Blank (Media) Slate

OK, I’m not usually one who plays the meme game… but this is hil-bloody-arious. They could have played up the departmental rivalry angle a bit more, but the production value alone makes this worth a viewing.

I had no idea what the guys at the office were up to when they camped out in the conference room one evening with their video gear. I figured it was just one of those things you just shouldn’t ask any questions about, and quietly move on. Well, here’s what they were doing:

… and I have to admit I think their take on collaborative filtering is pretty funny.

Well, here we are again. Another cease and desist order for the brand-spanking new DataPortability Project logo, this time from Vivendi Mobile Entertainment’s new ZAOZA service.

While we’re still in flux, though, I needed something to put as a placeholder in a couple places. Inspired by a coworker (who shall remain nameless), I simply created a code-128A barcode for the word “LOGO”, and voila - it’d be hard for anyone else to claim it as their own.

By the way, I’m not suggesting we adopt this for the project. I just thought it was amusing enough when I was done to share.

This morning (Monday, April 21, 2008) at 10:55am EDT, we’re in the back yard getting the garden ready for the season when my phone rings. After answering it, I’m greeted with heavy breathing, and a question about where I am. It takes a beat for me to recognize the breathy voice, but as soon as it clicks I realize it’s my friend Sunita Williams… and I guessed the reason for her being out of breath is that she’s running the Boston Marathon (again).

For those of you who followed her exploits, you’ll remember it was exactly one year ago that she was orbiting 500 miles above the planet in the ISS when she last ran this particular race. So, it’s quite an accomplishment to have her feet back on the ground and running another 26 miles (this time with the pull of 1G rather than the simulated effects of the straps holding her to the treadmill).

Anyway, she tells me she and her sister have just crossed into Framingham and wondered if we were along the route somewhere. I told her we hadn’t planned on it, but that I’d bundle up the family and we’d intercept her somewhere to cheer them on. I shout to the kids to drop the shovels and that we’re going on a mission, to which my daughter starts singing the theme to her favorite show:

We’re going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship, flying through the sky, Little Einsteins.

Climb aboard and get ready to explore, there’s so much to find, Little Einsteins.

We’re going on a mission, start the count down: FIVE-FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE

Mission Time: 11:05am EDT: Fortunately, my wife’s a marathon runner and could roughly gauge their speed. Assuming Suni called when she first entered Framingham, she calculated where she’d be in about 30 minutes.

Mission Time: 11:20am EDT: We find a parking spot near Natick center, and deploy the troops. Since I used to live with my brother in the area, I had a good sense for where we could park close to the route.

Mission Time: 11:30am EDT: We arrive at the corner of Routes 135 and 27 where I take and upload a snapshot to Twitxr - Twitter - Flickr.

Mission Time: 11:35am EDT: Success! Dina and Suni run by as the Adams Clan hoot as loud as we can, hoping to be heard over the noise of the crowd, cheering them on.

Mission Time: 11:45am EDT: Return trip to resume the previous gardening activity.

I’m not entirely sure everyone else will find this as amusing as I did… but I find it hilarious that (a) Suni called while running, (b) she thought we’d be able to get somewhere to see her run by, (c) we were able to calculate the intercept trajectory, and (d) be accurate within 10 minutes.

Then again… Suni’s used to much greater odds in a successful rendezvous.

I play around with a lot of new widgets as they hit the scene, and of the zillion or so I’ve encountered, only a couple seem to have lasting value. Generally, I’m not a personal fan of the time-wasting variety of widgets, but I like the ones that seem to add to effective communication. For example, you can check out the about me page to see the LibraryThing widgets I use to show my reading interests (you can actually browse my complete library, if you’re so inclined). Similarly, each page of this site includes a couple other widgets for illustrating my interests as a tag cloud as well as my LastFM info.

I was recently playing around with the wealth of Amazon widgets you can create. If you haven’t already checked ‘em out, I recommend popping in and seeing what they’ve got cooking. There’s just about every type you can possibly imagine slicing-and-dicing any way you’d probably want. While checking it out, I played with their embedded store widget where you can sell anything you want on your site.

In order to try it out, I looked around my office for something I could sell. My eye landed on the one-of-a kind “J. Trent Adams Modern Man of Action” action figure. My brother made it for me a few years back, and I thought this’d be the perfect thing to sell though this kind of widget. Of course, I’d really rather not let it go, but then again, who’s gonna’ pay me US$500 for something like this?

Now, the reason for this post is that I found another widget from iTunes I’m playing with and I needed the Amazon real estate for it. Rather than toss out the Modern Man of Action one-of-a-kind opportunity, I moved it into this post. At least now it’ll live somewhere in case I want to refer to it in the future… or someone found a hefty chunk of change laying around they want to parlay into something hip.