A.Blog

Day at the Beach

Amy — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:05:00 +0000

A nice, sunny yet breezy day at Jones Beach, Long Island. Woke up early to buy some picnic foodstuffs¹ from Trader Joe’s and then took the LIRR to Freeport.

I spent most of the day reading a trashy fantasy novel and sunbathing but once in awhile I waded into the ocean.

a French baguette, baby carrots, tomato basil hummus, vegetable potato chips, herbed goat cheese, mozzarella, prosciutto, vanilla and chocolate macarons

Visualizing Hip-Hop: 50 Cent vs Biggie vs Nas vs Jay-Z

Amy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:31:10 +0000

Using the visualization method I wrote about in the last post, I created graphs charting the discographies of 50 Cent, Biggie, Nas and Jay-Z. This time around, two kinds of readability scores were also charted (or is it visualized?), the flesch score¹ and the SMOG score². You can check out this visualization here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Readability_Test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog_readability

Visualizing Jay-Z

Amy — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:42:38 +0000

One of the many things I’m doing this summer is interning for Tahir, at Eyebeam. I’m creating a few visualizations from the data that he is compiling for Hip-Hop Word Count, an ethnographic database of hip lyrics from the 70′s to the present.

The first data pack I had access to was Jay-Z. For the image above, I used Protovis¹ and re-purposed the Parallell Coordinates example. The data represented are: the year the song was released, word count, syllable count, and sentence count. I’m still working on this particular visualization². I need to figure out how to make the data more meaningful³. I also need to refine the UI a bit⁴.

which I found easier to use for visualizations then Processing because in Processing, I’d have to mess with tons of for() loops and lots of declarative statements for drawing data points and axis’. It would be aces if there was a Protovis library for Processing.
just finished re-formatting the data
I definitely should add the song names, but what else?
this is interactive, but I’m not ready to make the live version public yet

Camera Obscura and The Love Language concert at the Grand Ballroom

Amy — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:16:01 +0000

Jess had won tickets to the sold out Camera Obscura show at the Grand Ballroom and she invited me along (thanks Jess!). I haven’t been to a real concert in awhile so I was excited. Also, Camera Obscura is one of my favorite bands and my mood for their albums happens frequently enough for me to consider them so.

Here’s a single from their latest album, My Maudlin Career: Download audio file (01-French-Navy.mp3)

The opening act was The Love Language, which I wound up liking alot. I’ve been playing their latest single Heart to Tell alot. Download audio file (06-Heart-to-Tell.mp3)

Camera Obscura went on and play songs from their previous two albums, as well as some new songs¹. More photos here.

though they may have been songs from their first album, which I haven’t listened to

I wear sunglasses indoors

Amy — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:33:44 +0000

And here’s what the back of the page looked like:

Blank (toy) canvases

Amy — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 22:55:21 +0000

I’m getting ready to work on a few custom vinyl toys. I have two 7″ inch MUNNYs and one 4″ TRIKKY (a cat instead of a monkey).

For the TRIKKY, I’m going to create a black and white Bat Kat:

I’m going to sculpt the mask, gloves, and Bat insignia out of Sculpey clay. I figure since I’m still starting out with vinyl toy customization, I’ll stick with black and white and a simple concept (hence the slight copyright infringement).

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the 7 inch toys. I think I’m going to turn one of them into a Femme Fatale and use the other one for free doodling with a Sharpie (apparently with Sharpies, you don’t need a primer).

Stayed tuned.

Business cards printed!

Amy — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:45:07 +0000

I had moo.com print out my business cards and I think they did a good job. I was expecting the colors to be off because I wasn’t sure if the file I sent had the proper CMYK color settings, but the cards’ colors are near perfect. Also the cards have a good weight and silky smooth texture to them. I think for the next batch of cards, I’ll make the grid background on the contact info side, darker. Maybe, for the other side of the card, I would have some cards with a teal background and some cards with a yellow background.

Designing my business card

Amy — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:37:24 +0000

I finally got around to designing my business card. I’ve been putting it off for awhile because there was no motivation to have a business card. I wasn’t looking for a job and I’ve always been pretty lazy about networking and such.

However since I need to find a summer internship and a more permanent-ish job after graduation, I figure I should probably sit down and get to it. Also, in a few weeks, my department will have a showcase of projects that the graduate students have been working on. Various members of industry will be visiting, so there will be opportunities to pass out business cards¹.

So for the design of these cards, I started out by looking at some the conventions I used for my portfolio site. The font is the openType, Museo Sans and the color scheme is MYS (Magenta, Yellow, Seafoam Green). I thought it was best to follow the design of the site, to establish a kind of self-branding. It also made making decision easier, as I’ve already made those decisions for the site design. There is one departure though. I made the front of the card, one solid color. I thought this would be more eye-catching, as opposed to having many smaller blocks of color, like I do on the site.

I will probably sleep on this first iteration and maybe tweak it later. Then I’m going to send it off to get printed at Moo.com.

and hopefully snag a gig

Moonrise over Atlanta

Amy — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:39:07 +0000

This photo doesn’t¹ do this view from my window last night any justice. It really was quite lovely. I stopped what I was doing² and gazed at it for a bit.

Do you ever feel your digital camera is holding you back?
procrastinating on the Internet

Celebrating my 25th Birthday

Amy — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:50:15 +0000

This past Saturday I celebrated my 25th birthday. It was food-themed for the most part, which is just fine by me because I love food.

Rob got me Almost Meatless as a present and Arren got me some turtle fudge from Kilwin’s.

Also, for my birthday I thought it would be a good idea¹ to eat the Double Bypass Burger for my birthday dinner at the Vortex Bar and Grill here in Atlanta. Here’s the official menu description:

Topped with two fried eggs, six slices of American cheese, and eight slices of bacon, all served between the two grilled cheese sandwiches that we use in place of the regular hamburger buns.

In preparation, I only had fruit and salad for most the day. When I ordered the dinner that night, the waitress was unfazed. The burger arrived, and it didn’t seem as big as I thought it would. Here’s a video of me tackling the burger (9 minutes, 4 minutes of which are of me chewing and rolling my eyes back).

I didn’t really taste the burger, I was more focused on finishing the burger. Also, I had to divide the burger in two because I couldn’t fit the whole thing in my mouth. So, one portion was a grilled cheese sandwich with a burger on top (the meat was adequately juicy) and the other portion was a grilled cheese sandwich with fried eggs, bacon, and cheese on top of it (the breakfast sandwich portion). I also subconsciously managed to eat a good amount of my tater tots (which are always very good). The meat didn’t really get to me, it was the massive amounts of cheese. The next day, I just ate salad and fruit in an effort to detox.

So, last year I had written that I felt stagnant, that is certainly not the case this year. My 24th year of life has been pretty eventful, for one thing I got into grad school and I moved to a different city that was completely different from New York City. I also paid off my student loans. I learned how to do lot of different things like, silkscreen and Processing.

I don’t think I feel old at 25. Sometimes I still feel and see the world (and sometimes act) like a kid.

it’s wasn’t