WordCamp Melbourne Middle

We are back.

Darren Rose from Problogger is talking. Almost 5 years blogging. Talking about making money from WordPress, or on a larger scale, blogging in general. He shows some survey stuff and shows that he has a statistic that about 8% of his audience is making 15K per month or more. He brakes people who make money like this into two groups. People who make money from blogging and people who make money from having a blog. Things like advertising, affiliate programs, merchandise, paid reviews, donations and CPM, selling adds directly. Most bloggers seem to just want to write. There are many ways to do this stuff. monetizing readers. Even people selling space on blogs to do poles and other market research stuff. For less direct methods a lot of people are also getting sales systems and empowering their skills though blog networks, Ginna Trapani from Lifehacker and her book as well as many consultants and others working to create ebooks and so on. Lastly many people are using blogs as a gateway for resumes. He asks, what do people think about this list. One audience member talks about the specialisation of consulting work, another mentions networking and growing contacts or audience contact, another member talks about valuing niche skills by generating a need context for highly valued skills that can be 'advertised' on one's blog.  Now we are moving on to methods and advice in this context. If you are going to make money you need to aligned your self with a specific niche. Make your self the specific person of value, establishing trust and expertise and authority. He also advocates running showcases on what you do and why it is important in the context of a specific context. Case studies are really valuable. Give away what you can, especially principals. Sell your self, not someone else, AdSense can be used to sell other peoples work because it links contextually. Lastly, make your self accessible. He moves on to talk about utilising better design to optimise your add value. Less is more, fewer adds can translate to higher value. Relevance and content relation is really key to value. Keeping all kinds of traffic is really important but one should keep and understanding of what most of their traffic is. Try moving adds around.

Questions:

1. Q. How could Google improve their percent accuracy and rules about AdSense? A. I have never though about this. I think there should be more communication about this from Google but I understand that it is hard for them to avoid bad SEO.
2. Q. Is visual value very important. A. Yes and no, some advertisers really care about what competition you are using but most readers do not care as much as expected.
3. Q. How do you know who is using the adds. A. We tend to put some survey information as the results to some adds. Some advertisers ask about this and ask what you reader demographic is. 
4. Q. What companies do you go to to get advertising. A. I do not look for companies it is more the other way around. I think the best thing to do is to work at what you are good at and find what suites from who comes looking. That said I put adds up early and just waited.
5. I could not hear this one
6. Q. RSS advertisement, what do you say. A. I do not really use it. I find that in general it does not work, most of my money RSS is from the larger numbers of readers and affiliate programs. 

Christene Davis is now going to talk about classification models. 

Content categorisation availability. Aggregating common information. She is talking a little bit about the displacement of a tag out come and a link to a tag content page. 

Machine Tags - Flickr introduced this idea that is like a more developed tagging context. Including info like Geo tags and other standardisation off tag information. Machine tags are a little like making a wiki out of a tag context, giving special attributes and empowering connectivity.

Folksonomy is a terrible word. She sees this as a useless made up word that does not seem to deal well with the connection between the various groups in the context of blogging. She says there are distinct branches and they seem not to be allied well. 

James has asked about mircoformats or something. He is suggesting that there may be no point at which meta is too small, and asking that there is some point where it should be overtaken. Referencing the microformat plugging for WP. She answers that this is not really an issue, essentially. 

Structured tagging paradigms are really valuable. 

Another question from the crowd. What is the difference between a category and a tag. She suggests that one is higher in the order of power but the fundamental difference is that categories is finding similarities and tags are documenting specific aspect.  People are discussing some of the aspects of the problems of permalinking for tags and categories. One audience member is suggesting that categories are like organisational systems while tags are like cross organisational information connections. Another person is allying tagging to an index and categories to chapter headings in a book. 

James tries to bring it back to a more structured presentation.

Now we are moving into a real question and answer time

Questions: 

1. Q. How aware are search engines of categories? Some are quite good, there is a bit of worked done especially looking for commonalities in the themes of pages such as a tag page. On my work I find that tag sections have higher conversions because the content specialisation is so rich.
2. Q. There is a tool that can take content and provide some appropriate tags. This uses some yahoo service. What do you think? A. There is a bit of other stuff going on there like Delicious tags of tags. 

We have finishing up this round, James is now talking about adding a WCM07 tags to any content related to this event.

WordCamp Melbourne Intro and Morning Presentations

Today I am at my first blogging event, WordCamp Melbourne. 

The morning started of with an introduction from Simon Chen from Eight Black.

James Farmer from Edublogs something, a local WordPress guru then introduced the first speaker, Alex Shiels from Automattic. 

Alex spoke first about various statistics of WordPress such as how much info transfer there is, how many users, how much spam. A lot of spam. Then went on to talk about their management process. He displays $250,000,000,000 and states it is the largest amount they have ever been sued over. He then goes on to talk more about management process including their load sharing systems and chasing systems. He then goes on to mention the troubles of timing associated with propagating changes though the caches in their various server farms. 

Questions

1. Q. Is there going to be a Themes competition like blogger did a while ago? A. There are some new themes in the pipeline and we are working on ideas of a theme marketplace.
2. Q. What is the relationship of WordPress.org? A. They are quite similar, Wordpress MU and WordPress.org are more similar to each other than with .com. Right now there is a few things that are not released because of secrecy but in general they are the same.
3. Q. WPMU, are there plans to create larger scale features? A. HyperDB has been released, Barry gave a talk about this a while back that should be online. I will talk to some people about that but for now there are only some implementations of ideas for this.
4. Q. Automattics opinion on the GPL? A. Each person working there would have a different opinion. I like the BSD license, others at the company really like the GPL. 
5. Q. The question really is, as a plug-in developer what licenses would you like people to use? A. We support people using GPL it is easy and it is efficient. 
6. Q. Are you changing the admin theme? A. There is work on that, it has been around for a while and it kind of sucks. We are more concerned with doing it right than doing it now. 

James came back to talk some more and do his own talk on his work with WPMU. He talks a little about his companies growth, a whole punch of blog sites... He clams he is not going to talks about, security, promotion, attention, support, communication, time or feedback. If you are going to compete you have to have something great to compete with. However, the market is NOT flooded. There is a huge opportunity to stay out of the social network market. A blog site has a major difference, it is close to you, a social network, on the other hand, is a place you go to do something... 

One has to decide, community or service. Community is about interaction and sharing, you will need a lot of plug-ins to help run the WPMU site as a community and enable community features. Service, is a thing you use, a tool. Most bloggers are not quite doing a community, but generating a service. Similarly there will be a lot of associated plug ins and customisations to help organise everything. 

Code. You really need some good code work if you are going to do a blog network because there are a lot of things like plug-ins that continually need to be messed with. Server topology is also very important and having a skilled person to deal with these issue is paramount to success. What you do not need is a graphic designer. We found out that it does not matter at all, in the end what mattered was that people could pretend that it was a community system. People want to feel part of a community, they may not interact, but they want the feeling. 

Money. This is really the question of why you are doing your work, is it for money? If it is, you really need to think about the model. We do this, we sell parts of our code as our main business model. Also, however you can actually do advertising, without being an asshole. This is quite rare but people like Wordpress.com do it quite well. Do it as an external link, ie search, click through. But, it does not have to be about the money, it can be about the passion. 

Questions:

1. Q. Can you talk more about the adds work? A. I don't really know that much but there are some good plug ins that do it, for instance only have adds for non friends, only have ads for people coming from a search engine, adds for non registered users. We do not do it as we are for education.
2. Q. If you were starting something new what would it be? A. Farmnet.com.au is an interesting, a pretty big network. He works with a great email list and he shares it on the grounds of a network. If you do not have that list, find someone who does. 
3. Q. How big a problem is SPAM? A. It is a pretty big problem, we check all posts. We also use capchas on sign up and we have a terms of service agreement system on sign up. I think it is not a bad idea to make people try hard to get a blog, to avoid too much spam. Akin to the idea or Barriers of Entry (some book).

The Toothpaste I Use

I really like toothpaste and I really like trying new and odd ones that I find in strange places. I also really really like going to the dentist but that is a different matter.

Anyway, I was reading medgadget and saw this lovely picture. It is of a Korean toothpaste that I think would be just swell. I have used a few other Korean toothpastes but I have not ever seen this one in stores. I which someone would send me some. 

Really Looking at Design

I recently heard of someone, Nathan Shedroff, who actually understands things and speaks about them well, a rarity in a world where most designers make up what they want to be true. The picture is one from his recent presentation at the Connecting 07 Conference. Please don't take my word for it and have a look at the whole presentation here and his homepage here.

Thanks to core77 for making me more aware.

Smooth Things and Good Information

Over this last weekend I have been to a number of quite good lectures from the RMIT GRC, graduate research conference. Apart from just being a good showcase of interesting work it also unveiled the reason and value of doing a PhD at some point and now I am even considering this a real possibility. For the time being I am interested in doing it some place where I do not speak the language and where I can get a scholarship. More on this later.

At the same time there is some interesting work here on interface design. I think this is a great example of what more projects should be like. Seeing many of the graduate projects I realised that most people do not know anything about presenting content well. I was saddened also to see that a number of the applicants, especially masters were at quite an elementary level of development of ideology. I am not sure if these people will be allowed to progress immediately and I hope that RMIT presses them to work harder in the future.

Because I was away watching presentations and working on projects a lot recently I have a huge number of reading built up in my Google reader. I am working though it and learning interesting things. Read my reblog if you want to see more on that.

China's Real Wonders

I was looking at Digg and I found this great collection of photos of some of the cool things you see in China. I have seen a few of these sorts of things in person and a number of others which I will have to track down photos for.

Here are the images.

Play Blogger

Recently a little thing for looking at recently uploaded Blogger images was put forth. It is called Blogger Play and has a few controls to mess around with. If you like images this seems like a good way to find interesting blogs. I was actually surprised that more of the images were not interesting. In any case, it is a funny little thing.

The Hole in my Soul

There is a hole in my soul somewhere in Seoul.

I miss so many things at this point. Good food, good speakers, movies, sun, real winter, rain, thunder, chairs, desks, a house, pets, swimming, working hard, not working at all, China, the USA, the world, and some great Koreans.

I think there are so many things to miss but only one or two of them actually matter.

modo 301

Today I started messing around with the new version of modo which happens to include animation features. It is a fair bit faster and has some great new snapping tools. As usual I would like to convince everyone to use modo, it is just that good. 

Searching for Reading

Yesterday the much loved Google released an in line search with some parametrization into Google Reader. It is all AJAXy and stuff so things are good.

Yesterday also, however, Google Reader cleaned all my unread posts which put my on the verge of tears as I had quite a few really great things saved to read some where. In any case now my I have a clean slate to work from.

On another note Google Docs has added some interesting auto fill tools into Spreadsheets. One of the things they have added, which I think is really smart is a tool that uses Google Sets to find its elements when doing an auto fill. I think this is a great use of goggles services. I hope to find a good way to utilize this new tool. They also added some other stuff for programmatically referencing RSS and XML feeds but I have not played much with it yet.

Music for God's Ears

So I was reading around the previously mentioned 6moons website when I came across a listing of some of their favorite tunes. The list is not too long, perhaps about 65 albums, but it is enormously varied and eclectic. If you are interested in this sort of thing, take a look at some of the tracks I think there is something in there to make anyone swoon. 

Here is a direct link. Most can be found on Youtube for a preview and at least some of them can be bought as iTunes Plus tracks if you want a little clearer listening. 

I Love Audio Technica

For the past few years I have been using Audio Technica ATH-EW9 Sovereign clip on headphones and I must say I really am happy with them. They have lasted me well and sound really brilliant with incredible clarity for their size and an easy to drive design, capable of working with even the puniest of portables. 

Recently however, the left phone has started to fail due to a whirring issue. Of course I can probably fix it and will try to do so as soon as possible, but in the mean time I have been looking into all sorts of future solutions and alternatives for my next set of phones. After spending some time looking and reading a lot of 6moons reviews among others I have decided firmly that I will go with Audio Tenchinca once again with either their ATH-W1000 Sovereign, the sealed can older brother version of my current clip-ons, or the ATH-D1000, similar in stature but not appearance to the W1000's, a set of cans with an optical input and an on board custom DAC. I am very happy that I have not had to stoup and buy a set of Sennheiser and I will hold out on getting a set of top end Grado's until I have some extra money. 

Anyone who wants to buy a set of Audio Technicas should go to Audio Cubes, a direct importer from Japan. 

Pecha Kucha

This is movement to present large sets of content in a short time. It is based on 20 communicative images displayed for 20 seconds each. Quite simple.

More interesting is the immense community enveloping this technique. People all over the world have taken this technique and turned it into regular events with a few presenters and some drinks in an evening. Even my current place of stay, the tiny town of Melbourne Australia, has such meetings.

Here you can find some info about the Melbourne event this Wednesday.

Images and Math

Recently an interesting imaging thing has been going around. A technically simple way of resizing images while maintaining their core content. Here is a online example. The original paper can be found here but you have to read them all to find out which one it is. 

I really love graphical math.

Cuckoo

So here is a nice little thing I found. A real Cuckoo Clock

That blog is pretty interesting at times too.

Lastly, anyone in the world not using Google Reader MUST START NOW and the same applies for Compendium.

Gmail Video Thinger

So it looks like we were a bit slow off the mark to get into the Gmail movie thing. Here is the final compilation.

P2P in Video

So some nice person put that good lecture that I went to recently on line. This is the lecture that was on Peer to Peer technologies. If you did not get to the talk watching this video is really worth it.



By the way, this guy is really interesting and has more on his site the P2P Foundation

Portfolio Stagnancy

So I am still working on my portfolio website and I have come across some issues and I am not sure where to go from here. I have three options:

1. Work out a way to fix the problem
2. Change what I want to do
3. Change how I do what I want

The issue I am having is that I seem not to be able to do as much juggling of data as I think I need to. I would like to find out I don't need to do it this much or find a way to do things so it is not required at all. I need someone who really knows how to use the Google Mashups Editor because the help provided is not good enough.

Also I am starting to think that some external options seem good. I have been looking at a few other CMS's and a lot of them are quite nice. Of course I would have to turn in that AJAX web feel but it there may be some serious advantages. One in particular is Google search friendliness which my current data model is not great on.

I have also been looking at using Google Base as my back end storage system because it is so ingrained into Google's results. We will see if that works how I expect it may not.

Compendium User Forum Developments

Recently I talked to Dianne from RMIT about having some kind of Compendium User Forum which would involve her and as many other users in the area and have them talk about their methods as well as tool advantages that could be used to enhance the use model of Compendium. She was really excited about this and said she knows a few people, very involved in the field, who would be interested in contribution. We will see about that but so far so good.

If you are interested in taking part please leave a comment.

Dynamic URL for PNG Corners

So a while back I heard about this cool little tool which is a Google URL to a image of a round corner which has some parameters that can be adjusted for ones needs. The adjustments let one change width, height, foreground and background colour and position. The image is in the form of a PNG and if no background colour is defined it comes out with a alpha mask.

The image above was created using this tool and the following code.

RSS is So Good But Slow

Over the weekend I have been working on my portfolio site quite a lot and it has been going very well. I have started working up a visual styling and I have come to understand the layout tools in Google mashups editor (GME) much better. My next task is to deal with some of the information model issues and then I might start putting together the final code. Then of course I have to make my content.

As my content is all RSS from blogs I have been looking at various tools. One that I have been familiar with for some time however never used in a serious way is Yahoo Pipes. It is a great little tool which is a lot like Shake (node based editing) however it differers in one way that I think is quite bad. Shake lets you "fileOut" many things in one render however Yahoo Pipes is limited to only one output feed at a time. For instance I could make many versions of a file in Shake, different sizes, different keys, different anything and then export them all at the same time and have it create a clip of image files where each fileOut node points. In Yahoo Pipes on the other hand I have to either nest a pipe in many other pipes to get similar functionality or remake it in each case. All this said I think there may be one possible solution which is using a dynamic url for the RSS address. I have only recently been introduced to this technique and not yet tested it, which brings me to Dapper.

Dapper is a cool little too that I found while looking at other peoples GME sites. It seems to be a little like Yahoo Pipes crossed with OSX 10.5's implementation of dashboard widgets (as in widgets as clips). Essentially what Dapper lets you do is extract an RSS feed from a normal website and build it around your preferences. It also lets you use dynamic URLs to include things like searches into your Dapper feed. For instance you could, as they show in this example, extract a feed which is dependent on a search on a site. You reference that search by including the search term into the URL of the feed that you are rendering. This is really great I think and I hope to be able to use it soon. For the time being I do not have a use in mind but I think I may need a feature like this for one of the things I wanted to put in my portfolio site. We will see.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

The Stuff that is not the Actual Stuff

So recently I have felt that things are not as good as they should be in some way or other. Actually I have always felt this but recently I have noticed in more in a particular way. Even more recently, as in, last night during a dream and for the past day or two, I have come to begin to realize something about this issue. I am starting to see that a thing, like an activity or an object is more valuable and more interesting to experiance when it is surrounded by something else. I think an example of this would be the event of going to a movie with a friend. One option is to simply go to the movie and the other is to enrich the experiance by adding little things to it. For instance going with a few friends and buying candy or some other value adding experiance option. Now this is quite strange because I am not at all opposed to doing things the simple and easy way, for instance I go to movies by my self about once every two months. Which is about one time out of twelve. However I think that this noise adding value notion can really make or break an experience. In the example of a class discussion or a lecture. The package is so much more valuable than the words that are being said or any other indevidual aspect of the experience.

At the moment I think this sounds a bit like somone who has never had friends meeting someone for the first time, but it is not. I think in reality this could be an interesting observation but I have not had a chance to understand it yet. I think in essence I am starting to believe that the value in any experience is the extra stuff that is not usually discussed, the rigmarole and the noise.

I would really love comments if anyone actually knows what I am struggling to understand.

A Few of My Favorite Things

A few weeks ago I put up a post about Damien Hurst's recent project of a platinum skull with lots of diamonds.

Today, I found a blog post that details his process in constructing this interesting project.

Now I want one more than ever.

Also, some person made a fake one in an using Swarovski crystals.

I really love this stuff. Perhaps I should make one out of silver and pearls; a few of my favorite things.

China, the Real People

Today I found a cool post, from a few weeks ago, about Chinese manufacturers and some aspects of their lives.

Here is the Boing Boing summary but please go into the indevidual pages if you have time.

Compendium and Issue Mapping

Today I became aware that one of my lecturers, Soumitri, and a few of my classmates, all use Compendium quite a lot which makes me really happy. I think it is a great tool but more over it offers a good alternative to thoughtless mind mapping. It it a tool that has been designed around a more structured work flow for more complex problems. Issue mapping is one example

Issue mapping, in short, is the process of engaging and understanding something in a whole sense and to the degree that a solution evolves naturally from the options that have been made visible during the process. The reason this is so important is because when a problem becomes too complicated to look at from any one point of view this tool steps in to help hold the points of view and contending actins in place and allow their interaction via the structure created by the user define their use.

The details, however, are not something I am too familiar with. How a discourse turns into a map to solve complex problems and how that is then broken down into useful chunks for reporting and delegating I am not sure. This is something that I would like to learn and may well do so at a seminar with this aim at some point in my life. In the mean time I will read some stuff to work it all out.

Talking and Not Talking

Today I went to the same talk as yesterday except for it being held at RMIT. It was quite interesting yet again but more so was a talk I had with the guy beforehand. I think it is likely we will stay in contact which is quite nice.

Also, my Design 2.0 community is really not moving fast which is a little sad. I think I might try to change a few things for the second project.

PtwoP

Today I went to a really great talk by a guy called Michel Bauwens who spoke on the implications of various kinds of topology, especially P2P, within various aspects of humanity. He is an interesting man and had a lot to do with the development of the P2P Foundation. He spoke about how P2P systems have a few intrinsic advantages over some of the other, more common system topologies. He also tied his suggestions into reality and gave examples of areas that could benefit from this methodology.

All in all it was really interesting and I will be going to another talk by him at RMIT tomorrow. (Todays was at Melbourne University)

The Beach on the Weekend

Recently I actually started on my Individual Project for my last semester at university. The start has included revisiting an old blog of mine and making a new google group. Soon it will also involve getting the projects moving.

In any event I did not go the the beach on the weekend

The love of Gmail

Recently a video competition started involving making videos of the human passing of Gmails around the world and through various situations. I think it sounds quite interesting and I am quite certain I will enter a few pieces.

Does any one else want in?

Also, I am glad to say that I have started the forum for my Individual Projects stuff and so far there are four members.

8 Women

There is a really great movie called 8 Women.

That is not all.

I am thinking about changing some things in the world. Primarily I am thinking of either reinvigorating my For the Work of the People blog for the purposes of schools stuff. Do you think that is a silly idea?

Also, there is a new tool I came across called 8 Apps it seems really nifty and it seems like the ideal tool to solve the problem I am working on in Individual Projects at the moment. If I get an account I will invite some people.

Starting to Code

Work on my personal portfolio website has started. I am doing it using the Google Mashups Editor and, if everything I think is true is actually true, it will be able to compile a number of RSS feeds in a way that allows me to have a portfolio a lot like the one I described a few posts back.

It is not even close to finished and at the moment I do not even have a publicly viewable prototype but hopefully it will keep rolling along.

Google Reader Comments

I am really into Google Reader and use it for a couple hours a day to help me read many hundreds of posts. For this it is a really great tool as it brings all of ones blogs and other RSS or ATOM feeds together into one place and allows really quick navigation vial keyboard shortcuts. It does not stop there as it also lets its users star, share and tag posts. The shared posts from a given Google Reader account appear like a simple blog or can be syndicated as a feed.

This is all great and wonderful but a problem, in my opinion, occurs when users want to incorporate some of their own information, for instance as an introduction to a given article on a shared feed or as comments to any article in their reading list. To do either of these things a user has to travel to an external website and use a inconsistent pipeline. Google Reader has further issues in that even bars the user form seeing comments on articles they read without traveling to the source of the content.

I think allowing of additions to posts in the form of both comments and sidecars to shared posts would be really convenient and would allow the Web 2.0 concept of social web to be more strongly upheld. I think the same is true of reintegrating existing comments into the feed view in Google Reader, without doing this I think we are taking steps away from social web ideals which seem to reduce the engaged nature of the social web.

Here is my main shared feed.

Blogger.beta

Everyone knows that blogger has recently announced Blogger in Draft and a blog which discusses the features that will be avalable in the opt in beta service.

The most important addition so far is support for uploading video directly to Google Video. Quite convenient I think, especially when considering the recent interest in a video project of some sort.

Today there was some sort of show of things. I think that so many things that people think about normally should be thought about differently.

Time Pices

I found something really nifty called Wiki Clock.

Also some cool ideas were mentioned today by a colleague.

1. Websites that sleep some times
2. Websites that get old in ways

I think both of these ideas have a lot of potential to be used in interesting ways.

Film Projects

A friend just showed me this quick little movie on a site. I think the cause is not that good but I think it a fun little project.

I also think that people, especially me and company should take on more video projects. Is anyone interested?

By the way. I have started a projects database on Dabble DB. It is not public at the moment but it might move so at some point. If people are interested in project teams and the like to take on and manage large and hopefully interesting projects then please say so and arrangements will be made.

Blogs and English

I just came across the Blog Readability Test, a cool tool that determines various statistics about the english used on one's blog. This interests me for a few reasons but one in particular is because at some point I wanted to know how many words there were in one of my blogs. I ended up copying and pasting each post into a single Pages document and performing a count there. This tool, among other things, informs us of the total word count in the last 20 posts. I would love to see this tool with a few more options, for instance one to determine how many posts to evaluate and also some way to in bed the statistics in one's blog or web page but for a start it is quite interesting.

This blog's stats can be found here.

Also, take a look at blog of the software's author.

Finally, does anyone know a good way to get a word count or any other tools like this for blogs?

Embarrassingly Bad Service in Australia

Recently Qantus was voted by its passengers to be one of the worst airlines of all time. I do not know the details of the vote but I do know that Qantus's response was a blind cover up of fault. A representative publicly rebutted that Qantus employees are the best in the world.

I don't mind that a company is proud of who what it tries to be but when consumers, the ultimate user, get together and tell a company that their product is substandard, I think it is completely out of the question for that company to pretentiously discard their customers claims.

One report in particular mentioned how in the past Qantus would care for there customers quite rigorously, even going so far as to include a kit of temporary solutions when a one's luggage was lost. Now, on the other hand, Qantus staff are quite rude and it is impossible to get them to ever admit fault little own provide something even slightly resembling concern and customer care.

I have not had this experience however I have been exposed to Qantus and Jetstar's grave shortcomings on many occasions.

Similarly many other airlines in Europe and Australia offer completely pathetic service and very little recourse for their mistakes.

A recent post by on NussbaumOnDesign details a better interaction set with an airline in the states.

I hope Qantus and Jetstar go out of business and are severely punished for their lame attempts at being impressive and reassuring anyone with their awful public relations.

What do other people think about this issue? Has anyone ever had a good experiance on a plane?

The Real Technical Support

As was recently discussed, technical support needs to fixed. The level of rigger is completely below what is acceptable when dealing with businesses and people who need solutions fast and cleanly. Similarly the persistence of data is often not addressed well by these people and this often leads to loss of valuable information or inconvenience.

By they way, the Apple store near the corner of Elizabeth and Abeckett Streets is completely crap and I strongly suggest a fully boycott. The offer pathetic service by a staff of surly gentlemen who know are completely incompetent when it comes to fixing anything or being in any way helpful. This is a great example of the worst imaginable technical service.

What is needed by good technical service, why is it no longer something that exists, and how can something change so we are happier in this situation?

I think there is some truth that some things are not worth fixing and there is a lot of truth that it is hard to be the "computer guy" however I do not agree that there is not a system in which computer service persons are greatly valued and offer a good service to the people around them. I think part of the problem is the social acceptance of buying new things but another significant element is the fact that peoples things and their work are important to them. Perhaps a solution is to look at a broken computer more like a wet sketchpad. It is a problem that has to be fixed with minimum interaction. Once the problem is fixed the range of solutions is large.

What do other people think?

Harvesting what we mine

Some things were found. Ideas on harvesting from the many data mines we have. Using Google to answer questions it was not designed to answer or using it's answers in an unexpected context.

I am sure there are some really tricky and smart things to do with this but I am not sure what they are.

Perhaps one would be to use Google trends to get past data on locations or some other relevant search-able thing and then a 4 dimensional representation could be made of the data which would indicate how interest has evolved and how it has done so comparatively. I think there are surely better uses.

Here are a few samples of this idea in place:
1. Chess and things
2. Go keyboards
3. Suicide

In addition to mapping things like this there is a lot of work to be done with connecting images and videos based on search. Photosynth is a early effort at making this realistic.

Any ideas?

The image is one I made from a video off my phone. It demonstrates the idea of dimensional reduction to add richness. I think similar tools have great application in vibration removal.

Portfolios with no pictures

Today discussion of my future and a portfolio for my work came up again. It seems evident that graphical assets are not my most valuable and that non graphical things will need special treatment of sorts. The discussion lead to creating a body of content that can act as a portfolio for me that most well represents me in the context of what I want to do.

Discussion also covered dealing with images well on the internet. Intellectual property is a problem that is going to have to be dealt with. It is starting to seem that now is a good time to begin drafting and thinking about this issue.

For the Love of God, Pray

I think this thing is wonderful. Some one buy it for me or buy me a print, or make me one.

It is by Damien Hirst and prints are available at White Cube, which is where this image is from.

Old time never

I think this video is quite a decent look at what people should think computers should be and what people should be working to make them. That said, this is a 20 year old movie. What is not represented here that should be, in our modern dream of future computing?

Think Differently

This is an new apple advertisement that I like quite a lot

A great new internet

Today I found a new thing on the internet called YouTube. It is an odd thing that lets you live with moving images. Here is a smart person using it

Also... Google Gears guys...

That is a happy pony and I did not draw it.

My China Reflections

Despite what I may have said, I actually went to China last year and since returning I have been asked to do a large project talking about my time there. In the end it is essentially a blog about what I did and how it may have effected me.

I had originally kept it private for various reasons however I have recenlty made it a public database.

The My China Reflections Website

The my China Reflections Blog

China is cleaner than the USA

I do not have statistics and I do not think I need them. I have words and ideas.

China is doing a lot to be green these days.

They are also working to make the world a better place.

Wordpress

Today I got a wordpress account. I am not sure if it is useful or important or anything else but I have had to because I am involved in a forum that uses wordpress. I also got a wodpress hosted blog in this way however I have not yet used it or done any coding on it.

Are there important things to know about wordpress?

Also is there anyone in the world interested in game design and good at drawing?

Thinking about the format

So...

I think a few things.

I have decided I think it would be nice if everything that is work was considered work. That is to say. If I have made a rendering that should exist as something that could be separately looked at or as part of the greater project it was actually made for. On that note, I think everything should have a few core properties, including date and others.

Properties: Notes

1. Title: A unique name for a specific element
2. Date: This would probably be start to finish date and things would generally be ordered by finish date unless a separate ordering date property was mentioned.
3. Content: This would be images or movies or other files. Just core content.
4. Description: This would be a quick description about the project and perhaps broken up.
   
1. Client
2. Context
   
3. Role
   
4. Goals
5. Issues
5. Containing projects: Projects that contain this work such as classes, or larger projects.
6. Contained projects: Projects that lie within this work. Such as a render, within the larger project of an automotive concept pitch.
7. Tools used: just a listing of the tools used. Both ideologically and technically.

I am sure there are a lot more interesting data classes I could have but those are the immediately obvious ones to me. Please add comments to the post if you have anything to say about this.

After an information model is built I need to be able to access the data online through pages using XML as my data language and CSS to store the layout preferences. Visually I will need the folio to be quite nice and I will need it to be able to deal with a wide selection of asset types without breaking.

Lastly I need to be able to generate smart groups based on all sorts of pre-definable and viewer definable constraints. For instance, someone would like to be able to view all the projects where I used a certain tool in the last year. Another example would be when I want to create special subset folios for a specific client. I want to be able to make selection groups that I can put links to without a problem and without any changes to the visual format.

It does not sound like something that is hard but it might need a specialized piece of software. At the moment I know of a package that can do the data modeling but it can not store my images and I am not sure how well it deals with being accessed by other websites online.
The software is called Dabble and it has free to use component.

Please leave any suggestions or comments you may have.

The real portfolio

As part of my application for jobs as I come close to graduating from university I want to create a complete portfolio of my work to date. However, being someone who is quite concerned with keeping things theoretically neat I want to start by working out a good way to make a portfolio who's format I can adjust in the future without any costs and who's content can be added to without reprinting. I also think it is important to be able to control access and create versions that cater specially to different viewers. For example there are certain projects that pertain more directly to certain companies or interested parties that I may show my folio to so I would like a good way to filter things without generating a new special edition of the data set.

I would also like to do it all online so that it's state is independent of the state of my current computer and it is more easy to access for a greater number of people.

The first solution that comes to mind is one like my recent project summarising my work and experience in China, My China Reflections, however I am not sure that this is the ideal approach. This project was held on a blog and subsequently suffers from the lack of depth that the blog information model seems designed to handle. I am interested in creating my own information model but I am not familiar enough with any software to do that at the time being. For this reason my first step is to look into various possible ways to deal with the information and attributes of the information model that I eventually use that would be useful.

Please comment if you have anything at all to add. Thanks.

Speaking about saying sorry

I just watched an interesting talk by a guy called Seth Godin. I think he is famous or something, but what is important is that he talked quite well about really understanding a lot of the low level ideas behind brand, market capture and finding need.

There is nothing sadder than okay.

ZThings

This is a ring bug or something. It was done in Zbrush using mostly object modifiers and selection masking. After getting the basic details I painted legs dimples and some of the features on the head. The materials is a "Gel" using an environmental lighting and reflection map.

I recently started using Zbrush. It is unlike most programs I have used in the past and seemingly unlike most other 3D programs avalable these days. Though in function it is similar to Mudbox I feel that many of the top level design requirements are different between these packages.

ZBrush claims to be a 2.5D to 3D paint system and that is quite honest. It has an odd rendering structure that projects light around a space where the only depth that can be visually proven is in the currently active tool. Once something is set as part of the environment it is unchangeable. The modeling is all polygon in theory but it has a lot of SubD like control. That said so far I do not see a great way to select a single edge or for that matter a single vertex. The only methods of actually interacting with the model seem to be paint tools.

I think ZBrush has evolved for a while and consequently has a lot of good ways to deal with the oddities of it's modeling environment. So far I really enjoy using it but i am still at a stage where I do not quite understand everything so my appreciation may be due to my learning process. I think that the programs oddities are well dealt with but it seems that there would be some things that it would give a lot of trouble with. That said I have to say that the fur engine is nice and fast and rather easy to use.


This is just an early test of fur and painting that I did. I really like the ability to mask materials when painting, which is how I achieved the noisy celular pattern coming coming through on the fur. The gear which should be casting a shadow but seems not to be is a stock model that I have made a few adjustments to. I am sad that it seems not to fit into the environment as well as it may in other render engines however I am sure this is due to my lack of knowledge for the time being.

Not state

I am about to leave the USA to return to Australia. I will land on Friday and be back in Melbourne the following Monday.

I will be looking for an apartment. If anyone has any suggestions that would be great.

Blood in Asia

For some reason whenever I met Koreans, and also often with Chinese people I knew, I would be asked my blood type. I of course never new it so something like this would come in handy.

Also, Firefox, well really Bon Echo, lost all my extensions. I think I ran a bit low on disk space and then tried rebooting but I do not really know how it happened. In any case, it sucks.

Labor in China

I was reeding digg and found a few interesting things. Please take a look.

1. China giving the states the time. This is about a conflict of interests between the united states and china over oil in Iran. It is not a great article but it says something.
2. China labor becoming pricey. Also, check out the origional digg post, there are some smart comments.

Yeah I am a little pro china in these arguments.

China is the new designer

I came across an interesting website today on core77. Most people probably read core77 already but if you don't check out what is the new

You may have noticed I have moved my blog. It will probably be moved back soon though I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. I am starting up my new site Metophile.com and I want to keep naming consistent. Also I am doing more with Mark.Whiting.GooglePages.com

On another note I am in the states at the moment but I will be going to Australia soon. If you are interested there are photos of my recent activities at my photos shared on Picasa web albums.