Flash Things~

Heyo - I made a loop in class that really ended up only being 2 seconds long. It looks better jsut by itself. I don't know how to embed it directly as Flash directly onto the blog, tho. Here's the link instead.

Here also is something I cooked up by myself, for myself. The U-TIC Danceparty! (It's actually hastily done fanart of some characters from Xenosaga, which is my knock-down, drag-out, most favorite video game ever.) These guys can sync up to just about every song on my computer, and probably yours, too.

HI.

Nahid Toontoochi Lecture

This was more or less my first exposure to actual graphic design from Iran. I'd been helping other students in the lab with the posters Ken's class was making for this lecture, so what I was looking at was American interpretations of what they thought Iranian graphic design looked like. Sort of like American Chinese food. I wasn't expecting to be so impressed, but I was, because I've always been really enamored with cultures that I have absolutely no biological roots to.

I was extremely excited about a lot of the pieces that Ms. Toontoochi showed because I actually took a Typography course with Ken a few semesters ago, and it made me obsessed with letterform. The things that these artists were able to do with the Persian Alphabet were really just sweeping and beautiful, and around about impossible to accomplish with ours.

Not that there's anything wrong with the Roman Alphabet. I just haven't seen a lot of Old English calligraphic forms in magazine advertisements lately.

I guess one of the reasons I seem to be so drawn to foreign imagery is because status quo USA rejects their traditional roots. Actually, the U.S. technically has no traditional roots because caucasian american culture is made up of people who decided to leave Europe for some reason or other. And in general, the average american doesn't really have any particular interest in their heritage other than "Oh hey, I'm Irish! Let's drink!" and football. Not that there's anything wrong with drinking and football, but it just seems much less interesting to me than say, the Renaissance Festival or the latest manga that's come out. Then again, I also consider myself a squirrelly escapist hippie artist kid, too.

DED

Hey guys - sorry I missed class yesterday. I was really, really sick. Too sick to blog, but not too sick to text message Heather to let Todd know that I wouldn't be coming. Also not too sick to sit up in my room playing my Nintendo Gameboy DS until the battery ran down.

I took a look at some of you guys's videos! WE KICKED THOSE OTHER GUYS'S ASSES! (I still have to work on mine. v_V I kinda have no excuse.)

I don't suppose I've wailed at anyone in class about the utter hell I've been experiencing at the hands of my transfer to the Wawa off of Route 40. I snapped and quit the place this past Sunday. They're probably not too pleased with me at the moment. Which is fine and dandy with me because of all the breakdowns I'd suffered at their hands in the course of two weeks. I probably wouldn't have been too much help in the first place because I am actually really very very sick and probably would have been moreso had I stayed there.

So, hopefully I'll have something up sunday. D: Sorry for missing what sounded like an awesome class!!

Cell Phones = NO

Much like Donny, I also consider myself a big tech-head, but I'm not a big fan of cell phones. Mostly because, from the start, I've lived in a place that's a complete dead zone, so I've never been interested in having anything more than the cheapest phone possible.

When I got my first cell phone, I was 22 years old (I'm 25 now). It had a camera on it, but I had no idea how to get the pictures off of it. All I knew was that I had to subscribe to some sort of web service that wasn't included in my normal cell phone bill, and that the attendant at Cingular was not willing to take the time to show me how to work it even if I did get it.

So, after about a year, I dumped Cingular and went with T-Mobile because I had some friends who worked at T-Mobile in the hopes that they would show me how to do some things. The second I get my new phone, "Here ya go! You can do it! I believe in you! :D"

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"ANDY, HOW DO I GET IT TO TEXT MESSAGE THINGS THAT ARE THE LETTERS I'M ACTUALLY TRYING TO TYPE IN INSTEAD OF IT BEING DEFAULT SET ON TRYING TO SPELL THINGS FOR ME?"

Srsly, it's all about selling things and not about educating people how to use them. That's why a lot of people don't like technology. It's because it's being sold and not adopted to people. We're not taught how to treat a piece of technology. It's either sink or swim, and oh yeah, if you're lucky, here's an instruction manual in 10 languages that goes over the first 10% of what you might run into.

Don't even get me started on the prices of cell phone services.

Most days, I'm just as happy to call someone with full reception from a land line.