Ultranormal

  • The Jaywalking Hokey Pokey

    I went to dinner last night with some folks from the Ghost in the Machine panel and some of my favorite south-by pals. Kevin Smokler convince a bunch of loons into doing the Hokey Pokey in the median of South Congress. I, being a rational human being aware of his own mortality, did not. But, that didn’t stop me from filming it:\

    <script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://media.dreamhost.com/ufo.js”></script>
    <p id=”HokeyPokey_480×360.flv”><a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>Get
    the Flash Player</a> to see this player.</p>
    <script type=”text/javascript”>
    var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”480″,height:”360″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”, flashvars:”file=http://dev.lawver.net/media/HokeyPokey_480×360.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false”
    };
    UFO.create(FO,”HokeyPokey_480×360.flv”);
    </script>

  • Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online

    Today is panel number one for me at SxSW. I just got back from lunch with the panelists, and I have to say, this panel is going to be a lot of fun. I feel a little out of place, but I’m honored that James asked me to join in the fun. The panel is hopefully going to be led somewhat by the audience, but we’re probably going to talk about how being online and talking about religion has impacted our lives and our faith, and how online community both helps and hurts. It should be an interesting discussion, and one that hasn’t really taken place as SxSW before.\
    I hope to be able to contribute something. James and I are both “generalists” on our blogs. We talk about whatever strikes our fancy. The other folks on our panel: Rachel, Hussein, and Gordon are all pretty specific in their subject matter. I think there’s an interesting discussion in how we use our blogs to discuss religion, and how our blogs have changed how our friends and families interact with us, and how we interact with your faiths. We’ll see what happens.\
    Whatever happens, lunch was a special experience. We had six people (Gordon’s wife joined us) around a table sharing a meal, and discussing their faiths without judgement, with interest is what each other had to say and how each other related to their faiths and the “real” world. It was a lot of fun. If that same spirit carries on in the panel, we’re in for a treat. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.\
    Today at 5 in 9C (or 9-something… I don’t remember).

  • Kevin Smokler and Dave Thomas Under Pressure

    I stayed up way too late last night having fun with my SxSW pals Kevin Smokler, Dave Thomas and James McNally. I ended up driving us around to Bryan Busch’s SxSW Karaoke Kick-Off (not the real title, but close). I didn’t plan on singing anything, but I ended up doing a duet with MD of TMBG’s Don’t Lets Start, and with Dave on Shock the Monkey. The song of the night though, was Kevin and Dave’s version of Queen’s classic Under Pressure. I didn’t get the whole thing, but here’s the last minute:\

    <p id=”MVI_0450_480×360.flv”><a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>Get
    the Flash Player</a> to see this player.</p>
    <script type=”text/javascript”>
    var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”480″,height:”360″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
    flashvars:”file=http://dev.lawver.net/media/MVI_0450_480×360.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false”
    };
    UFO.create(FO,”MVI_0450_480×360.flv”);
    </script>
    \
    I think you’ll agree, it’s superior to the original is almost every way.

  • Quickie Update

    Kevin is off for SXSWi. Every year he claims it’s a work thing and every year I swear it is “Geek Spring Break.” I have planned lots of projects around the house and fun activities to do while he is gone. Instead though, I think I will hit the store for some bonbons and lie around watching the Pussycat Dolls reality show. How many of you watched it? Come on, be honest!\
    How many of you are mad at me because you can’t find orange Cadbury cream eggs at your local supermarket? I wasn’t just trying to tease you. Promise. I can’t find them at my regular store either. Poo! We were out running errands on Saturday when we ducked into a store for something quick and that is where I found them. So no orange cream eggs for me.\
    Brian is a delayed speaker. He only recently started really talking. Here are some of his unique pronunciations, saved for posterity:\
    Airplane= Sissy. I don’t know why. It was one of his first words.\
    Thank You= Go. Yes is also Go, even though he can say “yes.” Can only tell meaning by context.\
    Triangle= Up and down and around. Cuz that is how you draw them, duh.\
    Rocket= Rocky. At least he’s close with this one.\
    Maxi= Batty. Kevin likes to joke that he is saying “butt.” Max isn’t amused.\
    Muffin= Frossies. Again, I have no idea why.\
    Seep= See. Wow, he almost gets this one right too!\
    He still says a bunch of words we don’t understand, but he has come along way in the last 3 months. YAY!

  • Hello, Ficlets

    It’s been a very long day, and it’s not over yet, but I couldn’t let the day be done until I posted about this. Today, we took the covers off of the project that I’ve been working on for the past three months: ficlets. It started as this little thing I was going to do all by myself to learn Rails, and ended up what you can see over on the site.


    I don’t even know what to say about it, really. Cindy, Jason and I have been dancing around it so long on twitter, calling it Ape Shirt, that talking about it now in the open feels kind of weird. But, here we are. There’s more information about what it all means on the ficlets blog.


    Ficlets is very much an experiment (we like to call it “a prototype we just happened to launch”), and this is our very first release (we’re the first product in AOL to roll out on Rails, so we’ve still got stuff to learn about it…). So, things may go weird and wonky from time to time. Just give it a minute, and then reload.


    I am truly fortunate to work at a company where I can get away with stuff like this. This started as my own little thing to do on the side. When I realized that it was actually a pretty cool idea and that I didn’t have the time or talent to do it all myself, I presented it at a meeting, and the next thing I know, I’m working on it full time with a small team of amazingly talented people. It was a pirate project in the best sense of the word. We didn’t really do a project plan or start with a big committee. It was four people in a room, working towards something we were all geeked about. From the beginning, we treated it like we were in a startup, very few rules, no defined roles (except that I got two votes, and Kerry got three). It worked so well, and we had too much fun designing and building it.


    I never imagined it would look so good, or be so much fun. For that, I have to thank the designers who worked most closely on it: Cindy Li, Ari Kushimoto, Jenna Marino, and Jason Garber, who did 99% of the markup (all the good stuff), the CSS and most of the javascript (I worked on it some, I swear). We make such a great team, and I’m so proud of the work we did. We had lots of other help too, from folks who helped design the stickers, buttons and shirts for SxSW: Shadia Ahmed and Jayna Wallace, to the folks who played around with concepts early on: Elisa Nader, Elsa Kawai, Tom Osborne and Justin Kirk.


    There are tons of people to thank, and a lot of people helped out. We had tons of support and “air cover” from Kerry and text and language help from John, Amy, Suzie, Nancie and Erin. My pal Tony was an immense help figuring out how to deliver everything in working order to the Greatest Ops Guy in the World, Dan, and Kelly helped us bend a few rules to get all the other opsy bits in order at the last minute. We had legal help from Holly and Regina. And my bosses let me steal Jason, and go work on it, so big thanks to Alan and Bert too.


    This has been so much fun, I think we should do it again. I have big plans for our little story site…


    One last thing… if you’re going to be at SxSW Interactive this weeked, come find me. We’ve got some lovely stickers and buttons to hand out (while supplies last). I should be pretty easy to spot. I’ll be the big fat guy with the ficlets shirt on (well, for two days… ).


    Now I have to go finish packing!

  • The Amazing Mr. Chipman

    Ultranormal

    The Amazing Mr. Chipman strikes again. First, it was his great sculptures (OK, before that, it was all his javascript toys). Now, he’s gone and turned Cindy’s frightening portrait of me into an almost more frightening drawing. You can see the whole thing progress, which is even cooler than the final product.\
    I have amazing friends.

  • Weekend Wrap Up

    Having a side-by-side blog with Kevin is really entertaining and snags me lots of readers. But it is also really embarrassing when Kevin posts about making things better and I’m all, “TV shiny; poop stinky!” But, eh, it’s my life. And with that in mind…\
    The orange Cadbury cream eggs are so yummy! You must try them.\
    I think dim sum broke Brian’s butt! He’s been pooping nonstop ever since! Ok, well, it may have been the dozen strawberries he munched on in between servings of the dim sum.\
    Here is my weekend wrap up:\
    Saturday I spent the morning cleaning Max’s room. We even found a favorite stuffed animal, so he is extra happy. I organized his books and comics on the bookshelf and the toys in his toy box. I even found more storage space to utilize- wheeee. I washed the marker off of his walls, but the pen wasn’t coming off so easily. I’ll try Magic Erasure next time I have the urge, but I worry it will take off the paint too. I did manage to get most of the crayon off of his door. It was a tough job though, because the crayon is in the groove of the wood lines. I think a scrubby brush with bristles that can get in there will work. Most the “unsanctioned wall art” was from Brian.\
    Saturday afternoon, the kids got to be with Anne while Kevin and I got to have a day date! We went out for a lunch at a new restaurant in Ashburn. The salad that came with my meal was so big, I took my entire entree home, which was dinner for Sunday. Score! Afterwards we got my passport photo taken. I am so excited for Paris! And still scared. After hanging around the house for an hour, trying desperately not to fall asleep, we zipped to the in-laws’ for dinner and to pick up the kids.\
    Sunday was a good day, too. I woke up so freaking early with the kids that I was able to sneak in a morning nap. Around 11 am we went into Arlington for a group lunch of dim sum. Our party had 31 people in it, so we had to split into 3 tables. And of course we saw the Washington Monument, because no trek of ours outside of Northern Virginia would be complete without seeing it, even if it is not on the itinerary! The whole trip took us 4 hours, 2 hours for lunch & gabbing and 2 hours for driving. The kids were so well behaved that they both deserve ponies. They tried a bunch of new dishes and Max ate with chopsticks. When they weren’t eating, they just sat silently looking around, talking, or drawing. It was so nice. Brian was even awesome enough to poop before and after the trip, but not while we were out. YAY! Way less of a hassle to change him at home.\
    This weekend, I only got one thing done and I feel great about it! The kids had fun with Grandma, I had fun with Kevin, and we all had fun together. Since Kevin is leaving for SXSWi this week, it was a good pre-trip fun time weekend.\
    In other news:\
    Max is in the faux gifted program at school. What this means is that a teacher takes him and a few other students out of class and has special lessons and activities for them. So far these lessons seem to be about spacial reasoning and placement. Anyway, let me take a minute to complain. We are lucky in that Max is smart, charming, cute, and has pushy parents who asked for more challenging instruction for him. So far Max is in: faux-gifted group; the accelerated reading program, which attempts to let kids read at their own level; the school’s writing group (they made a special exception for Max since it isn’t open to 1st graders); math all-stars (which is open to everyone); and has a very big part in the class play. What was I complaining about? oh yea, school. So, max is being taught all this extra stuff. Which yay for us. But booo to the other kids who are missing out. Here is my complaint: maybe Max isn’t smarter than anyone else, but maybe he is just being taught more?\
    Brian has only napped once or twice in the past week. UGH! Make it stop. He is such a monster from 4-5:30 when he doesn’t nap.

  • Tell Us How You Really Feel

    I hate it when people say “tell us how you really feel.” Hate it. Why wouldn’t I tell you how I really feel? You asked. Would you rather I lie to you?\
    We’ve been having this internal discussion about passion, how to change things inside the company, and how things could be better. It’s been going on for a while, but a presentation I did with a bunch of pals last week (called Guerilla Web 2.0 – I’m going to see if I can release the audio and slides publicly) really sparked something, and I keep coming back to that statement (which people have said to me a lot recently, which is why it’s stuck in my head)… “tell us how you really feel.”\
    If you want to change things, don’t stay silent. If you’re passionate about what you do or what you want to do, don’t hide it. The only way things change is if people speak up. I’ve had this quote from Angels in America on my phone for ages and peek at it every once in a while:\
    bq. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens… the time has come.\
    Now, that’s about something a lot more serious than technology, but the line has stuck with me. If you want something to change, don’t suffer in silence. If you want something to change, get off your ass and make it happen. If you can’t convince anyone, or fail the first time, then go back and find a new message that will. People assume that things are the way they are for a reason, and they’re just not. A lot of times, they’re an accident or an unintended consequence of another decision.\
    There’s a flip side to that: that we need to “protect” management from issues. Nope. If something’s broken and it’s important, they need to know about it. They’re not fragile, nor are they immune from mistakes (and if they are fragile, they probably shouldn’t be managers). Most of them are human beings, and if they know something is broken, they’ll try to fix it. If they’re decent (and I think 95% of them are), they’d prefer to have happy employees than disgruntled semi-postal ones.\
    The next time someone asks you to tell them how you really feel, tell them. Don’t be hostile, don’t embellish or hyperbolize, but dammit, tell them the truth. Nothing will ever change if you don’t. If we keep it to ourselves and suffer “secret deaths”, there’s no one to blame but ourselves. If we speak up, at least we’ve made the first step in making things better. If others fail to take that information and do something with it, it’s on them.

  • Robin Hood

    The BBC series Robin Hood is playing now on BBC America. It’s not spectacular groundbreaking television, but it is a rollicking good adventure show where the bad guys are delightfully bad and the good guys are good but conflicted. It’s lots and lots of fun, and you should watch it, if only to encourage BBC America to bring good shows over here quicker (like, concurrent with their UK release).

  • Point Out the Good Stuff

    I don’t normally blog about work stuff (well, I have recently, but it’s an anomoly), but I have to point this one out because it’s such an improvement. There’s a new AOL Webmail beta, and it’s really cool. I’ve been using the current webmail at home on the kitchen computer, and while it was better than the one that came before it, it wasn’t great. The new beta? It’s great. It’s speedy once it loads, and I can view mail without having to open a new browser window. Check it out… really. It’s good.