LeliaThomas.Com

Building a Good Art Portfolio Part 1: Website Hosting and Domain Registration

2009-07-02T01:00:05+00:00

Summary:
First part of a series of posts that will be about building a good portfolio website for your creative works. This part focuses on how to choose a web host that fits your needs and what to consider when registering a domain name.

There are many how-to articles about building websites, but as is usually the case there are few that discuss it within the context of creative works. Building a good portfolio for your creative works may be the difference in getting a low-paying job versus a high-paying one; this is especially true if you are a freelancer. Unfortunately, many artists make mistakes that likely do cost them a few good jobs.

This is the first part of a series of posts that will be about building a good portfolio website, both technically and visually, and how to make it work well for both you and your potential clients. I’ve had many people ask for my advice over time about how to build a nice portfolio, and so I thought it was about time I got around to writing a series of posts on the matter.

In this part, I discuss website hosting and domain registration. The information below is fairly general and would be helpful to anyone starting out, whether they’re building a portfolio or not.

Hosting Options: Types

Firstly, you need to understand the technical information concerning types of website hosting, because all are quite different, and one type of hosting may suit you much better than another. While there are others (e.g., clustered hosting), there are three main kinds of paid hosting that you will likely encounter the most, which I’ve outlined below. These are the three that I think people looking to build a website portfolio (and/or a series of off-shoot businesses) should consider looking into most. All prices listed in USD.

Shared hosting is where you share a part of a server (computer used for hosting data and/or providing services) with other people. Good hosting companies will carefully place a reasonable number of your and other individuals’ hosting packages on the same server; “bad” services will try to pack too many people on the same server, making the service slow, particularly when the hosted websites have a lot of traffic or experience a sudden burst of traffic. Good shared hosting is ideal for individuals and small businesses on a meager budget and will be able to withstand small bursts of extra traffic with little trouble. This should work well for most all creative, personal sites.

ESTIMATED COSTS: $6 to $10 per month; $70 to $110 annually.

Virtual dedicated hosting is a type of hosting where one server is partitioned (separated) into several independent parts that resemble fully-functioning servers. (Thus the name “virtual” dedicated.) Each of these parts has its own set of independent features, such as an operating system, and can carry out individual tasks, as though each section is a server itself. Virtual dedicated hosting is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, or sites that may need a little more than what shared hosting can offer, that are willing to spend a little bit more for (likely) better server performance and most of the time extra customer support features.

ESTIMATED COSTS: $40 to $60 per month; $480 to $720 annually.

Dedicated hosting is where one has access to an entire server, through a hosting company. Administration of the server can be handled by the hosting company, but all server options are left up to the paying customer who is essentially renting a server. Dedicated hosting is ideal for medium to large-sized businesses or websites that expect to get lots of traffic and/or need lots of bandwidth. As it costs significantly more, I would not recommended this for small, low-profit or non-profit sites.

ESTIMATED COSTS: $100+ a month; $1200+ annually.

Hosting Options to Be Wary Of

While the above hosting descriptions should help you a lot in starting out, there are a few things I wish more people would talk about when it comes to hosting, particularly the stuff you should be wary of.

If it seems too good to be true for the cost, it almost certainly is.
Multi-year or even lifetime sign-ups. My rule of thumb is to only get one year of hosting with a company you’re starting out with, two or three years with a company you know and trust, and to never pay for a lifetime plan that in all likelihood you’ll outlive.
For visual artists, it could be a very bad idea to use “pay as you go” hosting plans. I didn’t discuss these setups above, but they essentially consist of customers paying only for the space and bandwidth they are using. This might be okay for creative writers (I still do not recommend it, but your mileage may vary.); however, visual artists, may find their pay-for-the-megabytes plan quickly becomes more expensive than the hosting types above, due to the size of images and the penchant that random passersby have for occasional hotlinking.
Deals where you must register your domain through the hosting company, in order to save on your plan. This does not indicate a bad hosting company in the least, but it is worth paying a little extra to keep your domain name separate from your hosting company. I’ll discuss this later.

Hosting: Reviews and Recommendations

So now that you know the basics, what are some of your options?

I could attempt to give you a list of services here, but really each person has his or her own set of needs, even among portfolio sites. With that in mind, I suggest you use tools and reviews sites, like WebHostingSearch.com and Web Hosting Geeks to find a host that suits your needs and budget.

For those curious, I am currently hosted by MediaTemple, which I have been very pleased with since signing up with them earlier in the year. The service is good, and the customer support has been quite amazing. I recommend them.

Domain Registration

There are many registrars you can go through to register a domain name, but I have to say that I thoroughly recommend GoDaddy. As annoying and infomercial-esque as their interface is, they do have excellent prices, and there are almost always coupon codes to use when purchasing something from them. Annually, I only purchase two things from GoDaddy: the renewal of my domain name(s) and privacy features to keep my home address unlisted. This costs less than $20, all total.

I don’t recommend you purchase web hosting or other “web tools” from GoDaddy. You can find cheaper and better.

Choosing a Good Domain Name

Use websites like Domain Search and Faster Domain Search to help you find out which names are available.
Don’t get a country-specific domain (e.g., .au, .co.uk) unless you want to target users exclusively from that country.
Your name can make a good domain (like this one!).
Shorter is better.
Easier to type is better.
When combining two words, make sure you don’t make any fumbles like expertsexexchange.com, unless you’re wanting that kind of traffic.
If it sounds weird when you speak it, consider changing it. You’ll have to verbally tell people your domain name many times.
Is this a name you can live with for a long time? Once you’ve gotten an audience to come to your website / domain name, it would be good to keep them there.
With creative names, don’t forget your audience. If you’re planning to target professionals “funkymonkey” and the like probably isn’t what you should use.

Summary

By no means have I told you everything, but I have given you a start. An important thing to realize if you are not a geeky person yourself is that though the items you are purchasing may seem quite intangible, they do have tangible, software and hardware bits powering them. When it comes to hosting, you will get what you pay for, and when it comes to domain registration, a little shopping around or coupon-hunting is often worth it.

Excluding your own personal time, these two services will be your most expensive, ongoing costs in owning a website. For most individuals and small businesses, owning a website can cost less than $150 a year. That becomes increasingly affordable, if you profit from your website and/or works. Choose your services wisely.

Stay tuned for part 2, where I’ll discuss website design.

Lelia Thomas Twitter Design

2009-07-01T07:08:06+00:00

My personal Twitter background. It consists of many layers of textures and faded lyrics from one of my favorite Tracy Chapman songs, Telling Stories. I am happy overall with the design, but I do wish background images could be centered on Twitter. It would give designers more options.

If you like this design and are in need of a good background for Twitter, consider hiring me.

Students Using Technology to Cheat Show There is a Problem With the System

2009-06-22T08:20:21+00:00

Summary:
Discussion about why students cheat and whether using technological devices in a classroom should really be constituted as wrong.

Education Week published an article on the 18th of June, Students Often Use Technology to Cheat, Poll Finds, which discusses a recent Common Sense Media polling [PDF] of over 2,000 students in grades 7-12, as well as parents who have children in those grades. The overall results were that over a third of kids cheat, and many are using mobile phones to do so.

To those of us who all but live and breathe all that which is geeky, this surely comes as no surprise. What? Children are using the tools that were essentially put in their hands from birth? You don’t say! I would be more concerned if these students weren’t taking advantage of these tools. It would be on par with rejecting the use of fire and the wheel, and I’m pretty sure that those who did that back in the day weren’t too successful in the long run.

Unfortunately, many parents and teachers don’t see it this way at all, which would explain why so many teachers and schools ban technological devices in the classroom. This does not, however, solve the problem. It only relieves a symptom of the problem. Arguably, those banning the devices don’t even have a firm grasp on what the problem is, much less how to deal with it.

So, firstly, why do students cheat?

People obviously cheat for a variety of reasons, but I think the majority of school cheating falls into one or more of the following categories.

Students cheat because they don’t think the subject matter is important.
Students cheat because they aren’t interested in the subject matter, as individuals.
Students cheat because the systems of incentive and/or punishment are ill-balanced.

To me, this isn’t rocket science, and I’m not quite sure why teachers and parents expect extraordinary things from young people that they themselves do not do. Young people are human, and I believe many are quite likely to cheat if one or more of the above issues exists. If the importance of a subject’s matter is not explained, they will tune out and possibly cheat to cover that up. If the subject matter is made to be boring and tedious, or is a requirement that they are particularly uninterested in, they will not try hard and may cheat to get by. If non-cheating students don’t see benefits from not cheating, few will see the point in remaining honest. If cheating students aren’t punished enough for cheating, they won’t see a reason to stop.

These are not alien concepts. They are concepts that adults have and act on every day. People cut corners, don’t listen in meetings and they even stalk people during work hours. Some do the same in their personal lives, even. To varying degrees, these are all dishonest and harmful to individuals and society as a whole. We can’t blame technology, a tool, for this, nor I think a change in morals. We can only blame human nature, which of course isn’t likely to change anytime soon, and strict control rarely works against it.

Is cheating okay? No, of course not. We want honesty in people’s actions, because honesty creates peaceful reliability and stability within society. But just because cheating is wrong, doesn’t mean we should stick to outdated systems and force young people to live and learn as if they’re in a world without technological devices. Information, both good and bad, is abundant. We should not act as if it’s otherwise. Doing so only promotes ignorance and, I think, corner-cutting and cheating.

Is it really appropriate to act like these technologies don’t exist?

At 22, I’m no longer fresh out of high school, but if things are in any way similar to how they were several years ago, I know technology is condemned by a majority of teachers. I think there are a combination of reasons for this.

The first possible reason is ignorance on the part of the teacher. Few teachers have attempted to keep up with the technologies that their students use. (I even frequently encountered this in my multimedia degree.) This is not a student’s fault, and computer and Internet challenged teachers should not feel ashamed for being out of the loop; instead, they should be open to learning.

Another possible reason, and the most likely of them all, is that it is sometimes easier to stick to old ways than to adopt and adapt to the new. However, just like cheating is wrong, being stubborn and unrealistic is as well.

So what’s the solution?

I think a possible solution is to train young people, particularly those in secondary school, in how to identify good and reliable sources online, as well as how to correctly use them (i.e., not to unwittingly plagiarize). (To teachers reading this: The answer isn’t as simple as “don’t use Wikipedia or blogs,” so please can that broken record response.) What this will mean is a redefinition of cheating. To me, a student using a dictionary in the classroom, when writing an essay, is not cheating, as this is something anyone with a career in writing will do. Likewise, using the technology that is readily available to you, to hopefully find an answer to a question, as well as the way the answer was arrived at, is not cheating; it’s good researching.

An over-quoted Chinese proverb comes to mind with all this. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” When teachers and schools ban digital devices from the classroom, we are only left teaching children in the day that we have; we’re feeding them on that day, in that semester. They may or, more likely, may not remember all the information taught in that day or semester. They have an outdated, tedious way to record the information—pen and paper—and their ability to branch out and research subtopics of the topics taught are destroyed. These things make it exponentially harder to retain the information and put it into a useful context for the individuals participating.

However, if we teach these children how to find reliable information and use it well, they will never be without it; they will always be able to learn and apply that learning—easily. They will be able to record and organize and have everything at their fingertips. When we teach children to use dictionaries and thesauri, the language used in their essays tends to improve. Imagine, then, teaching children how to properly use the tools of the Internet.

What is it that makes us think remembering everything means that someone knows much at all?

Are grades and cheating really what we should worry about?

The concern about cheating is that it breaks the system that so many of us so foolishly believe in 100%, but maybe the system should be torn apart. Maybe it was broken from the very beginning. Technology and all its devices, if used correctly, give us a chance, more than ever before, to have a truly personalized learning experience that is based on the concept of learning and education, rather than hazy goal setting and supposed achievements.

Pixel Art Map of Hong Kong

2009-06-20T15:51:27+00:00

Summary:
Every now and again, there’s a piece of artwork that makes me think, “Damn, I do not have the patience for that sort of thing,” and this pixel art piece is one of them.

Every now and again, there’s a piece of artwork that makes me think, “Damn, I do not have the patience for that sort of thing,” and this pixel art piece is one of them. Created in such a way as to be used like a Google Map view, this artwork is more than one mere block of visuals. It is a large piece containing what really can be considered multiple pieces in one and details that must surely have taken the artist ages to complete.

To see the full piece, go here. On a final, side note, I could not find the artist’s name anywhere. (Or perhaps I couldn’t read it.) If someone knows the name of the artist, as well as their personal website, please tell me in the comments.

7 Inspiring Indie Music Videos

2009-06-18T15:40:38+00:00

Summary:
Seven creative, indie music videos that feature everything from unique animation, to puppetry and dancing.

Like most people, I’m a music lover, and I especially love finding the more obscure artists. Below, I’ve compiled a list of seven creative, indie music videos. All of the artists featured in this entry produced their music under independent music labels (though some do have major label distribution setups). These are not just artists that “sound indie.” They actually are.

An interesting thing to note before watching the videos below is that most of them are within the same sort of genres, folk or alternative. Believe it or not, my tastes aren’t just for these genres (last.fm for proof!). It’s more a matter that it can be pretty hard to find indie music videos for genres outside of these. I think more people tend to search out indie music in these genres, for whatever reason, and so it is more viable for artists to be independent in them and actually do well enough to warrant music video making. However, as you’ll see, many of the videos aren’t what mainstream labels have typically trained us to be used to; many use animation, rather than studios or on-location shots. This undoubtedly is a way to save a few bucks.

So, your taste may not be for the styles below, but you must admit that these are some pretty creative animations and short films. Lastly, if you do like the music, consider buying some. I’ve given you links to make it easy!

1. “Twice” by Little Dragon (Sweden)

Buy “Twice” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit Little Dragon’s Official Website
Label: Peacefrog Records

2. “Wait for Me” by Kutiman (Israel)

No available purchase links; however, the ThruYOU project audio rips can be downloaded via torrent.
Visit Kutiman’s Official Website
Label: None; released online.

3. “Mykonos” by Fleet Foxes (USA)

Buy “Mykonos” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit the Fleet Foxes Official Website
Label: Sub Pop

4. “People Help the People” by Cherry Ghost (UK)

Buy “People Help the People” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit Cherry Ghost’s Official Website
Label: Heavenly Records

5. “Wood” by Second Person (UK)

Buy “Wood” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit Second Person’s Official Website
No “true” label. Used SellaBand to fund and create album.

6. “Boy With a Coin” by Iron & Wine (USA)

Buy “Boy With a Coin” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit Iron & Wine’s Official Website
Label: Sub Pop

7. “Hearts a Mess” by Gotye (Australia)

Buy “Hearts a Mess” from Amazon or iTunes.
Visit Gotye’s Official Website
Label: Creative Vibes

Remixed Australian Literature: Through the Clock’s Workings

2009-06-17T05:41:02+00:00

Summary:
An Australian writing community has released a 126-page, remixed anthology that is licensed for further remixing. It’s available for purchase in book form or free to download as a PDF.

Remix My Lit, a Brisbane, Australia based international, online writing community that focuses on remixed literature projects has released Through the Clock’s Workings, a 126-page anthology of remixed, Australian writing. The anthology can be bought through the Sydney University Press website or can be freely downloaded here.

Through the Clock’s Workings is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license (the same one I use for most of my works), meaning it can be freely shared and remixed, provided it is kept noncommercial and placed under the same sort of license. This makes it a read and write anthology; it will be a living piece, so to speak. I’ve downloaded the book now to see what I can do with it myself.

Regardless of this book’s quality factor (as always, some will like it, some won’t, I’m sure), this is an important piece, as it will undoubtedly give rise to other remix writers. If we could build sites and communities around this concept, we might see a resurgence in experimental, remixed writing. We have it already for music, art and video, but writing has sort of been put to the side. While experimental writing, including some remix, is done by well-known authors, I have found very little of it among writing communities online, perhaps partially due to fears surrounding plagiarism. (And no, I’m not putting fanfiction in the same category as remixed writing.) With the proper licensing in place, we will probably start to see more “alive” texts. I guess the step after that will be as with all remix and the Internet: the need for organization.

UK Restricts Photographers (Even More)

2009-06-15T14:52:09+00:00

Summary:
Photographers are now banned from photographing “sensitive” areas and police in the city of London. The question is should photographers obey the law?

As many photographers in the UK or elsewhere have likely already heard, the UK has put extra restrictions on photographers. Photographers are now banned from photographing “sensitive” areas in the city of London, and the legislation may be present in other parts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Ironically, when The British Journal of Photography attempted to get a list or definition of what constituted as a “sensitive” area, as well as information regarding how far-reaching this legislation is, the government kept mum. We can take an educated guess, though, that the banned areas are primarily military bases, police and emergency stations and possibly certain other governmental buildings. The question is should photographers obey the law?

Individual photographers will have to make up their minds on that, but the fact is this new law falls well within the UK’s freedom of expression laws. Wikipedia offers a succinct summary:

“Regarded as one of the most important human rights, the courts have stated that there is no difference between the protection offered by the common law, and that guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights[5]. The freedom of expression of Members of Parliament is encouraged and guaranteed by parliamentary privilege.

The right can be restricted where it is justified in the public interest, for example where national security concerns prevail (see the case of Ponting) or where countervailing interests of privacy, public order or religious tolerance must take priority. In addition, the law may also require that in certain situations information is kept confidential or may place a restriction on its dissemination.”—Wiki on Freedom of Expression in the UK

This new restriction on photographers—just one of many in Britain—does not breach the UK’s concepts regarding freedom of expression, as the excuse used for these bans is, of course, national security. (When is it not?)

British photographers would do well to seek stronger press and artistic freedom rights, regardless of whether they intend to knowingly ignore and/or blatantly fight these laws or not. These two recent laws, in particular, which ban areas unknown to the photographer and ban individuals from taking photographs of police, create an interesting and dangerous case for photographic and artistic rights, if not civil liberties on the whole.

Follow The British Journal of Photography website for the latest news regarding this and other photographic issues of the region.

Creative Commons and Image Searching

2009-06-15T05:39:26+00:00

Summary:
A look at what the new Creative Commons filtering in Yahoo! and Google image search will do to intellectual property rights.

Anyone who has been in a classroom or board meeting where PowerPoint was present has certainly seen images that were found through probably simple image searches. It’s easy. For many, the need for an image leads to the search, which leads to a download of an image found on the first page of results; credit is sometimes given to image creators, but it is not always known if the credit is going to the right person when it comes to online imagery. The ability to search for images on the web is perhaps taken for granted today, as most any traditional search engine worth mentioning has some sort of image search capability by now. Most image search tools are quite indiscernible, though a couple, like Google’s or Yahoo!‘s, do stand out from the crowd. One way some are standing out now is by bringing the concept of intellectual property to the forefront of image searching. This could very easily change the way people use image search over time.

In May, Yahoo! added Creative Commons filtering to its image search, inheriting this feature from Flickr, which has had this capability since 2006. Google has now not only working to follow suit in its mainstream image search, but also in Picasa Web.

The competition between two search leaders will most likely always lead to good things, but perhaps especially so in the case of the copyright issues Creative Commons seeks to address.

Recognition of Creative Commons

One of the most important results of Google and Yahoo! adding Creative Commons filtering is that it brings CC licenses, or at least their concepts, to the mainstream public. When students and businessmen find themselves in a pinch for an image, the concept, and hopefully the importance, of virtual property ownership will not be so alien to them in time. Yahoo! has done an especially beautiful job at simplifying the CC licenses in its search interface, making the concept usable for those who may have not encountered it before.

Widespread knowledge of Creative Commons, or similar licensing structures, will be positive, hopefully resulting in discussions regarding copyright and intellectual property laws. In time, this knowledge may indeed pose a problem for industries that depend almost solely on people’s lack of knowledge regarding these issues.

The (Slow) Return of Intellectual Property Rights

A problem that easy-to-use image searching has produced is the illusion of there being no creator behind the images. Many image searches bring up one or two results that are exactly the same, but are to be found on different sites. Rarely is there an obvious answer as to whether the image is a stock photo, being inappropriately used by one website or both, or whether both website owners had particular permission from the creator; if credit is even given, it is often buried deep within an about page. Over time, this has become a bane to image creators, and it has given a false security to image searchers who sometimes think that whatever results from their search is theirs to use.

Having a simple Creative Commons structure restores not only the concept of the creator, as a whole, but also what the creator actually wants. The way that Yahoo! takes this a step further by breaking down all the Creative Commons licenses into two simple check boxes is also very helpful. Google will have to work hard to make their Creative Commons filtering as simple and elegant.

I think as tools like these develop, we will see a lot more attribution on everyday websites, which is a very positive outcome for visual artists of all sorts.

LeliaThomas.Com 2009 Relaunch

2009-06-10T22:15:50+00:00

Summary:
Overview of the changes made in this relaunch, primarily detailing what topics this site will focus on now. Discusses art, new media and education, and what all three topics mean for the future of LeliaThomas.Com.

The first time I released a portfolio website was in 2004, and the Internet was a different place then. Just to give you an idea of the evolution of this website in particular, I’ve made up a little visual.

There were many trial designs between those above, as well as the occasional printed portfolio, but as you can see there have been a lot of changes over the years. This year especially has many changes in store for LeliaThomas.Com.

Dear Diary: It’s not you. It’s me. I think we need to go our separate ways.

While this is still very much a personal site, in the way of publishing my artwork to the world and expressing my views, this site is no longer about diary-like life stories. I enjoy reading about the daily lives of others, and it was fun to write about my own life over the past four years. Now, though, I feel I need to change the focus of this website, to better direct myself toward my true passions: art, new media and education.

Changing Focus: Promoting art and creativity.

LeliaThomas.Com has never ventured far from the artistic realm, nor will it. My portfolio, while likely much easier to browse now, is not incredibly different from the last time you might have seen it. What’s changed, rather, is my focus to promote art in other people’s lives, instead of just focusing on building it up in my own. That’s why I have released most all of my art and writing under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license. These pieces are now available, in high quality versions, through torrents, and I will be making them available elsewhere (e.g., Archive.org, SXC) in the near future. Doing this allows the creative community to play around with my work and remix it. It will also give those interested a little insight into how I work; I have even gone so far as to add my Photoshop PSD files in the digital art torrents. For those who work really hard on their remixes and wish to use them commercially, I am more than slightly open to the idea, provided you ask for permission.

This desire to promote creativity is also why I’ve created the remix section, the art resources wiki (note: this wiki will probably change to a different service), the art-related YouTube playlists, and The Artistic Bent (TAB) forum community.

This blog will partially focus on indie art and how Internet tools and a digital air of openness are reintroducing commons. As corporate and lobbying giants like the RIAA and the MPAA have interfered with more people’s lives, are behind the erosion of some of the laws that protect our civil liberties and have continued to eat away at the public domain, I have become increasingly concerned as an artist and citizen. I think one of the only ways to combat what these industries have done to us, our societies and our creativity is to take more control of our own works and dare to share them, whether that results in significant monetary benefit or not.

I don’t intend to shy away from commercial or mainstream artworks in this blog, by any means, but I will be addressing these legal issues on a regular basis, as I believe they not only negatively affect artists, but also whole cultures. The changes in this website are just my little contribution to the fight.

Changing Focus: Studying the wonderful, wild world of new media.

A topic I frequently discussed on previous versions of this site was that of mainstream media, and how many articles and news segments are brazenly illogical, blatantly emotive and sometimes more than just bordering on falsehoods. I could easily dedicate a whole blog to these atrocities, but I fear it’d bore you and might very well give me heart attack. Taking that into consideration, I think I’ll stick to more interesting and typically more positive issues, namely those concerning new media.

I’m not interested in making this site into another techie review blog. There are far too many of those, anyway. I am, however, interested in studying the new technologies that come out, how they might affect our every day lives for the better, and the odd and creative ways in which they can sometimes be used. There is a lot to be studied and a lot of potential for many tools that have already been created, not to mention those that are being thought up as I type this. When I began writing online, there was no Flickr, YouTube or Twitter. The web is bigger, louder and more beautifully designed than in the past. At present, many of these new tools get slapped with the “waste of time” label more often than not, but I think we need to look beyond videos of cute puppies and the stalking of old classmates to see what might be done with them. Innovative technology abounds, and I hope to promote open discussion (and the occasional debate) about what it might mean for our future, particularly when it comes to creativity and education.

Changing Focus: Wanting more out of the learning experience.

If you followed this blog in the past, you’ll know that I feel modern education fails us in numerous ways. Whether it’s ripping us off, failing to keep up with new and helpful technologies, or not allowing individuals to grow into themselves, most educational systems and institutions produce far more unsatisfied or confused customers than people who are interested in going on a lifelong adventure of learning. Rather than just critiquing this ailing industry, I feel those who are interested in education should discuss and promote ways in which we might improve the system. As this website is particularly interested in art and new media, I plan to talk about how we might enhance the learning experience for all ages by utilizing creativity and existing technologies in classrooms and everyday environments.

Open to your ideas, works and links.

One thing I want to stress in this relaunch is that I am interested in hearing from you as a reader. If you know of something that might fall into the three broad topics above, please send it to me either by way of the contact form, by emailing leliathomas@gmail.com or by chatting with me on Twitter.

Hope you enjoy the new site! Please comment!

Preface to WWIII

2009-04-11T20:15:25+00:00

This piece is about the sometimes unseen or forgotten costs of warfare. While inspired by what I consider to be the unnecessary war in Iraq, it is not specifically about it. This piece does not adhere to any particular time in history, outside of mentioning there is email in the world; so it can be a tale of present or future. I’ve left it up for you to decide.

I suppose Preface to WWIII can be considered a cautionary tale of sorts. Whether you agree more with physicality or diplomacy to get points and peace across, those left behind and those involved will always be affected.