Rice, Potatoes, and Bananas

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Gray
1 month ago
in Blog, Malaysia and Opinion
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You’ve probably heard of the reference: people calling you a banana just because you do not speak their language. Strictly speaking, a banana is someone who is of oriental ancestry, who doesn’t speak an oriental dialect or is not familiar with their ancestor’s culture.

Another way of putting it is chiding another at the dinner table with: “Will you have rice or potatoes with that?” Some believe the staple food defines whether you are a local or not. (An Easterner must eat rice, if they don’t they’re a banana.) You may interpret this as a racial joke.

These are products of ethnic stereotyping, and is a form of peer pressure. This phenomenon probably happens everywhere in the world, using different terms, but with the safe modus operandi and motive.

Someone sees your liberal behavior, becomes jealous of it, and proceeds to make snide remarks about the person “not behaving as he/she should”. That you are not “living in a manner befitting your cultural heritage”.

These are the words of an ignorant hilly-billy.

Firstly, they fail to see what culture really is, and why they exist. Cultures are to an extent, dependent on geography and how connected a society is to another. Even if a group of people are of the same ancestry, they vary greatly in behavior, adapting to their current surroundings and who they connect with.

There is no exact template how anyone of a given ethnic origin should behave.

Some totalitarian nations take steps to censor what they call “Western-influences” (vice versa is unheard of) and moderate it according to their cultural sensitivities. Some may argue this is to protect national heritage, culture, language, and so on. How? Consider: You are exposed to a brand new language, someone you are able to familiarize and identify with this language more than what you have been speaking all your life; you are also comfortable with the culture of that language’s point of origin. Will this lead you to completely abandon your original language?

Simply because humans are populous, and not wholly connected, we will not have an absolute lingua franca.

Cultural spheres of Influence

You’ve probably heard of it, that is the East and West. It’s the notion that the world is halved by two completely different incompatible cultures. I beg to differ, they’re not incompatible, merely different. To have chosen to divide the East and West by a particular line, the author’s point of reference must have been in the middle of either of the two sides. Deviating from a central point until you perceive your hemisphere.

Another of interest is the North-South divide.

Opinion

Why should we maintain a culture we do not believe in? If another language has evolved that suits the purpose, why reinvent the wheel? Some may argue only a native language is capable of describing things in a given culture. That may be true for most cases. But a sufficiently evolved language should be able to encompass everything.

There exists a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We should be able to choose how we behave, nobody can dictate forms by which we must behave. If you must argue, i have this to say: Don’t do unto others what you would not have done to oneself. What I mean is: Will you accept it if someone else told you not to act the way you are?

Enough said, so stop discriminating others.

Blogs & Bloggers

Published
by
Gray
1 month ago
in Blog, Interwebs and Noteworthy
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Any website, with an ordered of entries arranged reverse chronologically, composed of links to other websites. #

With a working definition for a blog, the blogger is someone who uses a website to post articles displayed in a reverse chronological manner. This includes blogs of all forms, from wordy posts and short-asides, to photo-blogging and video-blogging.

Blogs as the Media would have it

The media has long cast blogs as the low-cost alternative to spreading news (as opposed to newspapers and television). So entrenched is this view that some say the two have come to complement each other.

The reader should realize by now blogs are merely tools. Unless we say: anyone who’s ever used nails and a hammer is now a nailer, and anyone who has used screws and a screwdriver is… a screwer? The full extend of this concept is show in this video: Blogs in Plain English. My main complaint is that from our working definition, user interaction is not a criteria for becoming a blog.

Blogging as a lifestyle

With the blogs-as-diaries concept in mind, and the existence of free “blogging networks”, it is easy to understand why the tech-savvy (this would usually mean today’s youth) will attempt to keep a public diary online. The very nature of a diary was to be very personal, and to write in a way as if you’re addressing the reader. Usually a diary writer is unconcerned with the language and subject used because only they were supposed to read it.

Woe to them who used this mentality when writing in blogs.

Because a blog is a very public website, and the fact anyone can anonymously read it, any insults or bouts of anger expressed in words may cause some backlash. This may come in the form of lawsuits, or vicious comments. From personal experience I know this can get very ugly… especially when the commenter lack empathic communication.

So great is the blogophobia and kiasuness, that a Blogger’s Code of Conduct has been suggested. I do not think this is right, because it means blogging will be more constitutionalized.

Powers May Be do not like bloggers

Powerful persona has a problem with anyone who is too critical of him or makes him a subject of parody. The powerful person subjects these people into submission by intimidation or by decrying his acts.

In ancient times, you could replace the powerful persona with a Roman senator, a king, or bureaucrat; and the people with whom he has a problem with, the satirist. Today, they would be politicians and whining celebrities against the common blogger. There are political dangers for bloggers in totalitarian societies, because of the rebel connotations attached the term by the mass media.

From where I come from, the term blogger is sneered at by supposed serious politicians.

Blogs on websites, for an online profile

For those who agree with me that the internet is the largest online social network ever built, websites can be used as your online presence. In an ideal situation, everyone has a website. These websites link to each other through linked names when you mention others in your blog. We wouldn’t need to have dozens of profiles on separate websites to establish our identity.

The Bright Side

With all the trouble and suspicion plaguing “blogs”, why do it at all? The answer is simple: Because we’re lazy.

Before you begin to ponder, consider this: What’s the first thing you’ll say to someone when not communicating face-to-face? Most of us will ask for an update on the person’s life, by saying “How have you been?” and it’s equivalents. Not all of us can remember what we talked about the last time we met, or exactly what you know about my life, or what you want to know.

Blogs can easily be used to publish general outlines of what we have been doing, what we have seen, etc for all our contacts to see. So when you actually meet someone, you can dive into a conversation without being too repetitive.

Thinkers and extroverts on the other hand can easily use blogs to expound on their theories and opinions, so when you meet them, you’ll only talk about new stuff. It can also be used as update-able portfolios and multimedia repositories.

So what are you waiting for? Start blogging!

MACPU Scrabble Tournament 2008

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Gray
1 month ago
in College, Event, Games and Malaysia
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It all started in 2006 with TICST, there were supposed to be annual Scrabble tournaments, but due to some administrative complications (not to mention paperwork) there were no Scrabble events aimed at tertiary students in 2007. Meanwhile, the MAPCU Sports League had come to my attention. Traditionally, they only included Chess and XiangQi, so I made some inquiries about how to include Scrabble; because with MAPCU a stable number of participants could be achieved. Not only that, it could be a stepping stone to gathering more participants for general scrabble tournaments locally.

Early 2008, the new committee of HIGS managed to rally enough support during the year’s annual MAPCU secretaries meeting. We needed at least 5 other universities willing to take part. As fate would have it, Nottingham and Taylors were also going to suggest the same thing. HELP was chosen to be the host. HIGS played a large role in organizing and making this a success; since I have left the club, I only played a supporting role and as a participant.

The Two Days

A total of twenty team-pairs turned up for the tournament. We roped in Henry as the judge. Before we started the event, the HELP Magic Club (not MtG, it’s the magic tricks club). Actually, we were still busy setting up, placing clocks, briefing runners, cutting the score sheets, etc. But soon the games started.

Photos will be added later.

There were a number of first-timers here, some very rusty players (myself included), and some pros. Unfortunately enough I had to face 4 of my own college-mates. Lost quite a number of games. But it didn’t really matter. Met some new people, had fun actually playing the game. And to see an idea turn into an actual event.

In the end, the team from Nottingham won the MAPCU challenge trophy.

There were some “spot prizes” in the form of vouchers and movie passes given out to players who manage to fulfill certain criteria during their games, they were a sort of consolation prize, so almost every college gets something (I didn’t get anything). In the end, I have made my mark on the local Scrabble scene, and I hope it doesn’t end there. We’re still waiting for news on other tertiary-level Scrabble events.

grids, typography, and the golden ratio

Published
by
Gray
1 month, 1 week ago
in Blog, Design and Development
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Lately, there’s a lot of talk about grid design for websites, in fact, this has been used for print media for a long time (I think it was because the history of printing needed everything to be lined-up nicely). In fact, before web-designers gained semantic-awareness, we used “tabled designs” (which in effect was grid design, yes we’re all guilty at some point).

Most of the so called grid designs, are in fact simply column designs. On the matter of columns: use the Golden Ratio. It’s a far better way to divide zones (rather than the bland 50%-to-50%). I think the Phiculator is an awesome tool to use.

As with any text-based media, typography, the font used on websites is very important. Because not everyone uses the same browsers, or the same operating-system, several font-sets have to be defined in CSS (designers fear the default font will destroy the impression they hope for). Fanatics of consistency have come up with the sIFR technique (only works if you have javascript enabled and Flash installed).

Speaking of typography, it’s probably one of the strangest things I’ve done, but when I saw the consistent typograhy on Blueprint.CSS, I was inspired enough to at least incorporate some of it’s sizes. I liked it’s uniformity, and how it lined up with the supplied grid.png background (now we’re talkin’!).

Update: After spending 13 hours (cumulative) on it, I’ve managed to fix all the text and styling to fit onto the grid provided by Blueprint. This is as far as 100% CSS styling goes. Now to fix me some Wordpress page templates (probably making a Front Page, redoing the Archives, and making a Links page).

my claim to a unique website

Published
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Gray
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Asides, Blog, Development, Malaysia and Opinion
. 0 Comments

Take a look at the Malaysian Bloggers category on Wikipedia, take a look at the other notable bloggers by nationality. This may answer the question why calling yourself a blogger may draw some flak in Malaysia, bloggers are cast as the antagonist only because all the notable ones are about politics.

While everyone else is busy talking about themselves, criticizing others, and trying to look the part of a cool rebel… I’m glad to call myself one of those exceptions. It’s not about keeping you informed, it’s about humanizing the Internet.

prefered websites

Published
by
Gray
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Asides, Blog, Interwebs and Opinion
. 0 Comments

On my daily to-visit list, there are a lot of blogs, webcomics, and a lot of feeds. Of these websites, only 3 of them can be considered “social networks”, fortunately they don’t include Facebook or Friendster.

I’ve been asked over and over: “Why don’t you join us on … ?” It’s not because I don’t want to know you, but I prefer websites that do other stuff, not be another community website for the sake of being one. In the words of someone I know: “I think that for whatever topic in the world, there is a forum for it already“.

Social networks are about people, but in some networks, all that’s there is some snazzy design, and stuff to do on the website itself. What happened to the people supposedly inhabiting the social network? What do they do? I believe social networks should be about bringing people closer. It should help others know what you do, when you do it, and your other interests. Simply posing about it is never enough. Now you can snap it, and mention it. It’s all about putting the person back behind the related social networking account.

Don’t get me wrong, community websites are great. But let it have a premise for it’s existence.