As a designer, I sometimes seek out inspiration. (That’s something all creative people talk about when they don’t want to blame themselves for not having any good ideas.) Sometimes the inspiration is other websites. But I’ve found a better source: Colour Lovers. It’s an online community of people who just love color. They love talking about it, looking at it, and putting it together. The discussions are great (scroll to the bottom of the page for blog posts), but it’s that last one that really gets me. Color palettes. Thousands of them, all selected by creative people with an eye for design.

The palettes usually have a few keywords attached to them, and all of the keywords are searchable on the site. So if I’m looking for a vintage palette, or one that evokes citrus or autumn, they’re easy to find. Users are also allowed to rank them, so you can browse through the palettes that the users of the site liked the best. Just browsing through a bit, here are a few good palettes I stumbled across:

Giant Goldfish
London Bus
Trip Through Clouds
Choc Mint (I might play around with this one later.)
Sugar Bamboo

They also have an option to search for a color range. So if I want to use crimson in a website, and want to find some other colors that go with it, I can narrow the color range to shades of crimson and get every palette that uses a color within that range. (I think we chose the color for one of the rooms in our house using this tool and a painting that we wanted in that room.) Very cool stuff.

I like this better than looking at other websites because it’s a very raw source of inspiration. There’s no worry about copying a design, or needing to change it enough so it’s not just a rip-off of the inspiration. Certain combinations of colors evoke a feeling, but it’s still up to me to interpret that feeling and present it properly.

Anyway, there’s your inspiration for the day, creative folk. Enjoy!

Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, is widely considered to be the most important play of the 20th Century. If you’ve never read it, the full text is available here.

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The word around the neighborhood is that our house is haunted. I’m beginning to think it’s true. Consider the Gregory curse! Every new gadget that we bring in will not work until you go back to the store and exchange it for a new one. This has happened with several items in our new household:

• Our lawnmower
• Our barbecue
• Our dishwasher
• My new cell phone

So we’re haunted by a ghost, but not a very persistent one, and one that has a special hatred for products from Home Depot. And one that may be giving Zoey advice on how to break into the master bedroom.

So, in honor of this ghost, here’s a fan video of “Welcome, Ghosts” by Explosions in the Sky:

That’s right: my ghost is a girl walking through a park with a picnic basket.

After 17 days, 5 trips to Home Depot, $70 spent at Home Depot, and 1 complete product exchange, we have a functioning dishwasher in our kitchen. And to think, a professional installation was only $100. I’d take a picture of it, but I’m afraid that if I look at it one more time, I’m going to punch it in the face.

Three cheers for Janelle, who helped tighten a few screws when I couldn’t hold my hands steady enough to do it. She also came to Home Depot with me on several occasions as a badly-needed pep squad.

We’re washing dishes right now. Hopefully there won’t be anything bad to report in the morning.

At Becky’s request, I checked out Frightened Rabbit. I was impressed. It sounds kind of like Adam Duritz singing lead for a somewhat-upbeat indie band. Good stuff.

I did some digging and also found Ra Ra Riot. It’s a mix of indie rock and chamber music.

Also, just five minutes ago, I discovered Cabin. They come recommended by Sufjan Stevens (or so it says on their MySpace page), and while I actually can’t stand Sufjan Stevens, Cabin is alright.

This is all in reference to a letter to Christians published by Focus on the Family speculating what kind of hell-hole America will turn into should Barack Obama take office. The letter is on their website here:

http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf

You can also get to it from their Election Coverage section.

If you don’t want to read it, it includes a fictional letter written after four years under Obama. Here are some of the things it speculates will happen:

• Gays will receive bonuses for enlisting in the military
• Open displays of Christianity will be banned in schools
• Hardcore pornography will be aired on daytime network television
• Guns will be outlawed, which will dramatically increase inner-city crime
• Terrorists will carry out attacks on four U.S. cities
• Gas will cost $7 per gallon, and the Democrats will be happy about this increase
• Liberals will shut down conservative talk radio
• Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com will stop selling Christian books due to a campaign of vandalism and hacking attacks from the gays

Toward the end, the letter states that electing Obama was “a mistake that changed the course of history.”

I’m not even going to attempt to argue against this. I think it stands on its own well enough. There are two really sad things about this, though:

1. It gives sensible conservatives a really bad name
2. It will probably work, to a significant degree

You can tell Focus on the Family how you feel here. Just please, please, please don’t give them any encouragement in thinking that they’re suffering persecution for their faith.