In last week's post I tried to organize the information to be presented into a hierarchy of some kind. I explored several maps showing the relationships between the different components related to the life cycle costs of home ownership. Although I did a good job mapping the information, there were a few problems. The biggest problem is that I was moving this project in a direction I don't want to go. Specifically, I don't want this to result in a business-like presentation that somebody from an MBA program would produce. Not that there is anything wrong with such presentations; educating people about financial literacy and home ownership is a critical function that somebody needs to do. The problem is that doing that would be painfully boring for me. I worked in the finance industry for too long and I really wanted to do something else for this class.

Read more…

Continuing my research on the "Life Cycle Costs of NYC Home Ownership," my next step is to create a taxonomy and draft field guide entries.

Before exploring the details of each I wanted to first discuss some higher level concepts to get them clear in my mind. First, in last week's post I was concerned that this project would become tedious and boring as I presented real estate financing details like ground leases and the mortgage tax. Rather than go in that direction I would rather bring these concepts to people's attention but then direct people to other sources for the detailed information.

Read more…

Our first topic is to create a field guide on some subject to contribute to a collection of Energy Field Guides. The field guide will be small pamphlet or zine. My randomly selected topic to research is "Life Cycle Costs," which I understand to mean both the visible and hidden costs associated with some entity or thing.

It wasn't immediately clear to me how my topic relates to Energy. I would have preferred to have a topic like Nuclear Energy so I could research the various technologies humankind is using or could be using to generate electricity with nuclear fission or fusion. But Life Cycle Costs? What does that mean in this context? In class I inquired further and was told by Marina to think about the hidden costs of ownership of something.

After thinking and exploring I decided to research "Life Cycle Costs of NYC Home Ownership."

Read more…

One of my goals for the summer was to rebuild my Networked Media final project on AWS. I am interested in learning more about AWS and rebuilding this did a lot to further that goal.

You can view the completed website at its new location: quickdraw.ixora.io. The functionality is exactly the same as before. The big difference is how the website works.

Read more…

I created a software program to apply a Neural Style Transfer algorithm to Google Street View data to make an animation that looks like you are traveling inside a painting.

Google collects panorama photos from all around the world and makes them available through the Google Street View service. Although they visit many interesting locations, the photos often look dull. My project involves obtaining these photos through their API and using a coherent style transfer algorithm to make the sequence look like a painted animation.

Read more…

Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) is an Italian artist who is well-known for his sculptures that on the surface seem humorous or satirical but on a deeper level address the bigger concepts of life, love, and death. He is one of the most famous and successful living artists in the world, and remarkably, he has achieved this without any formal art education or training. His success can be attributed to several factors. First, he is very knowledgeable about art history and has made a careful study of the contemporary art world. Second, he has a charming and engaging personality and has been able to use his character to build a network of people who like him, support him, and want to see him succeed. And third, he has been able to craft his artistic persona and brand to establish himself as a key figure in the art world. Sometimes Cattelan is criticized as a flamboyant artistic con-man, but I see him as a resourceful and motivated individual who initially floundered and struggled to find his place in the world but took some risks and worked very hard to build a successful career as an artist.

Read more…