I’ve registered too many domain names. I have almost fifty and most of them aren’t being used for anything. So now, instead of wasting more money registering domain names that I have big ideas but no time for, I’m sharing them with the internet! I’ve been posting them to twitter, but now that I’ve done two of them, I figure it’s time for a blog post about them. Here they are, along with the original idea behind them:
butchtutu.com – I have a horrible idea for a serial about a cowboy who rides alone through the Old West “hellbent on reconciliation” and “busting heads in the name of forgiveness”. It just struck me as a really funny idea. And yes, it’s still available. (I may end up writing this on Ficly)
bigbadbaboon.com – It’s a domain name and a tongue twister! Inspired by this awesome monkey by Jon Morris. I think it would be a great name for a design firm, heavy metal blues band or comic strip about unruly teenage mercenaries.
metaldick.com – Another serial idea about a robotic private eye who solves human cases with cold logic and learns emotions from his brassy secretary, Gladys.
Your welcome, internet. If you end up registering them and using them for either the intended purpose or something else, let me know.
Today is the third International Day of Awesomeness, a holiday I invented back in 2007. For the past three years, I’ve tried to perform a “feat of awesomeness” to commemorate the day. The first year, I dyed my hair blue, something I’d always wanted to do but never had the guts to actually do. Last year’s was less obvious, but there was a huge layoff at AOL the day before, so I wrote LinkedIn recommendations for all of my friends that got laid off instead of doing something else. This year, I walked around Forsyth Park with my friends Murray and Tom (something they do three times a week at 6:30AM), poorly organized a lunch at a brand new restaurant downtown, and am now doing part three – writing a manifesto. I wanted to write down, for the world to see, what I believe in and what I aspire to be. But, I remembered this TED Talk from Barry Schwartz and realized that he sums up most of it in 20 minutes of eloquence. So, watch it, and then join me down below.
He talks quite a bit about “moral heroes” and celebrating them. My moral heroes are pretty simple: Mister Rogers, Elwood P. Dowd and Jesus Christ. All three men (fictional or not) contain the attributes I aspire to. They’re kind, empathetic and gentle.\
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want my kids to learn from me, and here’s the (very short) list I’ve come up with:
Be kind to everyone.
Do no harm.
I think that if I can live those two things, everything else that I could do that would be considered good or worthwhile will follow naturally. As Jesus said, “And the second [great commandment] is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 22:39). Elwood P. Dowd, the protagonist in Harvey said it like this, “Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be’ – she always called me Elwood – ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”
I don’t know about choosing between being smart or pleasant. I hope it’s possible to be both.
And, I obviously stole the second item in the list from the Hippocratic Oath, but I think it applies to everyone, not just doctors. To me, that means not just avoiding physical harm but emotional. If you’re kind and empathetic, you’re not going to intentionally cause any kind of harm to anyone else – and you’re much less likely to cause it unintentionally.
The world is full of well-meaning people who forget about empathy. We hear it every day: “I can’t imagine anyone living like that / doing that / feeling that way / loving that person / doing that to themselves / etc.” That shows a problem with their imagination, not with the other people. The things one person can’t imagine are held deeply by others. The things one person thinks are disgusting are the deepest feelings of another’s heart. We try to legislate away everything that makes us uncomfortable. We try to push deep down inside us those feelings that we can’t express because we lack the imagination to invent the words for them.
I refuse to believe that there is too little imagination in the world for us to accept each other. Being “tolerant” isn’t good enough.
If the second great commandment is to “love thy neighbor as thyself”, then nothing else can trump that, not the Old Testament, not Paul’s epistles, nothing else in Christian scripture beats Jesus Christ telling us to love each other (if you’re a Christian that is – if you’re not, that’s fine, the golden rule is a fairly universal concept – see the Charter for Compassion).
If my kids learn that from me, then I think I’ve done my job. It doesn’t matter what else they learn from me. If they grow up to be gentlemen, in the truest simplest definition of the word, then I’ll be happy.
How are you supposed to end a manifesto? I think I’ll end it with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr, who is on my “expanded” list of moral heroes:
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, or retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Max and I presented today at the Telfair’sPulse art and technology fair for “family day”. Our presentation went over some of the fun stuff we’ve done together with technology and how people can get their kids to find creative outlets through geekery. We had a lot of fun, and Max had a blast presenting (he did a great job).\
Here’s how we came up with the presentation:
* Two weeks before the presentation, Max and I sat down and talked about what stuff we’ve played with he’d want to tell people about and built an outline.
* I went back later and created the actual presentation, filling in the gaps and figuring out what I wanted to say in the intro and conclusion.
* The week before the presentation, we practiced the demos and came up with the idea of having him tell me how to do everything (instead of the traditional “Mr. Wizard” style approach).
* The morning of, we went through it again and made sure he had some idea of what he wanted to say during his parts.\
I didn’t want to put a huge burden on him, since this was his first time in front of what could have been a large crowd. But, he was very involved in writing the presentation and walked me through all the demos.\
He had so much fun that he wants to present again, maybe at this year’s Geekend.\
Here are the slides if you’re interested:
Max and I made this little movie yesterday as his visual aid for his report on the Coriolis Effect. I figured out that it took us about an hour of work for every ten seconds of end product. I hope the boy gets an A.
You really should go watch it in full screen just to bask in the detail in everything. I watched very closely and couldn’t find any of the normal cheats you find in CG that break the illusion. Yes, there are things towards the end that aren’t actually possible, but they’re totally convincing. Unbelievably gorgeous and melancholy.\ Melancholy fits my mood this week. I found out on Monday that one of my favorite people and one of the first people I met at SxSW, Brad Graham, died over the weekend. Brad is (I still refuse to say “was”) one of those people totally filled with light. He makes everyone feel welcome, included and loved. He’s an infamous flirt, raconteur and wit and I loved cracking vulgar with him, usually in our now-infamous Kevin Smokler hosted dinners at SxSW.
For someone I only see once a year, and talk to only a couple of times a year, Brad’s death at 41 is hitting me hard. He’s such a life – the life of the party, conversation, etc. He’s such a fixture on both the web and at SxSW that I thought he was an immovable object – and for my own selfish reasons, I hoped he’d always be there. I love hanging out with him. He’s one of those rare comic minds that can make anything both vulgar and hilarious at the same time, being so offensive and outrageous that no one gets offended. For years at those dinners, we had people afraid they would pee their pants with laughter and afraid to take a bite at dinner. Every time I ran into Brad was an experience never to be forgotten…\
And I keep playing them over and over again in my head because those chance meetings outside the convention center, lunches and dinners with friends won’t happen again… because Brad’s gone.\
I miss him.
I had a weird dream last night (two, actually, but I’m only concerned about writing down the first one). In the dream, I was back at AOL sitting through a horrible product requirements meeting when I lost it and started yelling about how bad the requirements were, how they didn’t do anything original, were a waste of paper and no one would use this thing even if we built it (I don’t even remember what it was now). I got in a fight with the product manager, and all I remember of the screaming match was that she said something like, “You’re not the only ship on this sea, pal,” to which I replied… and I remember me screaming it: “Not the only ship?! I’m the sea!“\
Then, I got fired. It was a strange experience, watching dream me pack up his crap in boxes and get escorted out. I lost it a few times in my thirteen years at AOL (wait, sorry, now it’s “Aol.”), and one or two of them almost got me fired, but those were early on when I was still in tech support. I lost it in meetings a handful of times (which I think is a pretty good record considering how many awful product meetings I sat through) and called BS where I needed to, but I don’t think any of them ever got me close to the “terminating offense” line.\
Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but I thought it was a pretty good comeback, especially for a dream.\
The other one was a nightmare where I was Doctor Who. It was so scary, I actually woke up and had a hard time getting back to sleep. This robotic zombie fell on me, had me pinned to the floor and kept saying “I know what you are” over and over again. shudder.
This is a continuation of my list for the first half of the 00’s. This list is by release year according to my iTunes library, not by the year I “discovered” the album, and are in no particular order. Let’s get right into it:\
h4. 2005
The Rosebuds – Birds Make Good Neighbors: Folk pop at its best. The songs are bouncy, fun and great for car trips. They’re a blast to sing along with.
Rogue Wave – Descended Like Vultures: Great alt-pop with killer melodies and infectious guitar riffs
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois: Sometimes he’s a little “precious”, but this album is full of immense songs, some of which bring me to tears. It’s gorgeous, rich and a great headphone album.
Holy F\^ck – LP: Analog techno. Lovely Allen alone makes this album, but there are three or four other songs on here almost as good. According to iTunes, I’ve listened to Lovely Allen 128 times… that should tell you what I think of it.
OK Go – Oh No: Known mostly for their awesome videos, this album is full of really fun pop songs. You can’t really go wrong with any of them.
Eels – Blinking Lights and Other Revelations: You can’t miss with an Eels album and this one’s no exception. Lovely songs, puncuated with some real butt kickers.
Fruit Bats – Spelled in Bones: Wow, 2005 was a great year for music. This is one of my all-time favorite albums. The songs are insanely catchy and I sing along pretty much whenever it comes on.
Sigur Ros – Takk…: This is their most “accessible” album, and you’ve probably heard a lot of these songs in various TV shows and movies in the past couple of years. Great atmospheric headphone rock.
The Constantines – Tournament of Hearts: Other than Kensington Heights, this is my favorite album by the band. Working Full-Time is one of my favorite songs ever, and Soon Enough is a classic. There are very few albums where all the songs on it are great, and this is one of them.
New Pornographers – Twin Cinemas: One of Canada’s many indie “supergroups”, these guys are the best. Great songs, awesome harmonies and catchy hooks… I love ’em. And at this rate, I might never get to 2006. Oh, no, look… there it is!\
h4. 2006
Caribou – Up In Flames: I know the genre’s pretty much dead, but this reminds me of the too-short trip hop bloom in the late 90’s, especially Sneaker Pimps. You won’t be singing along with any of these, but you’ll be bouncing your head uncontrollably.
Gotan Project – Lunatico: Tango music for the 2000’s… this album oozes sensuality and lust. You might sweat a little listening to it, and that’s OK. Embrace it.
Malajube – Trompe L’oeil: Quebecois rockers really know how to put together a rocking pop song. I like this album better than their most recent one – it’s tighter and more “fun”.
Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like This: If you like their 2009 album, you’ll love this one. More of the same… which is awesome.
Regina Spektor – Being to Hope: Yes, I know it’s cutesy, but these songs are really well written and a lot of fun. There’s nothing wrong with fun, you mopey hipsters.
Zero 7 – The Garden: If anyone’s taken up the mantle of trip hop, it’s these guys. Lovely downtempo hang out and chill music. Lovely melodies and artful production make for a great headphone or dinner (or headphones during dinner) album.\
h4. 2007
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible: They’re little indie darlings, I know, but this album is really good. Listen to it again and forget all the stupid beefs and coverage. It’s so so well done.
Band of Horses – Cease to Begin: The first five songs on this album are spectacular, maybe the five best songs of the whole year. The other songs on the album are just great… you’ll have to forgive them.
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife: I think I may like this album more than Hazards of Love. Sons and Daughters will make you stand on your chair and sing along at the top of your lungs.
Great Lake Swimmers – Ongiara: This is on my short list for the best album of the decade. Masterful songwriting and just heart-breaking lyrics make this album unforgettable. It’s folksy and beautiful… it will haunt you for months.
Kaiser Chiefs – Yours Truly, The Angry Mob: The best sing-along album of the year, easy. We listened to this album about a dozen times on a road trip. You’ve never laughed until you’ve heard a three year old belting out “WOOBY, WOOBY, WOOBY, WOOBY!!” at the top of his lungs.
New Pornographers – Challengers: This album is even better than Twin Cinema, if that’s possible.
Polyphonic Spree – The Fragile Army: I like their first album better, but this one’s still really really good. It’s sort of alt-“Up With People” for grownups… but great.
The Shins – Wincing the Night Away: This is my favorite album by the band. It’s light and catchy alt-pop with a little melancholy thrown in.
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: Oh so poppy and delicious. The kids will sing along with this album any time it’s on too.
Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky: For Weighty Ghost alone, but the rest of the songs on this album are solid rockers.\
h4. 2008
Beach House – Devotion: Blissful atmospheric pop songs with some weird instrumentation. You really just have to go listen to it.
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along Blog Soundtrack: Mock if you must, but the soundtrack is really good!
David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today: So gorgeous. Every track is lovely and this album contains some all-time great songs.
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes: Gorgeous folk harmonies and masterful songcraft… you need this album. You really really do.
Flight of the Conchords – Flight of the Conchords: Funny, yes, but these guys actually put together some great songs.
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago: A lot like Fleet Foxes… so what I said about them, is true for Bon Iver and this album.
Woodhands – Heart Attack: High enery analog techno, a lot like Holy F\^ck, but I think this album is better as a whole than HF’s LP.
Arkells – Jackson Square: These guys sit somewhere between Spoon and The Constantines, and that’s a mighty fine place to be.
The Constantines – Kensington Heights: They’re one of my all-time favorite bands, and this is easily their best album.
Sigur Ros – Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust: Another great album. It’s amazing to me that I haven’t gotten tired of their sound. Each album shows just enough progression to keep me wanting more.
Sloan – Parallel Play: Great alt pop. They sound a lot like Spoon, which isn’t bad at all.
Presidents of the United States of America – These Are The Good Times People: I thought these guys broke up, but nope… this album is amazing. Their sound has matured just enough so the songs don’t feel like toys anymore. They’re really well constructed power pop with some real emotion in them.\
h4. 2009
Various – Dark Was the Night: A great compilation from charity, this album is full of great bands spreading out and experimenting a little. Usually, those kinds of albums would be tedious, but this is all good.
The Antlers – Hospice: Haunting and heartbreaking – they sound a little bit like if Sigur Ros and Radiohead had a really depressed teenager… but in a good way.
The Decemberists – Hazards of Love: This is a great album – and I don’t even care about the story. I think this is my favorite headphone album of the year – full of layers of masterful playing.
Eels – Hombre Lobo: The whole album tells a great story (what is it with rock operas this year?) and is filled with a great mix of ballads and butt kicking rockers.
The Dodos – Time to Die: Their first two albums almost made it to the lists for the years they came out. This is their third (I think) album and I think they’ve finally cracked it. Great pop songs all around.
Movits! – Äppelknyckarjazz: It’s mostly awesome for the sheer novelty of Swedish swing hip hop (yeah, I know!)… but the songs are actually really good.
Fruit Bats – The Ruminant Band: This is the band’s best album so far, and each of those has made one of these lists. The songs are so well put together and lovely, I can’t help but listen to it over and over and over again.
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: I know, everyone’s talked this album to death, but it is amazing how these guys put together pretty much perfect pop songs.
Pomplamoose – Pomplamoose VideoSongs: You may have seen them on YouTube or any of the other places they’ve shown up recently, but Nataly and Jack are just awesome.
Morphine – At Your Service: This collection of mixes, rare and live cuts is the perfect thing for a devotee like me. Some of them are better than the album versions and it’s just good to hear new stuff from a band that ended too soon.
Zero 7 – Yeah Ghost: Their latest is just as good as their first, with a couple minor exceptions. There are two songs on this album just just don’t belong at all and kind of mess up the mood the rest of the album conveys.
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 11:11: You must listen to this album just to be completely blown away that such a rich sound can be created by two people playing just two instruments. It’s acoustic heavy metal flamenco music, and it’s brilliant.\
Whew, there you go! I’m done! I don’t think anything else is coming out in 2009 that’s going to make the list so I feel pretty secure putting this list to bed and looking forward to 2010!
Max and I had a great time at Geekend, and I had a blast presenting some thoughts on building reputation systems. It was fun partly because I don’t have all the answers yet and there’s a lot way to go before I actually have a system I’m happy with. But, it was great to hear good questions from the audience and consider new stuff.
This is my third blog post for The South. You can check it out over there, or just read it here.
In Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, all the world’s shortages have been solved. There’s no need for money, because there’s no lack of supply. Even death has been conquered. In a world with no need for money, what’s the currency? Doctorow’s solution to this problem is called whuffie, a currency based on reputation. Everyone has a bank of whuffie, and anyone can give you a little boost or ding you based on your actions. My favorite part of the concept is that there are two types of whuffie – left-handed and right-handed. When you meet someone in that world, you get a little graph that shows you the whuffie that person got from communities or people you basically agree with (right-handed) and the whuffie that person got from communities or people you don’t (left-handed). In Doctorow’s book, the people with the most whuffie are those that do the most menial jobs: the janitors, plumbers, garbage men, etc.
I read the book on a flight from San Jose to DC, and for five and a half hours, I was hooked. I finished the book about halfway through the flight and spent the rest of the time frantically scribbling in a notebook, trying to design a way to implement this concept in the real world, or at least on the internet. I was so fascinated that I spent the next several months trying to convince my company that we could actually implement it, and I still think it’s possible, and have implemented a crude whuffie system on Ficly.
Why is the idea of currency based on reputation so interesting? Because when I look at the internet, I see that reputation is already the primary currency. In every community, there’s some concept of reputation, although usually unspoken. Every community has cultural norms, and rewards those that exemplify those norms and punishes those that don’t. The primary driver for almost every community on the web is not money, but something else. That something else is the source of whuffie in those communities. The other important point is that whuffie doesn’t travel. Just because you have a good reputation on one site doesn’t mean that reputation will travel when you join another. I believe it should at least provide some informative value to the communities I join. Don’t make me go through the usual new user initiation if I’ve got a good reputation on other sites.
Let’s look at Flickr. The primary whuffie driver on Flickr is the photos people upload. Once you get a reputation as a great photographer, and have your photos show up on the Explore page, you’re considered a “success” on Flickr. But, there are many other valuable activities on Flickr, and on any social network, that should drive reputation but don’t. If you post the most constructive comments, there’s no quantified reputation for that… yet. If you post the most expressive and findable tags, there’s not quantified reputation or recognition of that very valuable contribution… yet. Both of those actions are extremely valuable to the community and are complimentary to the primary social object – the photo.
Social sites like Flickr are perfect playgrounds to implement whuffie. They’re self-contained and have a limited set of reputation-building or damaging actions. On Flickr, those include uploading photos, adding favorites, tagging, posting comments, deleting things and participating in groups. Once you identify those activities, it’s then trivial to add values to those actions and increment or decrement a user’s whuffie based on their actions. This takes some of the gamesmanship out of other rating systems and can provide a way to reward the community-building secondary actions – like commenting or tagging – without detracting from the primary whuffie builder. That way, everyone is rewarded for their actions, and there’s an easier path to finding “bad actors” in the system. They could also make those first social interactions on the site easier. You could give people some clue as to the person’s reputation on your first introduction to them. How much easier would it be if you got some idea of how reputable someone was when you got that connection request on LinkedIn?
There are people already working on implementing whuffie in the real world, and a lot more to it than what I’ve had the time to write. If I’ve piqued your interest, you should check out the Wikipedia page on whuffie. Tara Hunt has also written a great book called The Whuffie Factor about building and using whuffie in the real world, and someone’s even started a whuffie bank. I heartily recommend reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (you can download it for free), though, as it still has the best examples and explanation of whuffie. If you’d like to talk about whuffie in person, I’m speaking about it at Geekend in a couple weeks!
