Saturday, July 26, 2008

Mirror Blog Facebook App

Just added the Mirror Blog app to my facebook page, which is somewhat a misnomer and might be more aptly called Funhouse Mirror Blog. It doesn't accurately mirror what is seen at the source, e.g., videos and most images are not ported over. Putting that out there in case anyone does peruse my bathroom stall scrawls via facebook.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Flash animated comic strips

Years ago I was given a hard copy of this book of comic strips, Get Your War On, which was debuted by 23/6 in animation yesterday. [Obviously my embedding skills are currently on the lower end of the learning curve. Someone help, I tried readjusting the width and height in the html, but it cropped the video rather than resizing it.]



One of the projects I'm working on within the Vietnamese Community Outreach efforts of the Asian Liver Center is a collaboration with Single Asian Female to introduce the recurring subject of hepatitis B in her comic strips. We are working to syndicate the Single Asian Female comic in Vietnamese newspapers, but now, in addition, this would be a novel way to present it online and on our YouTube nonprofit channel (soon to be up and running).

By the way, John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, was the first to work with Flash as a cartoon medium. And, by the way, he did my portrait.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Jott is unleashed potential....

Jott is full of unleashed potential. Check out jott.com, sign up and using this tool, you can do things such as calling one phone number and recording a memo, which will post directly to your blog -- all your educational health messages for example. listen

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Johnny Chung Lee's Interactive Whiteboard

If my parents had given me a cool name like Johnny Lee, I likely would have invented such marvelous contraptions as well.

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii

Many educators have already adapted Lee's interactive whiteboard. You yourself can have a $5000 teaching and engagement tool allowing you to demonstrate, present, and who knows what else for the grand total of $50 + tax (the cost of a Wiimote and a light pen). It's the ultimate bait and switch tool -- the audience (great especially for kids) think they're going to play Wii, when in actuality it's your presentation they're sitting through. Muahaha! If you have used this, please let me know what you used it for. Here's a demo.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

This article was shared with me this morning via hard copy. I looked for it in the health section of nytimes.com, but eventually had to resort to a search -- it resided in the Business section. Discussion to come after I read and digest the it.

Jonathan Player for The New York Times

Testing the blogger...

Testing the blogger phone feature. listen

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Open source for public health

I hope to explore the promotion of public health and the efforts thereof as based on the theory and practice of open source culture. Is public health already thoroughly open source? Are studies and journals easily and financially accessible? What else?

Noncommercial songs for PSAs or otherwise health promotional videos

I'm in the middle of creating a short, generic, multi-use video documenting the Asian Liver Center's LiveRight Run 2008 tailored towards the Vietnamese population. I've been mulling for a legal approach for music for my short clip and had settled upon recruiting the Pizookies to create a short jam to match the mood of this piece (something akin to Dashboard Confessional's "Don't Wait"). Today a delve into the concept and culture of open source and the Creative Commons licensing serendipitously presented another solution of entering "noncommercial songs" into a search engine (as demonstrated on their site):


Up until this moment, I had only knowledge of a database of royalty-free loops.

Khoi Vinh vs. Better Design

In my attempt to assemble a coalition on behalf of the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University against the hepatitis B -- and consequential liver cancer -- disparity that the Vietnamese population faces, I was presented with the fact that the design director of nytimes.com is none-other than a Vietnamese brother, Khoi Vinh.

I've always rhetorically begged the question: does Vietnamese=poor design? Is it unavoidable and messy because of all the diacritics? Cases in point:
  • Viet Tribune: one of the big Vietnamese media giants of California.
  • Miss Vietnam USA: site for the Vietnamese beauty pageant ... which now doesn't even work. Touché.
  • Lowes: a corporate site marketed towards Vietnamese
In wanting to effectively communicate with the Vietnamese community at large, I need to know these things. And if this is how it's done -- if this is what they respond to, then I guess it makes my job easier.

Khoi / subtraction.com's contents are producted under Creative Commons licensing ... which I think coincidentally tied in with my current wonderings about open source.

What is open source ... something to explore in another posting.