I still think the single flaming log with the .ca extension was a bad idea.
I think a .com or .ca or whatever address is, on its own, a kind of call to action.
You're unconsciously asking people to visit a website, but leaving them guessing about where to go.
I guess you can make the arguement that it was meant to be a teaser, but I don't think it could obviously be interpreted that way. This wasn't the Cloverfield campaign, ominously depicting a headless Statue of Liberty and a date. That generated buzz. The log generated confusion.
Anyways, the new Birchwood site looks good.
Mystery solved. I am now going for coffee and a Scooby Snack.
Finally, burninglog.ca is the website for a business which actually sells fireplaces, stoves, patio furniture, and pools.But it’s in Ottawa. So I doubt they'd be putting up confusing billboards in Winnipeg.
Some random stuff to entertain on a beautiful Sunday morning:
I was watching Goodfellas for about the tenth time last night, and wanted to grab a few songs off the soundtrack. A couple of months ago I realized you could convert songs and audio clips from You Tube into mp3 format.
Needless to say, there's going to be a lot more Motown and early 70s rock on my iPod at the gym this week.
If you're like me, you often experience intense cosmononplusation. (the vague awe experienced while gazing into the cosmos and feeling utterly insignificant) Now you can have that feeling whenever you want, thanks to this fantastic site.
Then, if for some reason you require a visual representation of your blog, then here comes WORDLE to the rescue. Create a customizable wordcloud of your thoughts and feelings!
Back when I used to work for a living, I often bought goods and services without plotting out a detailed cost v. immediate need analysis. Glorious days, those were. Many religions, both new and old, condemn the evils of money, and its frivolous expenditure on non-critical items, and extol the virtues of a penny saved. Not me. Sometimes a man just needs a t-shirt of a space cat riding a tyrannosaurus.
There was supposed to be a picture of my once proud office here, but I can't find it. Try and contain your disappointment.
As a collector of comic books and plastic bric-a-brac, I've found that money is extremely handy in acquiring these items (I've tried making my own action-figures out of soap, but somehow I always mess up the licensing).
I don't really have a "wish-list" per se, but here are some things, if I had some cash to spend in an irresponsible manner right now, I would pick up.
"But Jay, they're only $17.50!" Yeah, but I'm poor, and if I get this, what's next?
2. Next I visit Kidrobot. Probably pick up some Futurama mini-figs.
Morbo!
If that don't float'cher'boat, head over to myplasticheart. A lot of similar stuff, but still good.
3. Comics. I am lucky enough to have a future mother-in-law who, after a great deal of explanation on my fiancee's part, sort of understands that I like Hellboy. And as such, I am the proud owner of the Hellboy Library Edition Volume One.
But, Volume Two and Three are out now. What can a poor boy do? Sing for a rock n' roll band?
It's come to my attention that blogging is on the outs with the yutes.
According to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project:
Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends' blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.
Lordy. I would comment on this further, but I'm already getting the urge to check Facebook to see if anyone is up for wings next week. I'm looking forward to three years from now when 140 characters is considered "in depth."
The Love Blog! Soon to be Making Another Run
Valentine's is almost upon us. I was reading something insane today on Kotaku about a game available only in Japan for the Nintendo DS, Konami's Love Plus.
From the article:
Love Plus was released in September 2009 and was unlike anything Konami had done before. Konami had developed dating games, but those titles focus on the beginning of the relationship. Love Plus gives players the pursuit, but then asks this question: You've got the girl, so now what are you going to do?
The game allows a player to talk, send emails and even "caress" her via the Nintendo DS's mic and touch screen. It's the combination of senses (audio, tactile, oral) that separates Love Plus from Konami's other dating sims. The fact that the game takes place in real time and uses tens of thousands voice expressions and over a hundred cutscenes makes Love Plus seem far more organic than anything to hit the Nintendo DS before it. The game's characters even change the way they speak to the player over the course of the game.
Always in love... 365days
My first instinct is to say, "creepy." My second instinct is also to say, "creepy." However, a sober reflection: is this really all that bad? Earlier this week I read a Daily Mail article suggesting that boredom actually lessens a person's lifespan.
More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years - and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to have died by the end of study than those who did not.
I'm imagining a future filled with decrepit elderly people cozying up to their digital companions who've never aged a day; audio receptors tuned to a hoarse voice describing the minutia of the day. To go through life knowing love only as an illusion.
I think what makes real love profound, inexplicable, and powerful, is a shared, subconscious feeling of impermanence.
Yoshida Kenko defined the feeling brilliantly:
If we lived forever, if the dews of Adashino never vanished, if the crematory smoke on Toribeyama never faded, men would hardly feel the pity of things. The beauty of life is in its impermanence. Man lives the longest of all living things... and even one year lived peacefully seems very long. Yet for such as love the world, a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night.
As many of you know, I'm wrapping up my forth and final term in the Creative Communications program at Red River College. Term four incorporates two three-week work placements into the curriculum; students may choose an organization or business to work for as an unpaid intern to gain first-hand experience and understanding of the industry they'll be soon be working in.
I chose The Winnipeg Foundation - a very large non-profit group which supports charitable groups,community-building projects and organizations through grants. The Foundation is the oldest community foundation in Canada (founded in 1921 by William Alloway) and the second largest in the country, with an endowment of just over $440 million.
William Forbes Alloway, by Leo Mol (photo by J.Booth, 2008)
Another reason I wanted to work at The Winnipeg Foundation was my interest in gaining some experience in how non-profit groups operate, and honing my skills in areas outside of advertising (My amazing summer job last year was with Winnipeg ad agency McKim Cringan George).
I definitely found what I was looking for.
The Job
On my first day my supervisor LuAnn Lovlin, Director of Communications, left me a memo outlining what I was to work on during my time at the Foundation. My four jobs were, to write as many Foundation Feature articles (advertorials) for the Free Press as I had time for; to produce at least four podcasts for their website, pertaining to Foundation projects and personnel; editing together some footage provided by grant recipients for the Foundation website; and writing up a very rough marketing strategy for Will Week, to promote writing a will. I wrote five feature articles, produced 11 podcasts, and edited six videos. Aside from that, I immersed myself in the organizations literature and corporate culture. I attended dozens of meetings: staff meetings, departmental meetings, managed fund meeting (pretty fancy breakfast), professional advisors group meeting (very fancy lunch), and internal communications meetings. I also assisted with some basic clerical and day to day operations type work. (Help move the Christmas tree into storage, etc.)
Getting to Know You...
Staff were unbelievably welcoming and friendly, and most importantly accessible. Any questions I had were answered right away, staff at all levels took the time to converse and get to know me better (lot’s of questions about CreComm, my career path, and my perspective on the Foundation). I had a favourable opinion of the organization going in, but I went away feeling inspired about what they do, and the city I live in. They are a very well organized team, and even in one of the busiest periods of their year, nobody seemed stressed out or out of it. I was surprised by how many important events and meetings I was invited to, and they were very good about introducing me to important people as well. I met the outgoing chair of the board, Greg Hanson (incoming United Way chair), and the incoming chair, Richard Bracken, along with a slough of business professionals associated with the Foundation.
I was also very appreciative that Foundation CEO Rick Frost took time to sit down and talk with me about the organization and its history.
Surprises
The friendliness of the staff, and the extremely sweet office with a window view of the Exchange from the 13th floor of the Richardson Building. Didn’t expect that at all.
My awesome view, January 4-22, 2010.
What I Learned
A LOT about the organization; I have a tremendous respect for the work that they do, and intend to support them in some capacity in the future. It was fascinating learning about the history of the Foundation, the literally hundreds of projects the support in the community, and intricacies of running a non-profit enterprise in the midst of a financial meltdown. I also learned some general stuff about how non-profits work, and about a number of different charities in the city. I also learned a bit about the career paths that people followed that lead them to work at the Foundation.
And, I picked up a few tidbits on smart investing.
If I’d known there was going to be so much audio production, I would have booked out a better microphone from the get-go. Also, it seemed like they really wanted more video, so making arrangements to book an HD camera for a few days would have been smart. You live and learn.
Conclusion
Overall, I think this was a very good work placement. Last Wednesday I attended one of the public meetings the Foundation was holding around the city – because, believe it or not, I actually wanted to check it out. The enthusiasm there is pretty infectious.
In my farewell email thanking the staff for the opportunity to work with them, I said this: "Every time I visit the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden and see the statue of Mr. Alloway, I will reflect fondly on my experience here, the people I was fortunate enough to interact with, and the exemplary work which the Foundation contributes to the City of Winnipeg each and every year."
A coworker mentioned to me today that Bruce Head died last week. Head was an iconic Winnipeg artist whose work I had been familiar with for years without ever knowing his name. I had the pleasure of writing a review of his retrospective show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2008, and familiarizing myself with one of Winnipeg's most gifted visual artists.
Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet the artist, but judging from interviews and a documentary film which ran along with the show, he seemed like an intriguing and genial man.
My 2008 review:
Bruce Head isn’t a household name, but anyone who’s walked beneath Portage and Main is familiar with his art, whether they know it or not.Head sculpted a massive 130 metre untitled concrete relief, that looks as though it were excavated by anthropologists, below the city’s most famous intersection. The abstract piece’s interlocking forms, which resemble cracked ice flows on the AssiniboineRiver in spring, cover the full height and length of the center of the circular tunnel in Winnipeg Square.In a way, the 77-year-old’s work sits in the very heart of Winnipeg.
Head Space: Five Decades of Bruce Head, at the WinnipegArtGallery, is a retrospective and exhibition of 137 paintings, sculptures, and prints by one of Manitoba’s most talented abstract artists.The show is well worth the admission price, ranging from $4 for students and seniors, to $6 for adults (free for kids under 6).Spend an hour or two exploring how the artist’s outstanding work has evolved since he graduated from the School of Art at the University of Manitoba in 1953.
Head’s most famous innovation came in 1967, when he stretched canvases over metal film reels to create his first “shaped canvases.”The protruding shapes of the canvas are smooth and sharp, angular and curved, like bones beneath a stretched hide, as though the paintings have been starved.One of my favourites, The Ross Quartet (1968), is like a lava-lamp frozen in time and spread with a butter knife across four intersecting planes.The sculptural qualities of these works allow one to move around and study them from different angles for different perspectives.The varied colours almost suggest topographical maps.I can envision myself exploring the surfaces of the paintings, measuring elevations, surveying valleys of yellow, and hiking over mountains of blue.
Head’s acrylics (from the early 90s to 2008) are densely layered with thousands of tiny strokes, small squiggles and glyphs of every hue, to compose large fields of colour.One superb painting, Bingo (1992), features small dabs of red and gold fluttering out toward the viewer, evoking a gust of wind stirring up a bowl of petals.Heads work seems to encourage creative interpretations.Brushstrokes can become arteries and veins, fields of colour become autumn leaves, storm clouds, or pools of algae.Dots could be people and lines could be streets.One painting has me imagining a waterfall of licorice allsorts, or a tide of tiny multi-coloured sea creatures.
In the 1960s, Head was considered by some critics to be one of the most promising abstract oil painters in Canada.However, I prefer his ink graphics during this period, particularly, InteriorBay (1964).Its dark lines swirl in red, pink and brown washes, and look like signatures written in some fantastic, forgotten language.
“I don’t get it,” is what I often hear about abstract art, likely because it lacks the visual references we normally see everywhere in our lives.That’s alright.What makes abstract art successful is its ability to influence our emotions, to stimulate our minds and imaginations.I suggest enjoying Head’s exemplary work on your own terms.Visit the exhibit in the mindset of an explorer to a strange and wonderful land, not a critic, and you won’t be disappointed.
Head Space, curated by Amy Karlinsky runs until Nov. 23, 2008.
If you happen to be heading through Winnipeg Square, or stopping by the Woodsworth Building on Broadway in the coming days, take a few minutes to contemplate the work of Bruce Head.
