Throwback Song: Pony
One of the reasons I still listen to Z104 is because I hear this song all the time. No joke.
Throwback Song: All My Life
Before Alicia Keys, there was K-Ci & JoJo. And like I wrote before, if you never dated a boy who played enough piano to play you the intro in front of everybody in the auditorium, you totally missed out.
Throwback Song: Girls Dem Sugar
Just got reminded of this one on Twitter. I think it’s time for me to do throwback songs of the day, like we used to do on Throwback VaBeezy.
So, for today, how about some Beenie Man and Mya (and the Neptunes!):
Why aren’t all music videos just typography? [NSFW]
Ah, Ceelo. Now I don’t have to Google the lyrics to your song!
Speaking of foreign representation in the movies…
Having rewatched Joy Luck Club yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it even without English subs in the Chinese scenes, this is oh-so-timely. Also, I actually went through the entire slideshow, so you should, too.
…[Liz] makes a point of learning Italian, and director Ryan Murphy depicts her at various stages of comprehension, from a stammering negotiation with her landlady to a breathlessly fluent, restaurant-ordering triumph—accompanied by subtitles as needed. Dwelling on Liz’s Italian serves to illustrate her newfound curiosity. It is both realistic and dramatically functional. But when she gets to India and Bali, and becomes preoccupied with spiritual growth, Murphy stops focusing on Liz’s language skills. Locals conveniently speak to her in English, and there’s nary a subtitle east of Rome.
The Universal Translator: How Hollywood represents foreign speech at Slate
More truth from The Oatmeal
I do it at the airport when they tell me to have a nice flight, too.
I have more than a crush on this song
Yes, I am stuck in the 90s when it comes to pop music and I’m okay with it.
Great read on higher ed websites as prompted by that XKCD cartoon
But even then, some colleges’ home pages are saturated with features that do not so much reflect guesses at what visitors need, but what various campus interests want. Greenfield said “home page politics” — different departments and personalities jockeying for position — have a strong influence on what an institution’s site ends up looking like. After all, he said, if a president says he wants a letter and a mission statement out front, what Web administrator is going to say no?
No Laughing Matter at Inside Higher Ed
Minimalism vs. Simplicity
This really made me think (from It Isn’t Minimalism at Usability Post):
Clear, clean and simple design isn’t minimalist. It’s just good, clear design.
I always look at minimalist web design roundups with great interest because they inspire me, yet for some reason I never thought about how that is in direct opposition to my general indifference toward minimalism in music. Minimalism in music is characterized by patterns that repeat, with the interest generally being in shifting rhythms and/or small changes in tonality that are more apparent because of all the repetition. Minimalism in web design (and design and architecture at large) refers more to the stripping down of a subject to its basics. I suppose you could say that minimalism in music and design represent the same aesthetic, but most minimalist music bores me to tears and I would be pretty aggravated if somebody were to approach me and say that it represents the only necessary elements of music.
I’d opine that the author of the sentence I quoted above is right in questioning whether or not minimalism is the right word, as opposed to something like simple and functional. I’d then have to argue that “good” is far too subjective and that simplicity neither represents good nor bad on its own. I also have to say that just because I’m inspired by these minimalist/clean/functional websites doesn’t mean I don’t still love things that are make huge visual impact in the opposite way (though they must still be clean and functional or I get annoyed very quickly). I wonder how long this trend will last before everything starts to look essentially the same. Sometimes decoration is necessary to give something its own individual character, much like ornamentation can tell you which Baroque composer or architect created a piece. I just hope that the simple, clean functionality espoused by these “minimalist” websites can carry over into web design at large.
Bonus: Music I love that is so not minimalism (and yes, the ending is ridiculous slash bordering on funny):
XKCD does it again
A perfect summary of my current job frustrations:
