I am giving up iBlog. I'm not removing this blog entirely, and I'm not saying I'll never update it ever again, but for now, iBlog is not the solution it once was. (And to think that I only paid for a license this year, having enjoyed the freebie version from my .mac membership the past two years.)
This means Journler can take over. If you're on a Mac, give Journler a try. It's journaling software "with a dash of blogging." It's not a full-featured blogging program like iBlog, but I'm realizing that the full feature set isn't what I need right now. At the very least I will have my own archive of my words in my Mac, and not on someone else's server, and that suffices.
Please redirect your bookmarks to http://leigh.wordpress.com. And if my blogging visitors can spare a plug for My Second Life As a Verb, I will be most grateful.
Cleaning my desk is futile. I tried it last week. It stayed clean exactly one day before the objects of my various affections and affectations began to accumulate again.
I was staring at the mess on my desk when I heard about the bomb. At first, the report said it was likely an LPG tank explosion at Luk Yuen, a theory disproved not soon after by the bomb squad's report of the presence of C4 in the debris.
Mess: a group of people eating together, usually soldiers. An unpleasant or difficult situation. A state of embarrassing confusion. A person with a confused or disorganized moral or psychological outlook.
We worked throughout that awful day. Our building is across from Makati Med. It seemed as if there were sirens shrieking their way through the traffic every thirty minutes.
And what do we do, if those responsible are ever found? On the news, a woman cold in grief and anger said she hoped karma would return the favor, and even worse, to the bombers. Justice never feels like it's enough. But it is all we have, if we ever get it.
There's a trash can in Singapore with my headline on it.
Look, look! The first paragraph mentions a headline I wrote (with Ed's help) for the Dirty Jobs program, freshly premiered on Discovery Channel Asia. I am happy. Thanks, Ed.
I am so glad they didn't call it Twittr. Or Bloggr. I thought Flickr was quite the original. Now I have Tumblr. (Entitled, appropriately, My Life As a Vrb.) Can a woman become any more wiredr? Or unwiredr? Or so virtually put togethr? I'll take your best offr. No one will be the wisr.
Have you heard Sting's Englishman in New York bossa novified? I have. It's horrible. It's the song without the soul. It's a woman with blank eyes, shambling down a generic street. I don't normally mind the repurposing that goes on within pop music. I don't even normally mind pop music. But enough already.
This reincarnation of bossa nova is the new muzak.
Usually it's just me and available light. Last Thursday, I enlisted Mike's help. Not only is he an indentured art director, he is also a wicked photographer. Angel asked if I could do an article for Adobo, and I thought I'd write about my collection. (If I actually made it to the deadline, and they publish the article, please congratulate me on making it appear my obsession has something to do with my day job.) I did monitor my nouns; enthusiasts share abbreviations, reference points, an entire context of niche erudition that makes everyone else want to excuse themselves from the table and go stare at goldfish.
Scattered on the conference room table, a motley crew of pens:
The only pen standing is the newly-arrived Stipula La 91 (yes, a review is forthcoming, including my stupidest fountain pen moment). Among the others are a Wahl Eversharp Gold Seal, a Pelikan 400NN, a couple of Pilot E's, a Waterman Lady Patricia Inkvue. There's a Waterman 14 in there somewhere. A Pilot Murex, also known as a long Myu. The stubby green one is an Eagle Pencil Co. (Epenco) leverfiller.
He displayed extraordinary patience throughout the shoot. After I packed up the pens, he still had to do product shots. I don't think I'll ever get the pens to look this good again - thanks, Mike.
In my hands it has suffered, lately. The functionality! Oh, the functionality! The poor word, sheared of possible other-meanings, reduced to perfect unmistakable linearity, the tyranny of absolute clarity.
An accounts person told me to work on my "fluidity and semantics." There is the fluid nightmare unpunctuated of Ulysses, there is fluidity of the verb as the very metaphor in Steph Swainston, there is Bradbury fluid hiding in the secret canals of Mars, there is the fluidity of successive whip-snaps of realization in Jared Diamond's Collapse, and then there is this fluidity being asked of me: what is it? In as many ways as water can flow, there are variations and symphonies of fluid. I can only guess.
It is like playing hopscotch on a minefield, hoping one of my legs will blow up to prove me right - yes, see, there are mines here, Dorothy!
The guessing is what irks me, for I still have faith in the words, that they will be themselves in spite of my uncertainty.
It is like a good soldier being told to shoot at something somewhere in that general direction. Thataway! Spock frowns at Captain Kirk and another episode dangles, certain of a successor next week.
My desktop now has two running AIR apps: airpress and twitterAIR. AIR is Adobe Integrated Runtime. I like how the little AIRapps look and behave: like widgets all grown up. They are cross-OS rich internet applications deployed to your desktop.
Wordpress + AIR = airpress. It's a 0.3 (gulp) release. It imported my Wordpress.com entries without any trouble. I have a few quibbles about the UI. I don't think I need to open a separate text window to actually enter text in an existing window. My images show broken placeholders. Still, it's promising.
twitterAIR deserves the adjective "nifty." Just like Twitterrific, it lets you tweet and read tweets on your desktop. Unlike Twitterrific, it will run on Windoze. ;)
I downloaded and paid for Pixelmator today. Now this is what image editing software should be on a Mac. Download the demo version and start playing. It feels natural - if you're used to iLife and iWork shortcuts, it's only a short step to Pixelmator. It doesn't take forever to load, unlike Photoshop; I immediately made it my default editor for iPhoto. The UI is sexy. And I don't say that for a lot of UI's. Black on black - perfect for black MacBooks, and your inner Goth Lolita. I've tried the "new layer from iSight" tool, which uses my MacBook Pro's built-in webcam to take a shot and insert that as a layer. That function alone is worth the price of entry. Neat effects abound, especially under the Distortion dialog.
Presenting my first Pixelmator-iSight mashup, "The Horror." That's me and Derrick, an emissary of Darkness in a skirt, and watermelon flames.
I have been trying not to notice eBay's new tagline but it hasn't moved off the upper left of my screen in weeks, and there *is* something about the way "victoriously" is lettered, whizz-bang-kapow and all.
Is reading The Chronicles of Chaos in order an irony?
Thanks to two consecutive rainy afternoons and a snoring Lucien, I finished John C. Wright's trilogy. Oh, and I would not have managed without the Lumos book light.
The Chronicles of Chaos is what happens when you combine a classic British education with the Teen Titans. Seriously. In a British boarding school, five orphans grow up with superpowers and raging hormones, seemingly in equal quantities.
The first book, Orphans of Chaos (a Nebula Award nominee for best novel), introduces us to the orphans and gives us a crash course in incompatible paradigms. Each orphan comes from a different paradigm-slash-universe. They are not actually human, but monster hostages from another dimension. To keep the balance between Cosmos and Chaos from tilting either way, Chaos' monsters, the Titans, have agreed to give up their children to the other side, the gods of Mount Olympos, the gods of the Cosmos.
We meet Amelia Armstrong Windrose, Victor Invictus Triumph, Vanity Fair, Colin Iblis mac FirBolg and Quentin Nemo. (They chose their own names.) To Amelia, the universe is one dimension after another. She gets a lot of nerd moments, during which she talks in equations, and her friends go ewww. Victor is a teenage Spock, all impulse drive and no warp speed. Colin just wants something and there it is. Vanity always knows when someone's looking at her. Quentin is a warlock and has a magic staff. They always argue about how their powers work. They always have a different explanation why something happens the way it does. This can be either intriguing or tiring, so make sure to read on a full stomach.
The second, Fugitives of Chaos, shows us that even monster hostages have to get their kicks in. Fighting their way out of the boarding school, striking bargains with their guardians and discovering how to stretch their powers, the teenage Titans also indulge in shopping and furtive kissing.
The conclusion, Titans of Chaos, shows Wright heaving the story from one paradigm to another. What could have been a confusing narration becomes a can't-wait-to-turn-the-page whizz-bang-kapow adventure. By this time the characters and their paradigms are familiar, and the explanations do not get in the way of the story, unless you want them to. The orphans are stronger, sometimes even a little wiser, and they can kick Olympian butt. Aha, but is there a resolution to the raging hormones?
The first two novels are already here in paperback. Titans of Chaos appeared in hardcover early 2007; I bought my copy at Borders in Wheelock Place. Here's a peek.
I also finished Prospero's Children by Jan Siegel. We'll do that review another time. Or in the fifth dimension, where time is a point.
Two days ago, I acquired my first Nakaya. And just like any fangirl, I am bringing on the unboxing shots.
A plain box, made with textured off-white handmade paper.
Inside, a simple box of light wood, bearing Japanese characters and a red stamp.
The pen came with its own kimono, a dark blue fabric sprinkled with gold squares.
Finally, the Nakaya Chinkoku. Layers of red lacquer, incised with the Housoge (flower of paradise) motif, with Sumi (charcoal) embedded in the pattern.
It is the Piccolo size, and does not come with a clip.
The nib is Nakaya's own Elastic extra fine. It has curved cut-outs underneath the nib's shoulders. While it is not "flexible" in the vintage sense of the word, the elastic design makes it "give" more when it contacts the paper. The Chinkoku technique is also applied to the grip.
Where I applied more pressure to the nib, the line doesn't broaden as much as darken. Singapore Sepia, one of the dozen Noodler's Inks specially made for the Singapore market, is a pale purplish brown.
Last night, I installed the Platinum goldfish converter - a secret amusement.
Today is the second day of the Y&R regional CD workshop. The Chinkoku will see a lot of use. I will try not to write anything too silly or mundane with it, as it is so beautiful.
Now that Freehand will no longer be supported, and Illustrator will be the app to move forward, I decided to learn Illustrator. Lordy, this is almost enough to make me hang up the geek hat. That Live Paint Group, for one. Things refuse to be selected. I'm doomed.
The 2006 Agency of the Year winners - congratulations!
A lot of hobnobbing goes on during these industry events. This year, the Agency of the Year Awards night was in a ballroom at the Mandarin, ably (and humorously) hosted by Edu Manzano and, in a stellar performance, the SGV representative Lito Montes. (I hope I spelled his name right.)
I accosted many friends with my camera, which has a tendency to pour on the flash like your life before your eyes. Most of my pictures have very white, red-eyed people in them. It's all part of getting used to a new camera, I figure. I fiddled around with the exposure and the white balance, but the manual says there is a way to adjust the flash intensity. I just haven't found it yet.
Print Production House of the Year: Femar
Radio Production House of the Year: Hit Productions
TV Production House of the Year: Production Village (Provill)
Media Agency of the Year: MindShare
Best in Industry Leadership and Community Service: BBDO/GO
Best in Management of Business: JimenezBasic
Best in Market Performance: JWT
Best in Creative: Ogilvy
Agency of the Year: JimenezBasic (Abby Jimenez: "It pays to be patient.")
Yes, it does. For the first time in the history of the AOY, Y&R made it to finalist in not one, but two categories: Industry and Management of Business. We are gratified, proud, and raring to bring home a Plate (that's what the award is fondly called) next year.
