March 24, 2008

life lessons from Mr. Jobs

file under: thoughts about things

my friend Rita pointed me to a video of Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech. she and i had been talking about being older than 40, and potentially having the ability to reflect back on our lives and come up with a few things we had learned. we were also talking about mindfulness. she thought Mr. Jobs was worth listening to...i couldn't agree more.

you should watch the speech...don't allow my synopsis to stop you. it's 15 minutes of your life, which is a small investment to watch one of the great innovators and entrepreneurs of our times. it doesn't matter if you like Apple or even care about the whole tech industry, because the things he shares are pretty universal.

in his mind, it all came down to three things:

• you can't connect the dots looking forward, only backwards. as a result, follow your heart or intuition, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.
• you've got to find what you love, in life and in work, and you'll know it when you find it. do not settle for less.
• your time is limited...don't waste it living someone else's life. have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

one anecdote that i found powerful was something he did every day. he'd wake up in the morning, look himself in the mirror, and ask, "if this was the last day of your life, would you really want to be doing what you're going to do today?" if he answered no too many times in a row, he realized it was time for change. this mindfulness, the ability to step out of the river that can often push us downstream in life, is key.

deceptively simple messages. on the surface, they may seem naively idealistic, but are they? really? follow your heart, realizing that you've got limited time. one chance. no do-overs. this is your one-and-only life. make it count.

thanks, Steve (and Rita).

Posted by docrpm on 03.24.08 at 6:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2008

new ways of storytelling

file under: thoughts about things
tags: blog , flickr , microblog , social media

i haven't been writing too much here lately. part of that is due to the usual lame excuse (lack of time), but it also has to do with a few competing blog channels: flickr, twitter and, to a lesser extent, facebook.

...

for me to sit down here, with my "real" blog, i like to have something to say, preferably something interesting. this isn't generally a prerequisite for blogs, but it's what i always wanted. i've never been too interested in turning my blog into a linkroll (i.e., my personal version of Boing Boing), since others do that much more effectively. also, i never really wanted to share the minutiae of my pretty commonplace existence; if my friends are interested in those things, that's fine, but i don't want to give everyone access to that part of me. the problem, then, is that for me to blog the way i want to, it takes time (which i either don't have, or want to spend elsewhere).

enter new ways to blog: microblogging (twitter, pownce, jaiku and facebook), and image blogging (flickr). there are other things that could be seen in this light (e.g., dopplr, YouTube), but i'll only focus on the first two.

new ways to tell stories
blogs, microblogs, image blogs, presence blogs, video blogs – all of these things are tools for storytelling, but with different forms. a blog like this one is long-form (maybe too long-form), microblogs are (very) short form, and things like flickr are picture books, but with an amazing layer of other stuff attached. for the purposes of this entry, i'll refer to all the stuff other than regular blogs as "second-generation blogs" (2G blogs or channels).

each of these 2G blog channels supports the core motivations for blogging (communication, many-to-many connection), but with a different kind of effort that's easier to support more continuously. it's also easier for others to engage with these channels, or to ignore them without worrying too much about missing something important.

microblogs like twitter are about as lightweight as it gets. anything and everything is fair game to include in these streams of personal information. any single message is, for the most part, meaningless and very easy to create and consume (or ignore). the aggregate of these messages gives one window into what people are doing with their lives. it's not a rich connection, but it's a connection, and face it: people only have so much time and energy for real rich connections.

flickr is interesting. people put a LOT of time and effort into flickr, and it's an incredibly vibrant community. i was mistaken when i originally thought it's just a photo-sharing site. it is that, but that's secondary to it being a social network, with all of the associated drama, emotional energy, and fun. also, the nature of the effort to engage on flickr is different than with a narrative blog. the mental overhead is relatively small when it comes to taking a picture and posting it with a small description or witty title. it's not that it doesn't require talent, or creative thinking, it's just much different than the effort needed for narrative. this is also not to say that some people don't put a lot of effort into creating narrative that goes with their pictures.

so what do we get out of all this?
like storytelling, the rewards are different depending on what is consumed. long-form blogs take more effort, which hopefully leads to richer rewards. microblogs require little to no effort, with lots of small rewards, all of which add up to a heightened sense of connection and community. and flickr? for me, flickr is more about emotional inspiration and fun, tied to connecting with people through the way they see the world, as opposed to the way they think about it. the rewards here are more complex than microblogging, but different from the long-form.

as much as all of these forms of storytelling are about connection, they are also very much about our ultimate vanity and self-interested virtue. people love to feel like they are important, like people are paying attention to what they think and say and do and see and feel, that others find them engaging, interesting, funny, sexy. in addition to communication and connection, blogging (in all the forms i've discussed) is about giving and getting attention, and all of these new channels make it easy to get and give: they're free, they're fun, and they're easy to use.

and what the hell is my point, anyway?
i don't think i'm saying anything new here. if i had the energy to dig, i'm sure i could find 100 blogger or social media pundits who've already made these points better than i can. if i had to distill it, though, i'm saying that i think the internet is enabling people to share and engage with new kinds of stories, each with their own social rewards.

i'm also just thinking out loud about why i engaged with those other channels to the exclusion of this blog. it probably just comes down to me being lazy, and being able to connect (and get more attention) in those other channels. i still relish the ability to come back here and tell longer stories; i just also wish i had the time and energy to do that more.

Posted by docrpm on 02.10.08 at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 19, 2007

envelope-free ATMs

file under: thoughts about things

last friday, i had an interesting experience with a new way of doing something old: a faster, easier way of depositing checks at the ATM.

you know the drill: you've got some checks to deposit, so you head to the nearest bank to take care of business. if you're me (i.e., obsessive compulsive), you prepare in advance for your mission:

1. endorse your checks (for deposit only!)
2. tally up the total and write it on a Post-It
3. put a pen in your pocket (because there's never one at the ATM)
4. go to the ATM
5. pull an envelope out of the machine
6. put the checks inside the envelope and seal it
7. write the deposit total on the envelope
8. insert card, enter PIN
9. do the deal and stick the envelope in the slot

fully expecting to run through this routine, i went to the Safeway near my office. i ponied up to the ATM in search of an envelope and found none. no slot to hold them, inside or outside the ATM. i walked over to the teller area (this Wells Fargo was inside Safeway, for non-California readers), thinking i'd find envelopes there, but nothing. nada. zipperino. no envelopes.

thinking i must be stupid, i went back to the ATM and looked closely. these were new-fangled looking ATMs with a sticker across the front that said (you guessed it): "Envelope-free ATM." huh? what the *&!% is an envelope-free ATM? ATMs always have envelopes. does that mean i can't make deposits? if that's it, why don't they call it a "No-deposit ATM"? (actually, don't they have those and call them exactly that?). at this point, i have descended into complete stupidity, because it took me another 30 seconds spent staring at the machine (with a glisten of drool at my open mouth) before the wires got connected in my brain: "Oh! they must mean i can deposit my checks without an envelope.".

sure enough, you enter PIN and choose deposit, then just stick your entire stack of checks into the open, blinking slot (yes, all at once, not one at a time). it accepts them, closes, tells you that it's reviewing your checks, pulls up little scanned images, then shows you the actual dollar total on the screen and asks you if that's correct. it was, and that was that: envelope-free deposit. with one fell user-experience swoop, Wells Fargo has slain the deposit-hassle beast: no more totaling your checks. no more calculator and Post-It note with the total. no more pen in your pocket. no more envelope. just easy sailing. (Wells Fargo should be paying me for this...)

as amazing as this whole experience was, i walked away from the ATM a little dazed. it was really confusing. it wasn't that it was hard. not at all. it's just that the new experience totally defied my expectation of what i was supposed to be doing. i've been depositing checks using envelopes for about 30 years, and i had to cross the chasm of disbelief to realize that i didn't need to do that this time. they probably could have made the signage better, but short of having someone stand there to tell you what to do, i don't know what else they could do to make it easier. once i realized what was what, it was pretty easy. it was just that initial what-the-!&%$-is-going-on hurdle that was the hard part.

the whole thing just struck me as really odd, because i couldn't remember the last time i had something like this happen, where a very established way of doing something in the real world is summarily replaced, without warning or explanation. i'm sure this happened all the time during the industrial revolution, and throughout the last 30 years of technological advancement...i just can't think of another clear instance of this type of thing in my own life. i'm sure many of you out there have examples to share, so drag them out...let me know the last time you had a completely expectation-defying-yet-wonderful real-world experience like this!! (computers don't count...they defy expectations as a matter of course.)

Posted by docrpm on 10.19.07 at 9:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 25, 2007

the sun still doesn't shine

file under: thoughts about things

we went to see sunshine again last night after the debacle at the metreon last week. as luck would have it, the last night the film screened at the Metreon was thursday. in the words of Homer Simpson, "DOH!"!!!

we saw Ratatouille instead and were amply rewarded for our frustrations with the Metreon. i'll write a review shortly.

Posted by docrpm on 08.25.07 at 10:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 23, 2007

much less than six degrees

file under: thoughts about things

i am continually astonished by the connectedness of human beings. the notion of six degrees of separation is well-documented and popularized, and an explosion of work on the theory of networks has shed more light on the phenomenon. so, it's not so much that's i'm surprised we are all so connected. rather, i find it interesting the connections that exist in my little social world.

just yesterday, i was writing about the new album by Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie. i like to include links in my posts to other interesting reviews or tidbits, and i happened to find robin guthrie's blog. oddly enough, it was hosted on the domain run by my wedding photographer. i contacted him to ask what was going on, and he confirmed that he's good friends with guthrie, having built his first web site back in the day.

so, my wedding photographer is good friends with a famous musician whom i happen to like very much, and i never would have known it, were it not for the internet. you can argue (somewhat ineffectively) about whether or not the internet creates connections, but at the very least, it provides a way to expose the ones already there.

me and robin guthrie: one degree of separation. very odd, indeed. anybody else got any interesting "six degrees" stories related to the internet?

Posted by docrpm on 08.23.07 at 6:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2007

facial hair math

file under: thoughts about things
tags: humor

i was out to dinner with one of my work clients last night, and realized after awhile that his handlebar mustache bore some interesting relationship to mine. more precisely, if you took a circle beard (aka a van dyke) and removed the mustache, you'd get the form of beard i have (which is apparently the sum of a goatee and a soul patch). so, in other words:

   goatee + handlebar mustache + soul patch = van dyke

men play with this mathematics on their faces a lot, or at least i do. i'm constantly trimming here, reconfiguring there, trying out new formulas to see what works. call it a hobby. a weird one, probably, but still a hobby.

anyway. um. yeah. this information probably falls into the category of "interesting little tidbits you wish you didn't know about Ryan, but that explain a lot."

Posted by docrpm on 08.10.07 at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 8, 2007

trapped in the car by NPR

file under: thoughts about things

i get trapped in the car by NPR occasionally. i'll be driving home, and a particularly compelling piece will come on just as i'm pulling into the driveway. the thought of missing even 30 seconds of the 4-minute piece is excruciating, so i'll invariably pull into my garage, close the door, and sit there until it's done, relishing every word.

a few days ago, it was an interview with seth green and matthew sennreich about robot chicken. before that, i think it was david sedaris doing a reading of something on halloween. this american life has gotten me a few times as well.

i can't think of anything else on the radio that has spawned the same inability to leave the car. i'm not sure what statement that makes about NPR (good programs seems too obvious; it's more than that) and/or me (obsessive?), but i've laughed at myself every time i did it.

Posted by docrpm on 08.08.07 at 8:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

July 21, 2007

drink up. eat up. light up.

file under: thoughts about things
tags: humor

on my way to fort lauderdale this week, i had a layover in Denver. a long layover. one that started out being an hour and ended up being three hours. during the delay, my traveling companion and i explored the eating and drinking options a bit, searching for someplace with that certain airport je ne sais quoi. we found the Mesa Verde bar and grill, whose slogan (slightly obscured in photo, ironically) is "Drink up. Eat up. Light up.". pretty simple tagline, highlighting the fact that other states still allow smoking in bars, among other things.

Toto, i don't think we're in san francisco any more.

Posted by docrpm on 07.21.07 at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 17, 2007

how many items?

file under: thoughts about things

the photo above was taken at my local Safeway. while certainly well-intentioned, i think their desire to streamline the checkout process has gone slightly awry.

when carrying a full hand-held basket, how easy is it to count the number of items you have? can you even see all of them? what if you laid a bag of chips on top of 15 smaller items? if i have a single bag full of 10 oranges, is that 1 item or 10? if i don't put the oranges into a bag, is it 1 item or 10? the seemingly simple Express Checkout process is full of fuzzy logic, in my mind. i doubt that anyone counts items when they go through these stands, and by the same token, i doubt that checkers count things either.

the whole point of line segmentation in markets is to separate the full carts from the people with a few items. why bother putting numbers to things? why not just segment based on the size of your cart (handheld or four-wheeling)? doesn't that make more sense? sure, there's the edge case of the guy who buys 50 packs of gum and puts it into a hand basket, but there aren't many freaks like that....oh wait. sorry. i live in san francisco.

Posted by docrpm on 07.17.07 at 8:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 23, 2007

the two-stupid-question IQ test

file under: thoughts about things

a study released a few days ago shows that eldest children have the highest IQs in families, statistically speaking. i'm not interested in writing about that article or the study or IQ as a function of birth order. no, what i want to write about today is an NPR rebuttal to that story in which a reporter went around, found some eldest children, and did an impromptu IQ test.

this was a very tongue-in-cheek interview, but it still bugged me what the reporter did (or rather, how he did it). he asked two questions whose goal was supposedly to determine how smart someone was. the questions?

1. what is the square root of π?
2. what are the six types of quarks?

bueller? anyone?

...

1. π is not a perfect square, hence has no exact square root; it's pretty close to 1.77425. this lack of an exact square root is actually true of most numbers. in fact, the square root of 2 is not even defined (it's actually irrational).
2. the six types of quarks are up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.

better answers to these two questions are of course (1) let me get a calculator, and (2) who cares.

first, of course it's silly to think that you could see how intelligent someone was based on only two questions. it's pretty clear this was part of the tongue in cheek in this interview. second, the study related to IQ, and one could argue that there isn't a perfect correlation between IQ and intelligence (no comment on this from the reporter). third, these questions have little to no bearing on intelligence. the thing i can't figure out is whether or not the interviewer thought this was the case.

neither of these questions is difficult, but they rely on bodies of knowledge not needed in everyday life: number theory and particle physics. an inability to answer these questions accurately would mean you're ignorant of these particular facts, not stupid. this is especially true of the second question, which is based on rote memorization and thus equivalent to asking someone, "who is the author of Portait of the Artist as a Young Man?"

it seems to me that most people, when asked these questions, wouldn't be able to answer them, and might feel stupid because of it. why not pick questions that were either impossible to answer (e.g., can anything move faster than light?) or that were incredibly silly (e.g., how many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?). if you picked ridiculous questions on either end of the spectrum, it seems you'd get a laugh, make your point that two questions don't an IQ test make, and not make anyone wonder whether or not they were being made fun of.

then again, maybe i'm just overthinking things. it just irks me when intelligence is conflated with knowledge, and that's what i felt this NPR interviewer did with his two stupid questions.

Posted by docrpm on 06.23.07 at 2:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 9, 2007

year zero

file under: music , thoughts about things
tags: alternate reality game , nine inch nails , review

Nine Inch Nails (aka Trent Reznor) have released their latest album: Year Zero.

the nutshell review? there isn't one. it's a distressing, thought-inspiring, sprawling, frustrating, visionary effort put forth by one of the great innovators in electronic music. it's an attempt to merge art and political statement using digital tools and trickery. it's an alternate reality game. it's a brilliant "concept album," but it's not an album in the LP-sense of the word – it's an aggregate of ideas and media and information whose combination reveals an unsettling and dystopian vision for modern society, all wrapped in an aurally compelling package.

...

i've been a die-hard NIN fan ever since the release or Pretty Hate Machine. my life was consumed in fiery confusion at the time of its release, and it became a place for me to retreat during my struggles to make the transition from child to adult, to navigate my self-indulgent passage through loneliness and anger. it was a great listen, one that helped defined the entire industrial electronica genre of which i was a great fan. he followed with the brilliant Broken, the inspired and seminal Downward Spiral, the bloated and somewhat self-indulgent Fragile, and the half-listenable-but-safe With Teeth, which followed a loooong six-year hiatus containing scattered singles and tour materials.

after Downward Spiral, he sort of lost his way...who knows why? stardom, undiscerning idolatry, drug addiction and self-abuse...the usual litany of pop stardom woes followed by subsequent decay into mediocrity (at least in the minds of some). thankfully, reznor pulled out of his own downward spiral and produced something to rival or surpass the album of the same name. the new album looks out more than in, taking on multiple perspectives and voices, while still holding onto many of the core themes that have woven themselves through all of his work (god, religion, oppression, power, control).

the music

the album has been reviewed in a number of places. the year zero wikipedia entry has a list of fifteen or so critical reviews. as with most of NIN's later efforts, this one evokes a mixed reaction, ranging from brilliant to [shrug] to bollocks. this is to be expected, and despite the fact that i love it and can't stop listening to it, your mileage may vary significantly.

reznor recorded the bulk of the album himself while on tour. he plays almost all instruments, wrote every song. musically, this album pulls from the usual bag of NIN tricks, and to good effect. it's sonically varied as it progresses from beginning to end, wandering from kinetic industrial guitars to pulsing, danceable beats to quiet, earnest melodies and messages buried in whispers and static. standout tracks for me include: Capital G, God Given, Meet Your Master, Another Version of the Truth, In This Twilight, and Zero Sum. the album passes through an arc, one that starts with The Beginning of the End and ends with the affecting and thoughtful Zero Sum. songs represent the perspectives of some of the different personas and organizations in this dystopian vision of society.

zero sum is particularly moving. it's a look back at the (future) wasteland that we've created through our shortsightedness, our selfishness, and we're living in a twilight, one where the coming night may or may not end. a sample:

they're starting to open up the sky
they're starting to reach down through
and it feels like we're living in that split-second
of a car crash
and time is slowing down
and if we only had a little more time
and this time is all there is
do you remember the time we
and all the times we
and should have
and were going to
i know
and i know you remember
how we could justify it all
and we knew better
in our hearts we knew better
and we told ourselves it didn't matter
and we chose to continue
and none of that matters anymore
in the hour of our twilight
and soon it will all be said and done
and we will all be back together as one
if we will continue at all

at the end of it all, reznor doesn't seem to take hope in much, or if he does, he doesn't vocalize it. the future could be very grim indeed if his vision came to pass...but that's probably the point: shake our collective shoulders hard enough so that we invidually do what we can to foment positive political, social and environmental change.

politics and Year Zero

Year Zero was a political concept before it was the title of a NIN album. from the Wikipedia entry above:

The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely irrelevant, as it will (as an ideal) be purged and replaced from the ground up.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge originated this term, and followed it with well-documented atrocities and suppression of civil liberties for the good of the state. Year Zero (as appropriated by NIN) imagines a time 15 years in the future where the international calendar has been reset by the US and a Coalition for Peace, where Church and State have merged to fight the onslaught of global terrorism, where drugs are used to control the population, where freedom is a privilege, not a right.

Year Zero – alternate reality game

the music album Year Zero is only one small piece of a much larger puzzle. Reznor and his compatriots have constructed a large-scale alternate reality game (ARG) that houses the story behind Year Zero (YZ). the game has been unfolding through an elaborate series of hints and clues scattered across both the real world and the internet (USB flash drives left at concerts, MP3 files with hidden clues (see below), web sites, hidden urls, unlinked images on the web, album artwork, and telephone recordings). it started with bold letters on a concert t-shirt, which when strung together, led people to the web site iamtryingtobelieve.com. this hinted at the upcoming album, led to more web sites in the fictional universe being created, and started the game.

as an example of the kind of hints that have been scattered around the world and Net, the first album track was "leaked" on a USB flash drive left at a concert. it contained a high-quality version of My Violent Heart. it also contained 8 or 9 seconds of static at the end of the song, which when run through a spectrographic analysis, reveals an unsettling image of a godhead that's a central component of the game: The Presence (compare the image below to the album cover above). A number of other spectral analyses of MP3s have revealed additional clues, some in morse code, some in images as references to the online NIN community, some as phone numbers. (Note that NIN are by no means the first to embed images inside songs. another notable example is Aphex Twin.)

an example of one of the web sites used in the game is anotherversionofthetruth.com. at first glance, the site is a patriotic reflection of NIN's fictional Bureau of Morality, but drag your mouse across the site and it reveals a subversive message and links to an imagined future discussion forum in the game universe, which in turn reveals additional clues.

all told, at present, there are 30 separate web sites that have been linked to the YZ ARG. the storyline is fleshing itself out, complete with characters and a timeline, and it is pushing the buttons of a lot of OCD NIN fans who obsessively write about it and analyze every element of the universe. the best source for all of this information is the unofficial NIN Wiki, which at this point seems to be mostly focused on the YZ ARG. as a side note, several sites exist to help unravel the puzzles within ARGs (see unfiction and lonelygirl15)

open-sourcing art, resistance and music

an organization called Open Source Resistance (OSR) and its sister Art is Resistance (AIR) feature prominently in the YZ ARG, partially because they exist in the present day. by subscribing to the OSR mailing list, people were encouraged to come for a meeting in LA on Melrose place. they were met by people toting OSR rebellion kits, complete with stencils and other paraphernalia, all brandished with the OSR logo:

From the Wikipedia entry on the groups:

Although the group is technically in-game and fictitious, by allowing participants within the game to contribute via their art, "secret meetings," and similarly underground (though staged) activities, AIR could also be considered a real group, comprised of participants of the game and as a manifestation of the political awareness that the Year Zero game promotes.

this is, of course, reminiscent of past viral marketing campaigns. the one it conjures in my mind is Shepard Fairey's Obey Giant campaign, which eventually spread worldwide. no doubt, NIN would love to have their OSR stickers all over the world. free marketing for them, whereas for Fairey it was a social experiment.

but i digress.

the Open Source movement has been thriving for the past decade, with the rise of Linux, PHP, Mozilla, and other technologies based on freely contributing communities and networks, all striving towards a greater good without explicit rewards. reznor clearly believes in these ideas as they apply to intellectual property and digital rights management (DRM) of media. he clearly dislikes record labels and their approach to music sales as well. with the release of Year Zero, he has embraced these principles more firmly than ever. the entire album can be streamed from the NIN MySpace page, and all tracks will eventually be released in GarageBand/logic format for people to remix the songs themselves.

how all of this applies to the notion of rebellion and resistance is a little unclear to me. by its very nature, rebellion and resistance require networks of people, communities of the like-minded, in order to be successful. whether or not they are open or secret depends on the context in which they live. today, with our relatively free society, resistance can be more vocal and visible, provided it lives within the confines of the law. under the rule of a Pol Pot, resistance would have to be secret, since it would be punishable (usually by death). so, a secret resistance network seems a bit antithetical to the true ideals of open source (where everything is open and visible), although that's probably too literal an intepretation of the OSR term in the YZ context. the power of open source comes through the scale of networks it enables, and rebellion can only be successful if enough people join to fight, so maybe this is what NIN is getting at.

marketing, political statement and art

so what's the point of all of this? is it just a new NIN album with Marketing 2.0, or is there something deeper?

a cynic could argue (and many have), that the entire YZ ARG and concept are merely part of a brilliant viral marketing campaign, constructed to tap into NIN's core demographic (if there even is one). based on what i've read online, there wasn't much of a traditional marketing campaign for the album, so the viral marketing argument makes a lot of sense. however, many seem to stop there, as if that suffices to explain the entire effort. an implicit argument here is that the YZ ARG and everything around it has no meaning or value beyond the strict means to an end: sell more albums. i think there's more to it.

Year Zero is a fragmented, non-linear story about a possible future. it contains many voices and ideas that can't easily be contained in the confines of a 16-song album. by creating content outside the context of the album, these voices and ideas can be fleshed out more fully. additionally, they give more power to the narrative, partially because elements of the story don't seem dissimilar from current events. it's not that hard to extrapolate to the grim future Reznor imagines (although i think it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances to get there). YZ has created an unsetling simulacrum; with at least two of the YZ web sites (Free Rebel Art and Open Source Resistance), the line between fiction and reality was blurred pretty heavily, to the point that i wasn't quite sure whether it was a real or fictional call to action. all of this allows reznor (and whoever else is involved) to express a broader set of ideas (while simultaneously creating viral interest).

as a game, it's interesting to see the dynamics of groups coming together to solve the in-game puzzles, to discuss the music, to create an ephemeral network. the game's content is entirely political, so a natural outgrowth is heightened political awareness on the part of some participants, discussing it in the context of the game or otherwise. by writing this blog, i participate in that process, maybe inciting a reader to think differently, act differently (either positively or negatively).

finally, at a higher level, if you buy the argument (mine and trent reznor's as well) that everything surrounding and including the album is part of a coherent whole, then what is that whole? do we have the words to describe it? MetaArt? AggArt? InformationArt? InfoPorn? what do you call something that combines:

• 16 songs, neatly packaged
• 30 web sites with related audio and video content
• telephone recordings (and callbacks)
• the story told by all of the above
• an emergent social network of gamers, fans, and OCD ARG freaks
• the heightened political awareness generated by this collective phenomenon

i don't know what to call it, but i think it's a fascinating reflection of the times in which we live, even if it's all "just marketing."

final thoughts

the digital world that supplants our day-to-day existence is weaving itself into the tapestry of our lives; among other things, we've created freely available tools to support widespread information sharing, political action and resistance where necessary. conversely, governments and others may use these tools for the purposes of surveillance, monitoring and occasionally repression, all with the stated goal of maintaining our safety and security. control of this precious digital resource (in the sense of maintaining neutrality, transparency, standards, and openness) is critical for human rights and a free society, and for maintaining the balance between the right to share information and the ability to monitor it. the internet is not a toy any more; the information flowing through its veins is part of the lifeblood of our society, and it will only grow in importance. there will come a day when many literally cannot live without it; we should be thoughtful as we prepare for that day. Year Zero is only one possible outcome.

YZ taken as a whole is disturbing and scary for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its shadow similarity to our world. with a few negative twists and a well-placed dirty bomb or two, our world could be transformed by fear. the tragic events of 9/11 have shown how fear-mongering can be used as a tool for political ends; it's not hard to imagine more events like this leading us to a place where we give up more and more control to governments, religions, and corporate entities that supposedly represent our best interests. in many cases they do, but we should always remember that these organizations are run by human beings, inherently flawed, hungry for power and control over others, and endlessly thirsty for things that satisfy our far-flung prurient interests.

Posted by docrpm on 06.09.07 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 21, 2007

microsoft funny money

file under: thoughts about things

microsoft has done an interesting thing with their xbox live marketplace: they made their own kind of money. when you log on to live marketplace and want to purchase anything (e.g., movies, games), the cost is given in "microsoft points." for example, i am downloading the HD version of a scanner darkly; the cost is 480 points.

so how much is one point worth? well, you can do the math and see that 1 point = $0.0125 (1.25 pennies, or 80 points = $1). so my movie download is costing me $6 (ouch).

at first glance, this just seems to be another irritating, proprietary microsoftism (not to mention potential ripoff); it's something you accept, deal with and move on. if you think just a bit harder, you realize a few things (which i didn't at first):

• you need a calculator to determine the actual cost. the conversion factor was chosen carefully so that most won't be able to do the conversion in their heads; the order-of-magnitude shift amplifies this problem.
• if you don't use the system for awhile, you're likely to forget what the conversion factor is, or actual costs you may have calculated in the past.
• most people are probably too lazy to do the calculation in the first place (or if they've forgotten the factor)
• microsoft could, at some point, institute inflation and it probably wouldn't be noticed.

bottom line, in my opinion: "stored-value systems" like that set up by microsoft are very convenient, and are designed to obscure and encourage expenditures. it's pretty smart and pretty shifty at the same time.

Posted by docrpm on 04.21.07 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 29, 2007

planet earth

file under: thoughts about things

i knew i bought an HDTV for something.

the new Discovery/BBC series Planet Earth is stunning. Elaine and I have only watched one show (Pole to Pole), and we're hooked. the show is an unparalleled visual exploration of our planet, one that exposes things never seen, especially not in the high-definition format in which it's presented.

yeah yeah yeah...HD schmaitch-D. another documentary about the glories of Mother Earth? haven't we been there and done that? about a hundred times?

yes, we have, but that doesn't diminish from the power or the importance of viewing. Elaine and I have yet to see the whole series, but in times when all seems dire and dour in the news, it's nice to take a step back and look at the thing that nurtures and sustains us – our world. other recent documentaries have brought our relationship to the world into a different perspective; an inconvenient truth is an obvious (and probably over-cited) example. with this new (or refocused) perspective, i think our world bears revisiting in the less-gloomy documentary sense.

in the first episode of planet earth, we are taken on a tour of the world, from top to bottom, pole to pole, looking at how the sun affects ecosystems and life on the planet, how it is ultimately the engine that gives everything on this rock strength. in this one episode, they managed to show about 5 different things that i'd never seen before in documentary footage. everything from very-high-altitude time-lapse photography, to aerial explorations of a wild-dog hunt in Africa – it was jaw-dropping for us.

Baraka is the clearest reference point for me, although i think the narrative structure of Baraka leads to different feelings, different conclusions. this is more about the Earth without us, not in relation to us. it is about Nature with a capital N, from bitter cold to scorching heat, from abundance of life to desolate wasteland. it is also about the pure struggle for survival that most of us (in the Western world, at least), conveniently forget.

for me, shows like planet earth try to erase our myopia, our preoccupation with everything human, everything here, everything now. they try to give us a wider view, a way of seeing our tiny tragedies and victories in the mirror of the vast world that surrounds us. we would do well to pay attention.

Posted by docrpm on 03.29.07 at 7:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

December 20, 2006

red lobster holiday cookies

file under: thoughts about things

my mother's side of the family saves everything. i mean everything. we take packrat-dom to new levels; rats would take notes. fortunately, the holidays come along once a year, allowing various family members to put some of those unwanted, yet valuable, items to good use.

for example, my mom sent me a bunch of holiday cookies, along with other goodies...what better use for red lobster leftover styrofoam!!

Posted by docrpm on 12.20.06 at 8:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

December 9, 2006

elaine has superpowers

file under: thoughts about things

she's been keeping it from me all these years, but now that we're married, elaine finally came clean: she has super powers. she hasn't told me yet whether she plans to use these gifts for good or evil, although it does look like i can get LASIK for free if i ever need it...

Posted by docrpm on 12.09.06 at 3:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 6, 2006

water on mars

file under: thoughts about things

it appears that more evidence has surfaced for the existence of liquid water on the surface of mars. i will leave it to greater minds to ponder the importance of this discovery. i just think it's pretty cool to find out new things about our nearest planetary neighbor. it shows just how much there is left to discover.

Posted by docrpm on 12.06.06 at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 28, 2006

over the insurance barrel

file under: thoughts about things

i hate the american health insurance system. it is broken in the worst possible way:

• everyone agrees it's broken
• it's really hard and expensive to fix
• any solution would require compromise
• no one is willing to compromise
• everyone accepts it as just the way things are
• most people suffer as a result

it is not a problem of third-world magnitude; i would never compare it with the brutality and suffering visited upon so many in the world. but for a country of 250+ million, there are plenty of people who suffer with this system, and they are mostly poor and underprivileged. i'm not going to whinge about my issues – i just think they reflect a much larger problem, and it makes me furious.

i sprained my ankle amonth ago. it's not healing properly, and i have a history of injuries to this ankle. x-rays showed nothing. i went to see a podiatrist, a doctor of sports medicine, and he wanted to do a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan to see what the heck is going on. my insurance company has to approve such a test, since it's expensive (about $2000, which i can't afford to pay myself). with no other evidence than my doctor's request, their response (after repeated calls from my doctor with no response) was quite simple:

Review of the available clinical information (Man with trauma to left ankle one month ago. Has continued pain and limited range of motion. X-ray normal. No treatment other than ice and elevation.) does not indicate the need for the requested imaging study.

as a helpful afterthought, they provide the following:

The preceding determination was made in accordance with current NIA clinical guidelines for imaging. A copy of the general criteria used for the determination of medical necessity in this case is available free of charge. Please submit or fax your request to the address of fax number listed. A copy of the clinical criteria will be mailed within 30 days of your request.

well, at least it's free....and i'll probably still be in pain in 30 days, so waiting is cool by me.

now i have the option of paying $2000 for the test, or sucking it up and waiting a few months to see if it heals (with physical therapy that i'll probably have to pay for). at least it's not like the situation my father faced, where he had to pony up $26,000 to save his own life from skin cancer (insurance company response in that case was "sorry, pre-existing condition").

is there anything to do in this situation but shake your fist at the sky? it seems like that might actually be more effective. either that, or screaming into the nearest hurricane. do people with life-threatening problems get any more compassion? if i were really, really sick, i hope that the system would be slightly more inclined to help, although if my father's case is any example, i'd probably have more luck trying to jump to the moon.

PS: i realize the insurance companies are businesses that need to make money. it's not just them. it's the whole system (the cost of tests, the cost of care, the cost of practitioner liability insurance). it's all broken. it's one big Gordian knot of brokenness.

Posted by docrpm on 08.28.06 at 8:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 22, 2006

the price of stupidity

file under: thoughts about things

i'm going to take this in the reverse order from the commercials...

• expression on my face when i realized my car had been towed (with my cellphone inside): priceless
• phone call to figure out what to do: $0.50 (i remember when it used to be $0.10)
• taxi to the impound yard: $9
• fee to get my car out of hock: $88.25
• parking ticket for making the mistake in the first place: $60
• cost of a legal parking space: < $5

as an added note, i was at the impound yard within about 30 minutes of when my car had been towed. their storage fees typically run something crazy like $50/hour. it could have been a lot worse...

Posted by docrpm on 08.22.06 at 6:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 14, 2006

docrpm hits the big time

file under: thoughts about things

i never thought it would happen, but somehow, Steven Colbert found out about this blog and decided to put it on the air....the Internet is an amazing thing. ;-)

of course, i would never have made it without the reference from my good friend chookyfuzzbang.

Posted by docrpm on 08.14.06 at 11:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

August 4, 2006

all green, for now

file under: thoughts about things

whenever i drive places in the city, and it's really easy to get there, i get a little suspicious from a karmic standpoint. take today, for instance.

i left work early to run two errands. i gave myself an hour for both, knowing that under the best circumstances, it could take 30 minutes; 45 minutes was more realistic. this doesn't include the time to get home after the errands were done, which could add as much as another 45 minutes.

it took me about 8 minutes to get to my first errand. i drove up and parked right in front of the building (a Kojak, as we call it). hopped out of the car, paid a ridiculous $0.25 for 6 minutes on the meter, walked up the stairs, got my package, walked down the stairs, done. it took about three minutes. the next errand wouldn't be so easy. i had to cross the city, going through some notoriously congested areas.

the path to my next destination was going to be slower, and parking was going to be bad....i knew it.

from SoMA, i swung up Ninth street, crossed Market, turned on Franklin, and then drove all the way up to California without stopping once. all 18 lights were green (ok, maybe there was one 10-second pause). on that particular route, my smooth trip amounts to a planetary alignment of our entire solar system. the rest of the journey was pretty quick, and ended with a parking miracle: i drove up and parked half a block away (a Serpico – he never got to park right in front).

i waltzed into the building in question and walked into an empty elevator with its doors already standing ajar, as if waiting for my timed arrival. seriously creepy. up 8 floors, no stops, pick up my next package, back to the elevator, down 8 floors, no stops, and out. the elevators in this particular building usually involve about 6 stops, most of which involve kind, but slow-moving, elderly people.

total time to complete my two errands: 30 minutes. of course, it took me 30 minutes to get home, but it could have been worse. now, my question is, was the delay getting home the balance on my karmic scales, or is there a smackdown coming sometime soon?

Posted by docrpm on 08.04.06 at 5:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

May 20, 2006

i'm a voter and don't know squat

file under: thoughts about things

today, as i was responding to my friend Chooky's post comparing Nepal and Iran, i realized i don't know much about the world in terms of history, current affairs, and the connection between the two. i was trying to construct a coherent argument and basically couldn't (not without consulting the CIA world factbook in an effort to get at least the basics right). i knew bits and pieces of history and politics associated with each country, but nothing you'd take to the foreign policy bank.

it's pretty startling that i'm so uninformed, even though i make a daily effort (read the New York Times, listen to NPR, talk with friends who know more about current affairs than i do). in the end, it probably only really matters when i vote (and when i try to influence other's opinions).

my hope is that i vote for people whose knowledge of foreign policy is greater than mine [cough]. seems like a bit of a crapshoot when you really think about it, but that's the ultimate price (and gift) of democracy: the belief in the collective wisdom of an imperfectly informed electorate (averaged out over time, of course; even a well-informed electorate can make a mistake once (or, twice)).

this state of imperfection is natural. there's no objective truth when it comes to the past, since the supposed facts of history are always filtered through someone's lens. knowledge of the future based on the past is even more of a fool's errand – the world is a complex, emergent system. so when it comes to current affairs and foreign policy, even the smartest people are just making educated guesses most of the time, and however smart they are, even they can't escape unintended consequences.

as globalization, economic interdependence, and the daily influx of world news increases over time, we face an important challenge - how to make sense of it all. i'm not sure at this point. i can't even read the whole newspaper, not mention the modest 30+ RSS feeds piped to my newsreader every day. with all this information, there's just no way to know what's wheat and what's chaff.

Posted by docrpm on 05.20.06 at 7:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 4, 2006

(un)original sin

file under: thoughts about things

plagiarism seems to be the meme of the month, which brings me back to a theme i've explored before – the notion of originality in the Internet era. after all, what is plagiarism but a pronouned lack of originality?

it's probably not an original idea (i haven't googled it yet), but the Internet is making it easier to spot plagiarism and lack of originality. not only that, but networked communications with topic-centric filters make it easy to disseminate and/or locate the purported sins of the potential offenders. once google indexes everything ever published in the history of mankind, the situation for the aspiring plagiarist is looking rather grim.

the definition of plagiarism is actually a bit slippery. here are a few possible definitions:

the act of taking and passing off as one's own (the ideas, writings, etc. of another).

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

The willful act of presenting another person's work as one's own.

See the Athabasca University glossary

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as if it were your own, whether you mean to or not. ‘Someone else’s work’ means anything that is not your own idea, even if it is presented in your own style. It includes material from books, journals or any other printed source, the work of other students or staff, information from the Internet, software programs and other electronic material, designs and ideas. It also includes the organization or structuring of any such material.

See the Victoria, University of Wellington, NZ student glossary.

there are a few points of variation or distinction here that i'll boil down to ICE:

• intent: was the appropriation of work or ideas intentional or not? if it was unintentional, did it occur because the work had been seen or read before, or was it a completely random coincidence?


• content: what was the nature of the replication? was it literal transcription? paraphrasing? vaguely similar structure? what fraction of an idea constitutes the same idea?


• extent: how much was copied or paraphrased or otherwise pilfered? was it one memorable phrase out of a 1000-page book? what if the phrase was only tangential to the central thrust of the book? what if it were one page?

it all seems totally subjective, which explains to me why there is so much debate lately about relative degrees of guilt and culpability, even if one discovers and communicates the idea that plagiarism has occurred.

but let's forget about the vagaries of meaning in the word, and assume that we can agree on a definition. "is this work plagiarism?" an omniscient, neutral third-party observer (i.e., God), might be able to answer, but only withiin the boundaries of our definition. if everyone had simultaneous access to this omniscient source, we could all know whether or not something was original. of course, no such omniscient source seems to exist (or at least, to make itself available to us), so we're left to a more subjective assessment. in other words, i basically reject the notion of Platonic (objective) assessment of original ideas; it doesn't matter whether or not the same idea has been had before in principle – what matters is whether anyone knows or not.

so, if one agrees that knowing is what counts, we're left with two challenges:

1. discovery: one needs to find the crime, as it were. our source material needs to be compared with all other available work and ideas (i.e., the entire body of recorded human knowledge) to determine whether or not it is wholly original. this is possible in theory, but not (even at present) in practice. some monk in outer mongolia could have had the same idea, but this is irrelevant unless he made it known in some public forum (books, magazines, discussions at the local bazaar passed down by word of mouth, etc.).


2. communication: once something is discovered as plagiarism, the discoverer needs to communicate it to the rest of the world (or some subset thereof).

the challenge of discovery
in the distant past, an ocean (or even a few hundred miles) was enough to mask a lack of originality or cloak the sin of plagiarism. the spread of knowledge was slow, and similar ideas were likely to crop up in many places, either by coincidence or not, and the likelihood of discovering the similarity was slim.

the internet erases geography and the temporal delays associated with transporting physical representation of ideas. it also adds a very crucial feature: search. if i can take passages or statistically improbable phrases or other things, and drop them into a search engine, how much more quickly will i be able to discern similarities between one work and another? how often are these judgments accurate? how much are they apophenia? outright transcription will be very easy to spot, fuzzier borrowing of ideas more difficult, but i'd bet eventually possible to some degree.

the other thing to consider is basic statistics: the number of readers is increasing as the population grows, and as the number of people who have access to books or other forms of knowledge increases.

the challenge of communication
the internet has effectively turned this into a non-issue. the bulk of the world's population has network access, in one form or another, and anyone who doesn't might know someone who does. post something somewhere (on the Web, in an email), and odds are that someone on the network will grab it and run with it like digital wildfire, making it available for broad (global) consumption and analysis – metcalf's law writ large.

so who cares?
as i mentioned, the US media is rife with stories about plagiarism these days. it seems that a lot of people care, based on the level of media coverage. i wonder, is this true in general, or is there something about the current zeitgeist that heightens sensitivity to falsehood and misrepresentation? alternatively, is it just sensational, with the media inflating the relative importance of plagiarism in people's minds?

one could argue that the current US administration's approach to the notion of truth has eroded many people's faith. they don't know what to believe any more. who can really parse the triple-talk coming out of the White House? who believes traditional media outlets completely? whose version of the truth is the closest to the actual one, if there even is such a thing? i don't think anyone knows any more. i certainly don't.

we've reached a point where we seem powerless to hold our leaders responsible for misrepresentation of the truth, for prevarication, for equivocation. when a supposed plagiarist is thrust into the spotlight, we can shift our scorn and anger, showering the accused with righteous indignation.

or maybe it's just good, old-fashioned schadenfreude.

in either case, the Internet is changing the way we look at ideas, and it's going to be progressively harder to have original ones.

Posted by docrpm on 05.04.06 at 7:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

April 13, 2006

one giant leap for mankind

file under: thoughts about things

a video for dayvan cowboy has been released. it's the only video Boards of Canada have ever released, and it's a precursor to their forthcoming EP trans canada highway.

as you may have read here previously, i am a huge fan of Boards of Canada, probably to the point of having a blind spot the size of a (hexagon) sun regarding aspects of their work that don't, well, work. you have been warned.

dayvan cowboy is the best track on their latest album. at work this week, i went so far as to opine that it was their best song ever (ask elaine – i never use superlatives ;-)). watching the video just made me more foamy around the lips. wow.

a friend forwarded it to me, and while watching it, he and i were chatting over IM. he said, "it looks like they sound." that seemed a pretty apt description, yet prior to seeing the video, i would have been hard-pressed to visualize a representation of the BoC sound. now i will be hard-pressed to imagine anything else, or to get the video out of my head.

the song is roughly five minutes long, with a long, slow intro that changes significantly at the 2m06s mark. the second part of the song is linked stylistically with the first, yet different; guitars combine with violins, and then the drums and symbols come crashing in at 3m08s, punctuated all the while by a beautiful synth melody floating in and around the other layers of sound. for me, it evokes an odd combination of happiness and melancholy.

the video follows a similar structure, with two distinct stories, if you will, linked and yet not linked. the first 2m08s of the video are one of the most frightening and awe-inspiring things i have ever seen. they used real footage of Joseph Kittinger performing the highest altitude parachute jump ever recorded.

on august 16, 1960, kittinger used a special balloon to climb to an altitude of 102,800 feet (19.4 miles) and then proceeded to jump out of the gondola wearing 60lbs of gear and a parachute. he was in freefall for 4.5 minutes (85,000 feet), and reached a maximum speed of 614 mph, nearly breaking the speed of sound without an aircraft. this was the third time he had done such jumps, previously bailing out at 76,000 and 74,700 feet on two jumps spaced three weeks apart. he nearly died on the first jump; he lost consciousness after a parachute malfunction caused him to wind up in a 120rpm flat spin (his emergency reserve chute saved his life). i guess he just filed that one under "sh*t happens" and decided to get back on the horse.

he had already been awarded the distinguished flying cross for his initial high-altitude balloon flights. after three heroic and unbelievable freefalls from space, one might imagine Joe would just hang it up and retire to a nice calm life in Florida watching take-offs from Cape Canaveral. nah. he was only 32, after all; he had a whole life ahead of him.

after surviving being the first man in space without the benefit of a spaceship, kittinger went on to serve three tours of duty in vietnam, flying 483 combat missions. he was shot down and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war in the hanoi hilton, and was subsequently released. he retired from the air force in 1978, and spent the next five years setting balloon navigation records left and right. he still tours around the country flying a biplane, taking kids on their first flights.

we need more heroes like joseph kittinger, people who demonstrate courage beyond reason and show that humans are capable of a great deal more than what we limit ourselves to. it also wouldn't be too bad to have more musicians like Boards of Canada who show us transcendence in other ways. ;-)

Posted by docrpm on 04.13.06 at 2:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 6, 2006

what's next?

file under: thoughts about things

What's next?, you ask?

the entire course of human history is about to change. apparently, the end of the world is nigh (again). between earthquakes, tsunamis, and terrorists, it's all going to Hell in a handbasket. God is the only one who can save us.

my agnosticism aside, could someone come up with better marketing materials for these folks? i mean, seriously. if you look at the brochure i got in the mail yesterday, the front cover insert image says "Image courtesy of the HQ, USACE, Office of History." that just screams credibility to me.

here are a few thoughts:

• hire a Web designer who knows that red is an accent color, and make those nice images clickable!
• get a writer who can speak clearly and plainly, without the need for all the fire and brimstone stuff. things like "The Origin of Evil", "Armageddon," and "The Coming of the Messiah" are so 15th century.
• don't bother with fancy DVDs full of "Bible references and exciting special effects." Hollywood has already done it better than you ever can, even with God on your side.
• find real people to offer testimonials, as opposed to quoting entire Western states.
• try for more more positive messages and visual imagery; puppies are always good. people get tired of worrying about death and destruction and stuff; we get that from our President all the time.

heyyyyy...wait a second! Dubya, was it you who sent that?

Posted by docrpm on 04.06.06 at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 28, 2006

hanging thought bubbles

file under: thoughts about things

imagine you're having a nice little chat using your favorite instant messgener program (iChat, for instance). you and your friend du instant are making small talk. you make a rather witty remark with which you're terribly impressed, and think you might get a lol, or maybe even a lmao.

your friend starts typing. you know this (on iChat, at least) because a little thought bubble cloud goes up next to their clever IM icon. you wait anxiously for the response.

nothing.

the thought bubble just hangs there in perpetuity. you start imagining all sorts of scenarios:

• your friend flipped a quarter trying to decide whether or not to laugh at your joke, and it landed on its edge, stopping time (sorta like that episode of Twilight Zone)
• the X-Men just walked into your friend's office, and Professor Xavier decided to slow things down a bit, just for kicks (so to speak)
• early-onset alzheimer's struck hard, and your friend forgot you were even there
• doh...bathroom!
• the joke just wasn't that funny after all, and your friend decided to get some real work done and leave you hanging in the process
• maybe they don't love me any more!!!
• they never even meant to respond...you're just witnessing a random, meaningless keystroke, dummy

so there you have it. one of those little things about life in the digital age that makes things interesting. something that could never happen in the meat world is now an everyday occurrence.

oh look! my friend started typing again! (and yes, fyi, i do have too much time on my hands)

Posted by docrpm on 03.28.06 at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2006