Journaled!

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog used this photo from my "remix" set to illustrate an article on "the medical equivalent of bubble wrap. I placed a statement in the set that you were free to use these to remix in your own art without credit. I had applied a creative commons attribution license to them as it was the most liberal flickr would allow.

My thinking was that as long as it was an element or a texture, go ahead and use it. I did put in some language to the effect, don't try to pass it off as your own. I never imagined anyone wanting to use any of these as an illustration in their own right! The Wall Street Journal editor who used my photo generously credited me and pointed back to my flickr photo, for which I am grateful. In fact I'm excited that it might draw somebody to my stream.

It was a lesson for me also, on licensing. I stated on the page:
"Feel free to remix. All I ask is that you don't sell it as is. You are free to sell your own artwork which incorporates it. Just don't be a troll."

I didn't want someone profiting strictly by stealing. I didn't even think someone might want to use it by itself. I'll need to keep that in mind when choosing licenses for anything, that I have any reservations about use.

365 Self Portraits Week 5

Day 29 - Party



Had a hard time getting anything done, with a kid staying home sick, and generally getting off to a bad start. My wife talked me into meeting her with the kids at a company holiday party (In JANUARY!) and it pretty much salvaged the day. So you are stuck with pretty much the only self portrait I shot today.



Day 30 - Rest before Activity





I know, lots of people have askd me (winking) "what kind of activity?" Well, really I just felt like changes are coming and I am preparing for them.

Day 31 - Toes



Unable to face myself today. You are probably going to learn a lot about me, like my twisty toes.

Day 32 - Legs



I had a pretty full day, so didn't get around to the 365 till late. Wasn't happy with anything I did so I got desparate rolling around naked with my camera.

Day 33 - Solar Corona



Busy day, filled in as a Sunday school teacher, Worked out and went to a super bowl party, Where I fooled around and came up with this. Too tired now to do more.

Day 34 - Voyeur



Every photographer is a voyeur, invited or uninvited. I caught myself taking this picture through a window of a "hygenic" nail place where the employees were kindof medical uniforms. I'm not sure why they are absurdly short skirts. I felt very naughty taking this.

Day 35 - Frontandback



Wrapping up the week with a multiple exposure Polaroid spectra. You've seen both sides of me now...

365 Self Portraits: Week 4

Here's the weekly update of my project to take a unique self portrait every day this year.

Day 22

This is the goo side of this.

I never finished scanning this one. I feel stupid because I went to see if I could rinse the cruft off, and viola, a nice negative appeared as all the goo washed off. The box didn't say positive negative, but I looked it up and it was. sigh. I've been throwing them away. and the film is discontinued.This is a screen capture from the scanner's preview window. Alas, next time I will take a full scan just in case.

Day 23 - Unclothed

Shot in window light on top of a dresser. Boy it was cold.

Day 24 - Mason and Me

I felt like doing something a little different. Bring one of my loved ones in. Of course it had to be a funky polaroid, expired film.

Day 25 - Hang On

One of the remarkable things about this project is that the face that Ireveal to the camera isn't always the one I plan or expect. I'm not tosure I like the technical details on this one, and the being offbalance, on edge, was not what I was going for. There is truth there.

Day 26 - Nude ascending a staircase

Ok, sometimes I'm just crazy. Walking up nude from my freezing basement. The blur is intentional to keep your eyes safe.

Day 27 - exposed

I saw the sun on the snow, and had this silly idea. Well, first I had to go to the grocery store, fix a snack for girlscouts and then get my gear together. By then the light was rapidly fading, and not much was going right. In the end, I think it's good, because I have to give myself permission to go with whatever I got, or this project will be too much.

Day 28 - Mind Chatter

Multiple exposure Polaroid Spectra. Sometimes I do feel like my mind if full of junk. Oh and yes, I am in there, just look.

 

365 Self Portraits Week 3

Here's the weekly update of my project to take a unique self portrait every day this year.

Day 15

It was quite late. I hadn't blown it yet, but I hadn't prepared anything either. I shot a couple of goofy faces at arms length. Someone on flickr had just commented on this daisy scanner photograph I had put up a long timer ago. Hmmm. I had just read about some new (to me) photoshop techniques, so I played around. It's certainly weird. I particularly like the petals coming out of my nose.

Day 16 Windowlight

I was testing a camera to give to a friend, and decided to do a few polaroid image transfers. Turns out the film I had on hand was way out of date, so the colors were a bit blue and dark, but not bad overall. This is a technique I used a lot in my "professional" artist days. You peel the polaroid after only a few seconds, and place the negative (not the print side) down on another type of paper. I like Rives Arches printmaking paper. I then use a rubber brayer to adhere the emulsion and wait 60-90 sec, and then peel.

Day 17 -mydeskmymind

To say that I have trouble keeping things tidy is an understatement. It's often frustrating and gets in my way. This is a polaroid spectra double exposure.

Day 18

Polaroid Image Transfer on Printmaking paper. There's always a bit of serendipity to these, the bubbles and voids.. Sometimes they run the shot, other times they make them.

Day 19 - Shame

I've put on some weight since the holidays, and the weather turningcrappy, I haven't been running. I've been putting off showing any of mybody, but thought I'd get it over with. Kindly look away. The transfers weren't working (I think the film was too old.) and this was the last piece of spectra film I had.

Day 20 Bliss

An odd, busy, paradoxical, happy day.

Day 21 On waking

My wife says the first thing you do is the only thing you can count on getting done. I've been staying up late doing these, so I set up the camera by the bed to take a picture when I got up. This is me waking up at 6am after getting to bed after 12:30. Good thing I got it out of the way because, either I'm totally out of juice or getting sick so going to bed now, and for once, not doing this at midnight.

365 Self portraits: Week 2

Working on catching up. I think I'm on week 5 now.

Here's the weekly update of my project to take a unique self portrait every day this year.

This second week has really made it clear to me how huge this commitment is! As I usually run out of time every day, I've been doing the portraits at 10 or 11 pm. It definitely has worn down some of my resistance to picking up a camera that has built up with a long absence from photography.



Day 8 Finally daylight

But never one to do anything easy, I darkened the room, sat in my meditation chair and pulled my Pinhole-holga-polaroid contraption close. I then focused on my breathing for 25 minutes.



You always knew I was an alien.The camera for this was a Chinese Holga medium format camera that I ripped the lens off of and replaced with a pinhole. It was taken with a polaroid back (which cost 4x what the camera cost)The film is interesting in that it requires you to sponge on acoater/lacquer to preserve it. Whew done before 3pm. One thing that was interesting about this shot was that I darkened the room hoping it to be the right amount of light, and counting somewhat on serendipity. As I was meditating, the light changed coming from the roller shade, but I just breathed, experienced it, totally prepared to do something else later if it didn't work out.

Day 9

I started the day with another pinhole experiment. I opened the pinhole when I got into the shower, and closed it when I got out about 15 minutes later. Couldn't see more than a ghost, so I had to come up with something else.





I've reconnected with several old (as in since I started flickring) flickr friends through comments on the 365days project. Looking again at their photos, both old and new got me to dig out my spectra. My shower experiment with the pinholga didn't reveal enough of me, so I thought I'd try a different Polaroid.

A tip o' the hat to:

• aikithereska


• rskoon


• DerrickT

Day 10





Well, still in the shower mode, with the spectra. The light was nice, but I knew I was inside the minimum focus distance. I liked it enough anyway and didn't really have anything better. Well, there were a couple of other shower pics:



I kindof liked this, but as I had had several freak shots in a row, I rejected it as my daily selection.

And this one...



I thought was too goofy.

Day 11




I took a shot of my daughter washing her hair, and then double exposed myself on it (remember, these aren't digital, but polaroid instant film.) It turned out to have a lot of tension. Some people seem to find it creepy. Well, if you can't stir the pot a little, you aint no artist!

I have shot more than just self portraits as a result of this project. I took a single image of my daughter and worked it in photoshop to get this:



Which I was pleased with.


Day 12




It ws really late, as you can see from the monumental bags under my eyes. I shot this using my LCD monitor as a light source. The original was in color, and I hated how blotchy my skin looked. I've learned a few tricks about converting to black and white that give much better results than the automatic methods, and I came up with this dramatic pose.

Day 13

Gasho is a Zen gesture of gratitude. I can't seem to wipe the frown off my face lately, so I bow, and give way... a little

Day 14

another spectra double exposure, shirtless with side light. Cropped from the original.

WooHoo! only 50 more weeks to go.

365 Self Portraits: Week 1

Art and photography are very important to me. Unfortunately in recent years, I have been making less and less time for my art. I had heard of groups over at Flickr where the idea was to take one photo a day, no matter what for a whole year. Some of the groups are any photo, and try to have themes for each week (not required) and others are selfportraits only. I joined one of each, but committed to myself to do one selfportrait everyday. This would fulfill the requirements of both groups, and give me the option of doing something different for the non-selfportrait group.

I have done self portraits in the past, but not that many, and I always feel funny doing them. I don't particularly like looking at myself in the mirror, and these days it really underlines the difference in how old I think myself to be and how old I am or am looking.

Here's a recap of the first week:

Day 1.

Actually I got started a day late on Jan 2. Because it's a leap year, I still get to do 365. Ok, nearly missed this one too. Got started at about 11pm. I had these battery powered xmas lights:

Ok, mostly I was glad to have the first one done. Whew!

Day 2

Ok, 11pm again. Well, lets play with fire. And a mirror. Could be fun, could be cliche'.

This one was more technically challenging. I manually adjusted the white balance and set up the tripod and whoops! forgot to turn the flash off:

I debated about using this one, but felt that maybe that was cheating. Using weird effects to draw attention from my ugly mug didn't feel very honest. I ended up using the shot I was going for and eventually got:

Day 3

I don't really know what I was thinking. It was close to midnight and I have this funky color changing Hotei lamp. I didn't feel like setting up lamps and I started playing around and kindof liked the contact illumination. It's kindof cheesy, but I like the colors:

Day 4

I really wanted to do better today, but the shot I set up was socontrived, I'm too embarrassed to show it. No, you really don't want tosee me in an insect mask with glowing eyes created by shoving LEDcandles in the eye sockets...This was taken balancing my camera on my knee while waiting for a movie(Juno) to start. There was nooo light.

I figured it was better to get a blurry underexposed shot done than nothing:

Day 5

Trying to get outside, I finally did, still at night. 9:30 after my Men's group met. I was kindof depressed, decided to let it all hang out. Also, I removed a lot of the color. it was interesting that my head basically remained unchanged after I had turned all but the red channel down. I brought the green back a bit.

Day 6

Didn't get out again. Hmm, will I run out of ideas? I don't know. I've been eye-ing some of our toy robots for a while. Ended up with a me and my Teddy shot. Had fun playing with this one in photoshop.

Day 7

In spite of a beautiful warm day, in which I actually got outside, I ended up waiting until late again. I had tried to do a street shot similar to this but my first attempt went awry and I was underdressed, as the temperature had dropped quite a bit. Ended up making faces while lying in bed. In the Camera LCD, I thought this one looked like Mr. Clean. Gave it my fake Holga treatment in photoshop. Maybe next week, I'll actually use the Holga (a cheap plastic chinese film camera.)

Are you as tired of looking at my face as I am? I've thought several times this week, is this really worth it? Shouldn't I be doing something more productive with my time? Should I really be writing this article?

Well, one day at a time...

Back to Blogger!

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog. I have been blogging, but in a vain attempt to win Money! Fame! Prizes! over at gather.com

It's certainly an interesting community, far more diverse than where I usually hang out, with lots more middle Americans. After a while, the point grubbing got to me. I'll still be updating some content there, but not spending much time there.

What initially attracted me was the fact that it seemed to be a magnet for aspiring writers, and it is true, there's lots of good stuff in the writing contests there. The article editor is pretty easy to use, but the group posting and image browsing are very primitive, especially compared to flickr.

I have earned a $25 Borders gift card, but it seems to rack up the points you have to do a lot of commenting, which, apparently people do, spending lots of time there. Unfortunately, I don't have the time, and even if I did, the wage works out to something like 27 cents an hour, unless you resort to distasteful cut and paste commenting, which I generally equate to spam.

daisy-crop

I've been revisiting some of my scanner photography lately.
It's been interesting to look at parts of the images.

daisy-crop
Originally uploaded by osbock

Creating a readership and attracting a publisher through podcasting

I wrote this little summary for a friend who is trying to get published. I thought I'd share it with my blogging audience (all two of you!)

A growing number of authors, frustrated by the difficulty of getting publishers to even look at their work are turning to podcasting to develop a reader base that then ultimately attracts publishers.

Here's the website of an author (Scott Sigler) who has achieved what I mentioned. If you look to the bottom of the page, you see that his book "Earthcore" is now available in paperback at Amazon.com.
http://www.scottsigler.net/index.html

(By the way, Earthcore is terrific!)


I think his approach is pretty sound:
His own website that acts as a marketing vehicle for his work.
Distribution of the podcast is done through podiobooks.com, which also allows it to be visible through itunes, the most popular podcast feed source.
Also, though the main gameplan is to get a readerbase to convince a publisher, podiobooks also takes donations (guiltware?) and the author gets 75% which is in fact a pretty good percentage. Of course not every listener donates and they don't regulate how much (so it could be $.75)

There are other examples, here are a few that I have personally listened to:
Cory Doctorow
Mur Lafferty
J.C. Hutchins

There's also an article on the New York Times website that covers the movement pretty well: (requires free registration)
Link to the article

Podiobooks main page:
http://www.podiobooks.com/index.php
Example of a book page on podiobooks.com
http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/book.php?ID=85

Podiobooks has a submission guidelines page that also includes pointers to very good basic information about podcasting
(what kind of recording equipment, etc., tips, etc.)
http://www.podiobooks.com/authors.php

Once you start developing an audience, it is very important to keep up a regular frequency. Listeners are happiest with weekly, but monthly is the outside limit. It's probably better to crunch and build up a back log of several chapters, take a break and then do some more, etc.

If you have your own feed in addition to the podiobooks feed, you can release a modified version of your installments that includes a talk introduction if you want, responding to readers questions, making excuses why you missed last week etc. Some people go way to far with this.

Also no matter where your podcast feed is, if you prove that you have produced regular podcasts for more than three episodes, you can get linked into the itunes music store at apple. Another venue for exposure.

The Walk for Hunger

The Walk for Hunger
Originally uploaded by osbock.

Charlotte, Mason, Joyce and I did Project Bread's walk for hunger today. It's a 20 mile walk, but most families with kids just do part of it. We walked from Park Street Station in downtown Boston to Newton Center (around 7.5 miles)

We raised almost $600 to feed the hungry in Massachusetts. Their web site made soliciting and collecting pledges effortless. I hope my friends didn't mind a little spam from me, as it was for a good cause.

Charlotte and Mason complained a bit in the last mile, but mostly they were terrific! I think they were proud of their accomplishment.

If you'd like to donate, visit our walk page at:
http://www.projectbread.org/goto/osborn-pollock

MCAS Dragon

MCAS Dragon
Originally uploaded by osbock.

I meant to document the construction, but got carried away and in a hurry. The "skull" or frame is made from pink foam insulation board, stuffed with newspapers and plastic bags. The skin is duct tape, and the eyes are big super balls, that I drilled holes into and placed bright color changing LEDs, making them internally illuminated and changeable.

I hope to develop it into a full costume. I'm thinking about applying foam insulation to the surface for texture, installing a fan and silk flames in the mouth.I also want to build a frame to wear it on and big puppet claws. Wings would be way cool, but probably out of my time budget! Maybe in 3 years!

I meant to document the construction, but got carried away and in a hurry. The "skull" or frame is made from pink foam insulation board, stuffed with newspapers and plastic bags. The skin is duct tape, and the eyes are big super balls, that I drilled holes into and placed bright color changing LEDs, making them internally illuminated and changeable.

I hope to develop it into a full costume. I'm thinking about applying foam insulation to the surface for texture, installing a fan and silk flames in the mouth.I also want to build a frame to wear it on and big puppet claws. Wings would be way cool, but probably out of my time budget! Maybe in 3 years!

Mindful Management: Sovereignty

I've been reading Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting where the authors talk about the importance of the concept of sovereignty.

While it may seem patronizing to compare engineering management to parenting, I believe the concept is very useful in running a happier, more productive organization of any size.


What is Sovereignty?

Most of the dictionary definitions of sovereignty talk about absolute control, free from external influence, like the power of an absolute monarch. Both in terms of real sovereigns (like the Queen of Great Britain, as seen in The Queen.) and the way I'm using it here, sovereignty has many practical limits. The independence and power of a true leader can only continue as long as she serves the best interests of the group she leads.

Good engineers, marketing people, managers, and executives all have an abiding interest in their trade, and ultimately get satisfaction from doing their job well. Unfortunately, many managers, and leaders in organizations hold a notion of how the other people outside their organization should do their jobs, robbing them of sovereignty. Much better is managing in a way that respects people for their ability to create value for the organization. This allows everyone to operate at peak potential.

The rest of this essay will center around the role of the engineering manager and how a mindful engineering manager can facilitate the best result from his or her own team as well as facilitating interactions with other teams such as marketing, quality, customer service and executives. The same concepts can easily be applied to the other job titles.


Managing Engineers

Micromanaging engineers is never a good idea, even if the engineer is inexperienced. Experienced engineers resent it, and can often find better ways than the way they are told. Inexperienced engineers just experience stress and frustration and won't have the opportunity to learn to manage themselves.

Obviously, letting everyone do whatever they want isn't a good idea either.

How then, is a mindful manager to lead his or her team?

1. Know your people. What motivates them,? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their interests? What is the level of their skill?
2. Give responsibility. Assignments should be broad enough to give the individual engineers enough room to innovate, design and create solutions. Responsibility for larger areas, or when things need to be done in parallel for time's sake should be assigned to small groups of people.
   
3. Interdependence. The team's practices should include opportunities to work together, this includes pairs and small teams, as well as cooperative practices such as code reviews and brainstorming sessions.
4. Being clear about what is important. Time, specific functionality, usability. It's also important not to tell them things are important when they are not. This boxes in their thinking.
5. Be firm about what is important, but flexible about how you get it.
   
6. Listen. Be a sounding board, give feedback, offer to help or get help when needed. Take their good suggestions and evangelize them.
   
7. Give them credit for the good ideas.
   
   

Working with other teams and functions

Marketing and Product Management

It's the engineering manager's job to represent and help communicate the marketing team's vision and interests in the shape, design and requirements of the product.
Sometimes this requires marketing to geek translation skills, but often it is just demonstrating that you respect the value of the marketing and product management team. This means actively working with the product management team to understand the requirements and help (with the aid of the engineering team) translate that into a set of technical requirements that can be implemented. When tradeoffs need to be made, the solution the engineering team choses must meet the underlying business need, and the manager should get the marketing manager to sign off based on that common understanding.


Architects

When architects are separate from the engineering team, their needs for sovereignty also need to be respected. Common understanding and respect must also be established. Sometimes the architect's vision cannot be fully realized in a single version. Here the architect should be respectfully approached to help work out a roadmap that reflects the priorities of the details of his or her vision.


Superiors

Directors, VP's and second level managers have a great deal of responsibility for the financial success of a product. As such, their sovereignty concerns often deal with whether or not the product will meet business needs. This includes: marketability, features, quality, and time to market. The mindful engineering manager should focus on these attributes in communicating status, and raising issues that cannot be resolved without executive escalation. Acknowledging the underlying business problem of a particular engineering problem, and inviting the executive's perspective on acceptable solutions is a good way to use the executive's strength and acknowledge his or her sovereignty.


Conclusion

This seems like a lot to juggle, and one might come to a conclusion that no such super-manager can exist. I think, however, that just one manager behaving this way can inspire others to step up, in recognition of their own sovereignty and value. As more people step up and embody this kind of mindfulness, the communications between teams becomes more clear, and conflicts and miscommunication reduced. As the culture of mindfulness grows, morale, self-esteem and the esteem of colleagues is bound to grow as well. Consider this when managing your team.

Day 15: shifting priorities

toothpastefordinner.com
Well, I've missed 2 days of the 15. But in general I feel I've kept the commitment. I do feel that my entries haven't always been the highest quality. I don't know if anyone is reading this crap (no comments for a while!) I think it would be easier if I had a definite theme or "idiom" to stick to.

I could write about tech stuff, particularly making things, but my priorities are definitely shifting. Anyone who knows me knows that I am passionate about many things, sometimes serially, some things always. My photography has been shelved the last month, and I let the deadline for the PRC member show pass by. I still haven't quite figured out how to fit more of my art into my life, but I do know it is still important to me. I feel, however, that it is less important for me to go for shows, recognition, etc. but more important to get out there and do it. It will become important again to share it, but the exact nature of that sharing will probably be different, probably something more "open source"

Stay tuned. In the meantime, head on over to Toothpaste for Dinner
and Drew's excellent (not positive) review of second life (I pretty much agree with his opinion, though he's much funnier than me...). While you are there, check out his comics, they are twisted!

Unintended (?) Education

My youngest (the twins, age 6) are attending a "camp" run by the aftercare program at our elementary school this week (February vacation.) While my daughter loves school, both of them are more than enthusiastic about going to this program. Enough so that the getting out of the house on time isn't much of a problem this week.

Sure, you say, it's because they are playing all day. Well that's true, but the people who run this program have set up some brilliant activities with no pressure that I think can teach more than regular school can at times. Today they had a construction day, where they did domino runs, knex towers, and marshmallow/toothpick structures. They built a tower that reached their gym's ceiling (and that took some engineering) and had to use a lot of logic to build a domino run over 200 feet long. Even their marshmallow structures had a distinctly geodesic flair. No pressure, lots of fun, and guess what? Learning definitely took place. It's true that their going bowling tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't learn a little physics. The teachers would deny any ulterior motive of education, of course, but the fact that they are passionate, caring and fun makes the learning effortless.

A tip of the hat to those creative, engaged people!

Meta

The last resort of a scoundrel blogger: Meta blogging. What have I learned so far from my experiment of daily blogging in the last 13 days:
1. There's lots of stuff I'd like to blog about but am afraid to. Personal feelings and discoveries are great in the blogs of spiritual leaders, and others whose business it is to be open, but that's not exactly my situation. (geez. that will probably be misinterpreted...)
2. I like writing, but probably shouldn't put it off till so late at night.
3. The commitment has definitely gotten me to write more, and some of it on topics I like.

I have to figure out a way to balance the drive (commitment) with good content.

I wouldn't want to bore all three of you.....

Humility/Guilt/Intention

I found myself distracted during meditation today by guilt over blogging about helping a woman with her broken arm. I tend to over analyze these things, but I do know that I tend to seek acknowledgment. I was praised much as a child by my parents, and this unfortunately interferes with my self esteem. I'm aware of this tendency and I often feel guilty if I recount a good deed, even if my intention was to illustrate something else, as I think was the case yesterday.

I think it's important to be of service whenever we can. I think it is also important to encourage others to do the same. I think, though, that it is important to do service to do service, not to serve some need to prove "I am a good person."

I learned tonight of "Taking the Precepts," kind of a pledge that you do when becoming a Zen Buddhist. This led me to this dharma talk on the precepts by Sensei Robert Aitkin. In it he discusses the 7th precept: I take up the way of not praising myself while abusing others.

He gives the reason for this precept:
"The reason I praise myself and abuse others is that I seek to justify and defend myself as a certain kind of rather superior being."

And the appropriate understanding:

"Actually, I am not superior or inferior. My actions and words are appropriate or inappropriate to the needs of people, animals, plants and things, including myself. If I am authoritarian and put myself up and others down, then I am not meeting their need to grow and mature or my own to listen and learn. The Buddha Dharma is obscured. The world suffers."

This is my intention and my labor.

Another aspect of this that I still haven't figured out is how to avoid visiting this behavior on my children. Children do need encouragement, but too much praise is poisonous. It would be best to instill in them their own motivation to right action and passionate living. If anyone has good techniques here, I'd love to hear them.

A little excitement.

Well I missed a day again, but I've been having a lot of fun with the kids. Went sledding yesterday, and everything was ice, so it was very fast. I laughed a lot watching the the kids light up with the thrill.

We went ice skating today, and the twins hooked up with a girl Charlotte had in her class last year. I met her mother and we chatted. I was taking a few turns around when I saw the girl's mother on the ice, with a couple of people standing over her. She had fallen and broken her arm. I helped her get her skates off, and offered to have her daughter stay with us. I offered to drive too, but the rink manager had called an ambulance. She was in a lot of pain and looked like she was going into shock and it took more than 30 min. and the ambulance still hadn't arrived. I told the rink manager that I thought I should take her to the hospital, and at first they didn't want me to because the ambulance was coming, but they decided to let us go.

She insisted I just drop her at the emergency room, and I took the kids back to our house, where they had a fabulous playdate, with more laughter. While they knew her before, I think they are now friends.

Random

Complaining
I was complaining tonight about daily blogging. My 6 year old son said (laughing), "Why don't you just press a bunch of keys, like the alphabet."
My 6 year old daughter said, "Make sure you press the space key every so often."
djfha djkdhsf ads8f8di hvndvkj9ewy9 d fgjkdashfidf9 hdjfh 98d fdasjhf akdsjf9
djkfh akdsjf 8id fkha dsfjka dsfjkh adsfh ad faksdhfkja ds9

Hey, that was a lot easier, and it'll probably get past the spam filters.

Reality
Who says we don't create our own reality. I was walking in the woods, and I stopped to look at a frozen stream. I was soon lost in a fantasy about "trying" the ice. Just as I was imagining myself falling and telling myself it would be a stupid thing to "try" the ice. I slipped on the path.

Flickring family history.

Family pictures, snapshots, old formal portraits are a great way to pull out stories and family history from the older generations. The trouble is, whenever this would happen with my mother, or grandparents, I never wrote any of it down. I've long wanted to know more about my family history, but never had time to do the whole genealogy thing. I did briefly try some genealogy software, but it only helps you to record the data.

My mom loves pictures, and on one of my trips to visit her, I asked her if she wanted the negatives. I was interested in scanning them to save them digitally "for the future." Of course the negatives would probably outlast any computer media I would put them on, but honestly I coveted the photos. I took them home and eventually started scanning them and putting them up on flickr.
When I emailed my mom to show her, she started commenting (on flickr) on the photos making corrections to my titles, and dates, etc. Now flickr isn't really designed as a genealogy collab site, but it was a nice comfortable way for my mom and I to interact. I've thought of using the flickr API to build just such a genealogical collab site, but the nice thing about using photo commenting on a photo commenting site is that it's simple, and that's especially important if you can't train your distant (she lives in Kansas) mother in some specialized software.

Not that I've given up on the idea however. I think using flickr to capture the data is key, and there may be a few minor enhancements that could be made with greasemonkey scripts. It would also be cool to do a mashup that allows you to display a family tree and click on the nodes to bring up pictures of those people. Flickr did a cool thing recently that I only recently accepted as a good thing: hiding "machine tags." Tags with a certain syntax, like geolat:147.222 are hidden, but still available from the api. I think this is key for developing applications like this, as any metadata you would like to define for this mashup wouldn't clutter the flickr interface, but be available to your program. Guess I'd better get busy....

Smile

Smile
Originally uploaded by osbock.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell recounts some research about how assuming a facial expression such as a smile actually triggers the brain to experience pleasure and happiness. This has been verifed by imaging, and other techniques, but I like his story about the researcher who was cataloging human expressions and found he was depressed after frowning all day and happy after smiling.

Thich Nhat Hanh calls this "Mouth yoga" in "Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life." I haven't finished it yet, but almost every little chapter really touches me.
He includes this poem by Marion Tripp:

I have lost my smile
but don't worry
the dandelion has it.

I have lost my smile, but have found it again in the faces of my children, my wife, in the sound of my breath.