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If
You Can't Beat 'Em, Copy Their Ad Campaign |
Microsoft put out its
own "Switchers" campaign and then quickly
retracts it. |
| October 15, 2002
-- You know those Apple Computer Switch
Ads? Well, Microsoft decided to put together their
own campaign with people switching from the Mac to
Windows XP. It came in the form of a "letter"
posted on the Microsoft website. The only difference
is -- they had to hire somebody to embellish the story.
Microsoft said that it "regrets" the action
and said that it did the right thing removing the
page.
Read
more at the News.com site. |
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It's
Been a Long Time |
People are looking
for me. That feels nice. |
| Sunday 21, 2003
-- Over the past few months, and particularly over
the past few weeks, more people than I would have
ever expected told me they visited this site every
so often (more often than I had imagined. )
In fact someone from Japan even had the kindness
to write to me requested my class notes. One of my
closest friends in the whole world (who happens to
be the most fabulous person on the west coast) mentioned
in passing that she checks the site every so often.
And even closer, I have people who are just darned
curious b/c of my e-mail address.
I've decided to make a new commitment to my site
and it will be re-designed.
I think that after people meet me and they know my
work, there are expectation of this site. While I
think this site does capture my personality (albeit
loosely), it doesn't properly feature any of my skills
as an artist.
I will be posting some new content to this version
of the site today. Concurrently, I will be finishing
the re-design.
You can look forward to seeing the new site by the
middle of October!
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Please
Don't Sign This Petition |
My response to the
e-mail requests to sign a petition for Shaquille O'Neal
apology. |
| January 16, 2003
-- Shaquille O'Neal made an ignorant remark that offended
a lot of Asians. I received an e-mail to sign an online
petition calling for a "real" apology.
I refuse to sign the petition. And this is my reason
why:
You know what, I'm not signing this. I don't need
any apology from him. Yes, I think what he said was
very ignorant and short-sighted -- especially for
a man in the public eye. I'm actually more annoyed
at Tony Bruno of Fox Sports for playing it over and
over again. THAT man only perpetuated Shaq's ignorant
comment as humorous.
When I played baseball growing up, I constantly heard
the same comments when I took the mound. As an example,
I heard comments from people on my own All-Star team.
"Look at the chink at the end. Is he at the right
game?". Stuff like that. That All-Star game,
I took the mound in the 3rd inning, forced a man to
ground out and struck out 2 more. When I came back
to the bench, the same two guys making comments before
came to me and treated me as if we'd been buddies
for years. There was no greater way to gain respect
than to rise above the situation and teach by example.
Yes, there are some really good ways to counter to
ignorance. But I don't think online petitions for
apologies is one of them. At best, it will garner
a PR-driven apology, but no guarantee that Shaquille
will have learned anything of value.
It's been argued against my point that there's no
harm in signing the petition. That it is supposed
to garner an apology as well as raise awareness and
doesn't take much energy to sign. And even if the
apology is PR-driven, it is for the greater good of
raising awareness. In my opinion, seeking such an
apology makes us a larger set of push-overs as a culture.
Why seek an apology that we know is driven by the
evils of public image? Indeed, it doesn't take much
energy to sign -- but it takes much more energy to
do what is right.
We should cut out the petition charade and choose
to raise awareness on our own merits. What better
way to illustrate Eastern philosophy than working
WITH Shaquille rather than working AGAINST him?
So as not to eat my own words, I intend to post this
response to my own website and respond to everyone
who has sent me this petition. In addition, I will
submit this response to the Op-Ed Sections of the
LA Times, NY Times, Houston Chronicle and Star Ledger
(my local paper). I will also send this response to
the person who generated this petition and to LA Lakers
and Houston Rockets organizations.
The best you could realistically hope for as a person
physically distant from the situation is that Yao
Ming puts up a stellar performance. The least you
hope for is a respectable one. The best you could
do as a member of a culture who was publicly misunderstood
by Shaquille is to educate, not to berate. Perhaps
Shaq would learn a bit more about what the Asian culture.
Mark Rosal
To read Bill Walton's response to Shaq's comments,
click
here.
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The
Generation of Hip-Hop |
Read an excerpt from
Patrick Rosal's essay, "A Pinoy Needle in a B-Boy
Groove" which appears in the anthology Pinoy
Poetics. |
| October 6, 2002
-- "My teenage summers in the early eighties
simmered in the era of b-boys and b-girls, 'boys'
and 'girls' who were into breakdancing. Those days
started a long affair with the music and culture of
hip hop. Fifteen years later, when I began to write
poems seriously, I thought that hip hop's strongest
influence on me would be rap -- the most obvious connection
to poetry -- but I was the worst emcee (I still am).
Obviously what hip hop was to give me wouldn't be
from emceeing. Most of what I gained as a poet from
hip hop didn't come from graffiti or breakdancing
either. It came from making the music itself."
Read the excerpt. |
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60
Billion E-mails a Day by 2006 |
Report Says that We
Send 31 Billion a Day Now |
| September 27, 2002
-- Posted on MacCentral.com,
market research company IDC reports that currently
one out of every three e-mails is spam. And if that
weren't bad enough, that ratio will swell to one out
of every two.
So, with my feeble calculations, the statistics suggest
e-mail spam will triple to 30 billion a day. However,
as one of my stock analyst friends once said -- 94%
of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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Tattoo
Your CDs Digitally |
Use Your CD Burner
to Print Any Image on the Shiny Side of CD-Rs |
| September 26, 2002
-- (from the site) Yamaha's DiscT@2 technology allows
the user to burn text and graphics onto the data side
of a CD-R disc. This innovative process eliminates
the need for cumbersome stick-on labels, which peel
off in heat, become illegible when wet, or cause the
CD to spin unevenly, as well as the use of felt-tip
markers that could smear and are unprofessional at
best.
For more information visit Yamaha's
website. |
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For
Web Geek Designers: More Crayons!!! |
Expand Your Web-Safe
Palette of 216 Colors to the Web-Smart Palette of
4,096 Colors |
| September 21, 2002
-- It's time to move on, my fellow web designers.
Look past your 216 colors and move on to the array
of 4,096 web-smart colors offered by moreCrayons.com.
The site features a 3d
color cube, 2d
color squares and an GREAT
color slider. Furthermore, it provides some interesting
statistical tidbits on the average screen color depth
and so on. Give it a shot. |
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Hi!
My Name is Nick and I Don't Like to Read... |
My Brother Takes a
Trip to the Local Library in Irvington, NY and Quickly
Learns the Facts of Life |
| An E-mail from My
Brother, September 20, 2002 -- Apparently, the
old, fossil witches don't like us arty types in Westchester!
I went into the library to go on line just to see
what a design I did looked like on another OS. Since
I was already there, I went to check MY
site out since I made minor changes to it. While
there I pulled up one of my paintings to see how it
looked on this tiny PC screen.
That's when the old bat came out of nowhere and YELLED
at me (in a fuckin' library no less) for having "those
unaaceptable images" on screen. I couldn't admit
it was my work so I said - very loudly - "It's
a painting! I'm researching an artist!"
She eyed me very angrilly and walked off (I swear
she would have given me the finger if no one was looking.)
So, I just barked at her and said, "They're cleaning
Michaleangelo's 'David' -- can I look at that? Or
do you? He IS a NAKED MAN!"
I got the boot and lost a resource in the area...
No wonder people don't read anymore...
- Nick Rosal, nicholasrosal.com
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Fox Pulls Best Damned
Mike Tyson Ad |
Commerical Featuring
Mike Tyson as a Baby-Sitter Too Provocative for Network |
| September 20, 2002
-- Fox
decided not to air a commercial for the Best
Damn Sports Show Period featuring Mike Tyson
as a baby-sitter for the children of one of the show's
hosts John Kruk. -- AdAge.com
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Free
Online Learning:
Edit and Program Your Own DVDs |
Free Online Training
for a Limited Time |
| September 20, 2002
-- G2
Computers is offering free online training for
Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.
You must register
online at the G2 Computers website. The registration
form is just one page long. You must have Internet
Explorer or Netscape Navigator version 4.0 or later.
You must also have Quicktime installed.
Final
Cut Pro is a professional software package that
allows you to capture, edit and apply effects to digital
video. DVD
Studio Pro allows you to program professional
DVD menu systems.
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Surfing in Bryant Park,
NYC |
It's Easy and It's
Free |
| September 18, 2002
-- For those of you who have a Wi-Fi 802.11b wireless
network card installed in your laptop, you can get
on the Internet free of charge in two of NYC's parks.
Sponsored by NYCWireless.net,
you can now download downtown (Battery Park) and midtown
(Bryant Park). Just select a base station and open
a browser to log onto the Internet.
I tried it out myself at Bryant Park. The signal
was very strong, but inconsistent at times. There
were two other G4 Titanium Powerbook users online
outdoors. One of them mentioned that Starbucks had
wireless Internet, but it was a pay for play deal. |
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Ruby Boxing People
Out |
Hey, Quit Dancing with
My Dog. |
| September 16, 2002
-- Whenever I walk Ruby, my three-year-old boxer,
I'm stunned at the number of people in Jersey City
who bail out of her way out of sheer fear. Ruby is
a lovable 50 lbs. of fur, complete with an underbite
and is a well-oiled sleeping machine. Yet, I find
that she causes distress, and it is in times of distress
when people become truly creative.
They usually do the "This Looks Like a Good
Place to Cross the Street" maneuver. This is
an effective move for avoiding dogs and their walkers
except when there's heavy traffic. A consistent stream
of moving traffic means time off the clock, and time
off the clock means the space between the dog and
the street crosser closes more with every passing
second.
Which brings meto my favorite move, the "Boxer
Box Step." The steps are as follows: see dog,
take one step left, one step back, wait for dog to
pass as you stare, then one step right and move forward.
People, this is a dog who struggles to bark for fear
of being impolite. There's no need to be afraid. Unless
you're a Mets fan. |
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Animaniacs |
Wakko, Yakko and Dot |
| September 15, 2002
-- Whatever happened to them? |
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