August 2006 Archives

Yes, yes, yes, yes... The intensity of my 12 month Master's degree program at Trinity has overwhelmed me to the point where I have yet to write a review of SXSWi 2006 and BlogHer 2006.

Here are the Ultra-Super-Duper-Short versions:

SXSW Interactive 2006 : Ms. Jen spent most of the 4 weeks before SXSW in a stupor of flu induced fever and coughing, luckily for me the 90-something-degree heat knocked it out of me by the first day of SXSW. Unluckily for me, between the reminents of being sick for a month and jet lag, SXSW passed in a beautiful foggy haze, and not of the alcoholic variety either.

What do I remember: hanging out with lovely friends, LEI and the ZenMaster meeting, wine parties in the hotel room, Jeffrey Veen kicking serious panel butt, missing other panels that kicked serious butt (sorry Lynn, George & Jason! I suck, you rock.). Taking lots of photos, missing Kick! dreadfully (Anil come to 2007, bring Kick! back), talking to friends far and wide, and convincing folk to take my Thesis mobile survey.

BlogHer 2006: Ms. Jen spent most of the 4 weeks before BlogHer in a stupor of Master's Project induced planning, development and implementation. Luckily for me, I had a 7 day holiday to California to alleviate any Project induced stress. Unluckily for me, between all the Project stress, the reappearance of IBS and Evil Fire Tummy, as well as jet lag, BlogHer 2006 passed in a beautiful foggy haze, and not of the alcoholic variety either.

What I do remember: Scruffy McDoglet going crazy whilst greeting me at LAX, driving up with Megan, LEI, and Erika to BlogHer, Julie Wanda & Tink joining us for the SoCal Represents at BlogHer 2006 weekend, the Speaker pre-party, a trip to Whole Foods to get supplies for a wine & cheese party, missing Elise speak (sorry, Elise rocks, I suck.), getting to hang out with Lynn & George (Jason, where were you????), the Flickr Meetup, multiple dinners at Sushi Maru in San Jose's Japantown, Maggie Mason's expert panel moderation, and the Red Caterpillar from The Sky during my panel, and a whirl of meeting folk.

What I did not do I either SXSW or BlogHer this year and I regret: getting to more panels that would challenge my world or inspire me and making more of an effort to meet lots of new folk. At both conferences, it was all I could do to just get there and be mildly present. Next year, I want to be fully present and engaged in more than fighting jet lab and sickness/stress.

My Master's degree program finishes on Oct. 3rd, 2006 and I fly home to SoCal four days later, so hopefully by next March and July I will be all rested up and in full possession of my wits and bounce...

I am just about to leave to go to the far northwest of Ireland, Donegal, for 3 days of photos and project research. Watch for a few photos here!

I would like to wish a Happy Golden, 24 on the 24th, Birthday to Eoin Gubbins!

Jessica Helfand at DesignObserver has written on The Ovalization of The American Mind.

One can imagine buttons being scaled to the oval circumference of an average adult fingertip, but recently it seems that the propensity for ovals has resulted in a morphologically compromised landscape of soft shapes and rounded edges. And nowhere is this more noticeable than in cars, which (with a few exceptions) have enthusiastically embraced everything rounded: fenders, dashboards, you name it. While I'm not advocating a market for squared-off odometers, it is difficult to find a car these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

Ms. Jen echos: it is difficult to find a website these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

While Ms. Helfand uses contemporary car and thornamental design to illustrate her points, my mind kept wandering to thoughts of the ovalization of web design. While most of the current crop of Web 2.0 web design is keeping within the ideals of geometric modernism and avoiding thornamental-ism, the oval has landed and many sites have the stylized appearance of a darkly lit neon cartoon.

I do like that designers are breaking out of the box, even ovalizing their box model, but when a web design trend takes off it really takes off and the oval, rounded cornered, neon bevel is in full flight.

In case you have been watching the parade of mobile photos scroll through this site and scratched your head wonder, "What is that Ms. Jen up to?"

For the completion of my master's degree at Trinity College in the MSCMM program, we have to do a summer group project that is 50% of the total course marks. Some groups are creating games or virtual realities, others are working on photo narrative, and my group is doing a mobile documentation project of Ireland.

By Sept. 7th, I and my fellow(ess) group members are trying to take mobile photos or video in each of the 32 counties on the island of Ireland.

Yesterday, I traveled down the road, the N81, that starts a block from me in Dublin to its end south of Tullow in County Carlow / Wexford border. I got to see one dolmen, one ruined gothic abbey, 29 ancient standing stones on an earthen henge, walk through a recently mowed field to see a unique grooved standing stone, meet a nice horse and watch a river overflow its banks.

Today, I am off to County Tyrone in Northern Ireland to visit the Ulster American Folk Park.

As the Lonely Planet Ireland (6th ed) guide book says:

In the 18th and 19th centuries thousands of Ulster people left their homes to forge a new life across the Atlantic; 200,000 emigrated in the 18th century alone. Their story is told here at one of Ireland's best museums the Ulster American Folk Park...

The Exhibition Hall presents many of the close connections between Ulster and the USA - the American Declaration of Independence was signed by several Ulstermen - but the real appeal of the folk part is the outdoor museum, whose 'living history' exhibits include a forge, a weaver's cottage, a Presbyterian meeting house, a schoolhouse, a log cabin, a 19th-century Ulster street and a street from western Pennsylvania...

And off I go...

Fri 08.18.06 - After dropping my laundry off, I stood by the coy / lily pond attempting to get a photo of the coy, but they were a bit too fast.

Thurs 08.17.06 - I have been feeling a bit down this week, mostly due to the rainy weather and low clouds that have not been clearing. And then the other evening when on Jason's blog I saw that Rob, Jason and Greg were coming to Dublin on Business... well, Friends... in Dublin! Yeah!

A few emails later it was arranged. I met Greg (left), Jason (center), and Rob (right) in front of the Pearse Street DART Station and off we went to the Long Library on the Trinity Campus to see the Book of Kells. My TCD ID got all of us in for free and in we went. Shuffled out at 5pm by security, we walked over to Merrion Sq. and around through the Square. Up we went to O'Donoghues for a pint and then over to see the Phil Lynott statue just off Grafton Street for Rob. Back over to the Ely Wine Bar for dinner and a glass of wine.

The three and a half hour whirlwind tour of Dublin City Center over, Greg, Stan, and Rob are delivered back to the Pearse Street DART Station to return to their accommodation, as they left Philadelphia at 1pm yesterday, flew to Stockholm, then to Dublin without really sleeping.

It was great fun to have folks come and visit, if only for an evening, and my spirits are revived. Thanks guys. You rock.

Photo Friday : Friend

How I truly miss the Crowns....

I am a card carrying member of the "Kill Your TV" club and turn into a deer in headlights whenever I am in a public space with a TV, so I must get a TV-B-Gone! Thanks copyrighteous!

This morning Tom wrote:

More troubling is that it's reported that the principle people concerned in the plot were British-born, and arrested around High Wycombe, London and Birmingham. What an extraordinary world we're living in at the moment where groups of people brought up in the UK want to commit these kinds of acts. It's very troubling.

I commented in his post ending with:

Also, how does this get treated in the UK law? Is it considered a plot to harm and murder or can these folks also be tried for treason?

My natural curiosity kicked in about what is considered treason...

From Dictionary.com:

trea·son (trzn) n. 1. Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. 2. A betrayal of trust or confidence.

From Wikipedia:

In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation or state. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour.

Pertaining to High Treason in the United Kingdom, The Treason Act of 1351:

levied war against the King in his Realm or adhered to the King's enemies in his Realm, giving them aid and comfort in his Realm or elsewhere;

I am not a lawyer nor a judge in the United Kingdom, but what we have here is more than a plot to murder, a plot to cause terror in a land not one's own, but treason. I called my sister the lawyer and asked her to define treason, she pulled out Black's Law Dictionary and the part that jumped out is a traitor will "materially participate" in aiding a nation's enemies.

Flying right now involves enough ludicrous, inane stupidities in the name of security and as of today, I can't even bring hand lotion, lipstick, reading materials and my own lunch. The only way to create real security is to have one plane for naked humans and one cargo plane for luggage, even then an airport employee with all access can still plant a bomb.

Last but not least, Jennaratrix weighs in:

My real problem is this: I am more scared of my government than I am of the potential terrorists who may potentially blow my ass out of the sky some day. I'm scared of the fact that before I worried about getting on that plane next week, I worried about what my government was going to take away from me now, using this latest incident as the excuse.

There is no such thing as total security. But there is such a thing as a police state, and we are well on our way there.

*************

Dear Terrorists: Please do not chant Allah Akkbar. You do not know God. Nor do you know the Good God. If you need to practice murder, mayhem, terror and treason, please start at home. Preferrably when no one but yourself is at home. Meet your god asap.

Dear TSA and Airlines: If you do not want me to bring my lipstick, hand lotion, and laptop on board the 10-12 hour flights between Europe and California as of today's incident, please provide Mac Russian Red lipstick, St. Ives Hand Lotion in the lavatory, and a bunch of good books, Wired Magazine, and National Geographics for me to read. Or a LOT of Ambien. Thank you.

As a part of the incremental redesign of this website, I had turned non-TypeKey authenticated commenting back on a couple of months ago, although those comments were held for moderation.

My. What a mistake that was. Due to the incredible amount of ringtone spam that this Movable Type installation was receiving amongst other comment spam detritus that was awaiting my approval and causing good comments to go into the junk folder and be lost forever, I have gone back to TypeKey authentication only.

Sorry to folks who really would like to actually comment on a post rather than spam me and the world, but you have to register.

After six weeks of work and documentation, my project group is almost ready to launch our Ireland Mobile Documentation webiste. Almost. Check this space soon for the URL.

We have been working non-stop for weeks trying to get a working system of Nokia mobile phones with Vodafone.ie mobile service with Movable Type weblog. Unfortunately, there have been a few set backs but we are marching on.

I am still a bit jet lagged from my trip to California and BlogHer '06 last week, on top of going out and about Ireland to take photos and videos as well as struggling with MT plugins and css. I love the Movable Type development community, but the plugin documentation is sparse and spotty, or for folks who are programmers and not designers/installers, only to add ontop of a new release of MT 3.3, thus trouble for plugin compatibility with the installation. Let's not even talk about the 1543 lines of frustrating css, I have been keeping quiet for a year about the 3.2/3.3 css, but I hate it. Hello, KISS folks, KISS. Not the rock band, but Keep it Simple...

Why not use WordPress? Free, good community, almost plug and play... Well, I have a whole draft post waiting to be finished on why WordPress needs to be severely spanked and not in a pleasurable way, either. Let's just say, if you by accident delete the database running MT, you still have the static html archive files and posts. All of them. If you delete WordPress, you are FUCKED UNTO THE LORD... (thanks, Annie for the expression)... It is ALL GONE. All of it. Every single little bit. F*^king php.

Note to self, do not delete databases when very tired, hungry and jet lagged. Just say no.

Further note to self, do not ever use WordPress again until there is a back up of all php pages and database as well as an export of all posts function. 'Nuff said.

I got off the plane last Thursday, rented a car, and then headed off to the hinterlands with Simon (Sat.), Denise (Sun.), and Eoin (Mon.). Due to Vodafone's server being down most of the weekend, I was unable to moblog most of what I saw and explored. But I had a grand time and got to see at least a quarter of Ireland in 3 days, 761 miles, and over 1,000 kilometers.

I am now exhausted and want to go to bed. So, I shall. Tomorrow, hopefully we will have the final piece of the development/programming puzzle solved and I will have a link for you all to see 6 weeks worth of photos and videos of Ireland.

We (I) here at Black Phoebe sort out Jet Lag, Vodafone.ie server downtime (no moblobbing all day today), and did I mention that I am very sleepy and can't think?

I will over the weeknd have a BlogHer Summary for you all. I promise.

Here in Ireland it is August Bank Holiday weekend and I have a Toyota Micra rental car. Source of the River Boyne, here I come.

Our project supervisor Feargal Fitzpatrick brought up this article from last Saturday's Irish Times in our meeting this morning, in regards to Neo-Lithic sites (dolmens and the like) and "Celtic" nationalism:

Celtic invasion is pure mythology

World View: Barry Raftery, professor of Celtic archaeology at University College Dublin, admits an enormous problem in justifying his subject: there is no archaeological evidence for a Celtic invasion of Ireland. Squaring that awkward fact with loose talk of a Celtic Tiger, Celtic crosses, Celtic soul, Celtic rock and Celtic art is a difficult task for contemporary cultural understanding as well as for archaeological theorising, writes Paul Gillespie.

Over the period from about 450 BC to AD 450 when it is commonly agreed by scholars that there were Celtic societies and civilisations in western and central Europe, hardly any material evidence has been found here to substantiate the notion of Celtic Ireland.

There is no Celtic pottery - or pottery of any kind until well into the Christian period. Only 40-50 such swords or other military instruments are extant, six decorated brooches, eight scabbards - compared to the hundreds of thousands excavated in western France alone, for example.

There are no chariots in the 20-40 small burial sites unearthed, he told a conference on "European Culture: A Vision for the Future" organised by the British-Irish Encounter organisation in Cork last month. The patterns of burials, settlements and material culture show fundamental continuity with the earlier prehistoric periods which brought the original settlers here 9-11,000 years ago after the last Ice Age. The fascinating new science of historical genetics finds no evidence of a specifically Celtic migration.

And yet by AD 500 certainly and probably much earlier, the Gaelic language was spoken all over the island. It is undoubtedly a Celtic language, and probably a distinctively archaic one. Raftery asked if there is no evidence of invasion, how did the language spread here? Through a small upper crust? Or the kidnap of women over many years? He recalled the remark of one scholar, that "early Celtic art has no genesis", to illustrate the intellectual difficulties involved. Can there be a culture without a people?

Thur 08.03.06 - Landing in Dublin.

Home

Home is a funny word. Not funny ha ha, but funny many layered. Funny painful. Funny good. Funny ironic. Funny you may know what I mean.

I grew up in a family that moved every year or two as both of my parents married, divorced and remarried more than a few times. By the time I was 22, I had lived in 27 different houses. The five years that I lived at the Palmyra Street house in Orange (Sept. 2000 to Sept. 2005) was the longest that I have lived in any one place my entire life by 2.5 years.

Every 5-7 years or so, I get a wild hair up my metaphorical bowel system and decide that I need to move out of California and then maybe I will find home.

In 1992, I lived in Europe for six months and then came home to California.

In 1994, I moved to Boston for education and experience for 3.564 years and then came back home to California.

In 2005, I moved to Dublin and in October of 2006 I will move back home to California.

For as much as I love adventure, travel, and exploring new places, I have found that my home state of California is my heart's home. While I have no house to call home, I have had the same storage place in La Habra since 1989. Does that count?

I love Ireland, I can't live there for good. I knew that this trip home to California would make it even harder to go back to Dublin for the next 2 months to complete my masters degree.

This trip to go speak and attend BlogHer '06 really brought home the fact that both my native SoCal and the SF/SJ Bay Area is the land of my future.

As I sit now at LAX typing this post and bluetoothing the photos of the last 7 days to the Silver Princess, I know, Lord willing, that I will be coming home to California in early October.

Coming home to the golden hills and oak trees. Coming home to the souless strip malls and stucco'd mcmansions. Coming home to 30 some odd other million folk in my native state. Coming home to an amazing assortment of fresh fruits, veggies, wine, meat, and other food staples. Coming home to a state that I love, the country of my heart.

I am a Californian.

Wed 08.02.06 - This morning I went to breakfast and a walk on Sunset Beach with Dan, Ryan, and Maggie Callis.

Tues 08.01.06 - At Walt's. Again. Tomorrow I fly back to Dublin.

Tues 08.01.06 - Mom, Allison and I got pedicures at Lucky Nails in Orange.