November 3, 2008

Skip St. John

Well, look who has a blog.

My brother has claimed his own parcel of the web (MySpace don't count, sorry Joey). I look forward to redirecting all our conversation with one another to comments and trackbacks between our sites.

Enjoy: www.skipstjohn.com.

(Clearly the blog title is an affectionate homage to me. Brotherly hagiography, if you will.)

Posted at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 2, 2008

Sightings

Some upcoming talks for those of you who like your rambling in person.

Tomorrow I'm attending the Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science at the University of Chicago. It is a small, single-track, free (!) conference that I have wanted to attend for years. I'll be in the poster sessions, fishing for interest in using our non-profit grid for scholarship in arts and culture.

On Nov. 7 I'll be speaking at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The talk is called "Architecting Cultural Spaces: The Past, Present, and Many Futures of Digital Humanities" as they kick off their own Center for study of the same. I'll post to Slideshare when it is complete.

I've had a panel accepted for next year's SXSW festival. It's called Entrepreneurship in the Belly of the Beast -- basically an anti-SXSW screed about the opportunities for getting away with stuff in a big company. I'll most likely be booed off stage by startup junkies. Or fired for calling my company the Beast. Win-win.

If you'll be at any of these events in the coming days and months, please drop a line!

Posted at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2008

Sooty pretty things

Fall decided to arrive, aggressively, while I was gone. That means a few things: making fires, making booze, and making a plan for our annual holiday party. All of these take the chill off the city's mad dash to winter.

We had our chimneys swept today for the first time since 2002. I had hoped for a small, sooty Gamfield who'd hoist himself onto the roof and into the chimney Santa-style. Alas, even your most cherished 19th century images of child labor have been superseded by technology. Basically a couple of very clean guys shove a cross between a pipe cleaner and a vacuum cleaner up the flue, turn on a machine, and stand back. Apparently our downstairs chimney looked like an emphysemic lung.

For those of you interested in what I finally did about procuring firewood, it turns out that both companies we called in Chicago adamantly do not take down live trees for their stock. Basically they both said they follow loggers around and take the tops off the trees that they leave for dead. Both thought my wife was nuts for asking for an all-elm cord and offered up a window into their supply process when she explained why. A good lesson for us in the upside of simply asking.

'Tis also the season for things frightening, such as a five-year-old's birthday party on Halloween. But really it means a great excuse to catch up on a backlog of horror flicks. My love of the genre has recently taken a sidetrip into the small world of sci-fi/horror video games. I had read great things about EA's Dead Space, a first-person shooter set on a derelict spaceship and filled with all manner of nasties. Now, even though I've been deeply immersed in virtual worlds (direct descendants of 3D video games) I have never actually owned a game like this.

Truth is, it is scary and all for the reasons that the best horror films are. It is about what you don't see, what you do hear, and what you think might be around that next corner. I have little to compare it to in the game genre, but as an exercise in finally being able to get the imperiled protagonist to run from the monster when you know they should, it has been very enjoyable. (Not at all kid-friendly, I might add. A few minutes of them watching me and my wife was contemplating therapist appointments for us all.)

More on this year's batch of hooch and party prep soon ...

Posted at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Return from beyond

I've been back from the launch hoopla in China for a week now. Seems like forever. The silence* on the blog has you all wondering if I've retired, no doubt.

Not exactly. Beyond Space and Time continues to stretch us to the limits with its popularity as we close in on 175,000 activated users. At all hours of every day you'll find hundreds of people ambling about, mostly chatting and taking tours in Chinese. It's so much more gratifying even than the unbelievable coverage the project has generated.

Some have understandably been confused about whether the Virtual Forbidden City is part of Second Life. (Many people consider virtual worlds and Second Life the same thing.) The short answer is no. The VFC is a separate download. For those of you who are curious -- just not maybe 200 MB curious, yet -- you can get a taste of the project in Second Life at our little marketing outpost for the project. The island is called BeyondSpaceAndTime and, if you have Second Life installed, you can go directly.

* If you like your ramblings more frequent consider following my Twitter stream.

Posted at 1:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 18, 2008

A chosen few

Preparations for next year's South by Southwest festival are underway and the panel picker is live. If you love me you'll take a moment and vote for the two panel proposals that I've had a hand in.

The panel picker is a way of giving voice to the community at large about what the actual lineup of speakers should be. It isn't wholly a popularity contest as the editorial board and staff have a hand in what finally gets selected, but feedback via the picker is a large part of it.

So here they are.

The Street is a Platform

Cities abound in data generated by their inhabitants (virtual worlds, city websites, online media) and created automatically by systems or monitoring. How does this online manifestation of the city interact in tangible ways with urban design and informal urban constructs? Is there such a thing as "the street as platform"?

This is a joint proposal with the inimitable Andrew Huff. And credit where it is due: this topic is almost wholly informed by this amazing post by Dan Hill.

Entrepreneurship in the Belly of the Beast

Small is beautiful at SXSW. From Getting Real to starting up, the ethos is largely anti-large corporation. This attitude overlooks one of the most satisfying professional accomplishments: doing your own thing while working for The Man. This presentation uses examples to offer strategies for making the corporation work for you.

Subtitle: Why Working for a Gigantic Company Isn’t As Bad As SXSW Would Have You Believe. This is my first (possibly last) submission for a solo "panel". Just me on stage, a single target for the barbed arrows of the audience.

You do have to create an account to vote, but that's not much to ask for a lifetime of my eternal gratitude, a firm handshake, possible hug, and sip of my drink next time we meet, is it?

Posted at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 5, 2008

The Gigglesnort Hotel

In the ongoing quest to analyze my youth for clues to explain why I am the way I am, I think I've hit the motherlode.

The Gigglesnort Hotel was a children's show of which I have only the vaguest memories, but they're all dark. Which is odd for a kid show, no?

Gigglesnort is a cherished memory of anyone who grew up in the 70's in Chicago. It was produced locally and its creator and lone human actor was Bill Jackson, something of an icon in Children's TV here. But damn was it creepy. It was all puppets and, looking back on them now, I'm not surprised I think of it more in fear than in joy. Chucky would have been right at home in Jackson's entourage.

The hotel was run by a senile admiral who stayed in the attic and thought the inn was a ship. He'd steer it at a captain's wheel and request reports on the crew. A dragon -- Dirty Dragon by name -- ran the boiler in the basement, spewed smoke from his nose and was generally mean. I think he was also the mail man. There was a hotel employee named Weird who was exactly such, looking vaguely mentally addled (pictured above).

But the strangest character was a lump of clay named Blob that "spoke" in grunts and wheezes and basically sounded like a drunk old man. He was constantly being manhandled into new forms by BJ the clerk.

I suppose it all balances out with the Superfriends and The Bozo Show, but when I think about what I was watching in the 70's -- Land of the Lost, Son of Svengoolie, and Gigglesnort Hotel -- I do wonder if my current viewing tastes would be, you know, less macabre.

Only one way to find out I guess. Gotta buy some Gigglesnort DVD's and choose a control group from the kids.

Posted at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 27, 2008

Necessary feeding

Recently my subscription to Daring Fireball lapsed and it took me a day or two to realize that Gruber was not on vacation but that my feed had stopped. Sucked. Made me grumpy. Misanthropic, even.

So I figured now was a good time to comb through the ol' reader and highlight those feeds that I can't do without. I'm subscribed to hundreds of sites, but there are a few that give a moment of pleasure in simply seeing the new entry indicator in bold. Some of these are obvious and well-known, others perhaps not. Have a look at the one's you don't know.

Daily
Coudal Partners
Daring Fireball
Gapers Block
ISO50
kottke.org
Mark Bernstein

Not-so-daily, but just as satisfying
fueled by coffee dot com
microscopiq
PointAwayFromFace
Roo Reynolds
stevenberlinjohnson.com
wayne&wax

It's interesting to think about what's common about these sites. True, I know the authors of 7 of 12 of the blogs, but that's not really an explanation. It's that I feel a connection to all these sites in ways other than just being a reader.

For instance, I'm a huge fan of the music of Tycho (ISO50). I have eminent respect for the scholarship of Wayne Marshall (wayne&wax). Gruber (Daring Fireball) is a close friend of Jim Coudal's; that's a degree of separation that makes him almost a pal. And so on.

I'm sure there'll be a blog one day from someone I have no other connection with, but right now it's all about personal affinity. A kind of social networking informs my own reading habits, you could say.

Should I be following your site? Let me know.

Posted at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 11, 2008

Retrograde

I was shuffling files around recently and came across an archive of my first personal website. It wasn't Ascent Stage, but a site called hypertext :: renaissance (you see, the lowercase and double-colon were edgy) that I built when I was in graduate school in 1996.

Click for annotations and prepare to mock.

Posted at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

June 6, 2008

The search engine stares back

To commemorate the birth of artist Diego Velázquez Google today pulled a funny with their homepage logo.

I wrote about the strange interactive aspects of this painting a month ago. It's particularly apt for a search engine that's always looking back at its own viewers. Compare.

I didn't realize Sergey and Larry read Ascent Stage. Welcome, sirs.

Posted at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 1, 2008

Two things that make me smile, two that make me frown

You decide which makes me what.

I finally threw away my Stadium Pal. Now over six years old, used once, never washed, I figured it was time to let go. Friends, at a certain point it is time to say goodbye to the beer-drinking catheter.

******

June 24. That's the day that my China project -- which I do believe I've been working on for 17 years or so -- launches. The lovelywife will be attending the launch event in Beijing and traveling with me afterwards. First time we've gone international together since before The Coming of the Children and we're ecstatic. (She's lined up a cavalcade of friends and family too smitten with our kids to understand that watching them for two weeks will be only slightly less unhealthy than juggling spent uranium rods.) So we've been talking about the trip a lot.

Recently our almost two-year-old girl overheard us and kept pinching her nose. Couldn't figure out why. No one had "tooted" (four-year-old parlance, there). So we resumed talking ... about Hong Kong. Pinch. Hong Kong. Pinch. Then it hit us. She thinks we're saying "honk honk" which we used to say when squeezing her nose. Cracked us up. And further terrified us at the memory/pattern matching of the midgets in our house. Kids, lifecasting Tivo units for random playback.

******

Yesterday, at the Cubs home opener just as the good guys were about to stage an improbable 9th inning comeback (only to blow it), the umpire waved the Brewers' Eric Gagne off the mound. Why? Because he looked like a fucking slob. His jersey was completely untucked. Hirsute and in deep shit he looked more like a dumpster diver than a reliever. The ump made him tuck the shirt back in. Then play continued. Mind the signage, buddy!

******

Tomorrow the city has announced it will clean the street where MySweetRide lies comatose. It may be the official death knell for the problem-plagued automobile. The reason is that it means we -- and by we I mean my pal Chris whose street it is on -- must attempt to move it. If it starts, she's fighting to live. If not, I'm taking suggestions on what to do with her. Upside: tires so firmly mounted on hubs that that'll never be stolen, a few extra diapers in the trunk. Downside: sounds like freight train (because of this?), missing stereo. I'll start bidding at €50.

Posted at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 27, 2008

Platinum, Rhodium, and Palladium

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the most valuable piece of your automobile, at least according to car thieves nowadays.

I have just learned that catalytic converter theft is on the rise in Chicago.

Last week I used a friend's car while he was out of the country. Parked it on a fairly busy street by my house and then today went to move it back to his house. When I started the car it roared alive so loudly you would think I was at a Monster Truck show. Scared the shit out of me. My pal came back into town, took it to a service station and the attendants just laughed. Apparently they see this all the time.

The thieves just slide under the car with a saw or, in the case of our upscale burglars, an acetylene blowtorch, and remove it. Fast and easy. Why? Because the goop inside the converter contains precious metals that can be recycled for -- wait for it -- jewelry. Who knew?

I don't have a good track record with this particular friend. A few years ago I almost burnt his back deck down with a hookah pipe. Now this.

And I'm now thinking that MySweetRide might have been de-catalyzed months ago and I just never noticed. It's such a clanky bucket of bolts it's hard to know what's making which noise.

Posted at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 21, 2008

Smurf grammar

I've been a cataloger of nouns used as verbs since Jeff Spicoli opened my mind to the possibilities with "hey bud, let's party" in 1982. There's "google" and "calendar" and "lunch," but the original utilitarian nounverb has got to be "smurf".

The children over here are all about Apple TV and they recently found the Smurfs cartoon. The show was way before their time and slightly after mine (I'm a product of The Superfriends and Scooby-Doo, thank you very much) but it captivated them. So last night, post-concert, home alone, I watched a few episodes. Like a chill-out room at a rave.

Here is a lexicographical analysis of a single episode, called "The Smurf's Apprentice," for the varied uses of the word "smurf". You can, in fact, get the gist of the whole show just from these lines.

"Watch where you're Smurfing!"
"Smurfic acid"
"A half-Smurf of burnt siena"
"Three Smurfs of sarsaparilla leaves"
"Now to see if the experiment Smurfs"
"I've finally Smurfed spontaneous germination"
"I have a real gift for Smurfin' magic"
"I want to Smurf magic right now"
"Now's the time to Smurf a look at his magic book"
"What are you Smurfing in here?"
"A Smurf of quicklime"
"Smurf over a low flame"
"A monster! Smurf for your lives!"
"I Smurfed a magic potion"
"We'll have to Smurf something else"
"You mean i'll be this way for the rest of my whole Smurf?"
"I'll find an Anti-smurf and i'll call you"
"Smurf it, Grouchy!"
"Smurf's-eye!"
"I need volunteers to Smurf me three hairs from a cat's tail"
"We'll all Smurf you a hand"
"The rest of us will start making the anti-Smurf"

Gerunds, exclamations, even an adjective in there. Does English have a word this useful, a Swiss Army word? I suppose certain expletives might work. Go ahead, swap out "Smurf" for "fuck." Doesn't quite work, but will make you smile.

Posted at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 15, 2008

Soar with turkeys

Flickr's Paul Hammond made a comment in his panel at SXSW that's resonating a bit with a colleague or two.

Process is an antidote to working with stupid people.

It is an understandly resonant phrase at a conference like SXSW where the predominant vibe is entrepreneurial and innovative and all about small-scale Getting Real-inspired business models.

Truth is, I couldn't agree more. When not everyone is at the same skill or knowledge level (i.e., when they are "idiots" compared to you) a common methodology enables collaboration where sheer similarity of perspective can't.

But the statement has stuck with me and I think now that it might not be as simple as that. I do, of course, work in a gigantic, process-laden company where there are many arguments for following a common process. Quality assurance is one, presenting a unified approach and brand to customers is another. But both of those could legitimately be accomplished with a small team of non-idiots.

The real value of process comes from the inherent inability of small, smart teams to scale. When your team is based solely on shared perspective (whether of educational background, skill set, or job experience) there are only so many people you can add before that perspective will fray. I don't know what the limit is, but I imagine it can't be more than maybe 20 people. At this size some sort of common process needs to be implemented if for no other reason than to allow everyone to speak the same language.

Now, many small companies, especially in tech, recognize this and find it to be no limitation at all. They don't want to scale beyond their current size. And that's just fine. Note that I'm not referring to the scale of a project that can be undertaken or the scale of customers that can be served. Small teams can do this as effectively as large companies in many instances.

But if you do want to make your company larger -- or if you actively seek diversity of perspective -- then having some common framework for working is really the only way to do it. For instance when working on international projects, I find that process, in some cases rigid process, is the only way to work together. In the absence of cultural or language understanding it is sometimes the only common platform from which to work.

Too much process, the wrong process, sometimes any process at all can kill creativity. I see it all the time. And, in truth, I'm lucky to have worked with some of the smartest people in my field for the last seven years. I rarely encounter the need for process. But I do recognize the need and can see where it might usefully be applied with nary an idiot in sight.

Posted at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 13, 2008

Southbyline

I'm back from a bunch of great days in Austin at SXSW. As usual I came away excited and ready to quit my day job. But this time it took a lot longer to feel that excitement, whether that was because of the quality of the programming (or my choice of what to attend) or just that I know more than everyone else. To be safe I'll go with knowing more than everyone else.

Maybe because work pays me to attend that I started by attending panels most relevant to my job and ended up somewhat nonplussed. But as I started to drift into things I was merely interested in -- and made an effort to meet people I didn't know -- things got a lot better. I don't think you ever get over your first SXSW, which for me was a while back. Everything's new, everyone (mostly) is new and it is just an amazingly heady experience.

But it is fun to see how people change over time. One example. Three years ago standing in a beer line I struck up a conversation with the person behind me, Leslie Chicoine. Just out of design school at Savannah and looking for a job. I had none to offer, but we had a good conversation. Three years later, Leslie's in the thick of things in the Bay Area working at Get Satisfaction, an incredible company working on an even better idea. She was a panelist this year for the first time talking about OAuth and QR codes. Not much more to it than that, except that I've really enjoyed following the career of someone wide-eyed and new to the tech world straight into success. Kinda the whole point of SXSW writ large.

My colleague in IBM Roo Reynolds did (and is still doing) a great job cataloging the highlights of the conference and many of our experiences overlapped, so for the liveblog junkies among you I point you to his site. Good stuff.

Perhaps the entertainment highlight of SXSW was the Jane McGonigal talk on Alternate Reality Games. She's incredibly articulate and enthusiastic about the role of play in life and work. Made me want to go out and design an ARG right then and there. (I just might, buddy.)

As an aside during her talk Jane mentioned learning the Soulja Boy dance why playing an ARG. Immediately someone from the crowd yelled "do it!" Smartly, she said she would at the end of the presentation -- which pretty much kept the entire crowd there whether they were enjoying the talk or not. Sure enough, she did it. Here's Roo's video annotated with my obnoxious laughter.

In an effort to offer a flavor of my experience without being verbose I'll note a few of the panels I attended with the best line (I think) I heard at each. Beware paraphrasing.

The Future of Virtual Worlds and Game Development: Rise of the Indies: "Hi, welcome to my panel. I'm sorry, but I forgot to bring liquor." -- Corey Bridges. Sidenote: Corey made fun of an IBM executive during this panel. I'm pretty sure I was the only one in the room who knew who he was talking about and the only one who laughed out loud.

Opening Remarks with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson: "The two best shows on TV may represent a real turning point in the form. The Wire may be the last gasp of self-contained, inside-the-box television while Lost may be the first glimmer of new TV, one that exists in a web of 'trans-media extensions'." -- Henry Jenkins.

A General Theory of Creative Relativity: "There is a variable and a constant and finding the association between those two things is the act, the actual thing [of creativity]." -- Jim Coudal.

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts: "Does anyone know what IBM does?" -- John Gruber

Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users: "attention offsets" - like a carbon offset, sponsoring something that supports full attention in exchange for building something that takes someone's partial attention -- Kathy Sierra

Keynote: Jane McGonigal: "To imagine the future, always look back at least twice as far as you are looking forward."

But you know what made it great? Not the panels or keynotes or even the parties. It was a format called Core Conversations where basically a bunch of tables arranged by topic were set up in a room, BarCamp-style. My expectations were low as I had heard a bunch of criticism of them, but it was the end of the last day so what the hell.

I plopped down at Managing Media: Is Your Music Collection About to Become Extinct? and was immediately in music geek heaven talking about file formats, metadata, and genre classification woes. I was so happy to hear an Apple engineer admit that there are "religious wars" in Cupertino over things like whether to separate reggae and dub. It was just perfect, informal, smart discussion and all about what I care about personally. The Songbird team was there as well as a chap from Last.fm.

Well after I had told myself it was time to go drinking I found myself just sliding into the next confab on the Open Media Web. Why can't open standards be applied to digital media? If the web can do it, why not media? Down with Flash, down with record labels, yay!

Well, that's it. No great summing statement. There was no darling like Twitter at its coming-out party last year, as far as I can tell (though it was easily the most used form of communication).

I wonder about the future of SXSW Interactive. It is so damn huge now that the lines for parties and toilets are a real drag. A friend put it best when he said that the parties are suffering load balancing and scalability problems this year. And I have to think that if the parties really do begin to suck that much of the appeal of SXSW will fade. After all, meeting new people is really where the learning happens.

See you next year?

Posted at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

January 7, 2008

End of the Ride?

We have a second car, a 1994 Honda Accord affectionately referred to as MySweetRide, which I've not taken great care of. It's never seen the inside of a garage, braving the elements in the Deep South and the Fucking Cold North. I don't drive it very much, but it comes in just handy enough to keep around. At least until we have to make any kind of serious outlay of cash for it. Which may be soon.

You can hear the car idling on the street from my basement. There's a gaping maw in the dashboard where the stolen stereo once lived. A short in the driver-side door keeps the dome light on. Every hinge creaks like a drawbridge and there's enough decomposing flora in the shelf where the trunk shuts to compost a medium-sized garden.

And yet, she is loved.

2AM Sunday morning. Awakened by a phone call from friend who had the car*. A screw had punctured a tire and put the trusty steed out of commission a few miles away. (Ironically, the car was being used to transport home a bike that had just gotten a flat tire.) We jacked her up, unlugged the nuts, and then ... could not get the damn tire off. Like me, it just didn't want to let go of the Ride.

We left her for the night.

In the cold light of day we lubed her up and still could not get the tire off. We were about to give up. Just then -- and I swear it was quite honestly right then -- the dirtiest tow truck I'd ever seen drove up and out leaned a similarly hygienic individual asking if we needed help.

Aw, hell, he'd seen this thing before. He got out of the truck, walked up to the tire and kicked it as hard as he could. Nothin'.

No problem. He reached back into the cab of the truck and pulled out a baseball bat that clearly had a few stories to tell. He scooted under the car and swung for the fences behind the tire. Voila! Off it came. And away he drove, our guardian angel Cooter of Hazzard County.

Of course, the spare was flat. Probably should have seen that coming.

It's all good now, but it does have me wondering if 2008 is the year I need to put MySweetRide out of its misery.

* You may remember that MySweetRide is at the center of an informal car-sharing service and, as such, has its very own Twitter site.

Update: Due to an overwhelming number of requests to help out in some way (one comment so far) I've added a Donate button. The money is pouring in ($1 so far).

Posted at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Resolved 2008

Last year was the first in a while where I set no specific goals for myself in the new year. Maybe it is because I was tired of batting slightly better than .500. Or maybe I wanted to see what a goal-less year would be like. (Answer: not great.)

In past years I laid them out (2005, 2006), reviewed them midway (2005), and then gave a final assessment (2005, 2006).

This year I'm getting back to it. Shall we place bets?

1. Simplify.
   Instead of doing ten things at once, do four. For all aspects of my life.
   
2. Moderate.
   Related to above, but in quantity not complexity.
   
3. Start to write a book.
   Been researching it for six months now (or is it all my life?). Time to get back to the word.
   
4. Make more music.
   This one looks promising. There'll be an announcement soon ...
   
5. Get back into distance running.
   Why? Because it is the simplest, cheapest way to exercise.
   
6. Not travel as much.
   See point one. See also my family. See also my sanity.
   
7. Visit Tibet.
   Wha?! I thought you said ... Well, I know I'm going to China at least once this year, possibly for the last time in a while. Might as well make it worth it. (And by worth it, I mean riding the Permafrost Express to Lhasa!)
   
8. Figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
   I'm open to suggestions.
   
9. Learn to be ok with doing nothing/being still.
   OK, enough of that. Let's move to the next thing,
   
10. Visit more of the neighborhoods of Chicago.
    This requires more than just idly ambling around the city which would be inefficient and possibly dangerous. It requires a plan. I have a plan.
    
11. Read more books.
    You know, books. Spine-bound, pulp-paged tomes.
    
12. Eat more slowly.
    What occurred to me is that if you can't recall what something tasted like five minutes after you've eaten it, it is time to eat slower. (Or find tastier food, I suppose.)
    

Begin.

Posted at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

December 24, 2007

All of you on the good Earth

Apollo 8: December 24, 1968

Posted at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 23, 2007

Did I choose to write this post? Or was it chosen for me?

We almost have the house back in order after the cataclysm two weeks ago. One upside to reconstructing the basement is that lots of books have to be put back in place and this has given me the pleasure of rediscovering a bunch of titles I'd forgotten about.

This past week I grabbed two volumes, completely at random, on two separate trips to the toilet: Stephen Hawking's The Universe in Nutshell and The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Admittedly, not exactly bathroom fare, but such was what laid about en route.

And this is where it gets odd. Not too far into my first, um, session I randomly opened the philosophy encyclopedia to the entry on Molina, Luis de (1535 - 1600). Molina was a Spanish theologian best known for his doctrine of "middle knowledge," a way of reconciling human free will with the predetermination implicit in the idea of divine grace:

Middle knowledge, God's knowledge of what persons would do under any set of circumstances, enables God to arrange for certain human acts to occur by pre-arranging the circumstances surrounding a choice without determining the human will.

Basically Molina has it both ways. God has foreknowledge of what humans will do but only because he knows all the possible choices that humans can freely make in the omnipotently-arranged circumstances. He doesn't direct people's actions, just sets the stage. And because He set it, He gets to know the possible acts that can be played out on it. The elegance of this proposition, it seems to me, is that it comports with a purely rational view of the world. Remove the deity from Molina's equation and it is still entirely valid as a description of how people act.

During my next visit to the W.C, I had the Hawking book, a really beautiful follow-up to his Brief History of Time. Just flipping it open I landed in chapter three where he discusses histories of the universe:

Even if the boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary, it won't have just a single history. It will have multiple histories .... There will be a history in imaginary time corresponding to every closed surface, and each history in imaginary time will determine a history in real time. Thus we have a superabundance of possibilities for the universe. What picks out the particular universe that we live in from the set of all possible universes?

Hawking's answer invokes the "anthropic principle" which basically states that "the universe has to be more or less as we see it, because if it were different, there wouldn't be anyone here to observe it." Might seem like circular reasoning, but it makes complete sense, especially if you flip it around: humans would not exist to think about alternate universes in the first place if we did not inhabit one that could sustain intelligent life. So that's why we're in this one.

We can conceptualize alternate histories (e.g., one in which I posted about how much I love taco pizza instead of this rambling) and posit parallel universes that behave differently than ours, but we can only ever know the one we're carving a path through. Not because the choices have been made for us, but because we are choosing from the finite number of paths that are permissible given the universe we live in.

Now, I'm no philosopher and, though I really did want to be an astrophysicist when I was little, I am regrettably not a member of that profession either. But it seems to me that Molina and Hawking are describing the same thing, essentially. Or something very similar, anyway. Haven't fully parsed it all out yet.

In a way, both acknowledge that the sum of one's choices -- one's personal "history" -- is constrained in some external way (Molina by God; Hawking by the physical properties of the universe). What I find interesting is that they both also suggest a kind of human obliviousness to this constraint that allows us to live as though we were fully in control. Whatever I'm reading into these two passages, it is strangely comforting to me.

And the fact that I just randomly opened to two passages both related to free will? Well that's just spooky.

See also: "Gone out of experience"

Posted at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Halloween in a pill

So, I've been taking some medicine lately where one of the side effects is "changes in dreaming." Hmm, I thought, that could be interesting. More vivid? Super-sexual? High-definition?

Alas, no, and this is why I am telling you about it on Halloween. What the pharamceutical company should actually write in the warning is: "This drug will give you nightmares. All night. Every night." It has gotten to the point where lying in bed waiting for sleep is really a memory game trying to come up with all the real world fodder I predict my subconscious and this insidious drug will warp into a dark nocturnal narrative.

I'm not afraid of going to sleep. That I am dreaming so much each night means I am deeply asleep and pretty well-rested in the morning. But it does remind me of Wes Craven's really genius turn in the original Nightmare on Elm Street in making falling asleep -- something you cannot ultimately resist -- the one thing you don't want to do.

Happy Halloween!

Posted at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 17, 2007

If you squint hard enough you'll see a pattern

Lots of little things going on in my life, none seemingly important enough to warrant a full post. But this does not stop the party, no.

A few weeks ago my wife performed the role of arm-candy (yeah, that's right, she's that good) for my brother at the ground-breaking event for the Calatrava Spire (called, alas, the Chicago Spire). My brother is the salesguy for all the in-unit automation at the Spire. When built this corkscrew will be the tallest building in North America and will redefine the skyline. Impressive site too.

If you are interested in knowing exactly the kind of video I can watch hundreds of times and still laugh, this is it.

I recently moved from my beloved Thunderbird to the Mac Mail app. Why? Better handling of IMAP. See, since I got an iPhone I have wanted it to be completely in synch with my desktop mail app (inbox, archive, sent, all of it). POP don't cut it, so I had to move some 30,000 messages to the server. This took forever as Thunderbird (where it all lived locally) ain't the stablest with IMAP servers. But it is done. I also wanted webmail so here's how it works:

1. All my addresses forward to GMail. Every single one.
2. GMail, which does not support IMAP (sigh), archives a copy and punts to an IMAP server at my hosting provider.
3. The iPhone and my desktop clients on PC and Mac all synch with the IMAP server.
4. Outgoing mail on all is routed through the IMAP server and thence to GMail, so there is always a web-accessible copy.

A massive pain in the ass, but not nearly as bad as escaping Outlook.

We've undertaken an experiment with compact fluorescent bulbs. Nearly every light, including in utility rooms and closets, is strangely wired to a dimmer in this house, which makes things challenging. We replaced a bunch of dead incandescent cans in the kitchen (because, you know, it happens). Truly, they are cheaper for the life and wattage, but it does remind me a bit of a laboratory. Anyone have thoughts on CFL's that don't make think I should be titrating?

28 Weeks Later is an amazing movie. It is not a slasher flick or really a horror flick, exactly. It follows on the acclaimed 28 Days Later about a guy in a coma who wakes up in London to find Jolly Olde England overrun by zombies. This movie is, um, some time after that and shows what happens when the US Army (Mission Accomplished, baby!) quarantines a section of London for survivors. It is a fine flick and might contain the best scene in all of 2007 film. Let's just say that it involves a field full of zombies and a helicopter. Oh, also, how can a film in which zombies sprint not be good?

I'm absolutely smitten with the audio/sequencer/DJ app called Ableton Live. It takes a while to wrap your head around, but once you do, it is pure heroin. I can't not mess with it. More on this in an upcoming post on how I've left my job to be a terrible DJ at hipster bars.

In the category of links that did not make the del.icio.us feed but which I strangely feel important enough for a full post we have Wakerupper. It offers free telephone reminders with an iPhone-optimzed version to boot. And GrandCentral, one of Google's acquisitions to centralize phone stuff in a web interface (hey, not unlike what I just did with IMAP). Anyone using this have some tips on how to make me not so scared of it?

Keep squinting.

Tags: CFL, dj, horror, IMAP, spire, video

Posted at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

September 5, 2007

Nature, 4. Tolva family, 0.

Microscopic to macroscopic, we've taken it the hard way across the full spectrum of natural world nastiness in the last two weeks. Powers of 10 gone bad.

Let us start with the tiniest of living evils, the virus. A few weeks ago we headed out on our first truly long-haul road-trip adventure and final hurrah of the summer. All five of us crammed into one car. Luggage everywhere. Fishing rods strapped to the roof. Hello, Clark Griswold. We left Chicago at 9PM on a through-the-night journey to far northeastern Oklahoma, a friend's lakehouse. Strangely I had never considered OK to be drivable, but in fact the border is only as far from St. Louis as St. Louis is from Chicago. Doable, if miserable.

3AM. All three kids asleep. Bliss. Then, our one-year-old daughter awakens with a cough straight out of a horror flick and inhalation distress that was truly terrifying. She was sick, clearly. Wife says, that's croup. Just a nasty little virus that we usually combat at home with a steamy shower, a jaunt out into the cold night air and/or medication. We had none of these. So, wife then says, we need to pull over right now. I agreed that we needed to, but, see, we were on the freeway squarely bisecting East St. Louis, the city that began the tradition of Illinois towns on the east side of the Mississippi being hellish mirror images of their counterparts on the other side. I protested, citing the well-being of all of us in the face of the well-being of one of us. But thelovelywife threatened my well-being if I did not pull off to assist our youngest and, you know, I'm selfish about my own personal safety, so I did. Here's a short video I shot at this moment.

We survived this escapade but decided we had to stop over the bridge at the St. Louis Children's Hospital. I went to grad school at Wash U. so I knew this was a quality institution, but I was unprepared for just how amazing it was when you need it, even in the wee hours of the morning. Still, seeing your toddler in a hospital gown is a troubling thing. Sleepless and with two other kids in their pajamas in the ER it was all we could do at this sight to keep our composure. She got some steroid shots and we were on our way. But we couldn't go all the way to Okie. Just didn't seem right with Typhoid Mary in the car. So we decided to re-route to Galena, Illinois a small town in far northwestern Illinois where my parents have a place. We rolled in at 8:45 PM the next day. Just 15 minutes shy of 24 hours (minus ER) in the car. More on this at the conclusion of this saga.

Scale up, if you will, from the dastardly virus to the sustaining yeast fungus. As a culture, we owe much to this little bugger, but I'm currently greatly dissatisfied with it. I decided to embark on a raspberry wine fermentation last weekend. (You may recall the bloody mess that was picking these delicacies on my parents' property, the aforementioned Galena residence.) So I squashed and squashed. You can't run these things through a grape press, alas, and have to squeeze them whole in a cheesecloth bag. It was open-heart surgery.

We ended up with five gallons of juice. It smelled heavenly. I added the sugar, took the temp, measured the specific gravity, had the concoction positively yearning for ferment then added the yeast and ... nothing. OK, not a problem, might take a night. But no. No foam, no gurgle, no incipient smell of alcohol. This was a problem because I did this after the kids were asleep hoping to avoid their bacteria-laced touch and endless questioning. It was not to be. The next morning I checked the fermentor -- still no hot yeast-on-sugar action -- and my kids were all over the thing. I had to explain it all, which resulted in this classic quip from the six-year-old: “Mommy, mommy, did you know that yeasts are little critters that poop alcohol!?” I've done nearly everything I know to get the fermentation going, but as of today, no luck.

Scale up again to the charming urban indigene known as Rattus norvegicus. We've had a bit of rat problem of late. Early summer storms knocked our garage door off its track. We fixed it, but the fix left a gap at the bottom where the little nasties let themselves in nightly. We saw them scurrying out when we'd lift the door but only understood the extent of the problem when we peered into the corner where we store some of the 19 strollers we own. Rat shit everywhere. In every nook, every cranny. Son said “Hey Daddy, look at all the rotten raisins in the baby seat.” Um, not exactly.

As soon as they banished the thoughts of the cute vermin from Ratatouille and Flushed Away the kids were immediately obsessed with helping me rid ourselves of the bastards. But of course, as with the wine, they had to be right in the action playing away in the rodent feces. I finally shooed them away and fired up the leaf-blower to shoot out the very last of the Bubonic particulate matter. Stupid. I was immediately in the eye of a small hurricane of enclosed, whirling crap. (Woke up the next morning with a sore throat and some truly Dickensian snot.)

No rat spotted as of today, though we've identified their lair in the foundation of the couch house next to us. Next weekend promises chicken wire and concrete poured into their holes. Take that, suckers! Good fun.

Scale up now from the natural to the Natural. As in Mama Natura. (Bitch.) And rewind to the aborted trip to Oklahoma. We're on our way to Galena moving up the western edge of Illinois through such metropolises as Peoria, Galesburg, and Savanna -- a trip worthy of a Sufjan Stevens album. Just two hours from the blessed relief of a home we know the skies turn apocalyptic. Wife and I were barely coherent from lack of sleep. This was hour 22 of 24 awake. It all went straight to hell as an amazing supercell unloaded on us. We were on the Great River Road that snakes up the Mississippi through tiny towns so at least one cardinal direction, west, was cut off for our escape route should we have seen a twister. Luckily we didn't but it was a biblical torrent. In a way maybe it was a good thing. The adrenalin powered us through the last hours of our odyssey from St. Louis in our roving petri dish of a car.

Moving eastward these storms were on a bee-line for Chicago. They slammed the city as we all convalesced from our road trip in Galena. We didn't realize the extent of it until we arrived home that Sunday. There was evidence of the maelstrom everywhere: trees down, transformers blown, standing water. We arrived in time for our annual block party. A small affair, literally one block of the thousands in Chicago. The funny thing is that because of the storm one side of the street had power, the other had none. Being rather neighborly around these parts about a dozen homes from my side had strung extension cords across the street to power certain vital gizmos on the other side. This ad hoc wiring was made more surreal because there were no cars on the block due to the party. I'll remember this show of support when we're all irritable and threatening each other with a shovel-based death for parking spots come winter.

Scrolling further out I'm sure you can find a meteor headed straight for my home, but this has not happened yet so please post it as a comment when I am but a mixture of carbonized ash and interstellar dust. Thanks.

Tags: powersof ten, yeast, wine, storm, virus

Posted at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 9, 2007

Thunderbolts and thievery

Dear Internet,

Don't take this the wrong way, but lately it seems that you think all I do is travel the world and party (as-a-verb) with friends. This is not altogether true. You see, this blog is really a carefully pruned excerpt of a mostly mundane and often exasperating life (in-progress). People sometimes read this blog and say “I want your life.” Well, Internet, I'm here to tell you that all is not rosy at 1¢ Stage.

Recently we've had some intense summer storms here in Chicago. We lost power during a lightning strike. This was initially charming in the way that the buzz from one beer is fun where the stupor from eight really is not. Several hours later, well into our gridless stupor, the lights came back on and I realized that my two networked media drives were no longer accessible.

This is, perhaps, the worst technological calamity which could befall my home. For this is what happens when you have digitized all your CDs and DVDs and wired up the whole place to access it from the network. And this is what happens when you were midway through a really well-intentioned, disciplined backup strategy but couldn't afford that second terabyte of space.

So now we are a home of disconnected media islands. The kids' Apple TV only has on it what was synched there before the electrical storm. The only music in the house is what I had on my iPod at the time. My hope is that only the controllers are fried and that I can get the media off the drives. Damn you, Zeus. We hurl our fists at you from the Archipelago of Re-Runs and Tiresome Playlists.

Oh, but it gets better. You may have read about how wonderful the iPhone was overseas as a conversation-starter. Well, here's a conversation for you. I had assumed that international data roaming rates were only going to be as bad as the highway robbery of international voice roaming. In fact, it is grand larceny. While AT&T offers an international unlimited data package for the Blackberry, the iPhone gets a lovely two-cents-per-kilobyte surcharge. That may not seem like much, but the iPhone was made to view the regular web, and regular maps, and suck down regular bytes -- not watered-down WAP-py data. 2.7MB, for instance, comes out to $54. That's a hefty 10 minutes of web browsing. So what did the entire week of intermittent data access run me? Over $800.

When I called to complain I had to slog through the Three Stages of Customer Service: Encounter with the Script-Reader, Argument with the Pablum-Spewer, and Anger Management Therapy with The Middle Manager. Well. They certainly weren't going to waive the fee. Heavens no. Just because I didn't know it was two cents per KB didn't mean I could get out of paying for such lunacy. If only I had drilled several dozen pages into the byzantine innards of the miscegenation that is the merged Cingular-AT&T website to learn that international data roaming is their dirty little secret. Seriously, it took two separate agents over 15 minutes to figure out what the rate was. And they work there.

Turns out there is a plan for international data. $25 gets you 20MB. Then it is a half-cent per KB after that. That will still bankrupt you if you are trying to do much more than, say, nothing -- just more slowly. I switched to this plan and they “re-rated” my past charges to it. Ultimately I “saved” over $700. Oh, and I am now paying $25 more per month.

I swear, the irony of a user-focused company like Apple working so closely with a it-ain't-my-problem company like AT&T gets more and more bitter every time I pause to think about it.

So, Internet, that's what's been going on. My life isn't all warm, mixed nuts on trans-Atlantic airliners, you see.

Yours Sincerely,
John

PS - I also have a toothache at the moment.
PPS - Are you really just a series of tubes?

Tags: at&t, iphone, lightning, failure

Posted at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 1, 2007

Back alley transaction

This Saturday we're participating in a multi-family garage sale here in Roscoe Village. Hopefully beery Retro on Roscoe festival-goers will stumble by and lighten their wallets. Update: An address might help. Stop by 3537 N. Leavitt between 8am and 2pm, Saturday, August 4.

Garage sales in the city have always seemed odd to me, given that garages are in the rear on the alley. But I do like them, having grown up with a grandmother pathologically addicted to scouring them. But then, who doesn't enjoy sifting through their neighbors' detritus? Socially-acceptable dumpster-diving.

In advance of the sale I figured I'd offer up some of the geekier goods we hope to offload. Consider it an early-bird special. Let me know if you want more detail or photos or if you want to make an offer.

SOLD! Harmon Kardon HK3270 Receiver
Basic stereo receiver. 65w/channel, A/B speaker switching, five stereo inputs. Makes a great second-zone or audio-only amp.
$45

SOLD! Sony VHS-C Camcorder
Includes extra battery, recharger, carrying case, and VHS adapter.
$35

SOLD! Audiotron [Note: A friend of mine has two units he's willing to sell for the same price each, if you are interested.]
Network audio player. Scours network for playable audio files and offers a variety of ways to access them for playback through your stereo system. Mint condition. No moving parts. This is a choice piece of hardware. More info here.
$45

Roku Photobridge (formerly HD-1000)
Network media player, akin to Audiotron but for photos and video (including HD). Includes image packs. Also mint condition. More info here.
$45

SOLD! Canon Powershot G1
3.3 megapixel camera. Includes 1GB microdrive. You may have this camera, but you may not have the love in my heart I have for it. More info here.
$65

Sony Wireless Stereo Headphones
Infrared-based, 40' range. For use with stereo or television at home.
$15

Gateway VX1110 20“ CRT Display
1600 × 1200 max. resolution. It ain't flat, but that's still a lot of screen real estate.
$75

Nokia 447Xi Plus 17” CRT Display
1280 × 1024 max. resolution. Best CRT I ever owned.
$50

Pronto TS1000 Universal Remote
Screen-based, highly-configurable universal remote. Download templates for your A/V components from the web. More here.
$20

Tags: chicago, garagesale, yardsale

Posted at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 25, 2007

Moodbuster

Been in a funk all day. But the funk has broken, so to speak.

I was playing tennis with my brother, getting my ass handed to me on a platter on a crappy public court (massive weed-strewn fissures down the hardtop, sandstorm-grade dust blowing over from an abutting dog track -- nice design there, city, net two cranks too low) and it was freaking hot. Perfect to maintain my stroppy disposition.

But then I see a couple near a park bench. One or both of them is deaf because they are signing like mad. Not sure if they were arguing but whatever they were saying it was intense. And then one of them gives the sign (I'm guessing here) for “Screw this, let's SMS” and they pull out identical smartphones. They regain composure, sit down and start texting back and forth, right next to each other, happy as clams.

It was the most beautiful thing. I think I broke my brother's serve after that.

Tags: mood, signlanguage, sms

Posted at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Instant messaging peeves

In a bit of a mood today so here's my chat annoyance list.

When status says “not available” or “do not disturb.” I have never understood this. If you are using a chat application but not accepting messages what's the point? Log off.

“I just e-mailed you.” Yes, thank you I see your note sitting right here in my inbox. This is only slightly less annoying than people who call you to let you know that they've e-mailed you right after clicking send. E-mail is asynchronous, people. Look it up.

“On the phone” or, worse, “otp.” Yes, that's why I chose to ping you instead of ring you. And if you can't do two things at once, why are you on chat? IM isn't for uni-taskers.

When people treat IM like an e-mail. “Dear John, I am writing you to follow up on the matter we discussed ... [18 lines later] ... Sincerely, Mary.” Nice selection of medium there, Mary.

“Are you using [insert app here]?” This would be like asking people if they are using Outlook before sending an e-mail. Who cares?

12:51 PM		Mary: you there?
12:51 PM		John: yes
1:47 PM		Mary: just seeing if you are around

And the obverse:

2:15 PM		Mary: there john?
2:15 PM		Mary: hello??????

When you know someone is typing (“Mary is typing ...”) and it takes forever. People, put down the Strunk and White and hit return. Chat. Not oration.

OK, all done. Damn you, Mary.

Tags: annoyances, chat, im, etiquette

Posted at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 10, 2007

Set trimmers to kill

Buzzed my hair down to the scalp today. Up yours male pattern baldness!

Update: Best comments on new buzz:

"Did you get lice in Russia?"
"Overclocked brains require better heatsinks, right?"
"Your back hair is now officially longer than your head hair."

Tags: bald, buzz, hair

Posted at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

June 5, 2007

How to know you're in trouble for the web demo you're about to give

Your co-presenter says the following things during set-up. Let's call this person a she. Let's call her Pauline. Let's also call her my boss.

• In establishing a wireless network connection she said “Oh, we're not connected.” The status said connected 100% and it clearly was. I looked at her funny. She said “See, the little lines aren't making it all the way across.”

  

  That's eye-candy, Pauline. An animation. To make users feel warm inside. It means nothing. But that brick wall there, that really does exist. Best way to keep out viruses is to run your connection straight through solid brick. Kills 'em right off, I tell you.
• I ask her to find an empty spot on her desktop and drop a file there. She responds “There are no empty spaces.” Wha? Looking over I see she's right. Not a single square of available space. I think everything she's ever downloaded is crammed onto this single screen. Half of which are the executable installs for the very program icons that follow them. And, since Windows often uses the same icon for installs and for the program itself she reinstalls apps about as often as she means to run them.
• “Wow! How did you just switch programs that fast?” Um, I clicked on the other window. (No Alt-Tab sorcery here folks!) "I didn't know you could do that,“ she says. ”If I need to go from one program to another I just close the window and open a new one.“ Hello, MS-DOS!

I'm doomed.

Tags: inept, windows, techsupport

Posted at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

June 1, 2007

Enough already

I'm sure there are some readers sick of the baseball and genealogy posts. Suffice to say that my blissful month of no travel (OK, not much travel -- I'm in NYC right now) is coming to an end. This means new posts on things like Russia when it don't go dark, travels with Oprah Winfrey, certainly a trip or two to China, and a few other new destinations.

My loss, your gain.

Tags: blog, travel

Posted at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 27, 2007

Why go tapeless?

No moving parts.

Imagine what the tape looked like when I finally got it out.

Update: You know this whole thing reminds me of the hell of getting my data out of Outlook a few years ago. People care about the data, not the app. Same goes for hardware. I didn't think twice in destroying a videocam in my pursuit of a stuck videotape with Christmas 2006 on it.

See also: Canon Fodder.

Tags: failure, gadget, tape, video

Posted at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 16, 2007

Birds, bees, Burger King

On a recent trip to visit my parents I drove by this Burger King and it immediately came back to me. This spot, this very location, is where my mother explained to me the concept of human intercourse. It is burned into my memory.

We had just grabbed some BK to go and, apparently, mom thought discussion of sex was an appropriate topic to share over french fries. I believe I was mortified and intrigued and that I lost my appetite.

And before you ask, this little life event was decades ago, not in the last few weeks.

Tags: lifelesson, burgerking, sex

Posted at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 21, 2007

Velcro tie

So I'm at Starbucks, behind a cop waiting for his double mocha-frappa-hoohaa. His tie is a little askew so the baristas, who clearly know him, start giving him a hard time about it, saying it looks like a clip-on, ha ha ha. Schoolyard-bullying (of a man with a loaded gun). He goes along with it and then yanks it off completely. Velcro! Oh then the name-calling really begins.

And then he explains that the last thing a cop wants around his neck is a built-in noose.

Duh. Laughing stopped.

You gotta think this was learned the hard way after some cop-on-bad-guy fracas, somewhere.

Apologies to ZZ Top.

Tags: police, velcro, uniform

Posted at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 20, 2007

A group is its own worst enemy

Lots of people and companies want to know how to put together a great online community. Or scale an existing one way up. Not as many people consider what happens when a community goes bad. This was the topic of a great presentation by Chris Tolles at SXSW called When Communities Attack.

Here are a few points I found interesting.

The tone in discussion forums gets more friendly if posts are geotagged. The rationale, while not proven, is that a degree of anonymity is lost this way and that no one wants to associate a shameful post with their vicinity (or perhaps even suffer being located).

Lots of people have “conversations” with themselves in online communities using alternate screen names to establish credibility.

The word for the non-machine-readable letter grid that is often required for users to input to validate themselves is called a “captcha”. Didn't know that.

Registration often works against decorum by keeping out good posters who prefer anonymity and by encouraging flamers since registration implies that this community has something good going on inside of it.

I've been noodling on this question from a different panel, called Bridging the Online Cultural Divide, since Austin:

Do social networks conjoin communities -- i.e., technology facilitates connection where it could not be accomplished before -- or does it merely create closed communities by allowing like-minded folks to cohere and separate from the 'others'? Put another way, is a social network inherently based on segregation or inclusion?

Post title from this great paper by Clay Shirky.

That's it for recaps of SXSW. Back to the other stuff ...

Tags: community, dialogue, socialnetworking

Posted at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 14, 2007

Optimism

Kudos to Boingo for treating my request to not be signed up for a monthly charge not as a problem, but an opportunity. No, no. I am an Unlimited Upsell! Consider the possibilities for this hapless day user!

The browser window itself was called Click Capture. At Boingo, they are all about giving it to you straight. Straight somewhere.

Tags: sales, URL

Posted at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Texas nerdquake

A great last few days here in Austin. SXSWi has just wrapped up and I've got a bucket of notes, unvisited links, and ideas to sort through. Which is exactly the way I like it. Ingest complete, begin digest. Look forward to a few excreted posts in the coming days.

A few morsels.

Twitter, oh my goodness Twitter, was the darling of the festival. Literally everyone was using it to catch up with one another or just buzz softly in the great hive mind. There were screens set up in public areas that provided a steady flow of tweets. It definitely took the place of the room-by-room IRC channels from previous years. In a way, Twitter is just really slow IRC. But you can already see where this is going. Eric Rice is right when he says that a fest like SXSW is perfect for Twitter (especially given the overloaded WiFi) but that the long-term usefulness of such a dump of minutiae may be questionable.

There was a lot about virtual worlds this year -- more about that soon -- but it wasn't completely dominated by Second Life, which is good. There was a lot of buzz about an impending Google metaverse (what with the Earth renderer, Sketchup, and their purchase of Adscape Media). Of course last week's announcement of Sony's PS3 Home got a lot of people talking, mostly skeptically. And the Wii is simply adored.

Hardware DIY was big, especially given the deification of Phil Torrone for his Frogger hijinks on 6th Street last year. He and Limor Fried provided one of the keynotes. The Open Source Hardware movement is very interesting indeed. Fried demonstrated an illegal cell phone jammer to a room full of astonished geeks. I gotta get me one of them.

Last year's darling -- tagging -- was scarcely heard from this year. Tag: tired.

As always the best part of SXSW is what happens away from the convention center. This year's dorkbot meetup was especially well-done. You simply can't beat drinking free beer to the sound of humming tesla coils. Though the conference grew in size by almost 80% the parties didn't seem any more crowded than usual.

Best way to make a friend at SXSWi: pull a power strip out of your bag.

Overall, wonderful. I knew more people this year, but met fewer. I'd prefer to meet more, but that's the dark side of an expanding social network I suppose. My only complaint is that the size of the fest is such now that they've had to expand into other, very hard-to-reach areas of the convention center. It made for long slogs from panel-to-panel and also cut down on the mingling.

Special thanks to my panelists, by the way. A great discussion.

Tags: conferences, sxsw

Posted at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2007

Dude, where's my car?

Some people misplace their car keys. I misplace my car. Often. See, I don't drive very much, commuting to work by train as I do. And I park on the semi-anonymously gridded streets of Chicago. Add to that the frequent dustings and dumpings of snow and loaning it to friends in the neighborhood and it can be damn hard to find.

Enter Twitter. I've been wanting to do something with this much-buzzed, nanoblogging tool, but I really didn't think my daily minutiae interesting enough to submit. (And I still don't.) Hell, this blog is boring enough.

But as a mini-blog of my car's location, it is absolutely perfect. I give you ...

twitter.com/MySweetRide

Don't steal my car please. Oh, and someone add geotagging to Twitter. That'd be nirvana. (Update: thank you very much.)

Tags: car

Posted at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 6, 2007

Ghana@50

Today, the nation of Ghana and its sizable diaspora celebrate fifty years of independence from colonial rule.

My family, while not Ghanaian, feels a special affinity for the country. About six years ago, we first met Margaret Kumi, an experienced nanny looking for a new family. In short order she was part of ours, and we part of hers. She introduced us to the Twi language, Ghanaian foods, authentic kente cloth and a world much beyond our own. Margaret is no longer our nanny. She's more like a grandnanny, a Poppins-esque treat for the kids.

Seems like just yesterday I was getting emotional for a country I'd never been to as they marched further into the World Cup than anyone thought.

And mark your calendar Chicagoans. Ghanafest 2007 is right around the corner.

Tags: ghana

Posted at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Resolutions 2006 in review

Time to review the resolutions from 2006. Last year I went 7-for-12 with two partials. And this year?

1. Cook.
   Done. Not every night, not even every week. But a few dozen times is more than zero. And no reports of foodborne illness.
2. Visit San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, or Santa Fe, all US cities I have never been to.
   Thank goodness for the or. Got to Santa Fe in March. (But Los Alamos was cooler.)
3. Rip DVD collection.
   I'm going to call this complete. I didn't do the whole thing. In fact, not even close. But I did rip several dozen. I did all the children DVD's in the house. (These have been uploaded to TiVo for easy access. No more ruined DVD players from kid-smarm.) I also ripped anything that I knew I'd want to watch while traveling and any I wanted to send back to Neflix immediately to plow deeper into my queue, usually to stock up for travel.
4. Get to know the south side of Chicago.
   Uh, no. Apart from a few trips to the University of Chicago and Pilsen and some bike routes I barely stepped foot south of Congress.
5. Look into Italian dual-citizenship.
   I have the link. Does that count?
6. Shave head.
   Well, not completely. But I've gone quite short. Call it a partial.
7. Visit Xian, China.
   Nope. You'd think with four trips to China this year I could have done it. I even called this a “safety” resolution last year. Jeez.
8. Find Jim LoBianco.
   Task complete. Took barely three months. God bless The Google.
9. Run a half-marathon.
   Ha! No. Worst fitness year ever.
10. Teach sons how to swim.
    Gonna go for the stretch on this and say complete. Could I thrown them in a lake and walk away? No. (Well, not without pulling a Susan Smith.) But they can wear floaties and putter around the pool and that's all I was going for.
11. Call (not ping, not e-mail) my mother more often.
    Um. She reads my blog. Ruling?
12. Return to home winemaking.
    Yes, though we made no wine. Our brew this year was cider. Same gear, same principals.

Yikes. 6-for-12 with one partial. At this rate I'll be 0-12 by 2012. Now that's a goal!

Tags: resolutions, newyear

Posted at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 16, 2006

Seasonal smattering

A few trinkets for your stocking.

After over a year shuttered, the Division Street Russian Baths are back open. The “renovation” is somewhat underwhelming. The classic, mildewy old entrance is gone, replaced by a brokerage or something. I sauntered into a room full of cubicles and thought “can't be.” Indeed, it wasn't. The entrance is now through what used to be the women's spa. The new upper floor is a vast, soul-free community era decorated in stunning what-do-you-do-for-style-after-communism Russian cheese. The sauna benches have been rebuilt and enlarged. Yes, the charm of worrying about hooking an appendage (ok, the appendage) on a rusty nail popping through the slats is gone. As is the old tiled Russian and Turkish Baths sign. The eucalyptus steam room ain't working and the cold bath looks like the holding area for the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Granted, I visited two weeks ago, so maybe things have improved, but Russian Baths 2.0 is definitely still in beta.

On a recent ground stop in SFO (weather in Chicago, imagine that) I had a few hours to talk to the pilot. He told me about all the shit that's hit his plane's windshield during flight. Birds, obviously. But also fish over Cleveland that had been sucked up in some Great Lakes equivalent of a waterspout. He's also had a snake smashed into the glass, dropped from a bird of prey presumably. Snakes on a plane, indeed. Then there are the animals in the plane. The pilot told me about all the legally-permissible guide animals -- animals that are not required to be caged. Dogs, obviously. But also guide pigs (small) and even a guide falcon, which sat (hooded) on his owner's shoulder the whole flight. I suggest that the person behind the falconer was not about to complain about a too-reclined seat.

The 'tubes have been good to me this year. I've reconnected with my roommate from Rome in 1993 (one resolution, complete), my best friend from high school who I haven't seen in 20 years, and a student I taught freshman composition to in 1996. Is anyone still saying the Internet makes you antisocial?

The shooting at a law office in the Chicago Loop last week over a patent misunderstanding has gotten me thinking about the value of ideas these days. The business of patents -- creating them, licensing them, suing for them -- is gigantic, billions of dollars annually. And yet, they are only ideas, most never to receive material or methodological implementation. It's no wonder -- though certainly tragic -- that a sociopathic gunman didn't understand that just because a truckers' toilet hadn't been built didn't mean it hadn't been patented. The patent system clearly needs an overhaul, but so do people's expectations of the value of a single idea. Innovation ain't worth much if it isn't paired with insight and implementation. And for those of you who think your life has been ruined because of a stolen idea, perhaps check Google's new patent search first?

Tags: baths, patents, shooting, snakesonaplane, socialnetworking

Posted at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 11, 2006

Victory and fear

James Fallows has an good piece in this month's Atlantic Monthly (teaser only online to non-subscribers, alas). Yesterday's events in the UK make it a great piece.

Fallows argues that the "war" on terror should be declared over because of the successes the US and its allies have had (dispersing al-Qaeda, foiling plots, etc) but mostly because calling this protracted struggle a war plays right into terrorists' hands.

Perhaps worst of all, an open-ended war is an open-ended invitation to defeat. Sometime there will be more bombings, shootings, poisonings, and other disruptions in the United States. They will happen in the future because they have happened in the past (Oklahoma City; the Unabomber; the Tylenol poisonings; the Washington, D.C.-area snipers; the still-unsolved anthrax mailings; the countless shootings at schools; and so on). These previous episodes were not caused by Islamic extremists; future ones may well be. In all cases they represent a failure of the government to protect its people. But if they occur while the war is still on, they are enemy “victories,” not misfortunes of the sort that great nations suffer. They are also powerful provocations to another round of hasty reactions.

Hasty reactions. A good tagline for what will surely ensue after yesterday's anti-terrorism victory. Boing Boing chronicles the new idiocy:

Check out this article from Asheville, NC. "Maya Leoni, who is held by Angela Perez, cries as her mother, A.J. Leoni, pours the last of her drink into the receptacle while in line for the security checkpoint at the Asheville Regional Airport."

POUR IT INTO A RECEPTACLE? Don't you think that some of these potentially explosive liquids might be more dangerous when, I don't know, mixed in a big vat in the middle of an airport?

Christ, why don't they just have people put their liquids into a big bonfire?

If we overreact to this plot -- tremble, retrench, withdraw, not think -- it will be little better than if the bombs had gone off.

Posted at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 9, 2006

Snackposts

To tide you over until the next meal.

Voting on panels for next year's South by Southwest Interactive conference is open. Remember this is purely a popularity contest and that I will send you a postcard from Austin if you vote for my panel. (Note that the list of available panels randomizes itself on load to prevent giving precedence to those near the top. Lovely!)

The woman who cuts my hair has no e-mail address. She can only be contacted via MySpace. Now, I don't profess to understand what the hell is going on at MySpace, but this seems a bit extreme no? Also, the name she uses in the salon isn't her real name. The salon gives hairdressers fake names to ensure that they are mutually distinct enough not to be confused over the phone during appointment-making. Persona in MySpace; persona at work.

Propelled by Digg and del.icio.us, the LEGO mosaic post was shooting all over the 'tubes last week. Off to the bandwidth races!

During this deluge Holly posted a link to a similar project of hers, effectively puncturing a hole in the bottom of the tub and flooding her site too. And what a site it is. Cracks me up. Hollyrhea: highly recommended.

Books that, when released, I'll dump what I am reading at the time for: The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers and The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson. (Oh, anybody know what Neal Stephenson is up to?)

And lastly, to the terminally dorky I ask: Why is there no way to convert an RSS feed to a webcal feed? C'mon people.

Posted at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2006

E-mail longevity

Today is the tenth anniversary of the establishment of my primary e-mail address . Maybe not such a big deal, but I wonder how many people are using the same address and account after a decade. I don't mean aliases or forwarding services, I mean the actual account tied to an address. Where would you even find stats on this?

Mindspring, by the way, was a small ISP founded in Atlanta in 1994. It was acquired by Earthlink six years later. I've always liked the Athena reference.

Posted at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 3, 2006

Bathroom ethnography

One of the best things about not travelling is settling back into the warm embrace of routine. There I said it. Though the over-routinized make up a huge part of the IT geek pool and though they suffer my lighthearted mockery for it, I will admit here, now, that there is something to be said positively for having a bit of routine in one's life. For example, going to the bathroom. Now, this may have something to do with my work in China where toilets aren't -- how to say -- well, they aren't toilets at all. Being back in my office in Chicago reminds me how much I love the facilities here. So, having spent some time getting to know them again, I am reminded that others too have very predictable behaviors, especially as they relate to Human Bathroom Interaction (HBI). Here, then, are the gross (ahem) categories into which I put my colleagues, all male, obviously:

The Bold Enterer - This is the guy who slams the bathroom door open and forcefully strides in as though he were The Law come to confront some poker-playing desperado in a dusty saloon. Or perhaps he's just being strong and willful in case some executive is washing his hands and might take notice of his initiative.

The Stall Jiggler - This is the guy who won't take no for an answer when he encounters a locked stall door. Buddy, if the door doesn't give way on the first pull that means there is someone in there. To continue to try to obtain entrance suggests that you know the throne is occupied and causes one to worry about your motives. Back off.

The Spy - Perhaps the opposite of the Jiggler is this guy, who stealths about in the bathroom peering through cracks, looking under stall walls, and generally thinking he is a lot more sly than he is as he seeks to ascertain availability. What's needed maybe is a red light-green light availability indicator, ala airplane lavatories and old-time Catholic confessionals. And speaking of confessions ...

The Chatter - I'm sorry, but I simply don't approve of cell phone conversations while you are relieving yourself. Do you think the other party can't hear? Do you think I can't hear? The sad part is that most of the discussions aren't personal in nature at all. This guy is carrying on business. While crapping. This is not right.

Mr. Efficient - This is the guy who speeds into the bathroom (not boldy, just hastily), targets the first open stall, and has performed his transaction and washed up in not more than 90 seconds. This man has a goal and he accomplishes it. Task checked off the list. He's most likely a project manager.

The Turnabout - This is the guy who seeks privacy above all else. He's related to The Spy but the moment he learns that the stalls are not completely empty he turns on his heel and heads out or, amusingly, stops to wash his hands -- surely a communication to the other fellow in the stall saying "you think I left because you were here, but in fact I came in only to stretch my legs and wash up." Yeah, right.

Any others that I'm missing?

Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

March 11, 2006

Verge

Sitting in an afternoon panel at SxSW today I started a post on how I thought my panel in the morning went. I was thinking, gee, it would be nice to have a transcript when I looked up – literally to the guy sitting in front of me – and goddamn but he had one up on his screen.* I asked where he got it. He said, “Oh this is my site. I type fast.” And that is the essence of SxSW.

My panel? Oh it was on a concept that I didn’t really agree with. In fact, neither did my co-panelsts, David Pescovitz of Boing Boing and David-Michel Davies of the Webby Awards. Standing in line as we waited for our credentials a staffer looked at the title of our panel “Convergence and Transformation: A Whole New Creative World” and said quite disdainfully “What in the hell is that?” I shrugged. Sometimes that’s the best panel to be on though.

It was actually a lively discussion. The consensus from the panel was that it is not technology that is converging – tools diverge and proliferate to suit new tasks, after all – but that there is such a thing as convergent experience and in fact human beings crave experiences that unite, filter, and simplify – the more so in the face of multiplying tools, features, and media.

My particular take on the issue was to suggest that designers draw lessons from evolutionary biology. At the species level and above life does not converge at all. And in the rare case that it does – as with the horse and the donkey – it yields infertile life forms. There’s no convergence below the species level either, but there is certainly recombination, genetic in this case, which you might think of as a simultaneous divergence and convergence. A philosophy of recombinant design, I offered, is one where experiences are allowed to emerge by virtue of the remixability of your offering. Or, put differently, recombinant design is design as if your goal was to make designers of your customers. Consumer-as-producer, DIY media. Not terribly novel, I admit, but then no one threw me off the dais either.

[*} Not verbatim. I talked a lot more and made a lot less sense in reality.

Posted at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 25, 2006

Social convergence

I've had some amazing moments of social serendipity lately. Call it the "small world" phenomenon or six degrees of separation minus most of the degrees, but frankly it is a bit odd. And, even though I've recently joined LinkedIn to explore my network of professional contacts once-, twice-, and thrice-removed, technology hasn't contributed at all to what's been going on.

Last week at the Special Olympics basketball tourney I wrote about I met a mom of one of the participants, a woman named Alison Leland. She was reading the New York Times in the bleachers so, this being middle-class Texas, I immediately knew she wasn't like most of the other families there. Turns out, Ms. Leland is the wife of the late Texas congressman Mickey Leland. I only knew a bit about Mickey Leland: the causes he championed, the foes he made, the way he died. Forward a few days to New York City where I was meeting with some of the staff of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture and where, just for conversation's sake, I mentioned this small world encounter with Ms. Leland. The team looked at me and said, "You know, the idea for this museum was Mickey Leland's." Hmm, small world.

This week I also learned about a computer scientist doing some interesting work in Arabic machine translation who one of my colleagues holds in very high regard. Her name is Violetta Cavalli-Sforza, a distinctive name to be sure and one that rang a bell. Now, I'm not certain of the connection, but it seems that she must be related (daughter?) to Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the father of population genetics, author of the seminal History and Geography of Human Genes, and mentor of IBM's globetrotting co-principal on the Genographic Project Spencer Wells -- a project of which I am a part. Genetic forensics, indeed!

Then last night. A friend of ours lent my wife a book she loved to help us in our struggle to find a name for our third child, due in May. It was called The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. This of course is also the name of the much-lauded online app (also known as NameVoyager) from last year that dynamically maps the popularity of names over time and which was created by Martin Wattenberg, Laura's husband, and an IBM colleague of mine. I had no idea there was a book to accompany the site.

What does this prove? If the connections between the pairs of people and myself in each of these examples was a little less random it might suggest a widening professional circle. But two of the three pairs intersect my personal life too.

Oh, how I'd love this web visualized. Martin, are you listening?

Posted at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 12, 2006

Rebound

Wow, I didn't exactly bounce back from the Turkey trip like I thought I would. Here's what I have been meaning to post. Unrelated, all of it.

The news that they've found a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings is, well, big news. This is the first such new discovery since Carter found Tut in 1922, though no one seems to mention that Kent Weeks' re-discovery of KV5 in 1995 is actually just as profound -- possibly more so. I'm skeptical that the new tomb, called KV63, will create as many questions as KV5 did and does. From the scanty information it seems like KV63 was a cache or waypoint or merely a lesser noble's attempt to flank the pharoahs' tombs. Time will tell, but one thing is certain: count the references in the media to Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, versus the number of references to Edwin Brock and Otto Schaden, leaders of the team who actually found the tomb, and you will get a sense of how things go now for archaeologists in the Egypt.

When was the last time the word "museum" was used to sex something up? Never comes to mind. Well, not at the former Chicago Historical Society which has been newly rebranded the Chicago History Museum. While former director Lonnie Bunch takes the helm of the newly-placed National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in DC, the CHS has dropped the S to seem more inclusive, less upper-crust. Maybe "museum" is better. Though the etymology of the word as a cage for muses suggests old-fashion animals-behind-bars zoos, "museum" at least has an egalitarian sense that "society" does not. Better than the Exelon Chicago History Adventure, I suppose.

On the flight back from Turkey I sat next to a retired DEA agent who had made Istanbul a part-time home. In the 1990's he was stationed there with the task of evaluating the anti-narcotics programs of the former Soviet 'stans. He had tons of fascinating stories and, though we did no drugs, his penchant for drinking scotch hand over fist didn't do me any favors. See not bouncing back from the jetlag, above.

Songbird, the open source, Mozilla-based media player is out in pre-alpha proof-of-concept form. It does little more than play music now, but the interface is awash in non-functional functions that really make you think this could be an iTunes killer if it is sustained and, most importantly, if the development community seizes the add-on opportunities as they have with Firefox and Thunderbird. I am keeping my eye on this one.

Posted at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

Group effort

Working together as team with no "I" in sight these four blurbs make up a single post. Let us applaud their selflessness.

• I received an e-mail today congratulating Ascent Stage on being a rare Googlewhack, a search result wherein two terms exist only on that page. My whackedness? Jabberwockys and biosphere. Not jabberwocky singular, mind you; that returns lots of results. But the plural plus biopshere is all mine, baby.
• Coming home from Sunday dinner at my sister's last night I spotted a Macintosh G4 sitting, crying really, in the middle of our alley. As my wife recounted to me later -- I blacked out a bit in excitement -- I swerved into our garage nailing a fe