Life & Research Notes

It was a whirlwind five day trip, including 24 hours of travel each way. I had excellent colleagues and travel companions in Dave, Amanda, Jaewoo, and John. We managed to cover a lot of ground in a short time, both with the engineers and researchers at Samsung, and in our explorations of the city and the DMZ.

Yet I seem to be having trouble putting together any interesting commentary or reflection on Seoul. I can say that in some places, like among the students, shoppers and partiers in Insadon and Dongdaemun, the electricity and newness felt very much like Tokyo. And at other times, wandering the backalleys and outdoor markets, or watching the motorbikers carry impossibly bulky loads through crowded streets, I recalled the chaos of Bangkok and Saigon. Then there were those experiences absolutely unique to Korea, like the outdoor performance that Dave and I stumbled on, some blend of Taiko and the circus, with young women jumping and singing and drumming, and older men leaving the circle of spectators to dance drunkenly around in the center. Throughout the first two days we were also working, giving talks and a workshop at Samsung and meeting with engineers. It was a busy few days. The jetlag didn’t help.

One of many markets.

Some sort of food, hard to know what, probably spicy.

We happened to be in the right part of town at the right time…

A labor rights rally demonstration was happening…

Riot police were out in force. Hundreds of police sat in buses or on the street on their riot shields, smoking cigarettes, listening to music on their headphones, waiting for the rally to move outside its designated area. We heard later that it did. We’re told Korean police like to use tear gas.

Sometimes it is fun to be a tourist.

Amanda found out about this show at the modern art museum.

Jaewoo overordered. It looks nice here, but got messy really fast.

Approaching the DMZ.

That’s all we could see of the DMZ.

Dave and Amanda in Dongdaemun.

Samsung has tight security.

Advertisements of a comedy show

Insadon was hip.

More please.

Reminds me of a book I read as a kid.

The aftermath of the Samsung dinner.

We talked it over here in the PLW and decided to shut down Tiny’s public gallery, effectively closing the factory. In the coming week we’ll convert it into a curated collection. Luis and I will act as primary curators, though in the future we hope to add guest curators or even allow for an algorithmic curation via an API. The icon drawing tool is still available, and all icons submitted will be eligible for inclusion in the new gallery.

In just over one month we’ve had 41,000 unique visitors and 102,534 icons, 25,306 of them unique. It’s been a good run for the factory. Thanks everyone for all the blog links and traffic, now onto the gallery!

We’ve seen a number of mini conflicts on Tiny, but this appears to be one of the more intense click-offs.

Update: I don’t like having swastikas or other such symbols on Tiny, and there are concerns that it is against school policy to publish this sort of material. We’ve seen a lot of offensive material on here, but when I come across an ideological and religious battle like this it is a reminder that these symbols, despite their small size, can have a very real effect. Perhaps an open, anonymous system like Tiny is not feasible. I can’t police it well myself, nor can I automatically filter the content (although I suppose that’s a topic for research). I’ve considered community moderation systems, but that’s a heavy layer to add on to such a lightweight system. I’m not sure how to proceed. Thoughts or advice appreciated.

Tiny has had a few other spurts of activity this week with the Dutch invasion and it is now approaching 100K icons. Ironically the pace has slowed to a near standstill, and we are hovering at 99,783…

When we got back from teaching MAS110 today, Luis noted that Tiny had gained approximately 15,000 new icons in the past day, almost double what was there before. The culprit? Flabber. Helpful babelfish translation:

I thought firstly that this nothing was for an item, but when I came that I already a kwartier was with signs, thought I: ‘ this wants do fixed more people ‘. The creative spirit must be also stimulated.

A bunch of javascripty types also discovered the joys of iteration and crammed thousands of swastikas and Flabber icons into poor little Tiny. Thanks guys, that’s great.

My friend Anita asked me the other day why I choose to have a public blog rather than simply keeping a private journal. I thought about it for a while, and I arrived at an explanation of why I like my blog and why I choose to keep it public.

1. An audience, however small, obliges me to write regularly. Perhaps a very self-motivated person can just keep it private, but that doesn’t work for me. Imagine you’re at home alone and you have a nice big Milka bar sitting there next to you, and you know you should work out and eat vegetables, but instead you eat the candy bar and look at youtube all night. You feel kind of lame. That’s how private blogs are for me. I feel bad for being lazy, but not bad enough to make me write. Knowing that I have even a few friends and family that expect something is the extra little boost of obligation to counter my natural laziness. Hey, at least I know myself.
2. A public blog is a nice way to keep the people I care about up to date. I’ve been getting some more traffic in the few weeks since the Tiny thing, but I’m actually more interested in communicating to the people I already know. Burak and Kelly and a few friends around the lab check on it occasionally, Jenn subscribes, my parents read it, etc. My group also looks at it, including Henry and John, so it’s a nice way for them to know that I am doing things and when something is interesting they ask me about it. A few of my group members also keep blogs, and we can easily reference one others’ work and ideas as they come.
3. It is a dynamic portfolio. If/when I am someday looking for work I will point to the blog as a partial explanation of what I’ve been doing here. I feel that it is a nice way to mark certain ideas as my own. The contract stuff I’m thinking about seems new because I haven’t found any other people thinking about it the same way. If I get enough material up on my blog it will serve as a record that I was pushing these ideas early on, and if others find my work interesting they are more easily able to find it, and there is greater chance of collaboration and idea exchange.
4. The public blog serves as an excellent self-reflection exercise. I enjoy looking back on how my thoughts have shifted over the past eight months since I started writing. I’m also looking forward to using it as a tool for composing my thesis. I plan to write a good chunk of the thesis as blog entries. My blog is pretty safe; for the most part I can write what I like, and in the process I learn my voice and style. I’d like to approach my thesis with the same exploratory, meditative mentality, so the blog seems like a natural tool. Perhaps someday I’ll develop books, stories, or articles in the same way.

Screenshot from the top secret OPENCODE.