Two weeks ago I tagged along with my mom on an international conference, the ICAS5 or International Convention of Asia Scholars, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She read two papers and was chair for one of the panels.
Since I finally finished school (I’m not the type who skips school for any leisure traveling) and can work anywhere Risk has an internet connection, nothing was stopping me from finally stepping out of the country.
It started with the color I wanted to paint the walls of my room with. Of course I wanted blue. But something not too blue. I ended up choosing a very icy aquamarine (as noted by the man who did the painting), but continued to be fascinated by the remote regions of cyan.
Then I discovered Tiffany Blue and its reputation of all things luxurious and romantic. It is Tiffany & Co.’s official color (Pantone Matching System number 1837, the founding year of the company!), whose petite boxes contain strands of silver and drops of diamonds. Though for me, having the cute boxes would be enough.
More than that, Tiffany Blue is unlike other colors associated with famous companies. Coca-Cola red is just plain old red; it could very well be the same red of McDonald’s, Lego, or Ferrari. Tiffany’s ability to build a brand around a color was so successful that American Express more or less imitated it:
A phrase I’ve never heard to describe a Mac Book Pro. Outraged? Don’t look at me, go comment there. At least I got to discover Neil Young’s great song.
Have a look at the Lawyer Client’s Manifesto at Gaping Void. I always take a jab at lawyers, often at my dad (don’t ask), and I’m pretty jaded about them. Sorry, but I don’t really admire a large portion of them.
Regardless of the topic, though, Hugh McLeod never fails to amuse (“how DARE you love me… i must punish you…”) and inspire (learn how to be creative; it’s where you can find the famous Sex and Cash Theory).
Like Gaping Void, I always admire how Information Aesthetics always serves up good stuff (maybe because you won’t usually find things like a color-by-numbers tower in this time zone)—together with Information Architecture, it’s one of those awesome topics I dream of learning and applying in real life someday. Exempli gratia: Age Maps are photos manipulations by Bobby Neel Adams that merge, through a torn effect in the middle of the face, a person’s young and old face.
Tinily eerie to look at, but it’s quite a revelation how one’s physical features—even the look and pose—remain, despite many decades of change.
A note to all print publishers out there: if you’re doing a layout for an article that mentions URLs, don’t auto-hyphenate.
from Bookwatch Vol. 11, Issue 2, page 26
Hyphenated text is a elegant feature of typesetting. Auto-hyphenated text is equally ingenious, but will break usability when a URL is longer than the space alloted to it. Unlike in web design, where a long string of text will brim over its containing element by default, print design is fixed and WYSIWYG.
The photo says it all. Try visiting http://virtual-blooms.com and you’ll get nothing. Try it without the hyphen and you’ll get what the article meant to say but auto-hyphenatedly ruined. Not that people who read print even care about the websites featured.
Turn off that auto-hyphenate in your layout software, whether it’s Word, Publisher, InDesign, or QuarkXPress.
Yet another one of our projects, which we hope to be the central source for comics in the Philippines, has launched last June 18. If you’re a comic artist, you can get free blog hosting at Komiks.ph. Yes, free.
We’ve been lazily planning for it for the past couple of months but suddenly set a deadline when the ToyCon came. (There Garro picked up a bunch of indie komiks to feature on the website.)
This was the first time I put my Adobe CS3 to the test. And not just Photoshop, but Flash. I’m not a Flash expert, mind you. I struggled a bit with getting it to load URLs, and the fact that we made no less than a dozen minor revisions to the site design did not help. It meant opening up these two programs too often for my own good. Importing PSD layers into Flash was good, but would’ve been better if transparencies were retained.
Nevertheless, I think we did a pretty good job with the design.
Ay! Oo nga pala, ang nilalaman ng header image namin ay mga anyo nila Captain Barbell, Darna, Polgas, Lastikman, at Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah. Mga bayaning nakatatak na sa kamalayan ng Filipino Comics.
Pero pansinin niyo rin iyong ibang mga lumilipad kasama nila. Sino sa tingin ninyo ang mga iyan? Ang Justice League? Ang X-Men?
Hindi noh.
Kayo yan.
Ikaw yan.
Tayo yan.
Mga Pilipinong lumilipad. Kahit mejo cheesy ang dating, hindi ba ang gandang isipin noon? ^_^
Ito ang Komiks.ph.
The concept is golden, is it not?
There’s still much to be done—write new posts more often, get more people to host, set up a directory for comic creators, and promote the website. But we’ll get there.
In second year high school, when we studied El Filibusterismo by Jose Rizal, my classmates had yet another proof that I was mataray when I disagreed with the notion that Rizal was against overthrowing Spanish colonial rule by force.
Today I came across an article that pigeonholes the Philippines’ national hero as one who prefers enduring oppression rather than resisting it.
I’m not sure that’s what Manuel L. Quezon III meant when he was cited, though.
Ang “pagtitiis” na mensahe ni Rizal ay kakaiba. Sinulat nya “Kailangan nating makamtan ang ating kalayaan sa pamamagitan ng pagigiging karapat-dapat dito, sa pamamagitan ng paghahasa sa isipan at pagpapataas sa dangal ng bawa’t isa, pagmamahal sa katarungan, sa kabutihan, sa kadakilaan, kahit hanggang sa kamatayan. Kapag natarok na iyan ng sambayanan, ang Diyos na mismo ang magbibigay ng sandata, at ang mga diyos-diyosan at malulupit na panginoon ay babagsak na parang bahay na gawa sa baraha.”
Leon Ma. Guerrero, from Si Rizal at ang Pilosopiya ng Pagtitiis by Manuel L. Quezon III
Rizal has a whole bunch of characters in his two novels (there’s a third one, actually, called Makamisa). Don’t assume Rizal’s convictions lived only inside of the liberal illustrado Crisostomo Ibarra. What about his alter ego, Simoun? Basilio? Padre Florentino? The mere fact that Simoun emerged from Ibarra’s grief and misfortune is a sign that Rizal considered supporting the revolution, if he hadn’t in the first place.
Rather than weighing the merits of assimilation versus bloodshed, I urge Filipinos—especially during this nationalistic season of the Independence Day and Rizal’s birth anniversary—to ask: do we really deserve the freedom we celebrate this very month?
More importantly, are we really free?
Why am I always amused by these debunking-the-myth articles, especially when it comes to GTD? Last time it was justifying procrastination; this time it’s taking advantage of laziness!
Here’s an observation: often the smartest people are the laziest ones. They’re always looking for ways to get out of work, or do make something easier, and their creative ways of doing that have come up with some of the most ingenius, productive inventions: the computer, the microwave, the car, the Clapper, to name but a few.
10 Ways to Make Laziness Work for You by Leo Babauta
Two years ago I would have been thoroughly annoyed by that statement because people around me slacked off and got away with it and maintained their reputation as the most industrious people of the bunch.
Maybe because we need less slackers and more hard workers that time. Org and Department work both required free time, and not everybody was willing to give that up especially in between an already hectic academic life. You usually choose your orgs (and jobs) based on perks anyway.
Maybe because they weren’t doing it properly. Delegating would start to mean leaving everything up to everyone else and having to do nothing at all. I believe in hands-on leadership, especially if the people you’re managing have absolutely no idea how to do things. You’ll be surprised how many times I run into those types.
Today, I’m just glad I found more advice on managing my time wisely. I juggle way too many pins at a time that it looks crazy. What part of Don’t Get A Job did I not understand? All of it.
Bonus points for mentioning Gilmore Girls twice! And it literally applies to me since it’s a Friday and the show will come on in less than two hours.
