I've been dabbling with the idea of making more crochet phone pouches for the new shop.. then I started to think, why not iPhone cozies? Would these be useful? This is the first prototype mockup - call it v 1.0. It's still up for improvements.. any feedback?
And as I said earlier to BananaBoy since this is still under wraps, "Don't go leaking this to Gizmodo." ;)
I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd do a quick podcast review. This ties into "spending less time online".
Really, what does it come down to? Being efficient.
And nothing's more efficient than a podcast that will catch you up with the latest industry news in a few minutes to an hour.
The podcasts mentioned below are my current favorites. They range from general news to tech news to randomness to craftiness (listed counterclockwise):
This American Life There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always.
Craft.Rock.Live. Vickie Howell's podcast which lasted for one season. She has an interview with Greenday's lead singer's wife as well as other crafty divas.
NYTimes Podcast News on the go: Front page news, NYT Tech Talk, Political Points: On The Presidential Campaign, Science Times, Only in New York
This Week in Tech: TWiT Join Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak, and other tech luminaries in a roundtable discussion of the latest trends in high tech
That is all folks! Check out these podcasts when you have a chance. Let me know if you've converted to any of them :)
I attended this talk last month. Below is the description. The questions are what I jotted down. This is just food for thought. Enjoy!
Sponsored by the NYU Information Law Institute, Free Culture @ NYU, and ISOC-NY
What will come of the next decade on the Internet? We often take for granted the state of the net today, but there's no guarantee that it will remain this way. Will the digital future be dystopian, or is there a brighter outlook ahead than some may believe? Our panelists - thinkers and net visionaries, with backgrounds ranging from art, law, technology, politics, media, culture, and entrepreneurship - provided their perspectives on the future of the net, and engaged with members of the audience to further the exploration of what lies ahead.
Panelists: Lauren Cornell, Executive Director, Rhizome Clay Shirky, Adjunct Professor, NYU ITP Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia and Wikia Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School Jonathan Zittrain, Professor, Oxford University, Visiting Professor, NYU Law
Questions Discussed: Is it a bright or bleak future for the Internet? With the advent of user generated content, how do we manage to bring out the best information? Is Wikipedia just a happy accident? Does mob rule lead to a productive and useful knowledge base?
A lot of classmates of mine have customized their Mac laptops to hide the Apple logo. This is primarily due to the fact that 98% of my department uses all of 2 laptop models so there needs to be a way to differentiate amongst the sea of Mac Books and Mac Book Pros.
I have an XPS laptop from Dell which is pretty rare considering the Apple fan kids surrounding me. I figured I'd give the logo hiding a try for kicks. A few pieces of felt, lots of white glue and scissors and about half an hour later:
A couple of months ago, I downloaded the PHPList installation files. A few weeks ago, I noticed I still had the folder with said files on my desktop. I had been avoiding installing the mailing list software for no particular reason. I kept telling myself it was just procrastination but in fact - fear. Do you ever not do something because you're afraid of screwing it up? But then you think to yourself, really - what's the worst that can happen? In this case, sure I could screw up a database and mess up the installation but would that bring down the Internet? Would the tubes be compromised?! No.. I just needed to dedicate an hour or two to reading the instructions, following through and if it did go terribly wrong..well, I could just delete the mailing list directory and start all over.
All in all, I can say my site is still well and alive as you can tell :) And if you haven't noticed already, there's a link on the left hand column so you can join my mailing list. If you want to stay up to date and would like to find out when I'll be reopening the shop, sign up. I'll probably send out an introductory coupon of sorts for the new shop so it won't hurt.
And the moral of the story kids is - don't be afraid of screwing up. You can't get anywhere if you don't start and try. You just need to DO IT.
Panel: Browser Wars:Representatives from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera discuss why the hell they can't get along and figure out a standard.. or something like that - IE8 will have Javascript debugging - The Firefox founder created Javascript - Javascript 2.0 will be coming out soon! - There is no word if there will ever be a standard for having padding and margins be the same across browsers.. hopefully, it'll happen someday (IE8? maybe?)
Panel: Your Mom 2.0: Discussing how to make mom friendly websites - Their generation asks "how?" We ask "why?" - Basically, make your site understandable by anyone. This should hold true if you're a good designer to begin with. No one wants to go through several layers of links to get to the information they're looking for. And there's no need to "dumb it down" for a prior generation.
Went to the trade show and got lots of goodies. Talked to a few reps. Went to get dinner on the outskirts of Austin and saw the sunset while eating good ole Tex Mex. Afterwards saw the comedy show. Went to sleep far too late and had the most drowsy Tuesday.. All in all, visit Austin if you get the chance!! If you do, you *must* visit Magnolia Cafe. Ask for the breakfast burritos.
This is the conclusion of the SXSW reviews. Whew! That was quite a bit to catch up on.. if you want to read a highly distinguished review, go over to the Banana Boy Productions blog to get the other side of the story :)
Panel: Keynote with Mark Zuckerberg My notes: "Sucked" All I remember from this talk was Zuckerberg saying "platform, efficient, community" and Lacy just crossing and uncrossing her legs while twirling her hair. I left 15 minutes before the end. Apparently, the crowd went a bit crazy when it was Q&A time towards the end. The best part was when it as mob rule and they gave her a lashing. Ah well.
Panel: Human Rights in Virtual Worlds: discussion about whether or not you own what you make in a virtual game - there is no such thing as group rights as of now. There's still work being done for individual rights online - ULAs (User Licence Agreements) are not always as liberal as marketed
Should you own what you make? If it's on their server, perhaps it doesn't fall into "your" possession. Curious what the gamers in the audience think of this one.
Panel: Icanhascheezburger We were promised free burgers. While we were inside the room, passersby ate our burgers :( I still can't believe the company staffs 9 full time employees - all off ad-based revenue from funny cat pictures!
Sunday was the most partied out night of all of them. Went to a pre-party for the Adobe Web Awards. Then the awards show hosted by Eugene Mirman. Lots of laughs. The 'ask a ninja' guy came out to receive awards for participants not present. Went to the Etsy/Threadless/Moo party - which sucked. It was crowded, hot and no movement space since there were 3 pool tables with active games going on at the time. Gawker party at Emo's: Met John Coulton who sings "Code Monkey". Bumped into Eugene Mirman there who let us know of his comedy show the following night. Then went to Blogger party and met Cheeseburger from Icanhascheezburger. Partied hard.
Most memorable moment at the Blogger party: Met an Irishman and asked where I should go when I visit Ireland some day. Instead of the usual way of making a list, he drew out an accurate map of Ireland's coastline and pin pointed the cities I should see. I love the geek way and not the 'normal' way :)
All in all, it was a great set of panels. Learned quite a bit here and there. Oh and there was Bloghaus which housed free beer, brownies, fruits and veggies all day at the conference. That may have been my favorite room there.
I don't want to bore you with all the details and I'm sure you can find long, well written explanations of the panels on professional blogs. Here, I'll just note what I found interesting from the ones I attended.
In true slacker fashion, I will write up the first day. More to come.
Panel: Horrible Ads: A panel with Jeff Jarvis and others discussing last year's worst advertising campaigns - Rules #101 : When making an ad, make sure your audience can remember your brand name - Don't mess with Wikipedia because you will be found out - Don't make up socialibility where it doesn't exist (The Cisco "human networking" example) - Vespa: Started a blog and let it die after a few entries. If you start it, finish it! - Whole Foods CEO: Don't lie about your competition - Whatever you do, don't insult your audience's intelligence
Panel: Steven Johnson & Henry Jenkins:An optimistic view on collective intelligence - How is it that people find the time and devotion to fan sites? - Most pink collar workers need high levels of expertise to get the job. Once they have it, they are only required to use a small portion of their knowledge at work. They then seek out respect and a reputation outside of the office - this is possible in an online space. Hence, the motivation for hours spent creating online communities - Harry Potter has enabled kids to seek out larger text to read as well as learn about the legal process and fair trade when they try to publish their own works. - There's a shift from "I" to "We" - A large reason why Barack Obama is popular amongst younger voters: he is the stub in the Wikipedia entry and we are all filling out the entry together (interesting wording that caught my attention)
Panel: Voting - "miracle of aggregation" - In a betting market, there is a cost to be wrong. If there's something at stake, does a voter with a 'wrong' vote stay quiet? - If you don't know enough about a subject, don't vote! (brings up the question of how informed are we as a society about the current issues and our presidential candidates' take on them)
Panel: Worst. Website. Ever: A complete riot. Some of the most hilarious moments at SXSW. Loved it. - What makes a horrible website? It is: Inane. Derivative. Evil. (derivative example: Facebook for Senior Citizens. Threadless for Pants - Pantless) Sites presented: Presca.st, Flockd Up, HappyNetBox, Sickr, Mmomerce, PeopleIPO.
After this, we'd gone to Spaghetti warehouse. Because where do you eat the best Italian food? In Texas, of course. And how do you know it's the best? Your food has a tiny plastic Italian flag on it to remind you of the cuisine in case you'd forgotten.
Good times on 6th street afterwards. Got a cowgirl hat. :)
Since these posts are coming in very slowly... I've decided to rename them as "Slacker Reviews". Very appropriate.
In any case, it seems that SXSW is following me even at the entrance of my workplace. I walked out this morning to get some late morning coffee and I see two girls handing out fliers for Animoto. I had seen their presentation at SXSW's Trade Show. I grabbed a few dozen fliers of theirs and decided to join the site. Here's my little experiment -
It's not a bad process. Takes about 15 minutes total and is much quicker if you have your photos hosted on Flickr or another hosting site. I may use it later in the future. If you make your own slideshow, let me know. Mine was kinda a starter :)
It's a few hours before liftoff and I just got my luggage out. Talk about last minute packing, eh? There's something very calming about doing it at 3am. It gives you a little quiet time to think, write, and perhaps write a post ;) This upcoming trip brings me back to Austin, TX. I'm not all about finding a cowboy this time though (wasn't very successful at that the first time hah). Last visit was for Maker Faire. This time it's SXSW - South by Southwest. A huge music, film and interactive conference. Considering I have limited vacation days due to say oh.. work and a thing called thesis.. I had to cut my trip down to 4 days and will be seeing the Interactive portion. I'm pretty psyched about it. It's one huge geek fest + lots of booze + partying. What could be better?! I hear BUST magazine will be there and hosting a day long crafting + relaxing booth. I won't ramble too much now and will fill in details as the days progress.
Btw, I've never bought KnitPicks yarns but this ad from Ravelry is making me both hungry and craving something sweet.. like a yummy shade of alpaca yarn.. :-p
I love playing with numbers.. and guess what 25 means? Quarter of a century.. another '82 baby turns 25 this year. Oh the horror!
My 25th birthday is this November 3rd, a Saturday (oh yeahhh).
In order to make the process a little less dramatic (ha) I wanted to create a small giveaway on my blog. Just leave a comment and you just might be the lucky winner of 3 pins from my shop - your choice! (You can view the pin select here). I figure I'll write down the names of the commenters and pick one at random from a hat.
A few weeks ago while browsing the Etsy forums, I found a "Geeks, Nerds, etc" post where it was just a place for any geek/nerd/dork/whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself could hang out. I jumped in and mentioned my "Uber Geeky Pin" which has 42 printed in binary. You already have a Douglas Adams reference but to have it written in 0s and 1s? Well, that's just l33t. ;)
I had the pleasure of making the aquaintances of Whamodyne and NorthStarJewelry on the thread. They are some pretty cool geeks. Whamodyne ended up purchasing two pins from me, the "In Soviet Russia, Pin Reads You" pin and the Moo pin. Some pics Ray (aka Whamodyne) sent me: and: As Ray wrote me: This is my "guy purse" - my beat up, used, stained, torn, repaired butvery loved old map bag. It's where I keep my sketchbook and inspirationnotes and pens and a tape measure and my wallet and camera when I'm outhunting the next cool idea.
And Beth (NorthStarJewelry), was inspired by my 101010 pin and made herself a stamped pendant:(kinda hard to tell from the pic but at least you get to see one of my favorite ThinkGeek tshirts). Lastly, I want to do some promoting for their shops and show you my favorite items! You can find this Lightbulb Stand at Ray's shop. And the following Celtic Knot pendant from Beth's shop. You will find such neat treasures in their stores that you'll find it a hard time choosing just one thing :)
Some notes from the Microbranding talk (I just transcribed them this week)
Long Tail Theory According to Wikipedia.org, "Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of items at small volumes than f popular items at large volumes." The chart displays sales rank vs. inventory. From what I understood it to be, there are a small portion of companies that sell quite a lot and the 'long tail' is a good majority of the shops but they sell smaller quantities. In order to be a successful microbranded shop, you'd like to be somewhere in the corner of the green colored area so you are selling a nice amount of items and can still keep up with inventory.
New international market: Japan Why? Japanese youth likes American culture a lot and are big consumers of American products (although that's true for many countries, he only mentioned this one as an example).
Some ideas for a blogger - Run a "free gift" post to get more viewers (and bring out the lurkers). - Use Google Translate (done! I got this idea from the Bent Objects blog) - Create 3 Main Topics for you blog, then 3 subtopics for each. That way, you'll have 9 topics total which should be plenty to work with ( I really should narrow down the number of tags I have ).
So while researching "Beatles algorithm" in my failed attempt to find some programmatic algorithm to a Beatles song, I discovered this great blog entry: Great Blogging Tips from the Beatles
I found it so awesome - it's written as if the Beatles had had a blog, what would it be like, what kind of thought would go behind it, what would their principles be?
The ones I found most appealing:
Strive for Continual Improvement
"I’m pretty sure if John Lennon was a blogger, his attitude would have been that if his post didn’t come up high in the search engines, then let Google fix their algorithm."
While I'm on a "techy" roll, let me take a few moments to recap what I did the evening of June 7th. I went to work in the daytime. Left work early with coworkers to go on our very first drunken get together and had free pizza with every drink we bought. But that was an even luckier night - there was a spokesperson from a liquor company present so if we drank something with top-shelf liquor, it was free. So free pizza & alcohol. (You have to see Crocodile Lounge) What could be better?
Showing up to a Google Event half tipsy, that's what. That night, I was meeting Jessica to see Vint Cerf, "the father of the Internet", speak at Google's headquarters downtown (if you consider 15th street & 9th ave. downtown Manhattan". Apparently Google doesn't really allow people to talk about the actual events and content of the talk if it's not an official Google announcement. Welp. All I'll say is that there was some good empanadas, refreshing water, talk about geeks in a van driving around California, Mars and penguins. That's right. Penguins.If you're in the NYC area, I'd recommend going to one of their events. It's a nice way to spend a low-key evening. Check out their site for future events.
A little over a month ago, I decided to make the change. I switched from Microsoft Windows to Linux, specifically the Ubuntu flavor. I was already running in Mac-only mode at the office so why not ditch the superly annoying and slow OS altogether? From the Ubuntu.com site: "Ubuntu is a community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. "
As defined by being "Open Source Software (OSS)", it's free . You can download it right off their site and install it within only a few hours. The GUI (graphical user interface) will be very familiar to you if you are a Mac user since Mac OS-X is based on Linux technology and uses the Beryl graphics libraries. From the Beryl project site: "Beryl is an OpenGL accelerated desktop that seeks to provide a free, open source desktop experience to the community that reflects the wishes of the users."
I will have to say that the transition has been very smooth. The user experience is so much better in that the booting of the computer takes only a few seconds and once you are viewing the Desktop, there's no additional time for programs to be loaded. Whenever you click on a program icon, the program opens up instantly - no long delays like Windows. *shudder*. And if you are a Photoshop junkie like me, there is the Gimp Shop solution which is an open source solution to Photoshop with a skin that makes the application look and run just like the original thing. I'm not a gamer so I can't vouch for what the capabilities are in that field. Having used Firefox for years now, I'm pretty much set on a browser and Open Office is very good for your writing/spreadsheet needs.
One of the coolest aspects is that everything is customizable. And by everything, I mean everything. I've been able to change which shortcut keys to do anything on the system and change my windows styles. Another very cool feature is that all the programs you'll ever need are already in the repository just waiting for you to click on "install" and you'll download it and install it within seconds. No more searching websites to see which is the latest version of something you need nor choosing what hardware/softwareyou are using - it's already done.
Anywho, this is meant to be a small intro for anyone not familiar with the Open Source community and may want to convert... (convert! convert! ) Okay, that wasn't very convincing. But did I mention it's free and it's even prettier than a Mac?
Thanks to Chris, I now have in my possession 2 of the possibly coolest identity cards I've had to date. Behold, the official Firefox Love card and my semi-official status now of a Unix Programmer (although, I'm getting better at using grep but shouldn't really call myself such a thing til I finally get the hang of regular expressions and knowing more Perl). For the non-techy folks, I'm just not worthy of the Unix programmer title just yet hah. :)
It's a short update today. Will be posting about the Big Art Show, a scarflette I'm currently working on and possibly new wristwarmer designs. Back to the grind now.
A few weeks ago, Tamara from Emotional Baggage and I agreed to do a trade and it's been an awesome experience! She'd seen in my shop the "geek" custom warmers I made for an earlier client and I saw her bag making expertise so it was just a matter of saying Ok, let's trade!
These are the girl sized version "geek" warmers in all their glory - meaning, she's typing while on Etsy :)
Aren't they so c00l? :) I'm really, really glad she likes them and is wearing them already!
I have been wearing the purse I got in exchange almost every day now but I've yet to take pictures so that should come very, very soon. I'm aiming for a "fashionista in SoHo" look which won't be too hard to do since I work/study in the neighborhood.
That's all for now!
p.s. I've already created 1.5 new cozies for the art show.. now to make more and actually sew the buttons on them..
Last night, I attended a lecture at the Law School here at NYU held by a patent lawyer. And not just any patent lawyer. He's one of leading proponents of the Creative Commons (GPL) and is currently defending against Microsoft at the Supreme Court level. I was pleasantly surprised to learn this.
"The Empire & the iPhone: 'Technology Platforms,' the Commons, and the Way We Live Now." Eben Moglen Professor, Columbia Law School and Director, Software Freedom Law Center Monday, March 19, 8 PM
Some notes I took: the pursuit of "prosumer culture" - production & use of products by the same person
- Paypal decentralizes the traditional bank structure - Youtube, myspace, etc. decentralize the music culture
Hours that Microsoft actually spends, as a whole, producing software in a week: 3.8 million This is what he called "a microsoft" - a few years ago, there were 468,000 programmers on sourceforge.net - 10/hrs approx. per person per week - about 1.4 "microsofts" on sourceforge - about 1.6 "microsofts" in GPL entirely
so, who's producing more software? and who is spending more of their resources on advertising, middle management and twiddling of thumbs?
Commons is motivated by politics; to fight against the incumbents after all the power.
Free software is a "cultural outlook" - universal knowledge is possible through sharing of resources - our own expertise.
So share. Learn about GPL and the Creative Commons. It's really up to us to figure out a way to not have everything patented
I've been dabbling with the idea of making more crochet phone pouches for the new shop.. then I started to think, why not iPhone cozies? Would these be useful? This is the first prototype mockup - call it v 1.0. It's still up for improvements.. any feedback?
Upclose shot:
Crafts and technology collide!
A couple of months ago, I downloaded the PHPList installation files. A few weeks ago, I noticed I still had the folder with said files on my desktop. I had been avoiding installing the mailing list software for no particular reason. I kept telling myself it was just procrastination but in fact - fear. Do you ever not do something because you're afraid of screwing it up? But then you think to yourself, really - what's the worst that can happen? In this case, sure I could screw up a database and mess up the installation but would that bring down the Internet? Would the tubes be compromised?! No.. I just needed to dedicate an hour or two to reading the instructions, following through and if it did go terribly wrong..well, I could just delete the mailing list directory and start all over.
All in all, visit Austin if you get the chance!! If you do, you *must* visit Magnolia Cafe. Ask for the breakfast burritos.
(photo from Wired.com)
This upcoming trip brings me back to Austin, TX. I'm not all about finding a cowboy this time though (wasn't very successful at that the first time hah). Last visit was for Maker Faire. This time it's SXSW - South by Southwest. A huge music, film and interactive conference. Considering I have limited vacation days due to say oh.. work and a thing called thesis.. I had to cut my trip down to 4 days and will be seeing the Interactive portion. I'm pretty psyched about it. It's one huge geek fest + lots of booze + partying. What could be better?!
I hear BUST magazine will be there and hosting a day long crafting + relaxing booth. I won't ramble too much now and will fill in details as the days progress.
(kinda hard to tell from the pic but at least you get to see one of my favorite ThinkGeek tshirts). Lastly, I want to do some promoting for their shops and show you my favorite items!
You will find such neat treasures in their stores that you'll find it a hard time choosing just one thing :)
Long Tail Theory
I went to work in the daytime. Left work early with coworkers to go on our very first drunken get together and had free pizza with every drink we bought. But that was an even luckier night - there was a spokesperson from a liquor company present so if we drank something with top-shelf liquor, it was free. So free pizza & alcohol. (You have to see Crocodile Lounge) What could be better?
If you're in the NYC area, I'd recommend going to one of their events. It's a nice way to spend a low-key evening. Check out their site for future events.
From the Ubuntu.com site:
From the Beryl project site:
Thanks to Chris, I now have in my possession 2 of the possibly coolest identity cards I've had to date. Behold, the official Firefox Love card and my semi-official status now of a Unix Programmer (although, I'm getting better at using grep but shouldn't really call myself such a thing til I finally get the hang of regular expressions and knowing more Perl). For the non-techy folks, I'm just not worthy of the Unix programmer title just yet hah. :) 
