URLs From the Edge

I just spent an hour removing several hundred spam comments on my blog. Apparently the settings were such that Anonymous Users could leave comments. I thought I had disabled that, but I guess that slipped through my testing. If you want to leave a comment, it now needs to be approved by me first (part of the entry form) or you must create an account (just drop me a note and I'll approve it).

Why don't we prosecute companies that USE spammers, instead of just the spammers?

Sigh.

I was reading over on BoingBoing about people finding some old EPCOT artwork.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/06/more-fantastic-epcot.html

While it was cool art, I was disappointed to see that it was from the marketing campaign for the 'new' EPCOT, and not the original. I posted the following comment on the blog, which I thought I'd share here as well;

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While I love the art style, I still mourn for the wondrous EPCOT that Walt (and his WED team) originally designed, rather than this mundane thing they eventually built.

Chris Cole used to tell a sad story that went something like this:

"Walt Disney said "Let's make cartoons in color!" and marketing people said "You're crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that" and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said "Wow, Walt's a genius!".

Then Walt said "Let's use cartoons to tell full length stories; tales which can never be told with real films and actors" and the marketing people said "You're crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that" and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said "Wow, Walt's a genius!".

Then Walt said "Let's create an amusement park like no other - a clean, friendly place, where we can build narrative spaces and meaningful experiences that people will remember all their lives" and the marketing people said "You're crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that" and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said "Wow, Walt's a genius!".

Finally Walt had his greatest vision to date; He said "Cities are in horrible shape, poorly laid out, designed by chance and greed, and giving rise to all kinds of environmental and social ills. We can do better than this! Besides, mankind will someday journey to the stars, trips that may take centuries - we'd best learn how to live together soon; let's build a carefully designed arcology that puts the people's needs first, and which improves and changes efficiently as technology evolves. We'll call it EPCOT; Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow!" and the marketing people said "You're crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that".

...and then Walt died...

and the marketing people took control of the company said "Walt was crazy, let's build a big themed shopping center - people want and need that!"

Sigh.

Here's a wish list of all the strange projects I'd like to accomplish this year:

+ Build and fly an L2 class Rocket. Too much time spent looking at Steve Jurvetson's pictures of LDRS and Rocket-Mavericks for my own good. This is a hobby I could embrace!

+ BIG Movie Screen on the side of the house for parties (sound system, power, old projector, etc.). All the parts are ready, just need to assemble it from all the scraps I've been stockpiling.

+ a Cloud Chamber with a good CCD camera (and a good use for all those old smoke-detector alpha sources).

+ Halloween Alien drama - The less said, the better.

+ The Burning Man art project with my fellow mad-sci buddy, Squirrel (shhh!)

+ Build a large Aviary/Flight for the birds so they can spread their wings and spend more time outside. The price of stainless steel means I have to be clever here.

+ Garden Temple - We've been sketching and planning how we'd upgrade the garden/back-yard since the week we moved in... now it's time to start getting it done.

+ LED lights in crown-molding. I've always thought that the new high-output/low-energy LEDs were the right answer to ambient lighting so why not try it?

That should be enough for now... :-)

So, I've been musing about energy management; that is, emotional energy management. I'm currently working at a small game/tech start-up company (I'm a founder) and for a variety of reasons it's very draining emotionally... So, like many people who have a stressful job, I use my weekends to recharge in preparation for the next weeks toil. With this as the warp/weft of my life for a little while, I began thinking about ways to better manage my emotional energy.

For instance, I noticed that in a week where I have a day off (sick, work-from-home, holiday, etc.) that my overall quality of life goes through the roof. I sleep better, I'm more productive and sharper, etc. It doesn't seem to be about physical sleep/exhaustion, it seems more about having a break in the routine, or a context switch that lets all the pressurized emotional static get discharged. I suspect it's much the same with why mammals need to dream; there is some complex chemical/emotional/memory-processing thing that needs to happen or the brain can't process any more input effectively.

If there weren't so many other people's needs tied up with how/when I take vacations, I might think about taking my years vacation time and spending it the moment it accrues. Eg. one day off every other week... perhaps Wednesday or Fridays. It would be an interesting experiment, that's perhaps better run when I'm not a partial owner of the company.

I was going to make this post about *how* I spend my free days; all the weird mad-scientist stuff I do for fun... but I'll save that for another post.

It's funny how Burning Man gets into the blood. I was having a great discussion the other day about the message of hope that is delivered directly to my soul when I see thousands of people collaboratively building something complex, creative and social. BM does this in spades, with a distinct flavor that reeks of ritual and culture. There are deep things happening here.

I'm beginning to develop a new appreciation for being in a startup. The amount of focus on 'getting stuff done' quickly subsumes everything else in your life. The alternative is failure and disappointment.

I'm finally starting to get enough time to contribute to Fabula Rasa (the Interactive Story team site from Project Horseshoe). Many of this years PH reports are fascinating reading.

If you are interested in how games are evolving as a professional storytelling medium, check it out; PH

Actually, my new office at C3L3B is right down the hall from my old office at Emergent... but my view is a little better now.

The trees and things make for nice backdrop. Notice (in the foreground on my desk) Kurt has set his USS Excelsior officers wardroom coffee-service china. Probably Ok I guess, since my shirt looks like a Star Trek uniform. Yep, the geek-meter is set pretty high around here.

So Nikolai is finally getting over his fear of being upside down. What does this mean? It means I have a loud, insane, adrenalin-junkie circus-bird with no regard for his own safety.

We recently added some rings to the ceiling so we could hang up various parrot-things (ropes, nets, etc.) for play-time. OMG.

In these images he's swinging hard to gain momentum. Then he lets go with one foot and *spins* until he's incoherently dizzy. Oh, he screams with glee at the top of his big avian lungs pretty much the whole time too. Eeep. At least he's having fun.

Wow. My brown (er... golden) hillside is starting to turn GREEN. It's pretty amazing how quickly a desert will bloom, just given a little water. Our lawns are always fine, but that water comes from our sucking the life out of Nevada.

New stuff:
Built a pell last weekend (I think all the old crowd knows just what this *really* means). My armor has been dragged out and dusted off finally and I spend several hours last weekend cleaning up practice swords and fixing rivets. I guess it's time. Besides, I need something to break up all the stress, and getting beat up by young kids is just the thing. Now if I can just keep my knees from tearing out again. :-(

My newest student has some potential too, so that helps to goad me in the right direction and not take shortcuts. Bad fighting habits last a lifetime (I should know) so I get to rebuild the proper mindset and training in myself too.

I also rebuilt the workshop a little this weekend. I finally moved the huge pile of Burning Man gear from the spot where I dropped it last summer. I've been a bit afraid to move it, but it was also time for serious restructuring of the workflow pattern in the workshop, and it was in the way. I'm trying to establish separate work spaces for metal, electrical, leather, wood and painting. All have different tools, space needs, storage, tempo, etc. requirements. The pegboard is getting full (4' x 8') now (!) so I'll need to rethink that too. A Harbor Freight trip is order for another pegboard.

Also, building plans for a garden workbench for P. I'm basing it on a cool old bench I saw at the Canyon of the Eagles resort, where we stayed during Project Horseshoe.