As many of you will know, I'm a fan of baseball. And as I know, many of you aren't. So if you're not, this might not be for you, unless you like graphs, charts and pretty colours. For some reason, my brain can only really retain information if I write it down. Even better is to produce a chart. So, to help myself remember baseball facts and stats, I started making infographics. I've done a bunch of them, and there's an ever-growing list of new ones I want to do, so I decided to make a site totally dedicated to baseball infographics. There's other baseball-related stuff, too. It's called Flip Flop Fly Ball and can be found at http://www.flipflopflyball.com.
26 May 2009 - Collecting: Stuck Tic Tacs
I'm a big fan of Tic Tacs; there's always a rattle coming from my trouser pocket. Unless the last couple of Tic Tacs are stuck.
I've been collecting the stuck ones.
12 May 2009 - 10 years
Today's the tenth anniversary of Flip Flop Flyin'. Thanks so much for continuing to visit the site.
6 May 2009 - The 1,000th Minipops
I did the first Minipop in July 1999. Here's the 1,000th Minipop. I know it's self-aggrandising to feel it's somehow a special moment when I've done a little drawing, but I wanted this personal landmark to be someone good. Not a musician, sportsman, politician. Someone perfectly good. So I chose to do a Minipop of someone nothing but completely admirable: Terry Fox. Here's a couple of links: The Terry Fox Foundation, Wikipedia page, ESPN story on YouTube.
1 May 2009 - Nine new Minipops
These new Minipops are the 991st through to the 999th. Coming next week is the 1,000th Minipop. For now, though, there's: Babe Ruth, Sir David Attenborough, M.I.A., MGMT, Sarah Palin, Shigeru Ban, Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Steve Jobs, and Tokio Hotel.
19 April 2009 - Ten new Minipops
Apart from George Washington, today's new Minipops are mainly sports-related: three NBA players, Kobe Bryant, Yao Ming, and Carmelo Anthony; Cuban Olympic gold medallist in the 400 and 800 metres, Alberto Juantorena; 1972 and 1982 world snooker champion Alex Higgins (represented with the trophy and his baby); Ethiopian middle and long distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie; the former Detroit Tigers pitcher who sadly died recently, Mark Fidrych; every Cubs fan's favourite fan, Steve Bartman; and Liverpool FC manager, Rafael Benítez.
15 April 2009 - CraigRobinson.com
Recently, the dot com URL of my name became available, so I snapped it up. Rather than use it just to promote my stuff, I decided to use it to link to all the Craig Robinsons out there. CraigRobinson.com.
28 March 2009 - Real fantasy baseball
I've managed to hold myself back from getting involved in fantasy sports, fearing that it will suck up way too much time. But I'm not averse to a bit of fantasy involving baseball. So I present to you, a tiebreaker game between the Wu-Tang Clan and the E Street Band.
22 March 2009 - Baseball ticket prices
Something new for the ever-unpopular Sport section of the site: a chart showing the range of ticket prices available throughout Major League Baseball. Or, to look at it another way: how many Colorado Rockies bleacher tickets can you buy for the same price as one front row ticket at Yankee Stadium?
04 March 2009 - Ten new Minipops
Today's new Minipops: there's the two fellas off "Fantasy Island"; rapper Lil Wayne; Seasick Steve, who I keep thinking is called Seasick Dave; and the Fifth Dragon King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. And a bunch of political figures: Iranian president and current holder of the handsomest world leader title, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Venezuelan human cannonball, Hugo Chávez; Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Bolivian president Evo Morales; and the prime minister of Russia Vladimir Putin sporting the truly macho topless with combat trousers look; and Sean Penn lookalike Harvey Milk.
02 March 2009 - Obama family Minipop
It's eighteen months since I've drawn any Minipops. That freaks me out a bit. But, last night I did the 970th: the Obama family. So, with only thirty to go 'til there's a thousand of 'em, anybody got any suggestions?
26 February 2009 - Jesus doesn't always love you
I'd forgotten all about this, but I found the photos when fiddling around. At the start of my travels in January 2008, I stayed with my friend Naomi in Mexico City. As a small thank you, I drew five pictures for her based on the idea that Jesus is not an uncommon name in Mexico. Dumb stuff, really, but content is content... I've decided to call them collectively Jesus doesn't always love you.
09 January 2009 - Much fuck it's drawing
I've recently been enjoying the Brushes application on my iPod touch; I use it a lot more often than my notebook at the moment. There's nothing particularly special about this new section of the site, it's simply those drawings uploaded for the public gaze. And the title, Much fuck it's drawing, is explained at the top of the page, for those of you who are wondering what the hell it's all about.
29 December 2008 - North Pole
Here's an old - for want of a better word - poem. It was jotted down in a notebook in 1994 when I was at university in Derby. Out drinking last night, it popped back into my head, so I gave it a drawing and whacked it on the website. I call it North Pole. Take that, Tennyson! Who's the best poet from Lincolnshire now, eh?
15 December 2008 - Scared snow
Just like de Wonderboom, I was lucky enough to get a photograph showing details one doesn't normally see with the naked eye on a snowy day in Brooklyn: Scared snow.
06 December 2008 - Pigeon
For some reason, I forgot to mention this here, but I've doing a weekly comic strip called Pigeon over at top German website, Spreeblick.com. There's a new one online every Monday. And there aren't any pigeons in it. Hope you enjoy.
05 November 2008 - De Wonderboom
There's a magical tree, outside a launderette in Aalst, Belgium. It's de Wonderboom, and I was lucky enough to get a photograph.
02 October 2008 - Hip hip hip hooray
I would say that this is a children's story, but that'd probably be an insult to children. Here's Hip hip hip hooray, a story that's been sitting on my hard drive for seven years needed a bit of an edit and spellcheck. I've done that now. Err, woo.
08 September 2008 - A year of streets
Who'dda thunk it? The A year of streets project is complete. Now that I know that there is a street somewhere in the world named after every date of the year, there's one less thing to keep me awake at night. Thanks so much to everybody who helped this project along the way.
06 September 2008 - Sparrow
Here's a quick little true story, Sparrow.
17 August 2008 - NL & AL
It's been a while. Aside from "blogging" this year, I've not done a huge amount of FFF stuff, because I spent six months travelling around the Americas. The last two-and-a-half months of that was in the United States, where I saw a heck of a lot of baseball. That spurred me on to finish this chart of the history of National and American Leagues. Obviously, if you don't care about baseball, you won't care about what I've done. Such is life, I suppose.
01 May 2008 - The real Paraguay
Whenever I see a border with another country, I'm always a little bit disappointed that the "new" country isn't somehow completely different.
This, my friends, is The real Paraguay; viewed across the Paraná river from Posadas, Misiones, Argentina.
Also added, a couple of Sport charts that I put on the blog recently.
22 April 2008 - A year of streets
As I've been travelling around South America, I've noticed that a lot of streets are named after dates. I've compiled all the ones I've found so far, but I need your help. If you live in, or have visited, a town where a street takes its name from a date, it would be great if you'd let me know at craig AT flipflopflyin DOT com, or leave a comment on the blog post about this subject. It would be great if we could compile a full year's worth of streets.
Related - by nerdiness - here's my thingy regarding Buenos Aires' streets named after countries.
06 April 2008 - Collecting: Argentinian men
I'm in Buenos Aires at the moment, and this afternoon, I visited La Recoleta Cemetery. Beautiful place. I took lots of photos of the relief portraits on the front of some of the tombs. Here they are.
03 April 2008 - Mexipops exhibition
If you've not been reading the blog, then I guess you might think I've dropped off the face of the earth. Not so. I'm currently in South America, having a lovely time. Main reason for this miniature update is to those of you in Mexico City that there's a small exhibition of my work in your lovely city. It's called Mexipops and the venue and flyer for the opening party - err, tonight - is here.
