Stories

Hear it like it is (day 201)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:11:00 +0000

Short post today. It's been a day of catch up because threads that could wait three days ago are urgent now. I've estimated that for every day that I'm away I get behind about 25%. There was so much fragmentation today that it's hard to write about anything coherent right now. If I could I'd just show a box of bouncing balls I'd call it a representation and be done.

I started a new audiobook after finishing The Lovely Bones (which I recommend btw...read by the author). The new book is actually a series of interviews of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. He's not my favourite interviewer but Joseph is so fascinating it doesn't matter. I decided to listen to this after I read an article on the RWW blog that mentioned him in relation to creating better presentations. Turns out it's useful for a lot more than that. In fact, I'll have to think about how to apply it to so grounded a task as creating a presentation. You can listen to an excerpt of this on Audible.

I forgot to mention in my post a couple days ago that Jaron Lanier had recommended the book called "The machine stops". He says it's the best book on the internet. Turns out it's on Librivox a repository of public domain book recordings. I'm stoked that I'll be able to listen to it. Wouldn't it be nice if anyone could read any book out loud and post it online? You can if the book is out of copyright which is great (librivox is just that) but audiobooks in general are still very mainstream. Personally I would love it if I could buy a book and get the physical, digital, and audio version. Or at least get the other versions at a significant discount if I already own one version of it.

A song for this post.

Opening up to engage (day 200)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:52:00 +0000

For the first time I'm opening up my laptop during a flight. Usually I'm quite content listening to a podcast or an audiobook or reading/reviewing papers. But I wanted to describe the last day at the conference before it lost its freshness. It wasn't likely that I would write after the flight came in at 1am.

I started the day in a panel about the city as a platform. The ideas centred around the management of information available and generated from a city. One statistic quoted by the moderator estimates that by 2012 20% of all data traffic will be passive sensor data (e.g. traffic, weather, seismic, energy, etc.) One of the applications they talked about is SeeClickFix where citizens are encouraged to submit information about things needing fixing in the city, such as potholes, graffiti, water quality. Ideas are voted on and automatically sent on to the city councilors that would be responsible for the issue. There are also mechanisms by which people can volunteer to help with the issues identified. They've seen an improvement in the speed of resolution and the engagement of the councilors with their constituents. A similar system was developed in Manor, a small city of 65,000 people just outside of Austin. They developed a game-like interaction to the submission of ideas for the city. When you submit an idea you get 1,000 InnoBucks, when you comment on an idea you get 100 InnoBucks. You can invest your InnoBucks in someone else's idea and if the idea gets realized, your stock pays out. Investing in someone's idea helps it get promoted up a hierarchy which eventually leads to city review and possibly implementation. This system has been quite successful and they are making it available to other cities.

It occurred to me that perhaps all citizens could be given the option to have a portion of their taxes be used for a program like this. So say 5% of your taxes get put into this application and you get to collectively decide where the money should be spent. For this to work it would need to also be matched with open government records and good estimates of costs involved. It's pie in the sky but it would probably give a much needed push to citizen engagement and a better understanding of the issues politicians face. It could even involve younger people that don't normally get a voice. Someone at the panel session pointed out that not everyone has access to the internet and for this to truly work equal access would be important. I agree but if we wait to develop these tools, we won't be ready when access is more universal. In the interim, there could also be other ways to contribute to the system that don't require internet access.

I attended two other sessions that were not as thought-provoking: one on designing effective mobile applications, and the other on Canvas vs. Flash, two competing technologies for motion graphics in the browser.

In the first session I twigged on the idea of the peer-managed address book. I seriously had never thought how ridiculous it is to manage all your contacts, when they could be managing themselves. I update my contact info and it gets propagated to all the address books that contain me. How trivial an idea and how useful. Facebook is implementing something like that to interface with the iPhone address book. I'm not sure I want Facebook to be the platform for this but I like the concept very much.
The Canvas vs. Flash panel was interesting and full of information but the consensus is that there is no perfect solution. Canvas is open which is great but it's not supported in Internet Explorer and does not have development tools. The Flash plugin is ubiquitous and has great tools but does not work on the iPhone and is not open and is not easy to debug. No one won this debate. It's a sad state of affairs that we can't all agree on open standards. I personally love the idea of Canvas and I'll try it out soon. The Adobe reps on the panel was quite comfortable (almost arrogant) with their lead in this market. I also learned that Internet Explorer 9 will not support Canvas but has good support for SVG, a vector graphics standard that's been on the verge of succeeding for a long time. I made a bet with someone from Adobe in 2002 that 5 years hence SVG would be the major vector graphics standard on the web. I believed. I wonder if he ever thinks about that bet.

It will be nice to get back to a more normal pace of life but I'm really going to miss the intellectual stimulation of this conference. I hope to come back next year.

A song for this post.

Unusual instruments of inspiration (day 199)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:57:00 +0000

Another long day keeping up with three lives: social network, sxsw, work. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do this full time. I'm not sure how other people are doing it and partying too. Again, I'm wondering about my gene pool.

Today I woke up too late for the first panels which sucked. Seriously my only excuse is a 2am bedtime and a totally blackened hotel room which let no daylight in for me to cue to. I thought the birds would wake me as they had done the morning before but the miracle of selective hearing had happened in the intervening 24 hours. You see there are these birds here called Grackles and they deserve their name. They can make sweet sounds but in a group they make a range of grackly sounds that are very distinctive. And when I say there are these birds, I mean there are LOTS of these birds. They line the telephone lines for long distances, perched side by side so the line looks like a thick black marker.

Too me so long to recap yesterday that I'm thinking I'm just going to do very quick highlights for today. I tried to go to a 'battery life in Africa' panel but ended up being at a 'twitter and Tolstoy' panel which had usurped the canceled Africa timeslot. The amazing thing is about this twist is that before deciding to go to the Africa panel I had made my way to another panel and at the very last moment changed my mind. Unfortunately the venues were almost as far away from each other as possible so I rushed over to the Africa panel, probably just in time to miss the person saying it had been canceled. But I wasn't the only one that was late and when we collectively realized that we were not in the right panel we left and talked in the hallway. I talked with this guy called Peter Vesterbacka who had two gadgets to show me. One was a solar-powered battery charger and the other was a golfball sized bluetooth interaction device called Blobo which has both orientation, force, and pressure sensors. Very cool. You can even drop and bounce this thing. And it's only $49. I was hooked. I tried to find them at the Trade show to see a demo but a dyslexic brain turned 402 into 204. I'll see them tomorrow. Anyway, as I was walking away I marvelled at the sequence of events that would have me meet this guy. Sometimes these types of coincidences are more visible and I become amazed for an instant.

Then I went to a conversation on democracy in the workplace and found out about WorldBlu from Traci Fenton. She was very impressive and I left the session thinking, "yes we can". Turns out there are many organizations (some large!) that are switching to a democratic way of operating. There are core principles they outlined on their web site to get started. Every year they have WorldBlu awards they give out, and they publish a WorldBlu list.

Then I went to the keynote which was an interview with Twitter CEO Evan Wiliams. I knew it was really boring and I was desperately trying to connect to the twitter feed but my iphone wifi receiver was just too weak to pick up an overloaded signal. I would have been a witness to a live backchannel lynching. Oh well. I also missed the leaving the room in a coordinated swarm. I just watched a bunch of people leave and just thought they had to be somewhere (wasn't a huge swarm). Slowly, the room emptied to about half full. It had been standing room only. I honestly don't remember much of what he said except he announced a new API feature (@anywhere).

Then I went to a talk by James Fowler on how networks influence our habits and emotions. I think I may have blogged about this before. The idea is that you are influenced by people up to thrice removed from you. So a friend of a friend of a friend being happy will increase your chances of being happy. Same thing for obesity. It's not news that we influence each other. It's surprising that it's more spread out than I assumed. The talk was good but I am triggered by evangelism and this had some of that. They wrote a book.

Then I went to see Jaron Lanier. That was a definite highlight. I arrived early to get a good seat thinking he would pack the house. He didn't. I'd say the (large) venue was about a quarter full. Fools, I thought. And miss out they did. He started and ended his talk playing unusual wooden wind instruments, one he claimed is a precursor to the computer. He asked us all to turn stop using our gadgets during his talk. He then proceeded on a meandering discussion of the state of social media and asset exchange. If the social network guy was an evangelist, Jaron was a prophet. There is something about the way he is that reminds me of Richard Stallman. A kind of slightly off genius quality. Anyway, while he was talking my mind was the most stimulated it has been in a very long time. I even got lots of unrelated ideas pop into my mind and it occurred to me that being in the presence of someone who has such a grasp of a wide-ranging set of ideas is enough to make anyone creative. Next time I'm feeling in the grey zone, I'm switching on a Jaron Lanier talk. Hopefully they'll put it online. Maybe I should say a few things about the content of his talk. There was so much there I'll just scratch the surface. He was riffing on his current thinking that he summarized in a book "You are not a gadget". (He was signing copies later on but there were no more left when I got there. Bummer.) Some highlights:

The current thinking of make information free and sell merchandise is flawed. It assumes that there is a special 'creative' class and a much larger 'lump' class that does nothing but lazily consume.
Ted Nelson had it right with his Xanadu design. Unfortunately he was a terrible manager ("Imagine the worst possible manager, Ted is worse") and the idea never got anywhere. His model assumed everyone is a first class citizen and can be producer and consumer of information. They can make information available for free if they want to but there are no gatekeepers to keep them from publishing for a particular device. There is only one logical copy of every file.
The 'walled garden' approach does not work. Why should we accept to have multiple devices each with their own formats and marketplace?
Facebook is preventing young people from re-inventing themselves. They are so busy maintaining a representation of themselves that they don't have time and have too much at stake to change.
To much 'meanness' and 'me-ness'. We need to design systems that are not so ego-driven.

There's so much I'm probably forgetting but I didn't have my usual Evernote application open because of his opening request. Besides he was talking so fast there's no way I could have kept up. And he sped up as time went on.

Okay that's it for today. So much for just highlights. One more half day tomorrow. I head back mid-afternoon.

A song for this post.

More for less (day 198)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:50:00 +0000

A full day today. I was more familiar with the lay of the sxsw land so things were a bit more relaxed. One of the things I realized yesterday was that I couldn't really tweet and listen at the same time. I might be lacking that gene (or decade). So I decided to listen and take notes in Evernote of the moment that were more, well, notable. I retweeted a few things that agreed with my own observations -- a kind of second-hand or amplified tweet.

First a few comments I forgot about yesterday.

A few more Ze Frank projects that were interesting: angrigami, re-enactment of baby pictures (can't find a link to this!), his suggestion that we all re-enact habitual childhood walks on Google Street View or Bing Street Level.
Danah Boyd mentioned sharing more to gain privacy, in the context of celebrities. If they don't share enough they get more scrutiny.
Robert Fabricant posits that people respond better to badges than graphs when it comes to personal information presentation. Someone in the audience asked how far the game metaphor is going to go. Will we wake up early and get 5 points, exercise and get 10 points, etc? It's starting to feel a bit like a Brave New World. I've been using FourSquare during the conference and I've unlocked one badge. It seemed kind of random and even though I am checking in to places it still feels a bit forced. Perhaps if I was competing within a group, I would be more motivated.

A attended five sessions today. The first was a session on storytelling by Dr. Sanjay Gupta & Suneel Gupta who spoke about the Kahani movement which collects stories of (mostly) South Asian people. A the beginning of their talk I was expecting something so completely different that I didn't fully grasp the impact of community-based collection of stories. I liked the way they presented the material and the heartfelt responses they got from the audience. As they talked I remembered a sunny afternoon in Montreal when my dad told me stories I had never heard before. It felt like an unlikely moment and I wondered why I'd never even thought to ask. We spend so much time with our parents we think we know them. I liked how the Gupta brothers were asking us to look again.

The next session was by Michele Bowman, on cartography. She presented a series of maps combined with data collection. The ones that stood out for me were:

Then I went to a conversation with Michel Gondry who is always a pleasure to hear. I'm not sure if he was kidding (probably) but he seemed to have a particular sensitivity to people leaving the room while he was talking. They showed a clip of his music video fully made from yarn, incredible (can't find the link but will post it when/if I do). The thing that stood out for me was his very relaxed manner and the way that he seems to fully inhabit a creative world. When asked by someone in the audience to answer the question "what would you do to someone who wouldn't stop talking during one of your films" he mumbled a few words about not doing anything to them but then quickly jumped in to an anecdote about having shushed a crowd during a performance where he was playing music with his girlfriend. He then expanded on this and said it might be nice to create 'shush' units that could be installed on the theatre seats and remote-controlled by the filmmaker.

Then I went to see Valerie Casey's keynote. It was a call for interactive people to be responsible to sustainable practices. She said many things that were interesting including "when will be stop thinking that less bad is good enough?" Implored people to employ systems thinking. Said that we are all operating at the pleasure of the systems we are part of.

I also saw a panel on crowdsourcing and emotional gaming, neither of which made a big impression. Plus it's getting late here. If I feel more generous tomorrow I'll add some comments.

A song for this post.

Alone in a crowd with content (day 197)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:53:00 +0000

Crowds and crowds and lineups and free food and free drinks and loud music and people moving in streams. It reminded me of the dot com days but this time the crowd was much more mixed. Some from those days and some younger, and a mix of men and women.   A big emphasis on social media. Almost too much. It's somewhat suspicious in its pervasiveness. Like we're praising at the altar. This too reminded me of the bubble ten years ago. A constant consumerism vibe with products being offered as we travel from venue to venue. Even the 'we can end this' campaign had to adopt a similar tactic to get attention. Because in a place where distraction is the mode of being, attention is currency. Very little eye contact. Most people had their eyeballs on their screens.

For me the most exhausting thing was being alone in a crowd. I didn't see anyone I knew but I laughed and was frustrated with them, and read their tweets. I felt strange about going to parties alone and this made the lineups that much more daunting. So I came home to my new hotel which is a far cry from the Hilton where I spent the first night.   I asked Yelp to tell me where to eat and ended up at this Lebanese cubicle in a strip mall. Context is everything. Yes it's a 4 star in this neighbourhood, no doubt.

So what about content in this chaos? I'm happy to say there is some content. I attended a talk on design for awareness that had some interesting points about how to created a state of augmented mindfulness. It's too bad the talk was not well attended. From the tweets, I know that people were in the iPad panel. Robert Fabricant of Frog Design gave a great talk on how data collection and presentation can motivate people into making changes. He exemplified the challenge by showing someone craving fried chicken at time t, and not wanting diabetes at time t+x -- we are not temporally consistent in our desires. It is possible both want fried chicken and not want diabetes because they are not immediately and not completely correlated. That, and the fact that habits are physically compelling, make changing things really really hard.   Fabricant talked of the design challenges in convincing people to collect data (if it's not automatic), convince them to spend time with the reporting, and then make sure they know what to do, and then help them make the change. Enough to keep designers busy for a while.

Also attended a talk by Danah Boyd, on privacy and publicity. She had lots to say on the equivalence of privacy and control. That people may be more public but it does not mean they want to be publicized. She also talked about the privilege of being able to share and the crowd's rejection of some, and the fear of some. Hiding is sometimes a necessity and in a pinch this is hard to do if you're all over the web. She didn't take any questions.

The last talk of the day was a conversation with Ze Frank which was entertaining, heart-warming, and bemusing. Ze is a funny man. I'd say he's joyful and human but sometimes his entertaining side gets the better of him. When he was in balance he was amazing. I'd say this talk/interview/performance was the best I saw today. I laughed and cried. I loved his 'children songs for adults series' -- one about being scared and another for when you're overwhelmed. I thought it was interesting that he made these in response to request from his followers and with the help of his followers in the case of the second one. There was a kind of vulnerability that I thought was really sweet...perhaps the best of social media. Someone in the audience asked him if there was a limit to the world going faster and faster. Were we going to reach a breaking point. He was very dismissive of her question which I found surprising. He switched into making fun at her expense. It's too bad. I think it's an interesting question because it begs all kinds of questions -- how are things faster? Are we doing more things? Thinking more things? Being asked more things? Are any of these things controllable? Is everyone's life faster? Faster than what? What happens if we refuse to go faster? There are so many directions to take this question. Perhaps it's worth a panel on its own. I think she asked the question to the wrong crowd.

A song for this post.

Going Sou' (day 195)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:58:00 +0000

SXSW. I've heard of it. Now it's time to see what the fuss is about. I've shared my nervousness about it with some people. I've been to enough conferences to know that the big media ones are confusing and made for people who love the special kind of freedom that comes from chaos, drink, and unfamiliar surroundings. I can be that person. Or I can feel so lost that the only thing I can think about is getting back to my hotel room to read a good reference book. It seems to depend solely on the company I keep or don't keep.

I admit I have not done enough homework to even know where to go when I wake up on Saturday. Hopefully before then I'll have cozied up to the schedule and intuited the best coolest things to take in. The tools are there: fill up your my.schedule, gather info by pointing your iphone at coded designs, etc, etc. Being social is the what of this conference it seems. I'll be looking to my friend Alex for some tips, right after I load up my phone with the proper apps and have double-booked all the slots in my.schedule. Always better to start from a baseline before hitting up the experts.

And whatever happens, at least I get the sun for a sweet few days.

A song for this post.

Click away (day 194)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:35:00 +0000

Sometimes one more click doesn't cut it. Sometimes the unreal nature of digital communications gets louder than the real connections they are supposed to represent. Emails come in. Some get answered. Others sit in uncomfortable silence unable to generate a coherent response or be discarded. As the life stream goes by they scroll off the screen and the silence becomes the response. Sometimes they come back and do not take nothing for an answer. Emails go out. Some are answers and wish to be final. Some are missives and wish to be answered but are forgotten until the response comes. Some are FYIs and are confused when they elicit a response. Whole days go by where the conversations with people in the flesh are greatly outnumbered by those with people never seen. Eventually, the immediacy of digital communication gets confused for the efficiency of information surfing. A manic clicking fest has left a mass of waiting and frustration. Many conversations are in the air. Typing them will always be slower and that's why there needs to be many in the air. It's not more productive, it's the same. Except for one crucial difference: sometimes all the answers come at once and trigger a slight panic at seeing the day's end without an empty daybox. It's the feed for the involuntary scroll out. The drama of the inbox never ceases. It's a soap opera with the same characters and different actors. Apparently younger people don't do email. The drama has no doubt mutated to infect another medium.

I needed time away from the the clicks. I'm back now. I think.

A song for this post.

Alive in a cemetery (day 190)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:32:00 +0000

Just got back from the fourth installment of Paul Wong's 5 Projects. This time it was at the MountainView cemetery. For some reason before I went there I had visions of Halloween with spooky soundtracks and disturbing images. It wasn't that at all. Turns out Paul has a fascination with death in a way that I can relate to. There were 16 works in total, each really interesting. Some highlights:

Vigil 5.2 - Video documentation of Rebecca Belmore's performance at the Talking Stick Festival in 2002. She wrote the names of the missing women in the DTES on her body and screamed out their names then ripped the leaves and petals off of flowers with her mouth. She also nailed her dress to a pole and ripped it free. Repeatedly. A lot of grief.
60 Unit; Bruise - First colour video from Western Front, 1976. Paul Wong and Kenneth Fletcher exchange blood. The video was shown at Kenneth's grave site. He committed suicide two years after the video was shot.
in ten sity - an intense dance piece shot from above a padded room where bodies throw themselves about the room and each other. Dedicated to Kenneth Fletcher. It was projected on a petal-covered sheet underneath a tree. A lot of grief and frustration and energy.
Burka - slide show of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The slide show was projected on the wall, with a woman (mannequin) in a burka looking at it, lit from the inside. She is standing on what seems like traditional carpets but upon closer inspection there were woven guns and war machinery on them. The soundtrack is a machine voice. I wasn't able to quite make out what it was saying. It was interesting to see all the faces. Some looked very disconnected and dead even while alive. Others looked completely normal and happy.
Hungry Ghosts - A five channel piece about death. Different types of deaths, rituals around death, talk around death, violent death, natural death. A really touching piece.

Many other interesting pieces. The setting of the cemetery was really amazing. This was the best of the projects so far in my opinion. Everything worked really well together. I'm glad I went and gave it some time.

A song for this post.

The promise of compromise (day 189)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:49:00 +0000

The search for a portable S3D continued yesterday and today. Some incredibly useful people helped narrow down the search including Michael Verity, Vic Love, and Chris Lakes. There is no perfect solution out there but in the interest of time and future intrepid field stereographers of the S3D Centre, I had to make a decision. I settled on a system by Inition which integrates lower end but narrow Sony HVR-A1 cameras on a side by side rig, a LANC sync method, and a 3D preview monitor. The total weight should be around 30lbs but I'm missing some info to give a precise number. I think this system will be a nice complement to the full-featured Kerner rig with Sony HDC-P1 cameras.

All this last minute shopping has made me realize how much I hate making decisions. Yes, I'm a director and making decisions should be easy by now but sometimes knowing that there is no perfect solution is really heart-breaking. Or knowing you don't have the right people for the job but strategically you still need to go ahead and hope the right people show up. And seeing everyone else's press releases on the same things you are working on and wondering how you'll ever stand out in the crowd. I find comfort in logistics but just like cooking, there's no point being precise without a plan for all the food to complement each other. This is where a good team comes in. And I do have a good team. Shout outs to Rob Inkster, Alexandra Samuel, Dawn Whitworth, Lynn Leboe, Shannon McKinnon, Morgan Brayton, Simon Overstall, Rick Overington, and Bobbi Kozinuk!

A song for this post.

A 3D you can lift (day 187)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:19:00 +0000

bacterial update: I'm waiting for my tea to cool down so I can put the kombucha mushroom in it. It's important not to shock the mushroom. Usually I spend time worrying about things getting cold. It's amazing how long it actually takes for things to cool down. I've been underestimating all this time. Next time I'll plan a bit better. When I did a taste test today, I realized that I had to bottle the current batch before it went way too acidic. So it was a bit of a mad rush around the kitchen to get everything organized. I think this batch ended up with a bit too much yeast. It's not as good as the previous one. And the mushroom didn't form as quickly or get as thick either. Hopefully this next batch is a bit more healthy. I also realized that I need to buy a jar with a spigot. That way I don't disturb the mushroom formation when I need to test the pH. These used to be so popular in the early 80s because of Sun Tea. You'd think they'd be a dime a dozen. But a quick look at the Kitchen Store didn't yield any loot. The Happy Herbalist does sell some containers with spigots but they are twice as large as what I currently have. With the size of my kitchen I can't really fit anything bigger than a gallon jar.

I spent the day looking for portable stereoscopic 3D solutions. They are harder to find than I thought. Panasonic just came out with a twin lens solution but it's not really available yet and has limitations like fixed inter-axial distance. Still at 6.6 lbs it's an amazing solution for quick field work. Other than that, it's really a DIY market out there. I love the little Iconix cameras but the issue with those (besides the steep price) is getting small diameter matched lenses. It would be so great to have such small cameras to work with not just because of the lower weight but also to shoot in confined space or at close range. Love knows no bounds and I will find a way. I've also been looking the 3DFilmFactory rigs for smaller side by side setups. The ideal setup would be a system where everything fits in a backpack, is less than 30 lbs and runs on batteries. I remember seeing pictures of Ansel Adams and all the gear he use to lug up mountains in Yosemite. Not sure how much weight he had but it probably wasn't much more than that. I have to have some sort of defined shopping list by tomorrow morning. I've put out lots of leads out there, hopefully some of them pan out.

A song for this post.

To spawn or not to spawn (day 186)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:06:00 +0000

Recently a book review in the Globe and Mail caught my eye, and the eye of many others. It became one of the most shared articles for the week. The book? No Kids - 40 good reasons not to spawn. It caught my eye because I'm quite ambivalent about having kids but deep down I think "but everyone says it's so wonderful, am I missing out?" It was actually refreshing to hear a woman say "I had kids and I regret it". I haven't read the book and judging by the review it may be quite deliberately provocative. Still it's a voice that's not often heard.
Corrine Maier wrote the book in reaction to a policy push in France to promote higher birth rates. Apparently the policy worked. But the author claims many have been duped into procreation by a baby marketing drive. She is there to prevent that from spreading.

She took a pretty big beating in the comments section particularly because she apparently gave a copy of the book to her two children (who can read). I'm assuming they've been around her antics long enough not to pay too much attention. Love is in the details. Nonetheless, it will make for some good stories later on.

I think having kids is like winning the lottery. If you were happy before, you'll be happy after. If you were miserable before you'll be miserable after. Same thing when the bio-clock stops. There's no point agonizing over what could have been or resenting your own life. So, as much as I admire Corinne for having written the book, I think a pros and cons kind of list doesn't really cut it when it comes to kids.

For reference, here are the 40 reasons:

The desire for children: A false aspiration.
Childbirth is torture.
Don't become a travelling feeding bottle.
Continue to amuse yourself.
Subway-job-kids: No thank you!
Hold onto your friends.
Do not adopt the idiot language we use to address children.
To open the nursery is to close the bedroom.
Child, the killer of desire.
They are the death knell of the couple.
To be or to make: You shouldn't have to choose.
The child is a kind of vicious dwarf, of an innate cruelty.
It is conformist.
Children are too expensive.
You become an ally of capitalism.
They will destroy your time and your freedom.
The worst drudgery for the parents.
Do not be deceived by the notion of the ideal child.
You will inevitably be disappointed by your child.
To become a merdeuf (soccer mom) - what horror!
Parenting above all else - no thanks.
Block your professional path with children.
Families: They are horror and cruelty.
Don't fall into an overgrown childhood.
To persist in saying "me first" is a badge of courage.
A child will kill the fond memories of your childhood.
You will not be able to prevent yourself from wanting your child to be happy.
Child care is a set of impossible dilemmas.
School: a prison camp with which you'll have to make a pact.
To raise a child, but toward what kind of future?
Flee from the benevolent blandness.
Parenting will make you soft.
Motherhood is a trap for women.
To be a mother, or to succeed: You must choose.
When the child appears, the father disappears.
The child of today must be a perfect child: a brave new world.
Your child will be in constant danger from pedophiles and pornographers.
Why contribute to a future of unemployment and social exclusion?
There are too many children in the world.
Turn your back on the ridiculous rules of the "good" parent.

Two songs for this post.
One for the adventure without kids.
One for the adventure with kids.
Same artist.

Kinda over (day 185)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:13:00 +0000

I wonder why the Para-Olympics are treated so differently than the Olympics. I also wonder why women are not allowed to ski jump in the Olympics. Those two things seem like they belong in the same category. It didn't seem right to me that the closing ceremonies should be held, and the flame extinguished only to be lit again. I'm not sure of all the complexities of having the Para-Olympics but perhaps one solution is to fully integrate the two so they take place simultaneously. The whole party lasts a bit longer and both get the recognition they deserve. As it is, we're in a no man's land of Olympics. Closing ceremonies have happened but some Pavilions are still up and the Live sites are still there (at least the Yaletown one is). We have to wait for a couple weeks before the Para-Olympics start. The good thing is, we have a second chance at the closing ceremonies. Maybe theirs will have good music.

While we wait, a joke I heard from my friend Alex:

Mukmuk! Who's there? Miga. Miga who? Mukmuk! Who's there? Quatchi. Quatchi who? Mukmuk!Who's there? Sumi VANOC, it's just a joke

A song for this post.

Busy not being (day 183)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 07:23:00 +0000

I overheard someone talk about her realization that she was living someone else's life. She talked of getting married early ("you were married?") and building an image of what she thought others wanted to see ("you know?"). She divorced, went to art school and learned to do and say what she really feels ("that sounds great"). I didn't turn around to see how old she was. The sound of her voice was mid-thirties. I had the urge to ask her how she knows she's not still living up to an image. There are so few genuine people. I could still hear fear in her voice.

A song for this post.

A gift of poetry and song (day 181)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:32:00 +0000

I don't even want to write about the K'naan concert for fear of ruining the memory. It was so amazing. He gave generously, humbly, with incredible energy. That guy has so much life force he seems immortal. We need more like him. K'naan for prime minister.

A song for this post.

Life is a battelfield (day 180)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:53:00 +0000

I saw the movie The Hurt Locker last night. I'm not sure what I think about it. I experienced a kind of boredom and confusion throughout, like it wasn't fitting into any trope I was expecting except maybe a video game. No soundtrack makes it deadpan. Camera manipulation is slightly reminiscent of a home movie. No story arc aside from the guy who's afraid to die and indirectly involves an unprepared officer in a dangerous situation. The thread is a macho bomb diffuser who can't get enough.

I know I'm supposed to like it because it's directed by a woman and for a war film that's doubly amazing. But honestly I didn't feel it. If I'd had to guess I would have said 'directed by a man'. I know I'm supposed to like it because it's a different kind of war film that is more 'real'. I agree that it's different. I'm not sure it's more real. We are still only shown Americans doing their jobs. I agree that it doesn't glorify war in the same way but in the end, the macho dude goes back to war because it's the only thing he loves. I guess that ending is easier because he's a bomb diffuser, not just another soldier asked to kill or be killed. Before he goes back to war we are shown the comparison between choosing cereal in a large fluorescent-lit mostly empty supermarket, and diffusing a bomb. Yes life is mundane sometimes but seriously, choosing cereal is not representative. Then we are shown his son and the implication in the monologue is that he does not love him. Yet the admission doesn't even seem callous because the baby is not of talking age yet, and the soldier shows almost no emotion. The last shot of him returning to war again reminds me of a video game.

There is seemingly no value judgment about the war itself. I would argue that making no value judgment leaves it to the default of the war film genre -- war is necessary and aren't our soldiers brave. The fact that war is incredibly traumatic for all soldiers in the field has never been in question. I don't think we need a film to bring that fact home. What we need is a film that makes us think about why it's ok for a country to ask its countrymen to get a gun, put themselves at risk, and potentially kill someone. In any other situation, killing results in life in prison. So yes there is a big difference between regular life and war, but it's not found in the grocery aisle.

A song for this post.

Desire for innovation (day 179)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:14:00 +0000

I was on a panel about innovation today. Alex asked me to be on the panel yesterday after someone else cancelled. I was a bit panicky at the idea of speaking about innovation because the word has been so overused that I can barely get a grasp on it. It seems to be a word we use when we mean "something new that will make me lots of money" when really it should be more like "something new that makes life better for a lot of people". Either way, it's simplistic and trite to add it onto practically every company and product and high-up person out there.

Things get even more murky when we delve in to 'newness'. I've blogged about this before. As we become more public and engaged with each other, the origin of new is harder to pinpoint. Indeed, companies have stiff competition in the innovation business -- their clients. An example is Napster as innovation coming from the user base. It made life more pleasant for millions of music lovers and it did not come from the music industry. What businesses can do is take an innovative product created by the user base and stabilize it, bring to it innovation in the business model, and give a platform for spin-off right back to the user base. Value accrues for everyone. I'd say Apple did half of that with iTunes. Google does the other half. Together they'd be unbeatable. But that is not to be.

As to the origin of innovation, the juicy word of the day is 'desire'. I think it is the real driver. Not technology, not money...desire. It's that longing for something better, something else, the constant craving that kd sings so well about. It exploits technology but technology is not the root. Imagination is the fuel of desire, play is the catalyst. If we are willing to imagine something else, something better and play at creating far out scenarios and start prototyping, soon enough there will be innovation. The issue is that often we are fearful that freedom of thought will distract us from the 'real business' at hand. I get the protection instinct, particularly for small companies struggling to maintain their hold in a market. But I think a company that forgets the spark that started it is doomed to boredom and ultimately, failure.

A song for this post.

One for the birds (day 178)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:31:00 +0000

I mentioned the birds yesterday. They are so loud and diverse sometimes that I feel like I'm surrounded, like I'm in a steam bath of birdsong. I can't hear anything else. What I didn't mention is that someone on twitter told me that a biologist friend of theirs says that half the bird calls are warnings. I was shocked by this. Could it be that what sounds like joyful songs to me are actually cries of fear? Could I be so oblivious? But I shook it off. It's highly unlikely that this is the case because that would mean that a large flock of birds is not moving from their tree despite being in a perpetual state of panic. If it's so frightful to be there surely they'd find another spot. I have seen them panic when an eagle flies by. The songs stop and only a few call and then they leave or go in pursuit. Needless to say this reasoning was too long for 140 characters, so I let the tweet go unreplied.

I recorded some of the birds on Friday. Here is an excerpt. Hopefully I don't get a comment from a biologist telling me these birds are utterly unhappy and predicting a stock market crash.

A song for this post.

party culture (day 177)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:17:00 +0000

It was great having family visit for the weekend. They came for the olympics and in so doing gave us the closest thing to olympic fever we'll experience. We went downtown, visited some of the houses, cheered with strangers, and bought noisemakers. And there was lots of food and drink. An exhausting but perfect weekend.

Taking a bit of a social break, we saw Robert Lepage's "The Blue Dragon" this afternoon. It was an amazing production with a surprisingly delightful ending. The pace was flawless and the sets and effects breathtaking. I enjoyed myself immensely. The story was real. Nothing glamorous or saturated. Just people struggling to be happy and trying to find home. There were only three actors but the setting felt full nonetheless. Impressive.

By far the best part of the weekend though was being surrounded by the sound of birds in the morning. They were loving the sun and so were we.

A song for this post.

Seeing the sites (day 176)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:40:00 +0000

bacterial update: I think I nearly killed my kombucha scoby. To brew the new batch I used the baby from the previous batch. It may have been too thin when I put it in because when I looked at it on Thursday it was looking kinda strange (lots of tiny bubbles on the surface...kinda of like scoby acne) and the smell was intense, quite yeasty and vinegary at the same time. Surfing a bit on the happyherbalist site I started having a suspicion that the yeasts were taking over because there wasn't enough bacteria in my scoby to compete. Luckily I had saved the momma. Yesterday I did a switch. Things seem much better now (for both of them). Not sure what this means for the current brew or the new baby that will form. Perhaps I'll keep brewing with the momma for a few batches until I build up two good-sized scobys. After things going so well the last time, I felt a bit brought back down to earth.
I offered some of my Pu-Erh kombucha to my brother and his brother-in-law (who brews his own beer and cider). They both loved the taste but said the nose could use some help. Perhaps the pH was a little too low because they both pointed to a slight vinegar smell.
And in other news, I now have a few kombucha followers on twitter. It's a little community forming.

It's hard to believe CODE Live closes tomorrow. It's been such a huge success and I wish it would continue for another week (btw, I recommend seeing the CODE motion pictures online). I did manage to get to the Vancouver Public Library CODE Live 3 site today finally. I really loved it. The video installation outside is a very interesting set up with low benches and logs and built-in speakers into a large wooden structure that also encompasses the screen. Even though it was a bright sunny day I could still see the video and the sounds was excellent. I watched about 20 minutes of fun quirky sport related videos before I went in to see the rest of the exhibition. I had seen documentation of David Rokeby's piece 'Seen' but seeing it live was a completely different experience. It was fascinating to see the patterns of movement and stillness in the library space. To see the flow lines of people in and out even though it was really quiet when I was there. I then went down to see 'Sacred Touch' by Ranjit Makkuni from India. This may have been the most memorable experience I've had of CODE Live. Maybe it was partially my state of mind or the fact that I was alone in the exhibit. I was touched by the blend of spirituality and technology that was done in such a basic and grounded way. Particularly charming was a rotating screen interface mounted on an embossed silver base. As I walked around the post, rotating the screen, a panorama of the Ganges was revealed with occasionally triggered snippets of text and video. Having been to Nepal I was viscerally reminded of the prayer wheels and the ritualistic circumambulation of the temples. The experience was varied enough on each turn that I did several full rotations. There was another screen showing some textile and object interfaces to interactive media. I loved the interfaces requiring prolonged touch of symbols embroidered or printed onto fabric. There was also an egg-like object with buttons that was quite compelling. The whole exhibit felt really embodied and I felt good as I left the Vancouver Public Library, as if I'd visited a new place.

Other highlights for today were seeing acrobat acts at the Quebec House, and going on a video bus ride as part of Paul Wong's 5 projects. I'm still digesting the video bus ride a bit but the part that stood out the most was the juxtaposition of spectacles of real and imagined horror. For example, a mash-up of scene from "Snakes on a Plane" where Paul startles us with rubber snakes, followed by a news report of the horror of Tim McLean's death where Paul retroactively startles us by selling Nestea and toilet paper (the choice buys of the killer) before we got on the bus. It ends with a video of the aftermath of a car crash with the sound of one of the car horns blaring for the duration -- a sort of anxiety inducing virtual rubber-necking.

A song for this post.

Listening exhaustion (day 173)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:03:00 +0000

too much talking
speechless
housekeeping the cure
and excuse

A song for this post.

Purpose in gloom (day 172)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:33:00 +0000

Another day of strategic planning. Not as exhausting today. Just like yesterday the facilitator led us through a visualization to get us in the right frame of mind to think about what things might be like in five years. I came face to face with my pretty gloomy view of the future. In my vision, the air was more polluted, people were more worried, and there was a general sense of urgency to do something. The good part is that people were doing something. So it was gloomy but purposeful. The new campus had lots of green spaces including gardens, it had big open sunny studios, and there was more interaction between faculty and students as a matter of life on campus.

Something that came up a lot during discussion is the distinction between research and teaching and how much they can be brought together before each are compromised. I come from a system where the distinction is quite stark -- research is done by Faculty and graduate students, outside of teaching in sacred research spaces. Sometimes undergraduate students are brought in as Research Assistants. Now I'm being nudged to see if things could be different. The issue is that teaching has to do with breadth and research has to do with depth. They have different goals. And there is also the issue of numbers. There are many more undergraduates than there are Faculty and grads. It's unclear how they could be integrated without decreasing the quality of the research. And let's face it, not every undergraduate will want to go into research. Perhaps the scenario of research in pedagogy is the most obvious one to think about. This type of research needs a willing student body to experiment with and greatly benefits from their input.

Tomorrow, no strategic planning.

A song for this post.

Blue jackets and red scarves (day 171)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:55:00 +0000

bacterial update: I bottled the Pu-Erh Kombucha last night. It tastes really good, like a nice sweet wine. I'm still amazed that this transformation can happen. I mean I love Pu-Erh tea on its own, but its transformation to kombucha is nothing short of a marvel. I'm wanting it to carbonate a bit so I'm leaving it at room temperature for a while. I'm a little nervous about bottles shattering or the tea shooting up to the ceiling after I open a bottle.   I might chicken out and open one tonight to test the level of carbonation and see how much longer I have before the gamble of one more day is just foolish.

I was part of a group strategic planning session today. Interaction in a group is not my favourite dynamic but the facilitator was exceptional and I feel we got a lot done. Still the day was long. I left the school late and entered the GI zone.   Being hit by the Olympics group dynamic just about put me over the edge of normal social behaviour. Suddenly everyone around me was wearing 'the colours', were on vacation, quite likely buzzed, and caught up in their small group universe.   Under normal circumstances I might have just weaved in and out of such groups but today I just wanted to pop everyone's bubble. Bah hum bug.

I just ate. I feel better.

I've never been one for team spirit.   I am committed to the groups I belong to but always lurking is a skepticism about mob behaviour. I even have an aversion to Facebook groups. We do silly things if enough unreasonable people are making it normal.   I wonder though, are the people that easily lose themselves in the team happier? Do they feel like they belong? Like they are surfing with the waves of the tribe? What differentiates the people that can lose themselves in the team and those that can't? I can't even picture myself cheering a hockey team genuinely. Doesn't seem to be something that can be taught. Yet I've heard that we are all subject to mob mentality given the right conditions. Maybe I have an instinctive aversion to the likely conditions. Not yet curious enough to experiment with this.

A song for this post.

Coming through in waves (day 169)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:42:00 +0000

bacterial update: The kombucha is ready to bottle. I tested the pH and it's perfect but I found the sweetness still a little too high. I left some for Steve to try and he loved it. He had me fill one bottle for him. He put it in the fridge and I later tasted it. For some reason it didn't taste as sweet when chilled. This is a bit puzzling but familiar too -- warm fruit juice also tastes sweeter. Anyway, I think it'll be a nice compromise to bottle it tomorrow.
I fed some of the extra Kefir grains to my cat, and threw away the rest. They are just multiplying so quickly. Steve was starting to compare me to an old lady with 50 cats. I got ruthless.
My friend Tara pointed me to this podcast about fermenters. It's a good listen.

Today was a boring chore day. The most exciting thing I did is try Kefir with Muesli (delicious). But not wanting to spread the boredom I'll resurrect a piece of research that I find interesting, especially for the Breath I/O project, and perhaps for interface designers too.

Apparently our awareness can be entrained to a rhythm. Researchers at the University of Illinois discovered that you could induce awareness of otherwise masked stimulus by entraining with a regular rhythm and letting the masked stimulus fall where a beat would have been (details). I'm now thinking that breathing rhythms may be something to exploit in this way. Perhaps having usually undetectable visuals appear at a particular interval related to the breath. I'm not sure of the limits of this study (they were using very fast rhythmic patterns, to the tune of 12Hz). It's possible what I'm describing would be beyond the range of the effect they observed. I'm also wondering about trance music. Might we become more aware in a rhythmic trance? Castanada can only be around the corner.

A song for this post.

And so it begins (day 168)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:19:00 +0000

Well that was that.   I joined the millions (?) who streamed the opening ceremonies. I wasn't going to. There was an event at the Candahar Bar that I wanted to go to but my exhausted self won the argument and voted for a retreat homeward. Once home, the pull of the stream was irresistible. I had heard from Rob who attended the dress rehearsal for the ceremonies that it was amazing and I was curious. The best part of streaming were the simultaneous tweets coming in from others who were watching. Now I understand the push for TVs to have twitter feeds as a feature. Especially because the ceremonies were something I could watch while doing other things and twitters were a reminder that something interesting might be happening.

I enjoyed parts of the ceremony like the athlete entrance, the fiddle players and tap dancers, spoken word by Shane Koyczan, and k.d. lang. I know this will sound a bit strange but I thought there was way too much use of projections and lights. If there was any controversy about the power used for Vectorial Elevation, it should now have found another target. The stream ended abruptly before the cauldron arrived on the scene so I actually have no idea what the malfunction was all about and how it all ended. Who knew the word cauldron would become so searchable on Twitter.

One of the odd things about television is how they have to keep moving. Even during the minute of silence for the Georgian Luge athlete who died, they just kept on showing images every few seconds. It was a very unfortunate choice. Shouldn't the images have observed a moment of silence too? And after the minute of silence, there was no closure. No 'thank you'. No 'you may sit down'. Just a continuation of the show.   Sometimes I think we add these moments of silence without actually understanding what they're for.

I was very happy to see all the athletes march in. They seemed so happy. I was happy for them. I felt my mood lift.   I didn't get national pride. I just put out a wish that one day we'll do this without an overhang of inequality and war.

A song for this post.

Wanting more (day 167)

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Lantin) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:17:00 +0000

I attended a talk by Bruce Alexander today. He's a professor of psychology at SFU, and recently wrote a book called The Globalisation of Addiction. He's been studying addiction for over 30 years and brought up some interesting points about the mechanisms of addiction, or insatiability as he prefers to call it. First he makes a distinction between insatiability and exuberance. Both have excess as a characteristic but differ in the feeling experienced by the person exhibiting the behaviour and the person witnessing the behaviour. As he puts it "Exuberance gives you a contact high. Insatiability gives you a contact low". I suppose the line is fine and that one can certainly morph into the other. I remember a line in the animation Ryan where one of the characters talks about the first flush of addiction being highly creative, productive, and attractive. Often the language around the behaviour can identify the deeper motivation of the action. He gave an example of Lady Gaga exhibiting insatiability behaviours not only because of what she does (which could just be exuberance) but also how she talks about it ("if I lost [this fame], I would die"). I think we've all been around a person who drinks and crosses the line from exuberance to insatiability. There a moment where discomfort enters the room. We're all slightly embarrassed and fascinated at the same time.

The even more interesting part of his talk was when he started talking about the origin of insatiability. Gabor Mate who also works in the Downtown Eastside claims that addicts are there because they were abused as children, didn't get what they needed and got lots they didn't need. Bruce Alexander contests this by saying, there are many children who have had completely normal childhoods but end up in the DTES, and many who have had horrendous childhoods but are not addicts. He also contests Gabor's claim that the brain cannot really recover from a faulty wiring that happened because of the abuse, saying that half of the addicts in the DTES are able to kick their habit. So he fundamentally rewrites the equation of addiction by saying that the dysfunctional behaviour is present before the addiction is. He further claims that the dysfunctional behaviour is caused by a massive dislocation, a fragmentation of society. The insatiability comes from a need for community that has been lost and that we try to fulfill with other things which never work.

Unfortunately, I had to leave before the end of the talk but I'm intrigued enough to pick up his book. I know he takes the position that the war on drugs is not working and he is pro-legalization. I'm not sure what other changes he proposes. I recently heard Gabor Mate discussing the war on drugs, saying "the war on drugs is a war on people". And he's right. When has a war ever brought more health? The war is worse than the drug. Especially if it leads to more community fragmentation.

A song for this post.