So I've been occasionally posting on my blog 1337motif and completely ignoring this thing, so here's a summary of what I've been up to since I last posted.

I started making necklaces out of little tiny space invaders squares (available now at 1337motif.etsy.com)



My Space Invaders board was linked on Boing Boing again, and then ThinkGeek.com bought a batch of them to sell on their site.

I have just finished a batch of Triforce boards (possibly the last time I'll make these...they take too long to make...they're up on etsy now)

The ThinkGeek boards sold out in a couple of weeks, and now I am making another batch, half for them, half for me.

Once I finish those, I am going to start on a set of Pacman (or possibly Ms. Pacman?) boards. This, dear internet, is why I have come to you today. I need to know which design that I have been working on is teh win. Take a look at the two boards below, and let me know which one I should make next. Either one can be converted to Ms. Pacman fairly easily.





I like both, though personally I think the red one is cooler with Pacman and the Ghost racing toward the powerup, but a few people have told me it’s a bit crowded, which I can totally see.  Either one is going to end up costing more than my current boards because instead of 1 1/4 inch squares, they will be 1/2 inch squares, and thus much more work.  Also, the one with the red ghost would require the use of bloodwood, which is an exotic, and therefore, pricey.

That's right folks, the Triforce cutting board is finished, and I've got to say, it is sweet. Check out these pics, and while you do, keep in mind that if you want to have the power, wisdom and courage of the Golden Power at your fingertips during your kitchen-adventures, I'd be happy to help make that dream a reality. E-mail me at cameron at 1337motif.com or check out my Etsy store .





And here's one with a chef's knife for scale (the board is about 12 x 17 x 1 1/2).



I have really enjoyed making these, and have already started on my next project, which will be a full layout of the Space Invaders arcade game (partial plans below...I'm still figuring out the right sizes for the barriers). As usual, I would be willing to make one of these for anyone that wants one, but they should be aware that I'll probably have to charge significantly more for this one than previous designs because of the time it will take to make them. I'll post a picture and more specifics when I finish the first one.



I have also thought of a lot of other ideas for possible video-game themed pixel-art cutting boards (Pac-Man, the ghosts /cherries/whatever else from Pac-Man, Mario, mushrooms/flowers/the leaf from Mario, etc.), as well as Space Invaders coasters and Donkey Kong bookshelves, and the only thing it would take for me to actually make one is for someone to be willing to pre-order so I don't end up with half a dozen super sweet cutting boards and no money for rent (I'm not sure that my landlady would be too stoked about getting paid in old-school video game housewares).

I am almost done with the first set of 5 triforce cutting boards, and I have to say, they are looking pretty sweet. They are taking quite a bit longer than I expected them to, but I am still pretty stoked about them. Here's a picture of them about an hour before I stopped working on them today (plus a glimpse at part of our workshop...exciting, no?).



These are going to be totally awesome when they are done, and I am jealous of those of you that get the first several copies (I'm sure I'll make one for myself eventually, but I've got some other sweet ideas, and seriously, how many cutting boards does one man need). As usual, interested parties should contact me at cameron at 1337motif dot com.

I am just about to leave for a week of vacation with my family, but I figured before I go, I might as well whet everyone's appetite for the Triforce cutting board. Here's what I have so far (keep in mind, it's only part of the board, and it's still got dried glue all over it). Actually, the final product will be about the size of the placemat that the triangle is sitting on, so that works out nicely.



It is going pretty well, and I have my first batch of 5 of these babies a little more than halfway done, so when I get back next week, I'll be able to finish them off and send them out to the lucky people that e-mailed me first (more will follow, but I didn't want to start out with a batch of 15 and then find out halfway through that I was doing it wrong). If this picture makes you need one of these, send an e-mail to cameron at 1337motif dot com, and I'll get back to you when I get back in town. I'm charging $125 plus shipping per board (Space Invaders boards are $100...in spite of the fact that the Triforce seems like an easier design, they actually require 3 additional steps, which adds a significant amount of time, hence the higher price...sorry).

Thanks to everyone that has been excited about this stuff. I think it's pretty great when people can geek out over something like a cutting board, and it's really been fun for me to get to be mildly internet-famous for a few days.

So I am at work today when I get a call from Peggy telling me that Matthew has just called her from New Haven (Connecticut) to tell her that my Space Invaders cutting board is on BoingBoing!



CRED EXPLOSION!!!!

I was shocked. I left work early to go manage comments, send e-mails, call friends and family that would know what a big deal getting posted on boingboing would be, etc. Since this afternoon, I have had at least 6 people contact me wanting to buy the Triforce board, and one wanting to take the extra copy of the Space Invaders one off my hands. I'm so stoked. HUGE THANKS TO MELISSA, who submitted this to boingboing in the first place.

I just recently finished my Space Invaders cutting boards, and I have to say, they turned out awesome. I don't have my digital camera with me right now, so I can't post a picture just yet, but they are seriously sweet (and I made an extra one to sell, so let me know if anyone's interested). So now that I have finished that project, I am about to start on the next thing, which is aTriforce cutting board. So here are my current plans:



So I have one question for all the Zelda geeks out there (and anyone else that might have an opinion). In the original Legend of Zelda game, thetriforce is a right triangle (as in a 45,45,90 triangle) made up of four smaller right triangles (or I guess technically three smaller right triangles and one right-triangular void). In every other Zelda game, comic, bad cartoon, t-shirt, tattoo, etc. that I have ever seen, the triforce is an equilateral triangle. So the obvious question is, which one do I use? My natural inclination is to go with the equilateral triangles, because that is by far the most common version, but I could see an argument for the original as well. Either way, it's gonna be rad to the max for sure, and I'll probably make an extra one of those, too, so speak up if it turns out that this is the one thing that you feel has been missing from your life.

My sister and her boyfriend got me these sweet wall decals for Christmas (from thinkgeek.com), and I have only just finished putting them up after a month of vetting their positions with my friends.



I think that they are awesome, and that they go especially well with my Tetris bookshelves.



My roommate and I are pretty in to this whole 8-bit aesthetic (in our last apartment, he spent 3 months painting his room like the Bubble Man level from Mega Man 2...sadly, that had to be painted over during the move). I have a couple of other ideas on how to continue with this motif (a...leet motif if you will), including plans to make a really nice walnut and hard maple Space Invaders end-grain cutting board (12.5" X 18.75"). Here's a rendering I did using Google's SketchUp (free CAD software) to get an idea of how it will look.



There's something really appealing to me about geeking out as much of my domestic stuff as possible as I "grow up". And now, in the interest of crass commercialism and self-promotion, I am going to make at least one extra of these cutting boards, and if anyone would like to join me in reliving their youth through video-game-themed kitchen accessories (or bookshelves), we can talk deal. I am also trying to figure out if it would be possible to make a triforce cutting board, so if anyone wants to fund my endeavors by buying one, that would be sweet.

Ok, so I have a blog now called 1337motif.com, and since I am so bad at posting anything at all in either (a problem I am working on) I think I'll just copy posts from there to here verbatim, so here's the latest post from 1337motif.

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I don't know if this is interesting to anyone but me, but if I only post on here when I have something incredibly fascinating to say, I'll never end up posting anything, so here goes. For the past several months, woodworking has been essentially my only creative outlet, and I have really been enjoying getting to make some things that I have designed myself (not that making furniture with/for my dad's business isn't satisfying, but making my own stuff is really cool). It started with the Tetris shelves, and since then I have turned a couple of bowls on the lathe, and for Christmas, I made a table that was commissioned by a friend for her husband. The bowls, while very nice, are not terribly exciting, but the table is another story. A friend called a couple of months ago asking if I could make something like this for her husband for Christmas. I thought it was an awesome concept, but since the thing is going to be a table 99% of the time, I figured I ought to spruce it up a bit. This is what I ended up with.



( More info than you need to know and a bunch of pictures in here! )

Ok, so I worked both of my jobs today, and both were kind of rough, the first because I have a bunch of stuff that is coming up, a boss who is super nice, but not used to having an underling at her beck and call, and therefore not especially good at giving clear instructions, and I am not totally sure that I am doing everything that needs to be done to cover my bases, and the other because we were installing some cabinets that we had to paint with this super finicky paint and it took us forever because the floors in this house were all uneven and I had to do touch-up work for like 2 hours...anyway, it's boring to hear about, but it was a pain in the ass and we didn't even finish until 7:30.

So I figured that because of my hard day, I deserved to pick something up for dinner rather than cooking for myself. So I went to my local Boston Market for a pot pie and some cornbread, and when I got to the cash register, the old lady that was working there was all like "would you like some classic utensils?" ...CLASSIC UTENSILS??? What the hell is that? I stifled a laugh and declined, but seriously, when did plastic spoons and forks enter the ranks of the classics. I like to picture this lady standing in the back room with her manager and a box of super special plastic forks that they save just for special occasions, and she takes one out, and the manager - who is suddenly for some reason a '50s greaser with a light blue button down shirt with cut-off sleeves, extra-tight jeans, and a greased up duck-tail haircut - goes "yeah, Betty, those '62 Dixie brand black and whites with the extra-low scoop and 5-tine business end are extra cherry."

In all seriousness, though, it seems to me that calling plastic forks classic utensils is taking the whole down-home family-style eatery thing a bit far. I can't decide which I think is funnier...the idea of this old lady coming up with this on her own as an 'above and beyond' sort of customer service thing, or the board meeting where some up-and-comer, climbing the Boston Market corporate ladder, catches the eye of the president of the company and earns the respect of his peers in one fell swoop when he springs this great idea that he's been tossing around in his head for six months at the monthly board meeting... hehehe...ok...that'll do.

So I was reading the opinion page of the Indianapolis Star last Thursday, and there was a letter from some so-called doctor about how condoms really just provide a false sense of security. In this letter, the guy claims that condoms fail in preventing transfer of HIV about a third of the time, and only provide about 50% protection from most other STDs. Now I'm not an expert on this kind of thing, but I know enough to know that these numbers could not possibly be right. The information that this guy uses apparently comes from a collection of studies through 1990 that was compiled by the Medical Institute for Sexual Health. A simple google search confirmed my suspicions that the aforementioned institute is at least in part an abstinence-only education advocacy group. So anyway, I am going to write a letter of my own in which I would like to refute this guy's claims and provide more accurate statistics, and while I am sure I can find some on my own, I would appreciate any suggestions that people might have on where to look for reliable statistics.