[AURORA GOLES RELOS ] – Open388.com Ref:3838

I don’t have any comments.

There are always 2 sides to the story.

this is the letter i received from Rabbi Yoseph Y. Zaltzman of JRCC with the following text:

With the Gaza offensive now well into its third week, it is natural for the feelings of deep concern we all initially felt to subside somewhat. Life resumes…

But life as normal has not resumed for our brethren in Israel. And as a united people, we must make an exerted effort to keep our minds and hearts focused on our brothers and sisters who find themselves in distress.

The current situation underscores the principle of “Kol Yisroel Areivim Ze Lozeh” – every Jewish person is responsible for the other. A Jew in the North must defend the Jew in the South and vice versa. All of Israel will come to the defence of a few poor Jews in Sderot, no matter how few to save them from being assaulted from Gaza on a regular basis with missiles – placing their lives in mortal danger. This is what makes us all so proud of being Jewish, our amazing commitment to save the life of every single Jew.

and that all right after reading the following articles:

____

GAZA CITY, Jan 16: At least 10 people were killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on a house in Gaza City during a funeral vigil, according to Palestinian medics.

Earlier, a woman and her five children — all under the age of 13 — were killed when an air strike destroyed their house in Jabaliya.

Amid feverish diplomacy in Cairo and Washington, Israel said its offensive could be “in the final act”, but again bombarded the Gaza Strip, where more than 1,150 Palestinians have been killed and 5,000 wounded in three weeks of fighting.

Gazans savoured some respite a day after fierce combat that some had seen as a final Israeli push before a ceasefire.

But Israeli strikes intensified later, killing 30 Gazans.

read the full article here

____

Brown condemns Gaza attack on UN

Gordon Brown has said an Israeli attack on a United Nations building in Gaza was “indefensible” and reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire.

There were 700 people sheltering in the UN relief agency compound when it was hit by rocket shells and caught fire.

Israel has apologized to the UN for the incident but maintained that Hamas fighters were firing from the site.

Mr Brown said “no-one could defend” the attack which, he added, showed a ceasefire was “absolutely essential”.
read the full article here

____

Am I missing something ?

I don’t really know what to think. You tell me.

Advertising and Design Club of Canada Directions 2008 Student Award.. for me ?!

Funky.

Earlier this year, when I took Interactive Media from Centennial College, I applied to the ADCC (theadcc.ca) student competition. The Club recognizes all our fellow Canadian advertisers, art directors, copywriters, innovators, their brave clients, and other cool dudes. As the part of their annual awards they have a student competition, usually with a challenges like “relaunch Bell Canada brand” (this year).

Kind of “Can you do better than Zulu Alpha Kilo, Leo Burnett and 3 other agencies put together ?”..

It was before Bell relaunched with all these Ers, they still had beavers and apparently were not satisfied with them. I thought beavers were cute.

So for the competition I came up with rather silly campaign with the dear old Alexander Graham Bell him self a center of all ads. Its not a complex concept, very straight forward, “it’s our ground” – not that literary though, “it’s our roots”, “innovation, creation, kill degradashon and stagnaaaashon”, and turned the whole thing into the microsite.
currently unavailable due to unpaid hosting ;P

So the awards happened few days ago, where I got the Silver. But to my great horror I was called on the stage and spoke some stupid stuff for 5 minutes without even thanking anyone. Lol.

But practice makes perfect. You know..

For now just congratulate me ! :}

new imdb position. Change in #250. Abyss and degradation.

Thats what I saw today checking the listings on IMDb 250 raiting

I have a tough time believing in these results. 23000 votes in one day ? Hm..

magnetic lasers – a magic wand

Hm.

Over a year now I’ve been studying 2 matters:
magnetics and lasers.
Both of these, I felt, are future and use of these will make the human live so much easier and the planet cleaner.

Today however just for fun I decided to cross them.
What I came up with is some sort of a magic wand.

The idea is to have a concentrated stray of particles with a determined aspect of polarity and frequency.
What it will give us is a stream of strong magnetic field in a concentrated limited space.

The polarity may either be positive or negative and depending on the one you use you can manipulate the object with the set polarity.

So imagine a small stick object that has an ability to manipulate objects on a distance without use of any force.

Here’s how it’d work:

A. Laser magnet stick closed

B. Laser magnet stick open

1 – cap; 2 – magnetic laser; 3 – change of polarity change; 4 – the stick it self; 5 – concentrated magnetic laser beam; 6 – the opposing side, either opposing or same polarity – receiver of the beam; 7 – an object.

In fact anything can include a small magnetized chip with a set frequency, which you will be able to manipulate.

Another use can actually be the gravity breach. Extreme concentration of the polar rays can do anything.

NOTE: If you currently work on this or came up with the similar invention, please contact me – ikantsurova (at) gmail.com

Integrated Digital Media: Product vs Experience

In our fast moving century it is not enough to have only a book, or only a movie or tv-show. After creation of such online experiences as Second Life, company now really try to create their own little worlds, rather than just producing a piece of media in it self. It is simply not enough. You have to engage the audience further, take every possibility to keep their attention on a product. Create ‘an experience’, rather than just ‘a product’ and to sell the whole thing not just a part of it. And that’s when first ideas about integrated digital media started coming into play.

We are in the digital age, age of interaction between customer and an ‘intelligent product’. Every film now has a story to it integrating featured DVD and website with experience. Take for example Pirates of Caribbean and scroll down the google search page. All you see is a part of so called Integrated Digital Experience. The movie in it self is not enough, what really sells product is the branding around it, and branding is an old term for Integrated Digital Experience in media industry. A common sense. So lets look closer at the components of it.

Pirates of Caribbean integrated experience contain

1. Official website with embedded flash site to each of 3 movies, DVD overviews, PoC video games overviews, shop with everything from DVDs it self to teeshirts, mobile games, wallpapers, trailers, icons, interviews, news.. It is huge.
2. As mentioned, each of 3 parts has its own website, for instance Pirates of Caribbean: The Curse of a Black Pearl
3. Big online strategy game
4. Video games (not online) for PC, PS2, PSP, Nintendo, Game Boy etc
5. Huge following of other flash games made by other people
6. DVD’s with the whole new movie about the movie, interviews, sneak peeks, trailers, etc..

It doesn’t cover the whole ‘experience’, however. That would be only the ‘interactive part’ of it. Yet the industry uses it hugely in any way possible. Take another example: we all seen these silly ad billboards with “i hate sarah marshall” slogans. To spoil a surprise for you, it is a campaign for the new movie called “Forgetting Sarah Marshall“. The movie itself doesn’t seem to be anything special, yet their interactive strategy is, in fact, quite interesting. They created the series of campaign promoting “http://www.ihatesarahmarshall.com/“, which will lead you to the blog of the main character in the movie, Peter Bretter, who is writing about his life, his ex, his journal, etc.

Not to mention that almost every teenage group oriented movie will have their characters on myspace, posting comments, pictures, blog posts, etc. They all are no longer just characters, they are the real people, only living in the virtual space.

Breaking the borders between reality and show is not new to the media industry, take for instance Blair Which Project. They sold experience, not the movie or website. And that’s what I believe the biggest idea behind the Integrated Digital Media component. It is about experience that user gains from collective media tools and features. User doesn’t like to be a passive consumer of the product, they want to be in the crux of it, be the hero in the story, change it along the way, make a decisions along the way, to participate at least.

You never sell a product in it self, you sell the integrated experience formed in one story. And interactive tools are only tools, the idea/concept of how making it real, feasible and engaging is what giving it value. And that’s the bottom line.

Buts.

Since I am in a rather communicative mood in this wonderful Sunday afterMoon there’s another discrepancy I’d like to clarify here.

Undoubtedly misunderstanding the subject matter my friends and teachers keep protesting against the use of the word ‘but‘. But, they say, is a negative word, which creates contradiction instead of coming to a peace of matters. Ha !

Well, you can certainly use ‘and‘ instead of ‘but‘, but it won’t make anyones life easier or reveal, as they say, a spiritual knowledge, and I am certainly vote for a knowledge than for a peace.
You could also consider that ‘but‘ used after ‘yes‘ (”Yes, I agree., but &^*(), isn’t it ?”) is there not to create a contradiction, but to bring a new edge of the question into the sight. So ‘but‘ is not only positive, but most beneficial word in the world.

And thats how you know you communicate with a real debater. :}

Coolest uncool guys, pt. 1 – Adolf

Incredible. So much heart, how wisely put, how delicately emphasizes words they all want to hear, how philosophically inclined, how selflessly he puts it all together.
How noble it all sounds !

He speaks of children, of his country, his nation, future generations for which they try to do a Germany a better place. How selfless he encourages people to be towards their nation.

A pure phenomenon:

Yet it is incredible level of deception of ignorant people in that nation, who was promoted to obey (yet again) and _did_, in fact, obey without taking into account anything but the nobility of that speech.

The ironic thing is – i fell for it too when i watched it just now.

Curious thing is that to create such a change is an adventurous thing to do, why not make your own nation so much more powerful compared to the rest of the world. Not for the sake of fulfillment, riches or power, but for the sake of change. For the sake of experiment.

It is a common sense that when responsibility as such involved, one have no right for such ignorant and selfish experiments. But then maybe for that very reason Adolf was one of the few able to capture people’s interest in world-peace creation. World-peace viewed from a practical domestic point of view understandable to general masses.

That makes me think that creating the actual world-peace based on the pure love, loyalty and moral is not a close concept to a normal human being since it is not based on the tangible result. They were creating world peace for them self, for their kids, for people around them who spoke the same language, for riches of their country or them self. Thus the result from that theoretical world-peace is actually more-less distinct and real to be captured and understood.

But how bizarre the whole concept of deception, dogmatism and ignorance is. Its simply dangerous to be ignorant !

ps: nothing personal towards the nation !

Lynch on iPhone

I actually watched Blue Velvet on my iPod Touch one time.. Not that I’ve watched it for a first time on the iPod, but it’s just really funny.

And what’s ironic I actually feel his pain. Not that I was throughly bothered by the quality of sound or video but it just not right to watch real artistic film in the subway.

educational dilemma or ‘know vs. understand’

revised and updated as of Dec20, 2007 by Irina K. O.:

Have you ever thought how strangely based our education is?

Have you ever thought that we are in fact being judged by the level of our awareness or fact intelligence, rather than a completely different criterion – thinking and logic. We taught to know, not to understand in many cases.

The child who was bright enough to understand theory of relevance deeper and catch it why is it so important and useful for humanity will certainly receive a lower grade on the test lucking the awareness, for instance, that Albert Einstein was the developer or the theory.

No one bothers explaining what’s so useful and relevant about the relevance theory (both of them). No one teaches us to think deeper into things, how to examine things critically, how to filter the information by its trustworthiness, no one teaches us how to think logically !

It is generally assumed you either logical minded (mathematical or analytical they also call it) starting from year 2 when you place right shaped figure into accordingly shaped hole, or you never will be.

In our learning structure most rewarding thing is to know a facts/figures/events/formulas/theories and getting judged by same principle.While we are not ought to question each and every one of them.

__

“Obey” – religion taught us for last couple of thousand years; “obey” say parents, just because it’s easier to manage child that way; “obey” say teachers, because our education is originally coming from churches and religion.
__

Now think, what is the real drama behind ‘Obeying ‘ ? How much do we harm people saying: “Just follow the rules, don’t think about it..”; It’s certainly an easier may to govern and lead people to whatever you need them to do.

But at the same time, it is almost like watching television where things had been priorly approved for you to see and what’s good or bad has been determined for you. Isn’t it a little too totalitarianistic ? And aren’t we supposed to be a liberal society ?

Liberal society is mainly valued by the freedom of thought and expression. Yet they trained us for last couple of thousand years to obey the rules without questioning.

I am certainly not saying no one was questioning things, no one was questioning structures and rules before, but just look at the history and see what a small percentage of people that was. How in later years they try to grab peoples attention and make them active in terms of society and politics – but they were not taught to be so (curious and ask questions) from age of 5, nor from age of 10 or 15.

We try to encourage curiosity in people. Every single high school teacher, college teacher, university teacher says – come on guys, look deeper into it, look into the structure, are you sure you ought to believe it ? Explore ! – they say. – Think critically. Read more about it.

A good start. But the structure of education is still the same.. Curiosity is not rewarded. Critical thinking is left aside then it comes to ‘real paper with official title books’ and those students who constantly ask and question what teacher is saying to them are considered as trouble maker. And they are indeed a trouble makers in many ways, but only because they try to bring change which most people do consider as a trouble, as well as we unfortunately often look at things from a domestic point of view, not from the global. That what makes that kid a trouble maker instead of a properly acting human with rights, thoughts, questions and opinions.

We have to influence our educational system to be flexible about their judging standards. We have to educate crowd to think and to feel obligated to be involved and examine them self whether its right or wrong.

People ARE curious in the age of 2-7. What happens next ? They go to school. Where did all the curiosity go with millions of “Why” questions is not a mystery anymore I hope.

Education in early stages of life has to include the practical thinking and logic courses. It has to reward critical thinking and argumentative opinions which structures logically and make sense.

___

Here’s the interesting paper from Dr. Alec Fisher from University of Cambridge called “‘Thinking Skills’ and Admission to Higher Education”

http://iraoksman.com/Dr_Alec_Fisher__Thinking_Skills_for_Admissions_to_HE.pdf

But there’s a truly a problem in that paper. And the problem is – ‘Thinking skills’ is indeed viewed as a Higher Education tool and privilege. And that’s where humanitarian problems start and end.

More on the subject to follow.

personality tests: MBTI + MI

it is rather silly to post something like “What kind of tree are you ?” in your blog, but this has truly captured me and don’t let go. MBTI – Myers-Briggs personality indicator based on the Carl Gustav Jung’s typological theory.

And it is amazingly accurate. That is me for instance:

:}

Most importantly, however, I finally found quite a few like-minded people. Whole 3% of population !.. ;(

http://www.entp.org/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/entp/
http://centennialcollege.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5902145965

iWeb Generation – how soon would small web grow big ?

Being only few month old, iPod Touch, alongside with its brother iPhone, managed to fight its way to the very top of the personal devise (PDA) market. That is not the only war, however, new devise set in the market. After purchasing my iPod Touch (”iPod” further) I spent a very little time browsing “normal sized internet”, I actually browse it with my new iPod.

And every day to my great amazement I find a growing number of websites creating new format for their pages: it now actually fits into the relatively small iPod’s window (640×480). The new look has a name – “iPhone/iPod Touch web applications”, which can be accessed through Safari browser in your gadget. Originally having a simple web games and VoIP online merchants – web application list for iPhone products now contains a number of web giants like facebook.com, ebay.com, weather.com, gmail.com etc. (the full list can be found here http://ipodapplicationlist.com) Not to mention the build in applications such as You Tube by youtube.com developers and iTunes build-in store. It is thus clear that a size of small web is only a matter of time. How many companies would detect the trend before every single one of them will join the progress? How big the web usability issue would arise having yet another devise for a web browsing?

The dilemma of web usability is an old one. Daily thousands of web designers are struggling to make their website look good on user’s monitors researching most popular screen resolutions and browsers used. A whole new study has been created and websites like http://usability.com.au/ gain a birth. Wouldn’t it be a dream for a web-masters to have their websites viewed on one devise only with known resolution and parameters? On the other hand it’ll most likely add pain to the developers since they already have few different looks attached to their websites – for firefox, for IE, for flash, for html, for 1024×768 and 1280×1024, for mac osx and windows. Add the web-application view to it and you’ll have a very complicated list of needed resolutions to please a user. Yet it is a good thing, I believe, and the name to it is “Progress”.

To the language lovers all over the world – Erin McKean, the proper language scientist.

In recent weeks I spent enormous amount of hours watching the well known TED talks. All of them are indeed brilliant but the one that intrigued me most (given my present set of thoughts and priorities) was fascinating talk by Erin McKean called ‘Redefining the dictionary‘.

Erin is truly a language lover who strongly resembles a futuristic librarian-linguist in some 2030 in her red and aquamarine dress. I suppose, though, there will be a very little printed media at that point, since its costly, hard to consume and unreasonably formated. But back to Erin and her talk.

She discussed few subjects including the media consumption, usability of the paper/computer based dictionaries and their limited progress in recent centuries. She also placed a great notation on the “editing” or “revision” dilemma for a dictionaries and luck of proper judgment towards new words. I simply could not resist to add my 5 cents to her thoughts !

Here’s the comment I left on the TED page:

First of all i am throughly reminded of the New Speak in Orwell’s 1984 where the luck of vocabulary was limiting people’s abilities to feel and think. And indeed to keep our-selfs open to new words is the only way to make sure we are not bound to feel and think ‘what we are supposed to’.

secondly, inventing new words takes a great deal of creativity and language knowledge to express one self in such an unstandardized manner. And I will throughly disagree that creativity has ever been something to exclude if it lucked belongingness to a certain classification or acceptable norm.
I believe it is the highest stage of intelligence the ability to create something. Including even such tence subjects as languages.
Confessing that I had a delight of reading JKRowling’s books I will have to disagree to the statement that they are rather ‘non-eruditic’. (that just poked me, sorry..) She uses a great deal of vocabulary, not to mention her frequent introduction of Latin terms in personal or impersonal names.

Thirdly and finally, I would say that the whole ‘officially-edited dictionary’ dilemma is based on the media authority principle and consumption/usage of trustworthy content. They are maybe a perfectly trustworthy words but if they are not included it becomes dangerous to express them because of unauthorized content.. but it is rather sad and limited-minded. we don’t like it, now do we ?

**JK remark in comments by one of the participants, which actually made me write that comment, funny enough.

GMO. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Many different views have already been expressed towards a touchy subject of GMO. But what is GMO?

GMO stands for the Genetically Modified Organisms, a biotechnological breakout in late 70s that allows the replacement of natural material an altered, genetically modified bodies. The bodies as subject of modification can be any means of living creatures including animals, plants, or bacteria. More detailed is at Wiki GMO or in Human Genome article

Generally, Biotechnology is concerned with such living organisms (or, rather bacteria) as enzymes, which widely used in production of yogurt cultures and other milk products such as cheese, brewing beer, or preparing wine.

Worldwide, farmers from different regions of the world (total of 10.3 million) are using the Genetically Modification (GM) technology in order to increase quality and growth time of their products. Few of the most popular modified products are soybeans, cotton, corn, alfalfa and canola. In Canada alone as much as 6% of all food supply are genetically modified products. Just to note, those are the ‘official numbers’.

The GM technology started capturing the major audiences’ attention only in very recent years, prior being either left out unnoticed or else hidden as long as possible from it’s attention.
After wide acknowledgment that humans are, in fact, consuming the GM products, the society stroke back with anticipation and demanded explanation.

Here’s what I located in my search of truth. There are two sides of the question, one of which guarantees biotech products presenting no harm to human beings and that, on the contrary, are beneficial to society. The Monsanto Inc, biotech supporter and producer of Roundup pesticide created a series of interviews made by leading field specialists and scientists who claim that there’s really nothing wrong with technology. Here’s their video series with detailed overview of their views and statements Few of DM’s great benefits were such as: it was tested thus – is safe; it increases the quality of food and its nutrition level; it saves the products from diseases and pests; it even saves society from poverty and hunger in 3d world country, such as Africa.

On the other side we see a huge number of campaigns going against the DM foods all over the world. There’s a countless amount of issue related videos, some of which truly cheesy but have some interesting points including few about Monsanto Inc it self

and some of which are truly alarming

No one seems to hurry and prove that GM foods are, in fact, a harm for a health. Yet, without any notice of approval that those products are harmless they rapidly escaped the laboratories to the market without a hint of government approval.

Alarming indeed, especially considering the severe change in DNA of the GM products and its possible effect on the human beings. Will our kids have four legs, a tail or simply become 6’5” long ? Possibilities are undoubtedly wide and unexplored ! As ornl.gov states that “allergens, transfer of antibiotic resistance markers, unknown effects” may occur… I particularly enjoy the “unknown effects” since genetic modifications in organism usually occur in next generations

After digging the Internet sources I went to the store to purchase some groceries and to my greatest astonishment I found 90% of the content either containing the modified products or being modified it self. I then examined the substance of my fridge and discovered the similar situation.

Changing my eating habits would be rather expensive since the organic food cost more than genuine products on the market. Aftermath of the research, however, shows that this change is a necessity, unless we feel exceptionally adventurous toward the future generations.

“you have 5 drafts” or debate about deadlines and cultural differences.

yes, i do. I do have 5 drafts. (6 including this one.)

But, since non of them seems suitable just yet, i unfortunately have to say that I will not share my new media thoughts with you this week. But i will make sure to edit those to the presentable condition and post at least one of them by the end of the week.

Blog is a weird thing. I’ve been writing those for a while and familiar with those ups and downs in writing. It is thus most unusual been pressed to write blog under deadline conditions.

Of course, if you would put it somewhat like: imagine you are writing the weekly column for a new media design online journal and you are working under deadline, you will manage to come up with something every week without all this “inspiration rubbish”. Surely, I can’t agree more. But it all depends how you put it to your self. A matter of habit, I’d say. Blogs for me were always more of an inspirational sort of activity rather than a necessity. So, I can afford being ‘in search’. On the contrary, if my paycheck would have depended on it, I’d have to break my habits eventually.

The 6th week through interactive media program I am taking in Centennial showed that one of the biggest weaknesses is my most frustrating inability to cope with deadlines. So much, in fact, that it threatens to turn into a major turn point of my potentials being suppressed by time shortage, greatly affecting my overall performance. And it is all being aroused around the inspirational aspect of work.

One thing that is most uncommon to me (culturally-wise, or, that is to say, nationaly-wise, since I moved to Canada 4 years ago from Moscow, Russia) and that differentiates the views between my home country and Western culture is the perception of creative field performance.

Western culture made their point clear that no matter what you do you have to be productive in order to work in the creative field. It is thus means that there’s no such thing as inspirational dilemma of an artist struggling to get one piece done all his life. It is literally unacceptable if you are field professional. You are either productive getting something done literally ‘weekly’, or you are not suitable for the field and might as well go to the different working area. Preferably, other than creative. It has almost turned into a production line, which, to note, works !

On the contrary, in Moscow I’ve met many people in the creative fields who, upon hearing word “deadline”, were making scary grimaces of excessive disgust and saying they are better than that. That surely not how the industry works, since if it would, it would’ve died out in no time. But I am still talking about a good half of people freelancing in the creative media fields.

It all comes down to my somewhat lame but, nevertheless, strong respect of the western views and attitudes towards certain things. The age of the culture indeed matters as well as the age of the industry within the culture. There are things one culture is in a state of experiencing and tasting while other already gone through it and learned its lessons. Mature western creative media industry have overcome the threat and neglect of deadlines in creativity and accepted it as a valuable tool instead of picking their noses at it, while East (and by East I mainly mean my home country – Russia) is still struggling with ‘masterpieces’. Or at least flourish its thoughts that they are indeed a masterpieces..

Most valuable to know that, anyway.

and that’s how the announcements about delayed posts turning into trailed away debate about rhetorical dilemmas.. I hope this one will not turn into Draft#6..

Wait I’ll show you my overview of inspiring super person – Bill Buxton, who has definitely become my hero of a life time. I produce music too, Bill, can I someday become as cool as you ?..

Some Don Hertzfeldt for a bit of thinking.

Well, sure enough, most of the population have already discussed this man, but I feel obligated to introduce him to you, in case you have not seen his animation works.

Don Hertzfeldt – the creator of Academy-Award nominated cult favorite “Rejected“. But that is not it. Surely, it’s not.
Don proved himself being rather productive in his animation terms.

Some people may find it too open-minded. And even offensive. Even. Ha !

This is Don’s website, in case you’d be keen to find out more about him.
http://www.bitterfilms.com/

And, just to note, he have recently released DVD with full overview of his animation, in case someone would fall in love with him as much as I have.

Blogging, yet again.

Hello. I have many blogs. I said many things. Those many things years later I find extremely dumb and unworthy. So I suggest not to take this blog seriously.