Matthew Weiner presents…Mad Men

Former Sopranos writer Matthew Wiener has created a masterful tale about one of New Yorks most prestigious ad agencies at the beginning of the 1960s. Focusing on one of the firms most talented and extremely mysterious executives Donald Draper. Weiner will be on hand for a special cocktail hour screening of one of his personal favorite episodes of the beloved TV show.

Weiner’s talk was the highlight of the festival for me. Why there was a TV-guy at the film festival I don’t know but I certainly enjoyed his talk about making Mad Men. We watched a recent episode: Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency, which Weiner said was originally titled Nothing Runs Like a Deere. He said this episode was all about expectations and their anticipation. After watching it again with the audience, I saw many other ideas based on that theme. Most enjoyable was seeing the episode with a theater full of people. You forget how great the dialogue is, especially John Slattery as Roger Sterling. His timing is perfect and with a spirited, enthusiastic audience – had us roaring. Mad Men has been renewed for a fourth season too, so lots to look forward to.

American Cowslip

Ethan Inglebrink an eccentric agoraphobic heroin addict w ho is obsessed with his garden is searching for the perfect moment in a life that is running out of time. And the odds are against him. This darkly comedic tale set in small town California follows the last days of Ethan’s life as he struggles to find love and purpose – at a time when it might be too late to even matter.

This movie was interesting, especially for the cast of actors (Diane Ladd, Rip Torn, Cloris Leachman, Val Kilmer, Peter Falk, Bruce Dern). The plot is odd, and meanders a little in the middle (ok, a lot) but it was fun. I ran into the star and co-writer Ronnie Gene Blevins, the next night in line and he implied it was quite an experience. I commented that they should have featured the donkey more in the trailer, as a donkey always equals comedy gold.

Harmony And Me

The sharp-witted Byington returns with the Austin-shot story of Harmony a prototype nightmare dumpee – the sort of heartbroken friend you take out for consolatory drinks two or three times before resorting to any excuse to avoid hearing yet again the play-by-play rehash of what went wrong with his relationship. Never self-indulgent Byington creates a memorable modern comedy with subtle and sharp performance from his cast.

Locally made here in Austin and starring lots of local talent. Nice to see some Austin locations, but once you know Austin, you realize some strange liberties are taken with the driving about town. The audience was really behind this film, which made it fun to watch. Good dialogue and a few strong scenes, but I couldn’t tell if most of the movie was improvised or not. Not that it matters.

The Vicious Kind

A dramatic comedy set in small town Rhode Island brings tog ether elements of depression romance and self exploration among a dysfunctional family of men. Lonely and frustrated after a bitter break up Caleb warns his younger brother against women especially the pretty young thing he’s bringing home for the holidays. His indifferent opinion and steely resolve is put to the test as his attraction to Peter’s girlfriend begins to grow. The Vicious Kind features a very well written script and inspired performances by Simmons Scott and Frost.

Hard to classify, but interesting characters. I also didn’t know they had McMansions in Connecticut.

Houston We Have A Problem

With Houston We Have a Problem filmmaker Nicole Torre steps inside the world of Texas oil culture to understand just how the United States developed its large appetite for crude. Wildcatters independent oilmen and even the president of Shell Oil examine some hard truth s while discussing the history and the future of this limited commodity upon which we have become so dependent and weigh in on the future of this country’s energy supply.

A talky documentary about the history of oil, mostly in Texas, and what we’ve got to look forward to next. A surprising range of opinions (some unintentionally humorous). My big takeaway was to invest in energy stocks, which might not quite be the point.

Earthwork

In 1994 real-life crop artist Stan Herd traveled from Kansas to Manhattan’s Upper West Side to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. The multi-acre artwork was made from soil rock plants and vegetation near an underground railway tunnel. Stan recruited a number of homeless individuals living in the tunnel to become his crew. Over the months it took to complete the earthwork Stan dealt with a number of difficulties in bringing his unique rural art form to an urban canvas. In the process he unexpectedly encountered the true meaning of his art and it’s ultimate lasting rewards.

Nicely cast and acted movie. The most surprising thing about it was that the director, Chris Ordal, mentioned in the post-screening chat that it was shot on location in Kansas instead of somewhere in New York. Also, a supporting role by the great Zach Grenier.

Love the Beast

What if you were a Hollywood movie star with an obsession for cars and racing? You would probably read every script with even the tiniest link to the subject matter in hopes that you could tell a great car story the likes of Grand Prix Le Mans or Mad Max. Then one day you open your garage door and sitting there right in front of you is the inspiration that gets you thinking about that old saying If you want something done right Eric Bana has now unwillingly cast himself in his own real life drama and it is a love story between Eric and the car he has owned since he was fifteen. We follow him from inside the race car to the surreal world of the red carpet. The personal and social pressures mount up in the face of re-building a car that means so much to him.

Finely directed and edited movie. This surely had a larger budget behind it over most at the festival and it showed. Nice driving cinematography and some candid moments for Bana and his group of friends.

Floored

A world that’s more riot than profession, the trading floors of Chicago are a place where gambling your family’s mortgage is all in a day’s work. Floored, at a time when markets are unhinged, offers a unique window to this lesser-known world of finance. These men may not have degrees, but they’ve got guts, and penchant for excess that solicits simultaneous feelings of revulsion and admiration. But like many aspects of our economy, technology is changing the way these traders do business, and these eccentric pit denizens aren’t the type to take kindly to new tricks.

An interesting insight into some computer-phobic people. Very candid (and amusing) commentary by several interviewees.

The Donner Party

During the winter of 1846, a group of westward bound settler s is stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They must reach California for salvation, but without food and a guide, the group becomes disillusioned and decisions must be made so that others can stay alive. Inspired by the infamous Donner Party tragedy, the film is a harrowing look at survival and how far some will go to achieve it.

This movie looked beautiful, and the performances were on target. I was reminded a lot of Deadwood. However, I felt that with the casting (Glover) I was expecting something a bit more divergent (quirkier). I left this movie about half-way through because of the disrespectful behavior of others in the audience. People on both sides of me had their phones out throughout the movie and the festival staff let others in late with some clamor. One late-arriving couple sat near me and chatted/mumbled amongst themselves continuously.

Up in the Air

The timely odyssey of Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer and consummate modern business traveler who, after years of staying happily airborne, suddenly finds himself ready to make a real connection. Ryan has long been contented with his unencumbered lifestyle lived out across America in airports, hotels and rental cars. He can carry all he needs in one wheel-away case; he’s a pampered, elite member of every travel loyalty program in existence; and he’s close to attaining his lifetime goal of 10 million frequent flier miles and yet . . . Ryan has nothing real to hold onto. When he falls for a simpatico fellow traveler, Ryan’s boss, inspired by a young, upstart efficiency expert, threatens to permanently call him in from the road. Faced with the prospect, at once terrifying and exhilarating, of being grounded, Ryan begins to contemplate what it might actually mean to have a home.

In some ways it is unfair to compare this movie to the others. Obviously working with a much larger budget gives you a different kind of film. I’ll summarize that I liked it and remember hearing the book is interesting too. Reitman did a post-screening Q&A and was highly entertaining and talked a lot about his process writing (and re-writing) and directing.

Gerty, from the Moon (the movie).

Gerty

And in comparison, Microsoft Bob – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Microsoft Bob, the most expensive HCI failure of its era

If you’re getting to Austin for SXSW Interactive just a little early, come on by and get your SXSW started with some others in town a day early too, not to mention meet some of us lucky enough to live in Austin. Feel free to forward this to others you know coming to Austin for SXSWi too.

Those of you in Austin, tell your Web/IA/Designer/Startup/SWSXi-like friends to meet us there. (Look for the geekiest crowd at the Cedar Door, trust me, that’ll be us. Probably on the East patio.)

Here’s an upcoming link for the event, if you’re into that kind of RSVPing.

Note that now you can pick your SXSW interactive badge on at the Austin Convention Center the same evening, come to the meetup, then pick up your badge!

‘Indie Fever’ is the first result of a multi-year human geography research program to investigate the social and economical world of so-called ‘Indie’ developers on the Macintosh platform. ‘Indie’ is the self-chosen nickname of software developers that serve worldwide markets from the Internet, hold their artistic values in high esteem and celebrate their ability to make high quality software as small companies. Indies form a major part of the pool of developers of third party software for the iPhone that is currently available in Apple’s App Store.

It is a Bachelor’s thesis (108 pp) and covers a lot of ground, some obvious to Mac users or Mac decvlopers, but worth looking through.

• ABC News – Politics
• Comedy Central Indecision 2008 – Live Blog
• CBS News Election Coverage
• CNN Election Center
• Drudge Report
• FiveThirtyEight.com Electoral Projections Done Right
• Google Maps – 200 Elections Gallery
• Huffington Post – Politics
• New York Times – Politics
• PBS Vote 2008 Election Map

ReadWriteWeb also has a great list of sites:
Your Election Day Web Toolkit – ReadWriteWeb

Strauss Center :: Science 2.0: Globalized Innovation in Electronics by Dan Hutcheson, CEO, VLSI Research

Dan Hutcheson, of VLSI Research, Inc., is a recognized authority and well-known visionary for the semiconductor industry. He advises companies in strategic and tactical marketing, business management and manufacturing trends, productivity and strategy. Mr. Hutcheson developed the industry’s first cost-of-ownership model and the first factory cost-optimization model in the 1980s.

This presentation is part of the Strauss Center’s Technology, Innovation and Global Security Speaker Series, which brings world-renowned experts to campus to discuss how to sustain innovation and better utilize modern technology to benefit an increasingly global economic and social system.

This is the abstract for the talk:

This talk reviews an exploratory study of sponsored search advertising for a major US university’s academic department. The ad campaign used Google’s AdWord service with the goal of increasing awareness – not eCommerce – as part of the search process.  A behavioral model of information seeking is suggested that could be applied for selecting appropriate types of online advertising for awareness and other advertising goals. Insights into the study methodology will also be discussed including the use of increased integration with server logs, targeted site query terms and alternative awareness strategies. 

The talk is part of the panel AM08 2008 – The Google Online Marketing Challenge: A Multi-disciplinary Global Teaching and Learning Initiative Using Sponsored Search with Bernard Jansen, Mark A. Rosso, Dan Russell, Brian Detlor and Don Turnbull.

This is a summary of the panel:

Sponsored search is an innovative information searching paradigm. This panel will discuss a vehicle to explore this unique medium as an educational opportunity for students and professors. From February to May 2008, Google will run its first ever student competition in sponsored search, The Google Online Marketing Challenge http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/. Similar to other Google initiatives, the extent seems huge. Based on pre-registrations, more than two hundred professors and nearly nine thousand students from approximately 50 countries will compete. This may be the largest, worldwide educational course ever done. It is certainly on a large scale.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a real-life, problem-based, and multidisciplinary educational endeavor of the kind that many educators say is needed to relate teaching to outside the classroom. However, such endeavors are not without risks. The session should appeal to professors that competed in the 2008 Challenge, any professors considering the 2009 Challenge, as well as other educators who might consider the inclusion of Google AdWords as a pedagogical tool in their curricula. The panel will also be of great interest to those information professionals and educators as a possible model for use in other domains besides sponsored search.

This idea suddenly occurred to me the other day. Instead of building marshmallow “people” from scratch, these halloween marshmallow peeps seemed to be a perfect fit.

I used blue food coloring to make a “blue collar” on the very white (Delaware?) ghost for Joe Binden.

The jack-o-lanterns with a little dark food coloring for square eyeglasses seemed a natural fit for Palin with the rumors of her tanning bed, and perhaps a little empty-headed.

This course surveys Knowledge Management systems that enable the access and coordination of knowledge assets. Technologies reviewed will include intranets, groupware, weblogs, instant messaging, content management systems and email in both individual and organizational contexts. Students will use these KM technologies, review case studies, research methods of knowledge organization and analyze and design KM processes and systems.

The course is chock full of fun topics including:

• Knowledge Management
• Collaborative Work
• Email
• Personal Information Management
• Personal Knowledge Management (if there is such a thing)
• Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge
• Networked, Dynamic Collaboration
• Collaborative Filtering & Recommender Systems
• WiFi, UbiComp & Smart Mobs

Of course, we have a class blog too: Knowledge Management Systems @UTexas

This course approaches understanding Semantic Web technologies from three perspectives:

• Top-down, theoretical approaches to organizing semantic information including ontologies, taxonomies, knowledge representation and software agents.
• Bottom-up approaches, sometimes called “emergent semantics” or “the lower case ‘S’ semantic web”, for understanding and creating networked information including XML-based solutions including RDF, XPath and RSS. Also included are smaller, informal systems for organizing Web information including tagging (social bookmarking), microformats and other specific markup and distribution systems.
• Application approaches focusing on Web Services or “Web 2.0″ functionality including distributed (client and server) application design, syndication, Application Programming Interfaces, remote databases and “mash-ups”.

Of course, we have a class blog too: Semantic Web Technologies Blog.

Crayon Physics Deluxe
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a sequel to the popular freeware game Crayon Physics. Or you can think of it as the game I would have created if I would have had more than 7 days to do it. Way more than 7 days. More like 7 months or 17 months.

Anyway Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics.

Watch the video:

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe

(Ah, SQL92, you’ve been so good to us with your dynamic query execs.)

The Information Architecture Summit is the premier gathering place for those interested in information architecture. The 2007 IA Summit attracted over 570 attendees, including beginners, experienced IAs, and people from a range of related fields.

The 2008 theme of “Experiencing Information” shifts the focus back to users. A user experience exists only to allow people to “do things” (in the broadest sense … buying books, sharing photos with friends, looking something up on wikipedia, etc).

Call for Proposals

The summit is a great opportunity to share your experience and thoughts on a topic you feel passionate about – and for the first time – presenters will receive complimentary registration! (to keep costs manageable one complimentary registration will be given to each regular session slot and panel moderator/organizer).

Proposals for the following are due October 31, 2007:

• Presentations
• Panels
• Posters
• Management Track
• Pre-conference workshops

Submissions of peer-reviewed Research Papers are due November 30, 2007.

(Note that I’m a member of the IAI Advisory Board and will be a reviewer for Proposal and Research Papers. If you have any questions about the proposal process, the IA Summit or the Information Architecture Institute just ask.)

The Information Architecture Institute (IAI) will award two USD $1,000 Progress Grants for 2007. The purpose of the program is twofold:

• to encourage researchers and practitioners to investigate IA-specific issues
• to publicize useful work that furthers the information architecture body of knowledge

Applications should propose work that will forward the theory and practice of information architecture. This can include original research, a synthesis of important existing research, or the development of an innovative new technique.

The IAI Progress Grant Committee will review the proposals and select those with the highest potential to benefit the information architecture field. Half of the grant amount will be awarded when the grant recipients are announced and half when the work is completed. Progress grants will only be awarded to proposals of sufficient quality, clarity, and originality.

Work supported through this program will be published on the iainstitute.org website, but it should have relevance beyond the Tools and Library collections. For instance, the work could inform future IAI workshop curricula, tie in with potential Institute publishing projects, be responsive to issues raised by members in the email discussion list, or support other Institute activities, such as Local Groups and International initiatives.

The application deadline for applying is October 15, 2007

Applications should be 2,000 words or fewer and must contain:

• Description of the problem or hypothesis
• Methodology to be used
• Explanation of how the resulting work will forward the theory or practice of IA
• Conditions under which others can use the results (e.g. Creative Commons license)

(Note that I’m on the Awards Jury Committee for this grant.)

Learn more about the Information Architecture 2007 Progress Grants now.

PowerPoint prototypes are a great way to show someone how the flow of an interaction might work and even better, you can send them the .ppt file to view before or after your demo, not to mention ensuring that almost everyone you work with could (if you want them to) contribute to the PowerPoint deck since the application is nearly ubiquitous.

As an aside, I’m always a bit impressed with the ingenuity of people who live in one application for everything, and PP certainly can let you do that. I’ve known many people that use PP for note taking, article reviewing (guilty!) and of course outlining (it’s better than Microsoft Word). However, this is nothing compared to the people who used to live in Lotus 123 including writing memos and even formatting floppies. (Ah, floppy disks.)

Weird bit: some of the antennas are still analog. Oh my.

Well, to me.

Here’s the abstract for the paper:

The OpenChoice system, currently in development, is an open source, open access community rating and filtering service that would improve upon the utility of currently available Web content filters. The goal of OpenChoice is to encourage community involvement in making filtering classification more accurate and to increase awareness in the current approaches to content filtering. The design challenge for OpenChoice is to find the best interfaces for encouraging easy participation amongst a community of users, be it for voting, rating or discussing Web page content. This work in progress reviews some initial designs while reviewing best practices and designs from popular Web portals and community sites.

I’m also making it available to download: Turnbull, Don (2007) Rating, Voting & Ranking: Designing for Collaboration & Consensus. Works-in-Progress Paper presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference. San Jose, CA. May 2, 2007.

What’s your guess?

Update: Since there are 7,704 photos with the chi2006 tag, I may be underestimating.

Update on the Update: As of May 29, there are 3,341 photos with the chi2007 tag.

Here’s the blurb from the project’s Web page:

“What would 100,000 people chatting on the Internet sound and look like?”… Listening Post analyzes all the text—typed just moments ago—by tens of thousands of people in Internet chat rooms around the world. It presents them as six different “movements,” combining musical tones, sound effects, synthesized voice, and scrolling text. For example, in the first movement, Listening Post monitors and displays a randomly typed text beginning with “I am.” It then searches the Internet for related phrases, creating a simultaneously funny, sad, nonsensical, pathetic, yearning, quotidian, and ultimately mesmerizing tonal poem of identity in the Internet age.

For centuries, the soaring buttresses, vaulted ceilings, and luminous stained glass of cathedrals, along with hymns and chants, have transmitted that which is beyond expression. Using algorithms, software, and data mining, Listening Post generates a similar experience around what sometimes seems beyond comprehension.

It’s quite an experience with seven “movements” that range from ideas like Wave Cycle, Topic Cluster and I Am (I Like/I Love) where text from the messages floats, drifts or cycles across the many small LED screens in sync with some Philip Glass-like music.

The exhibit runs Saturday, June 3, 2006 through Sunday, May 20, 2007, so hurry up and take a look while it’s still there.

All those questions (and more) can now be (mostly) answered by the man himself, Red Wassenich, who did in fact come up with the saying as an offhand remark when he called in to a local radio station.

Now Red has a book chock full of Austin and Weirdness: Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town, by Schiffer Publishing.

Some friends had a signing party for Red’s book and I got to attend. Here’s a picture of Red in action:

Carl Linnaeus introduced the systematic classification upon which all subsequent natural history has been built. This Nature web focus brings together a range of material celebrating the tercentenary of his birth in 1707, including features on how the explosion of genetic data changes the way we look at taxonomy, and the conflict between professionals and amateurs when naming species. There are also commentaries by leading taxonomists on the future of their field, articles on Linnaeus’s global network of contacts and even his lost and lamented pet raccoon, original research on the origin of flowering plants and a review on speciation – the first of several such articles to be published this year, which will be added to the web focus over time along with other coverage.

The issue is behind a paywall. How would Linnaeus classify that?

As you may remember, I was at the kick-off reception for the video game archive a while back and think it holds great promise for insights into the history of video game development, design methods for future designers and possibly some fun too.

SI MSI Degree: Social Computing Graduate Program:

Social Computing (SC) Specialization

Social computing, including online communities, social networking, and user contributed content, has been the darling of Silicon Valley for the past several years. It has also gained currency in library circles, as venues such as library Web sites incorporate blogging features and sites such as LibraryThing bring recommender technologies to personal book collections.

SI faculty have been leaders in inventing and analyzing many of the underlying techniques that have powered the rise of social computing:

• Recommender systems
• Reputation systems
• Prediction markets
• Social network analysis
• Online communities
• Computer-supported cooperative work

Students pursuing a specialization in Social Computing learn to analyze online social interactions, both in online communities and in more diffuse social networks. They learn about features of social computing technologies so they can recognize opportunities to put them to use in new settings and make good choices about alternative implementations.

Technorati Tags: internet

Goodbye Spotlight?

Don is a favorite writer-director-actor from Toronto. You’re a fool if you don’t watch some his work including:

• The Red Violin: tracking a violin’s path through history with Samuel L. Jackson (but no snakes or planes), a child prodigy, a Chinese musician in the era of Cultural Revolution and a love-triangle including the violin itself.
• Last Night: an unusual “end of the world” movie with a small role by David Cronenberg as a dedicated power company employee dealing with the destruction of the planet in the only way he knows how – by thanking all of his customers (how Canadian)
• Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould : wonderful and insightful and you get to learn what Glenn Gould might eat for lunch.
• Twitch City: which recently came out on DVD and captures slacker Toronto, in the Kingston Market area perfectly. Watch this now.

• South by SouthWest Interactive (sxswi) = Velma
• South by SouthWest Film = Fred
• South by SouthWest Music = Shaggy

You’re welcome.

Sell SBUX now?

Well, it’s that time of year again, the annual Austin area Information Architects and UT ASIS&T chapter pre-pre-SXSWi Meetup and Happy Hour(s) tonight, Thursday March 8th. If you’re a Web geek, blogger, designer or just about anything else you’re welcome to join us.

We’ll be there tonight from 5-7 at the Cedar Door, which is at 201 Brazos Street. (Map to the Cedar Door ) Lots of Austinites will be there to happily advise out-of-towners on all things SXSWi, Austin, BBQ and so on. (Lots of Austinites will be arguing amongst themselves about SXSWi, Austin and BBQ too.)

Come on by!

http://upcoming.org/event/157945/

Put two fingers on your trackpad, keep them there and click the trackpad button. This emulates a “right-click” and opens the contextual menu in most applications that have one.

Technorati Tags: mac

As you might imagine, getting about 50 freewheeling game designers together can be pretty entertaining but Bill Bottorff (from Austin Business Computers, Inc.) and Don Carleton (from the Center for American History) kept the event going.

One issue discussed was the preservation of video game ephemera and digital assets related to the history of the game industry. Richard Garriott (pictured below) talked about his history in video games and even brought a few items for show and tell.

Among some of the items for show and tell are one of Garriott’s original Apple computers that he used to develop many games (he has a running one in his office to this day) and the roll of paper tape on top of the Apple is a working copy of his first game Dungeons and Dragons I.

George Sanger also spoke, played some recorded music and was very entertaining, if not a bit surreal.

George passed around some his personal keepsakes, including this test cartridge from the Son of M.U.L.E. game. (I fondly remember M.U.L.E. myself, it’s probably one of the best games I ever played.)

It’s hoped that this is the first of many initiatives between UT Austin and the the video game community, look for more information in the future.

Can the Internet Save Democracy?

Here’s his blurb:

We’ve been through a few election cycles in which the Internet played an important part. What have we learned? Beyond being a fund-raising tool, has the Internet changed anything important about elections, politics or governance? Will it? Does the connectedness of the Net promise an invigorated democracy? Or more of the same? Or a polarized electorate? David Weinberger of the Berkman Center will present a discussion opener on this topic, to be followed by an invigorating—or polarizing?—discussion.

David says: “ I’ll probably open the discussion trying to stay as far away from facts and reality as I can”, so with that in mind I’ll provide my quip:

The internet IS democracy.

The internet is an open-ended discussion, where anyone (with access) can participate on almost equal footing and the best ideas (usually) win out. (You vote with your clicks?) Sure, it’s not perfect, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill said “the internet is the worst form of government except for all the others”.

Technorati Tags: internet

Almost everyone I know in Austin is logged on to AOL Instant Messenger, GoogleTalk and Microsoft Messenger.

Ah, internet people, weather does affect us.

(I predict a winter-related rise in Austin blogging today.)

Technorati Tags: austin, blogging

From the Austinist: Scenes from a Snuff(leupagus) Film

Oh, please – someone develop a special strain of Ebola for Elmo only next.

I looked over dozens of recipes and ended up taking ideas from several, but the core recipe was from (of all places) Martha Stewart Living web site. (Keep your “jail house cookies” comments to yourselves.)

Here’s what I came up with for a final recipe, including some post-facto edits that I would do next time:

• 6 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
• 6 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 6 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup unsulfured molasses.

Supposedly, this makes 16 large cookies, but we did a double batch and made cookies of various sizes so I can’t verify that. I edited the recipe to add nutmeg, more cinnamon and ginger as I wanted even more flavor in the cookies. I also changed to a smaller amount of black pepper (it gives a nice after taste to each cookie bite). The dough turned out to be very dry so I think we cheated and added about two tablespoons of milk near the end of the mixing.

I whipped up (literally) some standard buttercream-like icing:

• 1 stick of unstalted butter
• one small box of powdered sugar
• vanilla to taste.

As you can see, we also divided up the icing and added food coloring. With some hastily-fashioned wax paper icing bags we were in business. Here are the results:

Not pictured was the favorite, literature-themed cookie. The white whale. As you can see, creativity reigned, but we also kept the original goal in mind: get as much icing as possible on many cookies. (Mmmm, icing.)

What am I doing with a whale, bunny, elephant and zebra cookie cutter? Like you don’t have some?

Some cookies had a personality of their own and these three jumped out at me. Note the resemblances to Zoidberg at the Beach, a funky, hypnotized Santa and Sluggo (respectively).

Don’t bother asking, they’re all gone.

Technorati Tags: baking, cookies, photos

The dough was courtesy of the now famous “no knead” bread recipe:

No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Apply your pizza shaping skills to lay out the dough.

We used two kinds of pizza stones, a store-made pizza stone and some unglazed tiles from your favorite home supply store. (Yes, we went to your favorite home supply store, where were you?) Even better – I used my new, wooden pizza peel to drop the pies right onto the hot, waiting stones. (Lessons learned: it’s quite possible that the metal peel would be better, certainly less likely to warp after cleaning. I’m going to get one and try it out. Also, be sure and have some cornmeal handy to put on the peel before placing the dough on it to enable easy sliding into the oven.)

As you can see, they turned out great. We went for mozzarella and fresh tomatoes and basil on the first one. The second pie was thinly sliced parmesan, more fresh roma tomatoes, red onions and some spices (pepper flakes next time too).

Delicious.

Technorati Tags: austin, photos, pizza

If you have purchased anything from Amazon.com in the last 30 days (Amazon themselves, not an affiliated merchant) and the price is now lower, they’ll refund that amount to you. Call Amazon at 1-800-201-7575 and dial 7 right away to get to an operator. Ask her about Amazon’s 30-day price guarantee. Have your Amazon order number handy too. If you get an uncooperative (or hard to understand) operator, just hang up and call right back.

It’s worthwhile to think about how the interfaces, features and even the incentives (“it’s the user stupid”) can influence a tagging system’s design and use.

Do they cancel each other out?

Technorati Tags: photos

Maybe that’s why this week the two most interesting (which means “best” by my own definition) TV shows have been Daybreak and The Lost Room.

In Daybreak, the main character is a police detective, who much like the movie Groundhog Day, is repeating the same day over and over – presumably until he gets it “right”. There are a number of contingencies and clues the detective must solve to make progress. Each week, the plot changes as some issues get “solved” and the detective isn’t plagued by them on the next version of his day. We gradually learn more about the detective’s world, his past and how everything fits into place.

In The Lost Room, the main character is also a police detective and needs to unravel a mystery based around understanding, collecting and using a set of magical objects. He must discover objects, negotiate with their owners and determine the object’s proper uses. In an attempt to go meta about the issues in the plot, several of the characters are written to seem very much like I’d assume people that are deeply involved in a social game (MMORPG or the like) might be as to forming clubs (even cults in show) around studying, finding and advancing skills in the use of the objects and making alliances. It seems like they’re truly playing a game about the objects within the episodes as independent characters, but overlapping with the main detective’s role in the show/game.

Obviously, these concepts: working through a game level, a quest, negotiating with characters and finding objects of power are common to many video games of the last few decades. Adding in the social interaction and high quality rendered environment (studio sets with actual actors) and it’s a bit like watching a someone work their way through a game. Is this a new trend in scriptwriting that will bring in the gamer demographic? (Am I only noticing this because these examples are more obvious than past shows?)

(Note: do people really say “video games” anymore? I’d think the people that design all the audio would start feeling left out.)

(Double extra bonus note: I just bought a Nintendo DS Lite – got any game or gear recommendations?)

Technorati Tags: games

We’ll be at Opal Divine’s on 6th Street from 6:30-8 PM this Thursday, Dec 14th 2006.

From the invitation:

We had such a great time at the last one, we thought we’d do it again.

Come join us for an informal creative technologist mixer. This time we
can look forward to a presentation from a fellow creative technologist
right here in Austin.

We are looking for energetic, passionate people from any discipline
who want to talk about making stuff with the Internet and other
networked technologies.

We welcome designers and developers, students and entrepreneurs,
futurists, pixelists, and pointillists, user researchers, product
designers, Web publishers, podcasters, video bloggers, graphic
designers, people interested in UX, IA, HCI, PHP, and MySQL, and any
other acronyms out there.

Come on out to talk shop or just meet people with similar interests.
Please pass this invitation to others who might be interested.

Direct any questions to creativetechnologists@gmail.com

I’ll see you there.

Technorati Tags: austin, blogging

This is really just a test to see if Ecto is uploading photos now into Wordpress. As you can see, it is – with sprinkly goodness! Thanks to all who made suggestions. The winning tip was to change the image upload settings in WordPress>Options>Miscellaneous for the Store uploads in this folder setting to leave it as it’s default of wp-content/uploads and to uncheck the Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders option.

Anyone know what I’m missing here? (And while I appreciate any answer that includes linking in pictures via Flickr instead, that’s not what I’m asking, but thanks.)

Technorati Tags: blogging, ecto, photos

I had not been to Home Slice before, and this was a great excuse to get there and try out some pie. For some reason, in the last year or so Austin seems to be getting serious about pizza. This is good news for all of us.

The Carnival was a charity event for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas, with tickets for the booths that included a few games of skill, a dunking booth, cotton candy, beer (but not beer-flavored cotton candy), and a fortune teller called the Great Calzoni. In the back of Home Slice there is a patio, which was a surprise and they were featuring a team of dough-tossing acrobats called the World Pizza Champions.

What would a carnival be without feats of skill? Well, they had them here too. The most interesting activities were the largest pizza dough contest where local pizzerias could send their greatest dough tossers and shapers to see who could make the largest (in diameter) pizzas.

Next, was the contest for making five pizzas (dough only) the fastest. It was amazing to see them at work.

Oh, we ate some pizza too. Our pizza karma was waxing and we got a booth inside (from the outside you’d never know it’s so roomy) and proceeded to order. I started with the greek salad, which was served on a room-temp tin pie plate. It has small, diced bits of cheese in it, with the usual leafy add-ons such as peppers and just a few very tasty Kalamata olives. A few garlic knots were included with the salad, just the thing to help with eating the salad and to sate my wait for the pizza. I went with my benchmark pizza, the margherita. Here’s what this beauty looked like:

The pizza was wonderful. The dough was hot, fresh and crisp but also chewy with some singed spots and just the right amount of bubbling in the dough. The tomatoes were very fresh and diced with generous amounts of garlic and basil.
Also at the table was the traditional pepperoni pie:

While I didn’t try the pepperoni, it was going fast and the look of meat-eating bliss was apparent. There was more cheese on this pie, which looked just gooey enough to be sinfully good. (I also put my life in danger as it took me a few shots to get this picture just right and at least someone at the table wanted pizza NOW and didn’t want to wait on my untouched pizza pic.)

Would I go back to Home Slice? You bet – let’s go right now.

Canadian Secret Service agent (yes, they have one too) on a mission: he’s out to get some respect. Caught between working with top US Intelligence officials and his budget-conscious boss back in Canada, Darryl finds himself solving world-threatening conspiracies on a small-time budget.

The trailer has gags on the agent having to ride the bus and still using dialup to access the internet. The show is related to some of the writers and producers for Monk, a show I quite like (and also set in another city I used to live – San Francisco).

(Yes, it comes in a little, commemorative gasoline can.)
Included are:

• Select Scene Audio Commentary
• Pulp Factoids Viewer
• Playing it Fast and Loose: A Documentary
• Profiling Reservoir Dogs – Featurette
• Tipping Guide
• Deleted Scenes
• Classic Interviews with Quentin Tarantino and others
• K-Billy Sounds of the ’70s

So when Bill does a whole show on an issue that affects us like Net Neutrality we pay attention. We like it even better when there’s a great overview of the issue including the entire show online for you to watch: Moyers on America . The Net @ Risk.

If you’re reading this, Net Neutrality issues should concern you.

No, I’m not sure why I wrote this with the royal “we” perspective.

So today there is a fire in downtown Houston that has knocked out power throughout the city center. Does the Chron.com staff pack it up and go home to watch Oprah? No. They run over to Starbuck’s with their laptops and start blogging on Movable Type to keep the US’ fourth largest metro up to date, smartly pointing chron.com domain to the main blog.

This is a wonderful and surprising reaction to what might you might normally think to be a slow-moving organization or centralized media distributor. Go Chronicle!

1. Garrett Dimon’s Visio IA Stencil
2. Jesse James Garret’s "visual vocabulary"
3. Henrik Olsen’s prototyping tools
4. Michael Angeles’s wireframe stencil
5. Peter Van Dijck’s Templates
6. Peter Van Dijck’s IA shapes

• Omnigraffle Palettes
1. Michael Angeles’s Wireframe Palette
2. Robert Silverman’s GUI Design Palette
3. Paper Plane’s IA Stencils
4. Jason Sutter’s Wireframe Stencil
• Microsoft Office Templates: Visio
• Visio Cafe
• Visio Download Sites
• Graffletopia – Stencils for OmniGraffle

And I quote:

“We believe in the freedom to tinker – to tear apart our technology, our clothes, our food, our stuff and use those raw materials to build something new and better…We insist that young students should be encouraged to do undocumented, dangerous, and weird things with their toys, tools, and electricity because they will surprise us with what they choose to invent.”

Watch it here:

Can I get an “Amen”?

At dorkbot austin (next meeting October 12th, 2006) you sure can.

.

Pay attention to the subtitles while you’re watching the flash (ugh) cartoon.

The question is:

What picture should I use to Pimp My Laptop?

Back in the 1980s, Yosemite National Park was having a serious problem with bears: They would wander into campgrounds and break into the garbage bins. This put both bears and people at risk. So the Park Service started installing armored garbage cans that were tricky to open — you had to swing a latch, align two bits of handle, that sort of thing. But it turns out it’s actually quite tricky to get the design of these cans just right. Make it too complex and people can’t get them open to put away their garbage in the first place. Said one park ranger, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

Take a look at the comments on the post where all manner of clever and cynical comments add to the post.

This brings to mind all of the Macintoshes I’ve owned (or used for work):

• (Fat) Mac 512k
• Macintosh SE (with 20MB HD – woohoo!)
• Macintosh SE/30
• Mac IIx (with the Texas Instrument LISP chip in it)
• Mac Classic (color)
• Duo 280 (where I installed my own internal modem, the Mac equivalent of neurosurgery at the time)
• NeXT slab (that counts now, doesn’t it?)
• Powerbook 540 (Blackbird?)
• Mac IIsi
• Quadra and Performas (many different ones, all similar)
• A large, Macintosh-less gap that could be called the dark ages.
• Powerbook G4
• G5 tower
• MacBookPro

And there are probably at least a few more I’m forgetting.

From the conference blog:

IDEA 2006 brings together a diverse set of designers, creators, and researchers addressing a fundamental challenge we’re facing today – how to let everyday people take true advantage of the overwhelming mass of information that floods their lives.

There are currently many different kinds of folks working in this space, but they typically don’t talk with one another. For this event, we’ve made an effort to invite presenters across a stunning array of disciplines – museum design, information visualization, librarians, environmental design, user research, engineering, interaction design, product strategy, and more.

It’s important to recognize that this is not airy-fairy theoretical stuff. These presenters are practitioners, people actually doing this cross-channel, cross-media work with complex information. A primary goal of this conference is to give you the confidence to cross boundaries and engage with a wide range of problems.

So if you want to find out where the world of design and information is heading, and how you can prepare, come join us October 23-24 in Seattle.

Just because I can’t make it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. What are you waiting for? Register for IDEA 2006 right now!

People are now using the World Wide Web (Web) to seek, gather, and share information in increasingly complex ways. In order to develop the next generation of Web information systems, we must have an understanding of people’s goals, their context, and their situational aspects. These aspects are difficult, if not impossible, to investigate in laboratory settings. Therefore, researchers must turn to naturalistic studies involving large number of users who may be separated geographically. In these settings, many researchers require logs of user behaviour on the Web to study the interactions of Web users, both with respect to general behaviour and in order to develop and evaluate new tools and techniques. Traces of Web activity are used for a wide variety of research and commercial purposes including user interface usability and evaluations of user behaviour and patterns on the Web. Unfortunately, current tools and processes do not support consistent and detailed studies using logs of user behaviour. As such, there is a duplication of effort, which hampers progress in the field.

This special issue is inspired by the Logging Traces of Web Activity: The Mechanics of Data Collection workshop at the WWW 2006 Conference this May in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Relevant research themes include, but are not limited to:

• Methodologies for data collection (client-side, server-side, proxy-based)
• Collection of browser data (e.g. events, bookmarks, history, and caches)
• Collection of data from users across different browsers
• AJAX-compatible logging systems
• Using mixed data sources for data validation
• Cleaning Web data
• Web data warehousing
• Using Web data for proactive user functionality
• Methods for matching user behaviour to task models
• Qualitative annotation of Web data

Submissions

Submissions should be full length articles. All submissions will be peer reviewed and should describe original research that is not under consideration in any other forum. Please follow the formatting guidelines of the journal. Submissions should be emailed to melanie@cs.dal.ca in PDF format. All questions regarding submissions should be directed to Melanie Kellar (melanie@cs.dal.ca).

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: January 8, 2007
Reviews Due: February 8, 2007
Notification to Authors: February 19, 2007
Final Papers Due: March 19, 2007

I’ll be there late, if at all, as I’ll be coming in from Portland.

Here are two possible captions that come to mind:

• Yes, please do pass the salt.
• OK then. Queen to Knight 6. Checkmate.

Post your caption as a comment.

I have already been in town a day and half. I’ve been enjoying the nice weather (no, that’s not a Seattle rain joke) and the downtown area. Yesterday I hit Dilettante Chocolates and walked down to the Pike Place Market for some fresh crab cocktail and hot french bread (a tasty sandwich indeed) at the waterfront park. Then a trip over to the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project (museum) and ran smack dab into a Star Trek convention (no, that’s not a Seattle geek joke). Then somehow I ended up at REI, which seems inevitable here in town (yes, that is a Seattle treehugger joke).

Later in the week, I’m driving down to Portland and will plan on at least one Lewis & Clark related stop, but am open to any road trip recommendations or must-sees in Portland. (I’ve never been to Oregon and I’m happy to correct that error. Also, that’s one more state I can say I’ve been to.)

With Labor Day freeing up a little more time, I tried out two batches of pizza dough. This time I pitted two different flours against each other, with the constant of the bread machine as the dough prep system. (If it is possible to get passable dough from a home machine is a bigger test indeed.)

The first batch came out pretty good, but was perhaps a little heavier than expected, perhaps from the fresh basil and dried oregano I minced and mixed in with the dough. Here’s what I came up with (I forgot to get a picture before I started to cut up the pie):

While this pie was quite tasty, the key wasn’t the dough, it was the roasted red and yellow peppers (not hatch chiles, just peppers this time). If it looks a bit odd, note that I forgot to buy some cheese, but the majority of the time I don’t like most cheeses on pizza anyway.

The second dough batch was with a “bread flour” that I also partly sifted. I also tweaked my recipe by adding about 1/4 tsp. more EVOO. This time I added just a bit of dried oregano and some rosemary to the dough, but much less overall than the spices from the previous batch.

Here’s what I came up with, forgive the oddlly-shaped final form:

The key to this one? Chopped jalepenos and more fresh rosemary with slightly over-ripe roma tomatoes. Tasty. I also have to improve my abilities to evenly distribute toppings. The dough was definitely better, lighter and cooked just a bit better on this other pizza stone.

As you go through the migration process, you boot your old machine in target disk mode (hold down the “T” key when booting the system) and with a firewire cable connected to both machines, the data transfer begins after a few questions about what accounts and files you want to move over (just a few choices, for files mostly everything on the disk or just those related to the account you want to migrate). Then the transfer begins. I started this once and when the estimate was more than 3 hours for the transfer, I deferred until later in the evening. Sure enough, about 3 hours later (much later), it seemed to be done.

Easily enough, I just rebooted the MBP (maybe I just need a great name for the new machine – any ideas? “Bender”? too obvious?) and logged on with the account name (and password) from the G4 powerbook. Simple as that. I knew things were looking good right away as the boot screen changed color to the background I had on the G4. Everything loaded from my startup items, with one exception, Textspander (yes, I know there is a newer version out). Nice job Apple software developers.

Mail.app snapped open quickly (after being selected my old customized dock – great!), but crashed in just a few minutes when I went to clearing out my junk mailbox. (It might have something to do with getting junk mail in odd character sets I don’t have the related fonts for. Just a theory.) I started mail.app right back up and it’s still going strong now. After working around in mail, I don’t feel a neck-snapping performance improvement, this is a bit disappointing.

Next was Firefox 1.5.06 and it seems fine too, including extensions. I checked and it is a universal binary. This is disappointing in a way, because Ffox still seems slow. (Oh, if there were all the right extensions in Safari versions.)

I like the increased screen resolution and the keyboard feels fine, a little mushy but with good bounce on the keys. Also, not as noisy as the G4. The addition of a camera is nice, but I don’t think I’ll make much use of it. There is not Firewire 800 slot anymore, I would have wished that Apple would have put another USB port in its place. As has been commented on before by many others, there is no internal modem included. I hope I don’t have cause to regret that. The PC Card slot is replaced with a smaller add-on slot that has some name I won’t remember because I’ll probably never need a device for it. The new magnetic plug power supply seems fine, but the box is actually LARGER than the old one. Also, I had three G4 powerbook power supplies, now that investment is lost (except that the extension cords seem to fit with the new power supplies).

The next, system-wide step seems to be making sure I have (intel) universal binaries for all of the applications on my system. I assume all the Apple applications are ready (and they were kept from deletion when I transferred the account over from the G4 with its potentially non-universal binary app versions).

The big question: Does anyone know of a utility that could scan my disk and make a list? (even better, give me links for the apps? even better, auto-download those possible?) Comments or emails are most welcome.

The best thing I have found so far to help with this is the MacUpdate: Universal Binary (Macintosh Intel) page (with an RSS feed).

There are no exact amounts, almost everything is adjustable for your tastes and what you have available, so let’s be algebraic with ratios:

• 2x Organic Plum Tomatoes – diced
• Kosher Salt – 1 pinch/tomato used
• Oregano, Cumin or fresh Basil to taste (or not)
• 0.5x Garlic Clove – finely minced

Stir these first four ingredients together well and let sit while prepping the remaining ingredients

• 0.75x Yellow Hatch Onions – diced
• 1x Roasted Green Hatch Chiles -diced (assume 6″ long peppers with seeds removed)
• Roasted Yellow Corn (not pictured)

And this is what you get.

Excellent with some corn tortillas.

1. to encourage researchers and practitioners to investigate IA-specific
   issues
2. to publicize useful work that furthers the information architecture
   body of knowledge.

IAI Progress Grant pplications should propose work that will forward the theory and practice of information architecture. This can include original research, a synthesis
of important existing research, or the development of an innovative new
technique.

The format of the applications should be 2,000 words or fewer and must contain:

• Description of the problem or hypothesis
• Methodology to be used
• Explanation of how the resulting work will forward the theory or
  practice of IA
• Conditions under which others can use the results (e.g. Creative
  Commons license)

The grant application deadline is September 15th, 2006.

Please see 2006 IA Progress Grants information page, including information on last year’s winners.

This year, I am a member of the awards jury for the grant, for even more information, see the details for the progress grant.

“I’ve launched a campaign to rid the world of the caps lock key. Sure, there are more serious problems to solve but please, think of the children! How am I going to explain to my kids why some of the most valuable keyboard real estate is squatted by a large, useless key that above all you must not press! Our campaign mission is simple: to send a message to the computer industry to force it (by any means necessary) to retire the CAPS key. It’s going to be a hard, long, and possibly very embarassing war on uppercase, but some things just need to be done. ”

Of course, there is a (Google) group called CAPSoff to discuss the woes and strategies (and some humorous nonsense) about getting rid of the keyboard’s least popular key.

Allow me to point out that I have two other keyboard pet peeves too:

1. The num(ber) pad on the right of most full keyboards, that rarely gets used and requires a Kent Tekulve side-arm mousing style. I want those 4 inches back on my desktop!
2. Keyboard real estate I’d like to have is a BACKSPACE key on my powerbook keyboard.

A trivia question: do you know how “upper case” got its name?

Update: Of course, there is a blog about the CAPS LOCK key fight.

From the BarCamp Web site:

What is BarCampTexas? Well, the organizers of BarCampAustin, BarCampDallas, and BarCampHouston have decided to join forces and create BarCampTexas! The goal is to get over 1000 campers to join together August 26th-27th. We will be updating this site often so sign up, check back, and participate!

So what is BarCamp you say? What should you expect at a BarCamp? What are the rules of BarCamp? Click and learn.

Note: BarCamp in no way resembles this, since I am able to tell you about BarCamp.

As it has been, this event was a benefit for Center for Child Protection, who also has a Happy Birthday Buck tribute CD by many of the artists performing in the past year’s bashes. I picked one up last night and it’s great. Highly recommended.

You missed it? There’s always next year.

Of course, as readership grows and authorship becomes more finely tuned there is great potential for advertising or sponsorship revenue. There’s nothing particularly new about all this, except we may be seeing mainsteam publishing getting re-invented (again). These group blogs have the potential to invert the pyramid, if not abolishing it altogether, of providing certain types of news targetting the same demographics as the bloggers themselves.

The most useful aspect (for me) is that the authors are many and can therefore collect a wider range of news and events than one single person (and their blog) can, if anything, point out links to other blogs or Web sites that have local content or appeal. With the informal and often humorous writing style, these blogs are fun to read. Having access to them via RSS feeds makes getting local information quite easy.

And of course, there’s the obligatory quote from me in the Statesman’s article about bloggers telling us about what they had for lunch and how eventually (hopefully, oh please) we will see this kind of blogging evolve into a more cogent kind of restaurant review.

The (unintentionally?) ironic part of the article has a quote from Ben Brown, who was the initial Austin Austinist: “It is the greatest city in the world in which to live, and we will hear no arguments to the contrary. We fight with tooth and nail to stay here, even when our real job asks us to travel for cash.” I’m told Ben has since moved away from Austin for a job out in the Bay Area.

Here’s the original post. Wonder what the back yard looks like. Stripes?

With Blanks on a Blank, the film making challenge here in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse. Check out the contest trailer too, it’s hilarious.

Note: the newest Snakes on a Plane theatrical trailer takes itself awfully seriously. I guess you can only run a joke so far, but seeing the joke played out (at length), in action, is all this movie may have going for it. It would be nice to see if they could push it even further.

What is dorkbot you ask?

From David Nunez (one of the organizers):

It’s a celebration of tinkering – people doing strange thing with electricity. Fringe finding at its finest.

There are three main presenters for this inaugural event:

* Bob Sabiston, the programmer/animator behind the trippy animation technology for Richard Linklater’s films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly will debut his latest invention: an art/animation homebrew application for the Nintendo DS game system;

* Phil Mancutt demonstrates his homemade Theremin that’s encased in a vintage 1984 Macintosh computer case; and

* Craig Newswanger fires off his Tesla Coil and Jacob’s Ladder (think of the electrified gizmos in Frankenstein movies).

There will also be the much-anticipated “Open Dork,” a rapid-fire open mic kind of thing. Between all this, DJ KDH spins.

Here’s what I came up with, only 42 40 states.

Create your own visited states map.

Yes, a few cross-country drives and you cover a lot of ground. I wonder what state is the least visited? (I’m guessing Alaska, North Dakota then Idaho?). Are these tempting targets for future vacations? Surely I could knock out those New England states in one trip.

And how I’ve missed Portland and Oregon in general, is a mystery indeed.

Some highlight quotes from the panel you really shouldn’t miss:

• “Explicit refactoring affordances” – Adina Levin
• “Razor-sharp, small pieces of metadata” – Thomas Vander Wal
• “What happens in the brain… in your cortical areas” – Rashmi Sinha
• “Dual-folksonomy triad” – Thomas Vander Wal
• “What we need is Tagginess” – Prentiss Riddle
• “More math is always the answer” – Don Turnbull

How can you pass up quips like that?

The Tagging 2.0 panel was one of the “highly-rated panels” this year, tied for first place with a number of other entertaining and informative panels, so check out their podcasts as they become available as well.

All of the papers, presentations and statements of interest provided a number of insight into different methods for collecting data about Web use including using both server and client based tools including the issues faced when trying to decide what to log about users’ interactions and what the log formats should look like too. A number of revealing studies also reviewed some current views of how Web users do interact with the Web as well as a number of applications, plug-ins and scripting methods for getting data, distributing it and what users’ perceptions of their data might mean to them.

We will be looking for a journal to (augment and) publish this information, perhaps as a special issue for the right journal. If you have an idea for a suitable venue, do let me know.

The entire day went well thanks to my excellent co-organizers for the panel: Kirstie Hawkey, Melanie Kellar, and Andy Edmonds.

• Ricardo Baeza-Yates of the book Modern Information Retrieval
• Andrei Broder (who co-authored two of my favorite papers – A Comparison of Techniques to Find Mirrored Hosts on the WWW and A Taxonomy of Web Search
• Prabhakar Raghavan, who has his own book (with Hinrich Schütze and Chris Manning) coming out that I’m looking forward to as well.

Here’s the blurb for the tutorial:

Web advertising spans Web technology, sociology, law and economics. It has already surpassed some traditional media like radio and is the economic engine that drives Web development. The transformation touches the way content is created, shared and disseminated – all the way from static html pages to more dynamic forms of expression such as blogs and podcasts, to social media such as discussion boards and tags on shared photographs. This revolution promises to fundamentally change both the media and the advertising businesses over the next few years, altering a $300 billion economic landscape. The technical underpinnings of web advertising are based on a plethora of scientific disciplines, including Information Retrieval, Microeconomics, Auction Theory, On-line Algorithms, Security, User Interface design, Data Mining, and more. The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce the audience to the many technology issues behind the curtains of web advertising.

A lot of what Andrei is discussing so far is basic, but it is worth attending to hear how his mind works through these issues, and his jokes aren’t bad either.

Sadly, we’re packed in yet another horrible venue, these workshop rooms are the size of a double (American-sized) office but they’re packing up to 40 people in them with the projector smack dab in the middle of the room that has the usual problems of being noisy and near the audience as well as the frequent shadow on the screen of the back of someone’s head. It goes without saying that the network connectivity is still lousy too. This has not proved to be a good physical venue for the conference.

Lots of excellent presentations and papers (see the link) with a lot of focus on enterprise or private tagging systems and some working demonstrations of products in progress. It will be amazing to see what this same workshop would be like next year, with lots of these ideas brought out into the wider world.

While I was offline I got 449 emails (223 were junk) and 318 comments (316 were spam) on this blog. It’s (almost) enough to make me go back offline again.

One good thing though – new Flickr photos!

Check out some more pictures.

I also am (finally) putting pics up on flickr.

www.flickr.com More of donturn’s photos

Fortunately, before the conference I will be doing some touring throughout Scotland including Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. If you have some recommendations, on “must see” experiences, I’m happy to hear about it. I’ve already added a few events to my trip from excellent suggestions including the Isle of Skye and a whisky distillery or two. Feel free to comment on this post or send me an email.

“A guy goes into a bar and orders ten shots of brandy.
The barman asks him ‘Ten, sir?’
‘Give them to me,’ the guy says.
The barman pours the ten shots and lines them up on the counter.
The guy takes the first and the tenth one, picks them up and pours them out
on the floor. He drinks the remaining eight, one after the other.
The barman asks with surprise, ‘Why did you pour those two shots out on the floor?’
The guy says ‘Look, sonny, the first one always tastes horrible and the last
one always makes me sick.’

From 101 Reykjavík (2000) (also a novel):

Why do Marlboro cigarettes have white filters in America, and yellow filters in Europe?
So Keith Richards can tell which continent he’s on.

I am both a (partial) organizer and speaker at this workshop. If you’re there, do stop by and say hello or introduce yourself.
For more information including directions and registration, please see the Open Source Workshop Web site

Thanks to Tolva for pointing this out and making me feel so lucky because I don’t punch a clock, get to work (mostly) on only what is interesting to me and can wear shorts + Hawaiian shirts on days when the weather permits. Plus I’m in Austin!

You can start hating me now.

Check it out.

Let a thousand orange smileys bloom!

Go Houston!

What I hope to find upon reading it is that a business can be more competitive by being more data driven than their competitors, be it from extending Knowledge Management ideas to fully forming a company around leveraging knowledge or from using data to help establish a conversation with customers about expectations and higher levels of service.

Come one, come all to the Annual pre-SXSW get together for anyone doing Web design, development, Information Architecture, and anything else SXSW “Interactive-y”.

Whether you live in Austin or are in town early for SXSW, do join us on this Thursday, March 9th from 6-8 at the Cedar Door at 201 Brazos Street in downtown Austin.

As always, this event is sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin School of Information, the UTASIS&T Student Chapter and the Information Architecture Institute.

Take a look and tell me what you like or what I’ve missed.

Where: Club DeVille, (voted best outdoor bar by Citysearch in 2005) 900 Red River St. Austin, TX

When: Wed. February 22, 5 – 7 pm

From the Web page:

TiVo Desktop for Mac v1.9.2 Updated February 14, 2006. This update provides compatability with Mac OS X 10.4: Tiger.

Download it now.