A Little Red Book

A while back, a good friend of mine, Phillip Bensaid, handed me his copy of the Little Red Book (he's not a commie, honest!), Chairman Mao's book of sayings, and said, "hey, fill this up." And so I did: adding little portraits of the people in coffee shops, on buses, on subways, in airports, planes, restaurants, meetings, lectures, and at concerts. I started sometime in 2008, and ended in the middle of 2010.

Sometimes I despaired of finishing. Now, 312 potraits later, I miss the practice.

The book, snug in my pants pocket, became worn and near tattered. I feared for its survival, so I found a box. I used whatever pen I had on hand, usually my favorite ball point pen I get at work, the Papermate FlexgripUltra Fine; sometimes a Faber-Castell PITT artist pen; occasionally a pen of less quality (which I would come to regret).

Most didn't take me more than a couple minutes to do. I'm not sure many noticed. I thank them nonetheless.

I read very little of Mao's text, but any correspondence with the images is purely intentional and genius ;-)

Check out the portraits

An image this morning while walking to work. A Chinese man, wrinkled, weathered, and short. I've seen him frequently, wandering south on Market street near Valencia. He's always wearing light brown clothes, a mao cap, a maoish jacket. He's always shuffling along under the weight of a short pole. Two bags balanced on either end. Today, maybe the other times too, the bag in front is white, a Macy's bag, decorated with one big red star.

It would make for a good photograph.

Reckless birds

Out in the back of my apartment, two Western Scrub Jays are squawking their way around everyone's backyards. They fly amazingly close; get a good look at me; make sure I'm not trouble. They are more certain my upstairs neighbors cat IS trouble. If he sits still long enough the birds find him, bounce around him, fly at him, squawk, repeat. The cat seems untroubled, occasionally looks interested in a pounce, but if a human is around the focus is definitely on getting some human attention.

I out of curiosity, got out my Audobon iPhone app and played some Western Scrub Jay calls. I won't do it again, as it clearly stressed the two birds out to no end, flying out of wherever they'd been holed up, and then realizing it was just a big, not-a-bird, not-a-cat, ran through the rest of a seemingly well established security routine, going higher and higher, bush, to tree, to house plant, to tree, stopping to check things out, until they get to the peak of a cypress pine. Holding a while, head cocking this way, then that, then diving -- a straight, long drop -- down to where their nest must be, a couple of yards over.

Last time I saw this, in the distant background, a raven flew against a hawk, no doubt defending its nest, as one often sees little birds fly against ravens. Like the blue jays with the cat, the raven seems reckless, tempting fate. The hawk and raven wheel, the raven dives, the hawk flips to defend itself with talons, they flap away for another go. The raven quorks, quorks, quorks as it flaps, dives, wheels. The hawk is silent, only its keening cry as they disappear from view.

I can't help but wish them all well.

IE 8 troubles with facebook like button?

Spent an aggravated afternoon trying to get the JavaScript version of Facebook's new like button working on IE8 today.

Took me a while to stumble into the solution. There seem to be two from this conversation in a facebook forum (alexl and marchawkins).

One is to add this to your HTML tag:
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml" xmlns:og="http://opengraph.org/schema/">
This makes sense in that Facebook is using non-standard HTML tags here, and so the tags are being ignored.

In case you have cases like me where you can't touch the HTML tag, the other is to include the JS before the non-standard HTML:

<div id="fb-root"></div>

<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js" ></script>
<script>

FB.init({appId: '12345', status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true});

</script>


<fb:like show_faces="false" width="80" height="30" layout="button_count"></fb:like>

It works, although it doesn't quite make sense to me... perhaps the JS is prepping the browser for our new tags somehow.

People lay into IE8 in the forum for not cooperating. But I have to say: hello Facebook? Why didn't you put out code that was actually fully browser compatible. That's the travesty here in truth. Maybe there were trying to ding Microsoft, but the people truly dinged are all the web developer and content managers out there.

Application Accepted!

Good news today, my application for the iPad, a multiplayer game called Dopey Dopey Dodos was accepted. WOOT! as my good friend 'deep would say.



I'll have links to the iTunes store soon enough. But in the meantime, I have set up the obligatory facebook fan page :-)

Dopey Dopey Dodos

Today, myself with the help of some friends, submitted an app for the upcoming Apple iPad. it's a game called Dopey Dopey Dodos. You can read more about it on my Dopey Dopey Dodos page. Meanwhile, I wait:



Writing and designing the game has been a lot of fun. But, perhaps only because of the long hours the past couple nights, the submission process was a pain in the butt -- getting all the right certificates and profile settings correct (my advice to you app developers out there -- do that sooner than later, don't wait to whatever last minute you might be waiting for), and getting over a couple hoops that seemed plain wrong (if you are confused when it asks for iphone sized screenshots, resize a copy of your screenshots, and you'll be asked to do it after you upload the iphone ones). Anyway, it's done. Wish me luck!

monster drawing

Thanks for anyone who stopped by my corner of the Monster Drawing rally, enjoyed a tagalog cookie, or grabbed one of my little cards. It was a fun evening for me, hope it was for you two.