#why does he look so beautiful in all these santander videos

[leclercskiesahead]

Carlos explains the uniqueness of race suits

(and also the times his thighs and neck got bigger so he had to re-tailor his suit)

from Formula Santander

[mycarlos2019]

Going to Guatemala. Part I

As recently as three years ago, it would never have occurred to me that I would come to love a small country in Central America known as Guatemala. It’s a love affair that began with watching travel videos on youtube.com and culminated with a ten day visit in January of 2018, followed by a three week visit in February of 2019. The youtube videos in question were made by a trio of young people called The Budgeteers and, to a lesser extent, by a man named Andy Graham who has his own website called hobotraveler.com. Prior to watching these videos, I suppose I must have just lumped all Latin American countries into one homogeneous mass of poverty, corruption and CIA meddling. Watching The Budgeteers hitchhike their way from Baja, California to the San Blas Islands, just off the coast of Panama, I realized that every Central American country is actually a little different. My original idea for 2018 had been to do what many Canadians do in the bleak winter months of January and February, to spend a week to ten days in Cuba. But the more I looked into Cuba, the more it seemed to me to be a country which is presented to tourists as a kind of Caribbean idyll, when in fact the truth is far from what you see on the surface. Guatemala, on the other hand, appeared to be a country where people are simply living their lives and don’t care all that much about tourists unless they happen to live in Antigua, one of the touristy towns around Lake Atitlan or Chichicastenango. In the rest of the country, people seemed to making a living from farming or by owning their own store. There are, in fact, so many tiendas in Guatemala that it is hard to imagine finding a place where there isn’t one. The point is that most Guatemalans don’t go out of their way to please tourists and they certainly don’t alter their behaviour to present a pleasing picture to the outside world.

The other vlogger who caught my attention, Andy Graham, did so because he has a number of videos of himself standing in front of Lake Atitlan saying, “Panajachel, Guatemala. I’m here. You’re not. Why not?” Mr. Graham’s shtick is that he has lived in 181 countries all over the world and can tell you how to live the same lifestyle he does, if you so wish. I won’t go into it any further than that, but suffice it to say that his assertions about Panajachel and Lake Atitlan being desirable places to head for if you wanted to live abroad were enough to make me open the Google maps Street View feature and start looking around. What I saw astonished me. Far from being a dreary, downtrodden backwater, Panajachel seemed to be bursting with life and colour. Souvenir shops selling multi-coloured clothing competed for room with open air restaurants and bars. Bright red Tuk-tuks, motorcycles and minivans somehow managed to share the narrow street with tourists and Guatemalan women selling their wares. A solid kilometer of interesting things to see, do and just be fascinated by. I decided that I had to go to Guatemala at least once in my life, if for no other reason than just to walk down Santander Street.

             The view out the window at Pearson Airport the day I left.

I began planning my first visit in earnest when I realized that a return plane ticket on Air Mexico would only cost in the neighbourhood of $450. That would include a one day layover in Mexico City, but I was fine with that. Why not look around there too for a day? I managed to find a hostel that was only a 20 minute walk from Terminal 1 at Benito Juarez Airport. The only potential hiccup was that Air Mexico flights from Toronto land at Terminal 3 and, while there is a free Sky Train to Terminal 1, I had read that you need to show your boarding pass to get on it. I, of course, had a boarding pass, but it didn’t carry with it any express need to go to the other terminal. It turned out not to matter. Despite the fact that the security guard at entrance to the Sky Train boarding area was overtly hostile, as soon as I showed her my defunct boarding pass, she let me go through. Seriously, what do these people think? That gringos who just happen to live in Mexico hang around in the airport all day with nothing better to do than ride the monorail back and forth from one terminal to the other? In any case, I made it to Terminal 1 and managed to find my way to the far western end of it, where the footpath to my hostel began.

I had looked it up on Google Maps, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it could be done, by which I mean getting across the very large and very busy, multi-lane highway that essentially cuts off the airport from the adjacent neighbourhood. The Circuito Interior is a 42 kilometer long, six to eight lane freeway that forms a giant loop through the central neighbourhoods of the city. Fortunately, my hunch proved to be correct. There is a footpath, which leads to an overpass (i.e. footbridge), which deposits you on the other side of the freeway at the foot of the street, Norte 33, which, in turn, leads to the hostel. The service road, beside the Circuito is lined with airport hotels, fast food joints, car rental agencies and all the other sort of shops one typically associates with airports. In behind it, however, is a solidly working class, blue collar neighbourhood. This is where old VW beetles go to die. I saw three or four of them, at least, just in the short walk to the hostel, not actual working cars, mind you, just burned out shells of cars that had long ago been parked on the street and forgotten about. Clearly, the intention was to fix them up but it was an intention that, for whatever reason, was never followed through on. So there they sit, the unrealized dreams of anonymous Mexicans.

                                  An old Beetle in Barrio Moctezuma.

Nevertheless, this is a neighbourhood that is full of life. Tiendas, restaurants and food stands line the streets. A large sports complex, complete with a soccer pitch and three basketball courts has been plunked down right in the middle of it. Around the walls of this complex are more street food stalls, fruit stands, miniature shrines where you can make an offering to the Virgin Mary (presumably to help your team win the soccer match).

If you should decide one day to stay at Punto DF, what follows is a short description of how to get from the footbridge to the hostel. Heading north, it is tempting to think you should stay on Norte 33 until you get to 166 Calle Oriente, and the cut over to the hostel, but it is much more interesting to hang a left on Calle Oriente 182 and walk over to Norte 25. This is where, to my mind the neighbourhood comes alive. Norte 25 is an absolutely unpretentious and, at the same time, lovely grand avenue with a line of small trees down the middle. A paint store sits next to the local stationary shop. Sidewalk eateries or comedors tell you that this is a place where people actually live and, to quote Van Morrison, have their being. Calle Norte 25 appears to come to a halt at Moctezuma and Fortino Serrano Parks (two parks side by side that are in effect one park), but it actually continues along the southwestern edge of these parks and resumes again on the northwestern side of Fortino Serrano. You could, of course, just walk through the park to get to the point where it starts again. From the corner of Calle Oriente 168 and Calle Norte 25, it is only one block further to Calle Oriente 166, the street Punto DF is on. Cocina Don Pepe has an orange awning. Turn left there. A large colourful mural will let you know you have found the right place.

My plane was two hours late, but it was still only about eleven in the morning when I rang the doorbell and was greeted by a very nice young man (I think his name might have been Francisco) who didn’t mind at all that I was checking in so soon. Of course, all I wanted to do was put my knapsack in one of their lockers and head downtown to see a bit of the city. Francisco gave me a map of the subway and confirmed that the cost was indeed five pesos. (It’s now six pesos, but that’s still less than fifty cents Canadian.) The Metro station nearest to Punto DF is R. Flores Magnon. It’s one of the more utilitarian stations in the system and is named after an anarchist who helped spark the Mexican Revolution. To get to it, you simply continue up Norte 25, navigating your way around the sports stadium and Mercado Moctezuma. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can cut through a pedestrian pathway that is actually part of the market. It’s just to the right of the low lying, yellow building that says Mercado de Moctezuma.

Moctezuma, as you probably know, was the ruler of the Aztecs at the time of first contact and he died on July the 1st, 1520 from being hit on the head with a rock thrown by a member of the Aztec uprising, because he was thought to be behaving in a way that was too conciliatory to the Spanish. They had, after all, massacred a large number of men, women and children in the great temple just ten days earlier. Another version of events claims that Moctezuma’s dead body–along with that of another Aztec king, Itzquauhtzin–was simply cast out of the palace once it became clear that he did not actually have the ability to stop the Aztec uprising.

At the far end of the laneway, you will emerge on Calle Oriente, just a short bit to the left of where Calle Norte 25 continues. Here there are more cafes, tiendas, stores to buy school uniforms, stationary shops, sidewalk food vendors, beauty shops and tortillerias lining both sides of the street as it leads up to the Metro. If you’ve never been on the Metro before, brace yourself. It isn’t even remotely close to the being like a ride on the TTC or whatever type of public transit you may have experienced in the States, Canada or even Europe. R. Flores Magnon, however, is a fairly mild introduction, in that it’s not very crowded. Just find your way up the stairs, buy a ticket at the booth, feed it into the turnstile, make sure the train is going in the direction you want and you are good to go, so to speak. One of the first things you will notice is that the cars are old. They were built by Bombardier, or at least some of them were, back in the late sixties and early seventies. Bombardier is the Canadian company that keeps getting its contracts cancelled by Toronto’s public transit system, due to its inability to deliver vehicles on time and to spec, but in this case, they seem to have done alright since these forty-year-old cars are still running. The next thing you might notice if you take the Metro at any time of day that is even close to rush hour is that these cars fill up fast. Mexico City’s population, if you take into account the whole metropolitan area, is 21 million, and a lot of those people use the Metro to get around. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to negotiate and I was able to make my way to the station I wanted, San Juan de Letran, without too much difficulty.

My plan had been to land myself somewhere central and just sort of wander around, but I quickly realized how easy it would be to get lost in a city where no-one speks the same language as you.  Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas is a large, bustling, multi-lane avenue, lined with shops of all kinds, and it also leads up to the Palacio de Belles Artes. You can probably figure out for yourself that this means Palace of Fine Artes.

                                      Palacio de Belles Artes

It’s an absolutely awesome building that I wished I had time to explore further, but I didn’t, so I satisfied myself with sitting in the park beside it, Almeda Central. It’s a large park, with water fountains, trees and places to sit. At the eastern end is the palacio. On the northern side is Teatro Hildago and the National Stamp Museum, while on the western end, there is an art museum with a mural by Diego Rivera. I dare say you could spend three or four days just exploring the different buildings around this park but I didn’t have much more than an hour to just sit and contemplate my surroundings. It can be a bit of a shock to the system to get on a plane in a city where the snow is a foot deep and seven hours later find oneself surrounded by trees and water fountains in a space where people are just hanging out and enjoying the warm weather.

                                               Almeda Central

I can’t say that I thought much more about it than that. Mexico City seemed a little on the inscrutable side, hard to understand and/or grasp the spirit of and I wasn’t going to have enough time to more than scratch the surface. I decided to fulfill my goal of seeking out a fish taco place I had read about on the internet.

El Pescadito is a chain of restaurants in Mexico City that only sells fish tacos. The one I was headed for is quite close the park, just one block south on Luis Moya and half a block to the right on Avenita Independencia. I really had no idea how to order because my Spanish was very limited at that point in time, but I somehow managed to muddled through and obtain a shrimp taco, a fish taco and a beer. The process, just in case you ever find yourself inside one of these places, is you order from the cook and sit down. Then someone brings the food to your table at which point you can take your tacos to the salsa table, where there are about ten different choices. Unlike most chains, you pay when you’re done. I sat looking out the window and watched a man using some kind of clay to remake the sidewalk curb, by hand. Basically, he made a cast from wood planks, poured the clay into it and then smoothed out the top with a trowel. I had the impression that he was some kind of private contractor, not a city employee, and I enjoyed watching him work while I ate my fish and shrimp tacos. Soon enough it was time to leave and begin making my way back to the hostel.

I was about to acquire a whole new appreciation for the term packed in like sardines. The trains on the Mexico City Metro become so full of people at rush hour that you find yourself pressed in on all sides and virtually unable to move. And just when you think that not one more person can press his way inside, someone manages to do just that by letting the doors close on him repeatedly until he is literally squeezed through the doorway. I began to grow concerned that I would not be able to get off at my station without bowling over several people first. Fortunately, after wracking my brain to find the Spanish version of “excuse me”, I came up with “permiso”, and that worked. People actually shifted to one side long enough for me to edge my way through them and get out the door and onto the platform of R. Flores Magnon Station.

It was later than I had thought and Barrio Moctezuma was already dark. I was a little nervous because I had read a TripAdvisor posting about my hostel which said that the poster wasn’t sure it was a safe neighbourhood to be walking alone through at night. Those feelings quickly dissipated as I realized there were still plenty of people dining in restaurants, going to the tiendas and just hanging out with friends on the street corners. Some houses had LED Christmas lights on them, giving the whole neighbour a soft glow.

                                    Barrio Moctemzuma at night.

I saw a brightly lit store called, appropriately enough, La Luz 1. It had a bottle of beer on its sign, so I reasoned that they probably sold beer and decided to pick up a few to drink on the hostel patio. After stepping inside and giving the place a quick scan, I found that the owner was stationed behind a cage of half-inch, white bars. There was a fridge to my right with beer in it, but when I tried to open the door, I found that it was locked. The man behind the counter came out, unlocked it for me and went back inside his cage. I took three Coronas to the counter with no idea what they would cost. When he told me the price, in Spanish, I found that I couldn’t understand him and gave him my notebook to write the price on, but he had a better idea. He produced a calculator and showed me the price on that. I left feeling quite pleased with myself for having successfully navigated my first purchase in a Mexican store, not including, of course, my meal at La Pescadito. That didn’t count because in that restaurant the prices are posted on the wall in large letters and numbers. In the store, I had to ask “Cuanta Cuesta” and try to understand the answer.

Back inside the hostel, I found Francisco still on duty and I asked, needlessly, if it was okay to drink beer on the patio. Many hostels in Latin America have beer for sale right on the premises, but I didn’t know that then, and in any case, Punto DF does not. He told me that of course it was okay, so I made my way out the back door and sat in the open air with nothing on my back but a short sleeved cotton, enjoying my beers and listening to the sounds of the barrio; the occasional car engine revving, a dog bark here and there and, of course, the far away sound of airplanes taking off and landing. Cognizant of the fact that I would need to leave the hostel at 7:00 AM if I was to be at the airport three hours before my flight, I stowed my knapsack in one of the lockers, crawled into the cubbyhole which contained my bed, pulled the curtain closed, got undressed and quickly fell asleep.

            Approaching Benito Juarez Airport early the next morning.

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To purchase Going to Guatemala as an instant download PDF, click here.

To visit Lost City Press, click here.

To continue to Part II, click here.

[meghanhalpin]

Content Design

Content is anything you create/consume/interact with.

What do users/people actually need from my portfolio? In order for me to present myself/get a job.

WANT V NEED; If someone is in debt, they are going to want a quick, simple solution. But what they need is a series of simple, manageable steps to help get them out of debt. This is what they need but not what they want.

Content can be anything. A combination of many forms could be what users need.

About me page in portfolio; could it be a video? A gif?

BOOK RECOMMENDATION; Content Design By Sarah Richards. Sarah worked on the .GOV website which is amazing looking now but when she started it had 30,000+ pages. So she printed all the pages out, laid them all out and the team walked about deciding what pages were essential and what weren’t. She paid a lot of attention not only to the content itself but also the way people talk about the content. Eg; people tend to use the word doctor as opposed to GP. Intuitive content design in action.

It’s important to put hours into the development of the content of your website. Content needs to be easy to find/use/consume.

Gazillions of webpages on the internet. Unless you’re incredibly specialised ie a government website, there are going to be competitors. You need to develop smart content. Design entrepreneur vs designer? Innovator or disruptor? We don’t want more content, we need smarter content.

Push vs pull content

Trust

Ease of use

PUSH CONTENT; look at this new iPhone, buy it! Ie bus stops, it’s THERE PULL CONTENT; This cool new phone makes your life easier and puts the entire world in your pocket, and it’s only £500. Pull content is you pulling it towards yourself ie searching things or following links etc.

Turning push content into pull content is an important skill. Your content needs to standout. Any push content can be turned into pull content, all you need to know is what your audience wants to see.

Why are we creating portfolios? MONEY. Good work will get you more work! Kyle ranks this as the most important thing. Portfolios should illustrate your work, your skills and how to contact you!! A bit about who you are is very good also.

People will pay more to use a good product. If a website is easier to use people are more likely to use it, even if the service is more expensive than a more difficult to use website. You need to make sure your website works and they can find your content. Your website has to be really good because employers KNOW what they’re looking for and they know what you’re talking about.

BRIEF; Portfolio Site and Content Strategy Example; Garry’s website. 3 portfolio items minimum.

Each portfolio piece should have its own page and case study; pics and exploration of the brief and process etc. Link blog through case studies? Words and images; prototype, video! It’s up to you!! App prototypes in invasion etc

CONTENT AUDIT; If you’re working on any kind of redesign project you’ll have to do a content audit Compiling all the content into a big list. Full content inventory

What are they used for? The list of content will come in handy at various stages of the project. If you’re redoing the information architecture you’ll come back to it again and again. It will give you a better idea of the content that you already have. Pre-courser to content analysis.

What to include Nav title Page name URL Comments Content hierarch

Content type Basic description of content; brief reminder. Topics, tags or categories; meta data Attached files; how many and type Related; links, related links Availability desktop, mobile, app? Numbering system; index

http://tinyurl.com/ContentAudit1234

Page is whole number Items within page are decimals

Site map Desc/comments

Tobias Van Schneider An incredible beard; the moustache work is a thing of beauty. First page is who is and what he does. Semplice, GOOGLE THIS Latest instagrams in the html not a link, a showcase. He doesn’t demonstrate much work because he’s working for other companies but his website is still slick.

Lefft (Paddy Donnelly) Illustrator, blogs are individual to the project he creates. Newsletter, styles his articles very well, about him page, links used. Colour changes of text to highlight. Paddy exhibits his work straightaway. Cloud whale is amazing.

Both he and Tobias have their own newsletters, Tobias also has a podcast. CONTENT EVERYWHERE. A newsletter could even be things you’ve found on the internet this week, or facts you learned or new words you heard etc.

Wenizhou Simple grid but exhibits her work immediately, and it’s lit. Little animations that are easy to do. When you click on each piece of work it talks about the project, this is what we need to. Her process is amazing.

Shantell Martin Unreal, I love her. Her website and the way she’s used photography is amazing. Detailed discussion of each piece within the page and how she arrived at the end product. Lots of photos. Website is fluid as heck. Worked with Kendrick.

John Hicks Big headers and pieces that take up the whole screen. Lots of content without over crowding. Then case studies which are very important. You can talk about what was easy and also what obstacles you encountered as well. Downloadables? Goodies.

Brian Holf Home page is one portfolio item but it changes the odd time, keeps the site fresh, not the same viewpoint every time. You can then go into the case study from the piece, takes you to an individual page. Contact deeds at the bottom along with an “All Work” button.

Case studies are so important! Four case studies looks far better than four finished pieces.

Xavier Cusso, Toy Fight, Cédric Pierra <- research in own time.

HAMBURGER MENUS ARE FOR MOBILE

SITEMAP YOUR OWN SITE

A sitemap is a planning tool, structure, navigation, page hierarchy, plan logical presentation to users, visualise user paths.

Marking algorithm has changed; 2nd year worth 30% and final year is 70%. Both new and existing algorithms are going to be used and we will receive whichever gives the best outcome. If you want to do a masters you need a 2:2 or a first. Grades count, don’t faff about!

Fathom talk, they’re offering placements. In next Thursday afternoon. Russell in the following Thursday. recruit.ulster.ac.uk lists all placement opps.

Apply for jobs even if you’re not sure!! Check linkedin about that Disney placement. Santander SME.

CONTENT DISCOVERY AND RESEARCH Discovery is an important process! Not just dribbble. Prototyping, attempting to build so you can see what works and what makes sense. Problem solving. Not all looking at computers, a lot of it is discussion. Understand the problem. Understanding comes from discussion. Discovery helps you discover your audience, what you think you want, what you need, when you should publish that and the channels in which to do that. Using discovery to bring people with you. Sometimes you have to sell things to people. Content discovery as a team is a great way for everyone to be involved at an early stage and dissolve confrontations etc. Everyone has a chance to share. Everyone can see the same data or idea. Helps build a collective understanding and appreciation.

Figure out who your audience really are, what they want from you and how to speak with them. You need to know all this before you write a single word.

What can you do for them? What is your skillset? What have you done and how did you do it? Understand beforehand. Your audience are human beings as well. Writing good content with real human language is what gets you ranked on search engines etc. You’re writing good content for humans.

Sometimes the audience you think you want isn’t the audience you’re actually creating content for. Finding your audiences vocabulary. What vocabulary are you using? What words are your audience using? Search data = the words people use. Google trends for example.

Web designer is OUT. App design is IN. Content strategist is solidly known. UX design is on the rise.

Using web analytics and metrics. Login to your gmail and it starts working, telling you how long people spend on your site etc etc More vocabulary, what your readers want to know most, their mental models. Unique visits. Bounce rate. How long people spend on your page; time spend there.

Digital language and spoken language. Absence of body language. You don’t put search terms into google the way you’d ask a friend. Language patterns, common usage.

Narrow it down; what do you do? Can you do it? How can I contact you?

Doing discovery and research means you’re better informed and better equipped to start tackling the content design problem.

Write the content for your portfolio in plain html - no styles. Focus on the content. Write it in markdown.

Include images, pages and links as well if you wanna. Case studies. Home page and one case study as a minimum.

Content Audit

Look at what heroes are doing

Research and Discovery; google trends

Site map - in illustrator

Start to write your content for your website in HTML

STATIC AND DYNAMIC CONTENT What is a static sitE? Fixed content written in html Each page written separately as it is o the web Every web page saved separately Any changes need to go into the separate files

Advantages Easy to develop Cheap to develop Cheap to host

Disadvantages IDK KYLE MOVED THE SLIDE

Dynamic side Construction is controlled by an application server processed by server side scripts

Webpages not coded and saved separately Point 2 Point 3

Main difference is that the layout can be changed quite quickly.

Advantages Much more functional Easy to update Easier to add new content Good for large websites

Disadvantages More difficult to develop Requires you to understand databases

What is a Cms Content Managed System Bro. What is it? Allows users to manage content Separate content from structure Versioning of post content Manage media Manage content grouping Easy to use Manage any time/type of content.

FLAT FILE SITES A hybrid of both? Jekyll is a ruby based parsing engine that generates sites based on what is put into it. It’s main components are yams, liquid and markdown. YAML Aint Markup language. Liquid is ruby based?

Jekyll gives you a lot of freedom as a designer because you can build whatever you want. But it is also angry emoji, huff puff emoji. sO INSTEAD.

Kirby, file based CMS east to setup, easy to use, flexible as an Olympic gymnast. You gotta build a website with Kirby. getkirby dot com. You can use it for free until it comes to hosting. We are gonna use it for either portfolio or elements!