Asians vs. First Nations - The battle for our city’s olympic image
Place yourself in the shoes of the Vancouver Olympic Committee for a second.
They’ve been getting a lot of negative opinions lately. I mean, first there was the whole debate about actually having the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and then there was the (ongoing) concern of how much it would cost, and then there was (and still is) the related mess known to Vancouverites as “that huge hole on Cambie that makes everyone avoid the street altogether and creates millions of dollars in losses for Cambie street business owners”.
But let’s forget about that. Today we’re talking about Vanoc’s newest unveiling: The official mascots (yes, mascots - the best place on earth clearly deserves more than one!) for the 2010 Winter Olympics. (A big thanks to Kaiti for suggesting a topic I couldn’t resist!)
When it came to creating a visual for Vancouver’s culture, I don’t doubt for a moment that the Vancouver Olympic Committee was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Why? Well, the reason is fairly obvious: Vancouver has no singular ethnicity or culture. You can find nearly every ethic background represented in this city, so what do you do?
I think Pete McMartin hit it right on the head in his column yesterday when he said, and I quote: “And, as usual, Vanoc went native, and heavily so, since it believes that the only culture worth promoting to the world is first nations. That, or it’s the most marketable.”
Content quality, advertising, and a lesson from Dooce®
If you’re even an inkling aware of what’s happening on the internet, you should know that making money with your website—not your company’s—is vastly becoming a huge thing. Ten years ago, pretty much nobody knew what a blog was. The same cannot be said today. Between the large availability of blogs (think blogger, livejournal, myspace blogs, etc.) and the rising spotlight on them (think celebrity bloggers, Fortune 500 companies, etc.), it seems that these days everyone and their cat has one.
So what about making money on your personal website?
If you’re anything like me, when you think about making money on a blog where you write about your personal life, you automatically think Google ads or Pay Per Posts. It is a general consensus among most blog circles I frequent that “those kinds of things” on personal websites are undesirable.
However, of those asked about their feelings towards advertisements, many of them used Dooce.com as an example of a personal website with ads that they didn’t mind. Curious, because as popular as Dooce.com may be, it is still a “personal” website. So what makes hers any different from Joe Regular’s?
A look at faux pas: The personal website scene, part I
Personal tastes differ. We all know this. The internet is no exception - everyone has personal preferences when it comes to web design and the content therein.
My web skillz0rs are by no means amazing. I’m not a professional at what I do, nor have I spent years (and money) in formal web design education and training. But like everyone, there is one thing I am entitled to that requires no formal education or training, and in this entry, I plan to voice it: my opinion.
I have seen a lot of websites that are hideous, both in the markup and in their aesthetic outward appearance. Much like people who can’t properly dress themselves, or like those who leave their house looking like they crawled out of a garbage can, I must ask the question everyone wonders on some level: Can they not see how ugly it looks?
The truth is, everyone starts somewhere. Hopefully they get a good start (i.e. not learning web design in this day and age by starting with iframes and tables) but even if they don’t, there’ll always been some smartass know-it-all who will be there to let them know when they’ve done wrong. Today that smartass know-it-all is me.
Offense #1: Large black serif font on a white background
There is a tasteful way to pull off black and whites together. This is not that way:
See this? This is hideous. Note the border. That is hideous too. Please don’t automatically assume that lots of contrast = good. There is a difference between making your font an appropriate size & color for all to read and going way overboard. Some people have yet to learn this.
(The specifics used for example 1: font: 15px georgia; color: #000; border: 1px solid #000; background: #fff; padding: 10px;)
Since this entry is all about my personal preferences, I’ll start this off with a head’s up: I like depth in a website. Flat designs can be awfully boring if you don’t know what you’re doing. Elements like shadows and color shading can make all the difference in a site. The difference between example 1 and example 1a is good proof of this. While example 1 looks flat and standard, example 1a and 1b provide more flair to the same block of text.
See this? Now this is much better. You can still read the text clearly and I haven’t changed the font size, but I’ve given it a “softer” look. It’s easier on the eyes.
(The specifics used for example 1a: font: 15px georgia; color: #333; border: 1px solid #ddd; background: #eee; padding: 10px;)
Even if you wish to keep your white background, there are still ways to soften and refine the look. In this example I’m still using the same font size and color as the above example, but I’ve made the background white. It is still easy to read, but unlike the original example, it is easy on the eyes.
(The specifics used for example 1b: font: 15px georgia; color: #333; border: 1px solid #ccc; background: #fff; padding: 10px;)
Offense #2: Clashing colors
Coming from the woman who once wore a red spandex shirt and a green terry zip hoodie together in the middle of July, when *I* of all people tell you something clashes, it clashes. Have no doubt. Purely for the sake of proving my point, I will provide you with some visual examples of colors that should never been within the same vicinity of each other:
Do your eyes hurt yet? If you’re even somewhat normal you should be seeing spots and feeling a slight inclination of a killer headache. It should come to as no surprise to any decent webdesigner then that if your design colors cause your viewers to experience pain, they will not return. End of story.
Offense #3: When your significant other hijacks your website
This is more of a huge pet peeve than anything else really, but it still deserves mentioning. I hate it when people go on and on about their boyfriend/girlfriend on their about pages - your about page is about YOU. Obviously your significant other may deserve mentioning in there, but he/she does not need a whole five paragraphs.
I understand you’re proud/happy/whatever and you wish to tell the world about your special relationship. This is fine. Creating a separate page for him or her is even okay by me. However, when you go on an on, making it appear as if you have no life outside your boyfriend, you make me want to empty my stomach contents in the nearest waste bin. Please stop. I realize I am not forced at gun point to read all of this and that it is your webspace and you may do with it what you wish, yadda yadda blah blah, but realize that by publishing it on the internet, you are expecting people to find it and read it. Unless you appropriately warn your readers ahead of time (”WARNING: MUSHYGUSHY SPILL AHEAD! PROCEED WITH CAUTION”), they are probably not going to see it coming.
This is my opinion: It’s tacky. I’m all for love and happiness, but like most things on an about page, I think your feelings for your loved one can be nicely summarized into one unmushy work-safe paragraph. At the very least you can mention him/her in your about page and link his/her name to a separate page where you may unleash your icky gushiness in full force - Just warn us poor unsuspecting readers beforehand.
Offense #4: Having “affiliates” - A word most teenybopper “designers” know not the meaning of, but use anyway.
I don’t like the concept of having affiliates. When I think of the term “affiliates”, I generally think of businesses and corporations - in other words, not your Britney Spears copyright infraction of layout.
This is how I see it: Affiliates on a personal website is tacky way of saying you’re “hits hungry”. It’s just not cool. If you want a popular site, having 57 affiliates is not the way to reach that goal. Read up on search engine optimization and lookup traffic boosting tips. Comment on popular blogs, link the ones you enjoy (you never know - they might return the favor), and join a forum or two and become a valued contributor to it. But whatever you do, don’t affiliate.
Offense #5: Pay Per Post-ing, badly-placed advertisements, and other obnoxious means of getting paid on your site
I truly, madly, deeply hate PPPs. They’re fake, obnoxious, and make me cringe. There is no sincerity in them. They break the flow of a personal blog. They’re horrible, and in my opinion, should have no place in a quality personal blog.
Working in the marketing industry only increases my strong dislike for PPPs. Ask anyone in the industry, and they will tell you that the one of the vital ingredients needed to effectively “sell” a product is passion. When you’re not passionate about what you do or what you sell, people can see it. Pay Per Post entries desperately lack the true passion, sincerity and enthusiasm that is needed to effectively get your message across. Of course, PPP bloggers don’t care about this, because after all, they’re just paid to babble about how great (more often than not) something is.
Other means of advertisement are almost as bad, but not quite. Google ads, when strategically placed on the sidebar and made to match the colors found on the site, are not completely horrible; they usually won’t hinder my overall reading experience, even though they’re not very visually appealing.
Text (or graphic) ads placed between blog entries or in the midst of content, however, is a major no-no in my books. They break up the flow of text and ideas rather harshly and really irritate me, sometimes to the point of forcing me to close the window and never return. Why must you do this? Are you obnoxious ads really not happy enough staying on the sidebar?
A personal website is, well, personal for a reason. Personally, I don’t think it shouldn’t be your place and source of income. Ads and PPPs just look ridiculous next to personal entries about your life adventures. It’s cheap and screams “I NEED MONEY SO BADLY I’M WHORING OUT MY SITE JUST TO GET SOME” - definitely a faux pas of the personal website scene.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Release Date: July 11, 2007
Staring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Rating: 
Being a Harry Potter fan who was previously displeased with the last four movies, I approached this one with trepidation. Could it get worse? Did I want to spend $10.50 CAD to find out just how much worse it could get?
Admittedly, I was secretly hoping this movie would be as awful as Pirates 3 so I could later write a scathing review on it. (Bitching is in!) However, what I saw in the movie somewhat pleasantly surprised me.
Let it be known before I begin that I do not remember a terrible lot about the fifth book. I hated that she (”she” being J.K. Rowling) killed off my favorite character in the series, something which automatically labeled the fifth book my least favorite. After finishing it I left it alone and never really picked it up again… This was a first for the Harry Potter series—up until then I’d read and re-read every book at least three to ten times in anticipation for the next.
The movie, surprisingly, didn’t spark too much righteous indignation on my part. It bothered me that they’d left out important parts of the book. I am a fan of the little detaills—like the DA coins, or “the sneak” part—and personally I feel those details add a small yet important dimension to the movie. Where was the visit to see Neville’s parents? Aurthur Weasley? And Lockhart.. Oh, I would have loved to have seen Lockhart again. He was such an interesting character.
The special effects, like most people have mentioned, were superb. Oddly enough, I found all the visuals for the department of mysteries and the ministry of magic in general to be surprisingly accurate to the visuals I had in mind.
I must say though… What stood out the most in this movie, oddly enough, was Luna Lovegood.
I love the girl they picked for her part. She is either very talented at playing Luna’s part or very much similar to Luna in real life because I thought she did an excellent job in portraying the character. Everything from her long blonde hair and big eyes to her mystifying, almost spooky presence was just perfect.
Overall, I did enjoy it. They could have made the movie a tad longer—some parts did feel rushed—but in the end the length was really quite suitable for a varied audience. Like I said in the beginning—I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals were excellent, the music fit well, the actors fit (for the most part) well with their roles and it made for a pretty nice movie-going experience… But as a word of advice: Don’t go on an opening weekend, because you will find that tickets are sold out hours in advanced and you can barely move in the crowds.
As a parting comment, Is it just my 20/20 vision playing tricks on me, or is Potter’s eyes always BLUE in the movies? Have they forgotten that his eye color is almost always mentioned along with his appearance? (“He had jet black hair, vivid green eyes and a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead…” or “You look just like your father Harry, but you’ve got your mother’s eyes!”) … How bloody hard would it be to wear contacts? This has always irked me. It’s in the little details where the Harry Potter movies seem to fall short.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At world’s end
Release Date: May 25, 2007
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightley, Yun-Fat Chow, Orlando Bloom
Rating:
Since everyone and their mother is doing a review on newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, I thought I’d hop on board and tilt the ship a bit (har, har).
Before the actual movie had started, the first thing I had noticed was how empty the theater was. I don’t go to the theater much, but when I do its always for movies with a lot of hype and anticipation associated with them—Harry Potter, Borat, Pirates of the Caribbean, Superman, etc.
I think the problem herein (as it is made clear as the movie progresses) was the sequel to the first, Dead man’s chest. The second movie in this series of (so far) three was like the first part of At world’s end—If you didn’t see that movie, you’d be lost in this one. Hell, I saw Pirates 2 and I still got lost in this one.
The second thing that earned this movie 3/5 instead of something higher was the absolutely HORRIBLE sense of “funny”—and I use funny within with quotation marks because it was not funny at all. Out of the many scenes set up to be funny (were they trying to turn this into a comedy?), I only laughed out loud in one.
At that brings me to my next point: The “comedy”. In my mind, Pirates of the Carabbean was never supposed to be a comedy. Obviously, being a Disney movie geered more towards a younger crowd I understand (and even enjoy) the fact that there has to be some sort of comic relief element to balance out the intense battle scenes, but the directors went cringingly overboard on that particular element in Pirates 3. The humor was—for a lack of better words—lame.
I also felt that it lacked the amazing plot twists the first movie had and the only shocking part of the movie was sort of disappointing and a little sad. Also, Jack Sparrow seemed a little out of character (”It’s because he didn’t have any rum!” my brother said) and that kind of disappointed me, seeing how I loved his character in the first two movies.
Aside from the fact that it was a little hard to follow (though that has always been a characteristic of these movies, due large in part to the nature of Captain Jack Sparrow, the highly unpredictable lead character) and the humor was 99% awful, the movie still wasn’t too bad. My ten year old brother was in absolute awe of the battle scenes, particularly the grand one in the end, and while I was mainly indifferent about them I suppose that shows what kind of audience these movies are geered too.
Advice on how this movie could have been better:
#1 - Stop trying to be funny.
It came naturally (or it didn’t come at all) in the first two movies.#2 - The last movie, Dead Man’s Chest, should have had an actual ending instead of an ending that felt like a “to be continued..” For those who didn’t watch the second movie again between the first week it came out and the first week the third installment came out, it was hard to remember what had happened in Pirates 2… LAST YEAR.
