As previously seen on Sunil Garg's blog, here is a bit of an exercise in self-reflection.
He leaves the building in a rush, with a rather battered black Eastpak backpack with what appears to be a staple holding together the right strap. It would immediately appear that perhaps to this person is either unwilling to spend much money, or else does not care about the image he projects. The backpack is worn very low, perhaps in an attempt to fit in with the many others who exhibit this behavior around him. He does not appear to be wearing any accessories, instead sporting a black t-shirt with an Apple logo and the text "Southcenter" centered upon it in cracked white lettering. This suggests that perhaps the person used to be under the employ of Apple at the retail store in the popular Southcenter shopping mall, and perhaps even resides there. Looking on, we find that he is wearing a pair of grey cargo pants. This is striking given the prevalence of jeans in American society, and also because it completes an entirely greyscale ensemble, suggesting this person's favorite color. Two glints of metal draw the eye to one of the cargo pockets - one is clearly the clip of a pen or pencil; it would seem that our subject requires the use of a pen or pencil very often. The other bit of metal is difficult to see and impossible to identify, though the fact that it is clipped to the upper fold of the pocket indicates that it is often needed.
I'm a bit of a boring person when it comes to clothing. I always wear (cargo) shorts or cargo pants out, a remnant habit from my high school days, when I used to carry around quite a few electronic devices with me - an iPod, a PDA, and cell phone to be specific, and cargo pockets proved handy for these reasons. These days, my laptop is almost always with me in my backpack, so most of these devices are unnecessary. My backpack is also a bit of a remnant - I have had it many years, and it has served me very faithfully. Ignoring the snapped strap buckle, it is in perfectly serviceable shape, and I suppose it may even have sentimental value at this point, having been brought so many places with me. Finally, I have a menagerie of random t-shirts which I wear, a growing majority of which were obtained for free, and the Apple shirt I wore today was no exception. I in fact have never worked for an Apple store, and do not reside in Southcenter, but instead got the shirt for free from a friend who had gone to the grand opening of the store in question. The truth is often disappointingly simple, I suppose.
Tag: meta
Mon, April
7th
7th
Reflection through refraction
Posted by clint
on April 7, 2008
As perhaps a bit of a recursive learning experience, I have been encouraged to review the previous musings of one of my course ancestors in the form of taking a figurative walk around their blog. In keeping with the concept of the "Native," I have chosen the blog of a friend of mine, Sunil Garg. I am hoping that my personal experience with him will provide a better context with which to examine the Amsterdam-related segment of his blog.
As the Honors Amsterdam 2007 blog linked to Sunil's main page and not the more relevant Amsterdam material, I was forced to dig through the navigation and search for the "amsterdam" tag. In doing so, I also caught a glance at the rest of his tags in the form of his tag cloud which, as can be seen to the left, visualizes the tags which Sunil has labeled his posts with. In this cloud, the size of the tags indicate the frequency of their use. I am not sure if it was the subconscious influence of having read Lynch's study or an act of my own volition, but I immediately began attempting to organize the cloud in terms of my current task, mentally sorting them into the categories of "potentially Amsterdam related" and "likely irrelevant." What then immediately struck me is that the majority of the content of his blog is amsterdam related, as the amsterdam and studyabroad tags are far and away the largest tags. Delving deeper, I ignore the technology and internet tags, knowing that these are unrelated interests of his, and confirm that wayfinding was a large part of his studies, along with research on society and culture. Having satisfied my curiosity, I finally click through to the Amsterdam tag to review the content of his posts.
Before arriving at content, however, the eye comes across the title of his posts, which are similar to mine and contrast with that of some of my classmates in their more abstract and less academic nature - "Tolerance and Submission" instead of "Amsterdam - Assignment number one" and the like. This, along with the introduction concluding with "[this] marks the first post in a series of what I hope to be many," is indicative of a certain excitement about the subject, rather than the requirements of a course.
My next observation is that Sunil does extensive research beyond the requirements of the course and prompt before posting, as evidenced by his abundant links off to various sources to support his statements. This is an interesting take on the assignments he was asked to do, bringing in the viewpoints of people other than himself to strengthen his arguments, either through agreement or dissent. This pattern is much more familiar to the format of a blog than to the format of a classroom assignment, indicating to me his native environment.
My final major observation that is general enough to note in this brief post is the lack of photos decorating Sunil's posts. Whereas most of his regular writing involves at least one image accompanying the text, only two of his Amsterdam posts involve images. This decided lack of images was a bit disquieting, as again the inclusion of images is a standard practice when posting on a blog.
As the Honors Amsterdam 2007 blog linked to Sunil's main page and not the more relevant Amsterdam material, I was forced to dig through the navigation and search for the "amsterdam" tag. In doing so, I also caught a glance at the rest of his tags in the form of his tag cloud which, as can be seen to the left, visualizes the tags which Sunil has labeled his posts with. In this cloud, the size of the tags indicate the frequency of their use. I am not sure if it was the subconscious influence of having read Lynch's study or an act of my own volition, but I immediately began attempting to organize the cloud in terms of my current task, mentally sorting them into the categories of "potentially Amsterdam related" and "likely irrelevant." What then immediately struck me is that the majority of the content of his blog is amsterdam related, as the amsterdam and studyabroad tags are far and away the largest tags. Delving deeper, I ignore the technology and internet tags, knowing that these are unrelated interests of his, and confirm that wayfinding was a large part of his studies, along with research on society and culture. Having satisfied my curiosity, I finally click through to the Amsterdam tag to review the content of his posts.Before arriving at content, however, the eye comes across the title of his posts, which are similar to mine and contrast with that of some of my classmates in their more abstract and less academic nature - "Tolerance and Submission" instead of "Amsterdam - Assignment number one" and the like. This, along with the introduction concluding with "[this] marks the first post in a series of what I hope to be many," is indicative of a certain excitement about the subject, rather than the requirements of a course.
My next observation is that Sunil does extensive research beyond the requirements of the course and prompt before posting, as evidenced by his abundant links off to various sources to support his statements. This is an interesting take on the assignments he was asked to do, bringing in the viewpoints of people other than himself to strengthen his arguments, either through agreement or dissent. This pattern is much more familiar to the format of a blog than to the format of a classroom assignment, indicating to me his native environment.My final major observation that is general enough to note in this brief post is the lack of photos decorating Sunil's posts. Whereas most of his regular writing involves at least one image accompanying the text, only two of his Amsterdam posts involve images. This decided lack of images was a bit disquieting, as again the inclusion of images is a standard practice when posting on a blog.
Mon, December
3rd
3rd
It's been a while
Posted by clint
on December 3, 2007
Here are some things on my radar right now:
- Apparently we still live in the 19th century. Ah, how we wish we could kidnap foreigners again. Oh wait, we can.
- GameSpot.com head reviewer Jeff Gerstmann was recently unceremoniously terminated after ten years of loyal service. Rumor has it that he was fired for rating Kane & Lynch: Dead Men fairly low, while publisher Eidos has been pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into reviews on GameSpot. This one deserves further comment, but that requires further knowledge. Suffice it to say for now that I have terminated my GameSpot paid subscription, and you should do the same.
- Our facebook app is doing fairly well.
Wed, September
5th
5th
Serverus Switcherus
Posted by clint
on September 5, 2007
If only switching servers was as easy as saying an incantation, a la Harry Potter. However, it was reasonably seamless, even if behind the scenes I dropped about 2.5 hours on transferring everything over and getting it all to work. Either way, I'm on another DreamHost server now, and I should have a little more breathing room to get development done.
Oh, and can anyone say "iPod Touch?" Yum. Tell me when it hits 50GB.
Oh, and can anyone say "iPod Touch?" Yum. Tell me when it hits 50GB.
Fri, August
10th
10th
Cue background
Posted by clint
on August 10, 2007
For the uninitiated, my name is Clint Tseng. I'm a graphics designer/software engineer working at a small software company in Redmond, WA called Sharplogic Software. Over the years I have owned numerous websites, including my now-nonexistent previous blog, \\unload, which ran on Ryan "wonko" Grove's excellent Poseidon CMS engine, which, sadly, is defunct as well.
I am currently a student in the University of Washington's Computer Engineering department, though I still hold that real life development experience is far more valuable than any textbook. I'm in the honors program because through a series of strange circumstances, it's less work for me than the regular program would be.
In my spare time, I like to pretend that I'm actually making progress on the many personal projects I have going on, hopefully some one of which will someday make me rich. I also play copious and potentially unhealthy amounts of Unreal Tournament and Rise of Nations with my friends. I also listen to a great deal of music, which brings me to another thing I often do, which is pretend to be writing music, for which I get the urge whenever I hear a good song.
What I do actually end up making progress on is DJ-ing, which requires far less time commitment. I spin mostly DnB, Chemical Breaks, and Trance, though "spin" is a relative term given that I work mostly with Ableton Live, which I suppose makes me a cheater. I try to make up for it, though, by taking full advantage of Ableton's additional complexity and power.
So that's me in a nutshell. It has taken me about half an hour to type this, because I am forcing myself to use dvorak only, which I haven't used in about a year. Ha.
I am currently a student in the University of Washington's Computer Engineering department, though I still hold that real life development experience is far more valuable than any textbook. I'm in the honors program because through a series of strange circumstances, it's less work for me than the regular program would be.
In my spare time, I like to pretend that I'm actually making progress on the many personal projects I have going on, hopefully some one of which will someday make me rich. I also play copious and potentially unhealthy amounts of Unreal Tournament and Rise of Nations with my friends. I also listen to a great deal of music, which brings me to another thing I often do, which is pretend to be writing music, for which I get the urge whenever I hear a good song.
What I do actually end up making progress on is DJ-ing, which requires far less time commitment. I spin mostly DnB, Chemical Breaks, and Trance, though "spin" is a relative term given that I work mostly with Ableton Live, which I suppose makes me a cheater. I try to make up for it, though, by taking full advantage of Ableton's additional complexity and power.
So that's me in a nutshell. It has taken me about half an hour to type this, because I am forcing myself to use dvorak only, which I haven't used in about a year. Ha.
Refresh.
Posted by clint
on August 10, 2007
I keep putting off the re-creation of a blog in my name pending my creating a suitable theme, but I think I've pushed the limits of that excuse far past reason. I've let a number of potential articles, posts, and rants slide by and I can't stand to see it fall any further, so I've thrown this up (which was far more of a debacle than I would have liked, really) in hopes that the presence of content will beget a deeper motivation for me to actually write a theme. We'll see how far that one gets.
