ideometric

I figure I should start thinking about grad school. I came across MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, which is right up my alley.

 A New Research Agenda

Comparative media studies is not the study of interactive technologies. It focuses on social and cultural interactions with technology. As media become increasingly integrated into all aspects of modern experience, it is impossible to fully understand our central institutions and practices without understanding media. The most urgent questions confronting us are social and cultural, not purely technological.

Which is right on. I’ve become less interested in the newest gadgets in and of themselves, and more interested in their social and cultural affordances. I’m interested in the kind of society new media (portable, social, networked, and highly capable) is shaping, and even more interested in potential reformulations of existing social relations to become more like the networks that underlie new media.

I bought a Sigma 10-20mm F4 wide angle zoom. Here’re a few shots. Haven’t had much time to do more than snap shots.

I wanted the Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 – low light performance would be much better, and the Sigma is deficient there. But because of the exchange rate, the going price was around 750,000KRW. More than I wanted to spend. Oh well.

Got this in the mail from Amazon.com. What does your data footprint say about you?

 Amazon.com has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.

In this message:
* Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (PSI Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era)
* How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
* Quantum Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers (Classroom Resource Materials)
* Wall-E (Widescreen Single-Disc Edition)

The scary part is, I wouldn’t mind reading/watching all 4 of them.

Koreans work too many hours. Some jobs in Korea operate on a 6 day work week.

This is weird.

 A giant straw goat erected each Christmas in a northern Swedish town has been burned down – yet again.

The 13m-high (43ft) animal in Gavle has been torched 23 times since it was first erected in 1966. It has also been hit by a car and had its legs cut off.

1966: The first goat is burned down

1970: It is set on fire six hours after being erected

1971: Tired of arson, the project is abandoned. Schoolchildren build a miniature. It is smashed to pieces.

1976: A car crashes into the goat

1979: The goat is burned down before it is finished

1987: The goat is treated with fireproofing – but still goes up in smoke

A few photos I took at school this week with the Sigma 30mm F1.4.

So I recently purchased a Sigma 30mm F1.4 lens for my D40X. I wanted a sharper lens, with a wide aperture to play around with bokeh. I’m still such a newb when it comes to photography, but I’m having a lot of fun messing around with it.

It’s so much sharper than my Tamron 18-200mm that I sold that lens today. I don’t really miss the zoom that much, and for longer range shots I can just crop and end up with an image that’s as sharp as the Tamron.

And the shallow depth of field is a lot of fun for isolating specific things in the image. Now I’m considering picking up a 10-20mm Sigma for wide-angle indoor shots, specifically for a cafe review project.

I just used VOIP (skype) to call an Indian call center, from Korea, to activate my American debit card.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings.

The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.

Though their new strategy, issuing warnings and then getting ISPs to shut off service to file sharers, isn’t much better. And I wonder how legal it is.

99% of the kids at my school are wearing the exact same black North Face parka. And the ones that can’t afford it have fakes, which other kids love to point out to me “TEACHA – HIS JACKET IS IMITATION.”

It reminds me of last summer, when literally every other person I saw on the street was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. Until it went out of fashion.

(Photo from Xinhua. Hainan trash dumps in China).

One by-product of living alone is realizing how much trash each individual person generates. There’s a mountain of crap out there with my name on it. It makes little efforts like using reusable bags and containers, recycling, second-hand shopping, and generally being more conscious about waste and conservation seem much less insignificant.

There are design projects out there that address this kinda thing by attempting to make consumption and waste visible — like glowing power cords and decorative meters that illustrate the electricity that usage otherwise hums away in the background unnoticed. Things like that, I think, can make a big impact on conservation. They’re potential behavior modifiers that hinge on making individualized information about environmental impact available, like the MPG meter in hybrid cars leading to hypermiling and altered driving habits that emphasize efficiency over other motivators. Feedback is important, and offers a relatively benign way to encourage more conscious behavior. Throw in some incentivization, and you might be getting somewhere.

Classic. And impressive for 1982. Design by Syd Mead.