Author Archives: lanazp

SketchUp: Sets and Spaces

Here’s a collection of SketchUp renderings of sets I designed for class (Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House) and a student theater production (Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds) during my freshman year at Penn.  I’ve also included models I did of my dorm room and apartment from freshman and sophomore years respectively (because, you know, every incoming freshman does a scale model of his/her room). Lest this post risk seeming self-indulgent, I should note that I’m adding more design/modeling work (elementary as it may be) because the vast majority of hits to the site are coming from people looking for information about or pictures of set designs or SketchUp models.

iPaddling Upstream

Okay. I promised I’d tune back into the Apple tablet hubbub when the fateful day came. Well, today was the day, and, while I can’t break a promise, I’d like to state the obvious, aggregate a few opinions, and be done with it.

Responses to the announcement of the Apple iPad have been overwhelmingly negative (common crits: giant iPhone, awkward size, no camera…). It’s been picked apart by Gizmodo, its “under the hood” capabilities questioned by lalawag, and the Onion, ever the barometer of popular opinion, has implied that it’s as though Steve Jobs pulled an all-nighter and the iPad was the result.  [For a view on the bright side, see the Apple iPad page].

David Pogue’s reaction has just been published on NYTimes.com, and, as usual, his appraisal is level-headed and he cautions us not to jump to conclusions. The iPad offers an incomparable reading/watching experience, perhaps at the expense of creating; it’s a “sack of potential” over which we should not hyperventilate.

So that’s that. Until I hold one in my hands, I’ll leave the opining to the techies.

Design Dump: Old School

These are renderings and models I did in high school (when my media were simply paper and glue), as well as photographs of the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I designed for my high school senior project (after the ‘more’ button).  The play was supposed to be performed outside but, in true Boston form, it rained the entire week leading up to and during the performances.   We relocated to the gym and created a stage space with the backs of bleachers, used flood lights from Home Depot (the voltage of the theater lights was too high for the gym’s electrical system) and borrowed a strip of turf from the baseball team’s batting cage.  It all turned out just fine.

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Follow the Glowing Rectangles

Back in June, the Onion “reported” that we spend 90% of our lives staring at glowing rectangles. Folly has been one-upped by fact: this morning, the Times brings us news of the results of the latest Kaiser Family Foundation study on children and their use of media devices. Compared to their last investigation in 2005, which found that kids spent just under six and a half hours using media, 8 to 18-year-old kids today are spending upwards of seven and a half hours a day glued to devices. Add in multitasking and you’ve got approximately eleven hours of content packed into seven and a half hours of attention.  I can’t say that I’m not part of this trend; I fall asleep and wake up to the glow and tones of media devices. But when I was eight, we had a television with a VCR and local-only channels, a telephone, a fax machine and a backyard.  Guess where I spent most of my time?   I learned what it was to “play” before I knew what video games were and before the Internet was widespread; I fear for the generation whose blocks and tea sets are digital.

Edge’s Question of 2010, or How Thinking about the Internet Makes Me Nervous

John Brockman, editor and publisher of Edge Foundation, Inc., posed the following as the question of 2010:

How is the Internet changing the way you think?

There are answers from hundreds of people with varying degrees of involvement in the new media/tech world, including, for example, everyone from Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno and Alan Alda to Howard Rheingold, Sherry Turkle, Chris Anderson and a whimsical (yet totally apt) response by Harvard computational geneticist George Church.  The response that gets me going, however, is by Clay Shirky, entitled “The Shock of Inclusion.” I turn to Shirky when I want to read something about the Internet that is clear, pointed and true, which is surprisingly hard to find.  He writes:

“If all that happens from this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages.”

I don’t know about you, but that gives me the chills.

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Tablet Rumors, Illustrated

I’m back from a brief hiatus and ready to report on the latest tablet rumors (and commence the revelry of senior spring the writing of my thesis). Information just keeps (re)cycling in: Techland, providing a roundup of tablet gossip, cites BGR‘s Apple insider scoop (“out of control” multi touch gestures, “basically an iPhone on steroids”) and the green room blog‘s visual representation (see above) of the rumors, complete with ratings of their likelihood. January 27 is the day of days; until then I will stay out of it and let the mill continue to churn.  As for last week’s attempted one-upmanship by Microsoft, the hype over the Apple tablet is stronger than ever because, well, Microsoft’s HP tablet seriously underwhelmed at the CES.  See PCWorld’s for a review of Why the Microsoft-HP Tablet is Such a Disappointment.

Microsoft to Upstage Apple Tablet?

It’s Montagues and Capulets all over again. The biggest, most rivalrous families in the tech industry, Microsoft and Apple, are gearing up for another duel. Rumors are flying (see Mashable, Bits, and Gizmodo) that Microsoft is going to unveil a tablet of its own tomorrow at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Reportedly, the tablet will be made by HP and it may or may not be called the Courier, which Gizmodo scooped back in September. Apple is expected to announce its tablet January 27.  That this whole tablet thing has come down to a corporate “me-first” is kind of pathetic, but if it means we’ll have a choice when it comes time to actually buy one, I’m all for a little competition. The more companies vying for the greatest market share, the cooler gadgets we’ll get. En garde, Apple and Microsoft.


For the Curmudgeon

In today’s Guardian online, Cory Doctorow offers a set of guidelines for the social media naysayers.  If you’re too pressed for time to come up with original criticisms (or read the whole article), these are the tried and true objections to social media that help folks like Brian Williams (see question 2nd from bottom) become super popular: social media is A] inconsequential B] ugly and C] ephemeral.


So, who doesn’t know what this whale picture means? Yeah, I thought so. As Doctorow writes, “Criticising social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook is as pointless as knocking people who discuss the weather.”


A Clip of Sonic Memory

I remember rocking out to Basement Jaxx’s “Good Luck” with my sister when we’d come downstairs for breaks after long stretches of studying for our high school finals. Right before trudging back up to our rooms to work, we’d play the song at full volume and totally let go for its 4 min, some-odd seconds.

I’ve rediscovered the Jaxx (after carefully re-curating my iTunes, an activity perfect for New Years’ Day) as well as a few other blasts from the past like Gogol Bordello, The Proclaimers, Colin Hay (famous for this musical cameo on Scrubs), las Orishas (who I first heard in one of the salsa club scenes in Along Came Polly), and the Stray Cats (whose title song I played with the summer camp band I was in when I was 10-12).  Ten years from now, I wonder what I’ll be looking back on.

Easy Being Green

I just learned about Brighter Planet’s 350 Challenge while reading Cyrus Patten’s post on Mashable, “10 Easy Ways to Green Your Website.” For every blogger that posts the green ‘badge’ on his or her site, Brighter Planet offsets 350 lbs of carbon in his or her name. Cool idea, easy to participate. Check out my badge on the sidebar, just below the index.