On Blogging

Okay, so it's been a while since I've posted a real post here, and I'm excited about getting back into this. I recently graduated UC Santa Cruz this spring, and have been spending the summer researching and conceptualizing for an airport/airspace experiences collaborative art project, touring San Francisco (I grew up in the bay area and yet only now, coming home after college, am I realizing how amazing the city is! A nice touch of irony), researching architecture schools, and browsing volunteer and work opportunities. There's been a lot of time spent at home, sitting at the computer, hanging with my family and friends, and bicycling around my town (although, in contrast to my indoor computer usage, getting more time outdoors would be great).

I forsee my use of the blog as being an opportunity for me to share insights, ideas, and weblinks I've discovered and find interesting. I hope to also use the blog as a place for sharing stories and experiences from my adventures and travels. ...and, of course, I hope readers will write back for some nice e-conversation. I began this blog Fall 2005 as a way to document and share my study abroad experience in Firenze, Italy, where I studied in the pre-architecture program of Syracuse University Florence (a great school). I'll be honest, my blog posts from last Fall are pretty interesting!

I highly recommend reading blogs. They're hot stuff, and a great way to learn about all kinds of things written by all kinds of people. I ussually frequent on a daily basis an increasing amount of blogs, but over the past year my favorite has been Worldchanging.com. With various news and information about technology changing the world for better (or for worse), Worldchanging is a web-experience worth delving into; heck, it might change you! There are posts on technology, projects, people, ideas, and movements that have been, are, or will change the world. The site's authors strive for a green and sustainable future.

Worldchanging.com posts range from megacities in China and their futures, to emerging concepts such as the participatory panopticon (a personal favorite) and "g/local" (danah boyd's term), to solutions for climate change problems, to urban augmentation systems like denCity and Cabspotting (hello, SF!), to insightful interviews with folks like Adam Greenfield (author of "Everyware", a new book on ubiquitous computing), to creative attempts at economically-efficent green, collaborative architecture. So the site, basically, covers a lot of ground, and is worth browsing often. (The interests of architecture, media and sustainability tend to be reflected in the selection above).

Yesterday I discovered the blog Resarch, written by Brett Steele, director of the Architectural Association in London, and have been enjoying the many fascinating links Brett has posted. Through the Resarch site, I also learned of Infoaesthetics, a terribly interesting blog about information and communication graphics. As tied to my research with the airport/airspace experience project, I discovered these very interesting global mapping projects using images from around the world:

Geograph - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/06/geograph.html

Degree Confluence - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2004/12/degree_confluen.html

PLEIX's Netlag World Webcam Map video - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2006/01/netlag_world_webcam_map.html

LIFE24 Picture Mosaic, world view - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2006/06/life_24_world_view.html

World Processor - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/05/world_processor.html

Time Graphs on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/sets/140323/

USA Air Traffic- http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=222&ind...

Google Search Activity Map - http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/11/google_search_activity_map.html

And three more interesting sites:

Visualcomplexity.com, which is another great resource with tons of interesting and catagorized visualizations - http://www.visualcomplexity.com/

A visualization of the universe, a project which created an simulated image of the universe. astounding! This was found on the visual complexity site. - http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/

Generic Mapping Tools, a program for use with Gimp to construct maps with complex data - http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/

More on my research and explorations soon!