Preview day and night (day 245)

Another day, another preview of things to come.

We spent the a good part of the afternoon working with the cameras and the remote again.  After giving up on finding another set of cameras by going shopping locally, we decided to give our current setup another chance.  We got as scientific as we could with imprecise tools and calculated the drift to be about .6ms per minute with a period of about 15 minutes.  So after 15 minutes they get in sync again.  Once they are in sync we have about 5 minutes to shoot before things are too far out of sync to be usable.  This is an estimate and would depend on the speed of motion in the scene.  So it's workable but certainly not amenable to spur of the moment shooting.  Leila will test it out this weekend.  In talking with Sean, he said that he's had the same issue with recording sound and video separately.  The oscillators were just slightly out of sync so the sound and video didn't match up.  Luckily with sound you can play around a bit and get things to match.  Not so with video.  We haven't found video editing software that will manipulate a sub-frame level.  Changing the frame rate to be a fractional number would not work.

We spent the later afternoon brainstorming some ideas about Breath I/O.  Here are the notes (not edited):

Lungs jostling/bending
Moving around forming clusters, groups, fights, collaborations.
Number of lungs - individual to couple to quartet to nine to multitude (varying)
Environment - rain, wind, snow, vidéo windows in bg
Internal video associated with personal internal space. External video associated with public videos.
When lungs touch each other could generate traces
External videos can affect internal videos (a mixture)
Lines in space delineating groups and boundaries
Breathing patterns affecting video speed and direction
Video particles or atmospheric around the lungs maybe more visible when they are actively breathing. Somehow visualizing sharing of the same air.
Sometimes lungs not having video (tuning out?)
Death/decay (line drawing?)
Events like a bird flying through. Each set of lungs associated with an event that can get triggered. Internal event or external event.
Provoke tenderness in viewer.  A sense of protecting.
Resonance, sound, visual resonance, synching, harmony/disharmony, oscillations that are sometimes in sync, oscillations that affect each other. Rhythms, ebbs and flows, events affect the patterns.

The day ended with the Grad Show preview night.  I toured about a third of the show before going home.  I'll see the rest during the week when it's a bit less busy.  It was great to see the MAA student work all in one place.  The official opening is tomorrow night.

A song for this post.

Sing Dance Eat (day 244)

Matching a tuning fork with the singing bowl didn't quite work.  Partially it's because the tuning fork is simply too small to make the bowl resonate and partially because the bowl does not resonate at a perfect B Flat.  I think if the first thing is remedied perhaps the second would be less relevant.  I think we would have better luck working with a piezo to induce a kind of resonance.  What I'd like to see is the bowl getting to resonance without the need for the wooden stick.  That way it becomes a kind of actuator for the interactive piece.

In the evening we attended two interactive dance performances in the IDS.  Both were great and made use of different kinds of motion tracking techniques to interact with text and type.  There are three other performances tomorrow (4, 6, and 8pm).

We ended the day at Boneta which we found out is part of Dine Out Vancouver.  The food was absolutely amazing.  A great deal for sure.

So again, not exactly a success-filled day but not a bad day altogether.

A song for this post.

Oscillating and Resonating (day 243)

Leila and I spent the afternoon testing the LANC twin remote with the Sony TG1 cameras, then shopping for other cameras that would work better than the TG1s.   It was a futile attempt.  In the end we ended up with a nice assortment of chocolate from Xoxolat, and a singing bowl from Maiwa.  Not a bad day altogether.

So what about the LANC twin remote.  It works as advertised but our TG1 cameras have mismatched oscillators.  We have yet to do the precise calculation but it's somewhere around 1ms per minute.  This is a lot.  And it's hard to get them to be in sync at startup.  On average it seemed to take about 15 power ups to get a sync better than 4ms.  We may try to make the LANC 3D Master which is capable of manipulating the frame rate to compensate for the oscillator mismatch.  The 3D Master has an open source hardware design.  I have no idea if the TG1 are even capable of responding to the frame rate manipulation of the 3D Master.  There doesn't seem to be any way to find out beside making the remote and checking.

We went to the Sony store to see if there would be other cameras that we could test for a match.  No luck there.  The cameras we were interested in either had a design flaw which prevented the physical connection of the remote, or weren't available at the store, or weren't able to be taken out of the box for testing. We looked at Canon cameras too but none seemed to have a LANC connection.  Maybe their higher end cameras have this.  So we are a bit stuck.  We could go higher end but the higher end cameras tend to be bigger so cannot have a inter-axial distance of human scale. 

The singing bowl will be used to generate sounds and perhaps be part of the interface for the Breath I/O work.  We will go to Long & McQuade tomorrow and see if we find a tuning fork that will resonate with the bowl.  The bowl resonates at B Flat which a quick search reveals could be heart, crown, or solar plexus chakra.  There is an intriguing NPR report about B Flat which claims it can stimulate alligators to bellow, and is the note hummed by black holes (yes, black holes).   Guess that means black holes make alligators bellow.  There's also a nice bit in there about a room that resonates at B Flat (a room mode).  This site has an interactive orchestra piece in B Flat.  There doesn't seem to be any agreements on a mapping between chakras and tones which makes sense I suppose.  Anyway, B Flat sounds good for  now.

A song for this post.

Suiting up to fight (day 242)

Is it a coincidence that there's been a few movies about vigilantes lately?  Movies like Defendor and Kick-Ass that have flawed real-life superheroes take the restoration of justice into their own hands? Defendor was bittersweet.  The superhero, a little slow but honest, was looking for Captain Industry.    Kick-Ass I think was supposed to be funny but it left me feeling uncomfortable.  The portrayal of a killer young kid (9 or 10?) was a natural progression of other violent movies we see but I don't think it's a progression we should be proud of.  Surely there is a better role model for young girls between that and Britney Spears. What I did like about the movie was the fact that the superheroes found and created each other.

Someone taking justice into their own hands is a familiar theme in movies but what I'm seeing is the bringing down of the hero to the level of the every day person.  I wonder if this is a response to latent anger in the population.  Even the term Robin Hood tax being bandied about lately is interesting in that respect.  The vigilante movies are still using very personal motivations for the superheroes so maybe I'm reading too much into them.  Is there a point at which the clumsy everyday hero decides to take on more than 'bad guys'?  Maybe the superhero trope is just an extension of individualism and it never amounts to much.  We'll have to see where it goes.

Here's a game based on the flawed superhero theme (via pardenarden).

A song for this post.

Life Support (day 238)

I took a breather today.  After attending the Masters of Digital Media graduation ceremony (which was awesome), I arrived home around 4pm and decided to make some tea, eat some chocolate from chocolate arts, and spend some time with a book that I've been meaning to re-open: "The Art of Projection" edited by Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon.  A few pages in I started to get some ideas about the screenshots and snapshots I've been collecting.  I started to think of what it feels like to be observed by my own computer.  At the beginning I was self-conscious, then I became annoyed, then oblivious, then embarrassed, then impatient.  As the shots pile up, I've become somewhat anxious about what the end game is.  What will I do with all these?  Steve asks me every now and then.  I've always replied that I didn't know.  Today I had an idea.  The sketch is below.  A LCD screen shows a video of the screenshots, and the top of the screen where a camera would usually be, a miniature projector projects the portrait snapshots onto a suspended concave structure (textured material, probably paper clay).  In between the two, embedded in a supporting plinth is an organ-like inflatable structure that 'breathes' (mechanics and electronics inside the plinth).  The sound is similar to a life support respirator in a hospital.  I'm not clear on the form of the breathing structure.  Probably amorphous.  I'd like it to be uncanny, like an organ.  With an affect similar to the organic game pod in Cronenberg's Existenz.

A song (clip) for this post.

You lookin' at me? (day 237)

Morgan Rauscher defended his thesis yesterday.  I was one of the faculty members on his committee.  He did very well and was an interesting person to talk to as always.  The best part of his thesis is the project which has two parts: Zeugen and Mind Machine.  Zeugen is a large suspended board with 32 half faces (eyes and nose) whose eyes follow the people currently looking at them.  The faces are backlit and turn on and off according to an algorithm that I'm not quite clear about.  There is a half-mirror in front of the faces which becomes more of a mirror when the faces are not lit.  There are servo motor sounds from the eyes tracking the viewers' faces.  The back of the board is open and shows the mechanics and electronics of the work, as well as the netbook that controls it.  Morgan calls this open source.  I've seen this work a few times in different instantiation but this was the first time I saw it with the half mirror.

After being with it for a while it started to make me think of social media.  The board is a kind of screen and the faces are looking at me and I'm looking at them and at the same I'm looking at myself.  And it's all quite ordered.  The whole thing is self-conscious in a mechanical and somewhat unnerving way. 

The piece will be on display during the Graduate Exhibition May 2-16th at the Charles H. Scott Gallery at Emily Carr University.  I recommend.

A song for this post.

Craigslist poets (day 234)

Penny Leong, one of my graduate students, defended her thesis today.  She did really well.  The topic: acts of giving on craigslist free stuff section.   She analyzed the ways in which people phrase their listings and conduct the actual exchange.   Her thesis project will be exhibited in the Charles H. Scott gallery from May 1st to May 14th.  It will be a participatory display of objects that exemplify the categories of giving that she has identified.  Her process blog documents some of the objects (and categories) that will be on display.

In came out during the defense that Veda Hille produced a musical with Geoff Berner called "Do You Want What I Have Got?: A Craigslist Cantata", that played during the Push Festival.  I wish we both would have seen it!  I think it might be playing again in some form on May 2nd at the Arts Club Theatre. 

A song for this post (from the cantata).

Booked on the weekend (day 233)

I finished the book "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".  It was a quick and entertaining read.  I'm curious about how well it works as a movie.  It's the first of a trilogy but I'm not sure when I'll be able to convince myself to take a full day to read again.

The other book that I finished a while ago and forgot to mention is "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster.  Jaron Lanier recommended it during his talk at SXSW.  The book was written in 1909 so is in the public domain.  It's set in a futuristic world where humans are living underground, each in separate apartments fully managed by the Machine, which has become something like a God to them.  Birth and Death are managed and travel is not desirable.  "Ideas" are the most valuable currency (if you read the book you'll understand why I put ideas in quotes). The short story is about the gradual decline of the machine as the inhabitants gradually become ignorant and complacent about its maintenance.  An amazing tale even if it was written today.  The fact that it was written in 1909 is almost unbelievable.

I was a panelist at the Diane Farris Gallery on Saturday.  Hank Bull was a fellow panelist and Lili Vieira de Carvalho was moderating.  The topic was social media and art.  It was interesting to hear Hank talk about the beginning of network art in the 1970s when artists were using the telephone, the photocopier, and the precursors to the fax machine and video phone.  He said something that stuck with me: when it became clear that artists would be able to link to each other in a great network around the world, the belief and hope was that there would be large collaborative works, no longer individual works.   I'm very much paraphrasing from memory and I wish I remembered his exact words.  He also said it's worth noting that it's called social media, not socialist media.  This is after some discussion about the role of corporate interests in web 2.0.   It was interesting to me that the optimism of the early 70's has been partially realized in the sense that the technology is more available than ever but there has also been the disappointment of losing control of the medium.  Overall, a pretty good panel.   It probably would have been more balanced if Kris Krug had been able to be the third panelist.  We needed a convert I think. 

A song for this post.

Blog interrupted (day 231)

We interrupt this blog for a riveting novel...the girl with the dragon tattoo.  We will be back after this low tech interruption.

A song for this post.

Smart and juvenile (day 230)

I finished the Jaron book.  He finished off with a discussion of how neoteny is the reason we are so smart and juvenile all at the same time, and a discussion of post-symbolic communication in virtual worlds.  Yes the book takes a turn away from a critique and toward an exploration of the pleasures of morphing, concrete communication, and the development of language.   In the end what I retain from the book is his belief that there is no need to elevate technology to the level of humans or debase humans to the level of technology.  There is no philosophy that will fit all the ways in which we need to think about these things and the important thing is not to get trapped.  I appreciate the way he discussed his research at the end of the book.  There was something really sweet about it.  Like a kid really enjoying the space to think about what is possible still.

I wonder what it would be like to tune out of web 2.0 for an extended period of time.  What would I miss?  What would be richer?  What if the whole world had to take a 2.0 break for a month?  What does that feel like?  Is it like the silence you hear when the electricity goes off and nothing is buzzing anymore?  Or is it the silence that makes your foot wiggle and makes you run to the nearest pub?  For me, the thought of the world tuning out from 2.0  brings the most insight about the true value of what has been created through it.

Now I have to find my next book.

A song for this post.

Everyone's talking (day 229)

I feel I should write something positive today.  I've been on a vicarious rant about web 2.0 lacuna for a few days now.   So what could possibly be good about the overload of everyone talking at once on the internet?  Well for one we can stop being ignorant of the real level of discourse in the world.  This is a call for action and one that I think is being heard.  iTunesU is a great thing, and so is YouTube Edu.  The YouTube Screening Room is also great.  Vimeo is a breath of fresh creativity every time.  The fact that I don't have to pay for all this greatness sometimes feels wrong and not sustainable but the greatness itself is inspiring.  I believe books will be transformed, especially textbooks, and I'm looking forward to that but that's not really web 2.0.  I hope for a resurgence of newspapers in a new form but I'm not sure it will happen.  These days when I pick up a paper I realize how good it feels in my hands and how it has some pretty good content, well put together in a visually comfortable medium.  Sometimes the simple things can bring an exquisite state of unexpected relaxation.  I believe newspapers can be that in some kind of digital form on some kind of reader.  I hope they survive long enough to get there.  I think people might pay for good content again soon.  Perhaps if our data plans stop being so expensive.   I think open government platforms and applications are interesting initiatives and I welcome anything that can get us from Farmville to HereVille. 

A song for this post.

If your friends jump off a bridge (day 228)

Jaron Lanier says that every advertisement is a failure of the hive mind.  He doesn't like the hive mind or advertising so I don't think either one wins in this statement.  It is interesting that so much faith has been put in the hive lately when we know that the hive slices both ways.  Crowds can topple walls and can loot stores.  Thinking as a unit does not equal wisdom.  It's just a stable state that could be any stable state.  There's no particular reason to assume it's the optimal solution.  And often we don't even know the question we're asking of the hive anyway.   When the hive speaks the assumption is that it's uttering the answer to something.  Once again Douglas Adams was prescient.

It's pretty clear that complex problems are probably left to good old analysis and experiment by domain experts.  Even the example of the NetFlix prize is not a good example of hive computation.  A gladiator style winner take all model is not optimal in terms of evolution of a solution.  It's an example of a crowd of smart and hungry researchers, that's all.   As far as I can tell we are far from anything resembling optimized hive computation.  In fact, research shows that we have great influence over each other when trying to reach consensus and local influences can prevail, preventing a convergence to the correct solution.  Still the idea of hive computation is so attractive that we want to believe it.  We want to believe that magically a crowd not only could but will come up with solutions to hard problems like global warming, and unstable economic systems.   Like Douglas Adams says, the simple existence of the human race expresses solutions all the time.   The problem is that as a species we're short-sighted and we want to be liked.  And I'm pretty sure the former doesn't get better at the crowd level.

I don't think we should entirely give up on hive computation at all.  I agree with Jaron that we should study it with a clear focus - what is it good for and how to we set it up for success.  Undoubtedly, there are certain problems that stated in a certain way might be ideal  for the hive but without a clear study we'll keep fumbling and believing a false god.

A song for this post.

The verdict is in (day 227)

When Skype came along it seemed like a good idea and it was.  Even older and regular folk use it, they love the video chat.  It keeps families in touch.  Great.  Can't argue with that.   When Twitter came along I never had the thought it was a good idea.  And I routinely hear regular folk say 'why would I want to do that?' in reference to Twitter.  Like it or not, Twitter has a ambiguous value proposition.  Even when you're on it you wonder what it might be.  Like Google Wave, it suffers from being a solution without a well distributed problem.   I think my experiment with Twitter is done, and my conclusion is that there is simply not enough content to keep me interested.  There is too much to wade through and the effort to sort it all out is not worth it in the end.  I'd rather keep up with my RSS feeds and get more in depth content.  The last piece of evidence to let go of Twitter was deliberately being without it for a week.  I felt better without it.  I logged on again briefly to see the difference and I immediately felt triage stress.  I do enough information triage during a regular day.  I don't need more of it.  I need less.  I need the Amazon recommendation engine for the chatter of my friends.  Either that or I need to seriously constrain the friend definition.

I'm a big fan of Google Reader.  There are probably lots of equivalent services out there but the basic idea is that I read my feeds and if I like something I share it with my friends.  They do the same.  It's a nice way to see what everyone else has triaged.  It's distributed triage.  Typically the volume is fairly low so it doesn't add a lot of work to see what they've shared.  I can also keep my own lists of things I thought were interesting.  There are two differences between Google Reader and Twitter that keep me with the Reader.  It's lower volume, and deeper content.  There is something so contrived about the restricted number of characters to a Twitter post.  You can be as clever as you want, it still comes out like half a thought if the underlying context is at all rich.    So for now I'm with RSS and I'm shunning Twitter.  We'll see if peer pressure changes this in the future.  I'm certainly in good company it seems.

Still beyond a tool vs tool diatribe, what is it that I really want out of information tools?

• I don't want to be presented with irrelevant information or idle chatter.
• I want the information to be linked with interests that I've already flagged either implicitly or explicitly.  
• I want to know what my friends are thinking but not necessarily in real-time.
• In fact, I rarely want information as a push mechanism.  I prefer to pull my info.
• I want ambient displays for the creative works that my friends are involved with.
• I want to know about events that are connected to my close friends, or my community.
• I don't want to be invited to events outside of my geographical area.
• I don't want to be invited to be a fan of anything.
• I want easy direct channels for personal requests.
• I want in depth reporting of current events.
• I want time-stamped dynamic geo-tagged information on demand.

 A song for this post.

A taste of last minute (day 226)

Today was the last day of the Ed Pien installation at the Museum of Vancouver.  It was there for three months and even though the museum is barely two blocks away I waited until the last day.  I regret this very much now for two reasons: it was amazing and I would have loved to go again, and I would have loved to convince others to see it.  The mostly blue paper sculpture was intricately painted and cut.  You could walk inside and look through multi-layered and coloured cutouts.  There was a large cylindrical room with a circular video projection up above, with animated ink drawings.  The feeling  of the projection was moon-like.  The paintings on the paper structures where mythical human/animal combinations.  Between two cylindrical structures was a thin hallway that shimmered and waved as you walked through.  It's hard to describe the form but the feeling was of being outside at night with a kind of melding of human and wildlife, very mythical, and reverent.   There was neutral ambient sound.  I took many pictures.

The other half of the exhibition was crafts from Canadians and South Koreans.  That too was amazing but for a different reason.  I was awed by the combined person years of expertise in the room.  The objects were each precious and precisely executed.  I enjoyed seeing all the different materials: glass, metal, wood, thread, felt, clay.  I bought the catalog and even though I'm glad I have some record of the artists in the show, it doesn't come close to the great way the whole was put together.

Later in the afternoon Liz and I went to Chinatown and I was able to pick up some dried flowers for my tea: Chrysanthemum, red rose buds, and Osmanthus.  We ended our excursion at Arts De Chine, a tea shop at the corner of Pender and Columbia.  I wanted to buy more Pu-Erh tea and had a notion that I would buy some as a gift for someone else.   He had many to choose from and explained the different regions, companies and ages.  I settled on one and we sat down for a Gong Fu Cha style tasting.  I mentioned that I was looking to buy some as a gift and after asking a few questions he wondered if the person might not prefer the Iron Buddha oolong tea.  After tasting it, I agreed that this was indeed a delight that they would enjoy.  It was fragrant beyond belief even (especially?) after several steeps.  The fragrance lingered in the most pleasant way.  Of course with the tea I had to get a clay tea pot.  I'll season the pot before giving away.  If you are looking for a great tea shop in Vancouver, this place is definitely a great experience.  High quality teas, friendly instruction, and no pressure sales.

A song for this post.

No really, is it all great? (day 225)

I'm slightly stunned that I haven't posted since Wednesday.  I had a late night Thursday and by Friday evening the virus had made a slight comeback, a warning that rest was a priority.  We have family visiting this weekend too so making sure I could be fit enough to entertain was important.  Like being out of town, being sick is about a 25% drag on an otherwise normal day. 

I've been thinking about Web 2.0 since listening to the Jaron Lanier book and also talking to people about it to see if some of the ideas resonate.  There haven't been many takers so far although it's entirely possible I'm not doing a great job explaining the ideas.  Plus there are so many ideas in the book that it's hard to summarize.  Either way, I've been trying to take a more objective look at what I think about Web 2.0.  One of the side effects of listening to his book has been a sort of permission to be more critical of the social web and hive mentality.  Do I really enjoy all this social networking or am I doing it because I feel I have to?  Jaron is particularly concerned with younger people who are slaves to their online identity which is different but entangled with their offline one.  He claims the most successful people are the one who view their online identity as a fabrication (creation?) and groom it as such.  In any case, there is maintenance needed on online identities and there are potentially many that require maintenance and perhaps concordance.  I've recently taken a break from twitter and I felt a decrease in stress from it.  I've not been updating my Facebook identity as much lately either, partially because I've been a bit disenchanted with the less personal feel of FB and the constant barrage of Farmville or Cafe World announcements.  On the whole I can't say I'm particularly enthused about social networking sites and I miss the personal style of web pages of yore (at least the ones that were updated regularly).  The comments on YouTube and most news sites are very discouraging and routinely make me lose heart in humanity but so does Sarah Palin having supporters for a White House bid.   These are merely side effects of the presence of ignorance in the world but I'm sure that the amplification of that signal does not help.  Jaron speaks about this trolling kind of behaviour and claims it is due to the level of anonymity that's allowed (and prized) on the web.   Whatever it is, it's pervasive and sometimes feels like walking down a dark downtown street at 3am, weaving around drunk, collectively stupid teenagers.  The question that Jaron is asking seems to be "have we backed ourselves into a corner?"  It is possible that the directions taken by Google, Facebook, Apple and other big players may be de-emphasizing the better parts of human nature by devaluing original content and making a business model so dependent on ads.  Are we indeed eating our own long tail?  In a world where physical labour will be increasingly done by robots, the world of ideas and creativity should be gaining importance, not losing.  I would say it's more common for people to view the web as a place to be entertained than to create.  We rehash more than we hash.  And I agree with Jaron, this is a worrying trend.

Next up, some thinking about how it might be different.

A song for this post.

The other side of rhinopharyngitis (day 222)

I was slammed by this virus which is so symmetrically beautiful that my pharynx may be excused for welcoming it in. 

Eleven days later and I'm on my way back to normal.  My dear readers, I could not even read.  I couldn't answer emails or think deep thoughts.  The only thing I could think about was how much money I would pay to feel normal for just a few hours.  This was entertaining.  Then I thought about Tony Judt who is suffering from ALS and I was grateful that at least I knew I was getting better even as my sinus headache threatened my sanity.

A few things did occur to me that I had forgotten to mention in previous blog entries.  While I was at Kerner the Camera Engineer there showed me a very nice little gadget - the Casio Exilim EX-FC100 camera.  I'm now jaded enough that gadgets don't automatically impress me but this one had me scheming about how I could justify the expense.  Until I found out it's only $250.  They make a higher end version that is more expensive (the EX-F1) but I love the smaller form factor of the FC100.   So what's so special about these cameras?  They can capture video (and sequential images) at a very high frame rate so you can get the small details in fast motion when played more slowly.  Perhaps many people knew about this but it never came to my attention before last week.  The price especially surprised me.  It seems that the Exilim wins my gadget dollar before the iPad (which I saw and briefly interacted with today).

The other thing I didn't mention is that I met a woman who happened to be visiting one of the partners at Kerner.  She was visiting from Nepal where she teaches high school, works for an NGO that helps girls recover from being kidnapped into sex slavery, and does genetic research on elephants.  Yes, three hard jobs in a country that is not easy to live in.  And she is a fascinating woman to speak to - calm, smart, interested, engaging.   So I asked her where I could find out more about her work "do you have a blog?".   "No," she says, "my kids always tell me I should have one but I just don't have the time."  Ya, no kidding.  Suddenly I felt like a tool.  Oh and yes she has kids too.  And she's only 44.  Ok, my point.  She is so busy being fascinating that she does not have an online presence.  It goes back to my fear of not knowing what we don't know.  Because it seems everyone is online around us we forget that there are people busy being rather than promoting.  I had the privilege of meeting her.  I hope I see her again but I realize this is unlikely.  Someone should follow her around and blog about her.

My first impression of the iPad?  a very big iPod Touch.   It's hard to look beyond that at first glance and interaction.  It does have a nice screen and a big virtual keyboard but as Alex pointed out it's impossible to touch type on a virtual keyboard.  Which is true.  I tried it and sure enough I had to look at the keys or I'd get lost.  I didn't realize how much I relied on the feel of the keys.  Still I think it might be possible with practice to learn to type on the virtual keyboard.  It may even be possible to implement a sort of sound-based feedback instead of touch that would help.

Still going through the Jaron Lanier book.  I'll put down some more thoughts on it tomorrow.  I made it through the parts where he slams web 2.0.  How he's onto some possible better scenarios.

A song for this post.

A day for repair (day 217)

Full blown cold now.  I haven't had a cold since September 08 so I'm not super resentful.  It's gotta rain sometime.  At least the four day weekend means I get to rest as much as I need to. 

I spent a large part of the day reconstituting a corrupted iTunes library file.  I'm not sure how it got corrupted but I don't recommend using Apple's method for fixing a library file.  It made things worse, renaming my files randomly to other song titles.  I ended up making a new library file (hint: press the Option key when starting iTunes) and reloading everything which means I lost all my playlists.  It's still moving files around.  The upshot is that if this ever happens again I'll have a backup.  I lost a few music files as I was rejigging everything but probably no more than 3 or 4.  At least I think so.  Who knows what was going on as I was moving things around.  It's a lot of wasted time on a problem that spontaneously appeared from iTunes.  I think it does not like having a library file stored on a NAS.  If the NAS is unavailable for whatever reason it automatically resets the media folder which I think is partially why the library file is getting corrupted.

I'm still really enjoying listening to the "You are not a gadget" audio book.  I agree with some of his points so far but it's hard to be as convinced as he is that web 2.0 is the wrong direction when I see so many great things that have come about because of it.  Still, I'm willing to suspend disbelief for a little while and see if I can glean a future that could be different but still have some of the same advantages.  I do agree with him about the insanity of the Singularity movement -- people that believe we'll be able to upload ourselves to the machine.  He had some interesting thought experiments about consciousness having to do with simulating brain processes.  Lately I've heard many people talk about how central the brain is to consciousness.  I don't dispute that but somehow I don't think that's the whole picture.  The assumption seems to be that everything else is easy to simulate or replicate.  It seems like a step backward to reduce consciousness to one of our organs.  I'm only on chapter 3 of 14 so I'll keep reporting here as I absorb what he's saying.

bacterial update:  I'm about to bottle another batch of kombucha.  The baby scoby on this batch formed amazingly well and healthy.  I have no idea why.  Three things were different than my other batches: 1. I used half evaporated cane juice because I ran out of white sugar; 2. I started with room temperature tea instead of warm. 3. I inadvertently made stronger tea.  This time I'm using a different kind of evaporated cane juice (not as brown) and starting with slightly warm tea.  I can't seem to be totally consistent but the process seems to allow some flexibility.  The vanilla secondary fermentation I did last time turned out very well if you like cream soda.  I'm not a huge fan so I probably won't try it again.  I still don't have chrysanthemum.  The weather was a little too crazy today to get outside and shop.

A song for this post.

Wanna see a demo? (day 216)

I only travelled with my iPhone this time.  It was a quick trip and I didn't want to carry one more bag.  I fancied I would write a short blog post with the iPhone.  For several reasons including tired eyes, intermittent wireless, and an oncoming cold, I decided against it in the end.  I think if I'd had a netbook it would have happened.  Reason enough to get one?  Probably not.   But if I continue with these short trips, perhaps.  I'll have to try out the iPad keyboard to see if it would even be a contestant.

The visit to Kerner went really well.  It was not at all what I expected.  It's a place designed to build things and blow things up.  It has a shop feel combined with some great creative (destructive?) energy.  There are lots of warehouse type spaces and remnants of models and sets built in the past.  I think I expected something more polished or cleaner.  I've seen so many CG effects that I hadn't thought through the mechanics of real demolitions.  The double meaning of the word demo was a great source of puns. 
Kerner was split from Industrial Light and Magic a few years ago.  They drifted for a while but are now being steered by a team of highly competent people.  The talent that makes Kerner so successful is still there.   In fact, I've rarely met such talented people.  It's great to meet individuals that are doing what they love.  One of them has been with Kerner for 30 years!  I don't know anyone else in that category.

I saw the S3D rig they've built for Emily Carr and it is very impressive.  I can barely wait to give it a spin in Vancouver.  We're just waiting for all the pieces to be integrated in their lab and we'll be showing it off publicly on May 13th for Industry Evening in the Intersections Digital Studios at Emily Carr.

A song for this post.