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February 7, 2010 8:13 PM

green police

In case you missed it, VW/Audi aired a really great ad during the Super Bowl as part of its 'Green Police' marketing campaign.

Despite some of the, um, issues with its name (which I only discovered when trying to find a link to the ad and finding this), the campaign is genius. By relying on humour, VW managed to do what a lot of sustainability-related messaging doesn't: present viable ways to reduce one's environmental impacts without being preachy and patronizing or dull and depressing.

Unfortunately, many PSAs and other communications with environmental messages tend to be preachy (thou shalt not drive an SUV because it is the right thing to do and not doing so is presumably wrong/evil/immoral...) or depressing (thou shalt not drive an SUV because polar bears are drowning/sea levels are rising/pine beetles are devastating forests...). Although the goal of these types of ads is to change behaviour, my sense is that they make people feel bad for doing something that they've already done and give the impression that it's too late to remedy the situation that has resulted or that remedying the situation is beyond their control. It's too late. The damage has been done. So why change? Furthermore, even if this form of communication succeeded in motivating people to change, alternative choices or clear solutions to facilitate the change are often missing from the message.

In contrast, the VW ad conveys that the status quo is bad (i.e., change is good) while suggesting that change is obviously easy. None of the charges laid by the green police in the ad were for behaviours that are difficult to modify. All the charges could have been simply avoided: don't use plastic bags (implied: use paper or reusable bags), don't use incandescent bulbs (implied: use compact fluorescent), don't use disposable coffee cups (implied: use a reusable mug), etc. And, given the comical nature of the ad, all of these solutions were presented in a way that made the audience feel happy, not shamed or depressed.

Clearly, the primary goal of the VW campaign is to sell more cars (public transit and bicycles were noticeably absent in the ad). Nonetheless, I think that that the core environmental message was a good one that might inspire more people to embrace more sustainable choices as compared to traditional eco-campaigns. I hope to see more environmental communication in this vein... Change is good.

Filed under // sustainability

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January 26, 2010 11:34 AM

learning to program through osmosis

There are times when I wish learning by osmosis was less dream and more reality. Studying for exams is probably the circumstance where I wished this the most (you know: step 1 - place textbook under pillow, step 2 - sleep, step 3 - wake up refreshed the next morning knowing the contents of all 14 chapters and the glossary, step 4 - ace exam). But I've also fantasized about learning by osmosis when it came to developing some basic web design and programming skills. Before I mislead you into thinking that I developed a way to do just that, the closest I've gotten to living the dream is by moving to San Francisco, being unemployed, and living with four YC alumni.

I've created some websites in the past using WYSIWYG editors. I won't be posting links to them here because they're, well, ugly. At the time, I didn't have time to learn enough HTML and CSS to do away with Dreamweaver and tables and all of their inherently frustrating limitations.

In contrast, when I arrived in SF I had time. Lots and lots of time. And I had a premise for a site. And I was surrounded by guys and their Macbooks and their nearly constant creativity. Not only were they creating things, they were creative in the sense that creativity is synonymous with innovation, initiative, enterprise, and resourcefulness. And I was inspired. I bought a domain.

After asking my roommies a few questions, I concluded that I was starting so close to knowing nothing about web development that perusing the results of Google searches would suffice as my guide. Sensei Google. I borrowed an O'Reilly book, but found myself returning to Google for tidbits of assistance (with a background in biology, most of my time with the O'Reilly book was spent speculating on what the species of fish was on the cover... salmon, in case you're also curious).

I began by mocking stuff out in Photoshop by following a few online tutorials. One of my roommies was hosting a houseguest who worked as a graphic designer, and he shared a few tips and tricks. I played with colours and wondered aloud why Photoshop tools were so counter-intuitive. Needless to say, the ⌘+⌥+Z keys got a lot of use.

Once I had a better idea of what the site would look like, got some feedback from a graphic designer friend, and determined the extent of the site's functionality, I debated whether I should learn Ruby on Rails (the language of choice around here) for the backend. Ultimately, I decided to create a custom theme for Wordpress (despite being warned that Wordpress could be a nightmare). Enter more tutorials.

I started with a template from a tutorial and started modifying it. Trial and error was the name of the game. I came to appreciate that the method isn't called "trail and flawless" - there was a lot of error. Starting with the CSS in a TextEdit window, I made changes, saved, and refreshed. And I did that again and again and again. For awhile, I would enter #000000 and expect white to appear. I then realized that, because the absence of all light/color is black, the nomenclature actually made sense. I got pretty far just by editing the CSS, but reached a point where I couldn't ignore the HTML any longer.

More trial, more error. I'd think that I was on the right track, then I'd make a change, save, refresh, and (fingers crossed) ... error. I began to understand more of the nomenclature. I developed a love-hate, or rather hate-love, relationship with semicolons (hating them when one was missing and the structure of the page suddenly collapsed in a heap of div rubble and loving them when inserting one would miraculously fix everything). When trying to float divs, I found myself envisioning the position of lily-pads in a pond. Eventually, I got to the point where I would make a change in the code and was no longer surprised that the desired change would materialize in the browser window. The code made sense and I was able to appreciate that the code I was using as template was inelegant and inefficient. The experience was analogous to learning the basics of a foreign language using a textbook only to discover that the textbook was poorly written.

Then came Wordpress. Kevin graciously set up the server side of things and I began the process of integration. The tutorial was less than helpful, but I followed it to the best of my limited abilities. Ultimately, Kevin helped me navigate the intersection of HTML and PHP. More trial. More error. But I was learning. As a result, I have a website: www.amerishock.com

It's not perfect, but it's far from fail and it's mine. The design is mine. The underlying structure (minus the Wordpress code) is mine. The idea is mine. And, most importantly, I learned to program. Admittedly, what I learned was very basic but it can still be classified as learning.

While it wasn't learning by osmosis, the learning process was relatively friction-free. Being immersed in a culture where spending hours at home staring into the glowing screen of a laptop is seen as creative and productive, rather than antisocial, makes it easy to put in the time and effort needed to learn to code. And if you already code, I can't help but conclude that living in SF can only be good for productivity. Sharing an apartment with YC alumn can't hurt, either.

Filed under // San Francisco science & technology

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January 19, 2010 12:10 PM

rien n’arrete nos espirits

Reading about and seeing pictures of the earthquake aftermath in Haiti is devastating. I can't even fathom how hellish it must be there right now. And I can't imaging the helplessness Haitians living outside Haiti must be feeling, not knowing the fate of their family and friends on the island. I find myself thinking of the large Haitian population in Montreal. According to StatCan:

...the large majority of Canadians of Haitian origin live in Montreal. In 2001, 83% of Canada’s Haitian community made Montreal their home. That year, there were almost 70,000 Canadians of Haitian descent living in Montreal, where they made up 2% of the metropolitan area’s overall population.

The video for Arcade Fire's song, Haiti, is particularly moving as it showcases images from Haiti that depict the country's poverty, but also the strength and spirit of the Haitian community.

And the lyrics to the song are so powerful, especially when interpreted in the context of the devastation caused by the earthquake:

Haiti, mon pays,
wounded mother I’ll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nes
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n’arrete nos espirits.
Guns can’t kill what soldiers can’t see.

In the forest we are hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nes forment une armee,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haiti, never free,
n’aie pas peur de sonner l’alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
in those days their blood was still warm

As an aside, note the french pronunciation of the country's name (as per the second line of the song)... Ha-EE-Ti versus Hate-Ti.

Filed under // books & art

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January 15, 2010 1:39 PM

the common bond between worms in SF and cassettes

No soil or earth of any kind is allowed into the United States without a permit issued in advance by USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine Permit Unit

(U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

USDA permits were not my top priority leading up to our move to San Francisco. As a result, I had to leave my plants and the vermicomposter behind in Vancouver. Most of the plants were left in the care of my cousin and the worms were adopted by Miss Maggie. I miss them all (the plants, the worms, my cousin, and Maggie).

In San Francisco, I have yet to acquire new plants (with the exception of this, which I might need to dedicate a blog post to in the future) or a vermicomposter. While I intend to add some flora to spruce up (hehe) our apartment this spring, I won't be procuring any non-arthropod invertebrate fauna.

Given my success with the vermicomposter in Vancouver, I wouldn't hesitate to set up a new bin if I were looking for a sustainable way to dispose of my food waste. But I'm not. To my delight, organics are collected curb-side, along with recycling and trash, in San Francisco. The worms have been rendered obsolete [1].

Our building has a green cart in the basement and I've set up a small organics bin in our apartment, alongside the recycling and the trash, lined with compostable bags and labeled ".compost". Cute, right? Okay, maybe it's just geeky, but I couldn't resist.

[1] Nope, the title of the post has nothing to do with tapeworms (thankfully), in case that's what you might have been initially thinking.

Filed under // San Francisco sustainability

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January 8, 2010 11:27 AM

cotton candy overdose

Sometimes 140 characters isn't enough. And this is one of those times:

'Eat, Pray, Love' reads like a very long article in Cosmo, O mag, or a compilation of self-absorbed yet insincere blog posts. Not a fan, but

That's how far I got on Twitter. Even after deleting some words and trying to rephrase the tweet, I still wasn't even close to articulating my thoughts. Hence, the blog post.

Basically, my criticism of Elizabeth Gilbert's book can be summed up by going to Amazon.com, reading the reviews of customers who ascribed 1-star, and compiling them. Or, you could just read this one (and the comments in response to it) because I think it best captures how I feel about the book [1]:

So, I'm not going to provide my own in-depth review of the book here. I will say that if you read Eat, Pray, Love and liked it, maybe I understand why. It might be the same reason as why I sometimes find myself watching Oprah (and enjoying it on some level) and why I used to religiously read magazines like seventeen, Sassy, Jane, and O cover-to-cover. Guilty pleasures that I'm not proud to admit to (although Sassy and Jane are less embarrassing than the other two). I'm actually cringing as I type.

Somehow, I can justify magazines - fluffy content that is quick and easy to digest - as guilty pleasures. I find this harder to do with books. In my mind, books are supposed to be intellectually stimulating, hearty, and ought to require additional inputs (i.e., thinking) to digest. While I do enjoy small amounts of cotton candy periodically, Eat, Pray, Love is like being served 108 sticks of artificially-coloured pink cotton candy and being asked to consume all of it without feeling nauseous. Perhaps I'm an elitist when it comes to books. I can accept that, though, without cringing.

As an aside, having perused Amazon's reviews of this book, it's clear to me that the online experience is much more valuable than what is offered in-store when it comes to buying books. Traditional methods of selling books relies on the assumption that everyone who bought the book subsequently liked it and the discretion of the publisher to extract and showcase the most favourable reviews (or sections of reviews, or parts of reviews that can be made to sound favourable with the replacement of text with ellipses). By offering transparency, Amazon.com changes the game.

The accolades printed on the covers of Eat, Pray, Love, combined with its best-seller status, present the book as a safe bet. But, less than half of Amazon reviewers loved the book, while 20% hated it. Overall, the book garnered 3.5 stars out of 5. I probably wouldn't purchase a book based on those stats. Would you?

[1] I have not read The Human Stain but now think that maybe I should. Cows on an organic farm as a metaphor... sounds interesting.

Filed under // books & art

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January 7, 2010 6:42 PM

year in review

The start of a new year inevitably prompts me to assess the year that just ended and ponder what the year ahead holds. In my case, on January 1st of last year, I didn't predict the events that transpired in 2009. If asked then where I'd be one year later, I would've responded "Vancouver". If you told me that I'd be married, I would've called you crazy.

Actually, I assumed that 2009 would be a replication, with some small, inevitable mutations, of 2008. Analogous to evolution in a relatively stable environment. But, as you probably know if you've been following hyphenated, the environment in 2009 was unpredictably stochastic.

Stochasticity is not a friend of mine. Nonetheless, I survived the ups and downs and the instability and the unknown. Despite poor forecasting, the outcome has been positive. I feel stronger for having ridden the wave that was 2009. This strength helps me to look at the blank 2010 calendar without panicking (too much). There are a few dates with pencil-marks, but the bulk of the year remains uncharted and unplanned.

I'd be lying if I said that I loved the predicted stochasticity, but I can acknowledge it, take a deep breath, and trust that most of the bridges that need to be crossed will appear on the horizon in due time. And if the bridges aren't there, we'll build them or find an alternate route.

Where will I be this time next year? I honestly can't say for sure. It could be Vancouver. And, despite the risk of mimicking Oprah, I do know one thing for sure: I'll be married.

Filed under // family & friends San Francisco Vancouver

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December 15, 2009 12:21 PM

cinémathèque

In the past, I watched a movie every couple of weeks - roughly twenty-five movies per annum. I think I've watched at least that many movies in the last six weeks. My movie intake has substantially increased thanks to a roommate who watches movies like other people listen to music. While he works with movies playing in the background, I get sucked in and, voila!, I find myself watching yet another movie.

Of the movies that I've watched in the past months, a few stand out. Inglorious Bastards, Moon, and Empire of the Sun rise to the top of the list. I hadn't seen the first two movies before, but I had seen Empire of the Sun and watching it a second time confirmed for me what a great movie it is.

Christian Bale, who was thirteen when the movie was made in 1987, and John Malkovich are great in their respective roles, but the cinematography, the story, and the themes underlying the story ultimately steal the show and resonated with me (this might have something to do with my affinity for books and movies set in historical China and Japan).

Empire of the Sun provides a captivating perspective of the occupation of China by the Japanese in WWII. Elements of the war are relayed to the audience through the eyes of a rich, spoiled foreign boy who is suddenly transplanted to an environment where his affluence and status become instantaneously irrelevant yet his sense of entitlement takes time to fade. His childhood innocence evaporates rapidly in the POW camp and is replaced with a cocky adolescent naiveté that is simultaneously endearing and exasperating. I found this paragraph from a 1988 article in the New York Times to be quite interesting:

''I was attracted to the main character being a child,'' says Mr. Spielberg [...]. ''But I was also attracted to the idea that this was a death of innocence, not an attenuation of childhood [...]. This was the opposite of 'Peter Pan.' This was a boy who had grown up too quickly, who was becoming a flower long before the bud had ever come out of the topsoil. And, in fact, a flower that was a gifted weed.''

I also appreciated the humanity instilled on the Japanese as a result of telling the story from the standpoint of a boy whose outlook hasn't been tainted by political rhetoric and wartime propaganda. Rather than being a black-and-white war story of good-versus-evil, the lines are blurred and the audience is left having to reconcile with various shades of grey. The subtly clever title alludes to the ambiguity by combining Japan's "land of the rising sun" with the idea that "the sun never sets on the British Empire".

Filed under // books & art San Francisco

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December 5, 2009 4:04 PM

power on

Flip the switch and, voila!, there is light. It's something I do everyday, without really thinking about it. I take electricity for granted and I know that I shouldn't, mainly because I found myself at the heart of the so-called Triangle of Darkness during the ice storm that ravaged Quebec in 1998. For twenty-eight days (minus the few hours between when John purchased a generator and when he deemed it defective because, in addition to generating power, it was generating an unsettling blue flame) lightbulbs were useless and I was forced to appreciate what life was like before Franklin's potentially idiotic kite experiment.

Given that producing light is as simple as flipping the switch, it's easy to ignore where the power comes from and even easier to leave lights on unnecessarily. In addition to turning superfluous lights off, my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint have included purchasing compact fluorescent bulbs in order to reduce power consumption for the purpose of illumination. The equation is simple: less power consumed = less power generated = less carbon emissions.

In the two places I've lived before now, the nature of the source of the electricity was implicit in the names printed on my utility bills: Hydro Québec and BC Hydro. I was always left wondering what impacts my effort to reduce my electricity consumption had if the bulk of the environmental impacts associated with producing the power were incurred in the past, when the dam was built and the landscape was flooded and the power lines were erected. The ongoing generation of hydroelectricity is considered relatively clean so the equation isn't so simple. Where hydroelectricity is concerned, reducing consumption limits demand in an effort to reduce the need to construct additional dams or power plants in the future, rather than reducing emissions now.

Our utility now does not have 'hydro' in its name and I was curious as to our current source of power. So I did some research and found some data for our zip code, which I've graphed:

So, in California, the link between turning off the lights and minimizing my footprint is more obvious, along with the fact that my footprint is probably larger here given the mix of energy sources. About 75% of the pie is non-renewable and fossil fuels make up more than half of the non-renewable energy sources, while the remaining piece is nuclear. Long story short, the pie is neither sustainable nor appetizing. Here's hoping that the recipe is tweaked sooner than later.

Filed under // science & technology sustainability

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December 2, 2009 6:53 PM

thanks, again

In October, I celebrated Thanksgiving in Montreal. With turkey and all the fixings, I reflected on all I had to be thankful for. At that point in time, my mind was mainly focused on the upcoming move and I was mainly grateful that the long-distance had come to an end. I also appreciated the fall colours, the warmth of the fire, and (last but not least) my wonderful family and friends.

This past Saturday, I celebrated Thanksgiving in San Francisco. While turkey and family were implicated (I was following Elaine's turkey instructions and I was flustered when the bird looked done about 3 hours before our guests were set to arrive - a call home resulted in some motherly advice and everything turned out fine), fall foliage and warm fires were not. Given that current ambient temperatures are such that many flowering trees are still in bloom, it didn't feel like time for the harvest. Of course, the pilgrims didn't take San Francisco's climate into account.

As I've explained countless times to Americans over the last month, Canada's Thanksgiving occurs earlier precisely because the harvest occurs sooner further north. Goes to show that there was a time when Canadian politicians didn't make decisions simply by looking to the south and copying (unlike Harper's recent change of heart regarding his decision to attend Copenhagen).

In any case, despite the lack of snow and shivers, Christmas is right around the corner. The holiday decorations and eggnog at the grocery store will have to serve as reminders, since looking out the window does not conjure up visions of sugar-plums.

Filed under // family & friends San Francisco

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November 25, 2009 6:40 PM

urban expedition

The Twin Peaks are well positioned to provide great views to those who venture to the top:

So, I resisted the temptation to keep playing DoodleJump (a highly addictive iPhone game) and made my way there to check it out. Although buses stop not too far from the summits, I decided to walk through the Mission and the Castro to get there and back - about 3 miles (4.5 km) each way. Given the warm temperatures and cloudless sky, today was a perfect day for a long walk.

Obviously, the trek there was largely uphill, with many stairways offering pedestrians more direct routes up the steep, urban terrain. The energy expended was well worth it - the views from the top are great on a clear day (as per the pictures). Visible landmarks include the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street, the Bay Bridge, the Bay, and the Pacific ocean. Apparently the peak is a favourite destination for tour buses bringing loads of tourists to take in the vistas, but I was lucky to have the top to myself for most of the time I was there.

And, as a comedic aside, the name of my destination today reminds me of a Monty Python skit involving a man with double vision leading an expedition up Mt. Kilimanjaro...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=46btEgKmCTo

Click here to download:

urban_expedition.zip (9484 KB)

Filed under // San Francisco

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