Video of the week: Click

Here we have the start of what I hope will be ongoing section on my blog. On it, I'll be presenting videos that I find have interesting concepts or are just plain awesome. For this week I have for you the video Click:



I guess most people have played with Lego at some point in their lives so the relationship of creating something new and Lego must be pretty obvious to all. But still, I find the miniature factory of ideas just great. And, as someone who has gone through an art education, I can relate to how ideas click when trying to find solutions to your projects.

Hempfest pics

Of the many things I'm dusting off internet-wise, one of them is my Flickr account. I had a particularly tough time choosing were to continue uploading since its been a while since I uploaded anything to it. I decided to keep things in a chronological order and start by uploading some of my older photographs.

These photos are from the 2006 Hempfest at OSU. I took them for my introduction to photography class back when I was still learning photography (I feel that I still am, for that matter). This was the first time I went to the Hempfest at OSU and it was rather interesting experience, I mainly liked it for the people you see there. There were all sorts of folks hanging out, from students passing by, to activists, to even a Glassblower making pipes.

After that year I've pretty much gone to all the following Hempfests afterwards. And, I still find it a good opportunity to practice my photography skills.

Ebook Readers Roundup

Photo by librarianbyday / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I love books therefore I was really intrigued by the slew of ebook readers that came out on CES this past week. However, since I'm a slow reader, they have to be really worth it for my to consider buying one.

My interest in them got piqued when on a trip to a mall a while ago I saw a kiosk were they were selling Sony Ereaders. Until then I hadn't seen an E-ink display for a good length of time. I was impressed and started to do a bit more research. At first there were only three good contenders, the Kindle, the Nook, and the Sony Touch reader. However, after CES I got a bit lost (so many new shiny readers... which to choose?), but thanks to a Gizmodo article I'm back on track on which ones I'm interested in.

Here's a list of the ones I feel fit me and are actually viable gadgets. How does one of them fit me more than others? First the price can't be too exorbitant, then it has to fit would fit in my reading experience of looking up stuff in the internet about what I'm reading. And in terms of product viability: It means I'm not going to count prototypes or new technologies that are not commercially viable yet.

1. The Entourage Edge

I know the roundup called it dead on arrival, but hear me out. The technology for a LCD/E-ink is still just enough away for a product like this one to be practical. Having both types of screen on the product seem like a good mid-point while waiting for such technology.

The Entourage Edge is essentially a two screen netbook/reader combo. On one of the screens you have an E-ink display for reading ebooks and on the other you have an LCD that acts a computer which lets you browse the web. Plus the content from one screen can interact with the other, for example you can move an image from the E-ink side to the LCD to watch it in color. With features like this I can accept its $500 price tag. However the one area it might fail is on its size/weight. It doesn't look to big to me (when compared to a laptop) but I'll have to grab it with my own hands until i know for sure if its too large or heavy for reading.

2. nook

My second favorite reader is still the nook. I tried it out at a Barnes & Noble and I loved it. The size is just right. The prize seems reasonable. The text look gorgeous. However, the time it took to load a single ebook was just horribly long. The page turns weren't too much of a bother to me, but waiting almost a minute to start reading is too much. I've heard that this is something they can fix on a software update, they're already on version 1.1, so my hope is still up that the reading experience will get better.


3. Alex reader - Sony Touch - Kindle.

In third place we have a three way tossup. First comes the Spring Design Alex Reader, Its very similar to the Nook however the bottom LCD screen can be used to browse the web and use android apps. In essence it would make it a smaller, lighter version of the entourage edge. However it's seems to be more expensive than the Nook (cheaper than the Edge though) and it will, hopefully, be on sale on February. Second comes the Sony touch, it has the right prize, the right size and I don't mind that it doesn't have 3G. But, I feel that the screen has too much glare for reading. That leave me with the Kindle, again good prize and it seems to be loved by everyone (most gifted product at Amazon during the holidays). Still, I can't seem to get over the fact that so much of the device is devoted to a keyboard and you don't have touchscreen technology on it to navigate.

Well, for me this is all wishful thinking. The products might be interesting but I'll have to be able to afford one of these before I get too serious. Wait a minute, I'm already too serious, I wrote an entire post about them!

Norman Perez Portfolio

For those of you who have read this blog, you might have noticed the date jump due to the lack of updates. Well one of the things that I should be mentioning after all this time is that I finally have my portfolio site up. It took a lot of effort to iron out all the details from changing fonts to re-rendering videos into new formats, and lots more. Nevertheless it got done.

Apart from using the template I talked about in a previous post for the design of the site, I also used a few Joomla components to organize the portfolio section itself. It essentially lets my to just upload the photos or videos along with a description without having to to work on the HTML code itself of the site. However, organizing all the thumbnails necessary was still a bit of a pain.

As it stands right now there are two main sections in the portfolio area: one for still images and another for my video work. One of the things I like about my site right now is that thanks to the component I used I was able to add a Multibox overlay for the entries without a lot of work. So the visitor should be able to have a gallery like experience with the images and videos I have posted. However I'm hoping that people have Quicktime installed so that they may be able to watch the videos on the site without having to go to my Blip.tv site to watch the flash version.

Also, all of you observant ones might have noticed that I have a new link at the top of the site. So now you can go from the blog to my portfolio site by simply going though the link. And, with the link I have set up on the portfolio site you can come back as well. One of the things I'm trying to with this is to try and have a way that if anyone goes to any one of the sites were I have content they have a way to go to the other ones.

Possibly my most favorite artwork

I first watched this video when I was still studying at OSU in my computer animation class. And after almost 3 years, I can still say that this is still say this os one of my most favorite and inspirational works that I have ever seen.


The Tale of How from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

One of the things that I find so amazing about it is that the first time that I saw it, I was learning about 3D animation and motion graphics. And through the years, as I learned more and more about the different design programs I use I would find new things in it that I didn't notice before.