Category Archives: media

Flash animated comic strips

Posted on July 24, 2008 | 3 comments

Years ago I was given a hard copy of this book of comic strips, Get Your War On, which was debuted by 23/6 in animation yesterday. [Obviously my embedding skills are currently on the lower end of the learning curve. Someone help, I tried readjusting the width and height in the html, but it cropped the video rather than resizing it.]

One of the projects I’m working on within the Vietnamese Community Outreach efforts of the Asian Liver Center is a collaboration with Single Asian Female to introduce the recurring subject of hepatitis B in her comic strips. We are working to syndicate the Single Asian Female comic in Vietnamese newspapers, but now, in addition, this would be a novel way to present it online and on our YouTube nonprofit channel (soon to be up and running).

By the way, John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, was the first to work with Flash as a cartoon medium. And, by the way, he did my portrait.

3 Comments

Posted in Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, communications, media, PSA, technology, vietnamese

Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 2 comments

This article was shared with me this morning via hard copy. I looked for it in the health section of nytimes.com, but eventually had to resort to a search — it resided in the Business section. Discussion to come after I read and digest the it.

Jonathan Player for The New York Times

2 Comments

Posted in communications, media, public health

Noncommercial songs for PSAs or otherwise health promotional videos

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 2 comments

I’m in the middle of creating a short, generic, multi-use video documenting the Asian Liver Center‘s LiveRight Run 2008 tailored towards the Vietnamese population. I’ve been mulling for a legal approach for music for my short clip and had settled upon recruiting the Pizookies to create a short jam to match the mood of this piece (something akin to Dashboard Confessional’s “Don’t Wait”). Today a delve into the concept and culture of open source and the Creative Commons licensing serendipitously presented another solution of entering “noncommercial songs” into a search engine (as demonstrated on their site):


Up until this moment, I had only knowledge of a database of royalty-free loops.

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Posted in Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, media, open source, PSA, public health

Khoi Vinh vs. Better Design

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 3 comments

In my attempt to assemble a coalition on behalf of the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University against the hepatitis B — and consequential liver cancer — disparity that the Vietnamese population faces, I was presented with the fact that the design director of nytimes.com is none-other than a Vietnamese brother, Khoi Vinh.

I’ve always rhetorically begged the question: does Vietnamese=poor design? Is it unavoidable and messy because of all the diacritics? Cases in point:

  • Viet Tribune: one of the big Vietnamese media giants of California.
  • Miss Vietnam USA: site for the Vietnamese beauty pageant … which now doesn’t even work. Touché.
  • Lowes: a corporate site marketed towards Vietnamese

In wanting to effectively communicate with the Vietnamese community at large, I need to know these things. And if this is how it’s done — if this is what they respond to, then I guess it makes my job easier.

Khoi / subtraction.com’s contents are producted under Creative Commons licensing … which I think coincidentally tied in with my current wonderings about open source.

What is open source … something to explore in another posting.

3 Comments

Posted in design, hepatitis b, media, open source, vietnamese