From Fish to Pixels.

Fish. The chicken of the sea some say. One thing I do know, is that it is the only "meat" that is prepared at my home. You see, my parents are pescetarians ( you can add this to your mental dictionary, no need to thank me). In their earlier years they did consume chicken and other meat, but they made a decision to only eat seafood many years before I was born. There is at any given time in the refrigerator, at least two types of fish or shellfish. If I had to choose, pink salmon might be my favorite. The fish pictured above is tilapia , its nutritional value cannot be underscored.. However, I am not a loyal follower of the sea as my parents. I place other sources of nutrition on my plate for sacrifice.

On to the reason for this post. Someday last week, mom was going to season some fish and asked if I knew how to do same. I gave a slick response, but the result was her showing me anyway.

There are two methods of seasoning fish, quick and dirty or long and precise. Both methods require your use of lime or vinegar to remove some of the "freshness" of the fish.  Quick and dirty is exactly  what it means. You purchase a bottle of fish seasoning from the grocery and smother it all over your unseasoned fish and you are done. The bottle contains various seasoning spices and to me it removes the fun that could be had from the L + P method. You can "fridge" it, or throw it in your non stick frying pan or grill. L + P requires specific steps. All the spices are added individually and because the potency of some are stronger than others, the quantity added varies. The difference between the two methods are the application of the spices and I have a feeling that the taste differs as well.

After mom showed be the ropes I decided to write it in my sketchbook. I used some whimsical icons for each step and it got me thinking I could transpose this information into a digital format !

The image above shows two things. On the left is the scan of my sketchbook and on the right is my first   attempt at a digital translation. You can see the digital layout is identical to the sketch. At first I was going to make near exact replicas of the symbols in the original, but I changed my mind. Some elements were kept such as the ice cube, but the regular fish in an ice cube wasn't hitting home. I wanted something special. I could have put an illustration of Ice Cube's face in there, but then people would think I'm a cannibal. The fact that I didn't specify what my other sources of nutrition above were, makes me all that more suspect. When I was finished, I sent my graphic art cousin a copy to get some feedback. His site here. Which brought me to attempt numero dos. A cleaner, more breathable layout, compared to my first attempt. Thanks Cuz.

This is only the beginning of these digital montages. Who knows, I might make this into a series. Sounds a bit fishy if you ask me.

Week in review

This week flew. Took mom to see Avengers for her birthday on Tuesday. She was heavily entertained and praised the movie for how good it was and how the subtle humor was skillfully placed within points in the movie. Her favorite scene was the "encounter" between Hulk and Loki. I think that was everybody's favorite scene. Was out with mother for the rest of the week running errands and mall visits, but I went to Maracas beach for some bake and shark. For those who don't know what bake is, it is bread, but instead of being placed in the oven, it is fried. It is the delicacy of choice when going to this particular beach. You cannot go to Maracas beach without having a bake and shark. Besides getting some food in the belly, the trip was also about catching up with a friend. Friday I went to West Mall, for the first time since I came back home and I just took a couple pics/sketches of things that interested me such as the handrail/balustrade detail pictured below.  Didn't get all the technical aspects of the week's goals done, but I did get my portrait project rolling with my film camera. Hope the coming weeks see me completing more of my goals.

New old media

As stated in yesterday's post, one of my summer goals is improving my photography as well as experimenting with different media. I always found film cameras and film on a whole to be "cool." The whole process of developing film and see it materialize in front of your very eyes always interested me, but not enough for me to set up a darkroom and search for the required materials and chemicals for developing. For now I'd rather send film to a shop and get the prints or just ask for them to develop the film and I scan the negatives myself. Of lately film has been pulling at my strings as the Youtubers and and blogs I follow deal heavily with the topic. Here a couple of my favorites ( Mijonju http://bit.ly/KPHEs5 & Japan Camera Hunter http://bit.ly/noQCIe) I tried resuscitation my dad's Pentax Superprogram he bought twenty years ago but to no avail. He said he carried it by the "best man to fix it", which I doubted at first, but I carried my 50D to him to fix one of the dials and he did an excellent job. So the Pentax is just a paperweight, a pretty one. One camera that my dad has that still works, is a Canon Ixus Z65, introduced in 2001. It uses APS sized film, which is a little smaller than regular 35mm film (pictured below), and has a couple neat features, such as indicators on the bottom, that tells you whether the film is in use or has reached the end of the spool. I intend to experiment with this camera and will post my findings.

Been Gone

When I started this blog, I believed that I would make regular updates. Such was the dream I had, and after a couple or so posts, this blog started to gather dust. It is summer now and I now have more time than before to make posts. Some goals I have for this summer are reading and viewing more Architectural literature, getting better at sketching, definitely improving my photography, seeing more of my country and meeting new people. One major project I wish to see completed, is to build a shelter design for the homeless in my backyard. It's a tall feat which includes making proper working drawings as well as securing capital to purchase materials. I also wish to do an internship at a firm I interned at before. Hope these things work out. The picture below is of a Spawn No.5 I picked up at a comic book fare at the local mall.

A Week in Review

This week was surely different from the previous ones. Started off with a lime with some friends at Trotters It was originally supposed to be a sushi lime, but found out that the place closed down sometime ago.  Had some fish and chips there and ironically mom, brought home the same order the next day when she came home from work. But the main happening for the week was me starting an internship at ACLA Works. They are one of, if not the top architectural firm in the country and they have been around for more than sixty five years. They are a small firm but with really talented individuals. Well when I started on Tuesday I was given the task of learning how to use Archicad. Archicad is architectural design software too awesome to put in words. I have seen the kind of work produced by that CAD software and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to learn it. Archicad sure would make life easier in years to come when CAD becomes more integrated into school work. Initially, I thought Archicad wasn't too hard to learn but boy was I wrong. It has a really steep learning curve, but as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, so I'm gonna push hard to get a full understanding of how to use it.

Table of Contents

One thing that I dream of doing, is reading till I get sick. From a young age reading was something I did when the information between covers was purely fictional. I remember buying novels such as Animorphs and Goosebumps to quench my thirst for surreal adventures. During secondary school my friend introduced me to the Artemis Fowl series which I got hooked on. The series entailed an adolescent genius discovering and protecting a world under the earth's surface, which housed everything from pixies to trolls. Not to mention this world was eons advanced in technology than the human world. The boy also had a bodyguard called Butler, yes butler. Up to a couple years ago I bought the most recent book in the series after stumbling upon it in a store. In secondary school, literature was compulsory and we read books such as Shane and To Kill a Mockingbird, which I enjoyed reading but didn't enjoy dissecting it over and over to bring out underlying themes etc. From there I moved on to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code, Angels and Demons, Digital Fortress and a yet to be read Deception Point. Somehow I need to transfer the energy I possess reading fictional novels and transfer it to the non fictional aspect of reading. I would read an architectural magazine, lets say Metropolis and it would hold me for a while before I do something else and get back to it, but I can't sit for an hour and read something non fictional. I just fall asleep or get the urge to do something other than reading. I do understand the importance of reading especially in my field that requires me to retain vast amounts of information to meld with my ideas, but the act of reading eludes me for now. I fight with myself daily on the time I waste where I could be reading. To visually stimulate my absent reading appetite I pilled all the books and magazines I want to read on my bed and put an 'IN' tag in front of them and to the right I have an 'OUT' tag, just like in an office environment where work comes to you and you need to process it and put it in the outbox. Thats my motivation I guess, but I need to get over this hurdle because the next semester is coming up and I don't want to be playing catchup when I could be progressing forwardly.

Monkey on my back

So I was rummaging through a drawer last night and I came across my old and trusty Gameboy Colour. Oh how the memories rushed back. Trips to far off destinations were shortened by this trusty companion. Stuck in my old friend was a copy of Donkey Kong Country. I loathed this game and its steep learning curve. If there ever was a game that would send you mad, this had to be it. I found myself a couple AA batteries and slapped those suckers in and fired up the beast. To my surprise the current level I was on when I put the gameboy away years ago was the one that was staring me in the face. Since last night I have been playing this game when the urge took me, and the sad part is that I am still stuck on this level. I think I am reliving the reason why I put this device away in the first place.