Sporadically Updated

Gah, deadline stress.

On the upside, there is SCIENTIFIC PROOF that overly white environments--like the all-white minimalist houses design mags love and I hate--are bad for you. They make you 25% less efficient.

Downside: how many times will research need to hit us over the head with proof that sunlight, fresh air, and nature are good for us in multiple, subtle, complex, and really bloody strong ways, before providing them becomes the standard in ordinary architecture?

I now have a Dreamwidth account, which is also called arndis, and lives at http://arndis.dreamwidth.org. I don't know anybody's Dreamwidth ids, so people who have them can friend me there?

I got the account because I was bored with my theme and wanted a new one, but most of the themes I actually like require money or invasion of privacy, and I thought to myself, "I don't like ads; didn't Ian post DW invites?"

I love that it can auto-import from LJ. The auto-crossposting to LJ was required, but I am delighted by there being automagical importing. Um...can it magically fetch new comments over too, or do I have to tell people where to reply? And do they need their own accounts for that?

So this term's major project is a fashion boutique, abroad, for a trendsetting international designer. I'm going to use Anand Kabra, from India. He does clothes that are not just western, not just eastern:

http://www.anandkabra.com/

And since he has stores in India, but none abroad, obviously mine has to be in London.

So, if you were a haute couture fusion fashion boutique targeting both Indian and European women, where in London would you be? What neighbourhood, and would it be streetfront property or a mall?

And does anyone know how to efficiently mass-download images from a flash site? I do not want to have to download the damn things one by one.

While I am at it, I am also applying for a passport. Is anyone willing to be a guarantor or a reference? Both kinds have to have known me for at least 2 years, but a guarantor also has to have a current or just-expired passport, and sign the forms and photos.

No big deal, but I am trying to get it done soon in hopes of trip-taking. :)

So, it's been the week from hell (missed 3 nights' sleep so far) and so I bloody well deserve something nice after I make deadline Friday afternoon for the sadistic incompetent asshole teaching 3D modeling. It's also my birthday soon.

Yousra and Savannah (classmates) owe me and Jason sushi for doing their proofreading, and they insist they will not be bored or scared off by my friends. So who wants to go for sushi (place they know on Elgin; I think it was Green Sushi) and then I hope go out dancing at the ID fundraising club party? Tickets are $5 and if you buy them in advance from me instead of at the door, it's pure airfare-to-Barcelona subsidy for my class.

Come along and give us a reason to dress up and show off! (And Jagash, if Eve is interested, tell her that I'll bring shoes that don't hurt my feet.)

According to its website, Mansion usually plays Top 40, RnB, and House. Given the party name "Ole," I suspect some Latin will make it in. Here's the details about the club party:

Start Time: Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:00pm
End Time: Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:00am
Location: MANSION NIGHTCLUB
Street: 400A Dalhousie
City/Town: Ottawa, ON

The Design Students of Algonquin 2011 are fundraising to implement an ethics and environmental study abroad course which will allow students to experience and understand other cultures, study environmental practices on a global level and have the opportunity to share Canadian perspectives with international counterparts.

Come & Join us for a wild night of Partying on January 15th .

Tickets available now!
5 $ at Algonquin College, J building third floor, (contact person : Maryam/ agha0009@algonquincollege.com)
More tickets available at door.

Doors open at 10pm
19+ (ID Required)

WWW.MANSIONNIGHTCLUB.CA

So, I have a portfolio piece which is a little tricky.  Some of you have probably seen it -- the group project from this spring where we were designing the new building for our program. I had the library. The trouble is, that the rest of the group's work really sucked.  The rendering was bad, the planning was bad, and every page not under my direct control had a spelling mistake. Some had more. Lots more. They misspelled my name on the front cover, for example. And put what the teachers had told us at least 3 times was the wrong title.

So I'm trying to figure out: how can I show my work, while still having the project make sense, and without bashing my teammates, even though they deserve it?  So far ideas are:

• print a copy that only contains my part of the project
• print the entire project but only show my work until requested otherwise
• show the entire thing but explain which parts are mine, in the hope that they will see how much better my work is than the others on the team. The hazard is, what if they don't remember which parts are which, and think that *I* would have submitted a drawing so bad that the walls wobbled?
• fix minor errors (e.g. spelling, formatting) in the rest of the book.

The only way to be proud of the project as a whole would be to redo it ALL myself, but I don't have the time and energy for that.

What should I do?

Lovely people, I have need of you.  I am researching how to design government office space that doesn't suck. Our school project for the Ministry of Technology has a floor full of programming teams, and a floor full of executives. Would those of you who work in offices, especially in IT or government or hopefully both, help me out with these questions?  Comment, send a message or an email.

1. What kind of work do you do, and in what kind of organization?  (Kind of work: e.g. is it thinking/concentration work, meeting-heavy, or interruption-based, like reception?)
2. What is your office in general like, in terms of its design, furniture, and environment?
3. What is your personal workspace like, in terms of its design, furniture, and environment? Which of your furnishings and equipment do you use, or not use? Are there ones you need and don't have?
4. What do you like and dislike about the space? (both personal and common)
5. What would make the programmers' floor in my Ministry of Technology project look unstodgy? Like a cool and pleasant place to work?
6. What would make the executives' floor in my Ministry of Technology project look impressive while keeping theme with the programmers' floor below?  I would like to keep the programmers from gagging on the smell of money and pomposity, but it still has to impress VIP visitors.

As you may have already seen Tchang mention, if OC Transpo strikes on Wednesday (likely) I cannot get to my last few classes this week before my Christmas break starts. (Who knows about after; I'll worry about those later.) Wednesday morning's class is an in-class assignment worth 10% of my term mark.

I have at most 15 classmates, most of whom also take the bus and the one that I know drives lives in Kanata, not downtown. I do not know anyone well enough to ask to sleep over, or even to know if they live in walking distance of campus. Ottawaridematch.com did not turn up any workable matches -- all at least 6 blocks away on both ends with at best 30% schedule match. All the residence rooms are full and cannot be rented. I would either have to pay for cabs or a hotel room, if there's one nearby.

I have classes:
8am - 11am Wednesday
9am - 2pm Thursday
8am - 11am Friday

Is there anyone who could help out with getting me to or from class this week, especially for Wednesday?

 

Okay, I'm going to be putting in an order to the natural soap and skincare ingredients place at http://www.handmadesoap.ca/.  Some items would be more economical to buy in bulk and split.  Does anybody else want to add something to my order, and when you pay me back we'll split the shipping charge?  The store is in Ontario and the maximum shipping is $12 for up to 40lb of stuff. My order was already at $10 for shipping, and there's at least 10lb worth of space left.

I'm getting

• 1lb Natramulse (emulsifying wax) (could be split)
• 1-2lb pure pressed golden cocoa butter ($10/lb in 1lb lumps, but $9/lb in the 5lb size)
• 1-2lb Ghana ivory unrefined shea butter ($11/lb in 1lb lumps, but $10/lb in the 5lb size)
• 1oz Optiphen (preservative)
• 4oz sodium lactate (humectant)
• 50ml  each of these essential oils: 10x folded orange, european lavender, patchouli, and maybe balsam peru (could be split)

Please let me know within a week if you are interested.  I'm looking at you, Allison.  The cocoa and shea butters are great for your skin as they are or mixed into other things; the emulsifying wax is for making lotions and creams that mix oil and water.

Since Apple has finally announced their fresh new laptops, I have finally ordered the computer I've needed since May and could pay for since August.

I'm getting the 2.53GHz Macbook Pro unless I chicken out before it ships. The reason that I might chicken out is that the whole kit is going to cost $2900 after tax even with my education discount. My inner accountant is screaming in horror, since I very rarely buy things this expensive, and I had not factored in $300+ of tax when I was weighing numbers in my mind.

The reasons to get the 2.4GHz Macbook (which just got a stellar upgrade today) would be that it's smaller, lighter, has longer battery life, and costs $960 (after tax) less.

The reasons to get the 2.53GHz Macbook Pro over the 2.4GHz Macbook are:

• twice the RAM,
• better hard drive,
• bigger screen -- important, since I am a big-screen junkie who works with graphics a lot.
• better CPU (twice the L2 cache of the other, which makes it faster than just the raw GHz does),
• separate graphics card with 512mb of memory instead of integrated graphics with 256mb of shared memory, PLUS the integrated graphics. Translation: more capable graphics card plus more memory available for my programs to use, and the less-powerful card to save battery power when I'm not flogging the RAM.

The screen, CPU, and graphics cannot be upgraded later, so I either have to buy it now or do without, or sell the laptop and buy a new one if/when I discover I didn't buy enough power. This thing is going to be my workhorse machine for the next several years, and I am an impatient power user who has to run three or four programs at once -- such as AutoCAD, Photoshop, webbrowser with ten tabs open and a word processor -- for my schoolwork pretty often.

And, I just realized the secret weapon hiding in the better graphics card on the Pro: Snow Leopard. That's the next version of Mac OS, which is going to offload extra processing onto the graphics card when it's not busy. The Pro laptop has two graphics cards, both of Nvidia's newest and shiniest lineup, one of them with as much RAM as my entire computer had for the last 7 years. So when Snow Leopard comes out, the Pro is going to get lots faster than the plain Macbook will.

Since I can afford it, I think I have just firmly talked myself into spending the extra $1000 for the almost-maxed-out Pro. (I'd have to spend another $300 on the 2.8GHz CPU to really max it out.)

I want my shiny new hotness to arrive soon, please.