Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

24 April 2011

Birthday Statistics 2011

Filed under: Reflection — Tags: , , — Ben @ 10:12 pm

Once again, I have compiled statistics of the messages I received for my birthday this year.

Birthday messages (change from last year)
Facebook messages – 64 (-1)
Face to face greets – 4 (0)
Text messages – 1 (0)
Phone calls – 1 (+1)
Tweets – 0 (-1)

Frequency of Facebook messages vs. Time (i.e. when was the message posted)

Use of initials (mine or otherwise) – 20
Average length (words): 4.7
Facebook email lag – none

Gender split of Facebook messages
Male – 38
Female – 26

Observations
It is easier and more interesting this year because there is data to compare with!

I expected a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) again. The histogram shows something resembling a normal distribution, with a slight right skew, and a spike at hour 20 (8pm).

The two posts at 1am (AEST) show something different was happening compared to last year. From the raw data, one post was make in Hong Kong (where it would have been 11pm) and the other I believe was made as a result of being awake for a night-shift job.

The spike at 8pm could be due to people checking Facebook before a night out.

There is a small group of friends who have posted birthday messages in both 2010 and 2011. This subset tends to have known me for longer than others. There are also people (who I consider to be good friends with) that have not posted messages at all. This isn’t a bad thing.

Gender Split
This year is the first that gender has been analysed. I predicted an even split of male to female, but the graph is self explanatory.

Initials
This year I have counted the number of people who used any initials. This will be the count methodology for the future.

What’s interesting is that my standard birthday greeting can be transformed to a birthday message for me with the removal of the exclamation mark.

In some cases, ‘Happy Birthday’ was abbreviated to ‘HB’, and thus shows symmetry with my initials (BH). Although I usually frown upon this method of greeting, in the interests of symmetry and brevity I have accepted it.

Conclusion
Thank you for your messages!

20 January 2011

Review: LIVE at Sydney Festival 2011

Filed under: Arts,review — Tags: , , , , , , — Ben @ 8:00 am

The concept for LIVE seems so simple: musicians, black and white, solo performance. But after viewing a few of the 20 performances on show, you’ll realise that there is more behind what you see.

LIVE is a project by Jasmin Tarasin to attempt to study ‘the art of performing’. I have to agree that large-scale performances that musicians do these days have lost their ‘intimacy’, and Tarasin does well to bring us right up close to these artists. Showing the performances in black and white removes the distraction of key elements of a performance such as their dress, and instruments.

The performance that represented Tarasin’s vision the best was that of Julian Hamilton, one half of The Presets. Hamilton’s performance had no instrumentation, so all you could focus on was his singing voice. His vocal part from ‘People’ is vastly different to that on the album recording, and it shows the song from another perspective.

By watching long enough, the subtle differences between performers are apparent, and interesting to watch. At one stage, three guitarists were pictured side-by-side. Each had a different way of playing their guitar. You could notice the positioning of the guitar, and their style of playing.

LIVE is a rather inexpensive way of seeing 20 songs from 20 different artists. I would highly recommend you to see it before it closes this weekend.

LIVE is open until January 23, at the lower part of Sydney Town Hall. Tickets are $15/$12.

PS: I’m volunteering at LIVE handing out headphones on the 23rd between 5pm and 7:30pm. Come visit!

3 January 2011

What’s in Store for 2011

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , , — Ben @ 10:19 pm

I hope you all had a wonderful festive season and New Year celebrations.

In the days before and after January 1, many people make New Year’s resolutions to achieve over the course of the year. Some are achieved, others not. However the chances of succeeding are greater if you take a look back at what you tried to achieve in the previous year.

I’d like to share with you what were my goals in 2010 and what they will be in 2011.

The first goal was to work hard enough in order to successfully transfer from Macquarie to UNSW. I wrote about this in detail in my previous post. I’ll know the result when the offers are released on January 19.

2010 introduced university life after 13 years of primary and secondary education, so obviously the challenge was to ‘get used to it’. I’m happy to say that I’ve done that.

University life is an opportunity to make new friends and associates. I called this ‘making connections’, because the substance of the friendship is what is most important to me. For example, knowing a person who has knowledge of and/or associations with entities that may come in handy in the future is a connection worth making. The goal was to make as many useful connections during the year, assuming I would only be at Macquarie for one year. I’m happy to say that I’ve done that.

Thus, 2011 will be about preserving these connections, as well as making new ones at UNSW (assuming I get in). What I also want to do is to ‘reconnect’ with those who I have not spoken to or seen in 2010. I think working hard at uni (or my attitude to social life) has deprived me of opportunities to do this.

Many New Year’s resolutions involve starting a personal project, such as losing weight or quitting smoking. These projects are easily delayed by claiming that other commitments took up the time needed to start. And that is exactly what happened with my ‘arts blog’ project, of which I’ve written about here before. I spent 2010 exploring the arts scene in Sydney, but most of what I saw was ‘mainstream’. Probably getting the plan in writing would be more convincing that to have it swimming in my head. I must keep at this in 2011, and start soon.

The other thing that could do with a bit more TLC is this blog. I say this every year without substance, with nothing planned. It’s becoming a bad habit, frankly. At least improving the frequency of posting would be a start…

And finally something a bit out there. This year I want to continue to be inspired you. Maybe I’ll leave you to think about that.

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