Life in Pixels

haud ignota loquor

  • Being An Actor for a Week

    Exactly a week ago, I concluded what was a glorious few months full of rehearsals for my school’s senior Drama production, a revue of the best of Charles Dickens’s works, titled What the Dickens?

    It was great fun, and I got to make a load of new friends from the other grades’ Drama students.

    For those that don’t know, apart from being a passionate writer and techno-fanatic, I love the theatre and from a young age have enjoyed participating in small plays put on by my school. In 2006, the final year at my preparatory school, I played the role of Jughead in an adaptation of the Archie comics.

    At the beginning of last year, I took up the subject of Dramatic Arts as one of my four subjects for FET (a South African equivalent — sort of — of the A-levels). Whenever I tell most people that this is one of my four choice subjects, they always regard me with a puzzled look and begin a rant about why I’d even think of taking up a subject like this, or they might curiously question this seemingly strange decision.

    As my Drama teacher constantly says, and what I also strongly believe in, is that Drama is an essential subject — an integral life skill — the benefits of which impact hugely in the success of one’s life in the long-run.

    You see, Drama is not just about getting up on stage and acting, similarly to how karate (another art that I practice) is not just about kicking and punching. It involves a state of mind, a quest for attaining complete concentration. It’s about learning a vast amount of theory based on acting, and about immersing yourself in rich cultures and fascinating social histories. It’s about learning to become confident and bold. About having fun.

    But enough of that rant about the subject; for an entire seven days last week (Saturday to Friday), I got to immerse myself in the world of Drama as the cast of this show tirelessly agonised over intricate details to pull-off three amazing nights of awesome performances on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In case you’re wondering, I played the convict Magwitch from Great Expectations, and performed the opening scene with Pip (“The Convict Frightens Me”).

    But alas, after seven days of living in the fantastic, I return to the mundaneness of daily life. It’s brutal of me to say that, but this past week has been exhausting to say the least. And as I approach half-year exams, my writing and blogging time is becoming increasingly shortened. I yearn for an ounce of free time just to read my own novel for leisure, but find that I’m too tired to even concentrate on it (I’m currently reading Area 7 by Matthew Reilly; great novel, by the way). In the meantime, I hope to clear a block of time on weekends to catch up on my blogging; let’s hope my mind won’t be fried by the information-bombarding I’m beginning to get from my revision!

  • Dreaming the Future (with a little help from Iron Man)

    So yesterday I went to the opening-night show of Iron Man 2. Amazing film. I’m in love with it; I was in love with the first one from the moment I realised how cool it was (that’d be around the opening credits), and I’ve re-discovered my love for the franchise with this new release.

    Whilst watching it, I started to think: is this what our world will look like in the next 10 years? Of course, I don’t mean the HD explosions and that Iron Man suit… I’m talking about the actual tech and science.

    When the first Iron Man released, we were awed by Tony Stark’s “magical” mobile gadgets; today, we’ve got the iPad, iPhone and yet-to-be-released Nokia N8 (set to change the mobile landscape with the new Symbian 3 OS).

    In the film, there’s a scene with what looks suspiciously to be a particle accelerator. Now, without delving into the intricacies of theoretical physics (I’m actually quite fascinated by it, and do occasionally read up on it. I know, major geek. Yeah), we must understand that this is a branch if science that can greatly improve our lives. Discoveries in the research labs of top institutions like CERN and NASA will directly influence the gadgets we use in the coming years. Physics is all around us; we can’t escape its myriad laws. But it can improve our society.

    For example, breakthroughs with the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment at CERN in Geneva could change the way we consume energy. If scientists can correctly control and manipulate antimatter to provide power, we’ll have found the ultimate alternative to fossil fuels. And the Earth will thank us.

    Superheroes like Iron Man, whilst fictitious, remain a beacon of inspiration to the next generation of thinkers, scientists and engineers — the people who will jettison our society into the next era of awe. I can personally say that my inspiration to become an engineer has been re-awakened after seeing that film last night. And the thing is that, in a world full of dreary news, we need heroes like Iron Man to show us that it is possible to build a better world through sheer intuition and ambition.

    Advances in science and technology are exponentially increasing; in the span of just three years we’ve gone from no-iPhone, to a mobile market saturated with multi-touch technology. And let’s not forget that confusing iPad.

    At this rate, we’ll have an Iron Man-esque era of technology in no time. And I seriously can’t wait for that.

  • To Make Steve Rich Again Or Not… That is the Question!

    In around September 2008, I got an iPhone. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing, really. I wasn’t a Mac user back then, so the idea of using something close to Mac OS X (yup, iPhone is powered by a “lower-end” version of the big boy OS himself), was quite appealing. It was as if I could have a piece of the Apple with me, and take a bite from it whenever I wanted to.

    Well… not quite so. Because then I discovered the annoying limitations of the darned thing. What I had effectively done, was downgrade from a far more capable Nokia N73, to something that seemed to come from the Stone Age of Technology. It couldn’t run more than one app at the same time. It couldn’t forward SMS. It didn’t have MMS. It ate up my airtime.

    It sucked.

    But then, low and behold, two years later, along comes the Apple Media Event for iPhone OS 4.0, and it seems like the iPhone has once again wooed me… and the scary thing is that it just might be working. I’m starting to like this device again now. Apple’s really refined the OS, they’ve added those “lacking” features, and those darned software developers are writing some really cool apps for the thing (and leaving us faithful Nokia users out in the cold, too!).

    The biggest “win” factor for me from today’s address by El Jobso (alias Steve Jobs) was the announcement of multitasking. Finally, Apple! Welcome to 2010 — how was it back there in the Stone Age of Tech?

    As usual, the fruity company from Cuppertino has managed to make this feature pretty stylish, too. Couple this with the addition of a social network for gamers, and I think my next mobile may just be an iPhone.

    Wait. I can’t believe I actually wrote that.

    Okay, seriously speaking, I’m starting to re-consider and re-think my opinion of the iPhone; perhaps if Apple included a slide-out keyboard, then we’re talking! I’m a “traditional” tech guy; I like the feel of an actual keyboard when I’m typing on the phone. However, I’m not banking on this happening any time soon; I know OS 4 has the option of using a Bluetooth keyboard, but what if I’m out and about somewhere? I don’t care much for typing on a virtual keyboard, no matter how damn cool it looks. Because functionality does matter, right? We can only find out for sure, though, come World Wide Developers Conference 2010, where Apple usually unveils these new iThings.

    I guess the real question is, though, whether to make Steve rich again… or not.

  • The Moleskine: A Writer’s Best Friend

    As my writing career finally begins to take-off, I’ve realised that there really is only one way to remember the hundreds of ideas flying through my head on a daily basis: keeping a notebook.

    Because I write so frequently, it can be difficult to recall ideas for a particular article I’m writing. Thus, enter the Moleskine: I bought my first Moleskine about three years ago, after meeting one of my favourite authors of all time, Anthony Horowitz, at a book signing in Exclusive Books (my all-time favourite bookstore).

    At the time of buying it, I was so inspired by Horowitz’s advice to aspiring writers to “keep a notebook, and write as often as you possibly can” that perhaps this “pushed” me into buying my own Moleskine.

    However, I never quite seemed to use it as frequently as I’d anticipated.

    The other day, I read an article on GigaOM by one of my favourite bloggers, Om Malik, who said that he swore by his own Moleskine to jot down ideas for his posts.

    This got me thinking — I could finally put my own Moleskine notebook, which was otherwise used less-frequently to jot down random thoughts and ideas, to better use as an organizer for the many blog posts I seem to always have lined up. I still plan on using it as a repository for my thoughts and ideas; I find it wonderful to have what I deem an “extension of my mind” between the faux-leather covers of my little notebook.

    Until now, I’d use tacky Post-Its stuck all over my wall at my desk to remind me of what posts I’ve got lined up. Mind you, these notes were stuck in a jumbled fashion, with untidy scrawlings strewn one on top of the other.

    But as of late, when I’ve realised that my writing has “ramped-up” significantly , I need a place to actually write full-on ideas, paragraphs (sometimes even full posts, which I’ll end up editing significantly when I later type them up), and, of course, research notes.

    And the Moleskine certainly delivers.

    Once  used by the titans of the creative crafts — the great writers and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin (who, co-incidentally, inspired the commercialization of the Moleskine range of notebooks), my little notebook carries with it a sense of inspiration — that I’m writing in something that legends once used. It’s a thrilling thought.

    In an age when typing has taken over the craft of writing, it’s a refreshing change to be able to sit down, take my Parker in hand, open up my notebook, and put pen to paper.

    It carries with it a sense of liberating freedom of thoughts when writing long-hand. As the man who inspired me to use a notebook, Anthony Horowitz, once said in a video interview, “ink should flow through us like blood”.

  • Blogging: It’s an Art, Actually

    A recent watching of an old interview by one of my favorite bloggers, Om Malik, got me thinking about the actual practice of blogging.

    I’ve been involved in this trade for close onto three years now, after launching my first personal site at Blogger, then moving onto WordPress.com with the old Life in Pixels, and finally here, to my very own “proper” home on the web. Interspersed through my blogging adventures were my various attempts at creating a “commercial” blog, and naturally, being the tech enthusiast that I am, these ventures focussed on something to do with technology.

    My first attempt was Tech|Zone. This was a resounding success, and it’s reached over 40 000 pageviews (not bad for a first attempt, eh?)

    I moved from Tech|Zone to a more sophisticated blog called Byte Lounge, where my focus become more clear, in providing “definitive insights into the tech scene”. Also, having Byte Lounge hosted on Blogger allowed for me to implement advertising programmes on the site, as a way of getting a small “reward” for my efforts.

    But the one thing that I discovered, that’s really left an indent in my blogging experiences, was that blogging is not just a pastime, or a monetization opportunity — it’s an art.

    As Om said in the interview, blogging allows him to interact on a level unheard of before with his readers. If someone says they don’t like what he said in his post, he can learn from his mistakes and thus better his writing.

    The same goes for me, and it goes even further than the interaction with readers: blogging allows one to express themselves on a faster, intelligent level that can reach thousands in an incredibly short space of time. It improves writing skills, and allows writers to develop a more concise approach to communication.

    As I near the 100th post on Byte Lounge — a remarkable achievement for me, as it represents my growth as a blogger — I’ve begun reflecting on what it means to blog; what it means to express your opinions on a platform that allows others to see and collaborate on.

    While I haven’t yet got the definitive answer to my philosophical question (I’ve been known to be quite philosophical) the joys that blogging has brought me is something that I’d never for a million bucks exchange.

    There’s something about writing a great post — knowing you’ve written it well — and clicking “Publish”, and that feeling of knowing that others out there, perhaps who you’ve never met in your entire life, reading and providing their feedback, that makes those hours slaving over a hot keyboard worth it.