Dozens of Interest, got an English degree (or Why I Love Writing)

If you've known me for a while, you probably know that I have a lot of different interests. A non-exhaustive, broad list of my interests (in no particular order) includes English (writing and literature), Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Economics, Psychology, Sociology, History, Geology, Engineering, Computer Programming, Graphic Design, Biology, Linguistics, Anthropology, Origami, Music, Cooking/Baking, and more. I had difficulty picking a major when I first started college, and my specific career interest based on that major kept changing. In fact, the more I studied in college, the bigger the list of interests grew.

So what education did I actually pursue in all of this? I got an English Degree.

I changed to English after I helped someone edit a book there were writing, volunteering for it because I felt I had a pretty good grasp of language and grammar. I enjoyed doing it and felt I should go into writing and editing professionally, so I went and got a Bachelors of Arts in English, with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Professional Writing.

But since I've gotten the degree, I've also realized I wasn't getting an education for pursuing just that one interest. I was in some ways getting an education to pursue all of them. That's the thing about writing, you have to have a topic to write about, or else writing is just incoherent jumble of words and sentences. Writing allows me to pursue any subject or interest I want, by writing about it.

Because of this, dear blog readers, I hope you're prepared for me to write about anything that strikes my fancy. Unless I found a topic that just clicks for me to keep writing about again and again, I won't have just one. Here goes!

Data Visualization: Comparison of Storage Media

Data Viz MASTERPIECE

So I really like data visualization. DataIsBeautiful is my favorite subreddit on Redditor. Someone recently posted a link there to a infographic about the 2014 US Federal Budget. It is an AMAZING piece of work.



Here's a high-res version where you can see detail.

Welcome to the Future

One thousand, nine hundred and forty-four years ago: Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the city of Pompeii in ash, preserving remnants of everyday life. 

A few years ago: Archaeologists digging on Easter Island uncovered the remnants of another archaeological dig from a century ago. 

Seeing this inspired artist Daniel Arsham to wonder artifacts a Vesuvius-like eruption would preserve of contemporary life.

Welcome to the Future was the result.

Creating casts of modern consumer products with materials including ash, steel, obsidian, rock dust, and crystal, he scattered thousands of objects in a 25-foot hole that he dug in the floor of a gallery. His goal was to create a "collapsing of time" like the one he experienced on Easter Island. 

Soft-sell approach in advertising

Mary Stewart says that in the soft-sell approach in advertising, a sensory response is expected rather than a rational one (334). This helped explain a lot about what I find confusing about advertising. So often, I watch an ad and by the end I wonder "And what did that have to do with your product??" I've been expecting the hard-sell approach--the rational connection between the message of the ad and the product. While this shows a lack of understanding on my part about the nature of ads--because I didn't understand the soft-sell approach, it also shows a failure on the part on the advertisers because I didn't connect with the ad.

Film editing to show emotion

Mary Stewart tells about a film-based experiment by early Soviet filmmaker Lev Kulesov, in which they perceived a man's unchanging face as portraying different emotions by mixing it with shots of a bowl of soup, scenes from nature, a baby,, and a dead woman (311). This reminded me of color perception due to contrast. The exact same color is perceived differently depending on what color it is paired with. Like this, in the experiment the man's face, which was the same from shot to shot, with perceived to be show hunger, longing, joy and grief, all based on the image it was paired with.

Listening to your Wi-fi Signal

So there's this guy named Frank Swain whose a writer for New Scientist magazine that recently started using hearing aids. He wondered about using hearing aids for things we can't normally hear as humans, even with perfect hearing. So with the help of a sound artist, he hacked his hearing aids to let him hear nearby wi-fi signals as sound. The signal itself is represented by a clicking noise, with the frequency equal to the proximity. And it's directional - you'll hear it in your right ear if its on your right, for example. And then the network ID is heard as notes, with each letter or number corresponding to a certain note. Here's an example of what it sounds like.