02 Dec 2010
by beverly
in Tech The Crazy
Tags: 3G, Hipstamatic, iPhone
Horrified by the reports of still sluggish performance on 3G with iOS 4.0.2, I have still not yet upgraded to iOS4 from 3.1.3.
Not that there aren’t still issues.
1.) Hipstamatic stopped running properly several months ago, and no update has fixed the issue of it hanging on the yellowing printing light stage. It is basically inoperational.
FIX: go to settings > applications: Hipstamatic, and turn off metadata. Voilà. Functionality returned. Too bad about the metadata, but a camera that doesn’t take pictures is a camera that fails at life.
2.) General Performance Issues – while looking up whether I should upgrade to 4.0.2, I ran across some forum posts that recommend to go to settings > general > home > search results, and uncheck eveything. I did that and I think it is helping, at least mildly.
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07 Aug 2010
by beverly
in art, Simon Fraser University, Tech The Crazy
Tags: A-Volve, glowing pathfinder bugs, IAT222, interactive arts, mignonneau, s, SFU, Simon Fraser University, sommerer, squidsoup
So I was surfing on Engadget and came across an article (with video) about an interactive art installation called “Glowing Pathfinder Bugs” by Squidsoup, Anthony Rowe, Chris Bennewith, and Liam Birtles, that was first shown in 2008, and most recently was installed at Siggraph 2010. I immediately thought back to a piece we looked at in IAT 222 (Interactive Arts) at Simon Fraser University last year called A-Volve, by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau from way back in 1994. Super cool! Evolution has evolved, har har har.
A-Volve let users draw 2D shapes which were translated into 3D ‘creatures’ that floated about in a primordial soup, so to speak, where users could then interact with them in a shallow water pool to control their movement, mating, and predatory habits. Back in 1994, revolutionary. Won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at the Prix Ars Electronica that year as well.
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs projects bugs of light onto a sandbox. The ‘bugs’ are aware of elevation changes in their environment, so users can change the terrain in the sandbox by building hills and valleys, as well as ‘pick up’ the bugs in their hands. The creatures can ‘die’ (with a big *SPLAT*) if dropped back onto the sand from too high a height, or if someone dumps sand on them. And yes. The bugs mate. Users can influence this too, by gently encouraging interaction between two bugs. Apparently, if the bug survives a few rounds of mating, it will turn into a butterfly. Cute.
I think Glowing Pathfinder Bugs is a fantastic re-imagining of the interactive environment that Sommerer and Mignonneau pioneered…and it looks most importantly, really fun. Kids like fun art. I love fun art.
Check out the links below to explore both Glowing Pathfinder Bugs and A-Volve.
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs by Squidsoup and Anthony Rowe, Chris Bennewith, Liam Birtles.
Article on Engadget about GPB at Siggraph2010: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/30/glowing-pathfinder-bugs-installation-puts-the-minority-report/
Artists’ website for GPB: http://www.squidsoup.org/bugs/
A-Volve by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
Artists’ website: http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent/WORKS/index.html
Video of the artists describing and demonstratin A-Volve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ3v1jcCXmk
Clip from the ORF-Documentary about Prix Ars Electronica 1994 re: A-Volve: http://vimeo.com/7723546
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02 Aug 2010
by beverly
in Exercise, News, Simon Fraser University, Tech The Crazy, Web Design and Web Related
Tags: exercise, facebook, health, rowing, SFU, SFU rowing website, Simon Fraser University, WordPress
SFU Rowing’s Official Website now located at http://www.sfu.ca/rowing.
This past week I’ve been working on getting the SFU Rowing Club’s website up and running again. Past incarnations have been external websites such as .com or .ca domains, but I wanted to get us back on the university system. The most excellent thing about this new website is that it’s hosted by SFU IT services, and uses SFU’s Central Authentication System (CAS), which makes it extremely easy for all club executive members to update and/or contribute articles to the site. The new site is run on the SFU blogs system, which uses WordPress. God bless WordPress. Also nice is that the club doesn’t have to worry about the extra ~$100 cost for domain and hosting every year (we’re poor!), and when it comes time for me to leave the job of webmaster to the next incarnation of club exec, it will be extraordinarily easy (*read: drama free!*) to make that transition.
In this day and age, I take it for granted that people have grown up building websites – at least to the point where they can get a really basic static site set up and running; however, this does not seem to be the case. My peers have either been spoiled by the advent of Facebook during their high school and university years, or are just not really that into content creation for the web. Thus, I made it a priority to find the most easily manageable system for continuing the club’s online existence. I definitely pitched the idea as “a good solution for us, because it’s pretty much as easy to use as Facebook”, which I hope, even after Facebook falls away in favour of the new online social tool, will hold true for the SFU Rowing Club blog as the years go by.
So check it out! http://www.sfu.ca/rowing
<3 beverly
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28 May 2010
by beverly
in Tech The Crazy
Tags: apple, blogging with iPad, iPad, microstore, SFU, Simon Fraser University
*this is an iPad test, all spelling and grammar mistakesintentiOnally left in the post.*
So Steve bought an iPad today from SFU’s Microstore on the first day of it’s release in Canada. SFU Microstore’s relatively small customer base meant that he didn’t have to wait in line – he just walked in a half hour after the store opened and bought one. Presto!
So far, it’s been rather fun. I find typing alright…not entirely ergonomically friendly, but the auto-spell-correct is definitely a nice feature. It feels like typing with three fingers of each hand might be the best way to adjust to typing on is keyboard. I sometimes also miss hitting the spacebar. I find that hitting the ‘keys’ hard helps me to avoid accidentally pressing wrong keys, for some reason. But the latter half of this paragraph I estimate that I’ve been able to type at around 50wpm with relatively few errors.
So…here’s a little bit of typing Practice not really talking about anything at all just sort of stream of consciousness type oof typing. As you can see, I still make a few typing errors by pressing two keys at once. What did I do today? Not much really.. I didn’t manage to get ANY homework done, but did get a really good workout in at the gym..
Oh and the other thing is that I get really nervous when either Steve or I have to walk around wi the iPad because he hasn’t bought a proper case or screen protector sticky plastic thing for the front yet and I keep having horrible visions of the thing just dropping and cracking. One other thing is that I have fingernails that even when short , extend pat the tips of the fleshy part of my finger pads which sometimes makes it a bit tappy when I type on the bottom row with my right index finger.
Okay! Enough typingr Practice for now,
Beverly
Long live the iPad.
*edit 10:53pm*: bought Autodesk sketchbook pro and this is the first finger painting of mine from that program. Pretty good, worth the $8. Limited to 6 layers and the simulated pressure levels are nowhere near what you’d get on a wacom pad but it’s still a lot of fun for when you just feel like sketching!
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26 Jun 2009
by beverly
in Dreams, Health and Healthy Living, Mental Diarrhea, News, Personal, Simon Fraser University, Tech The Crazy, Web Design and Web Related
I declared last Sunday, on Facebook, that I would be going on Facebook hiatus. I didn’t say for how long, but in my mind, I’d be quitting FB and Twitter cold turkey for one week. I am 5 days into this experiment. I find myself resisting that URL address bar like an unsmoked half pack in the back upper corner of my closet, kept for emergency use only. Nagging at my mind every couple minutes. But mind you, I don’t smoke. Never have. I know my addictive personality well enough to not bother trying. Just thought it was an appropriate simile for habit breaking. But I haven’t faltered yet. Those links are everywhere, though. EVERYONE trying to be someone is on Twitter, to the point of ridiculosity. Well, not really…just businesses, oddly enough. CKNW, CNN, BBC Science, BBC Health, Daily Planet…(my personal favourites) …and there was that one week where everyone hopped the bandwagon at the same time. T’was an odd week.
But I couldn’t have picked a more interesting week to go FB/Twit free. I just couldn’t break the habit of thinking that my thoughts all needed to be expressed and thrown into some intangible online world, that, excepting global nuclear meltdown circumstances coinciding with the time of my death, will exist beyond me, providing that inactive accounts don’t get deleted after a certain period of time, and there isn’t a massive server crash affecting all the backup copies of my accounts…etc. SO…I took to writing down all my thoughts on index cards. GOD do I love index cards. For some reason of kinaesthetic x visual learning it works for me. And here are some of the thoughts that rampaged through a manic mind going through withdrawl. Actually, happily, this week seemed like one of those rare weeks that I wasn’t overly manic or depressive. Actually, no. I take that back. I may have thrown a temper tantrum on monday. But after that things seemed to clear up, mood wise. Hopefully it lasts a little longer this time.
From the index cards:
June 23 1700h: Fascinating that so many things – economic phenomena etc. can be described/explained by little lines on a graph. Really cool.
June 24 10ooh: How the hell did I injure my knee? Left inside tendon/ligament thingy sore upon awakening. Did I sleepwalk?
1110h: There are a lot of funny looking asian men in ECON103.
1230h: I really enjoy talking to professors in office hours.
1345h: Correction: I enjoy talking to ungrumpy professors in office hours.
1400h: For every short and cute asian woman that exists, there exists an equally short, not-so-cute-asian man.
1415h: When you can’t figure me out: The secret to women is that we say things we don’t mean and we mean things we don’t say. But not all the time.
1415h: Today I feel very happy and calm and content.
1710h: I am quite possibly…floored. On gradebook, if “MT” stands for midterm, I just got 34/34, i.e. 100%. WTF?! In CMPT120! And so far I have 100% in the course! This has Never Happened Before. Not even close. Never.
1734h: Just discovered my flash animations don’t work on the CSIL computers. Not pleased.
1756h: The secret to not being frustrated and irritated all the time…getting laid.
June 25 1000h: Farrah Fawcett died. Cancer. Brings out my fears. And Jon and Kate Gosselin are divorcing. Not that that matters to anyone except their kids. I hope deep inside that all people who die are at peace. I hope the suicide bombers and war criminals, and serial killers given the death penalty are all at peace. I hope the man who believes he will be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife gets just that. If that’s the best thing he had going for him, I really hope he gets it.
1315h: I just get so fucking agitated at jerks like the guy who made a left turn from behind me while I was halfway across the street during my pedestrian walk light who then told me to look for traffic. It’s my walk sign, fucker! Concentrate on your own fucking half baked fucking driving, idiot!
1350h: playing piano really gets me unagitated. New “easy piano” piece yeah that disney song “A whole new world” from Aladdin. Love it and it’s just so beautiful and takes me away to a different time and place and imaginary life. Need to get a piano of my own so i can stop renting rehearsal space.
1425h: Low F + high GAC chord. Quite a nice way to end a song.
1700h: I had a breakthrough at singing class today. Lowered larynx + space + focus. Singing the exercise “Me-lia”. Letting go. Throwing it away. Fuck yeah. And going to McD’s inbetween rehearsing and class and thinking to enjoy fully and be present doing anything because it might be the last time I do that thing – gosh Steve cried last week when he ate a chicken nugget, having not had one for so long, and thinking that it might be his last. So I went and bought chicken nuggets today to remind myself to live. I couldn’t bring him any, though because he’s fasting, preparing for his colonoscopy tomorrow. And then I came home to find that Michael Jackson had died. What a day. What a week to choose to be facebook & Twitter free.
June 26 1117h: Watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and it wasn’t good. I am disappointed because I had been looking foward to that one for quite some time. Movies and people that try too hard to be funny are rarely really funny. The Make More Money scene ended up on the cutting room floor. All the essential bits of the story that made it a charming and funny story got cut out of the script. Nobody is sympathetic towards a woman who spends too much money (GUILTY!), but somehow the book made you identify so strongly with the protagonist, and the movie just did not succeed. Director needs lessons in directing comedy.
1440h: Been at Burnaby General Hospital since 1230. Steve’s colonoscopy today. yay. One year since we’ve been here for one the last time and we’re still where we began. Not pleased. Hopefully some answers.
1700h: +1 Medication for Steve. Prednisone. At least it’s cheap. + Humira starting ~2 weeks pending all clear from upcoming “urgent” MRI. Apparently the colonoscopy looked very different from last time. Some serious side fx on prednisone i hear. fuck.
1745h: Found out Lorena Gale (Priestess Elosha on BSG) passed away on June 21st. Shocked and saddened. Cancer. Found out Google, Twitter and Wikipedia etc crashed yesterday from too much traffic/too many edits. Again, I re-iterate. What a week to be Twitter and Facebook free.
1800h: Realized that I have this lifelong pattern of disillusionment with stuff. Note to self: write blog entry about disillusionment.
2143h: Made myself a little jar with little 1/8 index card chips inside with things to do when I don’t know what to do. Will pick one each time I find myself not knowing what to do and be just one minute more productive. Each task can be completed within one minute. I like this jar already. Note to self: write blog entry about this jar.
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