We don't have thanksgiving in our culture, nor do we have the day as a official holiday. So it's really the first time I have such day. I went to one of my roommates', Deandre's home for thanksgiving dinner. It's a unique experience for me because it's also my first time visiting an american family.
What I'm impressed is that people are so friendly here, everybody's amicable, but not affected (something very common in chinese culture, it really makes people uncomfortable). Before the meal, the whole family came together and everybody says something about what to be thankful for. What I thank for is my family, for giving me such a great opportunity to come to this wonderful nation, to have such high-leve education and to meet so many good friends.
What we had for the meal is soul food (traditional african-american cuisine?), which tastes really great as well as turkey (which I don't like so much...). It even includes my favorite food since 5 years old-the stewed green beans with potato :)
The time passed quickly and I went back to dorm. I quickly found out one thing really awkward: the restaurants and stores are all closed on this day! It is a great surprise for me because in China, even on the most important day-the Spring Festival, all the public places are still open and crowded with people! Well, my lack of knowledge on american culture left me hungry the whole night until a friend of mine came by to ask me if I wanna go to Wafflehouse for dinner. Then I get to know that Wafflehouse is open 24/7 throughout the whole year (wow, unbelievable). One thing is really funny that Wafflehouse is almost occupied by Chinese students, I guess many other people aren't aware of the fact too!
In a word my first thanksgiving here is amazing. I really enjoyed it and learned lots of things on american culture.
2010年11月29日星期一
CSS Style and Flash Plug-Ins: something really cool when designing our website
My job in my group is to create the main page. It is a tough job because the main page is what leaves the first impression on the visitors. What I'm trying to achieve is that it should be as simple as possible, easy to guide, easy to see what the site is intended for and easy to get info within just one click.
The most direct way for navigating on index page is using the shockwave flash (swf) plug-ins. It can integrate multiple pictures into a flash video and display them like a slide show. What's more, each picture is clickable and will lead to an internal link. The pictures I chose to put in the flash are the top-5 places our group recommended for college students. The other links are available through a navigation-bar placed above the flash plug-in.
I'd say creating such a plug-in isn't so simple for a beginner, it's not as easy as many of you may think, putting picture together and add transitional effects just like what we did in visual essay presentation. Actually, I learned some coding on flash scripts in order to keep the video running; and really spent a lot of time on configuring the buttons. Flash has many cool functions, also making it very pro-oriented and inappropriate for an amateur like me. Anyway I overcame most of the difficulties and get the whole thing running smooth and pretty.
Another thing is the CSS style, which we did not learn on class. Well, HTML design is just so universal: all texts have the same layout, same font size and same color. The CSS solves most of the problem, I can edit the properties of certain text easily. Still, the texts within the same functional area, such as table and menu bar cannot be edited. This time I had to use CSS coding in edit mode and found out in order edit the text individually, a CSS description-specifically intended for selected text-is needed.
All these compicated steps made me frustrated at first, because what I saw is things weren't running in the way I expected. But the process of exploration, trials and errors is what makes me really dedicated to it. Adobe makes great software with the highest standard in the industry, intended for highly-skilled professionals. If not so, I won't be able to put these cool stuff on our main-page, and what leaves is nothing but plain texts and pictures.
The most direct way for navigating on index page is using the shockwave flash (swf) plug-ins. It can integrate multiple pictures into a flash video and display them like a slide show. What's more, each picture is clickable and will lead to an internal link. The pictures I chose to put in the flash are the top-5 places our group recommended for college students. The other links are available through a navigation-bar placed above the flash plug-in.
I'd say creating such a plug-in isn't so simple for a beginner, it's not as easy as many of you may think, putting picture together and add transitional effects just like what we did in visual essay presentation. Actually, I learned some coding on flash scripts in order to keep the video running; and really spent a lot of time on configuring the buttons. Flash has many cool functions, also making it very pro-oriented and inappropriate for an amateur like me. Anyway I overcame most of the difficulties and get the whole thing running smooth and pretty.
Another thing is the CSS style, which we did not learn on class. Well, HTML design is just so universal: all texts have the same layout, same font size and same color. The CSS solves most of the problem, I can edit the properties of certain text easily. Still, the texts within the same functional area, such as table and menu bar cannot be edited. This time I had to use CSS coding in edit mode and found out in order edit the text individually, a CSS description-specifically intended for selected text-is needed.
All these compicated steps made me frustrated at first, because what I saw is things weren't running in the way I expected. But the process of exploration, trials and errors is what makes me really dedicated to it. Adobe makes great software with the highest standard in the industry, intended for highly-skilled professionals. If not so, I won't be able to put these cool stuff on our main-page, and what leaves is nothing but plain texts and pictures.
2010年11月8日星期一
The Palace Museum
Art museum is not so common in China due to relatively low average education level, but there is one that can rival against Louvre and Smithsonian. That is, the Palace Museum.
Many of you perhaps haven't heard of the Palace Museum, but you should be really familiar with the Forbidden City, an area of Beijing consisting of royal residence area, government departments and military headquarter. The Palace Museum is inside the Forbidden City, built in the 1920s that collects most of the cultural heritage of China ranging from artifacts, paintings, sculptures, weaponaries, scientific instruments and historical documents.
For a long period of time, the exhibits in the museum are missing due to the World War II, when most of the precious objects are moved to Chongqing (temporary government headquarter) and then moved to Taiwan during the Civil War. There is another 'Palace Museum' in Taiwan, built by the KMT government but now it is part of the Palace Museum of Beijing and many exhibits are beginning to be moved back to mainland China.
Therefore, the Palace Museum is not only a collection of history, itself also acts as a history document that illustrates the modern history of China.
Many of you perhaps haven't heard of the Palace Museum, but you should be really familiar with the Forbidden City, an area of Beijing consisting of royal residence area, government departments and military headquarter. The Palace Museum is inside the Forbidden City, built in the 1920s that collects most of the cultural heritage of China ranging from artifacts, paintings, sculptures, weaponaries, scientific instruments and historical documents.
For a long period of time, the exhibits in the museum are missing due to the World War II, when most of the precious objects are moved to Chongqing (temporary government headquarter) and then moved to Taiwan during the Civil War. There is another 'Palace Museum' in Taiwan, built by the KMT government but now it is part of the Palace Museum of Beijing and many exhibits are beginning to be moved back to mainland China.
Therefore, the Palace Museum is not only a collection of history, itself also acts as a history document that illustrates the modern history of China.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Built in 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most famous art museums in the world, more often called the Met. It's located on the 5th Avenue New York, where there are many other amazing places (State Empire Building, New York Public Library, Central Park etc.). It has extensive collections, from Ancient Egyptian artifacts, Roman and Greek sculptures, work of Medieval Renaissance European masters as well as many modern art pieces. In addition to artwork, there are also collections of musical instruments, ancient weapons from around the world.
The official website of the Met is amazing. The index is very interactive; it gives us the impression as if we are entering the museum in person, with these scuptures and architectures right displayed in front of us. Also shown on the index is the current exhibitions on show, which really helps in planning the tour to the Met. After clicking into the main info page, there are various links that display the amazing exhibits, really interesting things ranging from artifacts of Yuan China, modern furniture, contemporary photography to Roman Mosaics. All these show that the Met is really a great place with so comprehensive collections, compared to the much smaller ones like the High.
The official website of the Met is amazing. The index is very interactive; it gives us the impression as if we are entering the museum in person, with these scuptures and architectures right displayed in front of us. Also shown on the index is the current exhibitions on show, which really helps in planning the tour to the Met. After clicking into the main info page, there are various links that display the amazing exhibits, really interesting things ranging from artifacts of Yuan China, modern furniture, contemporary photography to Roman Mosaics. All these show that the Met is really a great place with so comprehensive collections, compared to the much smaller ones like the High.
2010年10月31日星期日
The Visual Essay
I was very confused with this assignment at first because it's very different from an ordinary essay like the one we did for the 1st assignment. I've never tried visual essay in the form of slide before and I guess that is the same for most of us. More than that, the biggest problem I have encountered is the theme instead of how to present it. There are simply too many options for me!
But the workshop on the thursday after the fall break really gave me some ideas. I presented the picture of the city where I come from and it seems that they attracted some of my classmates. Then I restricted my options to the role public art is playing in displaying the culture of a city. However, culture is a very broad term because it involves so many aspects, making it impossible to compress the slide into 10 pictures.
The final theme I determined to do in my visual essay is Public Art and History. History is the origin of culture, culture is built based upon certain historical background. I chose 10 pictures I took before during my experience as a tour guide-by the way, back there in China I worked as a volunteer tour guide for Germans coming to visit our city-. Some of the pictures are post-processed, though they may look awkward, for example, the back-and-white picture of Dalian Hotel with modern automobile in it (I didn't realize that until I was making the presentation!).
I'm feeling alright for my presentation, it wasn't so bad. I really dedicated to preparing for it and wrote a rough draft in order to keep my mind in pace with the slide. I think my presentation has enough transitions, good conclusions and tight relatedness to my theme. If there's something to let anybody down is that this theme is so ordinary, it reallly lacks some creativity compared to the awesome topic of Hyun Ki Lee's visual essay.
But the workshop on the thursday after the fall break really gave me some ideas. I presented the picture of the city where I come from and it seems that they attracted some of my classmates. Then I restricted my options to the role public art is playing in displaying the culture of a city. However, culture is a very broad term because it involves so many aspects, making it impossible to compress the slide into 10 pictures.
The final theme I determined to do in my visual essay is Public Art and History. History is the origin of culture, culture is built based upon certain historical background. I chose 10 pictures I took before during my experience as a tour guide-by the way, back there in China I worked as a volunteer tour guide for Germans coming to visit our city-. Some of the pictures are post-processed, though they may look awkward, for example, the back-and-white picture of Dalian Hotel with modern automobile in it (I didn't realize that until I was making the presentation!).
I'm feeling alright for my presentation, it wasn't so bad. I really dedicated to preparing for it and wrote a rough draft in order to keep my mind in pace with the slide. I think my presentation has enough transitions, good conclusions and tight relatedness to my theme. If there's something to let anybody down is that this theme is so ordinary, it reallly lacks some creativity compared to the awesome topic of Hyun Ki Lee's visual essay.
2010年10月12日星期二
Public art, surely, can be very cool!
I don't know if you guys have watched any public movies in the U.S. It was once really popular in China, people from the community gather in a plaza to watch a movie. There is usually a huge screen and a projector, just like a movie theatre but it is entirely in open air. Though we may not enjoy such good picture quality or sound effect as in a cinema, but the atmosphere is really rejoicing. The idea to share enjoyment with others is a key characteristic of Chinese community culture. And public movie is the best media to convey this. However, it disappeared after 2000 when people become more concerned with the quality as a result of Hollywood Movie bombardment.
Still, though they become rare but the technology advancement gradually make those public movies an art form. It is no longer for entertainment but for higher level of function, just like a sculpture or a monument does. Modern science has enabled people to project pictures onto high-pressure water fountains; the water curtain acts as the screen so the image formed is really impressive. There is a water fountain capable of playing movie in People's Square, Dalian, the city I come from. I once watched it and was immediately attracted by the magnificent effect made from the combination of projections and water curtain. But it has a big disadvantage: it consumes too much water. Therefore, the fountain movie is available only once a year!
Because this technology is so sophisticated, only a few cities in China can afford the cost of such a water fountain. It has become a symbol of prosperity (though from some aspect a symbol of extravagance). Such a luxurious art-piece add a special feature to the city.
Still, though they become rare but the technology advancement gradually make those public movies an art form. It is no longer for entertainment but for higher level of function, just like a sculpture or a monument does. Modern science has enabled people to project pictures onto high-pressure water fountains; the water curtain acts as the screen so the image formed is really impressive. There is a water fountain capable of playing movie in People's Square, Dalian, the city I come from. I once watched it and was immediately attracted by the magnificent effect made from the combination of projections and water curtain. But it has a big disadvantage: it consumes too much water. Therefore, the fountain movie is available only once a year!
Because this technology is so sophisticated, only a few cities in China can afford the cost of such a water fountain. It has become a symbol of prosperity (though from some aspect a symbol of extravagance). Such a luxurious art-piece add a special feature to the city.
Below is the most astonishing pulic art form I've ever seen: a 3-D stereoscopic projection movie on public building! The video is taken (not sure) on the national day of Ukraine this year. The technology used in this movie is fantastic; it is really incredible to have such stereoscopic images on a wall of a building!
2010年10月8日星期五
The multi-dimensional world (3)
Jumping out of 2-D and 3-D world, today we are going into the true 4-dimensional world, which is really a place of stunning view and amazingly beautiful objects.
To get more understanding of 4-D objects, I'd like to talk about the fundamental building brick of the simplest objects in each dimension. In 1-D space, an object consists of one single edge and two vertices (a line is a 1-D object). In 2-D space, we can get, for example, a triangle with 1 face, 3 edges and 3 vertices. In 3-D space, we have a tetrahedron with 4 faces, 6 edges and 4 vertices. We can deduce the construction of the simplest 4-D objects using mathematical induction: as the number of vertices increases by one as dimension goes up, the object should have 5 vertices. Similarly, we can get that it has 10 edges and 10 faces (just like something people usually do in intelligence quiz). Then we get a 4-simplex, a name to call 'the simplest object in n-dimensional world', just as the image below.
It's worth noting that what we see is only the projection of 4-simplex in the 2-D world. It's not what acually is like in 4-D world. In a tetrahedron (3-simplex), we get one surface by connecting three vertices together (a triangle). In 4-simplex, we get one surface by connecting four vertices. Thus, we have a 'tetrahedral surface' which sounds ridiculous. Actually it makes sense because the term 'surface' does not only apply to 2-D surfaces we see in daily life, but also 3-D surfaces, 4-D surfaces or whatever-we-what-D surfaces.
Well I think things are really getting confusing. But don't forget the main objective of this topic is to show the stunning pictures of multi-dimensional objects. I you can't understand anything just forget about it and enjoy watching them in the video shown below! There are even more incredible 4-D objects that really look so eve-catching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeHi1ol61eA
To get more understanding of 4-D objects, I'd like to talk about the fundamental building brick of the simplest objects in each dimension. In 1-D space, an object consists of one single edge and two vertices (a line is a 1-D object). In 2-D space, we can get, for example, a triangle with 1 face, 3 edges and 3 vertices. In 3-D space, we have a tetrahedron with 4 faces, 6 edges and 4 vertices. We can deduce the construction of the simplest 4-D objects using mathematical induction: as the number of vertices increases by one as dimension goes up, the object should have 5 vertices. Similarly, we can get that it has 10 edges and 10 faces (just like something people usually do in intelligence quiz). Then we get a 4-simplex, a name to call 'the simplest object in n-dimensional world', just as the image below.
It's worth noting that what we see is only the projection of 4-simplex in the 2-D world. It's not what acually is like in 4-D world. In a tetrahedron (3-simplex), we get one surface by connecting three vertices together (a triangle). In 4-simplex, we get one surface by connecting four vertices. Thus, we have a 'tetrahedral surface' which sounds ridiculous. Actually it makes sense because the term 'surface' does not only apply to 2-D surfaces we see in daily life, but also 3-D surfaces, 4-D surfaces or whatever-we-what-D surfaces.
Well I think things are really getting confusing. But don't forget the main objective of this topic is to show the stunning pictures of multi-dimensional objects. I you can't understand anything just forget about it and enjoy watching them in the video shown below! There are even more incredible 4-D objects that really look so eve-catching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeHi1ol61eA
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