This was taken at the Bunny Museum. It is amazing how much bunny kitch is produced in this world!
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At The Farmers Market
So I finally went through all my photos on the computer. Since the “webcomic” thing has petered out, I thought I’d use the site to upload random photos on a regular basis – at least until the stash runs out! The really good stuff will also be uploaded at flickr
Well see where it goes – I think I will actually make it go chronologically way from the beginning (2003 or so), but let’s start with my girlfriend at the Farmers Market which was taken just this January outside of Tafia.
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One Year without a Car
These images that are really remarkable – and not so much for the image quality or composition, but just the fact that we were in this car and that neither of us had long term effects – even without the airbags going off!
It’s been a year of not having a car anymore…amazing how quickly time flies!
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Shoes in Seattle
In front of the Liu’s home for Ben and Angie’s wedding pre-party Hey! I found a cord for my cell phone and so I was finally able to rip out all the pictures from my little phone — and they are surprisingly decent! They look so aweful on the little screen, but they are legit 640×480 pics so I thought I’d upload a couple photos from them. This one as you can see was from my cousin’s wedding, Ben Liu and his wife Angie. We were at his parent’s house and I went outside for a walk. being a good asian household — there were a bunch of shoes outside mirroring the bunch of folks inside!
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Portfolio posted
I’m official =) well…I finally got my portfolio posted. I started this weekend using an automated function in Photoshop to collect all the dwgs into web galleries and then worked on the overall navigation and stuff. As when I set up this blog site, it amazes me how much free information there is on the internet when it comes to putting up websites! In any case, check it out and ding me if there are any problems, portfolio.grizzlypear.com
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So I’ve been gone for a while
Between visiting New Orleans and starting up the new year – updating my portfolio and shopping for a new camera). Unfortunately it means that poor GP has been languishing.
No guarantees it won’t continue to languish, but I now have one less thing to do! It turns out my friend Dong had gotten a camera a while back as a gift and he never uses it. When I told him about my current obsession with camera shopping (I won’t dignify it with calling it photography until I actually go out and take some =) He offered to send me the camera for my use.
Even though its a bit scary to get someone else’s Christmas present (even if he says wear and tear is ok), this “rental” period will be good for me to know if I am the type who will be interested in the nicer form factor or if I just got caught up in the moment due to too much websurfing. Its easy for feature creep to happen when you run into a community of obsessives! Its been an interesting exercise in desire and fear, especially in these uncertain economic times and our plans to move back to the Bay Area.
On other news, the portfolio is more or less updated (everything except my grad school work(!), and I’m going to start messing with a simple online version this weekend. That and start making contacts with some people out in the Bay Area!
PS I did go to the aamera shop the other day and I must say I did like the feel of the Rebel more (and it does have DOF preview)…but now that is a moot point since if I do buy anything (other than a nice camera case) it will most likely be in the Bay Area now!
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asparagus carrot stirfry
I stir-fried some carrot and asparagus today and it turned out to be a pretty good combination. Put some peanut oil in pan and set on medium high until hot. Put a few cloves of crushed garlic in the pan along with some green onion. Let it sizzle in the pan on very low heat while you chop asparagus. Chop the tough parts into thin strips and leave the tops. When the carrots are coated in oil and wilted, dump the asparagus in. Put in some salt and a dash of chardonney and chicken broth. Keep stir frying. Turn the heat back to medium high. Cook until done.
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Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely, 2008
My friend recommended Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and it turned out to be an absolutely great read. The basic premise is that people do not act rationally and certainly not as the rational agents that one assumes in classical economics. Instead, we act in ways that would be considered “irrational” but are often quite consistent (hence the title).
Mr. Ariely is a professor in Behavioral Economics in MIT so his case studies are tested through experiments conducted on various college campuses. For example, one of his case studies examined the appeal of “FREE!”. In the experiment, they put up a concession stand selling chocolates – Hershey’s Kisses at 1¢ and Lindt Truffles at 15¢ a piece (you could only buy one). 73% chose the Truffle over the Hershey’s Kiss, even when they raised the prices a penny. They then took the prices and dropped them a penny. With the Hershey’s Kiss as “FREE!”, only 31% of the folks chose the Truffle. According to rational economics, this total reversal in behavior makes no rational sense (the price difference between Kiss and Truffle remained the same), and yet it does make “common sense”.
The book is filled with other such studies of “common sense” behavior tested empirically through different experiments. He closes each chapter with takeaway concepts which could be applicable in more substantial situations (i.e. if you want people to get preventative health care, it would be much more effective to make it FREE! instead of “really cheap”).
Well written and very readable, it is well worth picking up — not a classic that I must have on my bookshelf (I got my copy at the library) but is worth the time for a read.
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Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin, 2012
So I’ve been in the middle of reading a wide variety of books and Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae slips into the business/marketing area of the reading spectrum. Its a good read, easily taken in chunks, not surprising since he is a blogger. Actually, when I think about it I could easily imagine that most of his chunks are reformulated blog posts, but they hang together so nicely that it is not noticeable.
The basic premise of his book is that the new way of marketing demands a new way of doing business. According to Godin, the old way of doing things is to mass produce a bunch of stuff and then interrupting people (like TV ads) to get them to want it. While that has worked fabulously in the past, he contends that there are too many ways to get people interrupted and they are shutting off the interruptions that happen to them. Thus there a new type of marketing (direct communication with consumers, long tail, google, web2.0) has arrived and you can’t just apply the new marketing to the old business model and expect it to work. As per his title, you can’t just put flashy sundae toppings (cream, sprinkles, cherry) on the classic old meatball and expect anything good to come out of it. The web is not just a more efficient way of doing things, but a paradigm shift way of doing business with consequences that reach past the IT department.
However, as an architecture person, I’m not sure how new marketing works with my industry, even after reading the book. Part of the confusion is that Godin basic dichotomy is the mass versus the individual. If so, the architecture and design is already a very personal profession (especially at the small firms that I have worked at). Maybe he’s saying the paradigm shift is tilting the world towards my direction. If so, the lesson may well be that architects should get off of this mass production/prefab myth that they have been chasing for this past century.
Even so, I guess the book presents a mindset that may be useful in jumpstarting how one should view the role of computers in design, using them as more than just hyper efficient drafting mechanisms. Or it might be a bunch of new-speak that isn’t really work practicing. I’m just not sure — but I do think it is a good read, even though it is less entertaining than his other book Small is the New Big (which actually is a collection of blog posts).
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Hmm twiddling around due to election coverage.
Well, its been an interesting period since I got around to starting this website, (weddings, vacations hurricaines). Like many of my other hobbies, I guess this will be going through some changes after an initial push. At $40 its not a big investment so I’m not too concerned if it goes in wierd directions or just stalls out.
In any case, I’m still messing around with the tone and wasting too much of my time following election coverage as opposed to other more productive activities. Its fun to watch and follow all the gulf of opinions and information that can bury you alive. Not much else to say.
