An Introduction to the Dataflow

My attitude towards this site (and life in general) is highly experimental. I like to play around, push boundaries and see what happens. Hence the current 'pirate broadsheet' theme to the site, which I suspect is not universally loved. Now this is my site and I the design will keep evolving, breaking, reemerging and all sorts of other random things. But I realize that might not be to everyone's taste.

With that in mind, I've built dataflow an alternative interface to this site. As the name implies its the site stripped down to the raw data. No sidebars, no links, no ornaments, no design. Ok there is a little design, I can't help myself. More importantly though, you get the core of each and every post, on a pure white background in crisp easy to read, resizable text. If that's your thing then http://www.abstractdynamics.org/dataflow.php is your url.

Once again: dataflow

And of course any and all design critique (or even praise) is always explicitly welcome.

Any Illustrator Experts Out There?

Any master of the minutia of Adobe Illustrator out there who can help me?

Here is the issue. Filters and effects are technically supposed to produce the same visual results. But when I run Skribble & Tweak with the same settings in each one I get very different results. I like the effects one, but I have two problems.

1 - the result is something so complex that my 1.9GHz machine slows to a crawl.

2 - I can't edit the visible curves only the original, very different looking ones.

So what I'd like to do is either render the effects out as regular bezier curves, or be able to recreate the effect using filters. So far I've struck out on both counts, am I missing something?

Back In NYC

Back in NY and too busy to find a pretty picture to go with this post. But you know where I am...

Going to throw up a few quick links and then get hustling. Couple biggies (vaporposts?) in the works though, Friendster as Idiot Savant and Automatic Architecture, hold tight...

Punk Rock Cell Phone

My Treo 300 cell/pda broke the other day. Not in any digital or electronic way, its a pure mechanical failure. Phone and pda work great still, but the flip mechanism for opening the device is straight busted. Flip open the phone and the top half is left dangling. Worst part about it is anyone with a couple weeks of high school physics could have predicted this issue, the failure is engineered right into the device. Every time you open the phone, a strong metal spring pushes the soft plastic flip top open. Hard metal pushing on soft plastic, its going to break, guaranteed. And I've only had this particular Treo 300 for 7 months.

Planned obsolescence sucks no matter how you cut it, but I've come to expect I'll be getting a new phone every 12-18 months or so. 7 seems a short for an obvious design flaw. Especially since the replacement model isn't even due out for another few months.

Anyway despite this problem I still think the Treo's are the best devices on the market. The killer app in a palm for me is email, so it needs to be a phone combo. And it needs a keyboard. The Treo is the best of that small bunch.

Anyway for reasons I'm not going to go into here, I'm keeping my current Treo till the new model comes out, rather then having insurance replace it. So that means I'm going full cyberpunk on it. A pda phone held together with wire, velcro and electrical tape. Its the new style, you hear me? All those shiny new devices need to get out like Tom Cruise, its all about the hacked up tech pappi.

Readage

Post A Thousand Plateaus I'm back to my usual read a lot of books at once style. Here is the state:

From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe

Wolfe slices through the bs of modernist architecture with his usual flare and wit. It came out in the early 80's which probably added a cocaine fueled bitchy edge to all. Quite enjoyable, even if the targets are damn easy ones. Read it course with a grain of salt of course, not all the modernists are as bad a Le Corb...

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

A good 2 hour scifi read to cleanse the palette. Ignore the fact the "deep philosophical questions" are a silly bore and its an entertaining read.

The Twenty-First-Century Firm : Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective by Paul DiMaggio (Editor)

Its a collection of essays by various authors so its a bit hard to judge the whole book at this point. The intro however is an excellent introduction to the current state of thinking on the organization of firms. The whole field is still too deeply interwoven with free market capitalist thinking, but its ripe for a divorce. And that's the exciting part. There is a new approach to political economy in the making and some the roots (rhizome?) are nicely traced in this book.

Brightly Colored Food, Small Worlds and Social Clouds

Met up with Chad Thornton of brightly colored food yesterday. Chad emailed me a few days back noting that

1 - we went to the same school
2 - he read this site
3 - he once played in a band with a business partner of mine
4 - he knew two of my cousins.

and of course we shared a similar interest in interface design. and I quickly learned he used to be roommates with a good friend of mine.

But some how we'd never met.

These sorts of dense interconnections never seize to fascinate me. At the same time though, I come to expect them, they are so common. You can never predict the specifics, but they occur with regularity no matter where I am. Small world.

Except that its not, we live in a huge world. 6 billion people we are told. And as interesting as the interconnections are, I'm getting more and more interested in the lines of separation.

Things like friendster make it more and more clear that we exist in large scale social networks of hundreds of thousands of people. I call them social clouds at the moment. But beware I use the term cloud, not to represent what these networks resemble, but the emphasize the amorphousness of our knowledge of the dynamics of these networks. If they even exist, their existence is somewhat unproven, the evidence is anecdotal and peripheral at the moment.

Now some of these clouds and clusterings are pretty easy to guess at. Geography and religion are age old forces creating large scale social networks. Organizations like universities and governments generate their own large scale clusters. In the internet age, shared interests is a pretty efficient creator of such groupings as well.

I'd hypothesize that social networks also are divided by more arbitrary and random reasons. An exchange program between two schools creates a social flow. A chance meeting between two consummate networkers leads to a blending of their social clouds. A short love affair between a high school guidance counselor and college admissions officer leads to tight connection between the social networks of the two schools. The same admissions officer however hates the smell of another high school counselor's perfume, and rift grows between the two clouds.

Two people with similar backgrounds and education might live blocks apart, but drift through very different clouds. A meme might percolate through one cloud a year before the other, despite both clouds being in the same target market. Just as we find surprising connections between people I suspect we'll find the disconnects are just as surprising...

Back In the NY City

Back in my hometown of NYC, expect the information flow on this site to slow down for a bit as I no longer have a connected office to access. City is feeling better then it has in a few years. Energy levels are back to normal, fashions are cooking and the frigid winter gloom is gone. Lets hope this is the beginning of another long run, not just a summer energy spurt...

Bound For NY City

heading back to NY for a few weeks. Believe it or not the image above is taken in Manhattan, there is more to the city the bustle and bluster usually associated with it my friends. If you are in town and want to meet up give me a holla.

Google Metamorphosis

Ok, so Google isn't turning into an insect, but there is something Kafkaish about the place. Alert readers of the site might have noticed that some Google AdSense powered ads showed up on the site a week or two ago. Don't look, they aren't there now, so let me kick you the story.

I'm an info junkie and an early adaptor. New technology comes around and I'll play with it. Not blindly cause its new, but with a critical eye, I want to know what it does, how it works and if its useful. So of course I signed up for AdSense the moment I heard about it, didn't even cost anything. If fact it could have even made me money.

Sign up was as easy as they come, the Google simplicity was on point. More importantly though Google was serving based on the content of the page so the ads promised to be relevant to reader. I was impressed, they started serving up ads that were genuinely interesting to me, at least from a curiosity standpoint. I've always felt that when advertising is done right its actually a good thing. If the information delivered is useful to you then you're happy to see an ad. People hate ads cause they see to many that aren't interesting to them, and that sucks, especially if they try hard to grab your attention.

But Google was getting close to the advertising wholy grail, ads that people really want to see. And not just because they are funny, because their interests and needs match with an advertiser. Naturally I was interested on what Google served on my site, so I clicked on a few ads. Nothing in the terms of service indicated I shouldn't and Google provided no backdoor into the ads. Was mildly interesting, and I moved on.

Then I decide to place the ads on the subpages of the site. Now that was interesting. Each page now got its own specially tailored set of 4 ads. Most were quite different. Now I was really interested. I clicked on almost all of them. Some were great, sites on globalisation in Africa, philosophy books, and political sites. Others were somewhat relevant, and a few were pretty wrong. A couple right wing organizations would pop-up. The word Iraq seemed to trigger only ads for those Iraq's most wanted trading cards. Felt a bit guilty clicking on all those links, but hey, it was my site, and there didn't seem to be any other way to see what was getting linked. Plus I posted a huge link list of most of sites I visited, figured they deserved some free linkage for advertising on my site.

That sedated most of my curiosity, but I was still wanted to know more. Google never told which links were getting clicked, why a given link would get served, or how much a given link was worth. But they did give frequently updated reports on the total clicks and the total money earned.

My site's pretty low traffic (I was on course to make maybe a $1 a day), so I found I could inter a bit more info by clicking on a few links and then checking the reports. Most of the links were worth about 10¢ a click. Some were closer to a penny it seemed. And one page in particular stuck out. I had used "cash" in a post title. And that seemed to trigger ads for borderline loansharking operations. "Instant Cash". Not exactly my favorite kind of people.

What was interesting was that these links seemed to be worth a lot more then most, close to $1 a click was my guess. The post in question was pretty long and political too. It could have easily triggered a lot of other ads.But the "cash" seemed to win out every time. The loansharks were obviously willing to pay a lot more per click. And this seems to have triggered Google's ad placement algorithm to give them priority. Interesting. Wonder what the tipping point was. Larger archive pages with that post on them weren't getting the loanshark ads. Made a mental note to research more later.

Instead I got a terse letter from Google informing me my account was cancelled. I guess I had clicked on one click to many. I was a bit worried that all my clicking on the "subpage" day would trigger something in their system, it had pushed my click through rate to 40%. But it also resulted in a whole $12 of money, not exactly high impact. Figured a computer might notice it, but then a human would get involved and it would get worked out.

Humans, yeah remember them. Turns out they are in short supply at Google. The first letter was almost certainly computer generated. And the tone was nasty. "Subject: [#2801845] Account Terminated", what a way to start off an email... I was a bit taken aback by the brusk language. I expected at most a warning, which I hoped might actually lead to a dialogue about making more info available to people serving AdSense ads. Instead I got accusations:

"It has come to our attention that fraudulent clicks have been generated on the ads on your site(s). Please understand that we consider deliberate attempts to violate our policies and compromise the integrity of our program a serious matter. Furthermore, your actions have cost Google and our advertisers both time and money. Actions such as this are not tolerated by Google."

Hmmm, guess they are sort of new to customer service. I reviewed the terms of service, I wasn't in violation, although it did say they could cut anyone off. Time to get a human involved. I wrote back asking for a review of the situation and included by phone number. As I sent out the email I noticed the return address. adsense-spam@google.com, hmmm maybe its not going to be as simple as talking to a person.

After a day of no response I decided to call them up. Took some digging on their site but I got the phone number. It lead to a labyrinth. There were a surprising number of dead ends. If you want to talk about "x" hit 1. Hit 1 and you find out that google won't talk about x. Great. As far as I can tell there is no way to get a human on the phone at Google without randomly dialing in extensions. This was beginning to feel a bit like 2001, slowly dealing with a computer out of control.

On Saturday night I got an email back. It seemed to be written by a human, but was signed the "The Google Team". They had no problem addressing me by name though, a nice demeaning touch on their part. Still accusing me of fraud too. No details as to what that fraud was though. Great.

Figured I'd give one more shot, wrote back explaining everything I had done that might have set their computer off, and tossing in some suggestions on how to make it better to boot. Pretty much given up at that point, but it was worth a shot. No love back on their part. Guess the experiment was over.

The worrying thing about it for me is the inhumanness of it all. The money was pocketchange wasn't going to turn it down, but it would have been server costs and small xmas bonus at best. But I enjoyed watching the ads, seeing what got served up, and actually getting paid at least a token amount for writing. And the more I look at Google the more worried I get.

Google of course is still the best search engine around. But there is something brewing there I think that's a touch unsavory. They hold their information really tight to their pockets. They'll gladly lead you to other people's information, but won's share their own. Even their trends pages is hidden and sparse, in pretty dramatic contrast to the Lycos 50 and Yahoo Buzz Index. They've got a treasure trove of data, and it doesn't seem like they plan to share it. Too much potential profit buried there. But that just makes me jealous.

What makes me scared is that they are dangerously close to becoming the only search engine that matters on the web. And that gives them tremendous power. If they use it well then its all good. So far they have done a pretty good job. But they are young, they could change. Going public could change them. Political pressure could change them. Greed could change them. And the fact that they refuse to put out a human face doesn't bode to well. I'll be keeping my eyes open.

Owl

went hiking over the weekend up in Marin. saw an owl, was sitting 5 feet above my head directly over the trail. Apparently he/she was there all day. Not many words to describe it. He stared into everyone's eyes as we stood their. No fear at all. Amazing. The picture isn't him, but I needed more then words.

Sell Out! Sell Out! Sell Out!

Yeah there are Google AdSense ads on my page now. You got a problem? Give me some money. No seriously I'm just experimenting, and yeah I like money and could use more... So far its pretty interesting, if you get the Reconstructing Iraq ad its actually really interesting, some company set up to invest in Iraq. There was an ad for the Heritage Foundation too, scary on that one, wonder if they are going after new audiences or Google's filter just isn't so good at telling left from right?

Have to say Google made the process of setting this up absurdly easy. I've made a motion or two towards looking into other ways to get money from the site and Google's was the most seamless by far. And that's why they are on my site now. And why they are the number one search engine too. Smart people.

The Amazon ads are weird though, think they are all actually various Amazon affiliate members. Which means they actually compete with me. Not that I actually have ever made anything through that program.... Interesting none the less, wonder how much you can make with a well targeted google ad that drives traffic to Amazon?

Site Design Edits

As you may have noticed I've switched up the site design a bit. Just had too much stuff in the sidebar to leave it as two columns. Not 100% satisfied with the 3 column layout yet, but its coming along. Probably will have to redo the logo to make it meld with the 3 column better. Major design history props to anyone who can tell me where I borrowed the logo motif from, the name is a hint...

One minor hack to report if you really are interested. I had avoided a left hand column on the site because I browse a lot on my Treo, which renders all sites as one big column. Site's with big long left hand columns like Joi Ito's are extremely annoying to read on the Treo as it takes forever to render out all those sidebar links, so the real content takes forever to load. Pretty minor issue since Palm viewers make up only a minuscule portion of the people online, but I happen to be one of them... Anyway the hack. Discovered if I placed the main content before the left sidebar in the html, but used css to position the sidebar to the left of the main content, the main content would show up first when browsing on the Treo. Good for me, and hopefully totally unnoticeable to anyone else.

Dinner and Drinks with the Good Dr Ellis

Met up with Josh Ellis of Zenarchery fame for dinner, drinks and wandering. He's up in the Bay to meet with his new employer and is moving here for good soon. We talked a lot about the old SF of 7 years ago when he lived here. I think he's in for some surprises given the mass exodus of the past few years.*

Josh has been mysteriously hyping up his new gig on his blog for a while, and while I'm not liable to reveal many details there is tremendous potential. Lets just say this company claims to have found one of the internet idealists' holy grails. I'm somewhat skeptical, but I do believe this particular change does have the potential to be revolutionary. More likely though it will successful and useful, but not quite as earthshaking as some cloudy eyed proponents make it out to be. Regardless its great news and exciting stuff, congratulations Josh, the bay area needs some new troublemakers.

We talked a bunch about SF rent, its ridiculously easy to find a nice space in SF right now, which makes it a once in a lifetime opportunity to move to the city. Jump in while you can kids, things are going to change. I just hope enough of the freaks pushed out by the dot com era move back. And yeah I still won't be making this place home, fear not, I'll be gone before you know it, hopefully to Barcelona.

While on the subject of places to live Josh has some crazy stories about people living in the storm drains below Los Vegas. They're 10 years old and already have a vibrant community of living in them, and a legendary Gollum like figure who is rumored to stalk down and kill strangers that come into his dark private space. Josh has written a few articles on these communities, which I need to track down and read. Sounds like a great book to me, but apparently there isn't much interest yet.

Interestingly I just started reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, which is about a world of people living beneath the streets of London. So far its quite good, although Gaiman's prose doesn't have nearly poetry of his comics. Fortunately his ideas are just as imaginative and inventive as ever.

----

*on a somewhat related note though, its good to read danah boyd's enthusiastic posts on how much she loves SF. This city will return to its former glories at some point.

Thankfully

Discovering Columbus

Preformed "The Center Can Not Hold" last night, here in Columbus, Ohio. Still a work in progress, but it went over well. Now I can finally relax and explore this city more. Its way bigger and more vibrant then I expected. Its actually easier to get good food after midnight here then in San Francisco. Still a bit drained from the performance/celebration. More when I recharge.

Summertime Clipping

Its sunny and gorgeous out today. Perfect day for a summertime hairchop.

Can't recommend Akemi more, she's the best stylist in San Francisco hands down. Never got a good haircut in my life before meeting her. And now I get the best. Lucky me. Her partner Elle is best colorist in town too, you can see the remnants of her work left in my hair from their brilliant hair show last December. Theme was the 20th century, I somehow got transformed into "country club 80's", complete with massive blow dried hair, topsiders and a pink button down. Hilarious, wish I had the photos. Then again maybe they are best kept secret.

Elle and Akemi just moved to a new Fillmore location today. Give them a call if you are up for a top of the line haircut. Be warned though, like many luxury goods its pretty had to go back to the cheap stuff once you experience the real quality. You can reach them at diPietro Todd, 2239 Fillmore, 415.674.4366. Say hi for me.

And yeah, if you want to see me before the cut, follow the link below.

Barcelona Dreaming (Bound?)

There's something about Barcelona, never even been there but its been on the edge of my mind for a while. Today something clicked, I really want it to be my next home. Anyone from Barcelona reading this, or know someone. I want to find out as much as possible about the town and the possibilities of visiting for an extended period of time. Culture, climate, rent, stories, tips, send them to me I want to hear about it.

A Piece of My 15 Minutes

who actually is a techno-nomad, living out of his laptop between New York and San Francisco.

The good Dr. Joshua Ellis' new column in the Las Vegas City Life is out now. It's all about the Marginwalker community started Ellis and Adam Greenfield of v-2. Low and behold my name shows up in it. Fame, Vegas, Lights and Action. Its all mine now ;)

Anyway Marginwalker, its a good place. You may have noticed its slip quietly into my sidebar recently. Check it out. Its invitation only, but if you are savvy enough I'm sure you can get an invite. They don't cost anything to print... Open source futurism, radical urbanism and way too many JG Ballard references, its a sharp look into the future. Enjoy.

Flying Securely

Marked S. Enter an airport and that's about the last thing you want to happen. Your ticket is scared with dozens of esses in the corner. It means you have been "randomly" selected for an ultra thorough security screening, potentially adding a lot of time to your trip.

I've flow 3 times in the last 10 days or so. Each time I got marked S. Flown a ton since S11 don't think I've been selected for the secure screening more then 3 times over the whole time. Has my luck just ran out? Or am I now on some list? Flying a few more times soon, guess I'll find out...

Lunch With Sharda Sekaran of the Drug Policy Alliance

Going to try a page out of the Joi Ito handbook and blog lunch. Plus is a good excuse to use the free wireless in Bryant Park. Had lunch with Sharda Sekaran of the excellent Drug Policy Alliance. Talked mainly about the global politics of imperialism and the way the current administration is handling things. the DPA is shifting towards more of Think Tank model, with some libertarian leanings at the expense of its focus on social justice issues. Be interesting to see how that shift plays out.

If there is one up shot to the way Bush and co have let the economy fall apart and abandoned the states to deal with their budget crisis themselves it might be better drug policy. The current draconian drug laws in America are costing the states huge amounts of money. Sad to think, but it might be economic desperation not reason that gets them to change their policies.

Lynching Information

Saw Clifford Lynch speak over at UC Berkeley on Friday, courtesy of Ethan Eismann. Recently reformed OG blogger Peter Merholz also showed up.

Lynch took way to long to get to the interesting bit of his talk, research into collaborative filtering and personalization. Talked ended just as he started getting to the juicy issues. Did get a chance to talk to him about the issues of information segregation though.

The issue was one he new about from discussions of online newspapers, but still remains unanswered. He did note that when people configure online news sources they general will select very focused interests and then balance that out with some sort of filtered general list like the top Reuters feeds. So at least part of the answer lies in picking good filters that know how the mix up the info flow the way a good newspaper does.

Another interesting (but discouraging) part of the talk was his reference to problems in getting access to large enough groups of people to test out collaborative filtering ideas. More anecdotal evidence of the inverse Metcalfe's Law?

Drinking Green Art (and Politics)

Had drinks with Sam Bower director of the excellent Green Museum last night. Talked about the way that art movements don't take off unless there is a portion of the establishment that finds the philosophy of the art useful. Modernism for instance was a tool for the US government to push American ideals onto the world after World War II. A artistic complement to the Marshall Plan. The book to read apparently is How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Its now on the top of my wish list.

Interesting to see how our new school imperialists in the Bush administration just don't get it. They push with raw power, without understanding that the war can't be won without a cultural victory. Of course winning a cultural war is just as distasteful to me as winning a military one. A cultural marriage on the other hand is quite intriguing. What happens when Islamic and Western culture mix? Could such a cross breed (if allowed to exist) lead us closer to a political movement of unity and peace?

Flow My Information the Blogger Said

Information Flow is Ethan Eismann's new blog (finally). Time to update those blogrolls y'all. PC users get a special, limited edition, ultra elegant, minimalist version.

Digital Ronin: Location Update

If you happen to be keeping track, the physical location of by semi-nomadic body is currently sunny San Francisco, California. Be out here a month or two. Contact info the same as always.

Catching Sent of the Future

Dropped by Sephora this evening to sniff some of my favorite luxury item, fragrence. Smell is the most primal of our senses and I take picking a new cologne seriously. Refuse to buy one withoue wearing it for a day first.

Ideally I would test out all the scents, but there are far too many. And since all you see is bottles, the brand is the only thing you have when picking out what to smell. It brings the importance of graphic design painfully out in the open. If the package doesn't look good to me I won't be able to smell it, there just isn't enough time. I just hope the designers are good enough to represent the scents properly...

Ordinarily I'm not really into brands expanding into endless products, but when it comes to scent it seems like they don't go far enough. You buy a cologne to smell like it, yes? So why cover that smell up with a soap that has one scent, shampoo with another, and clothes with their own detergent odour. Its an area where it makes perfect sense to buy the whole set. But the Gucci laundry detergent is nowhere to be found. Guess its too low rent for those Euro megabrands...

Oh and if you care, my likely choice, an old favorite Comme des Garcons White. They don't even have a matching deodorant, so I guess its more Gucci Rush for the underarms.

Its Getting Cold Out Herre

Damn, for the second year in a row I somehow find myself spending January freezing in New York. Love the city too much to come for x-mas and leave. In anycase figured I'd share my cold weather technique for the world. Perception of temperature is mostly psycological, its a relative concept. If you don't think you are cold then you aren't. When heading outdoor the key is to make sure you can forget you are cold.

I use what I call the two option technique, a real simple trick you can play on yourself to stay warm. All it involves is making sure that you have two options to get warmer when you walk out the door. When you walk outside into the freeze the first thing you notice is how damn cold it is. You think its cold therefore you are cold.

If you walk outside completely bundled up, wearing all your gear you are helpless. There is nothing you can do to get warmer except get inside. What you need are options to get warmer, aka options to forget the cold. I always have two, but some people might only need one, others three or more. Generally I leave my coat unzipped and have a hat or scarf in my pocket. Walk a block and if you are still cold employ option one. Hold off on two for as long as possible. Odds are when you finally put on option two you'll feel warm enough to enjoy the crystaline winter beauty.

This trick has weak underbelly, an enemy called wind. Wind slaps you in the face and screams "its fucking cold out". All you need to do is forget the temperature, but the wind keeps reminding you. An unsolved problem so far...

And yes, I promise I won't be talking about the weather anytime soon again, so fear not.