25 reasons you might be a hardcore designer

Courtesy of CGI-files.com (via KirupaForums) come the 25 reasons you might be a hardcore designer. I could definitely identify with most of these points to some degree.

1. 1. You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
   2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
   3. You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.
   4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.
   5. You’ve had “Software Nightmares,” when you’ve been working way too much.
   6. You consider meals interruptions.
   7. You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving.
   8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
   9. You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.
   10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.
   11. You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.
   12. When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.
   13. When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)
   14. You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.
   15. You’ve actually $paid for a font.
   16. You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)
   17. The amount of words you’ve written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels.
   18. You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal.
   19. You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.
   20. You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)
   21. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.
   22. You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.
   23. You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
   24. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.
   25. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.

Image Courtesy of SXC.hu

Technorati Tags: lists , design , art

Running: novice observations and reflections

I imagine that to a none runner, running by itself is a god-awful boring task… and crazy too. I mean, who gets up out of your bed at these ungodly hours in the morning to go make themselves tired and sweaty? It is an understandable, albeit erroneous observation. Understandable since that’s how I probably would have conceived of it before I tried it myself.

Being realistic, you could say running is all of those things and knowing me, I’d probably quit, as is usually the case, after about two weeks of trying were it not for all the great resources I’ve come across. While I haven’t gone as far as to join the local running club or anything that elaborate, I have been tapping into some great running sites, blogs and of course, friends: both those who are already into running and those who are merely mildly curious about how its going from time to time.

For me, its these resources and people that elevate the experience from something I’d describe as ‘tiring’, ‘hard’, or even ‘undoable’ to something that I actually WANT to do ever so often. A friend asking how it goes or reading about ways to better your technique both have the effect of providing impetus to go some more.

                                                                                 Think no running scenery in Jamaica looks like this? Wrong… Mona Dam does.

Admittedly, since I’ve begun running, its done something for me (spiritually? emotionally? mentally? psychologically? not sure which) where I feel like I have something worthwhile competing for my time outside of the usual suspects (i.e. work, hanging out with the parries, endless hours surfing the net). It feels like its completely ‘my own.’ By that, I mean that it’s an activity that I don’t have to share with any other aspect of my life, unless I choose to.

That sounds borderline selfish doesn’t it?

It isn’t.

I guess it has to do with the fact that for me, it feels like a sort of ‘break in case of emergency’ item. If everybody and everything seem to be getting a bit much… I can just bust the glass and ‘bladow!’ I’m home free! Away from it all.

You’d be surprised how much your mind clears itself of all your ‘problems’ when you’re concentrating on overcoming the challenge of the run, or in my case, outrunning that damn half-breed Alsation dog at the bottom of my street!

                                                                                Adidas Viper. Cushioned running Shoe. Bad enuh!

I guess what I’m saying, or at least, the impetus for this post is that I’m offically in love with running now. Sometimes you try something on for size and it just doesn’t fit. Ever so often though….  yeah. I’m having a "look mah, it fits!" moment.

Don’t be mislead by that statement though, I’m still for all intents and purposes, a novice runner. I’m currently averaging about 4.7 km per run, twice a week. It’s just that with this current n00b high I’m on, with some more time management I can only imagine how much better I can possibly become.

Perhaps upping it to a regular 10K by the end of the year? A half marathon by next year’s Reggae Marathon? Who knows? Sky’s the limit I guess.

    Me in a few? Who knows. 

 

Technorati Tags: running , observations , novice

Jamaica and Trinidad rank high in press freedom

A recent publication from the Reporters San Frontiers (translates to: Reporters Without Borders) has placed Caribbean nations, Trinidad and Jamaica at 19th and 27th respectively on its latest Press Freedom Index. The index ranks 169 countries, so as you can imagine, this bodes well for Press Freedom in these here parts. Strangely enough Disappointingly, only three CARICOM nations and affiliates are indexed in total – the other being Haiti who come in at 75.

Note: the study itself wasn’t scientific in the technical sense so be careful how you use this beyond party arguments/conversations. From the report itself:

"Reporters Without Borders compiled this index by sending a questionnaire to the 15 freedom of expression organisations throughout the world that are its partners, to its network of 130 correspondents, and to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists. It contained 50 questions about press freedom in their countries…"

An aside: Press Freedom is one issue but when are we going to start seeing those indexes of Press/Media corruption? From where I’m sitting, giving a newspaper complete freedom to operate shouldn’t go without a demonstrated commitment to responsible journalism (Observer Editorialist do you see me glaring @ you?)

Link: RSF Press Freedom Index (.pdf, 240kb)

 

 

Technorati Tags: freedom , press , caribbean , index , RSF

Dancehall video mashups

A big part of what I’m interested re: the internet and associated cultural forms specific to it is the Jamaicanisation of those forms. That’s apart of why I’m absolutey thrilled by what I’m sharing with you below – Some video mashups by a youtube user named c4unitx.

In general the editing could be a bit tighter in some places but that really fades in the aura of an overall amazing collection.

See his profile here and check out some of my favourites below

Saving Private Ryan vs Demarco (Fallen Soldiers) || Barney vs Vybz Kartel (Beat’n Beat’n) || South Park vs Busy Signal (These are the Days)

Technorati Tags: mahsups , amv , dancehall , cool , youtube , movado , busy signal , vybz kartel

5k: the big stitch

Woke up yesterday intent on running another 5k along the same route since the first one had gone so well. About 3/4 of the way through, I started having stitches. I tried pushing out my belly while I inhaled but nothing. Perhaps I was doing it wrong or probably not long enough. Either way, I ended up giving in and walking the rest of the way home.

Rather pitiful ending considering that just seconds  before the pain, I was playing around with thoughts of how ‘easy’ this current distance was and how soon I should abandon the 5k in favour of something more ‘challenging.’

Ha. Joke was on me.

I guess this was life’s way of reminding me of my own email signature “… slow down. Live!” Knowing me, I was on the verge of pushing myself to hard too fast and then suffering burnout.

Regardless, I need to figure out how to manage stitches attacks in the future. If I was in a race, I would not fancy missing out on a good finish because of it.

I’m probably going to continue doing a 5k for two more weeks (3 times a week) and THEN decide on a new distance to cover or if I even want to go for a bigger distance. Not a step before. By next week I’m going to start working on times though. I figured my pace was pretty good until I met upon 3 runners going in the opposite direction at about 20 seconds per 100m! I can’t bother to translate that into better math. Feel free to indulge your inner geek if you’d like though. All I know is, them brothers was fast!

Technorati Tags: running , 5k , fitness

Weekend update from the life of Jamaica’s finest

Well my computer crashed so I’ve been forced to wade outside the comfort of Windows Live Writer and a tonne of Firefox addons that make blogging so much easier to make an old-fashioned post. You know, in the actual wordpress.com backend interface.

So lets see:

I went to country this weekend for the first time in a loooong time. While I could appreciate that the exotic rural beauty was still in place, I had to also swallow that the poverty never left when I did.

I’ve come to the realisation that I need to get involved in politics. Forget talking about it, time to be about it. Note though, ‘getting involved’ doesn’t and in all likeliness won’t translate to running for anything. It just means what it says – getting involved. More on this in subsequent posts.

Since this is the weekend of Jah Cures concerts (which I missed out on. Thanks to TB *glare*) I couldn’t pass up on Observer’s editorial re: Jah Cure. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the Observer was awakening from their election induced stupor and was back. Almost whipped out the Prostitute Flange in celebration too but *sigh* I guess a propagandists work is never done.

Charah Tabetha Smith. The shining example of using new media to help effect justice or just a vengeful woman going too far to smear the name of the good good prof and the nice poet lady? I’m leaning towards the former but with an open-minded question about whether or not she may have gone just a tad too far wrt to the latter. Pics || Pro-Charah Facebook group || Not so pro-Charah Facebook group

Whats with all the rain man? I’m hoping we saw the last of it.

Outside looking in on ourselves

Technorati Tags: music , dancehall , daseca , french , caribbean

I came across this gem this morning. A group of guys freestyling over a Daseca [Obs interview || Myspace]. Bits of it are in English but most of it is in, what sounds like, french Creole so if I had to guess I’d say they’re Lucian.

Though I have no clue what these guys are saying for most of this session, goddammit isn’t their energy amazing? I guess this must be a big part of why Japanese and Continental-European cats get off to reggae so much. The vibes man, the vibes.

Steve Jobs commencement speech Stanford University

I like this speech not only because its inspirational but because it puts a lot of my own beliefs and ideas into perspective wrt following what I think might be my true calling(s?) and following my passions.

Peep it, you wont be disappointed

Technorati Tags: steve jobs , stanford , inspiration

The reparation struggle must continue – letter to the editor

Excerpt from a letter to the editor which appeared in today’s Gleaner

The debate over reparations is not just an academic exercise to enhance the résumé of university intellectuals; it is a serious demand for debt repayment by all countries and companies who perpetrated the African holocaust, who participated in and benefited from the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica and the region.

Full Letter here. Jamaica Gleaner letter to the editor 10.10.07

Technorati Tags: reparations , jamaica

Design

What if I want to create something but I have no particular ’statement’ that I want to make about social or even personal issues. If I have no real objective in mind,  no end result to speak of. I don’t… nothing. I just want to create. Is my art therefore more or less? For whom? Why?

Had a conversation with a bredrin the other night. It made me realise some things about my own creative edge as a digital artist. I need to spend more time on it. Maybe when its perfected or at least made better, then I’ll come up with nice conversation pieces about ‘inspiration’ and ‘my aims in creating this one’ e.t.c. Until then… digital comps here I come!