Monday, November 14, 2016

Gardens & Villa, Floppy Disks & Exactitudes

Weekly Update 2016-46: Moody mellow music from Gardens & Villa, the symbolism behind the floppy disk, and copycats in streetwear trends as photographed by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek.

Music: Gardens & Villa
This synthpop band out of California has the power to get stuck in your head. I like their music because their songs have a range of feeling from moody and mellow to dancey. And their lyrics are clear and slow enough to learn. That's all you need in a good bit of pop music! Listen below:


Accomplishment:
The Other Side series on my trip to China is finally complete! It's kind of nice to finish the series (although it's been more than six months since the trip) because I'll have a good bit of content to work with in my blog redesign (which I've pushed back a little to focus on moving my site hosting to GitHub - which has a deadline).

I also neglected to mention last week – I finally won the Spelling Bae at the Ossington! As you will probably want to ask, the winning word was "isthmus," which I know from the Geography poster that is inexplicably sticky-tacked to the inner door of the closet in my childhood bedroom. Also, since I was awarded the Geography award at my elementary school in grade eight, this seems a fitting win.

I was awarded the pot of money (it costs $1 to compete) – a grand total of $28, a beer, and a ribbon which I will have to wait until the next Bae to receive as the organizer forgot it at home. Until then!

Here's a video of me spelling a word wrong earlier in the tournament (there was a crazy back-and-forth between myself and another participant that went on four about six rounds):


Goal:
My coworker mentioned that he allots one day a week for personal projects. What a great idea, since I can't seem to find the time with so much going on in the evenings. Tuesday seems like the best option, though it's going to have to start next week because I am going to a hockey game tomorrow. So this week I'm moving it to Sunday, when the weather will be cold and rainy. One thing I can do before then is to do a deep clean of my home desk, so that I have a good working space.

I'm also going to take some time to clean my Google Keep. I want to start a system of one central note for all random thoughts. Ones that don't get used within a certain timespan will be deleted. And all inspirational ideas for projects will go into the google drive document that I created for personal projects.

As an aside, wouldn't it be great if you could import a document to a blog post? Since these services are all run by Google, why aren't they more connected? But before I get too far into the random thought territory, let's move on.

Random Thought:
The mental model of digital files, folders, desktop, and documents is something that's been around since before I was born. I accept it because it existed before I did. But for those who did not have the luxury of growing up with technology,  they had to learn it based on a model they already knew (the physical counterparts of these digital files, folders, etc). It works. But then I think about the concept of saving. There is no 'save' on a physical desktop. We have to take a specific action to 'delete' something in real life (by picking it up and throwing it in the trash can). While in the digital world, we have to take an action to save something. I suppose that's why the icon for save is also a digital tool - the floppy disk. Don't even get me started on why that doesn't make sense. But my point stands, I wonder if it was difficult for people to understand the concept of 'saving' when it first came about.



Inspiration: Copycats


In 1994, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek started compiling and documenting bizarre, often unidentified subcultures. It started when they first noticed "the whole gabba thing in Rotterdam" – young men with a #1 buzz cut and a tracksuit. There were so many people walking around the city wearing the same thing that it looked like they were invading.


And so, the duo started to catalog these people. It makes for a dazzling display of uniformity, especially in those who may believe that their visual identity is unique.


And of course, the more obvious ones were not missed:

I like to think that these women all decided to pose like this with their hands on their hips. Comparing the stance with their facial expressions is extremely interesting.

Check out all of the grids in the project (there are a lot of them!) here.

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