Live or Memorex?

I've always been fascinated by technology and how we both we communicate with each other through it but also how it shapes what we say. So when the Kindle 2 came out and it was a product that people were really engaging in, I immediately thought about how does this affect poetry. We know it's a medium for novels and prose text, but what about the poem? Since I still had the layout files for Kali's Blade, I decided to transform the book into Kindle form. Because if I really want to know how this medium changes the face of poetry, I might as well dive right into it.

And not only put it up on Amazon, but also sell it at the special price of $0.99. Unlike the web, which shaped language, the Kindle brings about another important avenue for authors, the price of poetry. How does interacting with poetry on your iPhone change the experience? How does not having physical media to print change how authors make their work accessible to the public? And is the public willing to pay for it? If so, how much?

We know a good poetry book from a small press might sell 100 copies. 1000 copies would be astounding! But even author's who get their texts on their friend's reading course lists will be lucky to hit 1000 copies sold. Let's be honest. Plus how much of the actual cost of the book does an author really get? Not much because of the labor of production. But how many copies could you sell on-line for the right price? And while less and less people have room for shelves, there is growing storage on their computers. But do we want to interact with poetry through technology?

Right now Amazon isn't charging people to put their books on Kindle, so any price is a good price for now, but I suspect like the cuts publishers and distributor's take on paper books, how much Amazon eventually charges will affect the profitability of all of it. And since we're talking business, what of the publisher's, small print distributor's, and book stores? And even the non-businesses like Libraries? Imagine that libraries truly simply become cafes with reading tablets, instead of vast halls of books.

I'm not judging right or wrong, good or bad, I'm simply exploring possibilities. I've already had some lively exchanges with Jean and I'm looking forward to having lively exchanges with any of you!

Kindle Edition (will be up in a few days)


or

Print Edition

Is Google making us stupid?

I got turned on to this Atlantic Journal article that discusses how our use of the internet changes how we think.

I think writers have been discussing internet as a medium for quite some time. The article even discusses how each new technology changed the way we delivered information to each other had its naysayers that it would be the end of human brain function. And indeed there were pros and cons to each. Going from oral to written allowed vast amounts of information to be archived, but it also prevented access to only those who could read and interpretation and recording up to those who could write. The printing press causes phrases to get even shorter as it was time consuming to put in each word.

But it's not just google. Our language has transformed in ways because of blogging, and texting. And the way we use language changes the mind and body.

It's been a fascinating article that has stimulated various discussion with people I've sent it to particularly around techies who are always around technology. But also writers who constantly obsess over the page size of journals and paper.

The thing I find about Google is how we are redefining "source". I've googled some phrases to essentially get the same exact article word for word on 90% of the links sited. If this were a book, there would be a citation in regards to where this is from, but the internet barely had the original author's name, much less any reference to the dozen other sites that had the same article.

I know that Wikipedia attempts to try to have people verify their sources to try to really bring about true data, but even Wikipedia by its nature must succumb to the democratization of truth. If everyone says that this information is correct and no one steps up to correct it, then this is the "truth". And you have a younger generation that cites the internet as its source in their research papers.

Another question, is not just with Google, but do we take what we expect from Google and do we place that same expectation to other things in our lives. Do we presume that the first answer we get (how many of us troll to the 5-6 page of google searches) is the answer we need? And how much do we expect that the fastest answer is the most accurate answer? Or that we think that the answer we get is the entirety of the answer we need? How our knowledge becomes dwindled into summary.

On the contrary, if our minds are not filling with information necessarily, then what does that free our minds to do? If I don't need to know how to draw that parabola in Calculus because now my graphing calculator does it for me, then what other things can I free my mind to think about and process? At the same time, what are the skills and benefits of understanding how a theory was derived that I am losing because this computer did it for me? What knowledge is lost, what knowledge is gained? And in the end, how does this transform how we think and what we think about and ultimately the different directions society takes itself in.

The title of the article of course is meant to be provocative, but really it seems like how is google changing what we think of as stupid.

point and shoot

We've been looking to get a new point and shoot camera for a while now. We bought our last one about 4-5 years ago. It's still a good camera, but it is feeling slow and doesn't take as good of a resolution as the newer ones right now.

We have the hubby's real cameras, then we have the point and shoot what is nice and pocket sized so we can take pictures whenever inspiration strikes, which is nice. It's like a writer needing a pen everywhere they go. Our point and shoot has gone to New York, LA, Europe. A nice workhorse of a camera.

It's easy enough to buy a 8Megapixel camera for less than $300. Our 4MP cost that much 4 years ago. I tended to like the Olympus brand and had several very good cameras that were Olympus, but unfortunately their P&S were heading the way of the Sonys, the ultra thin with huge viewing screens. I'm not exactly sure who likes that, but I sure don't. Every time I tried to pick on up, I couldn't figure out where to put my hand and fingers to grip in. Am I supposed to delicately hold it between the thumb and forefinger of each hand with my pinkies sticking out? And how do I do that without it slipping through my fingers? And how am I supposed to do it with one hand?

From experience I know that we often hold the camera out at strange angles and just click, just to see what we get. And I don't think I could hold most of those cameras with one hand without smudging up the screen doing it. I love technology, but I most hate crappy design that prevents me from using the technology well. I don't need a smaller thinner camera, I need one that I can grip with one hand without getting a hand cramp!

So we settled for the Canon Powershot that (after the discount that the guy gave us to guilt trip us into buying a warranty that we still refused) was less than $200. A great deal!

Unfortunately, the store we went to had a lot of variety but none of the Nikon brand the hubby holds most dear. We do like to stay within the brand family. And we do like to stay with name brands that have traditionally been photography companies, so no Sony or Panasonic. Kodak is probably the only exception (and this is only because they were the last to get into the digital game and their first ones sucked; I don't know if that's still the case).

The Canon Powershot A720 IS still used AA batteries! (whoo-hoo!) While the others are running off of the Lithium batteries that run longer and hold more charge, for us they are not a good thing when we want to travel. When we travel, we don't want to remember if we recharged the camera, much less find a place to recharge the camera properly. And frankly, if you're desperate, you can get AA batteries everywhere in the world. And it's easy enough for us to have a stock of recharged rechargeable AA batteries with us. I know manufacturers are moving away from that as well, but like the rest of this post, obviously I dislike much of the direction of the P&S camera world right now.

In any case, I'm quite happy with what we got and it fulfills our biggest sell points: feels good in the hand/easy to grip, AA batteries, 8MP, good price. The pictures are pretty darn decent, especially the macros and the digital zoom ain't bad. The flash is really strong, so I don't know how long it will take to diminish the batteries using that, which is fine cuz we like using natural light whenever possible.

For accessories we got one of those small flexible tripods that you can wrap around anything, rather than precariously sit the camera on some ledge as well as a 2GB SD card. It's amazing that there's 2GB on something slightly larger than the SIM card in a phone. (That's postage stamp for folks unfamiliar with SIM cards). The guy tells us it'll hold about 600 photos one one card. The hubby then looks at me and asks, "Is that enough?" This coming from a guy who shot some thousands of photos on our 3 week trip to Europe. Um, 600 should be quite sufficient for me. Thanks!

favorite place on the web right now

My favorite place on the web right now is not Facebook, though I spend quite a bit of time there. No, my favorite place on the web right now is a place called, Live Mocha. It's a social networking site focused on language learning. They provide basic lessons in English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi.

So far I've signed up for the French and Spanish lessons. I've only glanced at the Chinese and Hindi. I don't think I could learn Mandarin on the internet. Those languages still intimidate me into terms of learning them. But it is nice to be able to keep up with the French and strengthen the Spanish.

The nice part is that it also provides written and speaking segments where you record statements that are then "graded" or commented on by a native speaker of that language. So, I've commented on written and oral statements submitted by those studying English. I haven't tried the other forums yet, but look forward to getting practice time with native speakers and such over the internet.

Geeked out goodness

I'm a geek and I love tech stuff. A friend sent me a link to this shirt:


It doesn't just glow, it actually tells you the strength of a nearby wifi router!

[quizzical blank looks abound]

Well, like I IM'd to my friend, wear this shirt and you'll be the "envy of all Geekdom"!

macworld musings

After a long busy week of meetings and other managerial stuff, I manage to find some time to go to MacWorld. I had actually gone there earlier in the week to watch the simulcast with other educational users, but didn't get a chance to go to the exhibit hall where all the fun is.

I think I paid for the exhibit hall once, then manufacturers realized, it's worth the investment to give our codes for free passes to the exhibit hall. It's regularly $45, and I don't know if it's really worth that especially if there's nothing jaw dropping to go look at.

There was the new MacBook Air, which is a pricy little lightweight notebook. For the vast amount of the public spectrum, it's not that useful. Even for me who would like a small laptop to reduce the load I carry around, it sacrifices too much functionality, but then again this is a mini laptop per se. Having said that, I told a coworker, it's really like going to the New York fashion week. Do people actually wear the high end fashion on the runway, no not really. But elements of those designs do eventually get filtered down to just about every clothing manufacturer so you can by elements of the high fashion tone in Walmart.

And really, this is what the MacBook Air and even the iPhone before that were. They are really about setting the tone for the entire laptop market. Already the iPhone touch capabilities are being incorporated into the trackpad functionality on the laptop. I suspect they'll be integrating that functionality to the rest of their laptop line as well. The push for smaller components, absolutely. Moving from the disk harddrive to solid flash drive memory, certainly. These things are expensive now, but as they become cheaper to produce, you'll see them in more and more products.

I loved the beveled contouring of the laptop. It made the laptop so much easier to grasp and to pick up from the table. In one sense it reminded me of a modern and more fashionable early iBook design (you remember, the one they called the toilet bowl lid, that had a handle). Both have rounder corners, and anyone who has dropped their laptop knows that a bad hit to the corner of most laptops will jar the thing asunder. The rounder corners provide a slightly flatter striking surface that I hope will disperse the blow.

The magnetic power cord continues to improve. In this case the cord is connected in a D fashion so while the plug is connected on the side, the cord exits toward the back of the computer unlike today's laptop where the cord exits from the side.

They've also brought along the new keyboard key design that limits the crevice space between keys where it seemed like all the dust and hair dropped into. Yech! Now is has that calculator button look to it.

The new laptop is improving upon it's environmental post-consumer impact by reducing the amounts of heavy metals in all components of the system. Hey, something to expect from a company who has former VP Gore on its Board of Directors.

I think the laptop is good for tech home folks who have a desktop but would like a laptop to work around the house. It'll be good for kiosk conference vendors and with classroom lab settings where you don't want the students loading anything into the machine.

I ended up finding a keyboard cover for my laptop from KB Covers. They also sold covers with the DVORAK layout which supposedly is much faster and ergonomically efficient than the QWERTY keyboard. I'd been shopping around for keyboard covers for a while but the other places were not selling their products at MacWorld. They had keyboard covers with extra large font, various colors, and ones for specific applications. Back in the day they tried to make you buy different keyboards for specific apps. Keyboard covers make so much more sense. I was really impressed by their variety. I also bought a World of Warcraft cover for the hubby.

I also picked up a brochure from ProClip USA for my sister the road warrior. They have all the car mounts so you can see your electronic devices at a nice safe height rather than in the coin compartment next to your seat. Helps you keep your eyes on the road.

Other than that it wasn't like there was this one great thing. I thought it was a really balanced MacWorld in terms of its offerings. There was one year it felt more like iPodWorldExpo.

I ended up clocking a good 3 miles of walking today so stopped by the food court at Westfield for lunch and beardpapa's to take home. I can't believe I inhaled one that fast. No wonder I'm not really hungry for dinner.

technotrash

We often took trips to Alameda County Computer Recycling Center to get rid of various computer and video equipment. Before they used to charge a small fee, now they have funding from the electronic recycling act so now you have no more excuses on holding onto your old computer because you don't know how to keep it from the landfill.

However, what we were left with were boxes of VHS tapes. A few were personal memories but alot of them were just tapes of shows before there was tivo. And we have boxes of old zip and floppy disks as well. What to do with that? Fortunately, there's Green Disk's Technotrash cans.

If you have 20lbs worth of stuff you can ship them the box yourself and pay a small processing fee. Or you can order one of their Technotrash cans (35lbs and 70lbs). You can toss in a whole bunch of stuff with your shipping fee already paid for. They ensure that your data will be sufficiently destroyed and what can be recycled will be recycled.

scrabulous

So I don't really know if Facebook is worth $15 billion, but then if you're microsoft $240 million is enough to place a bet that it might be.

In any case, of all the social networking sites, I like Facebook the most for all of it's little apps that actually create some level of interaction between the users. Favorite app so far, Scrabulous, which is basically scrabble games that you can have with up to 3 of your friends or with random other people who love scrabble as much as you do. Of course, since a game can run for several days as you wait people to log on, you do have all that time to wander through your dictionary.

(the one thing I don't like about online dictionaries? I can't just flip through to learn random new words. ok back to the actual post.)

Major bow down props to THE Carbonator as he slapped the word "Eminent" that also created three other words: "he", "em", and "ti". smack that! 96 points! oh, snap! He ain't a Zombie Lich for nothing!

So far Scrabulous is one of the more interactive and entertaining aspects of facebook, along with the Facebook Review, ala the North American Review that was recently published.

technically, no

A client who is now in law school was asking me how to get a copy of the Windows OS for his computer. While most citizens would be willing to stretch the licensing rules around what copies of software can be installed on what machine, alas, he's in law school now, and he really shouldn't be stretching anything.

I distributed software licenses for the campus for several years and had to actually read much of the "before you install" legalese that comes with software. And I often had conversations that started with, "technically, no..." and ended with "but in reality...". My client will have to wait til after he gets his law degree and maybe even after he passes the bar before he can mar his squeaky clean intent of the law. So for now, he's just going to have to shell out the cash.

Get your feel on

I saw this coming once the iPhone came out: iPod Touch!

It's really what everyone who doesn't want to switch to ATT wants from their iPod. What I didn't realize is that they would put wi-fi on it too!

This is definitely the hot ticket item for this Christmas season, and it's only September!

why facebook kicks myspace's ass

Can you say Zombie fights? Oh and throw a few vampires and werewolves to boot.

Facebook is interesting in the way it's changing how the socializing works on social networking sites. It's not just post, comment, flame. There are all these silly little things that may or may not add up to much, like zombies fighting vamps, but they are entertaining. I'm not sure how much of the "poking" and other novelties will build themselves into offline relationships. I mean, when I see one of these friends offline, will I bring up in the conversation, "yeah, my zombie sent your werewolf a can of whup-arse".

But maybe. I did ask the question on Facebook, "What part of the world should I visit?" One answer from fellow Meritage Press author, Ernesto was Mexico City, when he's there. Then I reply, "ooh, how about a Meritage Press author reading in Mexico City?" And while we haven't spoken seriously about dates and location, since afterall Ernesto is not in Mexico City right now, I'm interested to see how facebook and other social networking sites manifest themselves offline. Blogging has brought about quite a bit of interaction offline, but seems more on the cerebral end.

I do behave differently on facebook. Like is it ok to "poke" a colleague from work or turn them into a zombie? I stay on the conservative side and only bite people when bitten. If you attack me, well then, it's on! Then I'll "buy" you a picture of a drink later on.

social networking

I had been on friendster for a while. Friendster the social networking site that really launched a thousand ships, which in the US has been drowned out by myspace and facebook, but has a rekindled life in southeast asia, more specifically the Philippines.

I got a myspace page to keep in touch with some cousins, and then got a facebook page to keep up with some other cousins. After using them for a while, my favorite is facebook.

Friendster is ok if people actually bother to update their pages. So it's similar to where most people's blogs and previous to that personal websites ended up, the haven't been updated in years pile of harddrive server space. If people want to do a web archeological dig, it would be on all those dated websites. But having been the first, then it's population i've found is mostly late 20s, early 30 something folks, at least in the US. Oh, and Philippine Filipinos. i did manage to reconnect with people from high school and college.

myspace, I knew I would eventually dislike simply because of the layout and the unending advertising that seem to bombard you everywhere you go. But myspace became the hot spot for bands and other musical people, so everyone with a guitar or who thinks they can sing, is on it. I find most people's pages myspace layout completely obnoxious as in the early web html scripting days when we all learned to make text "flash" in horrible loud colors, when we thought white text on black background was the coolest thing, kind of obnoxious. And even worse, people have learned to spam on myspace which makes it even less worth my time. But this is where much of the fam is, so I stay.

facebook started out as something to keep in touch with family, but then someone from work found me on the network, and then another person. And then Ernesto found me, then Mr. Carbonator found me and soon after the other tech savvy poet Mr. Vince Gotera, and so on and so forth. So by far, my group of friends here is perhaps my most diverse in the sense they are the most diverse in terms of which part of my life they come from as well as diverse in terms of age/work/where they live, etc. And while I really like the facebook layout, I like writing on people's walls and i like the newsfeed that updates what people are doing on their facebook pages, part of me is a bit apprehensive in terms of do I want people I know from work to know this part about me? Then again, I work in technology, so it shouldn't be a surprise that these people are here.

Unlike others who use the social networks to meet people, I usually only approve people that I know in person or know online through some project. So I don't really have anyone on my friend lists I only know from their social network page.

People claim you get to know alot about a person really quickly, but I tend to disagree. Certainly you know alot of chit-chat information (fav movies, books, tv, etc), but not sure if you really learn that much more. Besides, you assume that they're all telling the truth about themselves.

We'll see where this goes. In the meantime, i find it rather entertaining this evolution of online personas.

Joost Me

Anyone want to provide a Joost invite to little ol' me who only watches tv online? Pretty please?

BOINC

This what I get sitting for hours next to a client who is a rocket scientist...literally. Well he launches stuff that's like 2 steps above model rockets. Things that break the sound barrier and launch themselves 10,000 ft into the air.

Anyway, if you can't decide between looking for alien life (SETI) or folding proteins, you can use the BOINC client and now use your non-used personal computing power for a number of cumulative processing power projects.

The basic idea of all these projects was to use all that idle processing time that computers have when they go to sleep or you're away from your desk. SETI was one of the first, and used the combined computing power to look for signs of life in radio signals collected from space over the years. Folding was a great project from Stanford where your screen saver was a picture of a protein folding. The way proteins fold can create enzymes or cause disease, so learning how and why proteins fold in certain ways could be used to find a cure for various diseases.

counting sheep

A client of mine directed me to this cool screen saver Electric Sheep which gives you a screen saver that is voted upon by all the users of Electric Sheep. And only the popular survive to reproduce with other screen savers out there to evolve into new ones.

tick tick grind tick

That's the sound of the eminent demise of a harddrive on your computer. Most harddrives right now are made of a stack of round plates, like a old jukebox. If they get out of alignment they can start grinding on each other or like those old lps they can start to skip.

However, it's darn near impossible to tell when your harddrive is about to go. Harddrives can last between 3 to 7 years or so. Usually people run out of room on the harddrive before the harddrive breaks, but sometimes that's not the case. Harddrive damage can just look like the operating system is messed up or a slow computer. But a coworker pointed me to this freeware called, "Smart Reporter, which polls your ATA or SATA internal drive just to check on it and it sends an email if it's not ok.

We plan to install this on all the clients, especially the eMacs which are notorious for falling apart.

seduction of a mac geek

Before attending MacWorld today, I read the Open Source Sex column about "How to Seduce a Mac Geek." Apple has played itself out to be the cool geek products much to the appreciation of the hard core long term Apple fans who are really actually more geeky than cool but are relatively more cool than the rest of the computer techies.

But as I walked the MacWorld aisles it was more about the seduction of a mac geek and there's only one way to do that, electronic gizmos like the iPhone which rotated under glass and had a security guard next to it telling people not to touch the glass because your fingerprints are messing up everyone's pictures. I know I took a few.

Other cool things: a visor, just like Geordi LaForge, that you connect to your video ipod to watch videos. They've been at MacWorld for the last 4 years or so and they're product gets better and better. But whatever happened to your mom telling you not to sit too close to the television? I didn't get a chance to try them on this time, but the last time I tried I thought they were a bit to warm to sit near my eyes. There was a cool new ergonomic chair where the seat isn't locked in, but swings as your move around.

Of the swag: I got a pen. There were some pins, and a gym bag. And one place gave out wine bottle stoppers. Hmm...maybe they think cool and hip Mac users drink more wine.

Most of the booths were for covers: ipod, phone, laptop covers, all with different designs to make your plain colored ipod more unique, but not. I bought an external 500GB drive at a good price which I'll use to do some video work we got hired to do for a wedding anniversary. And I bought a messenger bag that's a bit more ergonomic for my back. It's called the Bum Bak Packs and it goes over two shoulders so the weight is more balanced.

I have a regular messenger bag. But last week, I pulled a back muscle coughing from my cold, so the assymetrically balanced bag is killing me. Back isn't too bad so long as I do lots of stretching (thank you yoga tapes) and don't sit still. So, I need a better bag that can hold all my "cool Mac gear" and look "cool and hip" but not wreck my hip.

Actually, I'm not big on the look of cool and hip. But what I like about Apple is how it makes functional stuff really cool and hip anyway. A cell phone, I'm going to use it anyway, even better that it's cool and really functional. But I'm still not paying that much money for it. Though if you view it as a mini-computer, which it really is if the email truly has full functionality as opposed to simple text messages, then it's cheap. In any case, it's fun to look at in the meantime.

And truly, you want to seduce a mac geek? Ask Steve Jobs. He's the only guy that make an entire hall of Mac Geeks ooh and ah with orgasmic geek thrill.

cool and useful technology

Google Maps comes to the Treo! It works on the Palm telephones with data connections. You can look up directions and check live traffic data.

tv without a tv

My latest television fave is ABC's "Ugly Betty" based on the telenovela. The story of Betty Suarez and the former fashion magazine she worked for, Mode. But since it airs on Thursdays bowling night, I've had to catch the reruns online. Both ABC and CBS have been posting episodes of the more popular shows that people can view online. Each episode is "sponsored" by a specific advertiser which interupts the show three times to display 30 seconds of their online ad. You do need a faster connection to view it and it sometimes stalls even on our dsl, but it's not bad considering you don't have to watch any of the commercials and watch your 1 hour show in 42 minutes.

San Francisco has finally agreed to a contract with Google and Earthlink to take the city wireless. This will be quite a challenge considering that cell phone reception is hard enough in its sloping hilly streets. Mayor Newson says this will bring the internet to low-income residents for $12.95/month with higher wifi rates for those who want to pay $21.95/month. It will be interesting to see how ATT and Comcast react to the deal. Will they lower their internet rates or ramp up the bandwidth to their customers? The Tech boom of the 90s led to a build up of the internet pipelines. But the actual users have not tapped into these speeds mostly due to a lack of infrastructure from the pipeline to the residences. Will this push for hi-wifi get the other companies to bring us the extra mile for users to really be able to download and watch a movie online? We'll have to see. OK, so what company is going to supply the Tenderloin and Hunter's Point areas with computers? Of course, Google complained that it was so much easier to work with Mountain View on this deal. Duh, Google practically owns half of Mountain View and probably more than half the residents already have hi-speed internet.

Lastly, in tech news, there's plenty of buzz on the Apple phone set to debut at MacWorld next week. I actually tend to stay out of the rumor mills regarding Apple stuff and just wait to see what they actually announce. Cuz they've announced stuff only to say it's not available for 4 more months anyway. What's another day to see what's coming out. Last year's Macworld was more like iPodworld which disappointed alot of Mac Mac fans, but I think this one will take a turn to Apple branching from it's desktop/laptop hardware, which is an interesting move since they haven't been too successful with that before. Regardless, Job's ability to create a Reality Distortion Field is legendary. And even though his keynote speech outline is practically trademarked and predictable, bottomline is that it works and it works well. I am looking to see how iTV progressed since he last introduced it and I'm wondering if the Apple phone is actually something people would like or a cover for introducing something really good. The iTunes phone was a bit of a dud.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll have another cute girly geek shirt like the "Mac Chick" shirt I got last year. I'm done with the baggy t-shirts and it's nice to have something more girly than geeky and not just because it's in pink.

deux mil six

For the most part been partying since Christmas. And now everything is catching up with me and I'm sitting here with nursing a cold. I really do need vacations from my vacations.

Saturday we had our Guitar Hero party of a few friends and cousins. We set up a screen, projector and sound system to get that large screen gaming effect. While everyone else's hands cramped up hitting the blue, red, green, yellow, and the all dreaded orange buttons on the playskool looking guitar device, my cousin's friends played like they were typing a paper hitting 95% on expert settings for songs, even on songs they never knew. Hmmm...somebody's not studying in college. Actually, my cousin says they study for 50 minutes with a timer then they get 10 minutes on Guitar Hero before getting back to studying.

A friend of mine brought Intellivision Lives for Xbox. When my cousins looked at the box, they commented, "wow these are like from the 1970s!". One even guessed they were from the 1940s. Indeed technology is so ubiquitous in their generation that they can't even imagine how recent a development all this technology has been.

We'll have to do it again when one of us gets a Wii.

Sunday we slept in before checking out the "Pioneers of Philippine Art" at the Asian Art Museum. The display that includes Luna, Amorsolo, and Zobel closes January 7. Indeed transnationalism is not a recent phenomena, and all three were highly influenced by Spanish art and Zobel had studios in the Philippines, US and Spain. Luna moved from the historical scenes of "Spolarium" to painting current day people. Amorsolo most known for his colorful idyllic provincial landscapes also remained in Manila during the Japanese bombing and sketched the war as it happened. I really enjoyed his subtle use of color as it transitioned between light and shadow. Zobel a modernist who painted with a syringe to achieve the thin linear lines from the oil paints is both a contrast to and by-product of Luna and Amorsolo's works.

Afterwards we stopped by auntie's house for a few hours where the electricity promptly went out for 2 hours. Nothing like a brown out to make Filipinos reminisce about the Philippines. One of the women even recalled how her area had no electricity for a month. After the brown out we headed to the sister's house to spend time with the nieces. At midnight, the neighborhood went nuts with fireworks and the neighbors stepped outside with their noisemakers.

It's back to work tomorrow and a new year to ring in.