blog.aka.me - Filed under 'Friends'

November 15, 2004

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ResFest 2004

My good friend Gaku is quoted in this article on ResFest 2004 over at The Japan Times Online.

This time, look for Tokyo-born Gaku Kinoshita's entry, "For Your Blossom..." The six-minute animated film tells the story of a little boy soldiering through a big, indifferent world and an encounter that will free him from his destiny. The spare drawing and subdued pastel color scheme work perfectly for this touching little tale. "I guess the biggest inspiration was coming from the conformist and conservative idea of Japanese society," 27-year-old Kinoshita said in an e-mail from London, where he works for an independent film-production company. It is stunning to realize that the filmmaker made "For Your Blossom..." on a laptop computer, and indeed, many ResFest films prove how much is possible with just a few thousand dollars worth of equipment -- plus plenty of talent, of course.

This theme is recurrent in his animation work. And it has given him plenty of food for thought which he has until now always managed to beautifully interpret for our viewing and reflecting pleasure. Check out A Clown on his website. Congrats Gaku, I'll make sure to catch the show!

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November 10, 2004

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| blogging | Friends |

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friendly new sites

In the most unexpected move of the past 2.5 years (!), my friend Raphaël has just launched his weblog Petit Bourgeois.

Convinced like The Register that weblogs were hurting the net, he had until now refused to launch his own, going to the length of closing his previous site when William Gibson stopped blogging last year... Now that blogs are everywhere (and that Gibson has started blogging again), he non-chalantly launches one. And to push the irony a little further, he starts by making a couple of posts in which he addresses us, his beloved 2-3 readers, and clarifies that we shouldn't expect much from it, no film reviews, no personal stuff, nothing that could make this thing an enjoyable experience for himself firstly and his potential readership.
hum... Raph... c-h-i-l-l-l-l-l

My advices for starting a blog smoothly (in general):
- don't talk to your readers, cos you don t have any yet.
- If you want to talk and engage a dialogue, don't leave messages saying that you are sorry for not posting anything or changing anything on your blog for a few days... first, if you have no readers it looks funny and secondly, you should take it easy... nobody's expecting you to post anything on a daily basis, do it at your own pace... We all know that sometimes people get busy... It sounds like I have been busy and you know my blog is not all in my life so I had to actually do some work...
- don't say you're not gonna post personal stuff and then moblog (OMG, you moblog too!! how fancy of you!) your friends...
- don't dedicate ONE entire post to a single link to The Register. One can hardly forget their URL and they don't need more Google Karma.
- make the top banner a link back to the front page.
- forget about trackbacks, they are useless, and an open door to potential spam.
- don't leave comments open on all posts.
- be VERY ready for comment spam, as in, have some tools ready for when they'll come. and they WILL come.
- provide a way to subscribe to comments so one can get emails when somebody replies to a comment.
- AND again! take it EASY, slowly, don't set yourself barriers from the start cos it will be a long journey, you might drop it a few times, get busy more than expected, get bored, get famous, put Google ads etc...

Let's enjoying buloggu! (would say people in Japan)

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October 27, 2004

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| Friends | Music |

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Researching into Music and Memory

Dider Hilhorst and Marcos Weskamp are currently working on a project that links music and memory. At this point they are collecting data to populate the database that will be used for the visualization.
In a form they have put online, they ask you to mention a specific song that you relate to a memory. You can even sketch out your memory, among other things! It's great fun, really!

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October 8, 2004

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| blogging | Friends | GPS |

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j2me bluetooth gps mo-pho-weblogging

AkuAku: j2me bluetooth gps mo-pho-weblogging. Another c.r.a.z.y demonstration of love by Dave for Mie.
How geeky cute!

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August 4, 2004

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| Friends | UI |

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Experience Computing

Sony's "Viable future alternatives to the keyboard interface" Flash presentation includes work (Gummi and Block Jam) by two of my friends at Sony Japan.

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August 1, 2004

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Urban geometrics poetry

Updated

[Pallalink] The perspective of �daily scenery�, which is corrected by the grid, has been transferred into another dimension by some simple geometric manipulations, such as repetition for axis, rotation for center�etc. Images, which are generated by those manipulations, contain a metaphor that is hidden description for various events; the spectrum of the lost boundary area. The invisible world is concealed under the all-too-common cityscape, where all the places are linked, that is to say, an entire universe.

A good overview of the work produced by my friend Kazuhiko Kawahara-san (alias Palla) is now online. Can't wait for the real book! The real book is here!! And I'm buying at least 5! Get them while they last... Only 50!

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June 1, 2004

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Chriskk tries Mogi

[Ore no Buloggu] Bumped into a really kewl mobile location based game called MogiMogi. Finally got my hands on the game, and experienced what the GPS on my phone can do. It's a trip to see my keitai pin point my location just with a few keystrokes, then find virtual items nearby, and even showing other users that are physically/geographically close. The character creation process was cute ... I love creating characters.

My friend Chris is giving Mogi a spin. I'm sure he'll enjoy it. There are plenty of new features recently like enhanced trading system, new items to collect that you can wear (the hairstyle collection with hats and afro...), new collections (samourai emblems) and new creatures you can summon and race against in the city to win flags and more points. The national map is now also available on the web interface (try it with test/test)! The whole of Japan is covered! whouuuuu! Read more here.

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January 16, 2004

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| Friends | social |

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Social Circles

[Social Circles by Marcos Weskamp] Social Circles intends to partially reveal the social networks that emerge in mailing lists. The idea was to visualize in near real-time the social hierarchies and the main subjects they address.

Check out the JapanBloggers list.

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September 3, 2003

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| Friends | GPS | wow |

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