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First breath.
At 1:23 PM, I was born to Miriam Hsia, a director of photography, and Benjamin Schonzeit, an artist. So to speak, art is in my blood. -
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First Family Computer: Macintosh Plus.
Our first computer was the Macintosh Plus. I have memories of playing 'Pong' and 'Tanks' on the tiny black and white screen. It was also the beginning of a lifetime as a mac user. -
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Growing up in artist's loft in SoHo.
I grew up in a loft in SoHo, a neighborhood which was predominatly inhabited by artists. I spent my childhood running around my dad's studio and being brought along to photo shoots with my mother. They made a point to bring me to museums at a young age. My favorite part were the gift shops as the art didn't interest me. In my mind, the art in museums wasn't special, it was like what we had at home. At home, my father still paints. However, he now shoots digital and has a digital projector. -
First Art Exhibition: The Finger Painting Prodigy
Being the little prodigy that I was, I had a small art exhbition of my paintings in the window of a local bank. It was the beginning, and also the end, of my art career. -
Ate Playdoh for the first time.
Decided it was better used for sculptures. -
Cable Television enters the Schonzeit household.
I quickly became addicted, watching hours of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Before we had cable, VHS tapes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my obsession. -
First set of professional colored pencils.
My father bought me a set of professional colored pencils which I still use to this day. In my mind, these pencils were no different than standard Crayola's except there happened to be many more colors. I quickly ran through the peach skin-colored pencil. While the pencils did not lead to me becoming a particularly good sketch artist, I do believe that these pencils helped me develop an aesthetic awareness for color. -
First Video Game System: Sega Genesis.
Sonic the Hedgehog soon came to dominate my life. I also played a 'Simpsons' video game but was not a huge fan of the TV series at the time. The Sega Genesis -
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Art Classes.
The end of middle school also marked the end of art classes. My artist father was clearly disappointed. Although I stopped taking art classes, I began to focus more on general aesthetics and purposeful design. -
Began using Sculpey clay.
I graduated from using Playdoh to using Sculpey, which came in more colors and could be made hard by heating it. I didn't even think about eating it this time. -
Given an N64 for Christmas.
This was #1 on my Christmas list as I'm sure it was for other children of my generation. My half-brother (who is 16 years older than I am) and I would play Mariokart for hours on end. I'd like to say that it strengthened our relationship but in reality it just made him think I was a little brat. Largely because I never let him win once. -
Realize that my dad's art is actually pretty cool.
Up until this point, I sort of assumed that everyone's dad could do this. Specifically, I remember seeing a painting my dad had done of flowers on a background of Chinese calligraphy. I had just begun to study Chinese in middle school and realized that he had the ability to paint these Chinese characters as if he'd mastered Chinese. Appreciating my father's art on a technical level was the first step toward's appreciating in on an artistic level as well. -
Given a Game Boy Pocket.
This was largely used to play Pokemon on. Though I do remember in particular playing Gameboy Camera which had a front facing camera so that you could 'place' yourself in the game. -
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Second Family Computer: Power Mac G4.
The computer was an enormous machine and extremely powerful for its time. I remember the monitor resembling a killer whale. I mainly used this machine to IM and browse the web on Netscape. -
Learned how to use Adobe Photoshop.
My school offered an after-school workshop on how to use photoshop. My mother, a photo director, registered me for the class. I loved playing with the different filters, and would utilize the 'chrome' filter for just about anything. At the time, I just thought of Photoshop as another toy. It wouldn't be until I got to college that I really started exploring what was capable with the program. -
Bought baseball cards off of eBay.
I grew up in the heart of a very busy shopping district in downtown Manhattan. As a result, most things I wanted or needed to buy were typically within a few blocks of my house. Growing up, I'd buy baseball cards at a shop a few blocks away. However, as real estate prices increased in the neighborhood, the two remaining card and hobby shops went under. I then turned to eBay and found it to be exciting but ultimately not for me. -
First E-mail Address.
My parents were AOL subscribers and I had grown accustomed to using my father's AOL account. Eventually, I decided to make my own account, using a nickname I was given by my fouth grade teacher. Later that year, I remember a friend of mine in class asking me what my screenname was. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it was let alone if I had one. Only later, when my uncle IM'ed me while logged in as my father did I figure it out. -
First cellphone.
On 9/11, phone service throughout New York City went down. Knowing my father always left his AOL account open, I e-mailed him saying what was happening and he responded saying my mother was walking down from her office to come pick me up. A few days afterwards, we went to go get my first cell phone. Only some of my friends had a phone at the time and I don't even think I had text messaging, so I didn't use it all that much. However, I do recall being disappointed in the games on the phone. -
First personal computer.
Given my first personal computer, a Dell Inspire 8100 laptop, for Christmas. In spite of my parents telling me otherwise, I wanted a PC to play games like Diablo and Starcraft on. -
Download first songs off of Kazaa.
First time I broke the law also. But hey, everyone was doing it and the songs were 'free'. I soon stopped buying CD's thereafter. -
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My first blog: Firetrky.
On a whim one day I decided to start a blog. I honestly wasn't really sure what to do with it at the time and didn't foresee how popular blogging was going to become. I wrote on an almost daily basis, knowing that there was a small audience but not really paying much attention to the consequences of what I was writing. If you would like to see my blog or how I wrote as a fourteen year old boy, please visit: http://firetrky.blogspot.com -
My high school switches over to Smart Boards.
During my sophomore year, a number of my teachers began using Smart Boards. This meant learning from Powerpoints and Flash animations which was time effective but ultimately did not translate as well into learning for me. -
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Second Personal Computer: iMac G5
I was grossly in love with this machine when I first got it. It's been extremely reliable and is still running to this day. This is also the first computer I really began designing on and which I did not use for gaming. -
First iPod.
I was a little bit late to the iPod scene, having used a 128KB Real Player for a couple years prior. The interface with the iPod was stellar. Instead of having to click through each individual song, I could browse through my entire library. -
Joined facebook.
I only joined facebook after I had graduated from high school. I felt it unnecessary to join before then. I soon became addicted. -
Canon Powershot SD700IS
I was given a canon powershot as a graduation gift. The image stabilization function was a huge step up from my mom's canon elph. -
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Head off to Middlebury College.
I was shocked at the lack of wireless across campus and frustrated with Webmail's login procedure. I also lamented the dominance of PC's on campus but am glad to see more Macs popping up around campus. Being in Vermont and not watching television or reading magazines, I felt extremely removed from popular culture. Deciding on a Film & Media Culture major has helped but I still feel very much behind the times when I return home. -
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Interned with UDirect NYC.
As an intern with a film production company, I worked with a variety of production technologies including FCP and professional cameras. -
Mom opens Netflix account.
After we began receiving Netflix films, my parents began spending more nights in. All of the local video stores have gone out of business by now. -
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3rd Computer: Powerbook G4
Needing a utility laptop for my time abroad, I bought a Powerbook G4 off of Craigslist. On my first night in Senegal, the power went out while my laptop was plugged in causing the computer to short circuit. Approximately four days later, it came back to life on its own. Being without e-mail, internet, a cell phone, a computer or even electricity for those first few days was a challenging start to my immersion in Senegal. -
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Internship with The Ad Store.
Going into this internship I did not know how to use the Adobe suite beyond photoshop. My first week there, they gave me just one task which required Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign. I was told to ask as many questions as I needed but not to ask the same question twice. After that week, I taught myself for the rest of my time with the agency. I was tasked with a number of layout projects but also worked on two logo design projects, finding inspiration on flickr.com -
Second Blog: Toubab Toubab
For my time abroad in Senegal, I created a blog called "La Scène au Sénégal". It was a fantastic way to stay connected with multiple people at once and I love being able to pull up my blog no matter where I am. If you're curious, my blog is at: toubabtoubab.blogspot.com -
Family buys our first HDTV.
My father trades a painting for a high-end 42" LG HDTV. A pretty literal example of the relationship between art and technoogy, who knew they were interchangeable? Luckily by this point I've already moved out of the house for college because otherwise I'd still be sitting there right now watching films on Blu-Ray. -
My entire family gets iPhone 3G's.
Our plan with Verizon finally expired so my family and I got iPhones. This device has absolutely changed the way I live my life from how I communicate with others (texting on the iPhone is much easier than T9 on my old KRZR), eat (using yelp.com, I've discovered endless new restaurants in New York City) and travel (having google maps constantly available means I'm never lost). -
Made my first digital timeline using timetoast.