memoirs on a rainy day

Christian Ward is a beautiful illustrator. Check out his portfolio.

I’m planning of going to the National Gallery of Canada (GMaps). I have a keen interest in modern art and the wife reminded me that the National Gallery has a great section on it.

I remember that I went to the National Gallery in 2002 the last time with Joanna. It was fun. Tomorrow, I’ll have a lot of time to spend. I read through the rules carefully and will be able to take some photos, since my camera qualifies as a hand held device. At least, that’s what I think.

I’ll walk around a bit as well. A lot of attractions are close by and I’ve never photographed them with a D200. I’ll have lots of pictures when I come back.

Parliament Hill is within walking distance as well. Actually, the TECO office is pretty centrally located. I won’t be taking cabs once I get there.

Incredible situated photos of Li Wei in Beijing.

Here are the pieces that I worked on last night for about 45 minutes. It felt good to do this amidst the craziness of the end of term.

Continue reading ‘Numerical Analysis Art’

Awesome moleskine art by Laure Volume. (via moleskinerie)

Incredible portfolios from incredible artists.

Banksy strikes again with his biggest London mural right underneath a CCTV camera! (via TomHawk)

The 12th issue of Bak Magazine is out, available online for free! (via cpluv)

Monocle is a great design mag. Here are some design notes on it.

Blogging has become a part of my life since I started in 2006. I blogged in other ways before in HTML files that were constantly updated from 1998-2003. I wrote this post about my blogging habit. Today, I will go into the reasons why I love blogging.

Suplado tagged me with a meme, so here are my reasons for blogging.

1. Power of blogs

More than once, I have seen a positive change in my life due to blogs. For example, there was the time that I had topped my upload limit in a month on Zooomr. I blogged about this. A few hours later I received a comment and an email from Kris Tate CFO of Zooomr. He reset my upload limit for the month so I could upload my photos. I really appreciated that. Earlier this year, I had trouble uploading my photos. Kris managed to resolve my issue in a few minutes.

More recently, I blogged about losing a Better Bottle from CamelBak. I was running at full speed in order to catch the bus. I made the bus, but immediately noticed once in the bus, that I had lost my bottle in my full out run. I asked myself which I preferred, losing a bottle or being in time for my university classes. It took only a fraction of a second to decide that I’d rather go to school on time. I will receive a new Better Bottle from CamelBak later this week, courtesy of their marketing department.

2. Immediate results

As an aspiring writer, photographer and artist, I love seeing an immediate result. This happens when I push the “Post” button in my WP dashboard. Immediately, my post is published on my blog and sent through my RSS subscriptions. With a good Pagerank, what you write has immediate impact as well. The power of your blog relies on how easy it is to find your content.

3. Exposing racism and other injustices

As a visible minority in a largely Caucasian population, I am extremely sensitive to racism. This means that I notice it easily. A look, a word, a gesture. I can interpret these when they are racist. I have said before that between France, Germany and Canada, Quebec is by far the most racist place I have ever lived. I won’t count Taiwan, since the Taiwanese are pretty much racist towards anybody. That’s not necessarily true, but from a certain point of view, it is.

4. Sharing my writing, my photos and art

From paperblogging, to watercolors, to photography, to creative writing, I do create things. Some of them are crap, others are good. In an effort to better myself, I post these. Hopefully some people will like them. I don’t really post them to receive criticism. In that sense, I am my own harshest critic.