Pippa Buchanan - Photo by Mark Niehus

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller

Hi, I'm Pippa, an Australian living in Berlin, Germany.
I'm passionate about learning, particularly lifelong and self-organised learning styles. I currently work as an educator and developer of learning related technologies.
I make things such as clothes and at least one small boat and cook, eat and read. I like stories. I also like maps, hot cups of tea with milk, Arnott's Western Australian gingernut biscuits, well written songs and plants.

Archive for May, 2009

California by FBZ

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

, originally uploaded by .

Fabienne (aka FBZ) of fabienne.us and HardHack (May 28, 29, @ C-Base) drew a map of California for the nottoscale project.  The first Berlin Geek Picnic was rained out as you can see by the water stains on the map FBZ drew.

from on .

First Video Blog…

Monday, May 25th, 2009

As part of my 100 Things I Want To Learn list I’ve made my first video blog post. I learnt how to export from iMovie and how to wait patiently while videos compress, get uploaded and then converted by Vimeo. So I guess I did learn more about 64. Video recording and editing to the level required for good vodcasting

from on .

Self-centered personal blogging ahoy!

I’m playing with my gifted video camera and the idea of different levels of honesty, intimacy and immediacy afforded by edited text and unedited video.

Also, I’m in the middle of trying to work out what happens next in my crazy life. Writing hasn’t worked so far. Maybe talking to an inanimate object will help?

So anyway the challenge is to know (with more certainty) by August, what I do next in my life. I’m not sure if I make much sense in the video.

Visitors!

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I am having a marvellous time.

This week I’m overwhelmed with visits by half a dozen lovely people primarily from Adelaide band . It’s an absolute pleasure to be showing the first arrivals, Matt and Elizabeth around my new city.

I’m almost shaking with excitement for Thursday when some of my most absolute favourite people in the entire world come to visit. I think I’ll need to visit some more fotoautomats so that I can record their visits too!

These are the distances between us

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

If you subscribe to Fighting Tiger’s RSS feed you may have noticed several hand drawn maps appear in the stream. They’re part of a project I’m calling Not To Scale. I’m currently just collecting and blogging low-quality scans of the maps that friends and strangers draw me, but long-term I’d like to collate them into an electronic map.

I find that it’s far easier moving forward with nottoscale than it is working on the ideas I have for conceptual projects more specifically sited around friendship. Maybe nottoscale is easier because it is an unplanned project that’s worked its way into my headspace, rather than an idea which grows in importance and angst before I’ve even done the first sketch.

It’s also good for me that Not To Scale requires involvement with other people. Even though I can appear to be a very social person once I’m actually out of the apartment, it sometimes takes a lot of effort to venture out into the world. So much thinking I do is about other people, how they interact with each other, what I could do with them and the projects we could collaborate on, but I don’t seem to be very good at putting those ideas into action by sharing them with other people.

With Not To Scale, all I need from a person is a map. At its most basic level, all I need is pen or paper. Simple!

Though, I love the stories that people tell while they’re drawing maps, the added information that is lost in a drawing through limited cartographical skills and the restriction of pen and paper. If I have a camera or video camera to hand then I can pull that out to record the stories that are told during the map creation.

Actually, until recently I didn’t have a video camera of my own, but a good friend Pete Hindle generously gave me an old miniDV cam to record maps with. Thanks Pete!

I’m grateful for all my map creators so far, but I’d like to say special thanks to Juho and Marc who’ve emailed me some maps of Finland, Japan and the UK! Danke! Kiitos, Dom Arigato!

Finland by Juho

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

, originally uploaded by .

Juho and I met on a train from Kirkonummi around Juhannus (Mid summer) when I first lived in Finland.

I’d only lived in Finland for about 2 weeks but we already had mutual friends. And we both kept blogs.

Mine was about heartbreak and his was about wine.

We’ve seen each other only a couple of times since, but Juho was kind enough to email me this photographed map of Finland.

Japan by Marc

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

, originally uploaded by .

Marc and I are internet friends. We’ve never met in person – he currently lives in Tokyo and I currently live in Berlin.

He drew a couple of maps which he photographed and emailed to me.

Britain by Marc

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

, originally uploaded by .

Marc and I are internet friends. We’ve never met in person – he currently lives in Tokyo and I currently live in Berlin.

He drew me a couple of maps the other day which he photographed for me.

He included Sunderland but not Newcastle, High Wycombe but not for example, Cardiff.