I got fed up trying to 2-D sketch my building for Environmental Branding, so I jumped into Google Sketch-up and threw together a quick comp, just to get the feeling for it. It makes me want to learn 3-D programs a little more, and maybe build out a full quality render for this project. Hell of a lot funner that way.
Check out these pics from my 23rd birthday party, and from my summer trip to Texas. I’ve been pretty lazy about developing the film. My main concern is that people I know in Atlanta will definately check them, but my friends in Texas don’t really have blogs, or Flickr accounts, and I don’t want to do 50 million posts on Myspace and Facebook that no one will probably see. One thing I’ll definately start doing is stop jumping around on the internet. I’ll keep this blog running as long as I can. But there’s something slightly counterintuitive about social networking sites that don’t allow you to network. There’s always email, but people used to not get my mass emails due to bulk filters.
I read an article a while back talking about the different ways people network in different parts of the world. I think it was Germany that didn’t use Myspace because of bad design (and lack of bone glue) and mainly used text messaging. The US is still in the fucking Stone Age when it comes to wireless.
My interest in design in general surrounds the idea of way to fulfill a need. I find myself increasingly confused by decoration. I guess I see everything from a very basic level, and that’s the reason I’m here is to understand the broader scope. I was discussing today the website for another project in another class, and I was discussing how it felt very flat to me, almost like they had taken a print out, stuck it on the web, added a little motion, and called it a website.
Crash! Media discusses the notion of a transition into the interactive. We haven’t lived our whole lives around computers, and most of us have an analogue approach to handling digital. It makes me think more and more about how we are on the front line of a digital revolution. As much as I know about computers, my nephew will know even more. He’s already very adept at playing games on my DS, and he’s only 5. He won’t remember a time before the internet, before eBay, and Myspace, and YouTube. He won’t have an analogue mind-set. He still knows how to draw, and write, and use paints, but he has so many toys that are digital.
I don’t want to really get into the whole “biting the hand” thing right now, but I do question what the future of the analogue is.
Anyway, Crash! does some good work that I think is very “transitional”. Looking at their project, WEBCAMTASTIC, my first reaction is that this is a nice toy. It allows you to use your webcam (which I don’t have) and distort a photo, as is my understanding. Being the massive cynic that I am, I do wonder what the larger purpose of this would be. But, I don’t think I’m looking at it for what it’s worth. It’s the same reason I was having trouble getting off the ground with my widget. These are digital toys, and they probably aren’t going to change the world. And that’s really what these pieces of code are, fun toys, and serious tools. The public at large is starting to come around and realize that technology isn’t just a novelty, that if you don’t have an internet presence as a business, you will get left behind. But I still feel that there’s not a lot of knowledge as to what to do with the technology.
Everything we know today will be different tomorrow. I don’t think the web is the place to stick your :30 commercials. I don’t think people will stand for that for too much longer. But then again, maybe they will, and maybe there is a place for that. But we shouldn’t be thinking along those lines. We need to know what we want to do, and then we need to know what is the best solution to accomplish that goal. Maybe the old ways are still the best, and maybe it’s something that’s just a twinkle in our eyes at this moment in time.
So, if you’ve got a webcam, check it out. If not, look and see what people are up to anyways. There’s a gallery. As for me, I’m going to go figure out how to fuck me up some data.
Go Colts!
Did anybody else notice how shitty the SuperBowl commercials have become? Check out this banned commercial for Go Daddy. It’s kind of funny, but not quite sure why it’s banned. Fuckin’ NeoCons.
Okay, so a lot of stuff won’t be working on this blog for a while, because for some reason, wordpress messed up my whole site. I think it did something to the database it was running off of because it affected my entire server space. When I tried to access it, it kept trying to send me to http://localhost/.
Thanks to James, I was able to get this to go on as a clue as to what was happening:
It’s weird, because the site it mentions in between all the Japanese isn’t even my site. Any guess I can make as to what went wrong is only speculation.
I feel that the recent Adult Swim debacle presents some flawed logic in the practices of contemporary marketing. When I was in undergrad studying advertising, we were told that gurilla marketing was becoming more popular, and many of us were under the impression that this was the way of the future. The idea of gurilla marketing was to find younger consumers where they live/play/work.
Well, we live/play/work online as well. With gurilla marketing, you are subjected to advertising in places you wouldn’t expect. Yet, when it comes to the product, when you are seeking it, Adult Swim, in this example, isn’t willing to let go any control of the content. Look at what I get when I try to go to “Adult Swim Fix” in order to watch shows online:
I’m assuming this doesn’t work because I’m viewing from a Mac. There’s a lot of take (from the aestetic of someone’s daily commute) and not a lot of give. Yet when I go to ABC’s or NBC’s website, not only can I watch programming on my Mac, but I also get a long list of recent episodes to choose from. (I’m not saying that either services are perfect, but it’s a start.)
In my project from last quarter, blog-em, the concept was to create an aestetically pleasing environment that would automatically retrieve the content I wanted, without me having to navigate through ugly Myspace pages, and such. (It’s a still un-finnished project.)
But the project places an emphasis on the content, rather than whatever you are using to house it.
I lost my train of thought. I’ll get back to this later.
In observance of the problem of global warming, the Eiffel tower’s lights were turned off for 5 minutes. According to CNN, some people were saying that this wasn’t a good way to protest because of the power-spike involved with turning the lights back on. According to Mythbusters, (episode 69[hehe]) the spike isn’t equivelant to the power consumption of normal opperation. Yes, I am a big nerd.