Sangria & Dinner Party

August 21st, 2010 § 0

ALIA'S 23RD BIRTHDAY

Yester evening was a twitter friend’s birthday dinnerparty, as per requested quite a few of the guests were in swanky cocktail dresses or business suits and served a delicious dinner mix, curry and bean pastes, spicy fried chicken, melting salmon and so much more food with vino’s fragrant sangria.

ALIA'S 23RD BIRTHDAY

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I Don’t Need The Web

August 19th, 2010 § 0

Web Directions North 2007

According to Scrivs, if you are on the web though there are some basic functions that you need.

  • Web browser
  • Search engine if you wish to explore

Sometimes, I really hate internet.

Scriv’s article reminded me of a conversation I once had with karenkun concerning ancient civilizations and languages back in our highschool days (a class that focused on south asian, indian and china-based origins).

We were discussing one of the time periods of 800 BCE within India, during which the origin of the rigvedas and ramayana was constructed within the oral tradition (versus written).

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Summer Past

August 17th, 2010 Comments Off

bunnyloverr

Sometimes it seems like the harder I try to hang onto something, the more quickly the memory itself disappears.

It’s quite strange, like a blank space wiped within my memory storage device.

It is as if these people never existed, imaginary characters that were conjured into existence at a whim to fulfill roles and utter dialogue at a script’s notice. Chance encounters, random events and conversations never occurred.. I cannot clearly remember your face. I’m unable to remember what we discussed, how we met, the long-lasting consequences in present tense of our history.

Cosplay Adventures

August 15th, 2010 § 0

ANIME EVOLUTION 2010
Anime Evolution 2010

August 14, 2010. Anime Evolution – UBC – Vancouver .Anime Evolution is Vancouver’s premier event celebrating Japanese animation, manga, gaming, and every kind of related fandom. Featured activities include interactive panel discussions with industry guests, cultural demonstrations, 24-hour video rooms, cosplay contests, AMV contest, a charity auction, evening dances, and creative workshops. Click the photo to see the whole series.

Keep it Simple, STUPID

August 11th, 2010 § 0

Our generation has a short attention span. We’re also pretty design-savyy, I admit.

So if you want to teach us something, all of the lengthy articles on blogs and essay-format. Give us a break. We’re growing up, or should I say grew up in the brand-whore advertising generation… BOOM.

happy feet

We’re already bombarded by text everywhere a la advertising. Why do you think we rely on text messages on our cellphones instead of talking to someone on the phone? Keep it a short and concise conversation, old lady.

  • Feed us information
  • Make it bullet form
  • Summarize it in a few sentences
  • If you can’t keep it simple, well, it’s not stupid
  • It’s not smart either

The most important things  to give to your audience is a fish-hook:

if we want to learn more, we’ll be back.

Pocket Watch Heart

August 9th, 2010 § 0

pocket watch

A few months ago, specifically in the month o’ May, a few friends and I were shopping in Gastown and after perusing several fashion shops and antique stores, I discovered that Venus&Mars, a gothica lolita couture of wedding finery and lingerie beauty shop, sold pocket watches and chains for under $30 !! The lid snap doubles as a magnifying glass, perfect for my inner sleuthing detective persona, Nancy Drew.
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Twitter, from a Historian Perspective

August 6th, 2010 § 0

The concept of time stamps on twitter has always frustrated me. Not only are they akin to bullet points, or scratches on the proverbial sun-dial, these dates are by no means organized in such a shape or form that allows us to read and interpret tweets outside of their 140 character context.

word on the street 2009
Word on the Street Festival, 2009

If one wished to read ‘tweet’s from other users within a desktop client, app or on the main website, our neurons would have to be re-wired again to automatically skip the additional details, excluding meta data simply just to focus on context of the text.

Similar to reading, the page numbers within a book are unobtrusive and serve as marker of a specific quote or the measurement of the distance from beginning to end. But that is a tangible object, and can also be physically discerned by the weight or size of the different halves on either side of the bookmark.

The Reader
Mimi Li, Artist 2009

As a literature student (and sometimes designer) the quality of the paper or style of font affects my overall reading experience. If a text was published within the 1980s deca or earlier, the cover or scattered page illustrations influence why I accept certain aspects within the story or interact with the narrative, most likely as a result of my extended-reading history with children’s stories.

Texts aimed at teenagers were rather boring so I began reading histories of medieval England, analysis of Shakespeare’s comedies or National Geographics instead.

Mirror Reading
unknown student, Emily Carr Graduation Exhibition 2009

However, reading online requires building another filter to ignore additional or deemed unnecessary information. And as a designer, or more literally, as a creative person, this conflicts with the fact that require ourselves to “(be) more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment*.”

for humanity
Architecture for Humanity, Gastown, Vancouver, 2010

How are we to determine how to interact with twitter as a historical influence? There are no standards as yet to create calendars, weekly archives or categories. Instead, we rely on the individual and their recent twenty or so recent tweets within their stream. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, they’re allocated number of tweets or favorites are minimal

It makes me wonder now how much of the information we read on twitter (or an extended note, any social network) is relevant anyways, if some time in the future no one will be able to, from an organizational and tidy method, to read these snippets of information that defines who we were at a specific time, place outside of this instant.

If I wished to read say, the very first tweet you posted on twitter, or the first tweet you posted at the beginning of month and created a data visualization from this information, it would be impossible to do so.

Everything is rather inconveniently organized, meaning no organization at all.

Or, if you rather, the devil is in the details ;)

*a link to a stand-in article, I’m sure I’ve read something similar elsewhere but currently having difficultly teasing out of my brain WHERE I read this point [online? /website, google reader, twitter/ offline? book? magazine? conversation?]