California (Side A: San Francisco)

Posted on June 29th, 2012

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 5:16 pm

Since I’m taking a relaxing little 8 hour or so bus ride down to Los Angeles, I figure I can take little break and write something that for myself rather than something for Bilateral Warp or toonzone.

So, I lucked out and managed to score a pass to Google IO 2012. Thus, after a drive, a plane trip and a BART ride, I arrived in San Francisco, vastly too early to check into my hotel, yet late for the free breakfast Google provided all of the attendees present (the first of many free meals and free goods Google would provide.) Still, in terms of the stuff you’re supposed to be coming to IO for, namely informational panels, new product announcements and networking with other developers and tech enthusiasts, I have to say I’m just as pleased with IO 2012 as I was with IO 2009. There wasn’t as much in the way of live coding demonstations, but the information was quite useful. Those panels also made me realize just how much I’ve picked up from the classes I’ve been taking at Simon Frasier University. I’ve retained a lot more than I’d thought. The other attendees were quite cool as well; I had a lot of vigorous and fun discussion about all the new stuff Google dropped at the con. In fact, one of the discussions was so lively that it caught the attentions of a staff writer for the BBC. I don’t think anything will come of it immediately, but she did ask for my business card and contact information. Those discussions and panels were very exciting, and have renewed my passion for development. I can’t wait to wrap up school, and start making cool stuff.

Of course, while the previously mentioned elements are easily worthwhile themselves, Google always puts some frosting on cake by giving every attendee all sorts of tech goodies, apparel and toys. This year, they hooked everyone up with the surprisingly nice Nexus 7 Tablet, the (Made In The USA!) Nexus Q media streamer, the Nexus Galaxy cellphone and a Samsung Chromebox computer. Yes, they basically gave everyone four computers (all be it in very different form factors.) On top of that, I netted a couple Google shirts, some cute Android and Google lapel pins and even an Android Rubix Cube. It’s a silly amount of swag. I’ve already started to use the phone as my new Canadian cell phone, and I’ve already played around with the tablet. I can’t wait to dig into what the Nexus Q and Chromebox can do, but those will have to wait for a monitor or TV screen with HDMI inputs, and some WiFi. I’d write a whole bunch more here, but I have full review of the Nexus 7 coming over at Bilateral Warp.

I also managed to take break from the conference and poke around the city a little. Specifically, I took a bus up to San Francisco’s Japanese neighborhood, and paid my first visit the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright boutique. The second I entered, I was immediately thankful the staff was already busy helping another customer as I was absolutely at a loss for words. I had never seen so much Gothic and Sweet Lolita fashion in one spot, and it was really quite breathtaking. I know that at a technical level, houte couture from top line brands is made from fancier materials and with more delicate and intricate work sometimes, but seeing all of those outfits was something otherworldly. It was like I’d stepped into the film Kamikaze Girls, perhaps in part because I sort of had. Thankfully, I regained my sense by the time all was said and done, and between a quick call to Nursehella to take an order from her and the helpful staff at the store, I walked out of there with a lovely mint green, red riding hood-patterned skirt for Nursehella. If I hadn’t gotten a thing from IO, I think that store would’ve made the trip. I may be a tech geek by trade, but I am and always be a sucker for niche Japanese fashion.

However, like the title and intro says, this is part one of the journey. The next part will be my adventures at Anime Expo 2012 in Los Angeles. Considering this is my first time down there since 2007, it’ll be interesting to see what’s changed in 5 years. I already expect to a see a lot of companies missing, but I expect to see some new faces too. Good times.

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Play On On Play

Posted on June 16th, 2012

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 8:27 pm

Animatic is now up Google Play Music. Of course, that’s US only, so international people would still served best by Bandcamp. I am also working on some powershell scripts to try automate uploading my back catalog to different services, but school and finishing production on Rai Kamishiro’s and Nursehella’s respective albums have to come first.

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Oddly enough, this started as a facebook post.

Posted on June 15th, 2012

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 11:30 pm

I think I’m beginning to see that many of the friends (especially real-life contacts) that I’d most like to get an update from aren’t actually using social media regularly anymore. It’s at most the occasional photo, maybe a little blurb about catching a movie or going to a band. Rarely is there a moment of personal emotion, or at least feels like it’s been a lot less common. No talking about work (though in the NDA era this is no surprise,) no talking about relationships (perhaps to be expected as people settle down,) but even the university-aged people rarely talk about how classes are going (and I don’t see why that’d be a problem.) Everyone seems to play their cards close to their chest these days, even when that doesn’t seem necessary.

Though, maybe that’s a signal-to-noise problem.

After all, it feels like there’s been a massive increase in the amount re-shared content that I’ve usually already seen repeatedly. In a sense, re-shared content plays a role in face to face human interaction, but that interaction re-contextualizes and personalizes the information itself. It is also by default a conversation, and thus less likely to hit the mental filter of “saw that; can’t be bothered to comment further on it.” In a sense, you can’t have seen it, because it was already changed by the fact it was brought up in a conversation.

This leave all leaves me wondering how “social” social media is. If the future of Facebook is memes, old news stories, and self-promotion all relayed such that it doesn’t spur interaction, it’s going to go the way of MySpace. Facebook had a vitality because of new avenues of conversation, but conversation needs some personality to get started, and for the most part, wholesale re-shared content lacks personality. That’s not to say I’m not guilty of exploiting memes and internet pop culture myself, but in that sense, I exploit that information – I re-contextualized it when I put it in a song or a photo. It’s not just re-shared, it’s remixed.

However, I think a solution would be to have a means to block re-shared material from certain pages. This way, you could see the information shared that has personality, but stuff from content aggregators that only exists to be regurgitated could be filtered out, making the entire experience more personal. If part of the success of social media is the fact that it lets people connect in a fashion previously impractical (a broader range of people, a greater amount of transparency,) why have the artificial impracticality of a lack of fine filtering? In real life, you can take in the information from people you’d like to have, and ignore the topics on which you don’t share. More importantly, the topics you don’t care about don’t drown the information you do care about. Hyper re-sharing on Facebook breaks that real life consideration, and in this case, that change subverts the functionality and usefulness of the service. If you have to spend an hour on Facebook just to get at interesting content, you’ll stop spending time on it entirely.

That said, I’ve written this post while my site’s twitter bar is displaying a tweet I made about a news article I read on another site. Even after recognizing why social media is sometimes dysfunctional, it takes effort to not be that guy linking to stuff he read online. On that note, I relayed that news in own my words, trying at least to put my own character into the content, and that may be the difference.

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