Tai Chi

Tai Chi

The link

Tai Chi on Wikipedia

Hong Ying

What it is

Tai Chi is an ancient Chinese martial art. Tai Chi emphasizes ‘soft techniques’, which don’t strike the opponent directly, as well as meditative breathing exercises. It may be best known for photos of early morning Chinese practitioners in parks.

The school I go to, Hong Ying, teaches Yang style Tai Chi alongside Kung Fu, a much more ‘hard’ (and more well-known) Chinese Martial Art. Hong Ying is a member of the International Plum Blossom Federation.

Tai Chi has some resemblance to Yoga, and is said to originate from an Indian Yogi who travelled the Himalaya and visited Buddhist temples. In practice, Tai Chi is a bit more martial than Yoga: it has self-defense applications for all steps, which are often pushes or joint locks. I occasionally joke that Hong Ying teaches ‘full contact Tai Chi’.

What it means to me

I started doing Tai Chi for two reasons: all my friends were doing it, and I wanted to teach myself patience by picking up an activity that would take a long time to learn. I’ve stayed because, five years in, I’m still trying to learn patience, and because I have come to appreciate how Tai Chi teaches softness.

A core concept of Tai Chi is to not meet force with force, but to deflect it. Martial arts like Karate and Tae Kwon Do teach blocks, where you stop your opponent’s movement; Tai Chi aims to redirect your opponent’s movement and use it against them.

Competitive Tai Chi (also called ‘pushing hands’) involves pushing your opponent until they are forced to move their feet and take a step. It revolves around reading your opponents movements and finding where they are unbalanced or inflexible. If your opponent’s body part is rigid or ‘locked’ you can use it to move them, which is why looseness is very important. At the same time, you must connect to your opponent to be able to read their intentions. The ultimate Tai Chi is to be so fluid that you cannot ever be pinned down, yet to remain in contact at all times.

Years ago, I took a personal development course, and one of the teachers there also taught Tai Chi (I was already training at the time). I told him I had difficulties to communicate with people who disagree with me. In reply, the teacher told me to treat these conflicts like pushing hands: don’t try to win with force, but keep contact with your opponent so you know what their intentions are. If you know someone’s intentions you can work out a win/win solution, and you only get to know this by staying in the conflict – whether it’s a competition or a conversation.

In a way, Tai Chi teaches a generalized version of the message “Bargaining for Advantage” teaches about negotiation: framing a situation as an A versus B conflict is a choice, and often not a productive one.

Tai Chi has given me an appreciation for all things soft. I credit this regular mental and physical exercise (as well as parenthood) with the much calmer demeanor I enjoy these days. Also, enough soft exercise will eventually make your muscles harder – I have built a lot more muscle over the past five years than one might expect!

Garamond

Garamond

                   

The link

Garamond on Wikipedia

Garamond Version Comparison tool (uses Flash)

garamond.org links to different versions of the font

What it is

Garamond, designed in 1530 by Claude Garamond, is one of the oldest fonts still in use. Like most older printing typefaces it can be traced back to calligraphic handwriting used in books before the printing press, hence the characteristic "serifs".

There’s no "original" Garamond anymore – in practice it describes a number of related fonts with minor differences (such as the lowercase 'a'). The font has been digitized a number of times, notably by Adove and by Apple. The second link allows you to compare letters in various Garamond variants by overlaying them.

Garamond is included with Microsoft office. You can get a Garamond 8, a free variant, here (garamond.org), there's also an open source "EB Garamond".

What it means to me

Garamond is everything Times New Roman wishes it could be.

It has history. It has imperfections. It has a low x height (the standard height of 'normal' letters), which adds more white space to pages. Somehow, it manages to look distinguished and spacious at the same time.

I first worked with Garamond on an actual printing press, as part of hand-binding a book and stamping the cover. That meant I also had to do my kerning (the spacing between individual letters) by hand, with very thin metal plates. Garamond has been my go-to serif font ever since, for two reasons:

1. Garamond is pretty, classy, and dignified. It’s older than most countries.
2. Using something different than Times New Roman makes what you write stand out.

There’s nothing objectively wrong with Times New Roman; its biggest flaw is its success. Because Times New Roman is the default font on most office suites, it gets used a lot and never consciously. The result is that all those hasty memos, grocery lists and notifications blend together. For me, Times New Roman is associated with writing for work, with office memo’s, and with official corporate identity policies. And that is a fine role for a font to fill.

When you want to make something pretty, though? Don’t use the default option. There’s a host of nice serif fonts out there – Palatino, Baskerville and Century are some other nice ones. Blogger, where his blog is hosetd, also offer Georgia. When you print a book, a leaflet or a card, you might as well pick the nicer option and make your work look thoughtful.

Finally, fonts are meant to be read, and shouldn’t distract from the message. This blog is set in Verdana, a very ubiquitous sans serif typeface, which reads better on a screen (serifs read better physically). Verdana’s ubiquity means that Blogger offers it, and that most people who read the blog will have the font installed. This means everyone sees the same lay-out.

I could consider rewriting the blog title in Garamond Small Caps, though…

Stephen Few – Information Dashboard Design

Stephen Few – Information Dashboard Design

                   

The link

Stephen Few - Information Dashboard Design (on goodreads)

What it is

Stephen Few is an expert in data visualization. He is the founder of Perceptual Edge consulting, and the author of three books on data visualisation and the use of dashboards. He has a blog, as well.

“Information Dashboard Design” describes the fundamentals of information dashboards, as well as good and bad data visualization techniques. Hilariously, it also includes a number of examples on what not to do. You should be able to get the book at any decently stocked (online) bookstore.

What it means to me

                              

Most of my work experience has included management reporting, data visualization, and general Excel-monkeying. It’s interesting reading a book where you nod along the way, thinking “yes, that’s exactly it”, and I very much had that experience reading “Information Dashboard Design”.

There are three big takeaways I got from this book:

• Simple is better
• Don’t let pretty things take up space.
• Consider how visual perception works

The first takeaway is best summarized by the KISS principle (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”). It’s a principle most of us know, and yet I still need to be reminded every once in a while. In the case of dashboards, it’s very important that the information you present is easily digestible at first glance – and that means an effective lay-out should be priority number one. Effective presentation takes precedence over prettiness, or even showing all the data you have. Often, less is more.

This neatly ties into takeaway two – your dashboard is meant to convey information. No giant logos. No pointless visualization. Especially no car-like dashboard meters, because those are horrible for reading information at a glance. The key point is that page space is limited – so make the most out of the space you have. This principle got me into trouble with my boss the most, as I kept stripping dashboards down.

The third takeaway is more subtle, and has a whole chapter dedicated to it. The human brain makes certain assumptions on importance and grouping of information. Something that never occurred to me but is very visually striking is how “connecting” two symbols is a really strong indicator of grouping them, but that enclosing symbols is stronger – if you circle a group of items, this ‘overrides’ any connections those points may have outside of the circle. This chapter alone is worth the asking price of the book.

In addition to that, there plenty of smaller tips that are really useful and directly applicable – did you know that you can turn table borders to the lightest of greys and still have them function just fine, and that this makes your dashboard easier on the eyes? Did you know that a column chart with a horizon line marking the target value is a great way to visualize just about anything? For entertainment value, there’s some snarky takedowns of example dashboards as well.

If you work in any kind of reporting, get this book. Then expense it to your company, because they’ll be getting the benefits of effective reporting.

The Amen Break

The Amen Break

                   

The link

Documentary: the Amen break and its meaning for copyrights (Youtube, 18 minutes)

The Winstons – Amen Brother: the Amen break at 1:25 (Youtube)

The Economist Amen Break Samples List 

Summary information from Wikipedia

What it is

The Amen Break is four bar drum solo from the record “Amen, Brother,” by the Winstons. This solo has been used as the foundation for a large portion of breakbeat oriented music, particularly the electronic music genres of Rave and Drum and Bass.

The first link is a 18 minute documentary on the Amen break, and it’s an excellent introduction to the sample, its impact, and its relevance to copyright law.

The Economist article has an excellent collection of music the Amen break has been used in (imagine that: the best source for drum and bass music links being the Economist). If you hit the Economist's paywall, just google the article title and open it from the search results, as google has a licensing deal with them.

What it means to me

That drum loop you never knew you recognized? This is it. I think it’s flat out amazing that a six second drum solo on a B-side has had this much cultural impact, and has been used and reused in so many different ways.

The Amen break, and hip-hop and sampling based music in general, shows the process of different cultural elements influencing each other at a rapid speed. The sampler was a key acceleration in this process,  as were 'dub plates', throwaway quality records.  that were easy to produce. In addition, there was an audience for new music, and radio provided the infrastructure to play it on.

What’s happening in hip-hop and electronic music is no different from what happened with painting in the renaissance, or with fairy tales since time immemorial. Technology and mass media just allow it to happen much faster.

Copyright has not kept up with this increase in speed: copyright periods tend to become longer rather than shorter, locking work out of the public domain. The case of Amen break itself is particularly egregious: the Winstons never pursued their copyright with anyone who sampled the drum break. A production company which sold a “Drum ‘n’ Bass sample kit” which includes the Amen break (precisely due to this lax enforcement) may now be recognized as the official copyright holder – even though they never truly owned the sample in the first place!

To give you an idea of changes (and incentives) in copyright law over the 20th Century: the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie”, was originally expected to enter the (US) public domain in 1984. After two successful copyright extensions, it may now lose its protected status in 2023 – provided the law doesn't change in the next 8 years.

On one hand, this is the invaluable intellectual property Disney built its giant corporation on. We don’t know what would happen to the company (and the people it employs) if Mickey Mouse weren’t exclusive. On the other hand, I’d love to see other cartoonists ‘remix’ Mickey Mouse.

"A society free to borrow and build upon the past is culturally richer than a controlled one." - Lawrence Lessig