Massive fail on the posting front: basically, my job ended, I went back to Prince George for a week, had some meetings, went to a wedding, and came back to Victoria for another short term job. In-between, we (we being the unnamed people below) spent some time doing silly things like play laser tag (it’s better in Prince George, but still great) and go to the Victoria Bug Museum, which was way more awesome then it should be. That experience made me think that crayons and paper would be a great way to pass out thank-you notes.
Mr. PG, for those of you who’ve never been through Prince George, is our city mascot: a faux-wooden man wearing a hard hat and standing on guard for civic pride. Last year I started the Mr. PG Facebook fanpage, which has taken off with over 3,000 fans and hundreds of wall posts. What I’ve liked most is seeing messages from people all over the world who have lived in or visited Prince George, and still have a place in their hearts for the rumoured septic tank. Now he’s getting some official love, with Canada Post announcing he will be part of their new “Roadside Attractions” series, alongside things like the Vegreville Easter Egg and the Yukon’s roadsign forest. What’s best is that one of Mr. PG’s fans had posted this to the Facebook page before I even got to it.
Seriously, if you aren’t using StumbleUpon, try it out. I would never have found this, otherwise.
“Trilobis 65 Floating Home
Trilobis 65 is a semi-submerged dwelling environment. Reaching 20 metres in length designed by Giancarlo Zema for habitation by six people at sea. It is ideal for living in bays, atolls and maritime parks. The main aim of the project is to allow anyone to live in a unique environment through a self sufficient, non-polluting dwelling cell in unison with their ocean surroundings.
Trilobis 65 has been designed on four separate levels connected by a spiraling staircase.
The top level is 3.5 metres above sea level. The next level is at 1.4 metres above sea level and hosts the daylight zone with all services and allowing outdoor access. The third level is situated at 0.8 metre below sea level, semi-submerged, and is devoted to the night-time zone. At 3.0 metres below sea level, totally submerged, there is the underwater observation bulb, an intimate and mediative place.
The shape of Trilobis 65 allows the annular aggregation of more modular units, creating island colonies.”
I’m really enjoying looking at alternative living arrangements lately. This one is nowhere near as portable as the loftcube, but is equally, if not more, impressive. What’s interesting is how they’re both aimed at addressing urban density, but in terms of the moods projected are almost complete opposites.
A Low Impact Wooden Home »
So, in follow up to my blog yesterday in which I was asking about which social media I should or should not be using, I’ve been checking things out that I’ve been aware of for some time, but never really looked at. So far, the best has been StumbleUpon which lets you fill in categories and then sends you to random web pages you think you might like, rate them, save them, and share them. This definitely adds something new to the web experience, and I can see using this for saving random sites, while maintaining Delicious for things I want to reference on a more regular basis.
After looking at MySpace and Flickr, I remember why I quickly abandoned them. MySpace seems to be very good at providing a site template for bands, and not much else beyond a bunch of people/corporations using three-year-old graphics to promote themselves by friending other people. I just don’t see going back to it.
Flickr, meanwhile, would be useful if I wanted to share a bunch of photos, but I don’t, and if I do have some I want to display, well– this blog works pretty well. I’m not completely writing it off, and definitely think there’s some interesting applications I might use at some point in the future for other entities, but don’t see using a personal account just yet. I also know that back when I did want to share photos (since I was living overseas) I went to the Black Stripe, which gives unlimited storage.
I have created accounts in Reddit, Digg, and Newsvine as well, so I can get a better idea of how they work. They seem to all have the same basic concept (submit and rate news and other things in order to create dynamic “front pages”), but have evolved into different communities, with Newsvine focused on “real” news, Reddit on radnomness, and Digg somewhere in-between. I’d forgotten about flamewars until looking at Reddit posts like this one, and with a number of comments there about how these wars are making Reddit turn into Digg I’m not sure how long these things are going to last. Newsvine seems to be more of a personalized newpaper with the option of becoming a columnist, which is a neat concept that I hope works. I’m curious to see how these will all turn out.
Incidentally, I’m getting the hang of these aggregators, as well. Chi.mp is a good place to send someone if they want to get all your activities in a stream, whereas retaggr business card option is still great– as is the ability to interact with services like Skype (and hopefully more) right on the page, as seen below. I also think both of these might have uses beyond just aggregating a single account– I could see it being used to track groups of people, or various news feeds, or any combination of things, so long as they have an RSS feed.
You can find me on these services using my retaggr badge below or my chi.mp account. I’m still open to new ideas, even MySpace if someone gives me a convincing argument. And if you’re a user of any of these options, tips are more than welcome.
“the Loftcube project
What could a temporary, minimalistic domicile look like, to suit people of a nomadic lifestyle, living for short periods of time in large cities and dense urban areas, offering both sanctuary and social structure, and where might such temporary dwellings be built.
Details
Size LC39:
Gross Living Area: 39sqm / 420ft
Inner Dim. Net: 6,25m X 6,25m / 20,50 ft x 20.50ft
Internal Height: 2,50m / 8,20ft
Transportation:
Construction kit stored in two industry standard 40ft high cube containers.
Installation:
Placement via crane / Installation in 2-4 days“
So today, as advised by mashable, I signed up for three new social media sites. Actually, they’re not really social media sites so much as they are social media aggregates/search engine optimizers: Google profiles, chi.mp, and retaggr. These are touted as nice, easy ways to get all your social media information in one place– I especially like chi.mp’s ability to pull in full feeds from multiple places in a reverse timeline, though retaggr’s embeddable card may be useful at some point, too.
What really gets me is the amout of options there are. I’m trying to get online in a proactive way, but at the same time I really don’t want to be managing hundreds of accounts, aggregating tools or no. So my question to you, my three readers, is this: which social media sites are essential (inasmuch as a social media site can be)?
Sites I use:
Facebook: like it or not, this one is pretty much the macdaddy these days, and is an essential component of any online identity, personal, professional, or corporate.
LinkedIn: like Facebook, but without zombie attacks. This is where you connect with your CEO.
Twitter: better than Facebook for networking, since it eliminates need for friend requests. I can see this one either becoming king or disappearing altogether. Right now it’s near-essential, though.
Delicious: This is an awesome way to manage bookmarks if you switch between computers a lot. However, I don’t see the point of having and sharing a public profile if you already share links in a Twitter feed or a blog.
Sites I don’t:
MySpace: honestly, I don’t think anyone uses this anymore. Unless your a band (for which this can still be a great homepage) it can probably be ignored.
Flickr: I don’t know about Flickr. It seems like everyone has an account but me, and I’m not sure what I’m missing. I can see it being useful for certain situations, but essential?
YouTube: Like Delicious, this can be a good way to manage videos if you watch them again and again, and is also necessary if you want to upload your own. But if you’re not doing that, I’m not sure this is necessarily something you need as part of your public persona.
Technorati: I have a Technorati account, which I’ve used to claim my blogs, but as with Delicious, I don’t feel the need to publicly share which blogs I’m reading or which are my favourites. If there’s soemething I really like, I’ll blog about it.
Skype: I really want to use this, but since I don’t know anyone on it, I don’t see the point.
There’s a lot more, obviously, but these seem to be the big ones, with Reddit, Digg, Newsvine, and StumbleUpon coming to mind as others that are sticking around. I’m hoping to get some feedback on where else I should– or shouldn’t– be moving in the online world.
No one asked me, but if they did, here’s the albums from the Polaris long list that I think should be on the short list.
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The Arkells, Jill Barber, D-Sisive, Elliott BROOD, Handsome Furs, Junior Boys, k-Os, K’Naan, Metric, Chad VanGaalen
As much as it pains me to leave Charles Spearin’s brilliant Happiness Project off of this, it’s more an interesting art experiment than it is an album. I’m still going for Chad VanGaalen and the win, but I’d probably place F***ed Up as the one’s gonig in with the most hype, and given the past winners, I’m thinking we’re likely to see a spoiler in the form of Tim Hecker or something.
Building Diversity: BC City Pins Big Hope On New Mosque (the Globe and Mail) »
Aside from the fact that I’m pretty sure the future of the “hardscrabble” (?) city of Prince George (population 80,000, service center, and home of a university and college) isn’t completely dependent on the building of a mosque, it’s nice to see this getting sway in a national paper. I’ve been looking forward to seeing what a beetle-kill lumber mosque would look like since this was first announced, and now some movement’s being made. Disappointed that the local paper didn’t give this as much coverage.
“The Hampton”, by Bailey of Hollywood, ascot style, straw/twisted seagrass material, medium. I need somewhere I can buy it or, alternatively, if you’ve come across mine, let me know.
OK, without looking anywhere else, try to complete the lyrics to this very well-known song:
“I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can…”
I’ve yet to find someone who can do this, which is strange because this has got to be one of the more quoted lines from one-hit wonder history. Everyone knows he wears his sunglasses at night, but no one knows his motivation.
Ad nauseam
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