It’s no surprise to me that the very same scheming Wall Street financial engineers who masterminded such risky practices as credit default swaps and naked short selling have unveiled their latest, and perhaps most brilliant way to keep raking it in – the “triple fist”.

Hold on to your shoes people. Or at least tie your shoelaces very tight. Because what I’m about to tell you is going to knock your socks clean off and I don’t want your shoes flying all over the place and hitting some person in the face.

Tomorrow I’ll be leaving my post as group creative director at DCF Advertising as I transition my career trajectory from advertising into interactive and information design. So starting next Monday I’ll be settling in as the full-time web designer at my favorite website ever, Snooth.com.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t first say that the folks at DCF Advertising have been great to me for the past four and a half years. And when I told them I’d be moving on they were incredibly understanding and supportive. I’m going to miss working there. But enough with the tiny violins. Let’s talk about wine.

I’m so psyched to be working at Snooth it should be illegal. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Snooth, it’s the world’s largest online wine database wrapped in a slick interface (designed by my buddy Clint) and backed by a home-grown, extremely powerful social network and community. I could call it “Facebook for wine” but that would be a gross understatement. It’s a place where you can review wines (even if you’re a wine idiot like me), see what your friends are drinking and reviewing, and find wines close to your home. But here’s the kicker – Snooth’s magical algorithm will recommend wines for you based on what you like and dislike – automatically. So it’s a great site for people who know everything about wine and for people who know nothing about wine. Stop what you’re doing right now and create a free account and add me as a friend – my screen name is solomania9. Do it. DO IT!!!

So the bottom line is that working at Snooth will allow me to stay on the cutting edge of today’s web technology, while utilizing my passion for creating engaging and memorable experiences on the web and beyond. That’s a roundabout way of saying it’s going to be pretty fucking sweet. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Now please carry on and start picking up all the smithereens that used to be your shoes.

I just finished creating the website for ID Real Estate Partners, LLC – a New York based real estate company that offers a progressive approach to real estate mixed with boatloads of experience.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember a photoshoot I did at the top of Nelson Tower (link here). Well as you may have guessed, that shoot was for the ID Real Estate site. I’m very happy with how everything turned out, and especially glad that I didn’t die in the process.

I just finished reading the macabre yet entertaining Wikipedia’s list of unusual deaths.

Of the 125 entries mentioned, only 12 involved women. Anyone care to offer any insight by being particularly insightful or sexist in the comments?

This is a pretty cool judge of your visual accuracy – woodgears.ca/eyeball/. If anyone has the time (less than five minutes) I’d love to hear how you did in the comments, as well as your profession.

Today I spotted what looks to be another Banksy painting in SoHo, on Broadway and Howard (it’s facing the green patch on this map). Click on the thumbnail to view it larger.

I wonder what he’s trying to say?

I’m curious to hear about the different types of calendars everyone uses. How are people keeping appointments these days? To the comments!

In case anyone’s interested, you can now see what I’ve been posting to Twitter on the top-right of every page on this site. Prepare to be disappointed!

If you’re a professional geek like me, making an important home decorating decision is impossible without firing up the ol Photoshop. A great example of this is the rigmarole I recently went through to make sure a new rug would be a worthwhile purchase. Whether or not you’ll like the rug is debatable, but my Photoshop skills are totally slammin.

This a cool observation, but isn’t it a little embarrassing that nobody discovered this sooner?

As the guy who designed the original NYC Condom, my heart sank this afternoon when I saw about a hundred new NYC Condoms strewn across the street by Broadway and Broome. Let’s show a little more respect for our rubbers, New York.

Here’s another sophisticated poll. Feel free to explain your decision-making process in the comments.

A highly-entertaining activity is feeding random and/or strange snippets of conversation into Google and seeing what you get. Below are some good ones. Feel free to submit more in the comments.

"Looks like we got ourselves a"

"After the bleeding finally stopped"

"That was some fucked up shit"

"was nothing compared to"

"so gross that"

"why the fuck are we"

"and that’s when I had enough"

"that he couldn’t even walk"

"days of shitting"

"his shit tasted"

"got all over the place"

"never in all my life"

"I’m talking everywhere"

"than I’ve ever seen in my life"

Wanna see something gross? You never realize just how dirty your earplugs are until you place them next to a brand new pair. Make sure you’re not eating anything, then click here.

Buttplugs will be covered in a separate entry. Pun intended.

I was going through some old files today and unearthed what looks to be the first web page I ever made, from way back in 1998. It’s for my long-defunct high school blues band, Midnite Blue.

I know this web page looks like a joke (especially because of the reference to Windows 95), but I shit you not, this is 100% all genuine. When I think back to all the domain names I should have been buying back then, it boggles the mind. MY mind!

Anyway, click here to view the page.

Another exciting poll to thrill and titillate you!

I’m always curious to know where people are looking at this site. So I made a cheesy off-the-shelf poll. Isn’t it beautiful? Please participate if you can.

I spotted this on Broome Street today. For whatever reason, these pieces of wood were covering an open doorway in the sidewalk outside a Chinese welding company. It’s quite possibly the funniest thing ever.

Volatile Subject Alert: I’m not taking a side here, just voicing a thought I had today. I think that regardless of your political persuasions, this post poses an interesting question.

If the current administration is so power-hungry and has done even half of the truly deplorable, conspiracy-laden, dishonest things it’s thought to have done by many Americans (like the 9/11 conspiracies, anthrax attacks, election rigging… that type of stuff), then do you really think they’ll be complacent in letting a Democrat like Barack Obama get elected into office?

Either The Powers That Be are planning some really spectacular terrorist attack(s) to scare us into voting Republican before the November elections, or they’re not as bad as the conspiracy theorists say they are.