obvious follies from the past and looming on the horizon that are discouraging, and I’m sure that is the case in most places. I see visionaries like Fresco as vital to shaping the landscape that healthy societies will thrive in for decades to come.