Writing this as I'm working on transferring all the blog posts and content over from my old website to this new one. And, wow, after having to glance at and read through some of these old blog posts I can confidently say a lot has changed.

Not only did we (luckily) not go with "TBSB Media" as our business name, I am also sitting here writing this in an office. Our office. Weird.

Anyways, new site is being updated. May or may not write more frequent blog posts on here, but I am seeing how that mental dumping process is beneficial even just in this moment.

-- LAM

Throughout my life, especially in education, I have felt my wide range of interests were never valued for being so wide. People want to put you into a box and pick out your strongest skill to be what you do for the rest of your life. Be it picking a major or a short discussion with a counselor, your plans and interests need to concise enough to fit a single descriptor. That thought, frankly, makes me want to blow my brains out.

As we are beginning TBSB Media, I have begun to accept my multi-hyphenate status in everything I do and realizing the broadness of my interests and skills is not a detriment to me in the slightest. Whether or not TBSB Media is a fun project for a year or becomes a long term career option, I'm realizing I need to play into my wide range of skills to work as a "Creative Director" or whatever fancy term they place on managing expansive projects while also contributing yourself.

While I am quick to mention all of my early doubts of myself, my mom has always said these exact things to me and told me I would be the person to bridge the gap between various sectors and see the bigger picture. I never really listened to her, but now I am starting to understand what she means as I see the true utility of that process.

What this doesn't mean is: I am some magic genius person and I am super happy to pat myself on the back. Instead, I feel a greater sense of calm and purpose when going down these learning rabbit holes and side quests as essentially everything I learn and practice can be applied to the way we are developing TBSB Media's business model. I have a lot to learn and more freedom now to do so, yet, I also am granted a framework for why I am stretching myself across far reaching concepts.

TBSB Media is beginning to blossom. A lot of work has been put into the website, portfolio, and how we market ourselves to clients. Simultaneously, I have spent extensive time thinking about how we can be different and a positive force in our world. This comes alongside the multiple blog posts I've made about my fears and expectations about the the way the media/communications sector has evolved beyond having even a grain of piety.

User data profiteering, Secrecy behind closed doors, and deeply misguided quests for innovation plague media and tech companies (which are one in the same at this point) who never had humanity to begin with. I want TBSB Media to be different. So very badly. I cannot tackle my own personal convictions without it being different. It simply must be different.

Even in our small size now, I want to begin with charity, social responsibility, and truly beneficial innovation as the expectations and guardrails for every decision we make. For charity, we plan to set a aside a consistent percentage of all income to a TBSB Media charity account that can provide scholarships, media equipment, and funding to burgeoning filmmakers, schools, and community programs. This will need to be further designed to properly disperse the funds but, at the very least, the money will be set aside from the very beginning. For social responsibility, I believe any project we take on must not interfere with our moral convictions or harm anyone directly or indirectly. Additionally, I want us to be an entirely transparent company. No NDA's, no hiding how much we make, and no hiding our creative process and strategies. For truly beneficial innovation, I don't mean we shouldn't innovate to just try something new, that's fine. What I mean is we should understand how the innovation we create will harm or benefit humanity. We don't want to innovate in order to get more people hooked to a product or increase watch time or whatever financial reasoning. We want to innovate to push forward how we can communicate and how we can tell stories.

While all of this is in theory in pretty much Day 0 of TBSB Media's existence, I wan't to reference this ideals forever. In everything I do.

Been feeling increasingly existential about media production as of late. It may be due to the rise of NFTs commodifying some of the ugliest "art" I've ever seen or Facebook's rebranding to "Meta" or the entire metaverse concept as a whole. This entire era of popular media that I find myself in highlights questions about why we create to begin with (and why They create).

I would answer the billion dollar question of why we create with the cheap answer of: various reasons. Yet, that ultimately is the key to the difference between why "we" (the people, proletariat, etc.) create and "They" (technocrats, billion dollar corporations, etc.) create. Our variety of reasons and intentions to create (replication, exploration, introspection, communication) are so numerous and diverse compared the singular reason They create: profitable simulacrum.

Profitable simulacrum is working towards nothing that is new or even truly identical to what already exists. It is working towards immitations of reality with their core and thus their identity removed. As Žižek describes, diet coke removes the essence of coke, the sugar, and thus leaves it as a tool purely for consumption without true identity, utility, or any detriment to the user. The virtual reality metaverse as envisioned by Zuckerberg seeks to develop a world more desirable than the one that they and other technocrat billionaires destroyed before our very eyes. This is not a creation made to free us. This is made transactionally. We trade our information, our privacy, our lives, and our world for it.

However, this is not to say that we, me, or others are not enticed to create in the way technocrats do. It is significantly easier to do so and seems like a potent relief to the existence you are chained within. By design, capitalism's agony born of conscripted labor breeds people who want to break free of it and capitalism points, with a smirk, towards conscription and abuse of those around you.

With all this in mind, how, as media producers, artists, creators, do we navigate this space of new media? How do we not contribute to the cycle? How do we not let the technocratic future of consumption and control win? Truly, I don't know. However, I think there is something valuable in the purposeful creation of media to reflect the horrors of our world and not to transactionally remove them. What does this mean, again, I don't truly know. But, there is something to be said about not rushing to create a virtual world devoid of suffering and built upon escapism. Instead, we must acknowledge and be wary of the immense power that comes from designing and profiting off of a virtual reality. If we were the ones to make it, how would we? Should we? Should I? Should you? Whatever the answers to these questions are, all of us as artists, filmmakers, developers, etc. have an immense responsibility to purposefully create in a way that dismantles this approaching dystopia.

I've been planning to revamp my main portfolio website with what I have learned in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I just finished doing mockups of what I want the styling to be with my current skill set in mind.  

For lukeamakinson.com, my portfolio website, I am planning to go for something to the mockup below:

The main takeaways are I want to attempt some javascript rollover stuff where the A in my name rotates to different stylings and each button below my name does the same. I'm imagining switching to cursive, 8-bit text, 3D text etcetera. For the portfolio page I want it to start with 2 reels, one for filmmaking and one for general non-narrative media production. Below that, I'll have Narrative, Non-Narrative, and Interactive media descriptions that list what sort of projects those are and has some looping gifs of examples next to it. When you click on any of them it will take you to my view all page which is also accessible through a "view all" button at the bottom of the portfolio page. If you were to click on narrative, it would have the narrative tag selected and only show narrative media. You can fiddle with the sort by type tags while on the page to find other stuff too. Besides that, the site is pretty standard.  

For this site and my blog I plan to continue using jekyll as it makes content generation super easy for someone who is constantly adding new blog posts or portfolio pieces.  

For LAMLOG, my blog, I am planning to either just do one of these stylings or find a way to cycle through each either on a refresh or with a toggle button:

Inspired by Starlog magazine

Inspired by Fangoria magazine

Inspired by Game Master magazine

Each of these designs are inspired by different genre magazines I remember seeing as a kid. I especially liked fangoria. The rest I saw online mostly. I want to go for a weathered old magazine aesthetic. I might experiment with horizontal scrolling, but I think the site will work just as well without it. Main thing will be adding gaps between "pages" which would be the main landing page and each post. The size of each "page" will vary due to differing lengths of posts, but the gap between will be consistent and achieve the same affect.  

Jekyll will be hella useful for this in storing a bunch of tags and data to load constantly updating content on the front page. I'll have the 3 most recent posts and the date + post number of the most recent post updating on the front page.

I also have a "browse by category" feature worked in there (inspired by william's blog). Not sure exactly how I plan to do that (if at all). I would need to work out a way to make it work with the overall aesthetic. Probably just loads a page that skips the front "page" and instead has a tag selector that will load posts in order that meet the selected tags. Simple enough.

I am hoping to have all of this implemented by the end of December (the end of Fall quarter) which would make me totally on schedule to complete all the major projects I want to tackle this school year.

All media is fundamentally made to communicate  something that cannot / is not being communicated through other media and forms of communication.

Our classic forms of communication such as speech + writing lacked tangible visual communication. Modern forms of communication through film, music, and interactive media attempt to fill in these gaps of communication and introduce user interactivity that simulates interacting with the real world.

Film, music, video games, and all other media are partial objects which define an oft forgotten drive. They circle around, without getting to, the object of desire which is to (as independent beings confined to our own perception) experience what is other than ourselves.

Currently we perceive the act of foundationally experiencing life outside of our own perception as as the 'objet petit a'. The petit a refers to a an imaginary object of desire that is unreachable and belongs to the imaginary order of lancian algebra.

Through our production and consumption of these smokescreens and veils, we circle around and never reach the experience we all truly seek.

However, as the advancements of media technology, VR technology, and neuroscience develop, crafting and delivering raw experience is becoming closer and closer to Lacan's capital A or "Big Other" which is "raw" or irreducible from the pure experience and is ultimately plausible in it's realness.

In media production and communication, it may be the time for us to shift focus from communicating aspects of reality towards developing die-cast replicative experiences of reality. But, where does the line between perceiving and experiencing start to blur? How do we stop applying consciousness of a reality to a meta-reality and thus experience it without preconceived notion?

That is what must be developed.

Earlier this week on tuesday I released a quick short film project called "honey bunches". This past weekend, Henry, William, and I all went up to Oregon for a roadtrip for some camping. We were just messing around with the drone taking some funny pictures of henry laying down in the parking lot when I had an idea for a shot.

This shot became the opening shot of the film and as we continued on the roadtrip I jotted down a handful of other shot ideas to finish off the film. We decided to make the challenge to only use William's drone for all shots. Obviously, there are some shots that just simply work better with a drone and some that work better with a different piece of more standard equipment. This was sort of a test of where those lines are.

I essentially directed the film and went over the shotlist with William who acted as a Cinematographer. He provided input on the technical side of flying the drone that would change how we handle shots and informed me of which ones would be more difficult than others. We then would collaborate to design a shot that would work both creatively and technically. In particular, the final shot of the film was really fucking hard to do and constantly ended in the drone being crashed into an unseen branch. By gods will, the final time we shot it actually went well.

We are thinking of collaborating more on future projects and calling upon each other to use equipment either of us have. Overall it was pretty fun.

(Final Note) Forgot to mention this, but the soundtrack in the film was also just some random LP I found in a record store in portland. After looking the artist up, it seems they do abstract oil painting now. Worked pretty well as the soundtrack for being so random. Thinking about buying more random 1 to 3 dollar vinyls to use in films now.

You can check out the film on my instagram or here

Once again, heres a basically monthly return to this blog. I think posts might speed up again as I get back into school and stuff. I'll get more into that later in this post though. Anyways:

I've been working on and off on a little fan art project for a while now. I struggled to get it started, but eventually got to the planning/drafting phase a couple of days ago and drew these notes up:

Mockup of motion graphic mimicking the start up screen of the Nintendo DS

Draft of layout

Pretty much I was looking to emulate a DS ad using the stylings of an artist I like. Overall it would take photography, graphic design, and motion design to put it all together.

You can check out the final product on my instagram

Besides all that, I wanted to write about some general updates surrounding media production and life in general.

In terms of my life:

• Currently in the process of buying a car

• Started new job in Color Guard Instruction which is another passion of mine

• Moving out of the house is in the horizon  

All of these factors are playing into my lack of momentum in media production which used to be insanely fast and exciting a couple of months ago. Right now, I have to focus more on day to day things and I have less time for small projects. Thus, I have been devoting my time to learning new media production skills and extending my focus onto bigger projects.

What that pretty much looks like is me learning web development + javascript/game dev. I really want to venture into interactive media more than just video/photography/graphic design. I think its an incredibly valuable skill to have for the types of content I want to create.

Speaking of that, I am working on learning three.js and javascript as a whole. I have a very ambitious idea that I can't shake for a 3D browser experience that ties into the new version of my website that I am working on.

Thus, most of my time will now be spent learning and practicing programming + web design as I work on refining my online presence. I have a loose schedule I'm trying to hold myself to as I complete a large array of projects:

Pretty much this summer I'm working on making a coming soon page + trailer for the boardwalk 3D experience I will work on in the winter. I pushed boardwalk into the winter because over fall I'll be learning javascript in school which will put me on better footing to work on boardwalk. Besides that, in fall I'm gonna be doing a lot of html/css website building shit for my portfolio and this blog/ibuycrap. Finally, in spring I'm hoping to work on the infrastructure for "life+" (name tbd) which will be a network of similar 3D experiences to boardwalk, hosted on my website.

Alright, thats all for now. Peace.

Well, here we are at the PostProduction stage of the short film I am working on.

Funnily enough, what I believed was the beginning of the PostProduction stage actually began with rushing back to the set before sundown to record a final sequence the crew and I completely forgot to shoot! With that scene out of the way and a quick drive back to my apartment, I began work on developing foley sound effects for the fight scene that takes up the majority of the film.

However, the main issue was I have never done layered foley before! I found it incredibly difficult to mix into anything usable, thus, I was forced to just switch to free to use punch sound effects online. Nonetheless, I still want to return to layering and mixing my own foley in a future project when I am granted the opportunity (and time) to do it properly.

After deciding to essentially skip the task of producing sound effects, I got to work with my co-editor (who lives in Qatar) over discord on refining the cuts and transitions from what we had in our rough cut that we presented to the professor. After fixing the cuts, I went on alone to remix and level all of the background sound and dialogue to my liking. Once that was done I went back and color graded everything to match. I ended up having to go with a cool blue tone (which still looked good with the blue trim of the school) because of some shots that were filmed with an awkward blue lighting with no way to work around them. Once all that was done I added sound effects, a soundtrack I found online, and made the embroidered name tag title card you see below.

(Fun Fact: The title for the movie was decided  about 15 minutes before I had to export it and turn it in!)

All that being said, here is the final short film!

Alright, seemingly bi-monthly blog, I am back to talk about shit.

Aren't you happy!? :D

So, over the past 2 weeks my film crew and I had a couple of recording sessions for our (currently untitled, still) short film.

The set for the short film is the elementary school my mom works at. Overall, I was hoping to utilize the school at some point for a project as it is a very useful location to have access to. Our first day of shooting went smoothly besides a couple hick ups in which we forgot some props/equipment. Besides that, we were able to get the vast majority of necessary shots completed. That day was pretty tiring due to fight choreography and a lot of falls performed on my part.

Now I noted we got the "vast majority" of shots which eludes to a reshoot day we had to do (today) a day before the film was due. There wasn't that much to film, we just added some additional padding shots to give better continuity across shots as well as filmed the final sequence.

So, now comes a rapid fire day of post-production and sound engineering mostly headed by me! Pretty excited to get work on some foley punch sound effects.

So, I've been radio silent for my longest stretch of time since starting this blog. This isn't without reason as I've picked up a 2nd job working full time alongside my on campus job while I save for a car. Additionally, I have been working on a short film for my production class:

Essentially the boiled down story is about a school janitor gone AWOL who fights two teenagers who litter in front of him.

We are at a PreProduction stage in which we have a shot list and script written. The last bit of work being done is finalizing costuming and finalizing/practicing fight choreography.

On Wednesday we worked on the fight choreography and simultaneously finalized the cinematography while on location

Thus, we are ready to film on our scheduled filming date with a possible (inevitable) re-shoot day looming ahead as well. Beyond that, we will edit together a rough cut essentially showing the chronological progression of each shot to turn in as well as a revised fine cut. And, finally, we will work on PostProduction color grading and vfx editing.

Even at this stage, the biggest take away is that any production is more about management than anything. Keeping to a schedule and on top of everything that needs to be done is a struggle. Nonetheless, excited to continue this.

So, after thinking about the Boardwalk blog concept as I've been working on writing the layout files and markdown files for it, I have realized I want to think bigger.

I have always wanted to learn three.js and do a 3D browser experience after seeing what Will was able to accomplish while working on early stages of "Unreal World".

Thus, I think translating the concept of the boardwalk as a space for hosting interactive projects packaged in a boardwalk theme into itself being an interactive space is a positive leap forward.

Currently these are some of the ideas that I have surrounding this concept:

1. Photo real boardwalk utilizing photography for making looping textures.

   1. Practice skills in photography and 3D modeling

2. TubDrafts Fortune telling machine

   1. Print out tub drafts tweets and be a "TubDrafts Fortune Telling Machine"

3. Arcade area

   1. For any interactive projects that don't necessarily fit an outward aesthetic of "boardwalk"

   2. Designed arcade cabinets

4. Restaurant

   1. Some sort of food making game a la Papa's Pizzeria

5. Billboards

   1. Advertise Outside projects

   2. Hyperlink to the project

6. Some sort of physical exit/door back to other blog

   1. Back to lamlog + back to ibuycrap  

7. Santa Cruz Ambient sound loop

   1. Record like 5 minutes of ambient ocean noise when we go out there some time.

The main issue (i guess?) to tackle will be deciding whether in each of these experiences it will essentially be a hyperlink that sends you to a new tab that has these games/experiences or if we will be able to have these experiences pop up in the 3D space (essentially as a second monitor).

William says he will do some work to give me the base files / a base scene to work off of in three.js. That will be super helpful in trying to build this project up. I also need to do some more studying about three.js and especially javascript. I've been watching videos and reading blogs to try and be ready to hit the ground running.

My first goal will be to make a very simple proof of concept test that includes the fortune teller machine (possibly just a box with a pop up window). Once that is done I'm going to go back to work on lamlog and ibuycrap styling alongside this project.

Over the past couple days I worked on finishing up the 2 existing blogs, LAMLOG and ibuycrap.  

1. Made a link back to the main blogliam hub on all blog pages

2. Updated the directory to include the new blog

3. Updated ibuycrap analytics

4. Included analytics on each tag page (Music, Video, Other)

5. Created markdown/layout/css files to begin work on a new blog

So, what is this new blog?

Initially, I called this new blog idea "yardsale", however, I am changing the name to "boardwalk". This change is intentional as the old name only reflected a single idea I had for the blog. The single idea initially was to create a page that would output a random post when the user presses a button. Originally, I was going to reflect this idea as a yardsale where you might be able to purchase these posts or whatever. Then I thought this idea was better reflected as fortunes. Ultimately, I remembered those fortune teller machines that are at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and other arcade settings:

From shifting from a yard sale to a boardwalk visual style and location, I also realized I can make a wider array of interactive experiences on one blog if I call it boardwalk. So, I plan to include the fortune teller idea, but also leave myself room to create more boardwalk themed interactive experiences.

I will at least complete the fortune teller functionality before I move on to working on visual stylings of all my blogs. I am interested in what other experiences I can make within the constraints of my ability, web design, and the concept of "boardwalk".

So, this quarter I am taking my first Video Production class for my Film degree. Our current assignment is to create a pre-production package for our short film (the final for the class). This pre-production package has to include basic info like the plot as well as a treatment, storyboard, and other details.

Currently the concept we are going with is:  The school janitor has been working all day to clean up his school that is infested with dirty, inconsiderate, teenagers! Just as the sun begins to set, he ties up the last garbage bag only for a punk kid to litter right in front of him. The Janitor confronts the kid and it turns into an all out action filled brawl!

We are planning to film this at my Mom's elementary school. My main role will be Sound Design/Recordist as I am going to checkout the Boom Mics and Zoom Recorder I have been working with in my sound class to try and achieve a clear sound recording for the short film. I also want to do foley work like bones cracking, shoes rustling, and stuff like that as I have found it very fun to work with in my Sound Recording class.

One of my group members is a 4th degree black belt and is super interested in fight choreography so we should have some pretty cool choreo to work with. Besides that, we are gonna have the international group member focus on editing it all together. Most likely though all other aspects of production will be very collaborative. I will probably work on the final sound mastering after the first visual cut is put together.

I never really thought that I would ever fill this role in any production, but I am happy and excited to do so.

Besides all of this stuff with the video production class, I have been a bit slower on doing creative projects lately. I am currently focusing on getting in shape for Vanguard and getting a second job. Both of which have sort of taken up my time alongside school. I am thinking this lull is okay and I shouldn't really worry. I want to get back to work on some blogliam stuff soon though. Lot's going on, but I am used to that.

So today I had to do some projects for my Sound Recording class using the equipment I loaned from my college.

I ended up interviewing Henry for my Project #1:

For Project #2 I had to ADR a clip from the professor.

I was actually hella surprised at how hard it was to even get it remotely in sync. It took about 35 takes to even get it to where it is. I have major respect for actors who have to do this for movies lol.  

Also, here is a cool gif I made:

It's from Eliana's birthday party on the beach. Pretty Dope.

So, I have a plan. It's quite an elaborate and honestly stupid plan, but, I think we can make something awesome out of this:  

Essentially, the last big project orchestrated by anyone in the "Blogliam Network" was AYL (areyoulistening.studio). This project, for those unaware, was a website in which you could construct and purchase a t-shirt of all of your favorite albums in a 3x3 grid. One of the sub-goals of this project (besides making a fuck-ton of money from this amazing idea) was to try to get a cease and desist from a record company for using their copyrighted album art. To the four teenagers working on that project, the idea that a giant multi-million dollar company would notice us (for any reason) was hilarious.  

That brings us to the new project idea:  

The Bløgliåm Family Feast

The lore of the Bløgliåm Family Feast is as follows:  

• The San Jose Mcdonald's chains are hosting a partnership meal with a group known as "Bløgliåm"

• Bløgliåm is a Norwegian Ethnic-Retro-Pop-Group

• Mcdonald's is selling multiple meals as part of a collective "Bløgliåm Family Feast" and each member of Bløgliåm has a meal named after them  

The online presence of this project will be:

• The Mcdonald's of San Jose, California Twitter Account @McDonalds_SJ

  • Funny anti-McDonald's propaganda/memes

  • Advertising for Bløgliåm Family Feast

• The Bløgliåm Twitter Account: @blogliam_

  • Funny tweets from perspective of the band all written in Norwegian

  • Advertising for Bløgliåm Family Feast

• The McDonald's of San Jose, California Website: sanjosemcdonalds.com

The real world presence of this project will be:  

• Posters in San Jose Mcdonalds Stores

• Flyers in San Jose Mcdonalds Stores

• Flyers on light poles around San Jose

  • tear off coupons

Here is what has been done so far:

• Twitter accounts have been made:

1. Daily Posts for April + May have been scheduled for both twitter accounts.

2. The San Jose MCdonalds website domain name has been purchased.

Here is what needs to be done:

1. Develop sanjosemcdonalds.com website

   1. create website design (mimicking a retro McDonalds website)

   2. write Bløgliåm about page and backstory

2. Make Bløgliåm Family Feast Meals in real life

   1. Decide everyone's meals

   2. Create them in real life (i.e. Will makes a bacon butty)

   3. Take product photography of each meal

3. Make Bløgliåm Family Feast Meal Advertisements

   1. Several Twitter Post sized advertisements

   2. Large Poster(s) designs

   3. Physical flyers with tear off coupons

4. Film pinned post for Bløgliåm twitter account of the Bløgliåm members saying hi to fans in Norwegian

   1. Possibly get funny wigs or something

5. Print physical media and disperse

   1. Print large posters

   2. Print flyers

   3. Box printed posters with a note from manager to put up (If it doesn't work, put up ourselves)

   4. Hang tear off coupon flyers on light poles

   5. Leave some flyers inside mcdonald's eating area

There is still room to develop more robust concepts for this project. However, I think what we have is a fun challenge while still being manageable. I think we can get this going during May and have it done within the month. I think a video documenting the whole project could be edited and released in June.

Interested to hear everyone's thoughts and get to work on this.

Yesterday I added a page detailing the Blogliam project in the Creative Projects section of my current portfolio. For now, it has all of the work that I have done in designing the landing page for blogliam.com as well as all of my personal blogs that I have developed. I plan to update this when major changes are made.

I was planning to finish the motion graphics in the portfolio section of my website, but, I decided it was sort of a waste of time. I am planning to completely rebuild my website from the ground up with a new visual style, so taking the time to make these motion graphics is sort of unnecessary. Instead, I included some placeholders to improve the user experience and highlight better where the user should click to access these previously blank sections.  

Besides that little update, I came across and interesting concept that made me think about the feelings I currently have about my creative work and development as a artist/creator. The phenomena is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect:

It is essentially the idea that when you begin to learn a new skill your confidence rises at an immense rate due to your ignorance of the skill-ceiling that is truly above you. I definitely relate to that as when I began to take media production seriously with AYL I reached a peak of confidence in which I thought I could do anything.  

I feel as though I am either in the middle of the plateau shown above or I am on the slope downward. I am beginning to see the uphill battle of knowledge I can obtain in the broad subject of media production and design in general.  

This psychological theory definitely woke me up to why I may be feeling a slump as I continue to learn more and more each day. Importantly, though, it gives me hope that there is a future in which I regain my confidence and that this is a normal stage on the path to greatness.

-- LAM

Today I made my resume have better accessibility with screen readers. I was struggling to do this as it was the first PDF I made and I didn't use a proper workflow back then to make accessibility stuff easy. I worked in acrobat to make the text readable:

As for the concepts that have to do with the title of this post, I want to utilize the html/css/markdown knowledge that I have been gaining from making my blogs to do a complete revamp of my current portfolio site:

I want to completely revamp the overall design of my website and have it be completely written and hosted by me. I think that would be a great achievement and also be very useful to display my skills and also useful in having greater customization than using Adobe Portfolio as I am now. The design I currently have doesn't really reflect any of my own artistic tastes and more relies on a general corporate aesthetics in an attempt to look mature. I have realized overtime it is almost more mature to have a website I find aesthetically pleasing, that reflects my personal design preferences, and is still professional and useful. Overall, that is much more of a show of media production/design strength.  

The timeline of work should look something like this:

• finish ibuycrap

• make yardsale

• redesign all blogs

• create new designs for lukeamakinson.com

• build base site functionality

• integrate visual design  

To finish ibuycrap I just need to do the tasks I outlined in LAMLOG 008:

1. Add link back to blogliam in ibuycrap (and eventually yardsale)

2. Aggregate other metadata into other analytics beyond money spent:

   1. Proportion of media in different formats

   2. [Write more analytics ideas]

3. Add appropriate analytics to each collection page  

Making yardsale will be more of an uphill battle. It consists of researching some jekyll plugins or native processes that will allow me to show a random post to the user upon clicking a button.  

Past that I am going to take the time to make design mockups for every blog. One thing I need to figure out, and possibly talk to Will about is how mobile works in that whole equation. I am not sure if I write entirely different CSS styling for mobile or what, but, either way I will need to take that into consideration. I will also want to integrate any other changes like adding liking or comment functionality before I do those designs.  

Once that is all done I am going to make mockup designs for lukeamakinson.com and research creating my site from the ground up with some help from Will most likely. Once I have the groundwork laid out I can get the site to basic functionality and then integrate the visual designs I will have come up with.  

Lot's to do and some media production homework assignments will be posted in between my work as well.  

-- LAM

I haven't written over the weekend as I have mostly been hanging out with friends or doing homework. I expected a bit of a crash after working on blogliam so fervently for like a week. I assume I will be able to resume a pretty good pace with it going forward.  

Work is starting again and school is starting to pickup. This project and pretty much any creative endeavors I work on going forward will be practice in juggling multiple responsibilities and maintaining quality across multiple projects.  

The most work I've done on the site the past couple of days has just been uploading all of my video collection to the site. I think I am going to add a couple more posts in the "other" tag to finish all of my preliminary posting. Past that, everything I post will be new stuff I have bought.

Moving forward I am going finish the first three todos in the "medium" section which are:

1. Add link back to blogliam in ibuycrap (and eventually yardsale)

2. Aggregate other metadata into other analytics beyond money spent:

   1. Proportion of media in different formats

   2. [Write more analytics ideas]

3. Add appropriate analytics to each collection page

The first one is pretty simple, but I would like to do some basic styling with help from will to get it looking decent in its Alpha phase. The other two will take some thinking but I want to have at the very least a wall of analytics data about my ibuycrap posts. I just need to think of different ones to add.

Once all that is done I will be moving on to the final blog, currently titled yardsale, but that is subject to change.  

I assume those three changes will be done by the end of the week. Hopefully more, but, I have a lot to do this week besides the blog.  

-- LAM

I knew today was going to be a slow day from the beginning as I had a lot of homework for my business class (which I promptly dropped in a fit of rage). Nonetheless, I had a burst of creative energy at the end of the day and ended up designing a concept for the blogliam homepage utilizing my existing blogliam logo shown below:  

This blogliam logo is from a design concept for flyers we might post in San Jose and Santa Cruz to promote the blog:

I ended up making a couple versions of the webpage shown below but settled on this one after speaking with Will and hearing his immediate positive reaction to this version:  

After this design, Will requested a mobile version before he attempted any implementation which I made here:  

The About page will outline our gameplan for developing the blogliam network and the reasoning behind its creation (as well as possibly mini-bios of each blogger and what sort of projects they work on). The Contact page will have a central blogliam contact email as well as contact emails for each blogger. The Portfolio page will host any collaborative group work between a couple or all of the bloggers. Finally, the white squares in the above mock ups will host images of individual (and possibly some collaborative) projects and the images will either link directly to an offsite project or a blog post about the project.  

Tmrw I should have more sizable changes on the site done, but, I am quite happy with the unexpected work I was able to complete today.

Overall, today was mostly fixing bts issues on the site and not necessarily putting forward any new content or features. I am not sure if I will have the time tmrw to do any sizable changes either but by the end of the week ass the to do's in "SIMPLE" and some in "MEDIUM" should be completed.

Today I made it so all images on both ibuycrap and lamlog were hosted in the "assets" directory rather than being pulled from a google drive host. This makes the images load on pages significantly faster which is nice. I also fixed the redirects I have in my menus of my blogs to be relative redirects which works better with localhost testing on my end.

Tmrw I think I am going to try to get a couple of to do's done but friday will be more of a free day to pour effort into making noticeable changes. It would be nice to maybe get the "SIMPLE" to do's done tmrw which just consist of posting all of my video collection and other collection, which while easy, does take a bit of time (but I can just use that time as a break in between work as its somewhat mindless). In fact, I might do some before bed right now.

As for the change of plans, I think I might end up renaming the "yardsale" blog. We will see when I reach that bridge. I think I will decide when I create the initial logo. I might end up changing it to something like fortunecookie or something more conducive to the "random post appears and user views it" setup I am working on.

-- LAM

Will set me up with visual studio code and github so now I am essentially a Comp Sci major making a 6 figure salary and making questionable political twitter posts.  

Besides that massive dub, I got a good ammount of work done on the ibuycrap blog:

1. I added the format of each physical media (CD, Vinyl, VHS, etc.) to the metadata

2. Will helped me to add the "Money Wasted" counter functionality

3. I added in all the music I own to ibuycrap

4. I worked with Will to get the tag system working to add "music","video", and "other" tags to each post's metadata. Through this metadata, we were able to make Music Collection, Video Collection, and Other pages that show the posts from each tag.

With all of that completed, the ibuycrap blog has reached full functionality. Beyond this point, all further changes will be visual design based and/or minor additions that weren't accounted for in initial planning. On theoretical future addition could be more robust analytics beyond money spent. I am collecting as much metadata as possible with each post in the hopes of making visually pleasing graphics of calculations of: format composition of my collection, spending habits over time, average ratings, etc. All I need to do for now, though, is add in all of my video collection and any other purchases.

The 3rd and final blog site will be the first and only to be completely written in Visual Studio Code and the first to utilize github (git) integration. Once the 3rd site is functional (in the same way the first 2 currently are "functional) I am going to go back and do design mockups for each website and then breakdown what html/css work I need to do to bring the designs to life.

Overall, still much to do with this blog project.

School is also starting up and that means media & communications work for my extracurricular activities. Specifically, I have a meeting about designing sweatshirts (and a new logo) for the DASG. I will have a lot more small projects like that, including instagram posts and whatnot to utilize as practice and portfolio pieces in various mediums. Alongside these extracurricular media production tasks, I have two heavily project focused F/TV courses that are going to give me a lot to work with. A couple short film projects and sound design projects will be posted over the spring quarter.

-- LAM

Today I worked on building my second blog, ibuycrap where I am planning to host my physical media collection and other things I buy that interest me. In just today I was able to get a multitude of things completed. First off, I was able to make a quick placeholder logo for the time being, seen below:  

Besides making the logo, I was also able to figure out altering the css, scss, and general directory of the website to achieve the look shown below. I altered Will's code that showed the time of posting to instead show the cost of the item I am posting about. Overall, I am quite surprised at how intuitive all this html/css and markdown stuff has become as I keep working on it. I can actually see myself being decently knowledgeable if I keep working at it. Pretty dope.

There are still several changes to be made before the site is fully functional:

1. Remove "LAMLOG" from website title

2. Figure out tagging of posts through Liquid (?)

3. Integrate tag feature into /music, /video, and /other webpages so they display the posts that fall under those tags

4. Figure out how to aggregate "price:" data point of each post into a counter at the top of the page

5. Post shit

Once this is complete, I will continue posting on both with little revision for a while. I want to get all three concepts for blogs I have up and running (in one form or another) before I do design overhauls of each blog. At least from my perspective, figuring out how to make each site functional takes priority before integrating pretty designs.  

The next blog after this will be "yardsale". The main challenge with this one will be finding a way to present a randomly selected blog post to the user. It also has the hardest visual design challenge as I want the user to almost interact with products at a yard sale.  

Time to stretch jekyll to its fucking limits.

-- LAM

I wanted to complete the last two motion graphics that I need for my portfolio webpage today, but, sometimes things like that just need to be put off (especially on one’s birthday, lol).

Nonetheless, I have been doing a lot of thinking about an idea that has been brewing for a while. I have been wanting to make art that explores my transition into adulthood and the end of my childhood as that has been something that I didn’t expect to affect me so much.

One portion of this multimedia piece would be a photobook. I have some (honestly outlandish) ideas for the photobook that may not be able to be done all together due to money and production in general. I would like to mimic children’s “touch and feel books” which have portions of fabric and carpet and other textures that are in cut outs of each page. Obviously this plays into the childhood concepts but I also am interested in mimicking the sensory effects of the media I am including in the book. This can also be accomplished with scratch and sniff smells of substances such as grass or dirt, etc. I am also interested in inserting the tiny speakers that they use in hallmark cards that play when someone that opens the page. This ties into the musical or sound element of the piece and might include short clips of instrumentals or ambient noise or a conversation/narration. Another element I would like to include in the photobook is writing through poems, short stories, or any other composition that comes in between or alongside photos.

When it comes to the photos I am interested in exploring a continuity from the peak of my childishness and innocence to the realization of adulthood and the peering into this new world. A lot of these photos would have to deal with juxtaposition, especially in the middle transitional period between childhood and adulthood. One idea I have is doing a photoshoot in the graveyard that my dad is buried. That might sound sort of edgy, but it's also a place I have never been. In not going, I have sort of innocently existed without the thought of it. I see these photos as a group of friends playfully running and posing in a graveyard in high saturation clothing juxtaposed to the gravestones. I also want to take photos utilizing my dad’s letters for the same reasoning.

In terms of the short film side of it I am interested in trying to mimic the aura of skate videos. Minus the skating, lol. Essentially, I want to have the rebellious, fun, and childlike feeling of the moments in between skating in those videos in which the skaters are just hanging out. I want to do this and utilize the photos I took for the book in the videos as transitional motion graphics or still frames. Basically any time I’m shooting photos for this project, I am also filming fun moments. I want to also do a physical release of this short film concept on vhs and transfer it back to digital and upload it to youtube, maintaining a generation loss effect.

Overall, I see a bigger picture Idea to what I think I might call “enfant terrible”. I want to make not just something, but a multitude of unified pieces that explore the topic I’ve outlined. I am currently working to refine this idea into workable chunks to bring it to life in a reasonable amount of time.

-- LAM

Yesterday I worked on designing a temporary logo for the LAMLOG blog that is currently being made. I took design inspiration from the sci-fi magazine "starlog".

I think I might change the overall design of the blog name to be honest. I think it works for now but I think I'm going to redo it in more of a 70s typography similar to that seen in the Mort Garson album Plantasia with a little bit of chemical brothers logo thrown in for good measure. Again, though, the logo will work for the time being and I might even make some design choices centered around it.

I am planning a couple of other sub-blogs that will have more distinct styles. One of them will be a blog talking about my recent physical media purchases as well as any other purchases that seem cool and I want to talk about. I believe I am going to call it "ibuycrap". I think I will go for an analog (tapes, paper, cds, vinyl) feeling for that website. I think some sort of counter that tracks how much money I waste on physical media and memorabilia would be funny as well.

I am also thinking about doing a blog where I just post philosophical affirmations, thoughts, and random ideas. I think I'm going to call it "yardsale". I think it will have a sort of sunny outdoor aesthetic and you can ask the seller what's for sale today and he will tell you a random post. That is the overall concept at least. I am definitely going to tweak it to be something I can pull off and/or mimic with simple html/css styling.

The idea of doing a less specific logo than the one I have now with more room to design around (rather than pure sci-fi/comic book feeling) allows me to do other ideas on the site as well. I am thinking about making holiday versions of the logo that appear on certain days and could possibly be programmed to change when those days come? I would need to talk to Will about this. Alongside the logo changing, the accent tones of the website could change as well? Who knows.

Another thing about the driving game will and henry are discussing is: What if you used tillable real world textures for absolutely everything, including the interior of the car? Henry already experimented with it for unreal world and I think we've found it's easy enough to do and could give it a weirdly realistic but also within an uncomfortable uncanny valley.

I see the blogs as just a beginning. That isn't to minimize the usefulness of said blogs, however, I am saying that to note the clear and obvious room for growth. The blogs allow us to track our own creative growth and witness others. It allows us to view the projects of our peers and see where we can lend a hand as well as other things. As we spoke about at the lighthouse, it is clearly a central website we can grow from. I am interested as I type this in my google notes app what it will bring. I know, though, that while we all see the potential for growth, our desire to discuss and acknowledge the possibility to expand (and thus legitimize) the site differs. Whats funny especially is that I type this before the site is even made and before we even have a title for the central website (lol).

To continue my ramble, I see the site expanding in different stages. I am less writing this as a game plan and more as a prediction and an exercise in design and project management.

STAGE 1: Blogs

-each curated creative user has central blog to show daily (or more infrequent) growth and projects we are working on

-users can reference other users to provide input and users can view others blogs to reach out with interest

STAGE 2: Individual Project Growth

-utilize web hosting through central site to show off web-based content and tie it to not only yourself but the entire group

STAGE 3: Collaborative Projects

-central site hosts collaborative projects with links to behind the scenes on user's blogs

STAGE 4: Unified Branding Transcendence

-essentially the concept of the "artist collective"

-website still hosts blogs but has a centralized focus on collaborative efforts

I see Stage 1-3 as inevitable and see Stage 4 as an offshoot possibility in the event of collaborative efforts being fruitful in some way that causes us to want to continue working together in some official capacity. Nonetheless I see the general usefulness of a website to host blogs and shared content to be interesting for the future.

-- LAM