Skydiving

"I think that for babies every wobbly step is skydiving, every game of hide-and-seek is Einstein in 1905, and every day is first love in Paris."

- Alison Gopnik, Prof. of Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, from her essay in "What We Believe But Cannot Prove"

What I (Think I) Believe But Cannot Prove

- there is an infinite "nesting" of sized bodies in our reality...from universe-containing mega-structures to increasingly sub- sub- sub microscopic objects (and beings that may existing in any sized structure believe their environment is the "normal" one).

- to quote some graffiti I saw outside New Haven, CT, "society is not reality."

- reincarnation, in terms of the biologic & chemical structures and markings that create consciousness, is possibly inevitable based on the probably infinite size of (and distribution biologic and chemical underpinnings within) the universe

- business travelers are silly

Entry 47 Sends Me To NY

In rather exciting news, I was selected (at random) by the good folks over at the Boagworld Podcast as the winner of a free conference pass to the Future of Web Design conference in NYC.  I'm pretty excited to go, as the conference looks chock-full of luminaries like Joshua Davis, Andy Clarke, Ryan Singer, and Jeffrey Zeldman.  So hooray!  Thanks to Paul and Marcus!

And if you're really interested (or think i'm lying or something), you can listen to episode 99 of the Boagworld Podcast to hear the actual drawing of my name as selected by Marcus Lillington (who had great taste in numbers in the upper forties...and who ALSO was the guitarist for the band Breathe, yes...)

I want my podcasts...just not in iTunes

Here's the situation:  I have all but stopped using iTunes as my podcast aggregator (instead, I simply use Google Reader).  However, several podcasts seem to "only" exist in iTunes-world...meaning, there is no visible (cut-and-pasteable) podcast feed.  Rather, the only option seems to be iTunes' "http://phobos.apple.com/blablabla."

The "iTunes Podcast" feed url for some feeds is easy to change (itpc:// --> http:// and voila), but is there a way to suss-out a feed from the Phobos url?

If you're wondering, I am investigating this because Fabric London just launched a podcast and it seems to exist only as (in my view) the dreaded Phobos.

Two Toy Playsets...

Ideas for two toy playsets Kat and I discussed as "great ideas that should definitely be made" while shopping at Target this weekend:

 - the "Ants & Fleas" playset
 - Magic Little People's "Feces-eating Farmer" playset

LOLGORE

An unexpected consequence of global warming:  cats!


(pic from Pixel Packing Mama)

"Warmer springs and falls in the past decade are being blamed for the 'worsening problem of cat overpopulation,'" 
(from Humane Society blames weather for an 'explosion of cats' in Twin Cities).  Thanks Joe.

IM IN UR POWURPOINTS...EXPLODIN UR TREND LINES

Malente "wonky electrohouse" Mix

[via SluttyFringe...tracklisting at that link]

Testing PictoBrowser

Testing PictoBrowser...I really need to redesign Clampants to be wider.

North Reading is total anarchy

Since Wikipedia never lies (and people don't ever vandalize entries), I learned a few things about our town of North Reading:

 - N. Reading has an interesting official website...
 - "The town of North Reading is famous worldwide for its school system. It currently holds the world record for 'Most terrible administration', and 'highest suicide rate'."
 - Government:  "North Reading is total anarchy."

Oh, those wacky, zany internets!

Miles is better at it than daddy

Miles:


Daddy:

In An Age Of Gestural Interface, What Happens When You're A Clutz?

This morning, I was listening to the latest Read/WriteTalk episode...an interview with Adaptive Path's experience design director Dan Saffer...about Mr. Saffer's "call to arms" for interaction designers "around coming up with a set of gestural patterns for touch interactions" laid out in an Adaptive Path blog post:

"If you are anything like me, you've at one point or another admired the hell out of the group of interaction designers who, back in the 1960s and 70s, pretty much came up with the modern set of interaction paradigms that we've used ever since. Guys like Larry Tesler (cut-and-paste), Doug Engelbart (selecting, point and click, windows), and Tim Mott (the desktop metaphor).

We have a similar opportunity in front of us now, to define the interaction paradigms for the next several decades (at least) in the form of defining gestural and touch interactions."

It got me thinking:  in this future where creative maestros stand before expansive touch-screen table displays smoothly gesticulating their left hand across a high-resolution image triggering a blur effect while multiple fingers of their right hand twitch and spread, adjusting finer details...where do I fit in?  I am possibly the least ambidextrous person I know (hyperbole:  I have never asked about acquaintances' multi-handedness).  Never have I been able to even begin to play the piano...the one time I tried (a humiliating seventh-grade music class talent show), I found both hands, instead of complimenting one another's parts instead haltingly moved towards mirroring one another.  Gesturing in multiple ways, to me, has always felt like I was hyper-extending my nervous system.

Am I curse to forever use a mouse...or a glorified faux-gesture based mouse paradigm resulting in an awkward (yet wireless!) hunt-and-peck?

Maybe by then we'll all have advanced neuro-processors installed that will give us hyper-human ambidexterity...and I will become the piano-slash-word-processing impresario I have always (or not really) dreamed of becoming.

Testing Adobe Share