Information Lantern

Preamble

2010-09-21T00:35:00.004-04:00

Is no economic growth coming?

Related Videos
Recent decent explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UifzEpMjbsQ

Unpredictability of complex systems & concern about the fragility of the current situation and the intensity of possible breakdown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLFkQdiXPbo

Era of growth is ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFag3F1R-zc some other way of organizing economic activity is going to be required, and soon.

Chomsky on the economy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTtPYM8RSDE

UPDATE: 9/29/2010 the Daily Kos sees something comin... http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/28/906031/-The-Global-Currency-War

Beard shields

2010-04-11T22:03:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago on Twitter, the mighty Vaguery sayeth: "@mcburton Alas, the unsuspecting coder at the edge of the pack doesn't realize a Business Development Consultant is lurking in the corner…"

To which there was the reply from the wily mcburton: "@Vaguery my beard will protect me"

That prompted me to remember a conversation that came up at a party while talking to a bearded fellow about how our beards may relegate us to a certain class in society.

On Twitter/Facebook, I asked: How many political or business leaders do you know of that have beards?

1st reply: libbyh : @dcooney bill richardson and al gore sported beards. abe lincoln, of course ;)

From the photos I looked up, I think Al looks fine with the beard.

Replied: @libbyh those are good ones. There are a few academic + business types, such as John Seely Brown or Vint Cerf, but they don't really count.

next:
billmerrill @dcooney don't forget @homelessdave ;)

shadow power

down to the margins of the reeds and peer within

2009-09-23T08:54:00.009-04:00

Dave Pollard, author at How to Save the World set some of Loren Eiseley's prose to verse.

a difficult re-entry

The nature of the human predicament
is how nature is to be reentered; how man,
the relatively unthinking and proud creator of the second world --
the world of culture --
may revivify and restore the first world
which cherished and brought him into being.

For what, increasingly, is required of man
is that he pursue the paradox of return.

Yet man does not wish to retrace his steps
down to the margins of the reeds and peer within,
lest by some magic he be permanently recaptured.

Instead, men prefer to hide
in cities of their own devising.

- The Philosophy of Loren Eiseley, in Verse

the challenge of wild eating

2009-05-29T10:04:00.001-04:00

Nice story of Becky Lerner planning to go a week on food she can forage from the wild. She needed to cut it short to 5 days, and lessons emerged: plan ahead, work in community.

thinking differently about books

2009-04-17T14:32:00.006-04:00

In the past few years, I've noticed I had been considering books a burden of promises.

Though books by themselves don't make any promises, I have been using them as a sort of lifeline to the future: that I'll read that book, and some magic will happen, like I'll know some important bit of information that will make all the difference. Or I realize some secret path. Or I'll be able to offer some new way for my family to interact, or for my neighborhood to become more vibrant, or my experience of nature to be more intimate, or my understanding of history or human society will become profound and I'll be able to ...

Book sellers, authors, and book lovers encourage the mystery and promise of a book, but I'm now finding the majority of the books in my possession feel like items in a to-do list that are always in the low priority group.

After realizing I was doing this, I started to watch for other ways to relate to books. I often encounter situations for which there are not handy words - or even that there might not be words for. I've read enough Heidegger to have tainted my thoughts as to how new language might emerge. Recently I read an article that mentioned the use of a certain theoretical framework, and they called out that framework as something that allowed conversation on a topic.

Once employed, the framework provided by the book "gives us a grammar to..." talk about topic X. I like that.

So, now I find I'm starting to think of books a bit more like a toolset, or vocabulary framework, to employ when thinking about or discussing a problem.

Do I need that tool on the shelf there? If not, should it move aside to make space for tools I do need?

The shift from "unfulfilled promise" to "framework tool" is a great relief.

Local UX events

2009-04-13T10:12:00.002-04:00

A reminder that news about user experience events in the Ann Arbor area are regularly posted to UXnet Ann Arbor page. If you want to see a different city, click the "Locales" link at the top, then on the locales page, choose a city close to you.

If you are itching to go to a local developer + UX conference this spring, try Kalamazoo X conference - just a few weeks away.

IA Summit - Detroit Re-cap Session

2009-03-21T11:31:00.003-04:00

For those of us information architect types who are missing the 10th Information Architecture Summit in Memphis (March 20-22), there will be a local recap of the IA Summit at Wayne State on Thursday, March 26th at 11am. There is a write up of the event on the Wayne State ASIS&T student chapter website: http://wsuasist.blogspot.com/2009/03/information-architecture-summit-09.html

Panelists will include Peter Morville, Keith Instone, Chris Farnum, and Heidi Blanton.

SI Alumni gathering in A2 on March 12th

2009-03-11T14:39:00.001-04:00

Hey - for those who are SI Alumni -

Please join fellow School of Information area alumni as we celebrate this year’s graduating students and welcome them into the alumni community! Let’s show them there really IS life after SI!!

Mix-and-mingle with fellow alumni and meet the soon-to-be graduating students. We’ll be gathering on Thursday, March 12, 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the private room on the second floor of the Cottage Inn on William Street.

variable interface complexity

2009-02-12T08:58:00.003-05:00

or, maybe it should be "variable interface clutter"? I don't know, but I like the idea of turning it up or down - at this site for the Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique

http://paulsboutique.beastieboys.com/

(thanks Charlie)

best display of 2008 election results

2008-11-06T13:06:00.003-05:00

The NPR site was easily the best overall presentation of 2008 presidential election results. The user interface there answered questions before they were asked.

A man of his time

2008-10-26T11:51:00.002-04:00

Obama talking about online social networks facilitating a change in power.

got this from Amanda Mooney's blog, via Melida.

Candidates tax plans

2008-10-22T12:01:00.001-04:00

Nice visualization. Be interesting to have a Regan era tax plan up there for comparison.

Dance of Social Frameworks

2008-10-09T11:27:00.003-04:00

Dave Pollard at How to Save the World has a fine post applying his framework for finding people to work with, to the challenge of finding people to live with, assuming living in an intentional community is attractive. Cool. Feels like a post to refer back to.

Trusting Computer Generated Advice

2008-10-08T16:52:00.009-04:00

Was getting directions to go to a thing.
Went to Google Maps.
was goin' from Ann Arbor, MI to 2600 S Telegraph Rd # 100, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302
It gave me this:

View Larger Map

Now, if I was doing w/o the benefit of this sufficiently complex magic mapping tool, I would have taken 23 to 14 to 275 to 696 to Telegraph. Sounds simple, compared to what they suggested.

Turns out the path they sent me on was probably a bit faster, wasn't very complex, and had nice scenery.

I had the distinct impression that this was the route a person local to my destination would have suggested. It even had us coming up to the driveway to the building from behind the building, so we didn't see the business sign - just trusted the directions given.

I was impressed by this. And I wasn't alone. A couple other people had a similar experience - taking the same route suggested by The Goog. My favorite comment came from Les Orchard who said "I feel like I just gained experience points."

It was freaky. A revealing of what would have otherwise been "localized knowledge". I like benefiting from that. But it does make me feel drawn in, and this triggered some defenses. Do I trust somewhat wacky directions in the future? When I get this information from a human who lives where I'm headed, I trust. When it comes from a data crunching machine, what then? Trust?

All these roads we drive on are connected (other than some closed, corporate road correlate to the "dark web"), so it makes sense using that assumption that one should be able to just find the shortest path based on knowing the localized rules. So, I guess trust of certain advice coming from computers is bound to increase as it improves. Slippery road, trusting computer advice. Thar be dragons. (...but dragons give good experience points, hmmm...)

visualizing items in categories

2008-09-18T09:33:00.006-04:00

Someone on an IA mailing list I'm on was asking a visualization question. They wrote:

I'm planning a project where participants will grade example items according to how well they fit their idea of what a certain category is. The grading will be on a 1-10 scale, similar to the (in)famous hot-or-not grading system.

I anticipate about fifty or more items to be tested, and for there to be a range of agreement. What data visualisations formats could I consider for showing this?

Compelled to reply, I wrote:

Will you want to show items spanning multiple categories? I'm trying to sus out what you want to get out of this. I'm guessing you want to present back to someone(s) evidence for what categories make sense re: their set of items.

Of the 50 or more items, perhaps another dimension could be the importance of the item to the stake holders. Ex: the items that either make the most $ for the stakeholders, or are the most valuable for their mission, etc. would be "higher" value than other items.

If you could determine that, then you could make that the up/down dimension, with the top being "higher" value items. If you showed the categories as columns on a 2D surface, all with the same width, then placed all items on that surface in top/down order (could think of them as sorted rows on the sheet), leaving space to one side of each category... ah I should just make a picture... OK, attached is a picture.

The picture just shows the top items, but I presume your final visualization would include all items. Each "row" is an item. If it shows up multiple times, that's because it was considered to be more than 50% within the category (or some rule you will come up with).

You could show items that fell further outside that threshold, but only show them dimly. Or show all items with their transparency set to the percentage they were within the category. (if you do that, still show the physical placement of the item in relation to the category, as that is easier for us humans to pull data from.)

An important indicator of success for the categories would be if the top priority/value items all fit snugly into one (or more) categories. It might be ok if lower value items didn't fit the categories as well.

impact of new offshore drilling on U.S. oil consumption

2008-09-10T11:13:00.006-04:00

this from a post on TreeHugger.

ArbCamp 2008

2008-08-31T12:07:00.005-04:00

ArbCamp 2008 is approaching at the speed of time. The topic "Publishing" is broadly framing this year's event.

ArbCamp is an annual un-conference (BarCamp) of, for, and by folks who want to "build communities worth having" both online and off. Everybody who attends will collectively set the agenda for the conference, with food, meeting spaces, and a basic schedule provided.

Bring your friends.

When: October 18-19. 9AM – 5PM both days.

Where: Morris Lawrence Building at Washtenaw Community College 4700 East Huron River Drive Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105

http://arbcamp.org for more dirt.

Respect the Archivists

2008-08-28T18:35:00.009-04:00

I have some old paper material to deal with. You might notice it if you look closely at the right side of my desk.

My hope is to finish going through the last 2ft of this in the next couple hours. I don't expect to succeed.

See, many of the little bleached paper sheets here are also the articles and papers I kept from grad school. But it's time they either serve a new purpose or get to know our local recycling program. Still, I like the topics and I keep getting drawn in.

One of the papers that stopped me as I tried to let it go, was written by one of my professors at the school, "Understanding Electronic Incunabula: A Framework for Research on Electronic Records" by Margaret Hedstrom. Not having known much about archives when I started at SI back in 1998, this was what alerted me to the awareness and forsight some were bringing to the archive field. This brought on the respect for the archivists that has only increased to this day.

ok, back to culling the stack.

Black Iron Days

2008-08-21T15:12:00.003-04:00

There appears to be a large gathering of blacksmiths, called Black Iron Days, taking place this weekend up in Grayling Michigan.

Surfing bricks with clicks

2008-08-20T13:18:00.003-04:00

The Google Consumer Response Tag + newer smart phones seem to be finally the right sort of combo to fulfill the vision of physical items leading to online information or webpages - first grasped at by the Cuecat, which was shipped to WIRED readers about 8 years ago.

I have an older Sony Ericsson that isn't really up to efficient websurfing, so it's not something I'll try out now, but certainly a new opportunity space.

The Demise of The Carbon Age

2008-07-18T14:23:00.007-04:00

"I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within 10 years." - Al Gore

information lantern word cloud

2008-07-02T11:25:00.003-04:00

Complements of Wordle

Ann Arbor Startup Weekend, June 20 - 22

2008-06-04T10:59:00.002-04:00

In a couple weeks we will have an interesting event happening in our little town; an event which is poised to introduce valuable tools and a new spin on business development to the Southeast Michigan region. Attendees of Ann Arbor Startup Weekend will gather for 2+ days to create (in parallel) a number of start ups, that should stand on their own at the end of the weekend.

This is a "learning-by-doing" model that the good folk at Startup Weekend have been taking to cities around the country to leverage smart, motivated people who want to create companies, products, services, etc., but don't know exactly how to go about achieving their goals.

Details about Ann Arbor Startup Weekend are both on their blog site and in their Upcoming! event listing.

Michigan Estimated Individual Income Tax Instructions and Form

2008-04-15T12:14:00.004-04:00

I found it somewhat difficult to find the Michigan 2008 Estimated Individual Income Tax Voucher Form and Instructions.

UXnet Ann Arbor

2008-04-14T14:18:00.007-04:00

A little while back Lou Rosenfeld conscripted me to be the Ann Arbor area local ambassador for a group called the User Experience Network - or UXnet. From the UXnet website:

UXnet creates effective, functional, and strategic networks to enable cross-disciplinary collaboration between user experience professionals. We connect people, organizations, resources, and ideas to enable the growth and maturation of User Experience as a practice, a community, and eventually a discipline.

A few of the other local UXnet ambassadors - Keith Instone [Toledo], Anthony Viviano [Detroit], Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus [was the Detroit dude], and Bob Hale [Columbus] and myself have been doing a couple things to knit UX people in the region together so they can get to know each other, better coordinate, and expose the locale to the mighty good thing that is "user experience".

After the IUE 2008 conference in Ann Arbor, we had a meeting with as many leaders of local UX-related groups as we could muster. We introduced ourselves and basically got a sense of who is who in the area and what our interests and challenges are. We plan to have similar meetings over the next few years in other local cities (Lansing, Detroit, Toledo, etc.) with the intent of establishing or strengthening the bonds between the different groups.

I am also planning on talking with many local UX practitioners and sharing short interviews with them here in this blog, and on the Ann Arbor page of the UXnet site. Watch this space...

where, oh where, will I work today?

2008-04-09T11:28:00.006-04:00

A story of Ann Arbor co-working in a new online news source, concentrate. It mentions the office space where I work: The Brickyard.

IUE 2008

2008-04-01T13:11:00.001-04:00

Check out photos of the 2008 Internet User Experience conference in Ann Arbor.

Comcast is bad

2008-03-30T12:00:00.002-04:00

Comcast is terrible. Comcast has horrible customer service. The People should be able to sue Comcast for being so difficult to work with. Comcast creates a situation where I actively look for ways to no longer user services from Comcast.

The problem: the competition is AT&T.

AT&T is terrible. AT&T has horrible customer service. The People should be able to sue AT&T for being so difficult to work with. AT&T creates a situation where I actively look for ways to no longer use services from AT&T.

Help me user-contributed-infrastructure-creation, you are my only hope.

the crushing truth of paper

2008-03-26T22:35:00.001-04:00

whoah! Paper domiates
Originally uploaded by kinetisonic

http://colorwar2008.com/roshambo

Dreams

2008-03-26T02:32:00.003-04:00

http://xkcd.com/137/

Not An Employee goes live

2008-02-29T13:08:00.002-05:00

http://notanemployee.net/

Carbon Offsets

2008-02-04T11:36:00.000-05:00

Good explanation of carbon offsets on the Quest radio program.

Guiding actions

2008-02-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

On an SI mailing list, Chris Hanrath pointed out that from UX Magazine, choosing to view the print preview results in this >>

I like this aggressive guidance. Both to encourage a focus on the article level, as well as to promote appropriate printing practices to conserve resources.

I am not connected to a printer at the moment, so I don't know if a print results in a page, or printing the above image. In the end, I'm not sure if I would recommend this, but I certainly applaud it here.

Deep insight into Google Maps

2008-02-01T00:10:00.000-05:00

This Google Maps video reveals all.

DRM and the Warumungu tribe

2008-01-29T12:38:00.000-05:00

Kim Christen was recently interviewed on the BBC's Digital Planet. The radio spot is available from Kim's blog post. She is working with the Warumungu tribe in Australia, and has been developing a very interesting online tool for accessing cultural artifacts from the Warumungu tribe. One interesting thing - discussed in the radio piece - is the model used for managing access rights to the artifacts in the archive. The model is based on the existing traditional rules around who is allowed to see or hear the material in question.

update: here is the BBC article on this story, "Aboriginal archive offers new DRM"

Half-Life reviewed

2008-01-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

Nice write up for Half-Life in The Hollywood Reporter.

Half-Life, by Jen Phang, playing at Sundance

2008-01-17T22:09:00.000-05:00

Artwork by Jon Cooney and rotoscoping by Chris Cooney are both appearing in the film, Half-Life, which will start showing this weekend at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Jen Phang wrote and directed Half-Life and Reuben Lim produced it. I hear it is great, and I really look forward to seeing a screening of it.

Set in the idyllic hills of northern California, Jennifer Phang’s marvelously original first feature, Half-Life, is a supernormal tale about self-absorbed and disillusioned suburbanites who live in a futuristic time of natural disasters, suffocating air quality, and accelerating global cataclysms.

Single mom Saura Wu and her two kids, Pam and Timothy, struggle to rebuild their family in the presence of a sinister, but charming, interloper. Pam seeks refuge in her object of desire, a young hipster named Scott who, in turn, attempts to jar his fundamentalist parents out of their denial of his gay identity. Timothy, meanwhile, stumbles upon a way to develop and hone paranormal powers that he summons to alter everyone’s reality.

Modern and philosophical, Half-Life masterfully blends menacing rage with the tenderness and vulnerability of youth to create a tale that injects an empowering and persevering hopefulness into the family's fatalistic fears of a disintegrating world. A visually ambitious accomplishment filled with gorgeous cinematography, handcrafted animation, and expertly concocted faux news reports, this auspicious directorial debut is without precedent and firmly establishes Jennifer Phang as an exciting talent to watch.

Here are the official screening times for Half-Life (116 mins). It’s a great premier slot but their theaters are not the largest seating capacity. The Egyptian is right in the heart of the festival.

Sat. January 19, 9:15pm, Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City
Tue. January 22, 3:00pm, Egyptian Theatre, Park City
Fri. January 25, 6:30pm, Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City
Sat. January 26, 12:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinemas V, Salt Lake City

You can see the trailer at the Half-Life website.

IMDB entry http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428620/

Prediction markets exposing organizational information flow

2008-01-17T19:37:00.000-05:00

NYTimes Freakonomics article/blog post about an interesting study that used prediction markets (futures markets) at Google to measure information flow at Google based on similarity of trading decisions (similar trading implies shared information). Sent by Leanna Gingras to an SI mailing list.

Quote from the article:

I don’t know about your firm, but we academics are too self-important to ever sit in cubicles. Our research suggests that this may be unfortunate, and perhaps many of the best ideas in economics never occur, because the idea is waiting for us at a water cooler conversation at which we never arrive. I would love to see my colleagues brainstorm more often and more freely.

There is criticism of the study in the comments, as well as further ideas.

Some voting direction for our crazy Michigan primary

2008-01-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

Here in Michigan, I've been trying to figure out what to do with my vote in tomorrow's primary. One option was to try to muddy the Republican waters by pushing up Mitt Romney, as suggested in the Daily Kos. I was also thinking of voting for Kucinich, which now sounds all the more appealing, after getting an email from my friend Jeannine Palms:

Hi Friends,

I have heard lots of talk about voting uncommitted or Republican. For me this is an excellent opportunity to vote for the one who I think represents real values of peace and justice. Uncommitted votes could go anywhere in the end and I could not support any Repubican even as a protest. If Kucinich gets enough votes, it will make a difference. I urge a vote in the primary for Kucinich.

Here are other reasons:

*He is the only candidate who has refused corporate donations. He has no strings attached . He is a true people’s candidate and yet so many are being swayed by the elect ability factor.

*Early in the game when in true democracy we should be getting a fair view of each of the possible candidates, we are already being swayed by money interests and exclusion tactics meant to silence the voice of integrity.

*Kucinich is the only democratic candidate whose record shows he has had the courage to go against the statis quo. His record in congress and his innovative proposals demonstrate. He has:

-Voted consistently against the war and proposes a cabinet level Department of peace.

-Voted against the patriot Act and introduced Articles of Impeachment against Dick Chaney for constitution violations.

-Recognizes the humanity of immigrants and addresses the “immigrant problem” as an outgrowth of bad trade agreements such as NAFTA.

-Introduced bills(with Rep. John Conyers) for Universal Not for Profit Health Care, reducing costs and simplifying coverage by getting rid of the middle man: the insurance companies.

-Proposed a Green Works Administration and building trade agreements based on environmental protection and fair employment practices.

*This candidate deserves our support! Even if our votes aren’t counted by the DNC, let’s show them that if they expect our votes in November they better make a commitment to incorporate Kucinich’s ideas.

* Register your protest of the status quo.

Thanks,
Jeannine

Why I want to work locally (instead of flying to work)

2008-01-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

Another sobering article by Bill McKibben, this one in the Washington Post last week. He writes about a NASA scientist named James Hansen who is positing the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million. We are already at 383 ppm.

Hmmm.

the leaping boy

2007-12-23T18:08:00.000-05:00

Jude and Serene were over today and shot this video. Much fun, and bread pudding, was had.

Me and Arduino, down by the school yard

2007-12-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm one information set away from the people who attend this, but they are so darn cool that they are doing this that I have to forward this announcement. Go if you are at all interested - it's a great bunch of folk. They just changed their name from "notbago" to "GO Tech"

Here's the note from Dale Grover:

It sounds like there's enough interest to do a "Bare Bone Board" (Arduino clone) build night at the next GO Tech meeting, which is January 8.

What is an Arduino? From http://arduino.cc: "Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments." Or, if you prefer, it's a minimal Atmel ATMega168 microprocessor circuit and all the software to program it over USB in C or a C-like language from Mac/Linux/Windows. The Arduino runs about $35. However, some folks have designed boards that use a USB to TTL serial cable, which means the board itself runs more like $10-$15. You only need one $20 cable to program any number of boards.

The ATMega168 has 16K of program space (a little less due to the bootloader, I think), 1K of RAM, some EEPROM, and decent analog input, pwm output, and general digital I/O.

Here's my proposal. I can coordinate a group buy of the BBB boards from Modern Device (http://www.moderndevice.com/), and cables from some other source. I have had no problems so far running the software under Mac OS X (10.4), and it is supposed to run under Linux and that other operating system as well.

BBB kit--includes everything except a power supply (but you can run it off of USB). $10. (What a deal!) (This is the quantity pricing on the BBB. The RBBB is even cheaper, but I think the BBB is worth the little added cost.)

Optional: USB Cable--$20. You could skip this, see if you like the kit, and order the cable from Mouser or AdaFruit.com later. Just use someone else's to make sure it runs.

Optional: Plastic bread board. $5. Approximately what AdaFruit sells. Lets you easily prototype with through-hole components. Worthwhile having.

I'll supply LEDs, resistors, solder, 5 soldering stations, snips, a few "third hands", etc.

What you would supply: If you have a decent iron, snips, third hand, then bring them.

If you would like to participate, send me the following directly to dgrover at redcedar dot com:

*Your name
*What you want me to order--i.e., BBB kit ($10), USB cable ($20), bread board ($5).
*What tools you can bring--e.g., soldering iron (you'll want a decent one), snips, etc.
*A statement that you're kind of sorta sure you might be at the meeting, at which time you'll do your darndest to pay me with a check or cash. *Please don't send any money now.*

Or, you can just tell me you're bringing your own BBB kit. (This helps in figuring out how many soldering stations to line up.)

These are fun little boards, the Arduino software makes it easy to just jump right in, and you can apparently also program in straight C using the software. The hardware can be programmed using the regular Atmel programmer as well.

I imagine we'd spend the first hour or so building, and the rest of the time exploring the software. It would be helpful if folks brought (in addition to a soldering station) a laptop with USB, with the Arduino software already installed, and perhaps even a printout of the excellent instructions for the BBB assembly.

That's all for now.

--Dale

NotBAGO is a meeting for Ann Arbor area readers of Make Magazine, Circuit Cellar, Home Shop Machinist, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, slashdot, etc. That is, people who are interested in and make things using technology, whether that's a metal cutting lathe or a Python script. A kind of generalized mixture of CerealBar, DorkBot, Oxford Geek night, and Portland Machinist Guild. We have machinists, electrical engineers, software folks, industrial control types, and so on. We share projects, information about tools and ideas, and connect with like-minded people.

It's all about "Externalized Costs" n.( IK-STUR-NL-AHYZD KAWST)

2007-12-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

Really wonderful video (20 mins long):

The Story of Stuff about our current system of stuff production.

There are also a few nice teasers (but watch the whole video above! It really is good)

Call for a renewable energy standard in Michigan

2007-12-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

This email came in from Jeannine Palms:

Let's make a difference! By signing this petition, we can stop new coal plants from coming to Michigan and polluting our air, lakes and streams.

Join me in telling your legislator that coal plants are just dead wrong for Michigan.

http://progressmichigan.org/page/s/cleanenergy

I understand that we currently will use coal for energy, and this petition is not to have NO coal plants - just none built before there is a strong renewable energy standard that supports the future of our state's economy and quality of living (like, air quality).

I added my name to the petition. Here are the words of it:

TELL YOUR LEGISLATOR:
STOP THE COAL RUSH AND MOVE MICHIGAN INTO A CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE

Michigan's energy future is in the crosshairs. Our state is threatened with an onslaught of at least seven more dirty coal-fired power plants that will keep Michigan locked in the energy dark ages, dependent on imported fossil fuels and producing more dangerous global warming pollution. More outdated dirty coal plants will hamper the development of clean energy and the good paying jobs that come with it.

But the Legislature can stop this from happening NOW by passing a NO NEW COAL PLANT policy until Michigan has a strong Clean Energy Plan that would:

* Enact a strong renewable energy standard that requires energy providers to generate 20 percent of their electric power from renewable sources by 2020.
* Enact strong statewide utility funded energy efficiency programs that result in at least 1% energy savings per year.
* Protect consumers from having to absorb the skyrocketing future costs of coal burning.
* Implement a long term energy plan that guarantees energy efficiency and renewable power are used before any more outdated coal plants are built.
* Develop new standards for controlling the emissions of CO2.

It's time for Michigan's leaders to put old-fashioned, dirty, global-warming coal power aside and point the state to a new, clean, jobs-rich future that protects the Great Lakes.

Time is of the essence. Michigan's energy future is on the line. Act Now. Stop the coal rush that threatens our state. No more dirty coal plants until renewable and energy efficiency measures are in place

Tiki Lounge

2007-11-28T21:18:00.000-05:00

Worth the drive, me thinks.

MAI KAI LOUNGE- Tecumseh MI

(found off Jim Rees' Flickr photo)

Understand before you design

2007-11-28T19:27:00.000-05:00

"If you don't understand the underlying structure of the work that is being done in a particular setting, then you cannot design the technology that will best support it."

From the University at Buffalo News

Come hear the Yahoo! VP for Advanced Development give a talk at U of Michigan

2007-11-20T22:29:00.001-05:00

Bradley Horowitz, VP for Advanced Development at Yahoo! will be a Guest Speaker on campus next week Tuesday, November 27 from 4-5pm in the 1670 Computer Science Building on North Campus. He is being co-sponsored by SI and CSE and the topic is of clear SI interest "Innovation and Evolution - How Search, Social Media, and New Ideas can Shape the Next Web".

Personality Profile - Benevolent Inventor

2007-11-17T20:40:00.000-05:00

According to my personalDNA quiz, I'm a

Inspired by Dunrie at Scientific Ink.

Synthesizing Cultural Adaptogens

2007-11-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

must get on this project.... will start inviting team mates. tell me if you are interested in playing with this idea.

Lindemans, Shiraz, Bin 50, 2006

2007-11-16T18:42:00.001-05:00

1/2 smooth, 1/2 bite at the mid back of the tongue. Very fond of this.

(South Eastern Australia)

status

2007-11-11T11:53:00.001-05:00

13hrs of billable work to do before tomorrow
only 703 steps on my pedometer so far today (it's 11:55am)

40 emails in inbox (dating to Aug 7th 2007)
89 written to do items (very mixed granularity)
1/2 ft of paper in paper inbox
28 people in my "to write to" email folder
707 entries in my "to read" email folder
132 entries in my "to listen to or watch" email folder.

2 cups of coffee and slice of spicy pumpkin pie as present fuel.

go.

"Live more gooder!"

2007-10-16T15:45:00.000-04:00

Nice brief article in the Guardian by George Marshall on changing "save the planet" to something more effective, that carries a message of positive growth and change. He presents the new message as a testimony:

"I have embraced a lighter lifestyle because it is the smart, cool, intelligent and healthy way to live. I want to live in the present and the real world, not be tied to an outdated and dangerous 20th-century way of living. I live this way because I love it, because it makes me feel good and because it is healthy and gives me freedom.

"I feel that I am setting the pace for the 21st century and I am excited to see people all around me trying to catch up. If we all work together we can build a world that is cleaner, fairer and happier and that is what I want to leave my children."

Nice.

computer actions rippling the sea, upon every word

2007-10-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Interesting article on "quants" in trading.

"Linked with high-frequency trading is the developing science of event processing, in which the computer reads, interprets, and acts upon the news. A trade in response to an FDA announcement, for example, could be made in milliseconds. Capitalizing on this trend, Reuters recently introduced a service called Reuters NewsScope Archive, which tags Reuters-issued articles with digital IDs so that an article can be downloaded, analyzed for useful information, and acted upon almost instantly."

I'm struck by the imagery of (if not already, then sometime very soon) the words in a speech being semantically indexed from a live broadcast, and each word effecting the markets. Stunning.

Also, how the different analysts are using computers to comb through all this data, looking for any discrepancies and capitalizing on that, but then I imagine the size of those discrepancies must be reduced by all the scrutinizing activity, and that the pattern hunters must now be analyzing and acting on a sea of behaviors from all the other pattern hunters.

The Third Place, and "Texting is the new smoking"

2007-09-23T21:41:00.000-04:00

Said by Andrew Hinton, on the IxDA Discuss mailing list:

Even when people are at bars where it's supposed to be a 3rd place
already, they're constantly texting on their phones. It's even worked
itself into our public body language -- texting is the new smoking.

I love it. This is right on. There is considerable signaling going on while texting. It distinguishes a mind set, if not a generation.

also in his email:

If a Bowling League was the old 3rd place, the new one is still being
in the Bowling League, but having a bulletin board about it, a
MySpace group, and texting your team-mates (and your friends who
aren't even there) during a tournament.

Roughly Party

2007-08-12T22:25:00.000-04:00

Had a fun gathering today, inspired by Instructables and MAKEzine.

Made a solar oven. We need to find a better cooking container than the one we had. Also need to start earlier in the day.

From PBS Kids > Zoom we made glue and during dinner, were entertained by dancing raisins.

I keep thinking of making tethered sky/fire lanterns (mini hot air balloons) for a backyard party.

George Cooney Jr.

2007-07-03T17:40:00.000-04:00

My dad passed away Saturday, June 30th 2007.

The Freep had a little write up on him. (text follows)

George Cooney Jr.: Ferndale lawyer was a watchdog for the elderly

July 3, 2007

BY JOE ROSSITER

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Safeguarding the rights of the aged, while ensuring that their golden years were rewarding ones, was a role attorney George Cooney Jr. steadfastly played throughout his career.

Mr. Cooney, a private practice lawyer concentrating on elder law, estate planning and probate administration, died Saturday at his home in Ferndale after an extended battle with prostate cancer.

He was 64.

"As a watchdog for the elderly and infirm, he was concerned about people being treated properly," said his youngest son, Cameron Cooney. "In his mind, old age shouldn't be something to be feared, but rather revered."

Mr. Cooney started his law career with his father, George, at Cooney & Cooney in the Dime Building in Detroit. They practiced there for nearly two decades. He established his own law office in 1986, practicing for 20 years. He became a member of the law firm Mall Malisow & Cooney in Farmington Hills in 2006 until health concerns resulted in his retirement in April 2007.

"He relished the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people and use his unique insights and knowledge of law to advocate for people who were in need," said Sanford (Sandy) Mall, founder and senior partner of the Farmington Hills law firm.

A Detroit native, Mr. Cooney graduated from U-D Jesuit High School in 1959 and attended the University of Notre Dame where he graduated as an English major in 1963. Three years later, he earned his law degree from the University of Michigan.

Mr. Cooney was a member of the law faculty at Wayne State University for eight years He was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Bar of Michigan in the spring.

A lover of music and nature, Mr. Cooney played classical guitar and sang in the chorus with Michigan Opera Theater for several years.

In addition to his son, survivors include his second wife of 23 years, Mary; sons Christopher, Daniel and Jonathan; four grandchildren; two brothers, and many nieces and nephews.

A memorial service is at 11 a.m. Friday at St. John Episcopal Church, 26998 Woodward Ave., Royal Oak. Visitation will precede services at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Pleasant Prairie Cemetery in Spokane, Wash.

from "Investigating Value-based Decision Bias and Mediation: Do You Do As You Think?

2007-06-19T23:16:00.000-04:00

by Dianne J. Hall and David Paradice

The ability to see the big picture is often marred by the strengths of one's individual values, particularly as they relate to the problem at hand. Because individual values are deep-seated, they often form the basis for decision bias - that is, the inability to expand the lens through which one observes the world. This myopia leads to inefficiencies in information collection and assessment.
...
In this study, the DSS debiasing component forced participants to articulate both good and bad points of a given problem or alternative, thus forcing consideration of at least two perspectives.
...
This research suggests it is possible, through a system component such as that developed here, to change the behavior of decision makers at least for a specific decision domain. Supporting a decision maker's consideration of multiple perspectives will, at least temporarily, broaden their perspective base and will result in that individual considering a greater number of perspectives during that decision task.

Othar!

2007-06-15T23:30:00.001-04:00

Othar!
Originally uploaded by kinetisonic

I am very amused by Girl Genius. Great web comic.

merging thousands of photos to create a virtual space

2007-06-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

I just watched a video of a truly amazing demo of Photosynth at the TED Conference.

I can imagine families sitting down after dinner and just looking at the world through this. Self-directed virtual tours.

Can Has Quik Reference?

2007-06-14T00:49:00.000-04:00

The O'RLY book made me cry with laughter.

KTHXBYE

reputation aggrigator, where art thou?

2007-06-08T08:59:00.000-04:00

I just spotted a draft in my list of posts from about a year ago that I forgot to publish. Here is the piece that was semi-finished:

MOCHI meeting was this evening. I walked away with many ideas - amongst them a curiosity of how a reputation aggregator would work. Something that pulled into one place all online indications of my past participation and reputableness. These would include my eBay stats, Amazon reviewer ranking (if I had one), Slashdot karma points, the number of songs I'd listened to on last.fm, the keywords and # of posts I'd made on del.icio.us, the number of hours I've been running SETI@home... anything that was evidence of how I participate in a group and I am judged.

so, does anyone know of such a thing?

Classic Cup Cafe

2007-06-05T01:36:00.001-04:00

Classic Cup Cafe
Originally uploaded by kinetisonic

I went to Classic Cup Cafe one morning this spring. I had a pecan ... pancake, maybe? I recall it was good, but a little too sweet. I had been at A2 Auto Glass getting my windshield replaced, and there was going to be a wait, so they suggested I head to this cafe. The A2 Auto Glass owner, Jim Balcom, gave me a ride. Excellent service - my new windshield makes me happy.

And, Classic Cup Cafe has wireless!

The sign of Google

2007-05-22T14:50:00.001-04:00

The sign of Google
Originally uploaded by kinetisonic.

The sign is up on the Google Ann Arbor outpost.

Shifting A2

2007-05-10T10:54:00.000-04:00

An insightful post at Ed Vielmetti's blog where Ed responds to a few questions posed to him by a researcher at SPARK - a Ann Arbor economic development group.

"From a technology point of view, the opportunity is to turn Ann Arbor into a global knowledge hub knit together by and for people who have shared time and perhaps a bowl of bi bim bop in Ann Arbor but who have scattered to the four winds."

Alongside users

2007-04-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

I really like this article: "Liberating Usability Testing" by Phil Carter of Auckland University of Technology.

I grabbed the march/april 2007 the ACM Interactions magazine off a stack in my house - a little reading after the kids fell asleep - and switched from skimming to reading when I hit this article because I have a user testing session coming up in mid-May, and thought it'd be good to stir my knowledge.

It includes a table with examples of interventions for eliciting verbal reflection from a participant during a "talk outloud" usability test, when, for example, the participant is only giving non-verbal cues in reaction to using the product being tested. The examples showed increasingly less-controlling interventions. The idea being highlighted was that many commonly recommended intervention statements (e.g. "What are you thinking?" and "Why are you frowning?") trigger a constructive cognitive activity that, while probably eliciting the desired self-reflection, causes the participant to start searching for reasons for their behavior and thus gets in the way of their direct experience of their use of the product. The author suggests light-weight intervention, such as "Something's up, eh?", encouraging users to stay in their experience, and yet creating an opening for the user to naturally comment.

Then the author introduces the general concept that "being alongside the user" is a more honest and accurate approach to observing during a usability test. This is in contrast to the approach that encourages the interviewer to remain neutral - an approach that Carter suggests destroys genuineness and comes off as threatening to the user. Recognizing and respecting that an observer is in relationship with the observed frees both the observer and observed to create an open safe environment that encourages exploration and curiosity.

Then the article starts to get down-right transformational. "The relationship establishes a strong motivation for a truly ethical approach that can have an ongoing attention to the well-being of all." Wow! This is not the usual usability ROI-speak.

Then he starts to talk about the initial introduction and warm-up phase of the usability test - when the observer first meets the user - as an opportunity to develop gratitude for the participant. So very cool. And "In addition, emphasize and clarify the value of the artifact during the warm-up phase so that the whole enterprise can take on greater respect and dignity."

I really like this way of talking. It bridges the separation between work and the rest of my life. Usability testing where the words surrounding the activity shift to include words used to describe conscious awareness and respect for others. Buddhist awareness training through usability!

"Sit along side someone as they use something, and find out how it's going: That's usability testing. It's that simple..... There is room for us to attend to what is actually happening. We avoid the narrowness of thinking we are dealing with the process of extraction - we are in a human process. We bring the human qualities of inquisitiveness and friendliness because they are most effective."

Nice work Phil Carter.

Baaah Baaah screen saver

2007-04-23T14:39:00.000-04:00

Electronic sheep, you served me well. Your ever changing patterns mystified me. I must bid thee farewell, for your energy eating ways.

The times they are a changin'

2007-02-20T22:55:00.000-05:00

These days will go down in history as the time in which the model used to evaluate the profitability of a corporation was updated to take into account the corporation's effect on the health and good functioning of the system in which it is embedded.

Sustainopedia, or useful microcontributions

2007-02-09T00:50:00.000-05:00

I was filling out a survey for Grist and found myself writing the following in the comments section:

In question #6, you pose the following for people to respond to: "Passively reading is so 20th century; Grist should publish content I can interact with (comment on it, vote in polls, rank its value, etc.)." I said I was neutral about this, but I want to explain. Of course there is great opportunity with getting user involvement (Web 2.0 and all that), but I think just another place where users can post comments is not what the world needs. I would LOVE for you to be the hub of a system that accrued the knowledge of your readers over time. Something that either built up profiles of products (based on opinion and or hard fact) that could then be used by people browsing (or by systems on the web) to help people make purchasing decisions OR otherwise collected environmental info (Sustainopedia?) in at least a narrative form, but ideally in a (however flawed) structured format (or semi-structured, such as RDF [see Semantic Web]) that would then become a resource for our culture. So, I guess I REALLY would like you to publish content I can interact with, but I don't just want another place where the sea of opinion never amounts to much. I want you to provide the structure for people to make something cool that gives back to the world.

2007-02-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

It's bitter cold out tonight - 6 °F / -14 °C at the moment - and I was just reading a World Changing article on climate change and I got to thinking about the crunch of my shoes on the snow outside. Today it was a particular loud creaking and crunching, as the snow refused to melt under the pressure of my feet and each shift in weight drew a percussive series of strain releases from the compact snow. So, how probable is it that it won't get quite this cold here in Michigan in the near future? I don't know the answer, but contemplating this reminded me to appreciate the unique qualities of each day. I love that crunching creak of walking in the bitter cold snow. It is a deep childhood memory for me, and as unpleasant as the cutting breeze can be, I feel grateful, awake and engaged trudging through winter here in Michigan.

new entry in the MOCHI blog

2006-09-29T23:45:00.000-04:00

I just put up my review of last week's MOCHI talk by Mark Stock.

Contemplating designing user interaction with information from and about a spime

2006-09-19T22:02:00.000-04:00

The Internet of Things keeps coming back to my attention. A vision of a world where designed objects have extended well beyond their physicality. Where the information being produced by the object (or spime) is as primary as the object itself. Things that are aware of themselves in context, communicating with services around them. John Seely Brown gave an early hint at a begriming of the Internet of Things when he wrote about concepts at Xerox - mentioning remote interactive communication (RIC)

"is an expert system inside the copier that monitors the information technology controlling the machine and, using some artificial-intelligence techniques, predicts when the machine will next break down. Once RIC predicts a breakdown will occur, it automatically places a call to a branch office and downloads its prediction, along with its reasoning. A computer at the branch office does some further analysis and schedules a repair person to visit the site before the expected time of failure. ... the ultimate conclusion of this technological transformation is the disappearance of the copier as a stand-alone device."

Research That Reinvents the Corporation, Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management, 1991 Harvard Business School, Boston, MA

What I find particularly fascinating from the Internet of Things idea is the notion of the materials constituting an object being valued for more than their brief moment of being part of that object. Instead seeing the material as being in a stream of use and application. The idea of "all the uses for my dell keyboard" at various levels of disrepair, and then when it is only good for parts, what are those parts good for? What else I might want to use the buttons for (and how to detach them without damaging them) or where they can be sold. Or where to send them for recycling.

I keep imagining this information being organized through some (RDF?) ontology, with the abstract object as a primary organizing node for this information. Instructional videos (a al John Udell's ideas of using video to communicate material that is hard to convey in explicit text) linked to various points in the life cycle of an object.

How would a multiple branching chain of possible life paths for an object be represented in a way that makes sense to users? And when is the sum of parts the central entity vs. the parts themselves becoming primary objects of interest? Questions abound in this space.

Who's that guy on the PFC site?

2006-09-05T21:43:00.000-04:00

The cute face on the People's Food Co-operative home page is none other than my brother Jon Cooney.

from Mass Romantic

2006-07-19T19:49:00.000-04:00

"visualize success, but don't believe your eyes"
- Jackie, The New Pornographers

nice.

overheard praise of summer

2006-06-29T21:56:00.000-04:00

This morning a guy in Cafe Ambrosia said, "yeah, this is the Michigan summer that we love." and then talked about how last year sucked, and how it cycles, but how great this year has been already. I agree.

I've found my mind wandering to summer good memories. I figured it was all from having kids and thinking about what they are thinking, and wondering how they see things. But now I also think that this summer must be doing something familiar, too - eliciting these memories.

And I really love the fireflies. I'm so glad their time has come this year.

Evidence of interaction

2006-05-12T17:33:00.000-04:00

I was looking at a Google result page, and noticed a time listed to the right of a link and wondered "am I in the News section?...No...Oh!" The time is when I'd visited that link. I'm sure this feature has been there forever, but I just noticed it. I like it.

visiting people in Plazes

2006-05-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

Today I was checking my friend Ed Vielmetti's blog, and noticed that his Plazes gadget on the side of his site had him listed as being at a cafe less than a block away from me. A few days before we had been talking about neighborhood informatics, and having had a few more thoughts on the subject, I decided to wander down to the cafe and see if he really was where Plazes claimed.

I've used Plazes a number of times to announce my whereabouts to other people using Plazes, but I'd never really taken any action based on the location information that the service provides by opting to make the face-to-face connection. As I walked through Nickels Arcade and turned on State Street, I was wondering what the social protocol was for going to say hi to someone when you know where they are, but they don't know that you know they are there... Maybe it is polite to IM them first, and let them know you are stopping by? I decided spontaneous was fun and part of the experiment that is Plazes - and spotting Ed at a table inside, I ducked into the cafe to say hello.

I was a guest on Design Critique

2006-04-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of being on Design Critique, a podcast with Tim Keirnan and Tom Brinck in which they - and sometimes a guest - critique usability and design of a product or service, with an eye to highlighting elements that have to do with delivering a good customer experience.

We talked about recommender systems (such as: Amazon, Netflix and Last.fm), and the first of 2 parts is now online.

Google timeline

2006-04-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

Very fine work from the googlers:
Interactive timeline for stock data

urban outlets

2006-04-18T11:38:00.000-04:00

great page mapping power outlets in Ann Arbor:

Blogjects

2006-04-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

A Manifesto for Networked Objects by Julian Bleecker from Univ. of Southern Cal

a mention of products linking to the social behavior of companies

2006-04-16T22:07:00.000-04:00

A Feb 1st, 2006 post on the Internet of Places website mentions linking individual products to a company's social behavior.

Robots

2006-04-10T19:42:00.000-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockwasher/

Coin Relay: new phrases I've heard

2006-04-10T13:20:00.000-04:00

Here are two words and a phrase that I've recently heard, which are contenders to enter my lexicon:

"string", a replacement for the general term "word", which is used as a positive indicator in a conversation, or as a greeting, as in "string up?". Where string is a data type that is more encompassing than word.
The original form had a bling modifier: "$tring". [from Chris Duhl at Pfizer]

"straw fire", as in, "Playing music with those folks was very exciting, but it was just a straw fire, I haven't played any guitar since then." Meaning that it was a short lived, powerful event, that doesn't have much staying power, or fuel for continuing the activity. [from Daniel Noël at Lenny and Nan's house]

"ttyt", for "Talk to you then" when you've scheduled a time to meet with someone, and need a quick way of closing the interaction through chat or email. [from Emory Emrich at Pfizer]

Lord Dick DeVos

2006-03-30T01:05:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in the Nation, back in Sept/Oct, titled, Blackwater Down. It's about the unwise privatization of security forces, such as the mercenaries that had armed troops in New Orleans after Katrina - specifically the Blackwater USA group, and its socially conservative founders, including billionaire Erik Prince. It includes this paragraph that mentions our new GOP candidate for Michigan, Dick DeVos.

Prince, a staunch right-wing Christian, comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family, and his father, Edgar, was a close friend of former Republican presidential candidate and antichoice leader Gary Bauer. In 1988 the elder Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy, once chaired the Michigan Republican Party and is married to Dick DeVos, whose father, billionaire Richard DeVos, is co-founder of the major Republican benefactor Amway. Dick DeVos is also a big-time contributor to the Republican Party and will likely be the GOP candidate for Michigan governor in 2006.

Dick DeVos must be so very in-bed with our current federal administration. Go Aristocracy, Go!

Will the people vote this guy in, like they did George W.? Will the people stop listening to the words of the politicians and find a way to evaluate the actions of politicians? Stay tuned...

happy fun death march

2006-03-24T06:37:00.000-05:00

Another disturbingly insightful article by Mark Morford:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/03/24/notes032406.DTL&nl=fix
about the passing of time during the years of this US administration.

the coaxed emergence of the Internet of Things

2006-03-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

interesting read over at WorldChanging. RFID Viruses: A WC Perspective

If your refrigerator is on the Internet, somebody's going to try to write a virus for it.

And I'm in the middle of enjoying Bruce Sterling's perspective-inducing speech at South by Southwest.

(and last night I read the speech he gave at the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies conference)

my head is buzzing... "become the change we want to see"..."make no decision out of fear" "the decline does not hold indefinitely" "a regional novel about the planet earth."

Farewell Faz

2006-03-14T10:32:00.000-05:00

Ah, I'm so sad to learn that Faz has passed away. What a fantastic man. I'll always remember his kindness, kind words, enthusiasm and attention. He magically showed up at my bachelor party, hanging out in my backyard for a couple minutes, and giving blessings to my wedding. I am thankful for him, and I will miss him.

the magical flavor of energy drinks

2006-03-08T11:48:00.000-05:00

I don't want you to come away from this blog without some entertainment, so here's a section from Mark Morford's recent editorial, Tab Energy Drink Kills You Dead:

Caffeine, of course, is key. It is our favorite drug, meth for the masses. A basic can of Coke has about 45 mg of the world's most beloved drug. A good cup of strong coffee has about 80 milligrams. The average sickly sweet, fizzy energy drink, from Tab Energy to Monster to Liquid Ice to Rockstar, has anywhere from 100 to 200. And they all taste like some nasty Frankenstein inbreed of liquefied Skittles, road chalk and the blood of dead moths.

... the blood of dead moths, folks.

Further damage to the Environmental Protection Agency

2006-02-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

From Information Today, 21 Feb 2006 : http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060221-2.shtml
Another not-so-subtle manipulation from the G. W. Bush administration.

It's less than a month since President Bush announced his American Competitive Initiative that consists of doubling "the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences," coupled with a permanent research and development tax credit "to encourage bolder private-sector initiatives in technology." What he didn't say was that to fund these research efforts, he would cut $2 million that supports a network of 27 libraries, including an electronic catalog of holdings within that network, which is used by those very scientists and corporations whose work he is encouraging. That amounts to four-fifths of the agency's total library budget. How will the work of the libraries' staffs change if these proposed budget cuts are approved?

The problem here is the potential damage to the process-level infrastructure, as well as the social infrastructure that contains the essential tacit knowledge surrounding these information systems within the Environmental Protection Agency. It takes many years to build up a system that can be torn down by a couple months of disuse and lack of funding.

The beginnings of a Timeline

2005-12-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

I've been itching to create some timeline software. I just happened upon this discussion at W6 about making such a thing. I'm thinking I should get involved in an opensource effort that is trying to deal comprehensively with time-based information.

Please let me know if you are aware of any efforts.

Bound for Glory (a LoC exhibit)

2005-12-13T20:40:00.000-05:00

These are stunning color photos from 1939-1943. I had no idea such photos existed. They are amazing.

Can Yahoo deliciously aggregate my tagged hipster comic bookmarks?

2005-12-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

Now that Yahoo has purchased del.icio.us, I find myself wondering what they will do with it. I keep waiting for Yahoo to show something interesting. The Yahoo 360 thing appears to be a bad implementation of a social network, and if that is what they do with a neat idea - a year or more after the idea is popularized - then... I guess I hope they just leave Flickr and del.icio.us alone so they don't break them.

I do think My Yahoo is half decent, though this is probably because they have some decent content to add to it, such as local movies, weather and comics - though not many hipster comics...

the Google home page type thing - http://www.google.com/ig - is kinda cool in that it is an rss aggregated, integrated into a launch pad for search and gmail. Even this is starting to clutter up the scene, but at least they are introducing an aggregated at the right place in my web surfing experience.

Improving customer purchase decisions to include greater influence from the cutomer's expressed values

2005-12-04T22:35:00.000-05:00

I have an idea about a system that allows a person to express their values into a model, and then gathers product and availability information to propose optimized shopping excursions. I just wrote the following tiny bit after reading an article in Fast Company about things Wal-Mart could do to change its image (10 Steps to Turn Around Wal-mart). The comments on the article were very interesting as they quickly highlighted the standard dimensions that exist around the issue.

Executive summary of this idea:
"Free markets are responsive to consumer purchase decisions, but there is a ocean of information that needs to be considered every time a consumer heads to the grocery store, and weighing that ocean of information against the consumer's own values and making optimized purchasing decisions is an insurmountable complexity. This proposal describes a system that takes the chore of collecting the ocean of information, then interpreting it through the lens of the consumer's values, to support everyday consumer decision making."

more to come on this topic...

Jon Cooney's art on eBay

2005-12-02T23:48:00.000-05:00

My brother Jon has put a piece of his art up on eBay. I'm curious as to how The Seeds of Flame will fair.

I sold a really unique piece of furniture on eBay once, and it really didn't generate much bidding, despite it having appeared on Boing Boing!

I wonder if the art world needs to first have generated a buzz about an artist, and once that has emerged then the artist is free to use various channels - including eBay - to surface the material for purchase.

Or, maybe there is a sufficient amount of intuitive folks with money who purchase new artworks on a good hunch. Much stranger things have happened.

Semantic Web Spam (SWAM)

2005-11-25T03:04:00.000-05:00

I was just looking at the Workshop on Models of Trust for the Web (which I was hipped to through Dragomir Radev's ilist) and was delighted to read an articulation of something I was just talking to a West Pole colleague about, namely abusing inference engines used within the Semantic Web framework to mislead people. The description of this workshop names this Semantic Web Spam (SWAM)...

"As it gets easier to add information to the web via html
pages, wikis, blogs, and other documents, it gets tougher
to distinguish accurate information from inaccurate or
untrustworthy information. A search engine query usually
results in several hits that are outdated and/or from
unreliable sources and the user is forced to go through
the results and pick what she/he considers the most
reliable information based on her/his trust
requirements. With the introduction of web services, the
problem is further exacerbated as users have to come up
with a new set of requirements for trusting web services
and web services themselves require a more automated way
of trusting each other. Apart from inaccurate or outdated
information, we also need to anticipate Semantic Web Spam
(SWAM) where spammers publish false facts and scams to
deliberately mislead users. This workshop is interested in
all aspects of enabling trust on the web."

and then...then it spoke to me

2005-10-22T20:01:00.000-04:00

and then...then it spoke to me
Originally uploaded by kinetisonic.

fantastic birthday cake

On the Menu

2005-10-21T13:52:00.000-04:00

On the Menu (AVI 1.9MB)

Julianne: Girl with yogurt
Wendy: Videographer
Dan: Writer, Director, and the voice of the bread.

Insipred by Julianne running around saying "I'm bread, I'm bread!"

took 7 takes to get the everything right ;)

mmmm. Music

2005-10-21T05:18:00.000-04:00

The new Boards Of Canada album, The Campfire Headphase, sounds good.

Juan Kuni on GarageBand.com

2005-10-11T22:26:00.000-04:00

My brother Jon just put some of his music up on GarageBand.com. http://www.garageband.com/user/joncooneymusic/podcast/main

Nice descriptions to the songs. Jeezo Meezo, look at all the places this fella has lived and recorded!

What to do with those old floppy disks?

2005-10-04T14:15:00.008-04:00

--UPDATED 5 Sept 2010--

Make a floppy disk wall clock !:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Floppy-Disc-Wall-Clock/

Make a floppy disk bag:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Floppy-Disk-Bag/

Maybe make a floppy disk photo cube:
http://www.makingfriends.com/floppycube.htm

make a floppy disk pen caddy:
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/home/projectsandcrafts/2.5.33_recyclecomputerdisksandpartsintocrafts.asp

or my favorite, make the Starship Enterprise:
http://www.asciipr0n.com/archive/0013/bonnie/craft/