So I got to work to create a template that anyone can print out and pop into their Kaosillator for a perfectly mapped grid. Skip to the bottom of the page for the template. (Fear not, the template is sans Hello Kitty. I’m not about to impose anything on you.) Why a grid-mod? So that if you like, you can get specific about which keys you’re hitting.

For those of you who don’t know what a Kaosillator is, it is techno-dust-in-a-box. Here’s a video to save you the reading.

I’m going to start by explaining how I arrived at the grid itself here. To skip to how to use the template click here.
I started my process with some good old trial & error testing, with scrap paper laid over the touch pad:

After some measuring, I sketch out a preliminary grid on illustrator:

Printed it out. :

Checked it for fine-tuning:

And pretty much kept repeating this part till I got a grid that was accurate:

Then I made it pretty:

With is grid ready, it’s time to figure out how to stick it into the Kaossilator more permanently:

If you’re following this as a tutorial, have a print out of the template and a piece of acetate or transparency ready.
There are four screws at the four corners of the Kaosillator, remove them :

Pop the knob out :

Pry the silver face out, starting at the end close to the volume dial:

I used a paper clip to help. Be careful, the three buttons (Tap, Scale, Loop) can get caught by the metal casing and damaged at their joints. It happened to me. :

Remove the battery cover and undo the fat screw :

Keep these safe. The round-top one is from the back, the other four are from the corners :

You should now see :

Remove the four screws at the four corners of the circuit board :

You must pop the little circuit board with the audio jacks away from the plastic casing before the rest of the circuit board can be removed. It’s stubborn, use tools!  :

Gently push the dial to free the board from the casing :

Gently lift the board, don’t yank, the touch pad is still attached to the plastic casing :

Remove the three screws remaining on the plastic casing :

The touch pad is free! :

After looking around inside the Kaossilator, I realized four pins anchored the touch pad where it needed to be. So I traced the shape of the touch pad, along with holes for the pins, and through a little trail and error, aligned it with the grid I already had. :

At this point, I had not realized the chamfers (cut off corners) should have been at the bottom, not the top, of the touch pad:

Finally, a perfect fit:

Cutting the transparency to match the size & shape of the final print out:

Punching small holes where they belong:

Grid and screen-protecting transparency :

Installed! :

Now, just re-tracing the steps. After using a little tape to hold the touch pad & grid in place, put the plastic plate back :

Special note : The little circuit board & big circuit board interlock rather delicately at the top. Check for alignment before popping the boards back into the casing:

Special note: It takes some wiggling to get the on/off slider to fit the button properly :

Special note: I had to push the wire parts around a little to get the cover to fit perfectly :

And, the final product :

• DOWNLOAD>> GRID TEMPLATE (tiff, 300dpi, 8 x 6.3 cm)
  
• DOWNLOAD>> Grid in Illustrator format (in case alignment needs adjusting)
• Great link for grids : http://kgridmod.blogspot.com/
• Kaossilator grid mod by Vtecgogos : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33J5JYC5RLg
• Kaossilator grid mod by Kgridmod : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5QrCCxc_Y
• Vimeo group : http://vimeo.com/groups/kaossilator

Looking at all that 1980’s pixel goodness just made me realize how much of an impact this one toy had on my life.

I had a tablet in my hands when I was 5 and I didn’t even know it. And hey ho, now I never travel without my wacom. In fact, the last time I left my Intuos at home I ended up picking up a bamboo touch/pen. Such a addict. Tsk tsk.

There’s just something about holding a pen, but looking at a screen. Such a small gesture, but such transformative one in terms of interfacing.

Anyone out there with a My First Sony Electronic Sketchpad, I will purchase it for SGD$200. (It’s sale price in the 1980’s was USD$99.)

Images taken from Ebay seller rickerabc, who sold this off for USD$10.49.

But first, some miscellany!

Morbid comics from ManEggs!

And… Some Gremlin goodness from Designkins (via DesignYouTrust). I’m aware of the fact that I don’t wear caps. But hey, I also own a Hello Kitty Toaster. SO! FUCKYEAHUSELESSSHITBITS.

AND ONWARD!

Which word in the dictionary is most tainted with adolescent shame? Hand’s down, no-doubt, it’s goth.

Anyone outside of the cult of moody knows the goth look is designed to fug everyone. Statistically, chances that any given person looks good with pale face paint, greasy blue hair and a pin-cushion face is next to none. But don’t be harsh, it’s surprisingly hard to resist when you’re an angry tween. I wallow in shame every time I recall all the (now destroyed) evidence of my time as a confused clubbing gothchild.

But strangely, things like Tamagotchi and pokémon die, but Goth RAGES ON! Look, Disney’s finally declaring the moody-moody-slash-wrist market mainstream. Wall Street Journal declares: “Walt Disney Co.’s consumer-products division is aiming its marketing firepower at young women and teenage girls, particularly those who gravitate to darkly romantic entertainment like the Twilight series.”

” [Disney's] zeroing in on Hot Topic with jewelry, shirts, and other baubles while a Los Angeles location is becoming a miniature Wonderland. There will be a mingle-with-the-stars event for fans, and “goth-pop” bands from the soundtrack will provide the tuneage.” (via Cinematical.)

Sure, Disney’s investment in black lipstick isn’t anything new. They’ve always has Burton in their stable, but now, with the King of dark-cute leading the march with Alice in Wonderland, Mickey’s household’s gonna see some changes.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a cute chinese teen girl with a little Avenge Sevenfold backpack showed up at my home (family friends visiting from Sydney) and asked me if I knew where to buy Slipknot tees in Singapore. Man. After much ethical debate on my part, we skipped to Far East Plaza to complete the mission. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt as I let her purchase those horrid, unflattering black t-shirts. How did I ever wear these baggy shirts with tacky band logos emblazoned across both the front and back for maximum fug? But ah, well, she was full of glee and I wasn’t about to rain on her little black parade.

If I could tell her one thing, it’d be that the worst of skank is more forgiving than a goth FAIL, plus you get laid more.

You are intensely awesome.

Vivian Vee, Misc. Shit Bit’s featured Shitbeat for Feb 2010.

With head-bobbing love,
The Shitbits

EX-CITIZEN’S REGRET

Missing Singapore

The article made me shudder. Could I end up like this woman, who returns to Singapore 30 years after surrendering citizenship, only to be full of criticism about the country she left Singapore for in the first place? Words like “nostalgia”, “loneliness” and “colossal mistake” jump at me from the page.

The prospect of prancing off to New York in the near future looks pretty good to me. And it is certain that there will be even more prancing, more timezones, more visa-induced-anger, more accent-confusion, more more more in the great beyond. This article stares at me and ask the question I fear to ask myself:

[singlish] “Eh later you regret then how?” [/singlish]

Then, I slapped me to my senses, “Fuck la cheebye anyhow emo”.

The article laments (albeit indirectly) the unreliable public transport, dirty city streets and even work culture of the “foreign land”. Indeed, I won’t even have to name the country because 99 flights out of 100 will land you in a place less clean, less organized, less efficient, less blinged up with shiny infrastructure than Singapore anyway.

99 flights out of 100 will land you in a place less clean, less organized, less efficient, less blinged up with infrastructure than Singapore anyway.

It takes a certain degree of determination to see the only the particular shade of green that is missing from beneath the feet. Sure, learning to appreciate what one has is frequently a process that extends well beyond the fact of having. But leaving, then getting melodramatic over something you forgot to love in the first place, is a different thing.

I’m sure the lady who wrote the article did not mean to take jabs at her current host country deliberately. She did, in the end, declare her “allegiance and loyalty” to her new home. But why then, is she so clearly unhappy?

Let me make my point before the lao sai really pours: There is nothing more pitiful than having the privilege to expand one’s horizons, only to lament it’s burden.

If you wish, change is always knowledge gained. Just as certain as new experiences brings new knowledge, new knowledge in turn, brings new burdens, new fears, new joy and new responsibility. The key decision isn’t about making the right plans, it is about choosing how to be in the present. Make the right choice, and never have to “regret” in grave, bold Garamond.

And perhaps I am harsh. I do, after all, come from a background of (im)migration, plus, I have never really had issues leaving a place behind despite being deeply in love with it. I do get sentimental about friends, family and the quirks of different places, but I never regret.

It’s not unusual to consider migration as an opportunity to achieve something, but perhaps because Migration is a huge kind of change, people often mistake it as a solution to all life’s problems. I’ve seen my parents relocate to different places, and I’ve seen them through disappointment, disconnection and loneliness, but I have also witnessed their ability to find affection for every place they have lived in*. They do, of course, love Singapore, where they chose to bring me up, but they don’t love Hong Kong any less, and never do they complain about being short-changed by whichever Island they’re on at the moment. In fact, back when my mother had the energy to, she flew between the islands every fortnight.

Really, it’s not the place, it’s the perspective.

*With the near exception of New York, where my dorky father spent half the 80’s wishing he had witty comebacks to racist jerks, and where my maternal uncle lost his life to work stress. But hey, my Dad just retired, and guess where he’s planning to start his American road trip?

videogioco-loop experiment from donato sansone on Vimeo.

Via Carne Mag.

Some days I wake up & I look like shit.

Some days I wake up & I look like shit on my school’s website.

Happy Chinese New Year.

Place (Ställe) is a dance piece by the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre, 2009. Filmed by director Jonas Akerlund. Choreographed by Mats Ek, and staring Michail Baryshnikov & Ana Laguna

The trailer is amazing, I have to get my paws on the full version.

Incidentally, Akerlund is also the guy behind Ozzy’s Gets Me Through and Gaga’s Paparazzi. Hm.

Seldom does the world collectively experience a disappointment so great, it is humorous. Then again, as we sober up from the punchline, we begin to wonder if there is more to the iPad than a flub. Apple is, after all, the industry game-changer. It wouldn’t be wise not to watch closely.

The iPad could shift the rules of advertising, graphic design, blogging, journalism & publishing from right beneath your feet.

Iconic design house, Pentagram, has published a great trend-watch article, “5 Ways the iPad will Change Magazine Design“. Indeed, the iPad will, as an e-reader (as opposed to a half-assed excuse of a smart-phone-laptop hybrid) may revolutionize reading itself.

Magazine content, online and in print, will be influenced by the screen, interface, even processing capabilities of the iPad. Think this is an exaggeration? Just look at how graphic design both on- and off-line has been influence by the mouse and resolution for the past decade:

• Images got smaller and took the form of pop-up slide shows
• Content structure became dominated by overviews, excerpts and short articles while longer pieces sit on a lower hierarchy behind “more” tags or further into the heart of the publication.
• Video content flourishes and demands integration with text and still (often with awkward results).
• Advertising copy and images became miniaturized to integrate into layouts.
• The miscellaneous (archives, categories, similar posts, about-the-authors) became necessary browsing tools, equivalent to running one’s fingers through the pages of a magazine.

And all of the above will be changed, again, with the iPad. People will spend considerably more time, well, reading, than on a laptop or a computer. Trends that came about to adapt to people’s shrinking attention spans and patience will be, again,transformed. The screen real estate also changes when scrolling is eliminated or re-integrated into user interaction, or when reading patterns change.

Come to think about it … the iPad has even influenced the market as we know it before it’s release.

And of course, the iPad might just be the nail in print’s drawn-out descent into it’s coffin – with an iPad on every coffee table, where will print stand?

the iPad might just be the nail in print’s drawn-out descent into it’s coffin

But while the iPad’s potential is formidable, it must first, like every product, be purchased. And even as the kind of consumer who’s willing to part with a little more cheddar for a little more shiny, I must say that the iPad just won’t cut it. Lack of multi-tasking, limited processing power and no usb at that price tag? It’s almost vulgar.

Hopefully, all that speculation about Apple having something more up their sleeves is right…

EDIT: Haha,  Stanford does not heart the iPad.

Inspired by GTD (Getting Things Done), my latest wallpaper:

Download after the jump.

Can it be that it’s already February? Can it be that in 11 weeks, I will not have the numbing comfort of syllabi, academic units and past exam papers? Can it be? In my panic, I have brushed up on my Getting-Things-Done and started brewing double-shot expressos again.

Closer:

Free in Misc. Sizes:

• 1920 x 1080
• 1680 x 1050
• 1600 x 900
• 1344 x 756
• 1280 x 1024
• 1280 x 720
• 1024 x 768
• 800 x 600
• Not

Other GTD wallpaper ideas:

• by SmartProductivity.com
• by Josef Richter