Let's talk about food, baby.

I like food.
"Oh yes don't we all?"
No, you don't understand- I really like food.
I realized this over lunch with a friend today, we do lunch quite often and they noticed that while I eat- I can't help but talk about eating other things.
Today, while giggling and eating a Five Guys' cheeseburger (10/10 go get one) I recounted no fewer than 5 other dining experiences.

I tell my friend (I think I might have been moaning a bit at this point. Apologies to you, friend.) about my love for Chick-Fil-A (their food, not their politics) and how sad I am that it is my favorite American food that has not migrated over the pond yet. I tell my friend about the massive hot dog with plantains I scarfed down after running a 10k last summer. I tell them about tamales so fresh you can feel the steam through the corn husk. I tell them about burgers from IN-N-OUT and the secret (not so secret) menu. I tell them about eating at Five Guys in Times Square at 2 in the morning.

And then,
I feel guilt.

I feel like I'm undeserving to eat such food. I haven't worked out today- how will I possibly lose weight eating a burger and fries and also talking about food while eating said burger and fries.
I want to throw up, the reflex is still there. I wrap the foil around the rest of my burger and focus on my diet coke, I'm silent while I think about downing a glass of milk to aid with the purge. I try to lighten the air- joke about needing to use the gym for 5 hours. How on earth have I lost weight, I'm eating like a pig?

Then friend tells me I should write about food.

"Wut?"

I tell friend that they must be mistaken because if I blogged about food I would weigh so much and I'm trying to stop my eyes from being glassy, maybe I can make it look like the tears are from laughing too hard.

Friend knows my problem, friend has seen me cry unhappy tears before.
My friend then tells me that writing about something I'm afraid of can help me overcome.

I'd like that very much.
I unwrap the foil and finish my cheeseburger. The ketchup is still warm which makes the vinegar contrast against the savory beef. The cheese sticks to the foil but not to the roof of my mouth. The fries were a little more burnt than I usually care for, but they tasted light and crunched softly as I bit down.

So here I am. First blog post about food.
My burger still sits in my stomach, along with those amazing fries. (Seriously though if you haven't been to Five Guys you are MISSING OUT)
Maybe I'll do this once a week maybe more, maybe less.

I'm not as scared as I was this afternoon.
Milk tastes better when it's in tea that is too sweet anyways.

A Perfect Storm

Sick
Reading
Listening to Christmas Music
Trying to figure out what to write for my Web 1.0 Essay

And apparently there is a really big storm coming (#ukstorm) I think it might even have its own twitter page at this point.

It was nice knowing you all, I'm curling up in bed with the Information Architecture textbook (le bear polar). If anyone is feeling particularly generous, I will be accepting donations of pad thai and chicken korma.

Takeaway from DITA Week 2.

DITA is my Digital Architecture class, taught by the wonderful Ernesto Priego. Do go check out his blog and his twitter feed if you have an interest in Digital Humanities and also comics.

Basically this course acts as a small stepping stone to understanding how we have gotten to this point in time where a large portion of our own human history is written and stored via computer and internet. This week was one of the most challenging I believe, given that we had to learn to do HTML and CSS in a lab (I suck at CSS, I am going back to the lab to work on it again just because I suck so badly).

Before this week's lesson I began reading "The Wikipedia Revolution" by Andrew Lih, which was excellent in helping to fill in the questions I had that we were unable to cover in class time. I highly recommend giving the book a go, especially if you have ever used Wikipedia to fill in your own knowledge gaps.

But what I really wanted to talk about that I took away from Week 2 was the following selection from a piece about Digital Humanities:

"Digital humanities is by its nature a hybrid domain, crossing disciplinary boundaries and also traditional barriers between theory and practice, technological implementation and scholarly reflection. But over time this field has developed its own orthodoxies, its internal lines of affiliation and collaboration that have become intellectual paths of least resistance. In a world — perhaps scarcely imagined two decades ago — where digital issues and questions are connected with nearly every area of endeavor, we cannot take for granted a position of centrality. On the contrary, we have to work hard even to remain aware of, let alone to master, the numerous relevant domains that might affect our work and ideas. And at the same time, we need to work hard to explain our work and ideas and to make them visible to those outside our community who may find them useful".  [Digital Humanities Quarterly 2007]

Now just read that again and let it sink in. The Internet and Digital Age today are so prevalent that sometimes I find myself thinking of the first computer in Biblical Terms. In the beginning there was the super computer that only geniuses and million dollar governments and corporations could fund. Fast forward a generation or two and the offspring of Adam are squandering this precious gift with tweets about Justin Bieber and One Direction. 

Or are they?

Is it the evolution of knowledge and humanity that these technologies are shared with the masses? Sure tweens tweeting is possibly one of life's greatest annoyances- but these people have access to the entire universe. No, really- they can access maps of the universe- photos from The Hubble telescope and receive e-mail updates from the Mars Rover! 

I think the thing to take away from week 2 was not just the foundations of building an HTML webpage or information retrieval using LINUX, it is rather the neutrality with which we need to handle the capacity for digital storage and knowledge. The internet in its current form is equal parts computer and human ingenuity. Assuming one is more valuable than the other completely undermines the whole aspect of Digital Humanities. We cannot just rely on the internet to take care of our every need, instead we should nurture our own understanding of where, how, and when our information is stored. In order to have a more cohesive relationship in the Digital Age we must give as easily as we take from technology, that means leaning the programs and skill sets that we rely on others to learn for us. 

Spiderman's recurring theme of "With great power comes great responsibility" comes to mind as a reflection on my utterly horrible post/update/thing. The Digital Age is an amazing time to live in, we have THE UNIVERSE at our very fingertips (and with the advent of talk-to-text we probably don't even need our fingertips anymore now) but we should understand where and how it is derived. It is the same concept as sustainable farming and teaching people where their cheeseburger comes from. Where did this blog post come from? What resources went into its creation? How is it possible for a ditzy white girl to use her own HTML codes to compose this? 

I urge you all to find out on your own time, it's truly remarkable learning to have a symbiotic relationship with technologies. 

Cheers. 

A New Day. A New Blog.

...not that I really had a blog before, but yes here she is-zee blog.

Hopefully the main purpose of this blog will be to post my thoughts and feelings about my readings (both for school and leisure) and hopefully throw out a lot of good ideas that make people nod and go, "yeah".

I like to talk about shoes, books, Haribo, coffee, and my general anger with the lack of feminism here in London.

But seriously can I talk about that last one for a second?

I have lived in major cities before as well as small towns. I really thought moving to the UK would deliver that instant clarity and respect between any and all of the sexes but NO! I WAS WRONG!
I am harassed nearly everyday by men, honked at from cars, whistled at from balconies, and followed down the road.
What gives UK?
WHAT GIVES!?