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.