Richard Eriksson

"He was already telling me about the very important book -- with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority." [link]

Boris gets an email from the development team. I'll send debugging reports about the altitude problem. [link]

A figure skater herself, Julie provides insight into a sport I can't not look at when I come across it on TV. [link]

That gives me a month to read last year's selection. Oops. [link]

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In other words, it doesn't tell me what to think about it. Looking at the works even gave me an idea for a piece. I know! [link]

I attended the conversation hosted by Gordon Price with Jacques Khouri and Margaret Mitchell, activists in Kitsilano and Little Mountain, respectively. [link]

Last night I attended my first meeting of the Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) Mapping & Wayfinding group. They are a group of mapping enthusiasts who want to organize collaboratively mapping Vancouver's public spaces and have some interesting ideas on how to do so, including a web service with a REST interface, but also hand-drawn maps. Let it ring throughout the world that I consider Joey deVilla the master of the hand-drawn directional map, after showing me how to get to his work from his former house back when I visited in 2005.

Having heard about it two hours before and deciding to go with one hour to spare, I pre-loaded two of my maps on Flickr. One was the map I made of my bike route home, and the other was the map of a SkyTrain Explorer walk in Burnaby. I got to talk about the latter a bit, and showed off my GlobalSat DG-100, and we talked about the different methods to track points when mapping out various items in the city, like surveillance cameras, bicycle locks and billboards. (Especially "non-conforming signs": the CBC has a short story on the Lee Building advertisement that Vancouver City Council ordered removed after the owners lost their court battle to keep it up. Read more at the VPSN's page on corporatization.) I suggested taking a photo, since the times will match up with the GPS logger, but there are other good, paper & pen methods too.

After the meeting, instead of doing the dishes, I looked deeper into geocoding on the Mac and added the 'geo' microformat to all of my Flickr photos hosted on justagwailo.com that are tagged with a longitude and latitude. A good example is the photo I took of Dave Olson: if you have Firefox and the Operator extension, you can use the actions associated with location to get KML (Google Earth) or view the location on Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps. (I already provide a small Google Map on each geotagged photo hosted on my site.) At last night's meeting, I also learned about geocoder.ca, which gives you latitude and logitude of locations if you give them a fuzzy description (like an address, or an intersection). They also have an API, for free or for fee. Wasn't there a web service floating around that would accept your text and send you back geotagged HTML if it found what it thought were locations inside that text?

I haven't decided whether to participate in the billboard documenting effort—it will depend on how much work surveying a quadrant will be—but I plan on attending their next organizing event. The next VPSN Billboard project meeting from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the MOSAIC Community Meeting Room, located at 1720 Grant St. in Vancouver BC [event listing]. Just for fun, that previous sentence is marked up in the hcalendar event listing microformat.

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"While many commonly popular definitions of creativity amount to little more than references to self-expression or flamboyancy, we designers should not be so lax or obtuse in our concept of it." [link]

I've been using it, via Ma.gnolia, on my blog. I'll investigate the API in order to use it directly. Interestingly, accounts are OpenID-only. [link]

The trance/electro house producer knows Tommy Lee, and has a DJ name/online handle with a story behind it. [link]

In case there was any doubt that he is a real American war hero. [link]

For those of us who spend half (or more) of their time in a terminal window. [link]

Keeping consistent with my desire not to hear my voice, I haven't listened to it yet. But if you missed it the first time, now you can! [link]

The Sessions I Attended At Northern Voice

In point form, as is the style of the time, here is how I spent my Saturday.

• missed the keynote speech. I'll catch the audio later on.
• instead of slacking with Stephanie, Victoria, Kim and others as long as intended, I visited Nancy White's presentation advocating we take some time away from the textual world of blogging and look at the imagery. And even create our own. I'll save the story for how I came up with bubble ice cream for another day.
• attended Dave Olson's Fuck Stats, Make art presentation (Northern Voice wiki page with notes and links), which showed his personal journey to hone his craft and demonstrated how others can take their own journey.
• after giving Arjun Singh's presentation a try, I snuck into Alan Levine's presentation on storytelling, but only to get a good seat for the next presentation...
• ...titled The Other Side of Two Dimensions with Vancouver fashion photographer Kris Krug and Vancouver commercial and fine art photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, the latter talking about photography we can feel.
• after skipping the penultimate session, I attended Stephanie Vacher's talk on design in the new media world.

What I Learned From Northern Voice

During MooseCamp, specifically PhotoCamp, I learned that cloudy days are the best to get colour from the objects and people I'm documenting. Also, for portraits, bring the studio to them and tips on where to take portraits from (e.g. shoot down to make them look better) stuck out for me. The rest of the conference I closed the door of knowledge and opened the window of inspiration.

Who Challenged Me At Northern Voice

Whether they knew it or not, intended it or not, the following people challenged me to think a little harder about creativity and craft. People close to me wonder why I don't identify as being creative. The following Northern Voice speakers have me wondering too.

Dave Olson challenged me to step it up a notch, and to consider another media form if I'm struggling at the one I think I'm good at (writing). Podcasting, maybe? I don't like the sound of my own voice, so that strikes video out as well. Photography is the medium I sunk the most into already, so I will try to bring the SLR to more places, make the same mistakes everybody makes when they start out, and document the process better. I'd like to learn how to draw. And sing. Outside of the conference, he remarked that he likes to find a third place, away from work and away from home to be creative. This has me thinking of the ideal place to work somewhere (and on something) not domestic and not commercial, but somewhere in between.

(I know that my desire to learn how to sing directly conflicts with the angst about hearing my voice, so don't bother pointing that out.)

Nancy White challenged me to look at the beauty of the visual web, not just the written web. I do prefer visiting an individual article directly, especially articles intended for web browsers (and not printers). Nancy, by challenging me to think visually, to give drawing or other graphic form of expression and honest try, challenged me to rediscover my sense of wonder, a nice little nudge to remind me I wanted to do that anyway.

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward challenged my thinking on Flickr and the social photographic web, disagreeing with Kris on whether it should be rejected. Through the tension between them we learned about two styles of photography, both of which contribute to our understanding of the subject. He also challenged me to think about lighting and the third dimension, making the physical photograph part of the photograph.

Stephanie, nervous as she was during her first time public speaking, challenged me to think about the process of my "designing". If I understood her correctly, she challenged everybody in the audience to investigate what it means to design and to, if they can get themselves in the mindset, think of themselves as designers.

Dave, Nancy, Alex, and Stephanie: I accept your challenges.

Photo credits, from top to bottom: myself; Cyprien Lomas; Randy Stewart; and Phillip Jeffrey.