Remember September

I saw these on digital billboards today in Kansas City. They really don't need a caption, just another opportunity to pause and reflect.

Images from paperblog

Best. Craiglist. Ad. Ever.

I found this Craigslist ad through friends. All I can say is.. awesome.

$1000 Best. Roommate. Ever.

Konichiwa bitches. Are you looking for the most kick-ass fucking roommate that ever lived? If so, look no further. You fucking found him. I'm a 25-year-old professional marketing agent with experience at bad-ass companies in New York Fucking City. That's right! What you know about experience? I graduated from Auburn University in Alabama, and moved to NYC at the ripe, tender age of 22. After deciding that New York was a stinky shit-hole, I moved back to Alabama to cultivate more professional experience. Why? So I can make millions of dollars and not have to post shit like this on Craigslist.

Anyway, so I landed this job with a marketing firm in San Francisco, and I have no fucking clue where to live. Honestly, I'm moving there in 3 weeks, so I don't give a shit if I have to sleep in your bathtub.

A bit about me: I'm respectful, quiet, clean and I won't bother any of your shit. If you leave shit out, I'm just like, "Oh fuck I better not mess with this shit, because it's not mine." I turn off lights. I clean toilets. Fuck it. I'll even cook for you. That's right! My dad is a chef and taught me everything there is to know about cooking southern cajun cuisine. I'll fry green tomatoes, cover them with marinated crab meat and smother that shit in bearnaise. EVERY. GODDAMN. NIGHT. Don't eat meat? That's fucking FANTASTIC! I'll make a zucchini and yellow squash carpaccio that will knock your fucking socks off.

I also read a lot. I fucking LOVE books. Vonnegut, Palahniuk, Hawthorne. All that shit. I read Tuesday's with Morrie the other day. It's a sad story, but I learned something about life, love, knowledge and the pursuit of something greater than myself. Fucking smart. Do you like movies? I fucking love them. We can watch the shit out of some movies together if you like, or go get drinks, or work out, hike, play video games or play a game of one-on-one basketball, or I don't have to talk to you at all. It's completely UP TO YOU!

Sometimes I play guitar. Are you going to love getting baked and listening to Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd? LIVE? WHENEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT? Of course you are! I'll take requests and learn any song you like, because I have the voice of an angel and the acoustical stylings of James Fucking Taylor. AWWWWWW SHIT YEA!

A lot of people ask me, "Hey, you're from Alabama. Are you racist?" And, the answer to that question is, no. I'm not racist or judgmental at all. I love everyone. I'm a secular humanist. I FUCKING LOVE PEOPLE. That's the only requirement to being a secular humanist actually. You have to like other human beings and want to help them for no other reason than they are human regardless of race, religion or sexual preference. WTF?!!!? Pretty fucking cool right?

I own almost nothing! I'm driving my car from Alabama to California in which I'll be transporting two duffelbags of clothes, one laptop computer, one guitar, one cell-phone with charger, 8 pairs of shoes, one picture frame, probably some condoms and a shitload of beef jerky and Pringles for the trip. Though, you can expect the jerky to be gone upon my arrival. Unless you'd like me to pick up some on my way into the city. See?! I'm the most considerate person you've ever met. I'm offering to buy you shit already!

Am I interested in your pad? You can bet my nomadic ass I am! I only require 4 walls, a ceiling and a floor to shelter me from the elements. Other than that, anything else will be considered a convenient plus. I'm taking being a roommate to the next level. Email me! I'll hook yo ass up with Facebook links, background checks, credit reports, phone numbers, resumes, references, awards, sexual history, pictures of karate trophies and a list of the top 10 women I'd like to bang before I die. If you want a next-generation roommate who consistently blows your fucking mind with awesomeness, then hit me up. I'm ready to give you money.

Goodbye, White Stripes

[Image via About.com, taken by the talented Annie Leibovitz (2003)]

I think you all know my love for The White Stripes. Today, Meg and Jack announced that after 13+ years of making music together, they have split.

Today, we've lost "one of the coolest bands we've ever experienced," Connan O'Brien said.

Goodbye White Stripes.
For more on The White Stripes and their documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights, click here.

Happy Groundhog's Day!

"There's no way.. that this winter... is ever going to end."

One of the best scenes from a classic movie. I love you, Bill Murray.

P.S. Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow this year.
P.S.S. I am back on the blogging scene! Look for more posts soon!

So You Want To Be In TV News

This is a text-to-video depiction of a hilarious wannabe journalist scenario. I laughed. A lot.

Fashion Craving: Catherine Malandrino Draped Leather Jacket

Really, really obsessed with this leather jacket. It is made of piece-dyed brown shearling from Spain and is long enough for my torso. If only I had $1,269.00 lying around.

[Image via Neiman Marcus]

Here it is seen worn on Blake Lively, the style icon herself.

[Image via The Vogue Diaries]

Greatest/Cheapest Crafty Idea Ever

Found these awesome color streamer-sewed-together-amazingness online the other day. I absolutely love them and I don't know why I didn't think of them earlier. When I took sewing class in high school, we always practiced on paper and these make so much sense. Cheap - so, if they rip, get dusty, etc.. you don't have to feel bad about tossing them and easy - if you have a sewing machine that is! Get to it!

QR Code Wrapping Paper

I first heard about QR codes from Jen Lee Reeves, new media director at KOMU in Columbia, Missouri. QR codes are 2D barcordes in the shape of a square that take you to a website when scanned. The code can also lead to text, a phone number or email address. According to Wikipedia, they were created in Japan in 1994, but have just recently been used for professional reasons in the United States in the last few years. Now, QR codes are very popular in the professional field, but they were first created for shipping purposes. Now, these codes can be seen on cover letters, business cards and company websites.
Today, I came across an interesting idea on a Mashable article. This gift wrapping can be loaded with 50 different QR codes containing up to 50 different holiday-themed YouTube videos. This new invention, called Qrapping Paper is available in two sheets for $19.99. Visit qrappingpaper.com for more information.

Extras:

• Read Jen Lee Reeves' QR code blog post here.
• Get the free QR Code generator here. You can even use bit.ly to track statistics on scanned QR Codes
• Android has incorporated QR codes to a much higher extent than Apple. Most of the apps online can be found through scanning a QR code on application recommendation websites. A QR code reader can be found in the Android Market or get the QuickMark QR Code Scanner for iPhone here. The scanner basically just takes a detailed photograph of the code and then reads it and sends you the desired destination.
• The QR code to my website

I'm sure most of you have heard of QR codes or even use them regularly, but if you haven't - definitely give it a try.

Fruit Ninja, Best Game Ever

Our Mission, Part 2

Here is a blog post that I wrote for my other blog, Mobile Journalism Tools (what I am have been up to all semester).

...and now that the Mobile Journalism Tools section is up on Reynolds Journalism Institute's website, we are moving on to step two in our two-part mission statement. We are going to teach our peers and some of our journalism professors how to use these tools through our reviews and a help guide that we are in the middle of producing. It should be up by Wednesday, so check back for it then. Then, we are going to convince the journalism school faculty that mobile journalism should be incorporated into the curriculum.

To start off the week, we went to Jen Lee Reeves' broadcast capstone class and gave a brief presentation about the work we have done and offered them a chance to try the gear and applications we have experimented with all semester. On Wednesday, we are going to KOMU (the local NBC affiliate) and turning over our gear to the broadcast students on assignment that day. We will provide them the handout I mentioned earlier, a phone, a tripod, a microphone adapter and any other tools they might require. We will allow these students to test out the tools strictly from our guide, and we will shadow them to see their work (as well as be available to answer any questions). We have contacted Janet Saidi at KBIA (the local NPR affiliate) and are looking to do the same thing with her student reporters.

Next week, we have our final presentation in the form of a brown bag (faculty and students can bring their lunch and listen to our hour-long presentation). It is a little bigger than our last presentation (in terms of audience), but I am very excited to present our findings to a broad audience here at the j-school!

Tom Lubbock's Heartbreaking Memoir

Tom Lubbock, the day before his first operation in September 2008.

I found an article in The Observer recently that was fantastic and I thought I would share with you. It seems fitting for a time of year when you are thankful for what you have and the health of your loved ones. In "Tom Lubbock: a memoir of living with a brain tumor," famous art critic Tom Lubbock shares his diaries of his struggles with a brain tumor. It took away his language capabilities. The rare tumor took hold in an area of the brain that controls his language production. It is fascinating and heartbreaking to see the degradation of his writing and language skills (but maybe this is because I am a psychology nerd). This moving article can be found on the link above. I have included some excerpts below.

"This is about my dying: and how my life got here."

"At the same time, this life is unbelievable. At moments, it is terrible and outrageous. But in other ways, I accept what it brings, in its strangeness and newness."

"On the other hand, I don't know at what stage, and in what story, I am. I won't recover, no. But I haven't been given a definite time limit. So the narrative seems unclear and my luck, in a way, is both bad and good."

"Brain surgery: not worried about the operation itself; no, what an amazing thing; feeling excited, honoured, to be benefiting from, taking part in, human expertise at this high level."

This last section is the most recent - notice how the writing has changed.

"My language to describe things in the world is very small, limited.

My thoughts when I look at the world are vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were.

My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.

This is curious.

"Would it be imaginable that people should never speak an audible language, but should still say things to themselves in the imagination?" Ludwig Wittgenstein"

A Mother's Journey

This is simply breathtaking and I had to share. I reblogged this from http://awarewolves.tumblr.com/ This is titled "A Mother's Journey." Grab the tissues.

- A Mother’s Journey, Sacramento Bee Photography (2007 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography)

Band of the Day: Menomena

[Image via last.fm]

I first heard the band Memomena from the Barsuk Records sampler album in 2009. I found it on Amazon and probably listened to "Wet and Rusting" (YouTube video) about ten million times. I had forgotten about them until recently and came across them on ModCloth. Click the player below for a link to the ModCloth blog post (the player is on the bottom). Or, check out "Dirty Cartoons" here. (My favorite song of theirs!)

Cloudscapes

Check out this beauty from the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. This piece, called 'Cloudscapes' was assembled by Tetsuo Kondo, a Japanese architect, and a climate engineering firm (what is that?). To produce the cloud, they creators had to make three different layers of air - cool, dry air on the bottom; warm, humid in the middle and hot, dry on on the top creates the foggy effect.

They actually produced a cloud inside. You can actually walk through the cloud! The only way it would be better would be if I could float on it.

[Images via Sweet Station]

Journalism/Web Nerd Alert, Part Deux

I'm really excited about my recent Google Analytics report. The average time on site for my three sites - (in this order: Images Repeating (this blog), JenniferElston.com and Mobile Journalism Tools. This is really exciting because those are really long numbers in the web world. In a recent study we learned about at the IE Lab the other day said that people lose attention after five seconds if things aren't wowing them. They leave the page. These statistics are really encouraging - especially on my portfolio/website. Thank you!

Next step - talk to the IE Lab (Information Experience Lab), which tests the usability of websites through focus groups, etc...

Iggy Pop - The Passenger

Song of the day: Iggy Pop's 'The Passenger.' Such. A. Classic.

Mobile Journalism Tools, Pt. 2

Sorry. For the rest of the semester I will probably be really busy with my senior project - testing mobile journalism tools and creating best practice guides. Check it out here. Recently, we were mentioned on Poynter in a short write-up by Damon Kiesow in his Mobile Media column. Poynter is an institute located in Florida (and the web) who's mission is to improve journalism and journalists by discussing management, new trends, ethics and excellent journalism. Check out the blurb here or check it out below.

"A group of journalism students at the University of Missouri is blogging about mobile apps, hardware and best practices in mobile newsgathering, with the aim of creating "a sustainable and long-term resource guide for the industry."

The blog, Mobile Journalism Tools, has been running since September and has so far focused on a wide variety of mobile apps, accessories and brief quotes from experts in the field. The project is being led by Will Sullivan, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and an occasional contributor to Poynter.org."

I was very excited for this press piece. I have been putting my heart and soul into testing these applications and gear and it is nice to finally be recognized. This blurb made our pageviews skyrocket - see below. It is also exciting because, as a journalist, I turn to Poynter all of the time for news about the industry. It is exciting to have some followers and finally be featured in Poynter, even if it doesn't mention my name. :)

In addition to this exciting news, (thanks to my SEO training) our blog is now on the second page when you Google search "mobile journalism" and I am working on getting it to the first page. Wish me luck!

Until next time... I will leave you with some screenshots of the countries and states that have visited our blog recently:

Tim Flach

Recently saw the photography of Tim Flach in a Sweet Station post. The British photographer

is famous for his animal portraits. I love the detail and the expression on the dog's faces - especially the last one.

Serious Journalism

This is a post from my blog Mobile Journalism Tools:

The Mobile Journalism Tools team decided to cover the midterm elections with different live coverage applications on both Androids and iPhones. First, we deciding to live tweet the results and the experiences we had at the College Democrats watch party at The Blue Note in Downtown Columbia.

We were retweeted by KOMU 8, the local NBC affiliate the most. I was retweeted by one or two people and so was Drew Dumas, but that was it. If we would have had a better plan of attack, we could have let people know about our #comoelx hashtag (#) ahead of time and maybe it would have caught on like the #KOMUelx hashtag did. To see all of our #comoelx tweets, click here.I also experimented with both UStream and CoverItLive. First I will talk about CoverItLive. I couldn't find CoverItLive in the Droid Market, so I had to use it on the iPhone. Since we were stationed at a table for a night, I set up the Apple Wireless Keyboard to my iPhone 4 and the application wouldn't register the keyboard, but every other single application I have tried it on has worked. After I turned off my Bluetooth, I finally got the application to work, but it had all kinds of quirks (which we have heard from another capstone group). It wouldn't let me post videos or even photos sometimes because it said there wasn't enough space, but it would post audio clips, which were just as large. I could post text, but it was too glitchy to be successful. It was a good idea, but it just didn't work.

UStream also has its fair share of glitches, but it was definitely more successful. I set up both the Droid and the iPhone on the mobile tripod throughout the night to compare the two video qualities and ease of use. The Droid video quality was a lot poorer than the iPhone, but the Droid allowed you to film horizontally, which my tripod was made for. The iPhone forces you to shoot vertically. Since I put the phone in the tripod, all of my video from the iPhone is sideways. The iPhone has much clearer images, but it was really dark at The Blue Note so it kept trying to refocus and adjust on lighter flashes and images, so the video is a little weird.

I really like the concept of UStream. You have the option of recording to your phone, or going live. You can include a hashtag to appear with the chat for your channel online. This allows for conversation in multiple ways. The only real problem with using UStream on a mobile device is the sound quality. For Mizzou's Homecoming skits, the audio techs connected UStream to the main audio. You could hear the techs talking over their radios, but the sound quality was perfect and there weren't any audience mumbles. The only problem is I'm not sure you can connect a mobile device to the stereo equipment like you can a laptop. To view my UStream account and see the videos from tonight, go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/elstonjen

Here is a sample from the Droid 2. The audio quality is quite good for no external microphones, but the crowd and setting are really dark.

The only think I wish we could have changed about tonight was that I wish we would have separated to cover the Republican party also. We just really wanted to cover one aspect well and test all of the glitches out now, before we might use the applications in a real setting.

Craftsmanship

In a recent Design Boom post called the Brandbase Pallet Project by Most Architecture, wooden pallets typically used in shipping were used to create a fantastic office space. I really love the staircase and the choice of wood. The grain is deep and distinct (Yes, I am the daughter of a carpenter). The Dutch architecture firm was asked to by Brandbase to design a temporary space for their new office. The pallets allowed for cheap and easy construction and a recycling opportunity.

For more pictures of the office, click here. For more on nifty staircases, click here.

All photos by Rogier Jaarsma courtesy of Most Architecture