If you’ve talked to us anytime in the last year, you know we’ve been tackling some bathroom renovations. Well, it started as one bathroom renovation, then it grew from there.
Bathroom #1 – En-Suite
When we bought the house, it came with a leaky shower. We knew this from the inspection and received a price concession on the house. So, for many months we didn’t use the shower. Eventually the demo happened, and very slowly Ianiv built it back up. New insulation, new drywall, waterproof membrane, and eventually tile (this we hired for).
Turned out pretty nice. But still not done. We have yet to:
Patch the walls
Add the trim
Remove old baseboard heater & replace
Paint
Hem new shower curtain for window
Bathroom #2 – Guest Bathroom
Since we were already hiring someone to come tile bathroom #1, we figured we’d semi-refinish this bathroom. It was the only room in the house with the original flooring (linoleum) and it was in bad shape. If you’re going to do things right, then you should really do as much of the floor as possible. This meant tearing out the original toilet (blue) and vanity (shell motif).
In our search for a new vanity, we realized most commercial products were the wrong size for our bathroom or were just complete crap. So, we opted to get a custom job. We ended up-selling ourselves for a bamboo vanity. Well, with how nice that looked, you can’t just cheap out on the counter (Home Depot also had a minimum cost spend we couldn’t meet for any counter product). So, we ended up going to a local stone company and had them cut out this gorgeous crema marfil marble. It was installed a couple of days ago.
Dr. Eric McLuhan, son of Marshall McLuhan and taking after his father as a communication scholar, talked at Vidfest about digital media and the new culture created out of that. McLuhan’s panel was moderated by Michael Tippett of NowPublic.
Some highlights from the panel include:
Inattention is more potent than your attention, you have no defenses. It’s an area of vulnerability, of openness, by definition. Advertisers now compete in this area, since you have build up defenses against them grabbing your attention.
The message is small, the medium is enormous
Global village – coined to describe the effects of radio. People in instant proximity to each other. The fact that the bodies are spread around the world is irrelevant – it hasn’t constrained communication.
Since television, the global village was replaced with the global theater. The world is a stage, and you’re on it all the time. Everyone around is looking, not for jobs, but for roles to play. Role playing brings the idea of an audience – being observed by people. Your identity is connected with your roles for various groups.
Private identity means detaching yourself from people, but private identity is now useless, an encumbrance against the participatory world.
News is no longer factual, it’s participatory. It’s emotional.
Literacy is going out of style – it’s no longer a pre-condition to be in this world. It is not the only skill we need now.
Copyright, private ownership, is meaningless. Just like with private identity, it has no place anymore. Copyright started to become meaningless with photocopies, but the Internet made it obsolete. Enforcement is impossible.
Linear existence is no longer useful – people live in many spaces and times. They live mythically. For kids, this is very normal.
The session was much more in-depth than my notes can convey, but my thought process was still pre-coffee at this point. I didn’t agree with everything that Eric McLuhan had to say, particularly with his convictions of "how things are" and that the "right" perspective is one outside that of the digital age (he does not use a computer). Although I have great respect for his ideas, I have always been argumentative with communications scholars (it was actually encouraged in my degree), and am of the school of thought that you have to live in the digital era in order to understand it.
In the Right Brain Rock Out! panel at Vidfest, by far my favorite panel of the day, Jonathan Tippett, the engineer behind the Mondo Spider, answers the audience-posed question of how to get clients to pay up-front for design services for a brand-new web design company. Jonathan’s answer to the question was to create a formula:
Jonathan Tippett also talked about creativity being created out of necessity. You create a necessity and some idea will be born of that. The Mondo Spider was created out of the necessity he and his friends created to challenge themselves; the "necessity" was to create a walking machine. To Tippett, creativity is not just the spark of an idea, since many people have amazing ideas all the time, but the ability to actualize that idea.
In the Right Brain Rock Out! panel at Vidfest, the moderator Jordan Kawchuck set up a wheel to give away a ham. Members of the audience spun the wheel to kick off discussions with the panelists, but with the ultimate chance to win a free ham. On the last spin of the wheel, one lucky guy took the sweaty ham home!
Project Runway Canada’s 2007 winner, Evan Biddell, came to Vancouver last week to sit on a panel about creativity for Vidfest.
Evan Biddell shared that very loud music is key to his creative process. He’ll listen to the same CD over and over, organizing his work flow around the beat. When he gets stuck, he’ll switch to a new CD. Sometimes that means abandoning a design idea, one that no longer fits the music.
At the end of the sessions, the audience was encouraged to ask the panel questions about their own work. One question was about how to differentiate an online lottery – Evan’s suggestion was web cam strip poker!
After the Apple Store opening, and a little shopping at the H&M, we walked over toEat! Vancouverfor a day of gluttony. We sampled many foods and beverages, including an assortment of beers, wines and spirits in the beer & wine tasting section. Although we ate some very yummy food (including the Gourmantra channa masala we just ate again for dinner). We started things out with a cheese tasting, an educational seminar that included a delicious assortment of seven cheeses.
We are definitely lovers of tequila in this house. We have a couple of good quality ones, though none as good as the one we sampled there. For a fraction of the cost of a bar, we tried the Dos Lunas tequila, which is a 100% blue agave tequila. Unbelievably good.
Apple has come to Vancouver, joining H&M this week by opening a store at Pacific Centre. Devoted Apple fans started to line up for the opening as early as 5:30am on Saturday. When we arrived just before 9am, the line extended all the way from the store inside the mall to the outdoor of the mall. By 10am, the time of the opening, the line was wrapped all the way around the block.
A half an hour before the store opened, a crew of highly-energized Apple employees came out to cheer on the crowd. At 10am, the doors opened to applause and hundreds of eager people filed in for their free Apple shirts and a look at the new store. The store is deceptively large – it seems small, but is actually quite big. It’s filled with row upon row of Apple gadgets I’d love to buy!
Check out some other Apple Store experiences from John Biehler and Buzz Bishop, and watch Buzz’s video of the line below:
