∞ In-finitum

tacticalshoyu: Floating by Zhao Huasen

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:34:31 +0400

Floating by Zhao Huasen

Alexandria Field Notes (May/2011)

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:21:00 +0400

Thursday (24/05/12)
- Post-work flight to Alexandria from Dubai’s terminal 2.
- Watching some TED talks on the way there, pretty interesting stuff!
- Arrived at Borg el Arab airport outside Alexandria. Small but neat airport.
- Walked out to a barely empty parking lot to find the taxi drivers to be very easy on the haggling, no issue at all. Unlike Kathmandu for instance.
– Driving at night through a huge oil district and into the city. When we reached the corniche, people were out in big numbers. Maybe it’s because it was election day for the first time ever (posters of candidates are everywhere, but the Brotherhood’s candidate has clear quantity advantage). Maybe it’s just the way they roll.
- Taxis are old russian Ladas, colorfully decorated. Probably from the time Nasser was in bed with the russians.
- We finally reached the Sheraton hotel all the way across the Corniche. Site is nice but not necessarily new, carpets, gold rims and dark room fill the place. There’s a karaoke night filling the lobby with Arabic tunes. I go up to check out to be greeted by an overweight Egyptian family owning the stage. No one in the audience, though.
- Nice engulfing bed, balcony view to Montazah park and partial view of the corniche.

Friday (25/05/12)
- Early rise to a sunny day. Breakfast room is crowded, all Egyptian families which I assume are from Cairo. No western faces to be seen.
- We decide to start the day with a walk from Montazah to the Four Seasons hotel, the only new building I could spot in the corniche the following night. All the others are tall and crumbling, like they were forgotten by their landlords 20 years ago. Most likely that’s exactly what happened. Construction is going on though, but sporadic and apparently at a very slow pace due to the economic times.
- Beaches are crowded with families having sheesha, and the boys can’t take their eyes out of Dolores. Feeling an intense sexual frustration in the air. When I spot couples, the girls have a terrible hopeless look in their faces. The facial expression of “there’s nothing we can do before we get married”.
- So far, security wise feeling completely OK. We reach the mall and it has just opened and it’s warming up to people. We decide to have a quick coffee and then head by tram to the central part of town.
- Waiting for the tram takes a bit, but the ride is nice. It cuts through the inner streets of Alexandria, running parallel to the beach all the way to the main square. Good photographs. Older men are inside, mostly.
- Dropped off from the tram and into the main square. Not so full but traffic is already heavy. Sun is intense so we take a seat at one of the cafés, the newer ones because the French-styled ones like Athinios and the one in the Metropolitan Hotel are disgustingly old and humid and stuck in time.
- Good point about Alexandria: they have a good hand for espressos and pastry. Must be the lingering French influence. Glad.
- We finish our snacks and decide to go for a horse carriage up until the tip of the bay and back all the way to the Alexandria library. The ride was nice and worth it, but we find the library closed, so we take a Lada back to the hotel.
- Nap time only to wake up to go have a meal at the italian (San Stefano) in the Four Seasons. Chef is Napolitano and food is great, although the place is completely empty. Before that, we just had a few drinks in the balcony of the Bleu bar. Not bad. Traffic downstairs? Still bad.
- Barely standing up we come back to the hotel to crash.

Saturday (26/05/12)
- Early rise again and another packed breakfast room, this time even more. Time to notice the obesity rates of Egypt are off the charts. The whole pastry associated with idleness does not do good to their bodies.
- We decide to visit the nearby Montazah park, not expecting too much out of it. The park is neat and it’s lushly green, not a lot of cars, so genuinely interesting. First downside? The castle is not open for visitors. We continue walking. Second downside? We notice that the whole shore has been divided up in lots and sold to private owners. Feels weird to be on a public park and not be able to reach the ocean. Most of the houses are closed or not finished. I am assuming they belong to Cairo’s upper classes.
- Back to the hotel for some chill out time and packing. Late check out and taxi ride to the center of town again, this time we find the library open.
- Loved the library, it’s concrete and white wood, looks nice and peaceful. It’s busting with students and other people, some are studying and the rest are sharing the many available computers. The screens are ALL pointing to Facebook or YouTube. No exception. Makes me wonder a bit about the future of Egypt.
- We kill some more time on a café outside the library before walking through the streets for a bit. Backpacks are heavy so we don’t stay for much. We catch a taxi to one of the newer malls outside town, for a surprisingly cheap rate.
- Lunch at Brioche Dorée remembering the last time we were in one in Paris.
- We book some seats for a movie at the cinemas. It will give us just enough time to than head to the airport. Cinema room is very empty and movie is going well until… a movie break! First time in my life I’ve experienced it, but in Egypt apparently they give people ten minutes off to light a cigarette, go to the bathroom. Feels completely weird to me and it takes me out completely from the movie experience, but hey, my bladder is empty now…
- We broker a taxi back to airport and start a long wait for a late Flydubai flight back. We reach dubai at 7am on a working day. It’s going to be a long one.

Great War color photographers

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:12:28 +0400

Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (France)
Hans Hindebrand (Germany)

Recently I’ve read the book by the author featured in this...

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:11:11 +0400

Recently I’ve read the book by the author featured in this TED talk video. He’s done a great job summarizing the contents of it, and after an initial great excitement and engagement with the thesis of the memory palaces, I have failed to follow through with my memory exercises.

Quick sketch for a Prosecco label. Done for a friend of mine in...

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:30:00 +0400

Quick sketch for a Prosecco label. Done for a friend of mine in the Veneto but never executed.

Donation Tracking API (Chimera idea)

Sun, 13 May 2012 16:53:00 +0400

How to use software to bring transparency to the act of donating?

To donate is to basically cast a vote in favor of a better future. In much the same way as voting, the current method of donating pretty much everywhere is highly based on trust. Trust that the donation funds will be used wisely, effectively and produce tangible benefits for the communities they are intended for. However, there is absolutely no mechanism in place that guarantees that.

This fact – added to the frequent media coverage on corruption cases, embezzlement and misuse of funds – creates a scenario where most potential donors shy away from donating. But there are ways we can help change that that scenario.

Let’s work on a solution that brings full accountability and transparency to the flow of donated funds. It needs to be a simple idea and it needs to be easy for all stakeholders to adhere to: donors, non-governmental organizations and community representatives.

We are pleased to introduce you to the ‘Donation Tracking API’ concept.

It’s a free, open-sourced global accountability Application Programming Interface for tracking, metadata assignment and reporting of donations.

How does it work?

It’s basically a piece of middleware software that sits in between the user donation and the destination NGO, through which all donations are automatically tagged with relevant metadata (unique id, origin, value, destination, etc) that allows the donation to be fully tracked from its origin to its final destination, be it communities in need, NGO operations, etc. Much like web data packets and shipment boxes, donations will now have unique traceable codes that will show the donors where they have been used and to what purpose they were assigned for.

Why would the involved stakeholders adhere to it?

• For the donor, it will not require any additional effort, and they will be rewarded the security to track their donations at any point they would like, in the same way you can when tracking a parcel through a logistics company’s website.

• For the NGO, adhering to this new standard will grant them a seal of approval from a global community that is bound to attract more donors because of its enhanced accountability.

• For the community representatives, it will ensure that funds earmarked by NGOs operating in their areas reach their agreed final destination. Currently, without the transparency that this system will now provide, the communities are not part of the process of accountability for the projects they have a crucial stake in.

Why do we expect to succeed?

We feel that it’s the first time the concept of Application Programming Interfaces is applied to the issue of donation, and we feel that a community-owned, open sourced approach will guarantee that all stakeholders feel like they are part of the solution. By applying code and software expertise to this problem, we might be close to shifting the sector to a complete new paradigm of transparency and accountability.

How do we expect to make this happen?

For the purpose of Phase I, the plan is to prototype two main deliverables:

1) a public-facing website;

This deliverable will makes the donation tracking API available and explains the overall concept behind it, who are the stakeholders and companies behind the effort and what are the measures to consider this project a success;

This website will also be the main awareness element of the campaign, to which all people will be directed to for more information, updated content, sign up and engagement;

2) developing the web application programming interface solution itself;

This part of Phase I will demand most of the development team effort: we will need to first research how NGOs are commonly using accounting methods and mold a solution that doesn’t create a huge disruption from their current methods, which is critical for the success of the idea.

The second step is to prototype and test a web tool that conceptually works in a similar fashion to a web payment gateway like Paypal or Google Checkout, with the additional element of tracking the path of the donation fund throughout its entire life cycle. This can be done by assigning unique metadata to each donation input, and making sure that the funds can only be retrieved (output) by the NGOs if proper objectives are assigned by the NGOs. The community representatives will play the role of auditors in this process.

What essential data will you generate during your Phase I award?

We’d like to map out detailed scenarios on how different NGOs manipulate, receive, extract and keep track of their available funds;

We’d like to create a database of international NGOs (and their representatives) that might be interested in testing out the donation tracking application first hand;

We’d like to have the donation tracking application tested by a selection of donors and measure their response to this new approach in comparison to donors who have relied on current donation systems.

If your experiments in Phase I are successful, what are the next steps?

To fully build the donation tracking system and make it available to a larger audience through the website;

To scope and plan for launch in additional languages;

To generate and execute a communication awareness plan for this new application and its website;

To enlist a handful of large, high visibility NGOs to sign up for the system and vouch for it;

Broken experiences on the web, in a light TED video from Renny...

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:31:06 +0400

Broken experiences on the web, in a light TED video from Renny Gleeson.

Couple of artworks for a cover brief for Advertising Age’s...

Wed, 02 May 2012 18:42:00 +0400

Advertising Age The Global Issue cover

Advertising Age The Global Issue cover

Couple of artworks for a cover brief for Advertising Age’s The Global Issue.

Video

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:54:52 +0400

2012 UAE Young Lions Silver award (Horizon Draftfcb)

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:39:00 +0400

2012 UAE Young Lions Silver award (Horizon Draftfcb)

These little devils and their amazing algorythms never seize to...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:50:00 +0400

These little devils and their amazing algorythms never seize to amaze me.

These robots are still only used for warehouse organization so...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:49:00 +0400

These robots are still only used for warehouse organization so far, but imagine the possibilities of having these organizing retail experiences based on social information from a user: social design x retail x future.

wk12: John Jay is a designer. John Jay is an art director. John...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:11:26 +0400

wk12:

John Jay is a designer.

John Jay is an art director.

John Jay is a restaurateur.

John Jay is teacher, and a Portlander, and a Rolodex of artists, photographers and illustrators.

He doesn’t have time to get comfortable.

He is constantly inspired.

He is still trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up.

And he dresses like a goddamn pirate sea captain.

In short, John Jay is a creative evil genius (the good kind) and a total badass.

He invited 12 over today to introduce himself, feed us lunch, and to show us some of the amazing stuff Studio J is working on. It was a perfectly sunny day to be in his workspace, which is half windows, and looks out over Chinatown. It’s filled with art and knickknacks and keepsakes along with the evidence of the various projects he has in the works. We saw soap and blueprints, a strange model airplane and art from his friend Shepherd Fairey.

Before John shared with us a presentation that catalogued some of his best work from over the years, he dropped on us a bowling ball of wisdom that went a little something like this “you have to get good at something before you can do everything”. In other words: be amazing at one thing, it will give you the freedom to try new things and once you start trying new things, DO NOT FUCKING STOP.

Thanks John. It was an inspiring afternoon.

MENA creatives to follow

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0400

Ali Ali
Maged Nassar
Shahir Zag
Nicolas Courant
Peter Bidenko
Komal Bedi Sohal
Bechara Mouzannar

Startup Ideas For 2012

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:16:55 +0400

Startup Ideas For 2012:

collaborativefund:

This weekend we read Jude Gomila’s thoughtful list of 25 startup ideas for 2012. Some of his ideas demand ambitious engineering projects, others fill a niche in the online consumer landscape. Here’s our take on a handful that piqued our interest:

Build an educational learning platform
The…

2012 Travel ideas

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:20:00 +0400

Srinagar, Kashmir
Bazaruto archipelago, Mozambique
Socotra island, Yemen
Hong Kong, China
Tehran, Iran

Favorite IKEA hacks

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:25:23 +0400

Ivar Dolly
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2010/01/ivar-loves-dolly.html

Inexpensive drawing wall
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/01/not-expensive-glass-whiteboard.html#more

The Besta Photobooth
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/01/besta-photobooth.html#more

Lillivili Framework
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2011/12/lillivi-framework.html

Behind the scenes on Old Spice’s commercial

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:55:44 +0400

Behind the scenes on Old Spice’s commercial

tumblr_lwiric1Zyh1qzleu4o1_500.jpg 500×500 pixels

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:04:18 +0400

tumblr_lwiric1Zyh1qzleu4o1_500.jpg 500×500 pixels

The UHATEDOVE has been finished. It has been installed in...

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:57:42 +0400

The UHATEDOVE has been finished. It has been installed in fro… on Twitpic