From the HP Booth at the Maker Faire

You should be here; the Maker Faire doesn't disappoint.

Maker Faire

Twitter is so great a resource to the navigation of the Maker Faire, that it's an absolutely useless resource in the navigation of the Maker Faire...

Effin' cutsie Fail Whale...

Metriconversatoria

• Lemons & The Horror at Ryan's Steakhouse
• The Merits and Problems of Diligensanity
• The Maker Faire
• Wado & Wadone
• Elance for Engineers
• Religion vs. Social Psychology
• Vocational implications of advanced degree acquisition
• The Diet and Extraordinary Physiology of Inuits
• The Richest Man in Babylon

Meta-Metric

Metriconverse

• Chicaganite Kids
• Stories of the Day: Mommasee & Beers
• Extended Vocabulary: Wado (Want to do) vs. Wadone (Wanting done)
• The "I Love You" Bot
• Justice Sotomayor
• The Average Age of Entrepreneurs
• The Backbone Gambit

Metriconversatoria

• Glowing Transgenic Marmosets
• An Introduction to the Giant King
• The New Socialism (the We vs. They idea)
• Elements of Insanity, or Fun with English and Arabic
• Goal Driven Diversions (Fiddlery Continued)

Metriconversatoria

• The Vegetarian Dilemma
• Apple Picking Officiation
• The Problem of the Party
• Instrumental Humility

Metriconversatoria

• Grandparent Names
• The Purchase and Playing of Fiddles
• 23&Me
• Delayed Gratification

The Poetrithon is a Go!

I have problems sitting still. I think better while moving, and when my boss says I'll get a long weekend... I start to twitch.

And I'm not alone.

Memorial Day = Long Weekend.

Long story short: we're writing a book of poetry and creative prose, with some of the pieces catalogued on a wordpress blog we set up for the project.

Help?

Metriconversatoria

1. Old Time vs. Bluegrass (Episodic/Semantic)
2. Instrument Acquisition Times (Semantic/Prospective)
3. The Adventures of Fiddlers' Grove (Episodic)
4. Building a Musical Family (Prospective)
5. The Story of Cesil and Eive (Episodic)

My New Saturday Morning Cartoons

Conversational Taxonomy

Semantic Conversation: Talk about ideas, about things, about people (TED talks, cool research, nifty projects, etc...)

Episodic Conversation: Stories, autobiographical or not

Prospective Conversation: In the future tense

Metriconversatoria

Introns of Identity semantic
Chris Vincenhaler once told me that we are the stories we tell of ourselves. If a meme is a unit of culture that can be transmitted from one mind to another, then we can think of it as a viral piece of semantic memory, but there are more species of memory than this. Episodic memory, specifically autobiographical episodic memory must then form a different strain of meme, perhaps one with different patterns of transmittance. We can, then - following Chris' definition of self - describe an individual at a given moment as the phenotypic representation of an alternative splicing of these autobiographical episodic memes.

Put less stupidly: We can be a great many people - our histories allow the telling of ten thousand thousand stories - but who I am right now is not only about the part of my story I tell you, but about the parts of my story I don't.

24 in 24 semantic/prospective
A project for the long weekend: starting Sunday at noon, my friends and I will compose all the creative prose and poetry we can for the following 24 hours. At the end we'll biopsy the literary mass and compose 24 pages to be published through Blurb. Easy Day.

Christmas Plans prospective
Family Dynamics prospective
Symmetry and Chaos semantic

The Morganverse

Conversation Topics:

1. The Romantic Adventures of Root Beer Schrödinger e
2. Finances s/p
3. Credit s/p
4. Mint.com s
5. Post-Navy Migrations p

Metriconversatium

I'm in love with my favorite person, and for the last year our conversations have formed the foundation of my imagination. Honestly, I'm kind of ashamed that I haven't thought of this before now.

I'm going to quantify our conversations.

Step one: gather some data.

Tonight's topics of conversation:

1. Data Analysis s/p
2. Running s/p
3. Dr. Murray Nabors s/e
4. Crop Domestication s
5. The Fertile Crescent s
6. Desertification s
7. Mycorrhiza s

The End of Oil - Israeli Style

Last week I told Beers that in 20 years petrol would no longer be our dominant source of energy; solar energy would replace it.

To which Beers said the petrol-economy, especially when it came to transportation, was too entrenched to be so easily cast aside: there was no alternative.

Was.

Last night I first heard of Shai Agassi and his plan for a petrol free transportation system, a plan to disassociate electric cars from the batteries that comprise their most problematic component, a plan to rid the world transportation system of gasoline.

And I was amazed.

Sucks to be you, Saudi Arabia.

Suketu Mehta

Just saw a great Popcast by Suketu Mehta (the author of Maximum City) about Mumbai, and was struck by a sight related by Asad Bin Saif, an urban ethnographer.

He describes the hands of people unfolding outward from a commuter train like flowerpetals to collect late commuters and make space in a compartment already more packed with human beings than cattle are legally allowed to be, not caring if you are Hindu or Muslim or Christian, wealthy or poor, all that matters is that you too are headed for the city of gold. We'll adjust, they say, and they do.

Project Ideas

There are always a dozen or so microprojects orbiting the back 40. Here are a few I'd like to bring down in the next little bit.

DIY Bioengineering

DIY Drone

Codifying the Philosophy of Giants

Personal Genetic Profiling

Kivalanthrope

My Tweets as a Wordle