Add-Art

http://add-art.org/ This is simply the best browser plug-in I have ever seen. And one of the best "mash up's" too. Add blockers themselves have never interested me, I'm fairly good at not seeing adds, and maybe I want them to tell me what I should be interested in on some subconscious level. But to put something that I really want to see there, now that is cool. I notice add areas much more now, and I'm often surprised. "why in the world would they put that there" ... oh right "they" didn't Steve Lambert Eyebeam and Rhizome did. I look forward to future curated selections. I might think it would be cool to click on the art and find out more, but I don't think it should be done, then it really would be like trading one add for another, but I do like to have a site where I could get the credits for the art shown. Get it, love it.

Online retail packaging

excessive packaging has been getting me down lately So I really feel that products should be packaged for either retail or online retail sales. I'm sure there must be some action in this direction going on, but I didn't run into much on the web accept complaints, and comments that consumers claim they don't like it. However I guess we are not voting with our dollars enough to convince manufacturers. Not that I feel there are a lot of options, Lush is one for bath products, but I'm not a big consumer of bath products. I mean I do take my daily shower, but how can I expand this to oether atreass, particularly the really bad ones like consumer electronics.

Walking in NYC its what we are about. (sometimes)

It's a funny thing a few weeks ago I was trying to post to my blog from my phone about the urban / technology ennui I felt. And somehow I just could not get that post to go up to the site, it's like the technology didn't like what I had to say. But this week I've been noticing a more positive aspect of my environment. Not quite a ray of sunshine I guess if I think about it. I suppose it's more like a very interesting little desk lamp. Basically I have noticed that I prefer to walk to the subway stop just slightly further from my home or office than the closest. I'm not sure it's not just the longer walk, or just the environment. Some combination I guess. At work it's not that much of a distance difference. The stops on the N/W train are at 23rd and 28th st; and my office is at 26th st. But the walk down is through crowded sidewalks of wholesale hawkers. The walk up is through the area around Madison sq park that has just recently tried to clear up the traffic concision of Broadway, 5th ave, and 23rd st all crossing, by taking over a lot of what used to be roadway and coating it with a light tan sandy pebble surface and making it a paved extension of the park area. It's really quite nice, good work by whomever designed that. I hope it stays nice. In Sunnyside I go from 45th to 40th instead of 46th. When I drop off my son at the stitter I'm acutaly on 46th already. But it's just nicer to have a walk rather than hurry directly to the subway.

Flow and being Stuck. (Open the Pod Bay Doors Hal)

One of my colleges just pointed out the power of the Nap which I agree with, though I'm not sure I want to put myself in a pod of any sort, though I %100 agree that sleep is often the best solution. Now I can give some statistically meaningless examples if that would help. (oh wait that never helps) Anyway on a small scale I just switch projects (or when coding maybe just switch to a different area of the code, as long as I haven't broken the whole thing ;) when I get very stuck, or have a unidentifiable bug, or when I come up against what looks like an intractable problem, or if it still looks hopeless when I come back, no longer frustrated then I sleep on it. Unfortunately that does not usually mean a nap, but rather waiting for tomorrow morning. But I find that quite often my brain has solved the problem for me, or by having to search around in the project code to get back to where I was brings me to the forgotten or unexpected point where the problem (bug) or solution (challenging feature) lies. Oh that brings up one more point. When I stop working on something because I have other priorities but it's going well, I often leave it open hoping to drop right back into the same spot and regain my flow. But if things are frustrating or I'm stuck, then I close everything down. That process removes me from it far more than just going away from the computer. It frees me, I don't see the problem staring at me when I come back to the computer, and I don't feel it hovering just over my holder, it's a good 2-10 minutes away just to look at it again. I think that as well as the chance to delve back into it and navigate through the project to the target area helps. It's something that a good IDE can make happen or not. I'm somewhat interested in the idea of "flow", action without effort or thought, and I've though about the things that break flow, but this line of thinking makes me think about the things that break the writers-block, being stuck, or bug-lock (I just made that up). It's kind of like the anti-flow, and it's funny that the things that are the enemy of "flow" can also be the enemy of being "stuck", and thus used positively.

DPI residents for 2009

DPI Artist Residency Program : 2008-2009 Residents. Digital Performance Institute is an Arts Service organization serving experimental Media and Technology Artists. DPI has just announced their 2009 resident artists and projects. It's a pretty interesting mix of projects that hits on most of my artistic interests including: New Media Theatre: Ruth Sergel - Alchemy of Light Robotics and Art/Theatre: Jennifer Tsuei - The Mahler + Machine Project Physical Interfaces and Performing with a Computer: Michael Chladil - rope&pulley Experimental use of Media in Performance: John Kelly - ‘cara viaggio’ While the context of DPI is always Arts & Technology, the criteria used to select residency projects is always experimentation and risk. Artists and projects that can move forward the whole field and genre of technology and arts by doing things we may never have though of. It really ties in tightly with the Innovation focus that that we have been developing at Learning Worlds, the partner commercial organization of DPI.

osX and Sugar complaints, I'm a whiner today.

I made a DVD of some work samples for a friend of mine, and they asked how to make a copy. They have a MacBook so I figured it should be pretty easy, though not having a mac I don't know the process. [....] OK a google search turned up these instructions http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/making_dvd_copies.html or if you don't like those these http://www.gbradhopkins.com/archives/2004/09/duplicate_dvds.html But I have to say WTF apple that is a pain in the neck! How about a button somewhere that sais. "Copy Disk" ... "please insert source [DVD|CD]" .... "please insert blank [DVD|CD]" I mean this is version 10.5 right, and they charge $130 for each upgrade, and have had five major upgrades to add this feature. I thought that it was supposed to be "Intuitive", though I never believed it. If you are in a stage of life where you are exploratory then you "intuition" says just try everything and learn, and heck even the OLPC "sugar" is probably intuitive enough for you. If you are not exploratory, forget it no matter what OS you are using, you want a "single use computer" like the lowest end cell phone. Or the Presto Internet Printer, or a DVD player. By the way I think OLPC's Sugar is a huge mess, and a bad idea. Hey I know lets give computers to third world children ... But hey lets give it a freaky interface which will keep them ghettoized to our system so they don't get into that evil Windows / Mac world. And hey lets try and lobotomize the web browser to keep them away from commercial websites. That way when they find themselves at an internet cafe, or applying for a job they will be totally unprepared. I know that's probably and unfair assessment, the Nintendo/X-Box/PlayStation all have custom interfaces and kids learn to use them. And learning how to learn interfaces is a skill in itself, and throughout life we need to learn new interfaces constantly, for the car, phone etc. Also the "window manager" / "desktop" standard User interface is not necessarily the best. So the idea that you should throw it out and start from scratch is commendable, if a bit grandiose. But the idea that you should make is so different that there is little way to shift from one interface to another is just sadistic. I guess us geeks learned on a CLI via our Vic 20's C64's and (in my case) TI994A's which were far far from Windows and we made the transition. But that just brings up the question, where did those millions of C64's go and why not just ship them to the children of the world, surely they are less than $100 each. (though with the use of a CRT TV they are not all the power efficient.) Blah blah, there it is, some whining from hal.