Archives For Language

After many many MANY years, Yu Aoi’s Itoh Company web page will be redesigned. At the moment, you are greeted by the message excusing themselves for the blank page, and given a pop-up link to her Itoh profile.

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I wonder what they will come up with.

And no, Itoh Company didn’t contact me. xD

For a few couple of years already, people have been calling on the death of printed paper. And in all honesty, I rarely print stuff for myself — a vast majority of printed documents refer to letterhead letters, which I usually just send on PDF by email. But if I’m printing something, it’s got something to do with branded documentation.

We’ve talked about e-paper [1], digital newspapers, and Samsung’s flexible screens [1] are coming. People are supposedly using smartphones and are all over iPads, as sales for PCs are down dramatically as times flies by. Yet, people apparently still print stuff. At least that’s the premise for this project:

For a long time, people have been playing around with interactive tables [1][2][3][4][5], though I don’t know anyone who can afford one. The guys from Fujitsu Laboratories seem to be aiming at consumer-range products. And though it may sound and look cool that you can turn all your printed documents into something digital and interact with it, wouldn’t it mean that your page with video included has already been digitally design?

There’s digital pop-up books!

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Of course, there ARE elements in our everyday life that aren’t digital — doodled post-it notes (I can’t think of anything else other than notes). The rest, they wouldn’t have been embedded elements on your digital source document. The question is, why print it?

My Teenhood Crushes

April 16, 2013 — 1 Comment

I ran into this after a series of related links on websites.

jonathan-taylor-thomas-people-interview

“I never took the fame too seriously, it was a great period in my life, but it doesn’t define me.”

So I went down a bit on memory lane to think about my favorite guys.

Continue Reading…

There’s some stunning views on this hyperlapse video using Teehan+Lax technology

You can check more info and get the source code on their Vimeo page.

Yuguo Withdrawal Symptom

April 11, 2013 — 1 Comment

I am having serious Yuguo Withdrawal Symptom, especially because I thought Yuguo’s latest album would be out and about in March — it’s nearly mid-April and I’m still dry. I need my next fix! ASAP. Especially considering they do have the promo images for the album, and the official track listing. What happened???? I’m freaking out O_O

yuguo-sunset-strip-2013-album-promo

I’ll have to settle for replaying one of my favorite albums of them, which by the way, I got my aunt to buy for me in her last trip to Shanghai coz- it’s like impossible to get online if you’re not a resident.

Look at that flawless hair on Michelle Williams. I adore it.

It’s rainbows and puppies with S.H.E — I think, they’re prepping for their tour (2gether 4Ever?) — but the girls have released a new (spec) music video for the song Hereafter, Hereafter (後來後來) from their last album, which is all about them growing up and being apart, not like they used to be. It’s all about friendship and fluff. You can check a decent translation here.

About a week ago Nat Geo was showing a new episode of Tabu Latinamerica, which happened to focus on food. One of my favorite subjects. Thinking about food makes me hungry. But this is Tabu, so obviously we weren’t going to be talking about regular food. While the episode focused on Mexico and Venezuela, with their talks on eating rata campestre (countryside rat??? not from the sewers of course) soup, and… some kind of tarantula/spider?

Anyway, part of the episode also focused in Peru, where they showed a town called La Quebrada, in Cañete, they prepare cat. I haven’t eaten cat — at least, not knowingly… though once while we were eating rabbit chicharron, we suspected we had been given cat because the “rabbit” was bigger and had more fat in it — but I’ve eaten a lot of other things. Of course, guinea pig is kind of a regular “bizarre” food, and I guess rabbit is bizarre to some people. Suri (the worm) is also tasty when fried (it’s almost like crispy pork skin), as well as an assortment of fishes~ Including the palometa (which I’ve heard it’s a piranha’s cousin LOL) and paiche. Shark’s fin soup and swallow’s nest soup apply.

It’s kind of always been common knowledge that people ate cats in Peru- my family (and I’m sure many other people) often joked about it, it’s like joking about everything being chicken, or eating the insides of animals — horror movies and 4D jokes are perfect. Let me tell you, thank you Afro-Peruvians for developing Anticuchos. As a Peruvian who has finally learned to eat without asking (much), and not judge cultures by my own point of view, it saddens me to see people’s comments. Especially considering that we’re all Latin Americans.

Does it feel good to call other people ignorant, or small-minded? Is it wrong to eat something just because you think it’s your pet? Is it not wrong that we eat cow so easily when Indians see them as gods? We’re eating their gods, sending them to slaughter houses, and people judge these people because they eat their pets in a non-industrialized way. This is kind of the same issue I had with The Cove [1].

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From left to right.- Laure Shang Wenjie, animator Bill Plympton, Crowd Lu, and Esteman.

For the past couple of months I’ve been able to interview some of these awesome people. But that you knew if you were following all my ramblings on YAM Magazine.

For some other of my interviews, click here.

I was browsing albums, when I stumbled upon this album cover by Elliot Tupac.

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Of course, for those in the know, you’d know that’s a super Chicha style type of typography [1], so interested to see what it was all about, I did a quick search. You’d be happy to know you can stream all of the EP Cuatro Tigres on Soundcloud, as well as their new album Canibalismo. Chicha Libre is a multi-ethnic Brooklyn-based group formed by Americans, Mexicans, Venezuelans and French musicians mixing Peruvian Chicha music with 60s psychedelic music and stuff. It’s pretty trippy.

I never in my life would’ve thought that I’d be sitting through more than one album of Chicha music. The most interesting thing is that there’s no Peruvians in sight on core members of the group. You can check them out on Facebook or Twitter. I’m not entirely a Chicha convert, but I appreciate the variety in the concept of the group. I do think they sound a lot like Chicha groups, but sing in English instead. Novelty, but it gets a bit tiring by the fourth track.

Conveniently, the group was asked to do a The Simpsons tune for one of the episodes.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/81093323″ params=”color=ff0090&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]