みなさん、ゾウを見たことがある？

タイの代表的な動物と言えばゾウである。毎年、世界中からツーリストがタイで有名なゾウのショーを見に来る。何がそんなにすごいのか。理由はゾウがいろいろなことができるからだ。たとえば、サッカーやバスケットボールができるし、きれいな絵が書けるし、旅行の案内のための乗り物にもなる。

また、２００５年　タイのゾウのキャンプはギネスから「ゾウのグループにより書かれた世界中で一番大きい絵画」として、ワールドレコードを与えられた。この絵画は横２．４０メートル、縦１２メートルのサイズである。http://www.maesaelephantcamp.com/jp/records.html


絵が書けるゾウ／サッカーもできる／ピカゾウ／白ゾウ

タイの歴史によると昔から国とゾウは深い関係がある。特に王様以外持てない「白ゾウ」は一番大切である。多くのタイ人は王様の見つけた白ゾウは多ければ多いほどいいと思っている。また、平和になると信じられている。一方、昔の戦争では、王様はゾウに乗って戦争に向かった。ゾウは王様と国の象徴となった。



白ゾウ／ゾウの戦争／昔の国旗／ゾウに乗って虫を探す

さらに、１８１７年　タイの最初の国旗は赤地の真ん中に白ゾウを描いた。現在はその国旗を使っていないが、ほとんどのタイ人はこのことを知っている。

また、タイ語にはゾウについてのことわざがたくさんある。たとえば、

1. 「ゾウに乗って虫を探す」は無理をするという意味である。
2. 「死んだゾウは葉っぱで隠せない」は悪いことをするとすぐわかるという意味である。
3. 「男性はゾウの前足、女性はゾウの後足のようだ」は男性はリーダーになるべき、女性はフォローすべきだという意味である。

しかし、最近、人の考え方が変わって来たので、ほとんどの人はゾウの前足ようになりたがっているだろう。

最後に、タイのゾウの飼育は、今世界的に絶賛されている。みなさん、タイに行くなら、ぜひ、ゾウをご覧ください。

DesignSpree 1 : Vibrant Colors

DesignSpree is a series of collected thoughts along my graphic design experiences. I'll begin the series with "Vibrant Colors". Perhaps the most important aspect of design is how you choose the colors, set the mood for your overall work. Color is the fundamental beauty. Most of my past works are described as bright and vivid. Here I give you some examples of such works.

   

Colors made arrows visible

A music competition website layout

The project is called Acoustic Party which is organized in 2007 

Singing through time

Add some colors to the photo

Playful login

xQuiz, website layout for login page

Playful blue to attract users. Users are like cats, if you want to attract them you need lure them with playful colors!

I often play with colors by making many geometric shapes and run then together, see how they play with each other. It all began with basic shapes, [bright] colors, highlights and intermediates. 

In the example below the basic shapes are simply alphabet letters 'gx'. Bright colors are saturated pink, blue, yellow, green and other tones in between. Highlights are areas in black that stretch from tails of each letter. Intermediates are shades of grey, to bring more dynamism to the overall structure, alleviate the differences between two dominant colors.

Colors made possible for design to take shape

In conclusion, you can collect ideas through colors. Colors are elements that exist everywhere. You just pick one, two or more, define the tones to go together or simply select them from the  pre-defined color palette. Once the colors are right, the rest will started to come along. It's perhaps the easiest way for idea to take shape. 

New Year's Resolution

Finally it's 2009. This year there is the year of the Ox according to the Chinese calendar. I happened to born on this year so this year is best for me to show my cow pride. Here are this year resolution.

1. Stop spending time reading craps off the Internet, read more research-related articles.　
2. Save some more money (so that I can spend a big time later-- put it this way as an incentive).　
3. Satisfy 'her' more. She said that I ignored her too often. Perhaps my heart is not reaching to her deep enough.　
4. Study more Japanese.
5. Blog more! Share it before it is lost.

That's all I can think of for now. 

Adding a nice TeX equations to your Keynote

I just found a way to put TeX equations to my Keynote presentation. Before that I have to rely on either Beamer (writing slides purely in TeX, obviously I'm not geeky enough for this) or using Microsoft Equation with PowerPoint. Since I love how Keynote produce professional high quality slides, I seek a solution to bring the goodness of TeX and the stunning quality of Keynote.

The solution is to use the tool called LaTeXiT, which allows you to compose your equation and drag it down to any desired location of your application.

http://ktd.club.fr/programmation/latexit_en.php

Compose the equation and paste it any where you like.

However there's an issue with the latest version (at this moment) 1.16. It rendered extra "pxpxpx..." text on your equation! After searching Google, I found someone was having the same problem as me. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/takashyx/20081209/p1 (explanation in Japanese)

Apparently there is an issue with version 1.16 when LaTeX is installed via MacPort. However the older version 1.15 does not have a problem so I use the 1.15 and it works just fine.

It appears that the link for 1.15 on the maker site is dead, so this site above (in Japanese) suggests to download 1.15 from this link:

http://www.kerodownload.com/index.php?show=fx_info&id=17338&class=3

Thai Student Ski Trip 2009

Ski resort in Nagano (-3C)

On 1-4 January, 2009. TSAJ, Thai Student Association in Japan held a ski trip at Nagano prefecture 「長野県」. The trip was packed with fun! It is the first time for me to ski. 

Indeed to start learning something new is a painful process, but with help of TSAJ staff, the process become enjoyful. For me I'm not very good at it right now. I can dive down the hill and just that, often uncontrollable. 

The fun part of this trip is to get to know everyone and to enjoy the activities being nicely arranged by the staff. We created a Snow Voodoo! At first we were going to craft a Doraemon but later turned into Wall-E and Yoda, ended up in thin we called Snow Voodoo.

I thought that it was going to be very cold. But in fact it is quite hot when you snow, just like you when you are doing an excercise. That's why I slammed into thick snow very often. It actually felt great when slamming to that snow, but to retreat was no easy. 

I'm looking forward to the next ski trip and hope to learn some more trick.  

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