Hiking, Treks and Updates

The new mix­tape is up for down­load and lis­ten­ing over on the side­bar. It is more or less inspired by the things that I think about while I’m out on what­ever walk. I talk a lot about the ben­e­fits walk friendly cities can have on com­mu­ni­ties. Addi­tion­ally, one of my favorite ben­e­fits is being able to clear my mind and find new things. Any one of my var­i­ous hikes has led to dis­cov­er­ing some­thing I had never seen before. It gives me a chance to put a dif­fer­ent spin on life. Hik­ing and get­ting fresh air can do a bunch to ben­e­fit mood and reduce stress caused by the chal­lenges of day to day life.

On Mon­day I took the bus up to the bot­tom of OHSU, to take an unplanned hike through Maquam Nature Park. I never knew this trail sys­tem existed up until Sun­day when I was search­ing for a way to get out of the urban envi­ron­ment, but still be close to a bus line. When I arrived at the trail head I set my sites on the 4T trail that leads up to Coun­cil Crest, then over to Wash­ing­ton Park. After about an hour I arrived at Wash­ing­ton Park I moved off the 4T trail and on up to Hoyt Arbore­tum. I spent over an hour walk­ing through the Arbore­tum soak­ing in the trees, sun and fresh air. I wan­dered through a few of the trails and learned to iden­tify some of the trees I see around the North­west. I got onto the Wild­wood trail and fol­lowed that over to the Pit­tock Man­sion and then down into For­est Park where I ended my jour­ney at MacLeay Park.

It was a fan­tas­tic day, and I really needed to get out of the house. The thing that I really enjoyed about it was being able to get away from of all the noise and stress of the city, but still be close to home. When you don’t have a car, and are lim­ited to pub­lic tran­sit and foot travel, park sys­tems like what I expe­ri­enced are a won­der­ful way to con­nect with nature. I didn’t spend a sin­gle dol­lar, and had more fun than I would at any bar, movie the­atre or most other enter­tain­ment sources. Here is a rough route of my adven­ture, click on it to make it bigger.

Next week I plan on set­ting out on a much larger hike. I will take the Tillam­ook County Shut­tle to Tillam­ook and then hike back to For­est Grove, where I will either walk home or take Trimet. Just depends on how I feel. My friend Andy might come along. We have been talk­ing about going out for a walk while he is on his break from PCC. I just need to get my paper­work from OHSU, so I can sign the forms and send them back. And then I am free until my start date on the 28^th. Below is my intended route, which is about 52 miles. Which should take 3 days. If the weather is nice, I might keep going and hike out to another des­ti­na­tion. Look­ing for­ward to the free­dom of the woods and open road.

Jun 09, 2010 | Music, Personal, Travel | Leave A Comment »

Good News, New Stuff and Things to Share

First, the good news. Start­ing June 21^st I will no longer be unem­ployed! After more than 8 months of incon­sis­tent income, over­whelm­ing stress and gen­eral eco­nomic slumps — I will rejoin the work­ing class. Awe­some, and I have 3 weeks off until then to work on odds and ends with­out dwelling on the future.

I put up this weeks mix­tape. You can lis­ten to it, or down­load it on the side­bar to the right. Um, the lan­guage is NSFW. But so is leav­ing the win­dow open. I guess try it out with head­phones first before you start a dance party in the office. This will be a weekly thing, unless I find it to be too much to keep up on. For now, no prob­lem on that front. Enjoy.

30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity starts today. I made a mix to kick things off. I have a few ideas in my head and sketch pad that I am going to try and get more devel­oped. One of them includes a remodel exper­i­ment for my family’s house down in Flo­rence, Ore­gon.  It’s a really great mid-century ranch style house. Some other things will show up here before or after that. This 30 day project will be my moti­va­tion to really kick my port­fo­lio into high gear.

“30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity is a social ini­tia­tive encour­ag­ing peo­ple to cre­ate stuff, any­thing, every day for 30 days.

This is your excuse to buy that tub of Play­dough, unbox your Erec­tor set, or dust off your Holga. You might be work­ing on one huge project for 30 days straight. Maybe you are cre­at­ing some­thing new thing every day. (That’s the best way to par­tic­i­pate!) It could be as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture of your out­fit for 30 days to some­thing as involved as a writ­ing a song or mak­ing a movie every day.” — MAKE Mag­a­zine Blog

#30daysofcreativity — A How To Guide from 30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity on Vimeo.

Finally, some­thing to share. I’ve been try­ing to share at least one project/design a week that inspires me. Today I am shar­ring the Palmyra House located in Nandgaon, Maha­rash­tra, India. This has been fea­tured on a few archi­tec­ture blogs. So it may look famil­iar. It was designed by Stu­dio Mum­bai Archi­tects.

What I like most about it is the inte­rior use of very dark and rich woods, along with nat­ural stone and con­crete ele­ments. It has a strong tex­tural aes­thetic — almost rough look­ing. Still though, the end expe­ri­ence that I observed from the images it that the the house has a quiet and soft feel­ing. The house has great East­ern Asian design ele­ments as well, to unify the mod­ern design with tra­di­tional fin­ishes. More images and obser­va­tions are avail­able over at Con­tem­po­rist.

Jun 01, 2010 | Architecture, Art, Film, Interior, Music, Personal, Work | Leave A Comment »

Check, check it out!

Oh, I want these! These are Lim­ited Edi­tion skate decks by artist Ian John­son. Fea­tur­ing illus­tra­tions of five of the world’s great­est Jazz Musi­cians. Made by West­ern Edi­tion.

The Miles ‘59 series is an homage to the orig­i­nal band that cre­ated the epic record­ing “Kind of Blue” 50 years ago this year. -Rad Col­lec­tor

Ian John­son has some other amaz­ing work up on his site, to check out. Some­one hire me so I can pick these up.

GOOD.is has posted a really cool project, in which they asked peo­ple to cre­ate a flag that rep­re­sents their neigh­bor­hood. There are some Port­land neigh­bor­hoods in there, as well as many more really solid designs. I love the Rose­way flag. Check it out.

May 20, 2010 | Art, Design, Music | Leave A Comment »

Still Keeping On

I’ve been busy lately, which is why noth­ing new has gone up here recently. So what have I been up to? Work. Just as I typed my desire for work, sit­u­a­tions present themselves.

First, I’ve been fin­ish­ing up some revi­sions for the Whole Foods project I was work­ing on last month. Sec­ondly, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to work on restor­ing a 1890’s era house that a friend of mine pur­chased. No design work though, just good ol’ back break­ing labor! This is turn­ing out to be a very reward­ing and edu­ca­tional project, work­ing close with the Gen­eral Con­trac­tor and ask­ing ques­tions on the blood and guts of a restora­tion project from the man build­ing it. They didn’t teach me this stuff in school, and a good deal of this expe­ri­ence should go toward help­ing me be a bet­ter designer. The bad part is there isn’t much work left that I can do.

Last week I had another inter­view with Net­flix for a call cen­ter posi­tion. I found out today they went another direc­tion, which I guess has a pos­i­tive out­come. I needed more expe­ri­ence inter­view­ing, cause I know I don’t make the best first impression.

So well, it’s back to the grind of Craigslist and the land of lost resumes. Hey, at least I can pay half my bills this month. Right? The ques­tion is though, what the hell am I qual­i­fied to do now? It seems all I hear back is I am overqual­i­fied for the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able at the moment. The work I do want, which I am qual­i­fied for isn’t avail­able because of the great eco­nomic slump we are in. Even then, I am only entry level at this point and there is bet­ter expe­ri­ence in the tal­ent pool right now. Meh.

On to other stuff, and what my fel­low peers in the unem­ployed design­ers sub­cul­ture have been up to…

My friend Colin just fin­ished his book Pedes­trian. It can be pur­chased here. Colin is my typog­ra­phy and design critic, who has count­less times torn apart my own attempts at graphic and print media. And I lis­ten and respect every nag he has about my work because of things like this. Pedes­trian is a very strong mixed media project.

How about some music? I want to start a pod­cast of sorts called “Per­ma­nent Solu­tion”, I’ll try and dis­ci­pline myself to get that going this week­end. Mean­while, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the release by Cast Spells titled “Bright Works and Baton”. This is a track off that called “A Badge”. Cool.

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Jan 26, 2010 | Art, Design, Graphic, Music, Personal, Typography, Work | Leave A Comment »

Bah! Humbug!

The hol­i­day sea­son has been par­tic­u­larly good to me this sea­son. That being said, and of no real choice of my own, I no longer have a car. I am happy how­ever to shed my car­bon fueled addic­tion and see where this chal­lenge takes me. It does makes job hunt­ing a bit more dif­fi­cult because I have to limit my searches to those located near pub­lic transit.

Speak­ing of the job hunt, my inter­view last week was unsuc­cess­ful. The job really wasn’t in my impact mar­ket. I am get­ting really antsy to con­tribute and start whit­tling away at the goals I have tar­geted. I have a fear of being trapped in a dead and uncre­ative job where I have no chance at accom­plish­ing what I want to do in life. I know I’ve only been out of school for 3 months, but I’m not where I thought I was going to be. So deter­mi­na­tion must take me to where I need to be, I just hope it hap­pens soon.

I have been con­tin­u­ing on some older work. The first being the “Con­rad House” that you can see a pre­view of on the front page slideshow. This is a design I am work­ing on for a friend, as more of a dream home. It was a project I started on my 2^nd year of school that I am now revis­ing and cre­at­ing some ren­der­ings for. So that has been keep­ing me busy. If you don’t like wait­ing, or you want to get a deeper look the image is below.

I’ve also been work­ing on a bar that was in another project in one of my stu­dios from school. Which is below. It was part of a resort hotel in Whistler, BC. I am really happy with the result, but I’d love to get some­one else’s thoughts.

I head down to Flo­rence on Thurs­day for the Christ­mas week­end to spend time with the fam­ily. This is the first time in years that we have all been together. Look­ing for­ward to it. Then it is back to get­ting a job, and being some­where com­fort­able again. And hon­estly that is all I really want from 2010; com­fort and happiness.

This songs sums things up pretty good right now. It’s Iron Chic, off their newest EP. Which can be pur­chased here.

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Dec 22, 2009 | Architecture, Design, Interior, Music, Work | Leave A Comment »

It is official

After what was sup­posed to be 6–8 weeks, this came in the mail today. So I guess I have to do some­thing with it now. I have an inter­view tomor­row, which I am excited about. I’ll know more about that at 9:30 AM tomor­row. Sorry about the low qual­ity phone sourced image.
I’ve been doing some per­sonal design work and ren­der­ings to keep me busy between look­ing for paid work. Most of which should show up soon in the Port­fo­lio section.

Alger­non Cad­wal­lader appar­ently released a new 7″ called “Fun” that I got my hands on today. I am really excited about what­ever these guys put out, and this is no excep­tion. You can here one of the songs on their Myspace page, it’s called “I wanna go to the beach”. Me too.

Dec 16, 2009 | Design, Music, Website | Leave A Comment »

Online

It’s been 5 years since I’ve been online with my own site. I used to run a site called NWequation.com, and it just seems weird that I have never had my own blog. Though if you know me, than you know my tug o’ war with social media. I take that back, NWe­qua­tion was some­what of a blog back in the prim­i­tive years of blogging.

So I’ve spent the bet­ter part of the last two months going over how I want my web­site to look and oper­ate. I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that instead of doing some sim­ple “here is my resume, here is some port­fo­lio stuff of my inte­rior design work, blah blah blah”, that I would use danielmcclintick.org to be my per­sonal story and con­stantly devel­op­ing project. Noth­ing amaz­ing is ever fin­ished, and I love to tin­ker and have my hands dirty with many projects at once. So here’s to another work in progress.

The site has much more instore, sam­ples of past work and future work will be in place soon. I have more ideas of pieces to add and how to place them into the mud of this foun­da­tion. I plan to talk about what I’ve done, what I want to do and where I want to go with my time. This should be fun.

This is such a good song by the way.

Kind of Like Spit­ting — Dodge Dart

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Nov 14, 2009 | Design, Interior, Music | Leave A Comment »