Xmas Gifts

I treated myself to a few "gifts" this year and I just feel like sharing them with you all. In no particular order they are:

A new phone:







My first official gift was a Samsung Captivate I bought a few days before Xmas at Radio Shack. And let me tell you what it was a bargain. Considering that the phone generally goes for $199 (who are we kidding it's really $200, don't try to hide it by not charging the extra dollar) I felt it was a steal at $50. Now, I know that those that know me, are aware that I'm an Apple fan. However when you are short on money and you simply cannot afford those extra $150 then you compromise and join the android bandwagon for $50. After I've had the phone for a slightly longer time I'll update you on my opinions on Android and my phone in particular. Still let me tell you that things are going well, I like the phone overall and it's a pretty nifty piece of tech (a worthy upgrade from the Samsung Blackjack II I had before).




A clean (well somewhat cleaner) Gmail inbox







I've been procrastinating and I haven't processed my email as I should have. So I took some of my Xmas time and read/archived almost all of it.




A haircut







Aaahh... Yes we're close to New Year's so that means I need to face the 2011 with a new, fresh, positive, cleaner, organize way. What would represent all these things in a simple fashion? How can I do it? Simple. We get a weed whacker, and cut several pounds of hair out of my head. Actually I'm joking. We don't need a weed whacker anymore. That was for when I had my hair all the way down to my waist.




A pair of "new" shoes







In reality I didn't buy new shoes. My tastes on dress shoes tends to be a bit more expensive that what I can afford on cellphones. In other words if I were to buy shoes it would cost more than $50 bucks. But really, the dress shoes I had were fine, except for one tiny thing. The soles were falling off. So I went to a shoe repair place today and For a measly $11 I had them glued and stitched together. Plus, I had them shined.

So up to now these are the gifts I got for myself. I'm debating wether or not getting a pair of earbuds and a cover for my cellphone this season as well. Either way I'll update you (probably through Twitter) if I do get any extra stuff. I hope you all have some awesome holidays (here we still have until "las Octavitas" so the festivities are still going strong) and may the New Year bring you all the good things you deserve.

Why two blogs?

One might wonder why I would be starting a Tumblr blog when I already have a Blogger one and a Twitter feed (not to mention Facebook). I feel that this might be a good opportunity to explore a shorter form of writing and posting (something between my blog/articles from Blogger and the status updates of Facebook and Twitter).

As for content, I'll try to keep it as place for more on personal or journal type stuff. Expect my musing on traffic, weather, school, etc to be there. If you want something related to art/tech/productivity I'll keep writing about these subjects on my Blogger site.

Rules of action

One of my favorites productivity blogs is ZenHabits by Leo Babauta. While I may not agree 100% in his views on minimalism, I feel that many of his points are valid and really helpful. Personally, I tend to find the most inspiration and help through his posts about action and procrastination. As a matter of fact I'm going to talk about a post he wrote called The little rules of action. I’ll run down these rules and talk about how they relate to my own life or what they mean to me.

1. Don’t overthink: Oh, How much I fall for this one. I have this tendency of trying to get down every minute detail of what I’m trying to do. And, what happens is that I don’t do anything. Too much preparation and analyzing get in my way of doing things.

2. Just start: Another biggie for me. I plan and think things through so much things don’t get truly started. I believe that I might be confusing the planning stage with the doing stage. In other words I feel that because I’m planning I feel that I’m really working on something. The solution to this is really to do start by doing something really small related to the task and this will get the ball rolling.

3. Forget perfection: “Forget perfectionism? But that’s the defining trait of a Norman.” Well this little trait is a double edge sword with the sharper edge pointed towards you and you have to deal with it carefully. Perfectionism doesn’t mean you do things perfectly it really means to over-plan, over-prepare things you do. The task might get done well, but that doesn’t mean that you could have gotten the same result by just starting with a little (actually a lot) less preparation.

4. Don’t mistake motion for action: Like I said in “Just start”, Confusing the planning stage with the action stage is a problem of mine. Felling worried about the project, planning things over and over, does not get the project at hand done.

5. Focus on the important actions: Sometimes you might be worried as to were to start, sometimes choosing to do the most important thing first is the way to go.

6. Move slowly, consciously: You’ve chosen your task. But how to work on it? Well, if you move deliberately and slowly you’ll probably get the task done without unnecessary mistakes. Like the Puertorican saying goes: Dress me slowly that I'm in a hurry.

7. Take small steps: You’ve chosen your task (the most important one), you know you want to work on it slowly, but how to start? Well, starting out small seems to help. If you need to write a paper for college then maybe writing the introduction or reading it over will help.

8. Negative thinking gets you nowhere: Ahhh the I-can’t-do-this-it’s-too-difficult syndrome we meet again. Think about all the time you are wasting by having all those doubts and second thoughts. Instead eliminate those thoughts by thinking positively and starting the task at hand as fast as possible.

9 - 12. Meetings, talking, planning, reading (about it) are not action: I combined 9 through 12 because they deal with the same idea. Confusing certain aspects of a project with actually doing it. An example of this would be creating a blog post. Meeting and talking with someone about the fact that I want to write the blog post is not the action required. Planning how to write the blog post is not the action needed. And reading about writing a blog is not the action required either. To write a blog post you need to write.

13. Sometimes, inaction is better: Now this is revolutionary! But think about it. Sometimes the feeling of accomplishing something (or anything) gets in the way of asking ourselves wether or not the task or project is really necessary.

[via Zenhabits]

Video of the week: Kiwi

Oh my... this is a sad one, isn’t it.

Video by Dony Permedi

But what amazes me the most is what wasn’t shown. That little kiwi spent I don’t know how much time of his life putting all those trees on the side of the mountain, all by himself. And even if the author doesn’t show it you can just imagine what else he tried before he decided to go through with this route. It really is inspiring to see animations like this one.

In terms of the video itself, I particularly like how the perspective of the scene changes when he falls. You really do believe he is flying. There might be aspect of the animation that might not be perfect (like the texture or the lighting) but I find great that he chose to focus on what I feel are the more important aspects of this video which were the animation and the music.

For more information there's an interview at ISFAT.com with the author of Kiwi!, Dony Permedi.

Mac app: Marsedit

I’m mac fan. I admit it. I love how things work on a mac. I like how simple it is to do what I want to do and how simple it is to understand. Another thing I love are all the Mac applications that are around. The Mac developer community is a large one and I love the work that they do. So I’ve decided to start a blog section to showcase some of my favorite mac applications.

MarsEdit



On my first attempt to write a blog I went with using the blogger back-end for creating and managing the blog. Not a terrible experience but I found that organizing my ideas was a bit of a hassle. So when I returned to blogging later on I decided to see if there was any piece of software that would help me. After trying several I ended up with MarsEdit.

I loved that because it wasn’t WYSIWYG it forced me learn a bit of HTML and to think about the code that needs to be used to manage images. Another of the selling points was its preview option After tweaking the blogger template and putting it on MarsEdit I was able to see clearly how the layout of the post would look like before posting it on the blog.

However I would say that the main advantage to using MarsEdit over the Blogger back-end is managing your posts without having to reload thae page ever time you want to change or create new posts. I also find that using the preview option in MarsEdit is more accurate than the one Blogger has.

If anyone has tried any other Mac blog editor out there they want to recommend, I would love to hear about them.

Reminisce

Today we have another video made from my college days. This one was done using a combination of Cinema 4D for the 3D animation and After Effects for the motion graphics effects of the still images.



Reminisce tries to explore the experience of how an individual can go through their lives remembering a particular moment throughout their lives. Sometimes there are circumstances or objects in our way that can trigger these memories and bring us back to that moment.

Journaling and Blogging

Photo by pigstubs.

Around the start of this year I started to get into journaling. And I have to say that It has been a great experience, specially now that I’m blogging somewhat more consistently as well (lets forget this gap during April and May please). I feel that both blogging and writing a journal are great complements to each other. On this post I will tell you a bit about how I approach writing for the two mediums.

In my Journal, I direct my writing to future readers. And while I haven’t yet done so, I know that one day I will re-read these journal entries. Therefore, in a way, I am directing what I write to this future Norman that is going to read what’s on the journal. Personally, I feel that writing a journal is much more personal than writing for a blog, so don't expect to read stuff like "what-I-did-yesterday-was" on my blog. I reserve that stuff for my journal.

The way I view writing on my the blog is more focused on other viewers other than myself. Even though what I write is about my views and ideas, I write so that others may think about or learn from what I've written. For me blogging is more about sharing with others than writing about what I've done.

The line between journaling and blogging is little blurry for me because my writing medium for blogging and journaling are both computer programs. I use ViJournal as my journal and a combination of Marsedit and Macjournal for my blog and blog drafts respectively.

For me the distinction between the two mediums is the audience. In my journal I write for myself, either to vent of to write about personal stuff. Blogging for me is more about the public in general, about others. My blog is my space where I share with others about my interests and work.

Details

Here we are, with another video from Norman Perez's archive of artwork. This time we have "Details" a video that combines still images with 3D animation.



In this video I tried to present the sensation that when we are surrounded by an excess of information we lose sight of the details around us. The video starts with a single object in view and with the music sounding clear. However, as the view moves and shows more of the surrounding area, the music becomes more cacophonous and a stream of abstract objects overwhelms the scene.