ArchivePage 5 of 10
I just came across yet another fun little personality quiz - What is your Perfect Major?. According to the quiz I’m 100% a Philosophy major so it looks as though I got 50% of my degree right considering Philosophy was one of my two majors. My other major, Computer Science, is nowhere to be found on the list although Computer Science is pretty much all mathematics anyways. As for the other top ranking majors, my 75% psychology score sheds some light on why I am so interested in these personality quizzes and my 83% English and Journalism scores might help to explain why I like to write about them so much publish the results here.
| Philosophy |
|
100% | |
| English |
|
83% | |
| Mathematics |
|
83% | |
| Journalism |
|
83% | |
| Psychology |
|
75% | |
| Linguistics |
|
67% | |
| Art |
|
67% | |
| Engineering |
|
67% | |
| Dance |
|
58% | |
| Theater |
|
58% | |
| Sociology |
|
58% | |
| Anthropology |
|
50% | |
| Biology |
|
17% | |
| Chemistry |
|
8% |
What is your Perfect Major?
created with QuizFarm.com
I’m curious to hear about other peoples so-called perfect majors so feel free to post your own results in the comments section.
My friend Dan passed this little tidbit along to me and I thought that it was a rather novel and enlightening perspective on how to deal with stress.
A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”
In my yoga practice, we spend a lot of time trying to ?��Ǩ?�let things go?��Ǩ��, which I am able to do with varying results depending on the day and what it is that I am holding on to. Although I am getting better at letting go, this piece really shed some light on to why certain things seem heavier than others. The reason we sweat the small stuff is because we hold onto it so tightly ?��Ǩ��� it?��Ǩ�Ѣs not the burdens that are weighty, it?��Ǩ�Ѣs how we carry them that makes them heavy. Definitely a timely insight - knowing why they feel so heavy will definitely help to lighten the load.
I just completed my PersonalDNA - a fun, free and eerily accurate personality test. According to the DNA test results, I’m a considerate creator which is explained a bit more in the personalDNA map below. The map can be read by moving your mouse over any part of the box or strip to learn more about the traits that the colors represent. For those who prefer words, the full report can be found here.
Not only can you share you tests with others but you can also invite them to assess your personality. Click here if you’d like to asses me - I’m curious to see different assessments and if they match up at all. I must admit, all of the traits seem rather positive so it’s hard to go wrong however you answer. There is no obligation from either myself or the system to share the test once completed, and I’d be happy to return the favour. I?��Ǩ�Ѣd also like to see how other people did on the test, so feel free to post links your own assessments in the comments section.
In addition to being a pretty darn accurate personality test and a fun way to get to know others, the test itself has a pretty cool interface. Instead of using your standard checkboxes and radio buttons, the interface was designed with sliding scales and animations. Having a range of values makes the questions a lot easier to answer as you aren’t stuck in the “yes/no” or “yes/maybe/no” trap. My favourite was the glass animation where you had to “pour” your answers into a glass. I don’t know if these features make the results more accurate, but they sure do make writing the test all the more fun.
Update: I had a few friends asses me and it turns out that in addition to being a Considerate Creator, I’m a Dynamic Inventor, Animated Creator, and a Benevolent Creator x 2. Thanks to everyone who helped out - it was a lot of fun!
On Friday February 24, 2006, Hamilton Artists Inc. presented Interactive Interactive an interactive multimedia show of McMaster and Sheridan multimedia student works. I was an entrant back in 2004 and was honoured to be a judge this time around. The student works were excellent and playing around with them on the Smart Boards was a lot of fun.
I happy to announce that just officially signed up for FITC 2006, Canada’s first and foremost Design and Technology Festival. This will be my third year in attendance and I’m very excited about this years line up. A few of the Speakers/Sessions I’ve been eyeing include:
- ActionScript 3.0 with Colin Moock
- Extending XML by Brendan Lynch
- Magic, Deception and The Data Experience
- The Open Source Flash Revolution
- Developing a VJ tool with Flash
- Design and Happiness by Stefan Sagmeister
- Playing with Data by Ben Fry
- Sustaining Creativity by Margo Knight (I attended this one last year but I found her presentation so inspiring that I might just have to give it another go.)
I’m sure the list will grow with time, but for now I see plenty to keep both my left and right brain happy.
The other day I was designing a web site for a cardiovascular research group and I needed a simple graphic image for the site that would take up a good chunk of horizontal space without being two distracting. I choose to use this image of an EKG - a graph of the electrical voltage in the heart - for it’s graphical nature as well as the fact that it is a symbol that most people have come to associate with the heart.
I showed the design to the client yesterday, and needless to say I was shocked to find that that the EKG I had selected was that of a person on the verge of death. Oops! Turns out that that numerous peaks represent someone who is suffering severe cardiac arrest that would most likely kill them and apparently a normal EKG has far less of those. Luckily the client saw the humor in the situation and has since provided me with a healthy EKG so that visitors won’t be greeted by a graph of someone having a heart attack on their next visit the site.
Last night I had the opportunity to attend A Million Steps: Stories, Images and Music from the Camino Santiago, a photo exhibit of Peter Coffan’s two month pilgrimage from France to Spain along El Camino Santiago. Not only were his images beautiful but the stories and the sounds that accompanied them were fascinating thanks to the wonderful talents of his violin-playing companion Oliver Schroer. The presentation stirred something in me, an often forgotten yet ever-present urge to go on a pilgrimage of my own. The appeal of a pilgrimage isn’t so much about religion as it is the participation of a sacred ritual. It’s about the journey - the walking, the gradual progression - as well as the sites and sounds along the way. I’ve always been fascinated with sacred sites, from the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal to the temples of Angkor Wat. It’s been almost three years since my last visit to a scared sight and viewing this presentation made me realize that it is about time to go again.
After the presentation I found myself inspired and online searching for my next adventure. I came across the excellent Sacred Destinations Travel Guide and immediately came across the trip I always knew was going to be next - Peru. Given it’s rich ancient history and the fact that it is home to Machu Picchu (a place that I’ve wanted to visit ever since I first saw a picture of this magical city in the mountains) it became clear that the 4 day ascent to Machu Picchu was exactly the pilgrimage I was looking for.
A few months ago I blogged about a remixed trailer for The Shinning and how easily our perceptions can be altered by a voiceover, a bit of music and some selective editing. Around the same time I also blogged about how an innocent hug between mother and son could be transformed into an erotic embrace by simply changing the speed and frequency of frames in the Alone. Life Waste Andy Hardy film piece. So naturally I was pleased when I came across the following two trailer mashups for Brokeback Mountain - Brokeback to the Future and Top Gun Brokeback Squadron. Not only are they hiliarous but they also touch on the deeper issues of how editing effects (and potentionally distorts) our percpetions.
There have been several times after sitting through a long session at the computer that I’ve re-entered the real world and found myself wishing I could hit CTRL-Z to undo something. This often happens after an intense Photoshop session as image manipulation is an activity requires constant revisions, a series of undos and redos until you get it just right. Apparently I’m not alone in this as other Photoshop users as well as gamers have reported experiencing a similar phenomenon. This transference of computer commands into real world activities has always puzzled me, so I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this commercial.