spore-boy's kopi place

disposable technology

We are often thought of as a wasteful society; our waste produced per capita is growing increasingly globally, especially in the cities. And the rate of recycling is not keeping up with that increase.

But whilst we throw so much away, there is alot we also keep, or even hoard. Digital information. Sales of portable hard drives must be going through the roof; especially so in Singapore I would suspect.

All of us store movies, photos, files, games etc. We hoard so much information; how many of us delete movies after watching them for the first time? Rarely, or at least never until forced to.

Art Lebedev Studio is looking to re-explore this notion through their interpretation of disposable technology by conceptualizing cheaply-produced memory sticks that you would literally tear and give to friends to share all the information we hoard.

Article: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/disposable-fleshkus-drives-ensure-your-memories-some-day-hit-t/

screw the well-trodden path

Isabella Blow, an international style icon the world was privileged to know. 

As I and other friends contemplate the paths we are going to choose in life, Isabella’s quote was timely to chance upon. 

Especially in Singapore, the career and personal paths you choose in life tend to be rather set, especially when you belong to a certain segment in the socio-economic ranks. Society is so well-planned that the organisation of public amenities has sinisterly trickled into the private lives.

Not that its intentional evil, but if not careful it could spawn into a devil that would rob us the joy of living life to its full, along with its surprises and possibilities.

I dedicate Isabella Blow’s quote to those who have been brave enough to take the path less traveled (Ralph Waldo Emerson will be proud), to the people thinking of taking the plunge, and to those who have long forgotten how to dream their own dreams:

“I’ve done the most peculiar jobs. I was working in a scone shop for years, selling apricot-studded scones. I was a cleaner in London for two years. I wore a handkerchief with knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in the post office and said, What are you doing? I said, What do you think I look like I’m doing? I’m a cleaner! - Isabella Blow

From cleaner to international icon, Isabella’s spirit will live on in me, and hopefully you too.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

from wiki

randomdandom for the day: quidnunc

Just some randomness for a hectic 2 weeks.

• quid·nunc Noun   /ˈkwidˌnəNGk/ Synonyms:
  • noun: newsmonger
  • quidnuncs plural
  • An inquisitive and gossipy person

Web definitions

• • busybody: a person who meddles in the affairs of others
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• • Someone who attempts to know all that happens, but who is not careful of the facts
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quidnunc

i cannot paint…

i cannot paint. i can only hope my photography can capture even a fraction of beauty.

quiet moment at 3am

Cat Stevens’ ‘Best of…’ fills the familiar walls. The mix of yellow and fluorescent fills my eyes with a comforting normalcy. I am in my room. The room where the boys had sleep-overs. The room when I got hitched over a phone call. The room which I somehow hanged a hammock. The room which has glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceilings, with my hopes scribbled on them.

It is 3am-ish.

I am tired but I refuse to go to sleep. My mind is restless. Like a house with an open door, London wonders in and out of this tormented vessel. My eyes are heavy, but I refuse to sleep. I turn to my photography.

When I feel alone in Delhi, when I miss her in the death of night, when my mind feels helpless in providing comfort to my emotions. I turn to my photography.

Cat Stevens still sings like he was singing for himself. I fiddle with my photographs, doing the photo-shop post-processing. Somehow I feel less contempt for photoshop-ping. It gives me a freedom to express my photographs the way I want. Screw what people who don’t know what they are talking about when they critique the use of photo-shop. My photos are not for them.

My photos are for the relief of my soul, and the soul of others who want similar relief. I imagine myself standing by the highway of urban life, giving out prints of my photos to the tormented passing by. 

Then all these bizarre thoughts buzzing like wasps in the air, suddenly fall to the ground. In that moment, my thoughts settle like silky sand on the beach of the night. I get a photo right. Like a morphine shot through my nerve-bag. The cream of the photo is just right.

My thoughts fly to a London-Wickford train and touch her hand. I hold it for awhile. Slowly I let go, and I’m back in my room.

I am ready to close my eyes.

who is happy? are you happy? by how much?

Ever since going to the place called university, one either realise how much more the world makes sense, or how much more ridiculous the world actually is. Having studied Economics, it should have been the former for me.

But somehow, dedicating 3 years of my life studying the intellects and the academics, I realised some ridiculous things about the world. Nothing bad, just ridiculous in the way a red-nosed clown is to a child. And they started trying to measure happiness.

The British government is doing that, hiring 44 experts to do this. Not being cynical, I do wonder how much expenditure these 44 lads are incurring just to do this report. Since these are top captains of industry, doubt they would travel in environmentally-friendly buses and ships as opposed to fuel-guzzling sedans and jets. I really do wonder if this would make the British happier.

But I do wonder if that’s top of the agenda: to actually make people happier. What if the results of this report says: 85.97% of the British public would be happier (whatever that may measure on whichever scale) if the Cameron government be voted out? I do wonder what the government would do with that.

Perhaps if the Cameron government were truly sincere about this, and if I were their PR consultant, I’ll probably get a independent think-tank to front this survey and fund it from the back. Putting their face on this campaign makes the public cynical in using this as either a PR stint or a distraction. Either way, it may backfire on them, unless they really think the British public naive.

Or they are really sincere about this, but PR-dumb. Oh well, I just hope this yields real good for the British public. I’m sure with VAT tax now at 20%, economy not doing too well, Olympics looming, Blackfriars tube station still closed since before the Chinese started building their own Olympics stadium, the money spent on finding out how to measure happiness, could be better spent in making people les unhappy as they currently are.

Article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12300104

projek: the old eye

Perhaps it was talking to Valerie. Perhaps it was thinking about being there in April. 

London.

It strolled in as casually as a bloke might into a London pub at 4pm on a Friday afterwork; London just walked right into my head un-invited. At 4am in the morning in wintry Delhi.

I started my fascination for street photography amongst the grey arteries of London’s streets. Armed with my brand-new Nikon D60 with kit lens 18-55mm, I was drawn into the worlds that existed on these streets. Faces, waiting bodies, road crossings, mobile phones, hair, eyeballs, moving lips. It was as if I knew the world for the first time, simply with a camera in hand.

I started shooting right there, on the streets of London. That was about 2 years ago. I start looking at these photos I took then. Then, I thought a majority of the photos terrible; bad perspective, blamed the lens, didn’t do well under low-light conditions, pixelated pictures. But I realised I had a different eye then; what and how I saw then is slightly different from today.

The old eye. With my new one, I look at what I shot with my old eye; I re-examine the old eye with the new.

Perhaps that’s what the past is for; to give you an idea of where to go in the future, using the present as the judge.

Its nearly 6am. Haven’t slept. But London’s streets has just come back to life for me, here in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi.

nature’s wonder: moire

In physics, a moiré pattern (pronounced /mwaˈreɪ/ in English, [mwaʁe] in French) is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes.

Its found on parrot’s wings.

It’s found on Nike shoes.

and used probably my hynotisers (or whatever you call peeps who hynotise other peeps).

http://www.mathematik.com/Moire/

can’t take my eyes of you

Sometimes there are designs you just can’t take your eyes off. This is one of them.

Nike-designed American football uniform of the Oregon team. Read the rationale behind the small design details and not only will you find yourself starting, you might just start drooling too.

Read article here.

Uncle T

facebook not so universal

there is a time and season for everything

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, 
a time to plant and a time to uproot, 
a time to kill and a time to heal, 
a time to tear down and a time to build, 
a time to weep and a time to laugh, 
a time to mourn and a time to dance, 
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, 
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 
a time to search and a time to give up, 
a time to keep and a time to throw away, 
a time to tear and a time to mend, 
a time to be silent and a time to speak,


And I am truly truly blessed in the time I was allowed to know you. 




Uncle T

CurryTalk Digest #9

Hello friends!

Welcome to a re-branded 9th issue of the former KopiTalk Digest. Now outsourced to Delhi, this CurryTalk Digest should start getting interesting. Other than some people commenting they enjoy the articles, still haven’t received any saying that they would like to contribute articles. So please do let me know if you want to share certain articles :)

about KopiTalk CurryTalk
in the spirit of sharing in our age of social media, wanted to share ideaspirations and random bits of info with like-mindeds. hopefully these bits of info may inspire creativity and innovation in seemingly unrelated work and tasks we do everyday. feel free to share ideas and more with this digest, and would be happy to share with others. everything is hopefully bite-size especially in the deluge of information today in the digital world.

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Bye-bye Happy Meals in San Fran
US authorities are banning toys to be served with meals above 600 calories, so that means good-bye for Happy Meals for MacDonald’s US as these are around 640 calories. See article here.



Inflated job-titles: not just a local phenomena
The Economist has noted that having inflated titles is a worldwide phenomena. The person in the lead at the moment is Kim Jong Il, who has 1,200 titles to his name including “guardian deity of the planet”. But on the serious side of things, it was noted that job-titles are tied to the sense of ownership people had to their jobs, and hence tied to job performance. Perhaps this latter point is a serious point to note in our companies here, big or small. Check out this very interesting read here.

Innovation in leisure: swimming in garbage (trucks)
How does swimming in a garbage truck sound for innovation? Well, that is exactly what Brooklyn is doing on its streets this summer. Check that out here. Can we do something similar along Orchard Rd? Sure! After clearing perhaps 4 government agencies and equal-or-more number of licences we just might. But I also do wonder if our local sponsors will be as generous as the New York’s.



Powerpoint Presso 101: learn from Steve Jobs
Here’s a quick analysis of Jobs’ latest presso in response to iPhone 4’s antennaegate saga. There are a number of points to learn. but one that really jumps up that we possibly might learn is that there should be no bullet points in presentation slides, because every page should contain only a single idea. Many might disagree, but its still worth a quick glance of the article here.