Nader Shureih
Editor in Chief
As a market researcher with the federal government, Nader's energies are focused on the good of the public - looking at the Canadian cultural and social landscape for the purpose of developing stronger ties between and among Canadians.
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What do you call a Man with no Arms and no Legs hanging on your Wall?
Posted by admin | May 27th, 2009
Picking out art for the home is a tough thing. At least, it is for me. My wife and I have had conversations, discussions, spats, talks and deliberations over what to do for wall art.
The whole decorative ornament thing, we’ve figured it out. We (luckily) have very similar taste. And we’re both anal. So our pieces always match.
But when wall art is concerned, there are so many things to consider – theme, colour, texture, size, content… the list goes on.
I personally try to bring it back to basics. What suits my character? My person? I refer you to my first blog entry – we tend to make our homes our personal spaces, so that guests and visitors are oriented as to the space they have entered. Who we are is reflected in how we live.
That’s why I have some trouble with just using one of the various factors in choosing art for my home. Colour alone, even if it coordinates with the rest of the home, isn’t enough to make it work. Nor is texture, or any other variable on its own.
See, the thing is, art is a tough thing to define. My parents have an ornate Persian rug hanging on their wall, a violent blue background with decorative floral elements in various colours, which do not necessarily adhere to the soft pastel decor of the rest of the room. But it works, because it is indicative of the personality of their home.
In my many, many searches online for wall art, I’ve come across a few sites that have great stuff, if not at least offer a point of inspiration from which to refine one’s search.
One of my current projects is the result of finding this gem of a site (disclaimer: don’t leave any mean comments because of the name. I didn’t choose it!): The Rasterbator. For those who are looking for large scale art at a fraction of the price that it would cost to buy it retail, this dandy piece of FREE software is perfect. Pick any image, upload it into the Rasterbator, and the software rasterizes the image and sends it back to you in printable PDF format (on 8.5*11 sheets) for you to print out and assemble. The kicker: you can create an image up to 20 metres in size.
I’ll take a picture of my print and post it when it’s done.
I also want to point out an interesting approach to wall art by an Alberta couple, called Inspirations. These guys came up with a pretty cool idea. Both designers by trade, they took a novel approach to both material and the concept of “art”. Here, you can choose from a variety of inspirational quotes in vinyl that can be adhered to your wall and taken off in minutes. They look pretty damn clean too. And I love that you can create your own – check the site out. It’s a pretty cool idea. One of my favourite pieces was a wall mural – a black and white silhouette of palm trees.
Ok, I’m famished. Time for a martini.
A Man’s home is his Castle
Posted by admin | May 4th, 2009
The home has taken on a tremendous number of different forms. From cave dwellings to the mud huts of villages in North Africa, to urban apartments in city centres, to the suburban developments of the late 20th century, homes have been a key indicator of their socio-economic times.
None, however, have quite so much presence as those least humble of homes – medieval castles. These tremendous structures were designed not just to shelter, but to protect, to survey, and to dominate their landscapes.
The point behind these structures was simple – They were designed to say “I own you” to the serfs, or peasants, occupying the surrounding farmland. Built by rulers to protect their territories, they also made very clear to onlookers that there was power not just in the walls, but behind them as well.
Take a look at what is arguably one of the most famous castles in the Western world, Windsor Castle in England. This building is, without exaggeration, enormous. Its floor area alone, not including the gardens, is 484,000 square feet. Granted, this is the result of about 900 years’ worth of renovations. It’s actually pretty interesting, because you can follow the country’s history by the types of renovations and constructions that took place at the castle. When at peace, grand apartments and wings were added. When at war, it was more heavily fortified.
In the East, castles took on a slightly less ominous and imposing position, although, ironically, they were usually originally conceived primarily as fortresses. Himeji Castle in Japan is the most popular in the country. This complex is comprised of 83 wooden buildings. Huge stone walls jut out of the mountain top on to which the structure is nestled, a typical building approach to fortresses. It even came with stone dropping holes – large holes built into the high points of the foundation from which protectors of the castle could drop huge boulders onto the oncoming forces. The K.I.S.S. principle at its best, if you ask me.
One of the coolest things about Himeji though, is something I read in Wikipedia:
“One of Himeji’s most important defensive elements, and perhaps its most famous, is the confusing maze of paths leading to the main keep. The gates, baileys, and outer walls of the complex are organized so as to cause an approaching force to travel in a spiral pattern around the castle on their way into the keep, facing many dead ends. This allowed the intruders to be watched and fired upon from the keep during their entire approach.”
Pretty cool, huh?
The article goes on to say, “However, Himeji was never attacked in this manner, and so the system remains untested.”
Anti-climactic, I realize.
I, Robot
Posted by admin | March 16th, 2009
I remember this moment of realization about 5 years ago. I was on the train, on my way to Montreal, text messaging a Belarusian friend whom I met in university. As we were texting, she herself was on a train, travelling from Minsk to Warsaw. I remember thinking how wild it was that not even 5 years earlier this was not even a remote possibility (again with the puns!). We were having a real-time conversation, keeping each other company as we each travelled to our respective destinations. The realization was that we never need to be alone again.
That was in 2003. Now I have a Blackberry. I have real-time GPS on this thing. Along with the option to download and upload to the Web, Tweet, post Facebook photos, take video footage of my fat cat lying on her back in the middle of the dining room floor, listen to one of my 500 MP3s, and even do some minor video editing. Imagine that. I can stylize my video footage on my mobile device as I’m standing in line at the bar to go to the bathroom. Is that really necessary? Discuss amongst yourselves.
And now, Google has something else to add to the mix – Google Latitude – a location sharing application that allows you and your friends to find each others’ locations at any given moment using your mobile devices.
Some will argue that mobile technology is running amok. Others will defend its virtues as if it were a holy war. What I’m interested in is how all this technology will be used in the homes of the future.
We already see new homes with built-in networks for Internet access. No more running of 50’ or 100’ Ethernet cables to connect your PCs in a network. High quality, low-cost speakers are becoming more and more available. Some of the more opulent homes are being built with speakers hidden in the walls, equipped with sensors that follow you from room to room, turning speakers on and off as you make your way through your home. We have environmentally friendly fireplaces (some are so beautiful they make me cry) available to us now, burning fuels that leave no carbon-based residue. And the flame is controlled, all the time.
I currently am the lazy owner of a Logitech Harmony “smart remote”. Using a USB cable, I type in all the model numbers of all my electronic gadgets on the Harmony Website, and the Harmony downloads the software necessary to control all of them, together. I now need to push one “Activity” button, and my TV switches to the correct video channel, my receiver goes to the DVD channel and my DVD player turns on and begins playing my movie. Give me convenience, or give me death!
And you can even get built-in docking stations for your I-Phone or I-Pod. A ‘handy’ evolution to the home theatre?
One of the craziest pieces of technology I’ve come across so far is something that the technology consulting firm Accenture is working on. It’s called the Persuasive Mirror. A BBC Technology article says it “manipulates images of a person in real time depending on what they have been doing all day… it could be used to encourage people to live healthier lives by showing what would happen to their appearance if they took no exercise and did not watch what they ate”.
Incidentally, have any of you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray?
Technology such as the Persuasive Mirror is designed with the ageing population in mind. Apparently, by 2050, we’re talking about a good 20% of the world’s population being over 60 (and upwards of 33% in the developed world). But there are also more convenient and “easy living” approaches to technology coming to the newest home near you. For example, lights that switch on and off as you enter and leave the room, controlled by mobile touch pads that connect all your electronic devices (check out Logitech’s other remotes), and some devices that, until recently, were not even remotely electronic, like curtains.
One last cool thing for the millions of us who don’t like to vacuum: the Roomba.
Personally, this is what I’m waiting for…
The Origins of Home
Posted by admin | March 16th, 2009
I’ve been reading a book on the history of salt, called, appropriately, Salt: A World History. Following the path of civilization through a single commodity, and one as important as salt (it’s surprisingly important – consider it from the perspective of how important coffee is as a traded commodity now), provides an absolutely fascinating, and unifying, lens through which to view world history.
In the book, Mark Kurlansky, the author, does this very cool thing by embedding the etymology (the origins of words) of the word throughout the book. For example, Salzburg, that beautiful Austrian city, means Salt Town. The words salami (derivative of the Latin term to salt), salary (comes from the fact that Roman soldiers were paid in salt), salad (meaning salted), are all rooted in this substance.
It got me thinking about the word home and its root, so I did some digging (forgive the pun).
Apparently, the word home has its roots in Old English, which is fair enough. It means private dwelling. It started off as hom, hem or hum, and evolved with the language, as many words do.
A quick thought experiment and we find similarities in the word home, and suffixes like ham, as in Nottingham. The suffix ham (no connection to the animal), comes from Old French, which translates to village, or town, hence the word hamlet (the –let diminutive indicating a smaller town or village), which, if you think about it a little, gives the Shakespeare classic another dimension. Ham was derived from another Old French word, hanter, which means to frequent, and that evolved into the word haunt.
The Germanic languages, which have their roots in Indo-European tongues (remnants of the Asian invasion of Eastern Europe during the Bronze Age), are the source of a lot of French that did not come from Latin. I figure that’s because of the issues between the Gauls and the Romans a couple of millennia ago, but I didn’t research this, so don’t quote me. Also, trade, I’m sure, played heavily into the exchange of terms and words between cultures.
Now, in the Germanic tongues, as roots for the Old French terms above, were words like the German heim (which comes from the proto-Germanic khaim, of Yiddish origins) and the Dutch word hame, which roughly translates to “covering”. Also, the word heim bears similarities to the Arabic word for tent – ةخيم – which is pronounced kheime, and also happens to be derived from the Yiddish word khaim, meaning privacy.
What stood out as really interesting to me is that the word home comes, then, from roots both in community (ham) and in privacy (khaim). Consider that?! Our intuitive sense of what a home means – our sanctuary and our communal gathering place for friends and family, is all embodied in the 2000 + year history of the word’s evolution.
It’s also a little humbling to see how this one word incorporates the influence of at least 5 distinct world cultures. Kind of makes the entire world feel like a hamlet – a global village, if you will.
Buying New
Posted by admin | January 11th, 2009
Walking down Murray St. in the Byward Market in the early morning can lead to a caloric revolution. Le Boulanger Francais’s fresh breads are enough to make you reconsider that low-carb diet.
Or maybe a fresh cup of coffee from I Deal Coffee on Dalhousie – freshly roasted, freshly brewed…
I’ve been thinking about the concept of “the new” since I put on a new coat of paint in my place. The new does something to a person. There’s pride attached to it. You get a sense of achievement because you’ve renewed something old, or acquired something that is reflective of the value you’ve placed on this new thing.
Welcome to the first NHA blog post
Posted by admin | January 5th, 2009
So here I am, on my couch, chillin’ like a villain, writing my first NHA blog. In style, I might add…
The dimmer switch for the spot lights is on half-way – what a great way to set the mood. Lighting can be a magnificent ally.
My cat is hanging by my side. She’s actually getting in the way of my typing out this entry. She’s awesome though. She taught me how to chill.
The campy (circa 1963) faux-fireplace that we found at Aunt Olive’s, in one of Ottawa’s more eclectic neighbourhoods, Centretown, is on - the garland is rotating behind the fake translucent logs, giving the effect of smoke shadows against the back of the orange cone. The kitsch factor is so high in this thing it should have a following.
How To Find A New Home in Ottawa: Our Top 3 Resources Online
Posted by admin | November 9th, 2008
It’s somewhat ironic that in the three months of this blog’s life so far, we’ve looked at ways to do all sorts of things using online tools and resources… but we’ve yet to talk about different ways to use the internet to find a new home, which is our bread and butter!
The opinions and positions expressed in any blogs, wiki's and comments in the above links do not necessarily reflect those of nha, its partners, members or users.