Digital Feng Shui

A Double Entendre of Resolution

Poll: What's your New Year's Resolution?
Anon: 1024 x 768
Foo: Nice. That post is 1600x1200 worthy, no matter what anyone says.

Captain Obvious: This post is funny because the Anonymous Coward makes reference to one's monitor resolution when the common interpretation in the context of the New Year's resolution is a course of action.

See also double entendre.

Super Christians Scare the Crap Outta Me

I'm currently watching the movie Saved! and it's everything that I've feared, bundled in one neat package. Why scared? I'm not sure.

Did I mention that this season, I've had this inkling to go back to church? It all started when I got lost driving around my house. The roads I normally take were closed off so I needed to find an alternate route. And there I found the Catholic church nearest to my house. It was then that this feeling came over me... "Go back to church," it made me think.

And about church and everything Christian, there is this one person I think of...

But with all this Christian fearing (not really God fearing), why would I want to go back to church? I'm not really sure. I guess it's to renew that spiritual side of myself. I'm kinda jealous that one of my friends claims to be all into his spirituality. I also accuse him of being a weirdo and kind of a kook. All I have is logic and the magical dance that all logicians play; we want to be wizards and have command over nature.

Maybe I'll go to church. Maybe. Maybe finishing this movie will change how I feel about things... We'll see.

EDIT: Originally, I wanted to list the things that actually scare me, but only like two more minutes into the movie and already I wanted to gvomit... Gvomit and it's variants are superlatives to vomit.

It's the whole closing of ones eyes and the swaying of hands and the chanting and repeated mention of Jesus and God... It's just creepy. Too creepy! I still want to finish the movie, but seriously, this stuff just gives me the willies. I can't stand watching commericals that sell CDs. Oh and on that note, the whole Christian prefix scares me too. I used to be jealous of my friends that were in "youth groups" because basically it was a circle of friends. Anyway, I have a circle of friends now and we're all officially associated anti-social morons and better for it. But I digress. Christian rock, Christian activities, Christian fellowship groups, Christian this, Chrisitian that... I can't stand it! I mean, I'm a fan of intersection groups and statistics and laws for small or large numbers, but I can't help but think there's fundamentally something wrong with these people... Especially when they mention things like family values and creationism.

To all the creationists out there... Go fuck yourself. The only place religion and creationism have in this world is to fulfill that philosophical and scientific gap at the beginning of the universe. That's all you get.

Ugh... So sad. So scary of all things.

Pork Fat Rules as a Holiday Treat

Every time my brother and I watch the Food Network, specifically Iron Chef, we continually wonder... How come bacon was never a secret ingredient? Disappointed? Surely. But here's something my brothers have found to meet that monthly pork fat quota. Presenting... The Bacon of the Month Club! It sounds crazy, I know. I can even feel my heart slowing down in anticipation of the goods. Here's what you get:

• Twelve different artisan bacon delivered to your door each month
• Informative notes on all bacon selections
• Discounts on Grateful Palate bacon products and bacons
• Bacon of the Month Club Membership Card
• The Bacon Strip—Our monthly bacon comic strip for members only
• The Bacon of the Month Club Pig Ballpoint Pen
• A Little Rubber Toy Pig
• One free Bacon Tee-Shirt

That's wild!! Hog wild even. =/ I did think about subscribing, I mean, for a hot sec. But I'm low on funds and I don't think my heart could take the abuse. Besides, how would this at all fit in my New Year's resolution to be awesomely awesome? It'd probably just make everything that much for difficult. So adieux, ye pork fat... Que sera, sera.

Glass and Drop Shadows are the New Blue

I spent my day checking out Yahoo! Widgets, formerly Konfabulator, and I think it has been a pretty good experience so far. Although I've seen widgets or objects on the desktop before, the concept just never really stuck. Maybe it was the barrier of entry (price, $$$). Yahoo! is currently offering Widgets for free, so that helps tons.

Below is a picture of my desktop, the fruit of my labor... I selected some really useful widgets and sampled a whole other bunch. What I really like most about the whole widgets experience is the look and feel of the applications. Normally, I wouldn't ever use the phrase look and feel, because it's something that Java programmers throw around to bastardize native controls for application development, but that's something else...

These "mini-applications", as I've chosen to describe them, are very much in a different league than applications I've been using in the past... So far, there are Windows Applications, which adhere to The Microsoft Way and use native controls and have that crazy blue border that everyone hates (I dunno, I kinda like it, I'm sold), and then there are web apps. Welcome Ajax, etc etc. I know there's more than just those two types of apps, but those seem to be the most prominent types that differ from widgets.

Widgets simply don't have that nasty blue border around them. Nor are they confined to a rectangular area (well, I guess technically they are). But with tricks (graphical advancements I mean) like transparency and high-bit color depth, we get things like circles and triangles and glass and shadow... Which is the main point I'm trying to get at.

This whole glass and shadow look, I think, is the new blue. It's a mixture of what OS X first symbolized and what Windows Vista is trying to be. Sure, on the surface, it may look like excessive use of shading and transparency and processing power, but I think people are missing the main point. It's all about perception.

For instance, all of the icons on my Windows XP Start Menu have been updated to that new hi-res format, except for EditPlus. Now by pure virtue of aesthetic, I'd say that EditPlus is the worst application. Of course it's untrue, I love EditPlus dearly.

So aside from the obvious of how perception helps define the value of a product... Or at least the face value... Why? Why do things like highlights and gradients make anything better? I mean, I think they do. Like my secret to web design is excessive use of fades. My last project at IgoUgo that I did, excessive use of fades. The end result? People thought it looked pretty nice. Yeah right!

My theory is... Things in the real world are never, ever flat color. The real world is messy and organic and gradients are everywhere due to natural and ambient light. Even as I look to the walls in the room where I'm typing, I don't ever really see the color white. I see an off-white, I see darker shades in the shadows, I see highlights bouncing off the rim of my monitor... I see all these little things. And I believe if all these things are reflected in design, done tastefully, the end product is just... In a different league than anything two-dimensional.

And on to two dimensions... I read somewhere that CSS-heavy designs are, on the whole, accused of being very blocky, Well, I can see that. CSS out of the box supports really blocky, DIV-centric designs. But the main technical benefit of these blocky designs is that they are computer friendly. Easy to analyze, understand, and generate.

And so... Widgets help bring back a more chaotic, but tastefully organic element to design. We don't need to be blocky all the time. And widgets help us see that. A lot of widgets have that photo-realistic, organic feel to it, but are linked to live data feeds and change text dynamically. So we really can have our cake and eat it too, great looking designs and automatically generated content.

I think that's all I got for now. Glass and drop shadows are the new blue. Hell, the photo above this uses a drop shadow. Amen to that.

Are Martial Arts Meritocratic? Should Life or Work Be?

Part of my unsatisfaction with my previous job is how I was treated... My manager would praise my ability and potential, but I didn't feel the actual behavior of everyone in the office was reflecting that. Maybe it's an INTJ thing, throwing out the idea of rank based on seniority. I mean, I totally welcome all opportunities to be schooled by other people. I guess I use that as an excuse or safeguard to fight against the idea of systems which are anything but meritocratic... And with that, I believe I had more talent or just a different (better?) perspective than a lot of my co-workers...

But bleh to all that. Like, I wonder if martial arts are meritocratic... They seem to be. I dunno, maybe I've just been watching too much Naruto and Bleach. Watching Naruto really made me appreciate the academic and social structure of a school or an academy. Although I realize there's a load of honorrifics going, I do believe they are all founded in skill. All senseis and all captains can school all of their subordinates. It should really be that way.

I didn't feel like my superiors could school me. I've felt that multiple times, and I think that feeling, in general, is the collapse of any system, at least for the NT type personality.

Roof Climbing atop 530 Broadway

Vinnie's post about Windows Live Local inspired me to capture aerial ("Bird's Eye" they call it) shots of my office. I did try looking up my house, but I guessed (correctly) that they only had stock for major metropolitan areas.

I liked hanging out on the roof a lot. It was either the view, the fresh air, or just time to get away from the office. It was nice times up there, usually with my cell phone, making calls and burning hours. I have a friend who would be mighty proud to know that I scaled that building. Not too hard though, considering I just went up the first escape. This dude, however, likes to scale walls like Spider-man. Crazy. One time, he almost got busted by the popo...

From the view, I can totally see what Spider-man sees. The New York skyline, at least in Soho, is very organic. People actually have crap on the roofs of the buildings. Really interesting stuff to look at when you're thinking about nothing at all.

I think I'll miss it. (And it's not just me. The whole office is moving to Chinatown.)

Project Runway and Tim Gunn

I want to go on record and say that I love Project Runway. On the whole, I've already given up on reality TV and I think it's a load of crap, but Project Runway definitely isn't crap. I've watched it since its first season, and now, in its second, I really can't wait to see it unfurl. I mean, yeah, it's kinda campy and a little over the top, but as my brother and I justify it to ourselves, it's insight into the design process. Design is design and fashion definitely isn't an exception.

One of my favorite parts of Project Runway is one of the professors from the Parsons School of Design where the show is filmed, Tim Gunn. He definitely sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and it just makes me wish I had a design teacher just like Tim. "Make it work, people!" is what he'd usually say. If you don't watch the show, you're probably like, big deal, make it work. But it's so true though. These designers are under constraint, mostly by time limit, and a handful of them really don't know how to "make it work". Actually, I've always used that type of phrase ("make it fit"), but same sorta principle.

I'm not even enrolled in design classes, though. Maybe that will change if I apply to ITP or Carnegie Mellon. I'm starting to realize, also, that programmers, on the whole, or at least the ones I've hung out in the city with, are really really lame. Like Slashdot lame. People who are on the web are generally more well-rounded and sociable, and not as awkward as programmer types. Sucks. Oh well.

ITP vs Carnegie Mellon

I usually judge things by intuition, because hey, I'm an intuitive judger. But now I've got data and it all sounds like a good idea to me... So today's match, ITP vs Carnegie Mellon. ITP stands for Interactive Telecommunications Program, and by Carnegie Mellon, I specifically mean their HCI program.

I haven't heard of ITP until recently. Perusing through a couple of blogs, it was mentioned as some hot new thing. I've heard, however, it's been around for a while... So I was at the Adaptive Path social in New York, and I met these coders from a company I can't remember the name of... And they were graduates of ITP. I was like, man, that's weird, I didn't think this program was real. And then a friend of mine, Vinnie, has a friend who is currently studying at ITP. And then and then, I just found out that the founder of Dodgeball, Dennis Crowley, is graduate of ITP. So after all these pings, I can't really ignore how interesting ITP is sounding. It definitely looks like a place I should apply to if I ever get serious about graduate school.

And on to Carnegie Mellon... I've always had this self-fueled belief that Carnegie Mellon was the cream of the crop. Since the birth of the term HCI in the arena of undergraduate studies, Carnegie Mellon has always had the most ellaborate and sophisticated three-tier program (three-tier meaning bachelors, masters, and doctoral). I've always gave them a lot of credit, and have seen good things from their graduate students' web pages. One student in particular, Dan Saffer, is now a member of the Adaptive Path team. See how we're cycling back here now? Crazy.

Speaking of cycling back, at the Adaptive Path social in NYC, I met Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke. I feel kinda bad (and then it went away) that I put up a little ruse and pretended not to know them. I did that more to prevent myself from turning into a little girl. I mean, they are (were?) web celebrities, you know? So from them, I find out that it's all a tightly knit community, and some are galavanting on the front lines and others like forming consulting teams called Adaptive Path. Whatever. Bottom line? They revolve around the free alcohol. I mean, really. Go free alcohol, you know?

So with that... I find myself with loads of free time... Just a change in the seasons if you will. Kinda closing a chapter in my life... I learned a lot. But I still wanna learn more. Maybe applying to ITP and/or Carnegie Mellon is definitely something to consider. I mean, I've been gunning for Carnegie Mellon since high school, but just with my laziness compounded with experience and the way things have actually worked themselves out over the years, I don't really see the need for a graduate degree. I see myself driven by my own innate capability rather than having a degree speak on my behalf. Maybe I'll do both, attend school and still crank it out. But with something like Japan on the horizon, I can totally see what people mean. It kinda puts a damper on your long-term plans. Graduate school, I think, for the most part can wait. Not to say that Japan cannot wait, it's just something that I think is better served when I'm younger.

So that's my plan. Choosing A or B based on the availability of youth.

Just do it.

Don't Suck

It's actually a philosophy I've been thinking about recently... In regards how to properly treat work and life and all that stuff... Also, I've been trying to cut down on the whole using-a-blog-as-an-introspective-heatsink kinda deal... But just with the way things have been turning out lately, I can't help but say something.

In short, there are a couple things in life that suck. That's a given. Some things can be remedied by investing time and energy to find out that things don't really suck, but are just misunderstood.

Uh oh, hypocrisy coming up... I was about to say, oh, well, this other thing, isn't one of those times. Honestly, I don't feel like investing any more time or energy into it... There's nothing to "understand" if I'm constantly being cut down. So... That's the end of it. Cutting myself off from things that suck... It's not worth the lack of energy, stress, or emotional damage. Seriously, at this point, I just want to go on record and say it was all your fault. I mean, things were nice before, but now, they're not so nice. Why is that?

Yup. Little (a lot, actually) immature of me to go out and say all this... But, I mean, it's causing me so much stress. I'm already losing my hair (really) and growing up way too fast, so why do I need your constant influence on me? Every day, selling parts of my soul and making me progressively more lame... Sometimes, I'm just like, deep dive, here we go... But I'll try to hold off on that a little longer.

I want my time back. I want my energy back. I want my hair back. At one point in time, I thought we were cool. But apparently, that isn't the case anymore. So peace.

PS - More on the whole "Don't Suck" thing later.