Designed some new Business Cards

I designed some new business cards for a project I've been working on lately. To tell you the truth, I'm not totally sure about them myself...the reasoning being that nearly everybodys business card is so pathetic looking around here, I would feel like I'm making too flashy a statement with mine.

But then again, if it were my company (and it is), the last thing I want is crappy looking business cards.
I suppose the project I'm working on is obvious enough?

Score

Its been getting hot here in Beijing. Thankfully this weekend was a hit with the adventures. I spent Saturday at a champagne pool party getting pissed under the sun. It was everything you'd imagine at a hipster LA pool party without the pretentious swingers. Great people, venue, music, and drinks. Now only if the summer can last longer...

My Product Blogs

While I'm still on the topic of blogs, I figured it'd be a good time to introduce my two product blogs:

www.ModernPeacock.com - a blog about everything sneakers and hoodies

www.alittlehigh.com - a blog about all those toys you wanted but didn't know where to buy
Don't ask me what/why the hell I built them because I don't totally know yet. They're currently lab rats for me to experiment with web analytics, SEO, and the such. So far, they've already taught me a few things about how the internet works...specifically, search engines and web marketing. I really dig the idea of websites evolving within a virtual vacuum.

If you can guess which blog has more hits and provide a legit enough reason I'll buy you a beer next time.

Indie Music Beijing

I went to see my first show at 愚公移山 last weekend. Beijing indie rock bands CarSickCars, The Molds, and Ourself Beside Me were on display.

The venue reminded me of live music shows in Seattle. It was great, it felt like I had discovered a part of home here. The bands weren't the best, but the live music scene here is nothing short of awesome. The venue itself is also proper and they've installed well tuned (expensive) lighting and sound systems.

Expect to see me at 愚公移山 every so often.

My Cat Blog

According to Seth Godin I have a cat blog.

Cat Blogs are blogs for and by and about the person blogging. All sorts of posts about you and your cat, what you did today, how you feel, what you ate. You get the picture.

Cat blogs are cool because they don't have agendas (in comparison to viral blogs). But ultimately they don't ever get much or any traffic because they aren't focused per a specific audience. I have a few friends who write awesome viral blogs and I've considered starting one myself, but at the end of the day I just find it way too much like work to do one of those. Guy Kawasaki's blog is a fine example of a viral blog turning sour.

Is this Art?

I think desktop screenshots can make great artpieces.

They reveal such a specific time and place in history. The colors, the operating system, the personality...

~~~ Space Raiders - Beautiful Crazy ~~~
~~~ Gym Class Heroes - Everydays Forecast ~~~

Does anybody want to start a desktop screenshot revolution with me?

And you thought I was kidding...

So I finally got to straining my own yogurt and purchasing a useless ice-cream machine to make my own frozen yogurt (ended up manually mix it by hand). The results were incredibly wonderful I must say.

Well, except I nearly cut off a finger trying to cut the peaches.

~~~ the Verve - Love is Noise ~~~

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

It's not a silly little moment, it's not the storm before the calm.
This is the deep and dying breath of this love that we've been working on.

Can't seem to hold you like I want to so I can feel you in my arms.
Nobody's gonna come and save you, we pulled too many false alarms.

We're going down, and you can see it too.
We're going down, and you know that we're doomed.
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

I was the one you always dreamed of, you were the one I tried to draw.
How dare you say it's nothing to me? baby, you're the only light I ever saw.

I'll make the most of all the sadness, you'll be a bitch because you can.
You try to hit me just to hurt me so you leave me feeling dirty because you can't understand.

We're going down, and you can see it too.
We're going down, and you know that we're doomed.
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

Don't you think we oughta know by now? Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we oughta know by now? Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?

comments verify the truth

School

Back in college, Ahm and I had this smart-ass/rebel fantasy about how an exam should be taken. It was something along the lines of casually strolling into the auditorium filled with hundreds of sleep deprived students, each of them furiously scribbling away at their papers. You would stroll in 20mins late and ask the examiner for an empty seat, an extra copy of the test, and also borrow a pen/pencil to complete it with.

It didn't matter whether you scored the highest or not, what mattered was that you passed the class and were out of the building before anybody even noticed.

On another note, I miss my baby Taylor :(

Ratatat - LP3

Wow. They got better.

Please Vote for Me

I saw this documentary on TV one late night last year. I thought it was some pretty interesting stuff (its why I think Asians are crazy). You can find the entire thing on Youtube, the above video is just part 1 of 5.

Am I really in it for the $$$

I've been confronted with an interesting dilemma lately...

Would I work on a project I have the slightest interest in?

I've been put in this situation lately...well, specificly a project related to gays and lesbians. Its not new news I barely have any interest in such topic, but assuming it would be a profitable venture, I'm wondering whether I would still go for it.

I think my answer to such question would reveal a lot about me and where I will be in the future. And honestly, I think the final answer is 'no' at this point. I understand that a business is a business (meaning it doesn't frigging matter if its profitable), but I'm not sure I'm capitalistic beyond my own principles.

I suppose there are many angles to look at a scenario like this. It's a business and it allows me to treat it like one. And the other side of the argument then being, how is my life any better than working the desk job. Life is too short to being doing something you're not interested in.

Tech Trends 6/2008

I just read a great technology report ppt by Morgan Stanley. Lots of very interesting tidbits about the market and up-coming trends. I would definitely suggest it to anybody who is a technology analyst, looking to learn the technology landscape, or really seriously got nothing to do.

Download here

the Holiday

"I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible, and how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you, and it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could have misunderstood, and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new, and you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again, and little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade."

Deadpooled before it climbed out of the soil

I want to share another project of mine which entered the deadpool today.

For the past 2-3 months, I've been working on putting together an 'Edutainment' online game for Chinese kids to learn English. I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea (I still do), but I finally decided to bury this one yesterday.

Here are the reasons why it made sense:
- Flash & Audio, two main requirements for the design was that the game client is accessed via a website and English speech is complemented throughout the entire game. What this meant was that the game would be built with flash, and that either I streamed A LOT of custom pre-recorded dialogue or I used text-to-speech (TTS) technology. Both of these solutions were thorny and resource driven.

- Marketing and Sales, the distinction between user (child) and customer (parent) is an important one. It meant that my sales channels would be offline for the most part. For e.g. tutoring workshops, schools, kid education stores, etc... This was not something I would have the resources or skills to be any good at in China.

- People and Skills, I was looking for a resident Smartfox pro guru. This was somebody who understood SFS pro, flash, databases, and systems architecture. Right...

- Competition, it was Eddie Cheung, CEO of 北京国天科技有限公司, who put the nail in the coffin for me. He was nice enough to invite me to his office to chat about his similar company offering. I saw it and I was like that's what I had in mind...

Its definitely been a good learning lesson. It seems like I wasted a lot of effort in this project, but I think the truth is that the planning and research had paid off. Better to know it's time to call it quits now than 1-2 years later. Plus, I met new friends and leveled up on the way.

I've been working on this new project. It's too early to tell if it'll go anywhere, but I've been pretty psyched about it and have been throwing myself at it lately. I would really like to share it on the web, but I don't think it's okay to end up "anywhere" just quite yet. A good idea needs to be in stealth, I wonder if mine is any good.

Tenori-On - Oh! I want one!

I want the noodles on the left...

Louis Vuitton Sound Walk

I want to see this but am not going to pay for it...


Louis Vuitton has partnered with Soundwalk to produce a series of surreal audio tours that whisk listeners through some of China’s most well-known cities: Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The tours offer a strange and captivating mix of music, sound effects, and narration that are sure to enhance any traveler’s visit to the country. Listeners stuck at home can enjoy the tours as well - simply relax and watch the stories through your mind’s eye.

Three of China’s most well-known actors (Gong Li, Shu Qi, and Joan Chen) supply the narration, which blends instructions (walk down this road, open the door) with heartfelt and nostalgic story telling. Each city essentially serves as a stage for a different tale of love and longing that helps bring the tour’s destinations to life. It sounds weird, but it works.

Learning to get Lost (cont'd)

I decided to step up my game and take the bus home from 中关村 today.

Wow. Now that was a trip. Total 'ask passerby for directions' tally was 22. The best thing was that nobody had the same answer (or at least most of them didn't). I swear a few of the directions were so bad even I knew better ways to get home without consultation ; why would I want to travel further away from home so that I can get back home? I think I ended up doing pretty well (very luckily), just one bus change from 中关村 mall to 光华桥.

I'm going to know Beijing at the back of my hand soon.

Dancing with Robots

~~~ NERD - Sooner or Later ~~~
~~~ NERD - Happy ~~~
~~~ Eagles - I can't tell you why ~~~
+++ Coldplay - Viva la Vida +++
+++ the Dodos - Visiter +++

Learning to get Lost

For those who know me, it isn't new news that I have a thing for exploration (or as some like to describe it as 'getting lost'). I think it is the way I learn most effectively. I learn through doing and adjusting to the feedback I receive from doing.

I recently got back into the gear of exploring, and it has served me well while I adjust to Beijing. I have walked home from all the nearby subway stations, wandered through random streets and paths, and peeked around street corners just to see what's happening. Those experiences have all been incredibly rewarding in this city. And more so than my experiences in Shanghai I might add.

Back to learning through getting lost, one of few actually useful ways to get around which has worked like a charm for me in the past is to ask passerbys (compared to deciding based on intuition). Though, I've found that the method has required a bit of tweaking lately. I have received contradicting directions from the locals multiple times and have unconsciously begun to ask different groups of people at once to get a consensus. Maybe it seems like the right thing to do, but imagine an idiot like me walking up to each person and hawking for directions while they all wait at the same crosswalk...

SYNTHETIC TIMES – Media Art China 2008

I visited the National Art Museum of China earlier today to check out 'Synthetic Times', a digital media exhibition.

Being a little bit of an artist and a little bit of a techie, I've always been fascinated with mixtures of these two fields. I think it's because technology always evolves while art takes a big role in making history.
As usual, there were hits and misses throughout the exhibition. The good news is that most of them were fascinating in at least one way or another (otherwise I would be blabbering only about a certain piece).
I was surprised to see a lot of old Chinese people at the exhibition; I wouldn't have any idea what is going through their minds at the time. It must have been quite weird for them; to see computers and electronics put to artistic uses. But then again, maybe they're already used to seeing radical changes given the speed and amount of change that has taken place in China over the last 10-20 years.

You can find out more about the exhibition and the works on display via the link above.