About 6 weeks ago, I found that I could grab wireless from Cincinnati airport, but alas, this was locked up under some Bell ISP. I did see a computer-to-computer connection named, suspiciously, “Free Public Wireless!” (the exclamation point pushes it over the edge of seediness). Decided to stay offline, instead.

She talks about her creative process during composition.

creativity process

• musical ideas / sketches
• choose one as “main theme”
• choose style to apply to theme and get inspiration from previous work
• make structure – outline / form
• fill in structure w/ ideas
• Polish the details
• Polish the entire piece

It looks great! I can’t wait to see it work.

Wow.

I’m here to learn, observe, and help any way I’m needed in anticipation of Maker Faire Austin in the fall (October 21).

I’ve done everything from wiping down whiteboards to rolling up posters to cross-checking maker lists for safety waivers. Grunt work and face time and positive attitude, etc.

There is a very small team that is running around like mad, but it’s truly an amazing machine. The fair is double in size from last year. The main make/craft building made my jaw drop when I walked in seeing it so empty… Projecting tens of thousands of people showing up (not sure how “public” the “unofficial estimate” is supposed to be… but it’s BIG)

A new feature for this year’s fair is a gathering of makers beforehand to mingle (since the weekend will be so busy interacting w/ the public). Currently, I’m listening to John Law talk about the origins of burning man.

I’ll be walking in and out of the talks today as I alternate between helping out and shadowing Michelle (maker relations person) and taking in some content, selfishly.

I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I initially declined the thumbprint scan at the front door to get some dollars, but gave in when the guy basically said, “Oh, come on, be a good sport. This is part of the forum.” Inside, I tried to prevent one guy from filming me and even said “I would rather leave than have you continue filming me”, but he did not relent and clearly I gave him the reaction he was hoping for so he kept coming back to me. I’m a sucker and I’m sure they will get a big laugh out of it when they review the footage.

They screened a short film Surveillance and You, produced by 3 STS graduate students that was quite good for providing a remedial level of awareness. It should be mandatory viewing for avg. joe citizen who may be a little unsure about how much data is being collected about him.

Dr. Philip Doty. associate professor at UT School of Information, talks about the myth of perfect information – provides a reality check on the level of information and ability to mine data and cautions against policy decisions that revolve around the assumption that information is mine-able.

The breakout session w/ Dan Updegrove ‚Äì Special Assistant (former Vice President), Office of Vice President for Information Technology, Information Technology Services (UT Austin), was probably the most interesting part of the forum — it really didn’t focus on surveillance, but addressed a smattering of issues from the IT world at the university in a focused Q&A format. He talked about and answered well lots of questions about RIAA, Privacy, and Secure transactions as they apply to university. He told the story, a little bitterly and w/ a bit of gloating over the end result, of Christopher Phillips, the student who broke the UT computer system to glean SS numbers of applicants.

“Google is a fantastic search engine. GMail is a valuable and useful email system Google and GMail together is pathological.”

Generational and geographic differences was a recurring topic. GenNext is very used to technology invading private lives and bubbling them up to the public sphere. The US is hyperfocused on technology and individualism and private spheres (as opposed to focused on community building, sharing, and social justice).

Feedback-wise, I would say that focusing on audience questions was a fantastic way to structure the day. Hearing each panelist give a presentation for a very limited amount of time helped frame their particular perspectives. All presenters answered questions confidently and with an appropriate level of depth. Audience questions were hit or miss, but were all handled well.

It was a little hard to piece together all the various threads into a usable takeaway, unfortunately. The forum was great to raise the general level of paranoia, but did not follow through with obvious, immediately workable solutions. What small thing can I do today? (note: I did not sit through the optional lecture on buckling down your personal computer, however the solutions I feel we are missing are more societal and political in nature)

Conversation drifted away from surveillance often and became a more general discussion of technology intersecting with civil liberties. Narrowing the overall scope may be useful.

Not so much.

The arrogance, blatant misogyny, and let’s face it, frat-boy dialog is getting to be a bit much.

Maybe he’ll settle down in a month when the novelty wears off. At the very least, I hope he’ll take some zoloft and vary the tone of his voice once or twice. (I would have rather seen Michael don the headcam; he, at least, seems to have a personality).

My prediction: within three months we’re going to see Justin pull off some sort of outrageous stunt to desperately try to gain more viewers.

Sad thing is, I’ll probably still be watching.

This is my iguana (about 10" Snout to Vent, so about 2 years old) after he was spritzed with Bio-Mist, an aloe vera and cactus juice concoction that helps his skin. He’s molting now, so this is a look of pure joy.

Sometimes I wish I was an iguana.

Tim argues that our own time is most valuable and that economies of arbitrage allow you to outsource far more than we currently outsource…

This exports jobs, obviously, but the hour I free up by delegating fighting with my cell phone company on hold is an hour I can get back to go explore the parts of the world that aren’t top 1% economies.

He would argue that you should use your free time to go “have a life.” I wonder how he would feel about using that freed up time to do more “meaningful work.”

Here are better notes

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This is going to be a fun sxsw. Once dorkbot is over, I may be able to relax a bit.

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Everything broke and now I’ve got a duct-tape solution that at least will maybe let me get email again.

The 11th hour is too late to try to do a relaunch.

And yet here we are.

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Wow.

Based on the events of the past couple weeks, I’d say that’s some powerful juju.

What is Dorkbot?

• It’s a science fair with beer.
• It’s a geek talent show.
• It’s people doing strange things with electricity.
• Best of all, it’s fun, free, kid-friendly and hands-on.

We think dorkbot is exactly what Austin is all about. Nerds, artists, musicians all come together to show off their work in a casual environment. Previous dorkbot events have included singing robots, lightning bolt generators, hacked nintendos, and somebody crazy enough to electrocute a pickle. dorkbot was most recently featured on Austin Technology Matters, a new show on Austin cable access.”

I have a number which you can use to reach me: 512-782-9545 (update: 20060922_161320)

I’m also unclear on how up-to-date my phone backup is, so you may be seeing weird requests for data from me.

Argh.

Library – Sebastopol [?]

Both in San Francisco and here, not only was it hard to find WiFi, but it was even harder to find WiFi that was open and didn’t cost 4.95 a minute to use.

After trying a coffee bar with no seats and even McDonald’s (pay service and no electrical outlets… turns out they don’t actually want you camping out in there), I finally discovered the library.

I had to sign up for a library card in Sebastopol to access the web (and I’m convinced they’re blocking everything but port 80), but now, at least, I can do a few last-minute tasks.

Oh, yes, I’m in Sebastopol, a few hours away from Foo Camp 2006.

I’m definitely humbled by being asked to come, as I expect to have my mind blown by a collection of incredibly smart people – some are rock stars that everyone in my industry knows, some are rock stars to me – robot builders and hackers I’ve followed for a while. Still others are brand new names working on art+tech+community future media projects. All are potentially lucrative, interesting, and like-minded future collaborators.

The format of the event is the Unconference. Among other things, this implies that there is no set agenda or schedule before the event participants show up. In fact it IS the participants that determine what happens at the event and propose sessions and workshops. Based on pre-chatter, it seems that there will be a mix of web 2.0-ish talk, hardware hacking, and general goofiness.

I must admit that I’m a little nervous about that angle. I’m the kind of guy that likes to spen some time researching and planning out my general “conference strategy” of must-see talks and stuff I can do without. Wandering and engaging for the sake of wandering will be a useful exercise.

This gathering, because of its realitively small size, but more so because of its format and tone, heavily emphasizes the person-to-person connectivity I talked about in my sxsw guides. So my relentless friendliness strikes again.

After I finish a few things here, I’ll be taking in some of Patrick Amiot’s urban folk art on the way in to the O’Reilly campus. I’ll try to blog as much as I can as frequently as possible, but I can’t promise a full-on live-blogging effort (I’m there to participate and experience, not document). <!– technorati tags start –>

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That’s not to say that blogs and bloggers cannot provide valuable, timely and important information. However, FINDING that information in the sea of noise is very difficult.

I know the urge and trend is to bemoan the Big, Bad, Media companies, but the truth is that there are economies of information scale that are yet to be addressed in blogger communities.

• disproportional and artificial influence of A-Listers
• mob think and cross-posting
• difficulty in finding primary sources
• most blogging is NOT real-time reporting, it’s real-time interpreting. So much interpretation leads to limited fact-checking and research
• very noisy channels leads to limits on diversity as individuals go to the same “trusted” sources time and again

There are monopoly, editorial, and trust issues with large media outlets. When there are mistakes at media companies, people get fired. Nobody cares when a blogger lies.

What happens when the two meet? Fascinating juxtaposition, that.

Who Let the Blogs Out? Legal Experts Offer Tips on Avoiding Trouble:

But with all the excitement and potential for new readers and financial invigoration, something else is rippling: growing unease about the dangers of blogs — especially legal liabilities in the land of the free and perhaps overly brave.

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Then I put up this slide:

Here is why putting numbers in perspective is important:

When large numbers are thrown around, that gets investors listening. When investors listen, they throw down lots of money. When lots of money is thrown down at phantom numbers (i.e. false value), money is wasted, companies fold, and people like me get the shaft, yet again. (Please see the years 1999-2000).

We all intuitively know that if we pick blogs at random then they will be garbage – not everyone is a fantastic writer (or even human, for that matter – spam blogs are a virus). It’s rare to find anything that can even generously be called journalism (it’s there, but there is NO good, automated way to find it… human editorial functions are necessary). It seems the truly valuable propositions involve finding ways to FILTER AWAY as much of the 50 million “blogs” as possible.

Let’s not get overambitious with our little blogging project, ok? The vast majority of the planet’s population doesn’t even have access to a computer, much less internet, much less blogs, much less the knowledge to author a valuable blog.

50 million blogs. Nah. A mere sliver of that is what we should care about.

Here is a more mathematical approach:

STATS.org – Bursting Technorati’s Blogosphere:

This presumes, of course, that the number of blogs being tracked by Technorati is a real measure of virtual life in the blogosphere; but what this measure of diminishing output points to is that the number of blogs isn’t real at all: The 50-million figure is meaningless, an artifact of blogs past and present, derelict and dying, of virtual enthusiasm and manifest lassitude.

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