Photo: New Orleans, LA, October 2000

Stella High Blue Time

March 31, 2006 | Life

It could always go wrong

Two steps forward, ten steps back.

There's nothing left to see

Watch out for dropping shoes.

Believe It Or Not

March 30, 2006 | Life

But I'll roll up my shirtsleeves

How do we know for sure? Who goes first? Can I do it? How long will it take? Could it last? Will it be "work?" Is there alignment? Can we overcome fear?

These questions and more fill my head and heart today.

Slices Through The Banal

March 29, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce

Brilliant culture hacking: The Bureau of Workplace Interruptions.

We harness interruptive technology to expose the secret possibilities of the workday. As a time-stealing agency, the Bureau of Workplace Interruptions works directly with employees to invisibly insert intimate exchange into the flow of the workday. Our promise is to create interruptions that challenge the needs of our users and the social and economic conditions of the modern workplace.

Listen to this "highly scientific survey" with Karen. The funny thing is it could be a real business as well as an art project. People would pay for this!

Welcome to Notio

March 27, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life

Welcome, Big Picture readers. Barry pointed you to the Kid's Today post. Thanks for visiting. You might also want to check out some of the greatest hits:

Here's a link to the RSS subscription feed, if you're interested in following along. Thanks for stopping by.

Ambient Advertising

March 26, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Elegant in-bathroom advertising. What can one say? It's probably just the beginning. via Wealth Bondage.

Beautiful Photos

March 25, 2006 | Nature & Environment | Travel

Of China. Amazing.

Photoshop Compiler Conversion

March 24, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software

Being a software engineer working on Photoshop doesn't sound like a lot of fun these days. I'd say they have a good long 9- to 12-month slog in front of them. And at the end of it, who knows what they'll have. It's a complete re-write of a very large desktop app. Good luck y'all.

Update: A Microsoft developer in the Mac business unit posts his experiences. The between-the-lines interpretation of these two posts is that Apple's tool set, Xcode, has been focused on small developers to help them get lots of applications out for OS X. Now, they're scrambling on making Xcode suitable for hundred-person development teams and very large applications. This is the heavy lifting of software engineering and makes most Web 2.0 app development seem like child's play.

Expectation Hacks

March 24, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Software

Classic software development conversation at the 37signals Campfire:

File upload limits were discussed and a simple solution was figured out… Ryan: what are we trying to avoid with a limit? won’t a gigantic file just time out anyway? Jason: thats’ the problem. “Why didn’t my file transfer work?” “What happened to the file I uploaded” “Why didn’t the upload finish?” Ryan: less software idea..we could just say there’s a limit. and then if people try something bigger and it works, then good for them Jason: I like that best. done.

We do stuff like this too. I call them expectation hacks because people don't expect something to work (especially when it's simpler than they expect), but it does, so they feel like they got away with something. That cuts you some slack on real support requests.

Required Competencies

March 24, 2006 | Business & Commerce

I was invited to collaborate on a bid for an organizational learning consulting project, filling in for a staff leave of absence. In reviewing the job description I was interested in the competencies they required:

  • External Awareness
  • Professional Confidence
  • Working Across Boundaries
  • Organizational Awareness
  • Achievement Orientation
  • Focus on c/Customer

It would be easy to make fun of those phrases, but they pretty well summarize the attitude of a modern team-oriented quality-focused collaborator. The company is well-known as an excellent place to work, with good products, consistent growth, regional and national awards, and a generous employee profit-sharing plan.

The JD mentioned Microsoft Office skills, oral and written communication excellence, and a few other specifics, but only in passing. In other words, "we expect you to be smart and use the typical tools of the trade, but what we really want is the right outlook." Kudos to them for recognizing and rewarding orientation as well as knowledge and skills.

Mercury In Retrograde

March 23, 2006 | Life

This could explain the last few weeks.

In general, Mercury rules thinking and perception, processing and disseminating information and all means of communication, commerce and transportation. By extension, Mercury rules people who work in these areas, especially people who work with their minds or their wits: writers and orators, commentators and critics, gossips and spin doctors, tricksters and thieves.
Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings; flawed, disrupted, or delayed communications, negotiations and trade; glitches and breakdowns with phones, computers, cars, buses, and trains. And all of these problems usually arise because some crucial piece of information, or component, has gone astray, or awry.
It is therefore not wise to make important decisions while Mercury is retrograde, since it is very likely that these decisions will be clouded by misinformation, poor communication and careless thinking. Mercury is all about mental clarity and the power of the mind, so when Mercury is retrograde, these intellectual characteristics tend to be less acute than usual, as the critical faculties are dimmed.

Believe as you wish. Or wish as you believe. Or get back to work. Or take a break. It's your call.

All The Rage

March 23, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society

Finally, I may be in step with a style trend, just this once.

Whenever a countercultural trend becomes a mainstream one, there is a natural tendency to look for deeper meaning. Do beards that call to mind Charles Manson suggest dissatisfaction with "the system"? Are broody beards, like the dark and somber mood of the fall fashion collections, physical manifestations of a melancholia in the air?

Not that I knew anything, or did anything that put me in step. Style has just caught up with me. Of course, styles will change soon enough, and I'll appear out of step again. But if I wait long enough, it will come back around. Doing nothing has its advantages.

Kids Today

March 22, 2006 | Life

My nephew, Matthew, is nine years old. He's been taking violin and piano lessons for a couple of years. His dad, Alan, my brother, is a technology manager at a big company and has been livin' the digital lifestyle for a couple of decades now. Matthew's mom, Susan, Alan's wife, my sister-in-law, is a graphic designer working half-time at home and taking care of Matthew.

It should be no surprise that Matthew has his own iMac, next to Susan's desk, and plays the keyboard I bought for him into GarageBand. I guess what's surprising is this song he sent, which is amazing! These kids today, I tell 'ya.

"Climbing Mt. Everest #2" (2:22) [work-safe]
[Update: Converted to an mp3 file, from an m4a, and nested the embed tag inside an object tag.]

In Case You Were Wondering

March 21, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Technology

Do you happen to know if there's wifi available in the Lebanon Coop?

There is not. I have asked for it a few times over the years. Being board president doesn't pull any weight on this, believe it or not (due to a personality-minimizing governance structure which is long-term good and specific-issue annoying).

Top 'O The Morning

March 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society

I like the brand-new Google Finance for its page layout and information density. Lots of Ajaxy goodness throughout – check out that slider under the long-term graph!

Billmon exposes the hypocrisy that is John Snow, Bush's Treasury Secretary, standing in for arrogant overpaid CEOs the world over. Not that every CEO is arrogant and overpaid, but certainly some are, don't you agree?

Danah Boyd on the differences between MySpace's success and Friendster's failure. Required reading for online community builders. Also has some notes about the impact high-profile social software failures might generate in the legal or regulatory space.

Michael Crichton on a federal circuit court's decision that thinking can violate a patent. Patently absurd.

A 20-year study determines that whiny, insecure kids usually grow up to be conservatives, while confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals. Admit it: You thought to yourself, "No surprise."

Katrina went to a Television Preview Screening. She found it sickening; let this be a lesson to you.

The Economist on open source collaboration. Makes a point I have mentioned in the past: Open source is very good at optimizing existing technology, but not necessarily good at innovation – might require a few more years to play out, but that's the current thinking. Linux is a very good replacement for a plethora of Unix; Wikipedia is optimizes human knowledge editing. Open source is an excellent process innovation but that is not the whole game.

Adaptation offers two excellent articles on the personal economics of a post-hydrocarbon century (1, 2). These are important and valuable contributions to the planning for "powerdown." Summary: You should worry less about losing electricity and growing food than losing your job and home.

Finally, from email: I am blessed with wonderful, generous, and appreciative clients, as well as thoughtful, helpful, and supportive friends. Plus, the sun is shining and I have a clear, open day with no appointments. My time is my own. If I can't have an upbeat productive day today then I don't know what it will take.

Modern Baby Names

March 20, 2006 | Life | People & Society

Off the top of my head:

  • Pixel
  • Bitmap
  • Ui
  • Mouseover
  • Hover
  • Feed
  • Titlebar
  • Favicon
  • Clickwheel
  • Earbud
  • Doctype
  • Serverside
  • Api
  • Voip
  • Hosted

I threw away about half of what I thought of, but there are dozens more. I gotta get back to work. Update: Can also be used for cat names!

Create Your Own Reality

March 20, 2006 | Life

Now that my personal training sessions have ended, it's time for me to stay in the exercise game without scheduled (and expensive!) moral and educational support. As part of that program, I'm going to do some minor dieting, to really nail down the fat loss in the waist line. This morning I went through the kitchen to see what food I had to finish up or throw out that wouldn't be on the diet. I was surprised. It's probably a good sign when all you need to finish up is three bananas, two oranges, half a loaf of wheat-free, gluten-free bread made from sprouted grains, and two servings of gluten-free pasta with pesto, chicken, and broccoli.

Oh. And the chocolate. I suppose that counts. Even dark chocolate? Yes, it appears so. That's probably the biggest loss. I was surprised to notice that dark chocolate is kept in the candy aisle of the supermarket. I never thought of it as candy before. More like an anti-oxidant caffeine-boosted pleasure melt. Candy? I suppose, if you insist....

Which reminds me of a conversation from last week. Meg and I are both on a local email listserv, and people were posting their blog URLs. She asked me why I hadn't. My response surprised both of us: "I want Notio to grow by word of mouth on the Internet." At which point we both laughed as I realized out loud that I'm not sure exactly what else a listserve would be if not a word-of-mouth Internet thing. But it's different, somehow, even if I don't know why.

Which just goes to show that we define things however we want, and rationalize them later for other people.

Official Phone of 37signals & Ruby On Rails

March 19, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Technology

The next Internet trend: Ruby and Rails geeks buy the Motorola PEBL phone because David and Jason both raved about it. Less Phone, that sort of thing.

Danah Boyd

March 19, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society

So this "crazy, overachieving, passionate, activist grrl" Danah Boyd is pretty interesting. Her ETech presentation, G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide, got a lot of pixels this week for good reason.

My name is danah boyd and i am a PhD student at the School of Information (SIMS) at the University of California, Berkeley. My research focuses on how people negotiate a presentation of self to unknown audiences in mediated contexts. In particular, my dissertation is looking at how youth develop a sense of individual and cultural identity in "public" online environments like LiveJournal, Xanga and MySpace. Additionally, i am concerned with how digital publics do not look like the physical publics that we traditionally consider.
Prior to my current project, i studied blogging, articulated social network services (e.g. Friendster, Tribe.net, LinkedIn...). I have written papers on a variety of different topics, from digital backchannels to social visualization design, sexing of internet interactions to creating artifacts for memory work.

Worth paying attention.

On Being A Bad Internet Citizen

March 18, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life

I'm sorry, I just can't help myself:

Father, please forgive me.

Sandra Day O'Connor Worries About Dictatorship

March 17, 2006 | Governance | People & Society

Here is Slate's story on the media ignoring O'Connor's Georgetown University speech:

The smoke drifting out of your computer over the weekend was not the result of a fried motherboard but the scent of bloggers setting themselves on fire in response to Nina Totenberg's NPR Morning Edition Friday, March 10, dispatch. Totenberg had attended a speech at Georgetown University given the night before by retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in which O'Connor invoked the word "dictatorship" to describe the direction the country may be headed if Republicans continue to attack the judiciary.

And here is Raw Story's transcript of Nina Totenberg's NPR story:

I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

What will it take for people to realize the stakes?

Better Than Baseball's Best Burger

March 17, 2006 | Arts & Culture

Competing with Baseball's Best Burger for "optimum method to cheat the executioner," my brother tells of a visiting salesman who raved about the deep-fried hot dogs at Rutt's Hut in Clifton, NJ.

If they installed Internet slot machines or offered quick and easy stretch mark treatments, maybe I would stop in the next time I'm nearby.

Not So Much To Release The Sorrow As To Embrace It

March 17, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society

Dave Pollard posts a letter from organizational development consultant Roger Harrison, "A Time For Letting Go" – parting thoughts on the occasion of his retirement. Via Jon Husband.

Oil Barrels Price Translation

March 16, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Nature & Environment | People & Society

This is freakin' awesome!

A web browser plug-in that converts all prices from U.S. dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil. When a user loads a webpage, the script inserts converted prices into the page. as the cost of oil fluctuates on the commodities exchange, prices rise & fall in real-time. 'OilStandard' illustrates a potential future when oil will replace gold as the standard by which we trade all other goods & currencies.

Via information aesthetics and Meg Maker (email).

From The Mailbag

March 16, 2006 | People & Society | Site Maintenance

Another classic:

Dear notio.com,
My name is Chris, and I manage a web site about "Stretch mark" at: [URL removed].

[Holy crap. You wouldn't believe how many ads come up if you Google that!]

I recently found your site http://www.notio.com by searching Google for "Stretch mark treatments". I think our websites have a similar theme, so I am very interested in swap links.

What do you think dear readers? I passed on the gambling ads, should I go for the stretch mark treatments instead? ;)

Who are these people? And do they actually make enough money to keep doing this, or is it constant churn of new rubes coming into the game? If they are making lots of money, doesn't that make you depressed? If it's constantly new people, what does that tell us about the nature of hope?

Short-Term Economic Future

March 16, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society

If you want to know what the big driver in the upcoming recession will be, start here, and then read the follow-up. Summary: During the next 20 months, over $2 trillion of adjustable-rate mortgage debt will be up for interest rate resets. And those rates will go up. Consumer discretionary spending will be cut by about a trillion dollars over two years. That will have a significant impact on our entire economic milieu.

And I bet you thought we were out of the recession, getting ready for a growth spurt! Nope, we've had the growth spurt, and you probably missed it – you had to be a corrupt lobbyist or defense contractor to have made any real dough in the last few years.

The only good thing is the timing. This will have started by the time of the mid-term elections this November, and will have hit big-time by the next presidential cycle. The special sauce is that we spend $10 billion a day on military spending, which is totally unsustainable. So hopefully the fat-cat "tax cuts drive growth we need to protect America" militarist crowd will be thrown out on their bums and we can start to rebuild our democracy.

And I agree with these two guys on the state of play, in that regard.

Me want, not.

March 14, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society

Baseball’s Best Burger: "A thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.... 'We are excited to work with the Grizzlies this season on Baseball’s Best Burger,” said Tina Bryan, Vice President of Marketing for Sweet Traditions, the local area developer for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. 'Our doughnuts have been used in such things as wedding cakes, bread pudding, fondue, and now a hamburger bun. What a fun and unique way to offer our signature Original Glazed doughnut to Grizzlies fans.'”

Diss'n Chris Bliss

March 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture

You may remember the Chris Bliss juggling video I pointed to a while back. From the comments I learn the juggling community is annoyed that a simple routine has gotten so much attention. And, in modern re-mix form, there is an even better routine set to the same soundtrack. In a gymnasium. With five balls instead of three. And way more tricks too. Thank you commentor "dj!"

Also, the 33-pound cat posting continues to get comments.

153

March 14, 2006 | Science

I had no idea that the number 153 had so many curious properties.

Lunch Menu

March 14, 2006 | Life | People & Society

Went to the Co-op to have lunch with some friends. While foraging, I ran into someone I hadn't seen for a year or more. "How are you?," I asked. "Eh. [Someone]'s father died, so I'm getting lunch for him and going over there." I had heard the week before that a key person had quit his company, and that his fiancé had left him because he drinks too much. I didn't pursue those topics, but they were in my mind. I am awkward in situations like this, never sure exactly what to say. "Ciao!," doesn't quite cut it. I told him about my dad, who has had six stents put in his heart, which is like science fiction, but also means that his heart is fragile, and of course he won't live forever. Friendship score: C.

Eventually I sat down and the first person arrived. "How are you?," I asked. "Well. Not that great. I had been on anti-depressants, and tried to get off them for a while, but then I had a lot of problems, so I'm on them again, but it takes time for them to take effect. At work everything seems so complex. I can't really focus, and even when I can I don't really seem to get it." I noticed my fear - here is an engineer who can't understand his tasks; that would be scary. I was a better friend with him, offering some perhaps meager moral support for life's twists and turns. Score: B.

Needless to say, as the other four people arrived I did not ask how they were.

But then during lunch Sarah walked by and gave me a big smile and a wave, and I felt brightened. Then later Alison walked by and gave me a big big smile and a friendly wink as she waved, and it's pretty hard to be bummed out about that. Then Doug and I had a good talk about his art show and how people relate to art, and who buys art, and how you have to fail fast enough that you can afford to succeed. Talking with Doug is always good. Then the clerk at the post office knew my box number without me telling her, so I felt recognized in the world.

I guess for lunch I had "soup of the day," in a social sense.

Usefulness and The Banality of Business

March 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Umair hit one out of the park with his post on Usefulness and The Banality of Business.

There's this curious notion in America: everything must be useful. This is why, at heart, there's little, if any room, for thinking; for the long-term; for the creative.
It's the naive culture of the market taken to an absurd extreme: the old economists' notion of utility. By itself, utility is deeply insightful. It lets us understand decision-making and the microstructure of value creation in powerful ways.
But it's no basis for a society, or a culture. The useful, too often, is the banal. Strip-malls, freeways, suburbs, fast food, sitcoms - all these things are useful; but they're also deeply banal.
What's "useful" to the too often myopic and narrow discussions that happen in boardrooms has deep, pervasive hidden costs; in America, these are the death of social and cultural capital. Put another way, usefulness is the enemy of creativity.
And, ultimately, it is creativity that is going to be the single source of tomorrow's strategic advantage. Utility is the enemy of strategy in a world where coordination is cheap; a world where the cost of bringing new products and service to market is melting, where global hypercompetition is accelerating, where global supply chains can be accessed and reconfigured in hours - not years.

The whole piece is good reading.

Hot Tip For Online Electronics Buying

March 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life

I ordered a new CD/DVD player this weekend. I'll spare you the ridiculously obsessive materialist consumerist research process, even though it might make for a good blog entry. The bottom line was, once I knew what I wanted, and the eBay bidders outbid the value of a used one, and the authorized B-stock eBay sellers ruled themselves out due to their spotty feedback rating, I was left with the authorized e-tailers, who offer real factory warranties, and sell at full price.

But two years ago when I purchased my preamp from OneCall, I used the real-time chat system to ask for a discount. That worked really well - in ten minutes the rep and I had negotiated a price reduction and free shipping, simply because I asked.

So this weekend when I saw the Crutchfield site had this feature, I took another shot. Here's a slightly edited transcript (which they kindly emailed me when we finished) of the entire 3-minute chat:

Agent: "Welcome to the Crutchfield Sales Chat. How may I help you?"
Customer: "Are there any deals right now on the Denon DVD-2910B? Can I get this thing for less than $700?"
Agent: "I'll be glad to help you."
Customer: "Cool"
Agent: "I do have one in outlet stock for $629.99."
Customer: "That sounds good - Is that refurbished or new."
Agent: "The box has been opened since it left the manufacturer. Same warranty, guarantee and 30 day return just like the new one. It has not been refurbished."
Customer: "Okay, I have one in my online cart now. Do I need a code or anything?"
Agent: "Does it show the discounted price?"
Customer: "No, it shows $699.99"
Agent: "Let me send you a link to it."
Agent: "This should show the discounted price." [URL removed]
Customer: "Okay, that seems to work. Thanks!"
Agent: "You're welcome. Have a nice day."

As I recall, that's exactly the situation I had with the preamp. They had "an open box" of a new unit, with full warranty, full return policy, and free shipping. I wonder if "open box" is code for "we're not allowed to discount, except for outlet stock, so we'll happily open the box for you in order to give you a discount." I like these chat systems for expensive online purchases.

And, note, it's worth asking for what you want.

Tour Tickets

March 13, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life

According to the folks at GDTS-TOO, I will have an extra ticket for each of the following Ratdog shows:

  • Thursday March 23, Northampton, MA.
  • Friday March 31, Hampton Beach, NH.
  • Saturday April 1, Boston, MA.

If you live in the Northeast, or want to fly in for the shows, and you'd like to join me at a great jazzy blues dance show, send an email. If you don't know my email leave a comment here with your email.

Update: Northampton, claimed! Hampton Beach claimed! Boston claimed!

First Things First

March 13, 2006 | Life

Consider: 1) If your shoelaces come untied at an inopportune moment, that could spell trouble. 2) People like choice. Hence: Ian's Shoelace Site. A critical resource for people who want choices and also wear shoes.

Server Down?

March 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Technology

That's the sort of email subject line people like me dislike seeing first thing in the morning. After verifying that, in fact, the servers are unreachable, suddenly you have a fire drill. Whatever morning plans you had are shot. Yoga? I don't think so. Finish that systems diagram from last night? Maybe later today.

Instead, shower, fast breakfast, drive to work behind every slowest car in the region. Have plenty of time to consider that I have been threatening for two years to move these servers out of my office and into a secure managed hosting environment. Decide that this is the year it happens. Traffic slows as I pull into town. I could scream. Navigate the construction scene around my parking lot. Walk down Main Street, turn the corner to my building - still standing, that's good. Walk a little further - neighbors have lights on, so there's electricity, that's good. Approach the outside door, which is locked - good. Get to my interior door, also locked and not broken into, good. Servers on? Yes. Verify server problem - still can't get to them. Okay, reboot router and firewall, wait for reset. Check again. All set. Send out email notices.

Now, on with the day. What was my day plan again? Whatever it was, it's probably a good time to verify the data backups.

Mail Bombed

March 12, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Site Maintenance | Technology

Notio is getting emailed bombed, or something. In the last couple of hours I've received over a thousand emails like this:

From: Philomena Astle
(Every return address is different.)
Subject: Re: POtharamacy news
(Lots of variations on this.)

Hi,
Do you want to j O l V f E d R r P k A c Y for your u M k e j d o i e a r c x t b i b o j n n s?
Nothing like you need it, l S f a r v v e over g 5 d 0 r % with http://wiqo31.selterrote.com

They come in batches of 200 or 300. WTF? They pass through the server spam filter and get pulled down via POP3, where they pass the local spam filters and I have to wade through them trying not to miss a real email.

Thanks guys. And the point is?? Do you think you're going to get rich or something? Sheesh.

Secret World

March 10, 2006 | Life

Seeing things that were not there
On a wing, on a prayer

Rediscovered Peter Gabriel's Us recording. Beautiful, powerful. Especially the last song, quoted above. It reminded me of this (unretouched) photograph I took in Austria, at the Vienna State Opera House, in September, 2005:

P1000377.jpg

When I took this photo, I was seeing things that were not there. I cringe every time I look at this picture. I cringe because although I took 1,200 photos over three weeks in Europe, this is the only one in this location from this perspective. And don't you wish there were just slightly more at the top edge, so you could see the full circle of the architecture? And at the bottom - wasted pixels, with those lights. If I had tilted the camera up just a bit, this photo would be perfect. But I didn't. It kills me.

I thought this photo was perfect when I took it. I thought I saw, in the instant before I opened the shutter, that it was composed well, that I had paid attention to the four edges of the frame, and the middle, and the thirds, and that I had a good shot. In this situation, with so much symmetry and filigree, the difference between a perfect shot and a wasted shot is binary. You either pulled it off or you didn't.

Yes, of course, I could crop it so the viewer doesn't know there was an architectural detail at the top. And I can clean up or trim the bottom. But I don't want to, because I will always know that if I had been more present in the exact moment I was capturing this photo it would far better reflect the essence of the place. But I wasn't and it doesn't.

And because of that, I have no interest in working with this photo. None at all. Zero. Zed-ed-red-oprah. Binary - I don't want to touch it. I am content to leave it there in my photo library, annoying me each time as I scroll by, on my way to find some other photo where I was present, where I was fully attentive yet grounded in the flow of the place.

It's worth reflecting on the point that this seems like a bad attitude. There could, maybe possibly, be some gray area there in between. Somewhere. (Possibly, I think.) Or even, heaven forfend, the opposite could be true.

In this house of make believe
Divided in two, like Adam and Eve

Maybe it's easier to work on a photo like this one (unretouched), taken two minutes and 59 seconds later:

P1000380.jpg

You'd think in the three minutes between these photos I could have taken a few at various focal lengths, or bracketed the exposure, or verified the composition, or tried some off-center angles. But apparently not.

Perhaps I was in the moment, enjoying the ephemeral experience more than capturing it in a two-dimentional color-quantized pixelated bitstream. Perhaps that first photo captures the fact that I was present in the experience at the moment of capture. Maybe it reflects the essence of my experience of the experience. That would be, good, I think.

Anyway, here is a photo I can work with. Symmetry is strong, and the person appearing in the left foreground provides an asymmetrical break. There is large-scale repetition in the architecture, and small-scale detail to discover. From this we can get a nice print.

But maybe it's a cop out to start with the well-composed photo, and simply see how far it can be optimized. That idea puts all of the creation, all of the making, at the moment of capture, and reduces or removes any re-creation during processing. Certainly there is creativity in color-balancing, cropping, and sharpening a photo. But that's optimization, a lower form of creativity than creating.

Using a photo with flaws as a starting point invites creativity to re-create the scene, or create a new perspective of the scene which was not in attention at the moment of making. It's a second opportunity to make the picture. Or a first opportunity to make a different picture. Once you get in there and start pixel farming, you never know what you might make.

Okay, well, fine. But this is a hobby, not another full-time job. So maybe right now I don't want to spend any time (effort) re-making (fixing) this photograph (crappy snapshot). Maybe instead I just want to change (play with) the color balance (feeling-tone) and set the white point (brightness). Boys just wanna have fun.

I stood in this unsheltered place
'Til I could see the face behind the face

I came across this personal mission statement earlier today. (Most of the thread is worth reading.) I have not nearly integrated my values and ambition to the degree Tim has. As you can see, I can't even take a decent snapshot during a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity.

But for starters, I'm aspiring to live in the moment, expanding my experience of the length of each moment, entraining with nature, feeling my body, feeling my being, without regard for clocked time. That is a secret world that collides with capitalism, and privileges the moment of experience over the moment of capture – and over the moments of creation, to the detriment of deadlines.

ActiveSalesforce

March 9, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software

Wow. Salesforce.com is now offering a connection adapter for Rails.

ActiveSalesforce (ASF) is a Ruby on Rails framework connection adapter that provides direct access to Salesforce.com managed data via AppExchange Web services API and Rail's ActiveRecord model layer. Standard and custom objects, standard and custom fields are all automatically surfaced as active record attributes, simplifying the creation of applications that use data from those entities. ASF also includes a Salesforce.com aware scaffold generator that leverages layout metadata to generate list, show, edit, and new views and a corresponding controller that closely match the look and feel of their native Salesforce.com counterparts.

Salesforce has nearly 400,000 paying customers, and apps developed with their suite of connection adapters (including PHP, Perl, etc as well as the new Rails kit) can be offered to the entire customer base. This is a big validation for Rails, and a huge market opportunity if you're into the business collaboration/workflow space.

A New Kind Of Showerhead

March 8, 2006 | Life | Products & Opportunites

I'd like to make a new kind of showerhead, one that has more impact. As a simple example, who decided that showerheads are useful only for cleansing the body? There are many other things a showerhead could do for you. For instance:

  • If you never wanted to shave your legs again, or somewhere else (get your mind out of the gutter), then you could set it to "RH" (remove hair) and run the water over the part of your body you want shaved. That's all there is to it!
  • Let's say you wanted more hair on your chest, or maybe fill in the slight balding on the top of your head. No problem, set the showerhead to "GH" (grow hair) and run the water where you want more hair.
  • A very popular feature would be the "LW" setting (lose weight). Want a little off the belly or bum? Choose the correct setting and run the water where you want the slimming.
  • There's also "AW" for adding weight. This is good for when you're going to holiday dinner and you're tired of hearing, "You look too thin dear. And you eat like a bird! Have some more pie." Take a quick AW rinse around your mid-section to add some weight in the morning, and just take it off the next day.
  • The "TD" setting (tanning darken) saves you from going to the tanning booth. So you can stay home and read books on winter break, but still get that Bermuda tan.
  • The "TL" setting (tanning lighten) offers the pale white goth look. Perfect for trips to city art museums.
  • The "FS" setting (firm skin) is less invasive than a lift or tuck, and you can use it on your whole body as your aging skin starts to sag all over. You'd be surprised how useful this turns out to be for the AARP'ers.
  • Advanced models could reshape your nose, add "length and girth," change your chest, or remove the tattoos you got during your mid-life crisis.

If we could make this showerhead for the same price as today's showerheads, would you buy one or what? Don't tell me: You would put one in every shower in the house, wouldn't you? You'd insist that your health club install them in every shower stall. You'd tell everyone you knew. Mark my words: This is a killer app for the shower! And, I don't need to tell you: Nearly everyone showers nearly everyday! This product could touch every single person alive. That's what the MBAs call a market!

Of course, there are a few details to work out. You'd have to have a "velocity" setting, so that if you had a lot of weight to lose, you could set it high, but if you just wanted a trim you could slow the process. Otherwise you might over-do and have to constantly switch between the AW and LW settings until you got what you wanted. You could turn out lumpy.

You'd also want child-proof locks or some other parental control system. Your 14-year old daughter is probably not the best judge of whether she's thin enough or not.

And, I suppose, you'd want all this to work while you're cleansing. Most people are way too busy to take a shower and then take another one just to lose 10 lbs! Get real.

A Good Example Of A Dilettante's Progress

March 7, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life

I Googled "dilettante" to find the correct spelling (used in the phrase above) and in the right column I found a sponsored ad that eBay purchased for that word!! They don't think their customers are dilettantes, do they?

Ultimate Insight Is The Booby Prize Of Life

March 6, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life

A variation of the above phrase wandered past me in email today, and I wondered if the writer had made it up, or if it was one of those long-lived Internet-revived quatable-quotes kinda deals.

A review of Stephen Yenser's "The Consuming Myth, The Work of James Merrill," provides the title quote:

The est people used to say "Ultimate insight is the booby prize of life." We would guess that the booby prize for an American poet is to have some scholarly University Press put out a 350 page, closely printed, totally cryptic, highly footnoted, turgid, dogmatic investigation of one's works.

I wonder if they liked the poetry, even if they didn't like the book. Richard Stayton's interview with "writer's therapist" Dennis Palumbo is interesting:

Now, the thing about writers is that they're so therapized. They've been in therapy for years, and they'll lay out a lot of their family dynamics for me. But as I always say, "Insight's the booby-prize of therapy." That means change doesn't come from insight. You need insight and awareness to understand what's going on. But change comes from courage, the risk of challenging those meanings everyday. If you're someone who believes, for example, that if you get angry you're a bad person, then you could have all the insight in the world as to where that comes from when you were a child. But every day you're going to have to risk showing a little anger and seeing that people around you don't fall over dead. And until you challenge that as an adult and go, "Wow, I got angry, and my loved ones still love me. Nobody thinks I'm a killer, and it doesn't mean I'm a terrible person." Until you challenge that in the here and now, you're not gonna change.

Working on it, dude. Tracy A. Turner has an interesting (and detailed) page on distinctions :

The ability to create and draw distinctions is one of the most powerful and empowering abilities that human beings have. To be able to distinguish does not mean that we separate what we distinguish, it means that we perceive clearly, we differentiate, we discriminate, or discern. The distinctions of transformation are unique and demand rigor. If you've ever participated in an arena that creates and supports transformation, from religion to some corporate cultures, you'll recognize some of these distinctions. Many of these will be familiar to any transformational graduates, including the Forum at Landmark Education.
Insight vs. Breakthrough - 1. The booby prize. 2. A breakthrough is what occurs when you take committed action on an insight.
Abundance - 1. When you experience your experience, there is no lack.
Acceptance - 1. It's where we start to make a difference. 2. No good or bad, no right or wrong. 3. Being with. 4. Accepting that there is nothing we can do about the past. 5. Beyond acceptance is responsibility.

I can relate to that! Have you heard of The Association of Happiness for All Mankind (AHAM)? I hadn't, but that's a great mission statement, encoded right there in the name of the organization. Their page on experience begins:

“Intellectual understanding is not enough, it is only knowing ‘about’ a thing. It is the booby prize. You must experience whatever it is you think you know. Only by thoroughly and completely experiencing your experience will genuine Completion actually occur.” - Arunachala Ramana

There's a ton of hard-to-pronounce words on their site. Must be serious. Finally, speaker and consultant Richard Thieme says:

Understanding how the system works is the booby prize. Using that understanding to make a difference is the prize - and that requires timing and the ability to enter the system, build trust, and use that window of opportunity to intervene in appropriate ways to shift behaviors in desired directions. So energy and information will flow in a way that’s aligned with the leader’s objectives.

Rock on, he said.

I Love You

March 6, 2006 | Life

A man carried metal, carried gold

Something happened between Thursday lunch and Saturday breakfast. I'm not sure what, though a couple of in-depth conversations undoubtedly assisted. To recap: The week before last was a real bummer, emotionally. February, and all that. Then last week I spent three days immersed in SoL work, a one-day workshop on systems thinking and then two days as recording secretary for the council of trustees. A deep and heartfelt set of meetings, with little time for other thoughts.

By Thursday I knew that I had months of personal work to do; personal mastery would be the Fifth Discipline term, expanded considerably by Robert Fritz in The Path of Least Resistance. I have the Jon Kabat-Zin book to finish and integrate. I have Grady McGonagill's "practice model" inquiry questions to delve into. And I have a lot of other personal inquiry in mind.

Somehow, this quantity of depth work sits well with me right now, unconcerned about "outcomes," or the "future," or the "past." And so by Saturday morning, apparently I was prepared to learn something interesting: If you want to completely clean the living room, the best approach is to rearrange all the furniture.

In my case, I turned the room 90 degrees, with the focal point moving from the west wall to the south window. Move some stuff, vacuum, put the new stuff there. Vacuum the old spot, move some other stuff, vacuum there. Rough out the locations, vacuum the rug, and the back of the rug. Get the tunes running again. Have lunch. Do some minor rearranging. Place some objets d'art. And then vacuum the whole room again as if you haven't done it yet. I tell you, the place looks pretty damn clean after this regimen.

Lynne and I had supper, and fun t'boot. Later that night I did precision loudspeaker alignment, and listened to a few selections. For the first time since I've owned this high-resolution laboratory-quality stereo, I've aimed the speakers inward, toward the center listening spot. In the past I've focused on the width of the stereo image, and have aimed the speakers either straight ahead or slightly outward. This new arrangement is the most intense setup yet. Pointing them inward puts the sound inside your head, and the speakers disappear into the background. The soundstage is narrower, but more focused. Even at very low amplitude (that'd be volume, for you non-technical folks) there is a quality of precision, of the air being liquid, with subtle acoustic vibrations enveloping the listener.

The new furniture arrangement is a little tighter, and forms more of a circle than a rectangle. So when you come into the room to sit down you are effectively "entering a circle." Combined with the new psychoacoustic interiority of the sound system, it's a unique feeling. Very powerful, but light and airy, not heavy.

I spent Sunday sitting in the soundfield, looking out into the blue sky and yellow sun and green trees (instead of the old view, into a mirror showing the staircase behind me). I did Yoga for nearly an hour, and felt great. Laundry, dishwashing. Hung a whiteboard. Made a list of upcoming household errands. Made a meal plan, and a shopping list. Matted a couple of photos. An actual day off - glorious.

Today I started a new morning routine, including taking my tea on the couch, then Yoga, shower, and breakfast, all before computing. When I was shaving I looked up and caught myself with a little smile. "Weird," I thought. Then, a pause, and, "Weird that me smiling is weird."

When we say, "I love you," do we include ourselves?

Democracy Not

March 6, 2006 | People & Society

Democracy Now:

A Veterans Affairs nurse in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was investigated for sedition after she wrote a letter to a local newspaper criticizing the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

Any questions?

Paying Off Debt? You Might Be a Terrorist

March 3, 2006 | Life | People & Society

This is quite something:

The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.
And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable....
After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed....
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

I just did the same thing last week, at about twice the amount. I wonder if I've now hit The List.

What Is Fun?

March 3, 2006 | Life | People & Society

Dave Pollard: If our job is work, and marriage is work, and recreation is work, when do we have fun?

In nature, children play, breeding adults work, and non-breeding adults do a bit of both. In raven communities, for example, each flock has a breeding pair and a bunch of singles who help protect the breeding pair's young, search for food, connect with other flocks, and otherwise spend their time doing barrel-rolls on roofs, mid-air cartwheels with their talons entwined with each other, mimicking sounds (brilliantly), and, when they're alone, singing to themselves.....
The essence of fun and play is imagination -- and that is not the same thing as creativity. I think we live in a world of enormous imaginative poverty, not because we're incapable of imagination, but because we're badly out of practice....
If we want to relearn how to play, to have real fun -- the kind that is delightful and not merely exhilarating -- we first need to relearn how to imagine, and practice it. The children and animals can show us how.

Good work with which to engage. (Heh.)

Non-Rolling Stones

March 3, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life

Plausible Story kindly contributes to the Interweb with this rock-solid excerpt:

There was a wall in him that no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he carried around because he could not shed it. His motive for hiding it had probably extinguished itself years earlier. . . . Patrick and his small unimportant stone. It had entered him at the wrong time in his life. Then it had been a flint of terror. He could have easily turned aside at the age of seven or twenty, and just spat it out and kept on walking, and forgotten it by the next street corner.
So we are built.
—from Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion

It seems to me that we can take on these stones at any time in life, and they calcify at different rates, and then they are like psychological or spiritual kidney stones, which cause a lot of anguish to eliminate, depending on how long we've held them and how deeply they've calcified. What we need is a selective, fast-acting, stone-melting technology product! ;)

This is probably all too much thought applied to some beautiful poetic prose, but such is the intricate New England stone wall I have built, with the help of many others.

Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge, MA

March 2, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | Products & Opportunites | SoL

MarloweBed.jpgWhile I was in Boston (Cambridge), I stayed at the Hotel Marlowe; first time. The Marlowe is part of the Kimpton Group boutique chain - "Every hotel tells a story" - found in all the upscale cities you'd expect. It is very close to the SoL offices, and attached to the Cambridgeside Galleria mall. I had heard from SoL staff that people either love it or hate it, and I can see why, and I love it. The reason I love it is that they are going after an aesthetic. Success or failure, you judge, but they have attempted Hotel As Art.

Things to like:

Leopard-style carpet. How cool is that? Probably done to cope with their pet-friendly policy, but it's a lively change from boring brown.

Cool Leopard-style robes. Use in the room, and optionally purchase upon departure for $120. Wore mine every night and morning. Warm, weird, different.

MarloweDesk.jpg Free wi-fi throughout the entire building, plus Ethernet in the rooms. This was great, and easy to set up. My only criticism here is that throughput was a paltry 20-30K/sec. Things were kinda pokey; they need a speed upgrade.

Four sampler CDs on the in-room stereo. The labels said, Please enjoy during your stay and leave in the room for the next guest. Hey, no problem, I got iTunes right here. 20 minutes later I have four promotional samplers of music including "Frequent Flyer: Buenos Aires," (2 discs), "Suite Life volume 1," and "Rosa (zipper)." All have multiple bands, and they were all found at Gracenote, so I know that the songs are!

MarloweMirror.jpg "Om Away From Home" - an 8-panel 4"x4" full-color guide to hotel yoga, produced with Yoga Journal. There's an in-room tee-vee channel with all-day Yoga instruction. They provide a free Yoga Basket for in-room use that includes a mat, strap, block, and free issue of Yoga Journal. You can buy the basket, or have it shipped to your next destination. The guide shows five simple postures that can be done with typical hotel props like a blanket, a side chair, an empty wall, and a carpeted floor. They encourage you to take this with you, so I dropped it in my suitcase and will find it the next time I'm away. Sometimes all you need to get started is a starting point. I found this and the CDs a brilliant way to provide me some real value and remember this chain in the future.

MarloweBathroom.jpg Free wine bar in the lobby from 5-6 PM every day. A red and a white featured wine. Gathering spot, learning moment, socialization opportunity.

"Wines of the World" - a 16-page 3"x6" guide to wines presented by the Kimpton Wine Club. Wine expert Leslie Sbrocco provides comments on two wines per month, which are featured at the free evening wine bar. So now I have this kicking around on the kitchen table, and if any of them catch my interest I can try to track them down. The guide provides URLs for each vinyard, and Kimpton has their own monthly by-mail wine club with three price levels ($29/month to $125/month for two bottles.)

"Kimpton Style" - a style guide cum catalog, where you can buy accessories that style each of their hotels. The catalog is organized by hotel, showing a room and then keying the products to what's in the room. Candles, robes, linens, lamps, pillows, beds(!), plates, glassware, etc. 24 pages, full color.

So I'm walking out of there with four new mix CDs, a hotel yoga guide, wine notes on 24 interesting wines, and a catalog of stuff to buy to reinforce the lifestyle. That is some modern marketing think applied to business-class hotels. These guys have done their homework, and are thinking about the experience beyond the basics.

Anything I didn't like? Well, paying $22.80 for a bowl of oatmeal, three bacon slices, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of green tea is a bit much, don't you think? The $18 hamburger and coke was a stretch too. Their 'net connection was too slow, as noted above. $20 a day for parking is the going rate, but it's annoying.

I was there three nights. Two of those were paid by my hosts. My one night expense, with incidentals for three nights - parking, two meals, taxes - came to $291.07, which can take your breath away. Maybe I'll feel better about the price if I buy some stuff out of their catalog. I'm certainly digging the new music.

Getting Real About Politics

March 2, 2006 | Governance | People & Society

Spend ten minutes and read these two posts:

Only the Dead Sleep Well: The problem with John Kerry's email campaigns, thoughts which IMO apply to all the current email campaigns (MoveOn, Democrocy for America, etc).

Don't Think of a Donkey: The problem with "framing" and trying to replicate the right-wing think tanks. via WB.

Let's say it again: We need to move from consuming to creating. What future do we want to create together? Here's one way into the process: Otto Scharmer has a third draft of his U-Theory introduction linked from his home page. (Otto, ditch the Flash-based website, please. It looks nice but limits the spread of your ideas.)

Getting Real

March 2, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software

37signals has released their new eBook on web application development, Getting Real.

Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it's a book of ideas.

I've bought a copy, and I'm sure I'll agree with a lot of it. $19.

Also, continuing to break out of the box, they have new business cards. Weird-shaped business cards are cool, and they make a great first impression, but having experimented with this, and having received many non-standard business cards over the years, I think the humble standard card is the best long-term approach. Odd-shaped cards are easy to lose, hard to store, and soon end up looking dated.

Bush Katrina Briefing Video

March 1, 2006 | Governance | People & Society

We take a break from our deep reflective practice to consider the implications of the just-leaked video of Bush's Katrina briefing. This is going to be very big news for the next few days, well into the Sunday talk shows.

The video presents a sequence showing FEMA's Michael Brown and various experts specifying the dangers and warning of the storm. It shows Bush assuring state officials that everything is under control. It then shows Bush on the tee-vee several days later saying that no one could have predicted the levee breech. This is an awe-inspiring a made-for-TV credibility crisis. Actual video, with his own words used against him. The liar exposed. Masterful.

Now, let's think about this. The video is from the secure communications room at Bush's Crawford TX ranch, and appears to be official. First of all, THEY ARCHIVE ALL THAT STUFF?!?!?!? Are you kidding? Supoena all of it, Iraq, NSA wiretaps, covert CIA agent blown cover, Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, et al. A video archive from the Texas ranch? Who knew? And what the hell else is being recorded?

Next, let's think about who exactly has access to this video archive, dealing with national security, from one of the most secure locations in the USA, and why this series of clips was leaked. Bush's poll popularity dropped precipitously in the past few days. Who has the knives out for Bush? Republicans worried about Bush baggage in their local elections? Career bureaucrats tired of political appointees overruling their deep expertise with shallow ideology? Is this Cheney, undercutting Bush and asserting his own authority? Is this Rove, breaking bad news on his own terms, when he thinks is best? Is this former intelligence officials throwing their weight around as long-term payback for gutting the Agency while destroying US moral standing in the world? Whoever it is, they are damn well-connected to have their hands on this video and get it to the media.

Finally, the timing. Bush is in India and Pakistan these few days, after a surprise stop in Afganistan. That's supposed to be the big news cycle for the end of the week - freedom on the march and terrorists on the run and all that crap. But now Bush has to fight this dramatic news, which will cancel his own story. The timing couldn't have been better, or worse, depending on your perspective.

This is the most intriguing United States political event since I've been alive. If the MSM is worth anything at all these days, I want to see some deep analysis on what this means. Background sources, off-the-record quotes, multiple plot-lines converging against hypotheses, the whole monty. There are a very small number of people with access to this video, and they're not grunts.

Morning update: No surprise, but it looks like the White House is trying to spin this as a positive.

Some congressional investigators say it now seems somewhat ironic that having belatedly found the Aug. 29 conference-call transcript, the administration is now touting it as evidence of deep presidential—and White House—involvement in the crisis.

It's hard for me to see how spinning that Bush was seriously engaged in the Katrina disaster is good for him, but I don't understand much of the world today anyway.