(im)perfection

Every day, we're confronted with mistakes, errors, accidents and malfunctions. I may be an optimist, but I'm pretty sure these things are what makes life great. The inconsistencies of daily events, wrong turns down the right road, and being anxious about what may come or what has come to pass. Imperfection is perfect. Perfection is imperfect.


This video can be as closely or as distantly related to anything above as you would like:



Shoutout to this being filmed at the Walker Art Center. Double shoutout to Betsy Berens for showing me an awesome site North Shore Sessions where this video came from!

The coffee map is coming along splendidly. I'm currently working through my basemap showing export/import totals for three decades. Trying to figure out where/how fair trade will come into the equation. I'm leaving a lot of room for changes and updates as I go. Taking data as it comes and using it all to figure out which works best. There's so much! Will post some progress photos soon.

EDGE Project is running smoothly but I'm just going to link the blog since I don't want to type what's been said already. I'm constantly in debate over how I want to go back to Lingira. Not debate about wanting to, because I absolutely do, but when and for how long. If I go back, it can't be for simply a month. Time is what will give EDGE the grip on Lingira, and that's what I want to give to EDGE and myself; time. I'm trying to think of what I could do longterm for the community. So far I've worked out some ideas for working on a written history of Lingira Island through monologues and interviews, as well as some historical research in and out of Uganda. I think it would be a great way to work on the community aspect of the area, to have people better understand the land. It's a long ways away, but I'm pretty sure I was thinking about traveling to Uganda around this time a year ago. And considering my days are filled with EDGE, It's no surprise that traveling is something I'm always thinking about.

For those of you who haven't seen the "new" video, here it is in all of its glory. Edited by yours truly, put together and made possible by many.



And for a tacky motivational quote that I can't take any credit for but like quite a bit: I want to give you everything just to see what you would do with it.

Cheers, friends.

data jitters

Well, as anticipated, I'm deep into the grounds of caffeine while compiling data for processing through software (ArcGIS). It took me some time, but I finally found a solid source of data. The International Coffee Organization (ICO) has quickly climbed in the ranks of most visited websites in the past few weeks. I first checked out the National Coffee Association, but unfortunately you need to pay for membership to access their data. I would normally jump on board if it were a simple fee, but these people are serious. They want a whomping 800 dollars for a non-trader membership. This makes me figure that the website is pretty legit where people of the coffee trade compile their annual data through. The ICO on the other hand has much of their data from the past thirty years conveniently organized in downloadable spreadsheets! The amount of data has been quite difficult to dig through, but I've compiled decade data (1990, 2000, 2010) on export and imports for all recognized countries.

So, yada yada yada, I have all of this data. Now what to do with it? I've got some relation-based ideas to find some patterns or relationships within the data. Some focus on the export numbers versus the climate and available land for countries, to get a better representation of possible export numbers versus actual numbers. With price data, there's the possibility of comparing exports/imports with retail and basic cost to farmers. The problem I'm running into is where the need for a map comes into play. The climate and land availability are the most spatially required data, but the other numbers don't necessarily need a map. This is my current situation. I've found the data, now I'm trying to find its use.

With all the data jitters comes plenty of coffee jitters. I've recently purchased a fantastic blend of Peruvian medium arabica beans from a nifty little organization: Just Coffee. I linked them on the previous post, but they are a well ventured business dealing with the fair trade and just treatment of growers and buyers. Quite well run I would say. The cartography lab continues to radiate beautiful aromas around the mezzanine level of Science Hall. I'm starting a nice trend and to be honest, my productivity has gone way up. I'm not able to sleep much (3:00 AM) right now, but by golly I'm getting work done.