New Hobby: Letterpress

Published on March 9, 2010 in Nerd. 2 Comments

Recently I’ve become really interested in letterpress. It’s basically a form of printing on a movable type machine that results in a print that’s sort of embossed as well. I recently bought a set of cards from Vince Letterpress:

Meaghan was really nice because she had originally sent me two blue cards and a yellow. I told her that I had intended to frame them as a set of three and she printed a red one and sent it to me for free. It was really good of her to do that.

I think the reason I like Letterpress is that it leaves a very tangible impression. The object itself is a representation of something that’s not quite 2d, but not quite 3d either. In an age of all things digital, when it’s so easy to reproduce something by printing it out on an inkjet or laser printer, it’s nice to have something that’s a bit more difficult to recreate. Sure, someone could scan the card and print it out, but there would be something lost in the translation from a physical object with physical properties to a digital representation back to a physical object.

I like that the printer works by smashing into the paper. It creates something that’s different every time. I like that you can touch the card and feel its texture. I like that you can see it from different angles in the light, and how it changes a bit. In the example above, I really like the colors.

So far my hobby consists of collecting letterpress’ed stuff. I’d really like to take a letterpress printing class some time. It seems like it’d be a good way to balance my love of new technology with some older-fashioned tech.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture – Book Review

Published on March 2, 2010 in Book and Review. 0 Comments

I recently picked up a copy of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. As a self proclaimed cheapskate (I picked this book up from the library, after all!), I was very interested in the subject.

Ellen Shell does some in-depth research behind the psychology of why we (humans) love cheap stuff. Some of us go bonkers finding good deals, even when it’s not really economical (driving miles to save a few cents on gas). I’ve displayed this behavior in the past, buying videogames when they’re on sale while never having enough time to even finish the ones I’ve started, let alone the new ones I bought. I’ve chilled out a little when it comes to randomly buying stuff, but the allure of a good deal is still strong.

There are also some fun experiments described. Like the one where a person is presented with a crappy Hershey’s chocolate for 1 penny or an upgrade to a premium chocolate for 25 cents. Most people pick the premium. But when the price of the Hershey’s drops to the magical price of “free,” most people go for the free option instead of the “better” 25 cent deal.

Shell also describes the history of the discount store. Originally goods were priced according to quality. It was easy to tell that something made well cost more. But people started selling crappy quality goods at super low prices (and thrive on volume). This caused the more expensive sellers to go out of business. The super low prices made poor people feel like kings, being able to afford new socks instead of repairing their old ones! People could afford to just buy new things, which was good because the new stuff they bought would fall apart pretty quickly (think H&M).

The basic thesis of the book is that people love cheap things, but cheap things come at a cost. The lower class will always be involved (and basically abused), because if you paid people well to make things, the things themselves would need to cost more. This means that working retail sucks. It also means that the conditions for the people making the cheap stuff (mostly in China and Vietnam and other poorer countries) sucks really bad. If people saw what their need for cheap led to, they would probably be willing to pay a bit more to improve the quality of life of the people making their things. Sadly, most people don’t think about it because it is very out of sight.

One interesting section of the book concerned Ikea. I’ve always really liked Ikea because they make fashionable stuff and it is, indeed, cheap. I’ve had issues with their “stainless steel” items from China that rust like the surface of Mars. Overall though, I have a lot of love for their furniture. Learning that they use a hella lot of lumber and their “planned obsolescence” mentality leads to waste makes me reconsider. I’m not sure they’re the devil, but I think that next time I need to furnish an apartment, I may instead think of Crate & Barrel (which has way cute stuff!).

As for getting rid of my own cheap habits altogether, I don’t think I can do it. I will say that I am lucky to have the luxury of being able to choose to spend more or not. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart because I think it’s kind of evil and exploitative. One interesting thing to note is how well Wal-Mart does during a recession due to its focus on crazy low prices… I do shop at PCC because it’s good quality food and Michael Pollan says I should spend more on healthy food. I can’t really justify paying more just for the sake of paying more, however.

The book closes with a story about a company that goes against cheap culture. It’s a grocery store that focuses on customer service instead of price. People really love the store and are willing to pay more because of it. The store actually has fans. I think this is a great example of competing on another factor and really kicking butt doing it. I think that other companies that do this are Apple (for selling high quality products that people develop emotional bonds to) and Zappos (for focusing on customer service above price and making customer happiness their main goal). There is a special place in our brain that loves cheap, but I think there are also other things that are important to people.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture is a really interesting look at where we are and how we ended up this way. It says something interesting about our culture, our brains and ultimately our nature. If you buy just one book this year, then Cheap is probably the book for you! (It’s on sale at Amazon! 35% off!)

The Bird and The Bee – My New Favorite Band!

Published on February 21, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

I have been getting really into this band called “The Bird and The Bee.” They are composed of Inara George and Greg Kurstin. I’m not sure which one is The Bird and which one is The Bee. Or if it’s just a band name. I bet they get asked that a lot. I’m guessing that Inara is the bee, because almost all bees (the worker ones) are female. Anyway, what was I writing about?

My music-listening tendencies have been pretty unfocused recently. I just kinda try out whatever music I hear about. The last artist I sorta latched onto was Ingrid Michaelson after seeing her in concert in Ann Arbor back in 2007. I listened to some Andrew Bird but didn’t get super into him or anything. The Bird and The Bee is the first band whose albums I am listening to over and over again, and getting really psyched about. I even bought their single to hear some new songs. How crazy is that!?

I will now recount how I first became acquainted with this band. I am not ashamed to admit this is a very “Stuff White People Like” story. I was at The Gap, trying on some clothes in the fitting room. Then I heard this song that sounded pretty neat. So I used Shazam to figure out what it was. It turns out it was “You’re a Cad.” This happened on November 29th, 2009 at exactly 1:51pm Pacific Time. Thanks for the extreme data accuracy, Shazam!

Anyway, I made a mental note to check out the band, after purchasing a cheap sweater. I actually don’t remember if I bought a sweater, but details make a story more interesting. I put a few of their albums on hold at the Seattle Public Library and loaded them onto my iPhone to listen to on my commute to work. The rest is history.

The Bird and The Bee is probably so interesting to me because they have such a unique sound. Their website describes them as a mix of “Brazilian Tropicalia, ’60s psychedelic pop, and sparse electronic beats.” Inara has a wispy yet super-focused voice that really adds a lot to the complex arrangements.

To say that their “sound” truly defines them would be a disservice, though. In addition to a neat sound, their songs stand out because they’re really well composed. I think a lot of current alternative music focuses on the ambience, and not a whole lot on a coherent melody. The Bird and The Bee’s music not only contains some neat melodies, they also do some fun things like layering melodies on top of each other, making canon-ish things happen. Their songs actually start somewhere and build up to something. Maybe I’m just being a fanboy, but I really appreciate the songwriting skills of the duo.

At this point in the post, I should really just let you listen to their music. Here’s one of their songs along with a music video: Polite Dance Song. The concept of the song is wacky and the video fits it quite well.

They also have an awesome cover of How Deep is Your Love on the single that I got. Oh, and a wacky song about a weeaboo’s love for Japan.

The Bird and The Bee have a new album coming out, apparently a tribute album to Hall and Oates! I should probably just pre-order this as I’ve liked everything else they’ve put out so far.

Proof That Apple is Obsessed With The Customer Experience

Published on February 13, 2010 in Capitalism!. 2 Comments Tags: .

I was at the mall today just wasting my time (and looking at options for getting my eye prescription checked), and I stopped by the Apple Store. As I approached, I noticed an army of people in blue shirts, just waiting to help anyone who walked in. I soon realized that they were just cardboard cutouts.

Neat. I walked in and looked around at the unibody Macbooks (the white ones that are now more curvy) and checked the battery life on them. They apparently get something like 5 hours (when I unplugged them and the computer actually calculated) versus my MacBook Pro that gets like 2 if I’m lucky.

Then I walked around and noticed something:

Apple printed the backs of the cardboard cutouts! They’re in the same poses in the back as they are on the front! If the backs had been blank, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But Apple pays so much attention to detail that they decided that peoples asses must be printed.

It is likely due to this level of detail that Apple is succeeding where other companies fail hard. I don’t care what anyone says about Apple, they care more about the user/customer experience than probably anyone else out there.

The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker – Book Review

Published on February 7, 2010 in Book and Review. 0 Comments

As a first (or second, however you may define it) Asian American, I have often pondered about race, heritage and what it means to be an Asian Born in America. I’m an ABC. Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker is a collection of essays about the Asian American condition on a number of subjects and contexts.

Eric Liu and I share a few things in common. We’re “Asians” living in America who have been well-assimilated into society. I found Eric’s experiences as he describes them to be very similar to my own: his parents learned English well enough so that he could learn it as his primary language. His parents encouraged him to be studious but didn’t push in any particular direction. He had to learn how to fit into American society, but it seems he had a head start. He feels that he has lost a lot of his ancestral culture, and possibly made up for it by absorbing the local culture. In many ways, I feel like I can relate with him.

Liu’s essays range from the state of the Asian American as the “new Jews” to the idea of Chinatown as a place/symbol to how he himself assimilated into American culture. While some are very relevant today, I felt as though he used a few too many dated references, especially to the Clinton Administration “Chinagate” scandal. I was 13 at the time, for crying out loud! The interesting ideas were about old Asian ways versus Asian American ways and the American perception of Asian Americans. Since Asians were good at math, Liu studied English. Liu seemed to do things to fight the stereotype, but in doing so he reinforced that the stereotypes actually mattered.

I personally feel as though I am an American, first and foremost. I am obviously Chinese (though my name is Vietnamese), but that doesn’t define everything I am. This is especially true because I was born in the United States. While I have Asian friends, I also have many White friends, and those are the people who I had identified with when I was a kid. I don’t think I even had a grasp of what being Asian versus White was as a young kid. In high school I remember seeing cliques of Asian kids, the ones who were either ESL or less proficient in English than in their parent’s language. On one hand I felt that it was nice that they had their groups to feel a part of (better than being alone), yet on the other hand I felt bad that they were pretty much segregated from the rest of the school and the other students. I guess on some level, though, all cliques had the same properties. I sometimes felt strange walking past the Asian kid cliques. “Do they feel like I’m a traitor?” I used to think. So goes the life of an assimilated Asian.

In one essay, Liu points out that while Asian Americans are thought of as the “model minority” today, it wasn’t always so. There’s the whole Chinese being kicked out of Seattle thing, and the Japanese being forced into internment camps. He pondered something that I also pondered directly after 9/11. If an Asian country were to go to war with the United States, what would it mean to Asian Americans living here? I would like to think that everything would be fine, but Liu points out that we’re still not quite as assimilated in American culture as, say, Jewish people. Liu calls Asian Americans the “new Jew” because apparently we are described in the same way as Jewish people were 50 years ago: studious, unimaginative, etc. Maybe that explains why I have so many Jewish friends. Even so, I tend to disagree with Liu a bit on this point since another of his main points brings this link down: Asian Americans are really an amalgamation of a demographic.

Within Asian Americans you have Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans etc. Are we all expected to act as one sub-minority? Does that really make sense? Isn’t it bad enough that most White people can’t tell us apart? One of more interesting points that Liu brings up is that is is yet to be seen how the “Asian American” will organize and identify as a national group, or if it even will.

I think I started reading The Accidental Asian because I wanted to gain a little more perspective on the Asian American condition. It’s something that I usually just ignore. Of course I acknowledge that I’m Asian, but I also realize that among being an Asian American, I am many things. I am a Computer Scientist. I am a Information Scientist. I am an engineer. I am a tinkerer. Maybe I’m too young to really concern myself with race issues. Or maybe it’s the fact that being Asian American has never gotten in my way when I wanted to achieve something. Perhaps it’s even helped. Without conflict, I think people tend to focus on other aspects of their lives. This may be why Eric Liu’s observations all seem a bit trivial. He grew up fairly privileged, attended school at Yale and then went on to be a speechwriter for Clinton. There was no real mention of adversity in his essays. Out of the book, I think the worst thing to happen to him was his Asian hair (I can relate).

Overall, I think The Accidental Asian is a good read for anyone interested in Asian American issues. Though it is a bit dated, I feel there are enough universal themes for it to still be relevant. I would have preferred a bit more analysis on things like gender issues (Asian male stereotypes and Asian female stereotypes) and how they play into how we see our roles as Asian Americans. As a final note, Eric Liu married a White woman, but his book actually contains less tips on dating white women than this book. Unfortunately, I will need to seek another guide to get more information on the topic.