We’re approaching the end of the year and your calendar is most likely running out of pages! oOnce again we are very proud to sponsor vrse design’s Calendar for HOPE

We’re pretty excited to be sponsors and attendees of this year’s Pica 2011 Beyond: the un-convention taking place in Banff in early May. The event describes itself as “a graphic design conference that openly eschews the ordinary and any other euphemism for business as usual.”

The thirty days of Mo over and our wives and girlfriends are all celebrating. Everyone grew out a respectable moustache and we all think Sam should actually keep his. (Everyone should have a friend who wears a moustache for real).

We’d like to thank everyone that contributing to the Lift team and to Prostate Cancer Canada. We look forward to next year when we can do this all again ...

What we do in the past informs what we do today. A bit of an obvious statement, but I think it’s still valuable. The things we do in the moment have all these little tiny fingerprints from what we’ve done before. They have memories, perceptions and lessons learned. I think we benefit when create time and space to reflect on the the fingerprints.

Lift is always proud to support a good cause, and the calendar for hope is no different. vrse design puts a lot of extra hours into publishing this calendar every year (verve 2011 is their 6th annual) and this year we’re glad to be a part of it!

It’s a natural thing for the guys at Lift to lend their faces to raise support for Prostate Cancer research – by growing a moustache for “Movember”.

A few days ago I was reading an article on investing telling me that I am ten years too late. The article was talking about cloud computing, the new force that is keeping Microsoft awake at night, and how I am already late to the cloud computing party.

In terms of financial trends, most people are typically late before they even knew a trend existed. However I think the sense ...

I enjoy a good cup of coffee, sometimes I think I enjoy it a bit too much. For my birthday, I was given the ultimate coffee indulgence—the means to make the perfect cup of coffee. The Chemex coffee maker is both aesthetically pleasing and it makes a brilliant cup of coffee.

Here is the Chemex.

A chemist decided he wanted the best cup of coffee and so he experimented ...

“Sent from my iPhone” is a line of text that I am seeing on an increasing number of emails in my inbox. The line is also on a large number of emails that I send out. What does this short piece of text mean?

Chance is not the absence of causality but rather the achievement of one end while seeking another. ~Aristotle

Or rather…

[excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard]

(Rosencrantz has been flipping a coin and it has come up heads every time.)

Rosencrantz: Eighty-nine.

Guildenstern: It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. (He muses.) List of possible explanations. One: I’m willing it. Inside ...

I’m a big fan of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s book, Freakonomics. If you don’t know the book, the gist is that the authors take a lot of raw data and apply statistical analysis to it in an effort to come away with a conclusion. Sounds pretty dry but the beauty of the book is in what data they choose and how they break it down. The ...

I’m not sure what the argument was about, but we all agreed that whoever had the strongest arm should be declared the victor.

After much trash talk (and laughter) we found a suitable table for the arm wrestling showdown and got down to business.

I only wish a client had walked into the office during the clash.

A few ingredients, some resealable plastic bags and some ice. You can make your own ice cream. Seriously, it’s not that tough. Feel free to share your recipes here.

5 Minute Ice Cream

“Using natural ingredients, we brew a root beer so pure, so rich and creamy, you’ll swear it’s made in heaven!”

Luke was nice enough to share a 5 litre keg of Virgil’s Rootbeer with the rest of us here at lift. If you haven’t tried it, it’s pretty tasty stuff.

The thing I really enjoy about Virgil’s root beer is how much fun they ...

Here at the Lift office, we play foosball. A lot.

Over the course of our foosball games, certain trends have begun to develop – for example, Micah always loses, and Eli and I are unstoppable when Eli is on defense. Also, Adrian’s shot is almost as hard as Eli’s(but not quite as unstoppable).

Starting last monday, Eli and I were on a foosball killing spree; we were unbeatable ...

I finally got around to transferring the images from my humble cellphone to my computer. I don’t use the camera on my phone very often (I’m kind of a photo snob) and I haven’t ever transferred the images off of my phone – so I don’t really remember taking half of them.

If you’ve even been to the Lift office you might remember seeing a chalkboard ...

We’ve made an office purchase that has revolutionized our lunch hour: a sandwich press!

While living overseas a few years ago, I noticed that nearly every household had one of these brilliant contraptions. I vowed to purchase one when I returned home to Canada. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen as efficiently as I had planned. When, for reasons unknown to me, the idea popped back into my head earlier ...

My ears rang and I deafened.
I felt my hands shake.
But still my eyes saw nothing.

Eli has one wicked shot.

So I was getting ready to watch a TV show last night and I was quite excited because I actually remembered that it was on – before it was on. 2 minutes to showtime. I turn to the appropriate channel. What?! The show has already started… Very strange… Very strange indeed.

Then the end credits come on. Enter disappointment. I missed the show.

After I accepted the fact that I had ...

All of us at lift enjoy our photography (see our most recent pics here). Recently I have been experimenting with High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. Here are the results.