TheNyeLabs.com

photo bloggy

so I’ve owned doangang.com for a while now, and since no one has seemed too interested in the domain, I thought I’d turn it into a photo blog and start toying around with some of my photos. This will be more fun in a month or two when I can give it some more time, but for now I think it’s pretty darn fun just looking through the library for some good shots, and I get to take the time to tell a story about each photo, when I take the time. So please check it out, if you’d like to throw up a photo or two here and there, let me know, I’ll throw you a login, or you can email me the photo and the story and I’ll put it in the lineup.

This is what I do when I get stressed, I create things I like, and let the other stuff go to pot.

doangang.com

Photosynth

MS Live Labs has a way sweet site up called Photosynth, where they have collections of photos from all kinds of sources and have reconstructed areas and buildings to allow us to zoom in, walk around, etc, the entire area or building. It’s pretty much the greatest link I’ve come across tonight. I’m like a little kid with this thing, and loving every minute.

Check it out -
here

oh, to be well read

So I’m trying to bring a new balance into life and it’s kind of frustrating. You see, I have friends in many circles, I’m associated with the geeks through work and some play, the jocks through the gym and basketball, the math nerds and bio geeks through various friend circles, religion scholars, business and finance guru’s, entrepreneurs and salesmen, English majors and Shakespearean critics, political science thinkers, and so on.  Suffice to say, I’m in a lot of circles.  Now in the last little while, I’ve decided I would like to be better read.  Every circle or friend has their couple of must reads, and the ones that if you haven’t read them, they are shocked at how you are even able to function.  Well I decided to remedy that, and I’ve started reading a bit more.  Just hitting the library, I’ve been going for the gold.  It’s been rather interesting, I’ve tried to sell myself to the epic science fiction novels (most recently, I read Dune) and have found some enjoyment there, while simultaneously I have been reading Shakespeare’s Othello and teaching myself how to enjoy him.  My frustration comes in the fact that every book requires context, ever bit of art is defined by the era in which it was written and it’s impact on subsequent eras down to the present.  In the end, I just don’t have enough hours in the day to catch up with everyone.  The recommendations continually pour in, Les Miserables, various translations (as one is simply not sufficient), War and Peace as well as Anna Karenina from Tolstoy, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Flatlanders, and so on.  It seems that every circle has an endless amount of books you “HAVE to read” and I’m stuck trying to prioritize and tackle the mountain, speaking of mountain, have you read that new everest book!  Oh my gosh!  It changed my life!  Bah!  I’m going back to my hardy boys, life was just easier then when all I was looking for Joe Hardy’s sneaky move that was gonna save him in this one.  To try and be well read in every sense, it’s too much dirty work.  But why not, I guess I’ll keep reading till something finally snaps and you’ll see me at a book burning trying to make my unread conscience feel a little better.

new pohotos

my trip to LA and a couple of weeks ago, the day we had the earthquake I had time to take a walk, and here’s what I found then

Kiwi Night 2006 baybee!

Kiwi Night 2006 video after the jump! Continue Reading…

390R film projects -

check them out,

skateboarding psa
chewing gum psa
teh laptop chase
halloween chase

Teh Tree Dance

I feel this merits it’s own post, and position at the top of the page for a while -
Continue Reading…

do as yer told

I remember a story I heard recently about a young boy whose family moved to a new town and he was enrolled in a big and intimidating new school. The story, included in a 1982 book written by Mary Schramm, “Gifts of Grace,” continues about how the boy was afraid of all the new circumstances at first, but that he overcame his initial fears.

One day his teacher told the students to take out their paper and crayons, they were going to draw pictures of flowers. This really pleased the young boy because he loved to draw flowers.
He emptied his box of all 64 colors of his Crayola collection and was ready to draw some beautiful and colorful flowers. But when everyone started to draw the teacher stopped them. She then demonstrated on the board, drawing a red flower with a green stem, and she told the class that was what they were to draw. And the young boy did.

There was another exercise, this time with clay. The little boy thought he would shape a snake with his clay. But the teacher showed them how to make a bowl. And the young boy did.
So it went, day after day. Red flowers with green stems. A bowl, not a snake. What the teacher demonstrated, not what the young boy’s imagination dictated.

The next year, the boy’s family moved again and he was in another new school with another new teacher.

One day, she told them they were going to draw flowers, so they should take out their crayons and papers and get started.

But the young boy waited for further instructions. Finally, he asked what kind of flowers and what colors should they use.

The answer was simple: Draw any flower you want and use as many colors as you want.

When they had finished, all of the students turned in their drawings.

And when the teacher came to the young boy’s offering, she saw that he had drawn a red flower with a green stem.
__________________________
So here I sit, hours into redoing my programming assignment completed only days ago. Let me explain, I see programming as somewhat of an art, and it is, the design, the logic, the thought that goes into a program is varied and unique, as it should be. There are good and bad ways to do things, there are weird ways to program, funny ways, etc, expression can be had even in the dry sadistic world of a computer programmer. I take a great deal of pride in the fact that I can do quite a bit with what I know. I’m a quick learner and am able to incorporate new knowledge into application very rapidly. So needless to say I was a bit bothered by the fact that after spending a decent amount of time programming to obtain the proper result for a programming assignment, I was told to break it apart, do it on a dumbed down level of sorts. The professor had a series of steps that had to be followed, I argued the idea of the result, using proper methods, but my own directive and was met with no sympathy.

The thing that bothers me about this, is there are so many programmers who go to school, learn how to do it, come out, and follow instructions, to find one who can think for himself is semi rare, one who has an eye for the creative side of it. And what’s even sadder is the more of these basic programming classes I sit through, the more I feel like I’m just doing a “red flower with a green stem.” I mean, I hardly think of anything new with any of my IT related projects, I’ve come from innovation and think tanking to “did the book say to add that? Then why did you?” where initially I would have said “to see how it worked” or “I thought it’d be cool to put there” or “look how that saves time” I now get by with the bare minimum because that’s what I have to turn in anyway. I think in some way taking a break from it and doing some freelance stuff over the summer will help, just go back into some major design work so I can see with a directive eye again. Man, this semester is meeting a grateful end.