I don’t play games on my phone or tablet. Not because of some principled stance opposing them, or because I think they are boring and repetitive. Nope, my reasoning stems from experience: latent addiction is just waiting to devour all aspects of my life. Enter Catch…an elegant, playful, and visually stunning iOS game designed, developed and coded by Andy Bergmann. Andy is an executive creative director at CNN and all around talented guy. The premise of the game is as simple as it gets: catch the ball. There are no instructions on how to accomplish this simple action. No need. You start tapping and swiping, and soon enough you’ve got it. Until the next level (there are 50), when other objects are introduced into the mix as a means to increase the game’s difficulty. Did I mention that the hand and the objects exist on different 3-dimensional planes? According to Bergmann, “Catch requires an interesting combination of spacial perception and eye-hand coordination.” Catch appeals in large part because of its simplicity and unique graphic sensibility. I see a twelve step program in my future.

Here’s a nice write-up in Fast Co.

To download Catch, click here. Free for a limited time on iTunes.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile, these to do lists won’t come as any surprise. I just came back from a short family visit in France, and my brother handed me these pages…the latest installment to his growing oeuvre. However, for those of you who are new to Mrs. Easton, please don’t worry. He’s fine. Maybe a little busy. He and his partner run an unusual luxury travel business. Apparently, the devil truly is in the details. For the entire collection so far, go here.

About 15 years ago I remember being on the subway and seeing something that shocked me: a woman got into the car at 57th Street and, affixed to each of her 10 fingernails, were highly sculpted, three-dimensional unicorns. All different. All really pronounced. At the time I just stared. What I didn’t know is that the image would continue to haunt me this long after. I wondered at the time whether this was some crazy new trend in nail art. Why yes, yes it was. Here is but the teensiest smattering of nail art paraphernalia. The first image is fascinating. Photos are from here, here, here and here.

I went to art school with Scott Kelley. We lost touch a long time ago but, today, in my search for rope, I accidentally came across his obsessive paintings of these warp lines, which are traditionally heavy ropes used for anchoring, towing or mooring a boat. In this case, the warp is called pot warp, and it is specifically the line used by lobstermen to secure their traps. Scott does, after all, live in Maine. For more go here. And Scott, sorry for the crop here and there. Just wanted to get up closer to the detail.

Chalkboard paint started it all. I think Martha Stewart popularized it. And then Dana Tanamachi took it to new and exciting heights. I speak of chalkboard lettering. An earlier post about Dana here. The nicely packaged Chalk is available here.