Suburban (in)Sanity

We have the most disruptive technology in our pockets and nobody seems to notice

"We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters." This quote was made famous by Founder's Fund VC Peter Theil. 

We sci-fi folks are dreamers. Prognosticators. Fortune tellers. There are some in the SF community who feel like our era is over. Our dreamery future-fantasy stuff is just out of touch with the fast pace of technology today. Or our dreams are too inattainable to be real.

But here's the thing. Peter Theil is right, in a way. We don't have flying cars or bases on the moon or regular rocket rides to asteroids (though we did land a big 'ol rover on Mars. With Lasers!) A lot of the things we dream about in SF stories seem impossibly far off. Teleportation. Telekenisis. Teleanything that doesn't include 150 stations of Reality TV. Distant space travel. Contact with alien cultures.

But, really what's happened is that the future has caught up with us so fast that I think people just haven't noticed.

The cell phone camera is a disruptive technology, and most folks have one on them or are in the presence of someone who has one for the majority of their day.

My camera is a powerful force. I take pictures and digitally journal many of my days (I tried the 365 project  - a picture each day. I fell off the wagon early, but I still find I take a photo more days than not.) 

In addition to photo journaling and just recording life, we have the opportunity to catch moments and record them (my cell phone camera is also a powerful video camera) in high def video. From a baby's first steps to a blissful afternoon walk in a pretty park. This creates a bit of mania in us, I think, as we sometimes forget to just *enjoy* the moment, we're so busy photographing it.

But then it also gives us the opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of the "not so special" moments captured. For me, it helps me to slow down, to fully experience things that I might not have taken the time to notice before. Instead of creating hyperphotographyitis, it's almost like I've amped up my personal awareness of things I see.

What surprises me, though, is how little people pay attention to this. They just blithely go about their daily life taking snapshots of recipes and zinging them across the internets, videotaping democracy rallies in other countries, photographing new species of wildlife and otherwise slowly, (or is it so rapidly we can't even see the movement such that we think it's standing still?) changing the world.

In my own life I've found myself using my camera on my phone for all sorts of things beyond the general activities of a mom trying desperately to capture moments of her kids childhood before they slip through her fingers.

I videotaped my son's hands shaking so we could discuss it with our doctor. I've taken pictures every year or so of the birthmark on my daughter's back so we can see that it is gradually fading. I've photographed receipts to store a copy of them when dining out. I've videotaped a musical group in Ireland including an elbow pipe player. I've sent photos to family members so they can stay current with the kids' development. I've photographed food, flowers, the sandhill cranes that reside nearby part of the year, plants in my yard that I'm not 100% sure aren't weeds.

I've used photos to document the kids' orthodontia progress. I've sent photos to my husband at work to alert him of something going on at home (often hilarious, like the dogs passed out in yin/yang position with their noses in each others...nether quarters, but also to show a repair project we'll need his help with when he comes home.) And he's used photos to share parts of his travels with the kids, or to show us something funny he has seen. We use this powerful technology to stay close, and get closer.

How about you? Do you use that disruptive technology that's in your pocket? What's the most unusual (SAFE for kids/work/families please!) thing you've photographed or the most unusual thing that's happened as a result of interacting with other people's photographs?

Image gallery - click on a thumbnail to see the image. First is my first attempt at home canning. A good girlfriend texted me a page from her canning cookbook when I panicked midway through. The second is Liam's painting from summer art camp midway through. The third is the site that inspired the painting.

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Your parenting tip for the day: Bookmarks for the kids

Parenting Tip: Create a folder of Bookmarks for each child

My kids love playing on the computer. I'm on the computer a lot during the day while they're in school and I often come across a site or activity that I think they would enjoy.

After a few too many "browsers of doom" where I had 12, 15 open tabs just waiting to show the kids, I started a bookmark folder for each kid. This way I can put bookmarks in for pages I think they might be interested in and then *close the webpage.* This has done wonders for my digital sanity, though I still have a digital hygeine problem as explained below.

My own bookmarks are ridiculous, I don't keep anything in there, at least not anymore in the tangle of sites I originally bookmarked in 2003. It's the curse of a visual-spatial person, I can't ever find the things I want no matter how carefully I try to create folder structures and organizational schemes. I swear my digital organization is worse than my physical organization, and that's saying something!

However, for my kids I can manage a reasonable number of bookmarks. Right? (Right??!)

Some of the tidbits in there right now:

Liam's folder:

• Crowdsourcing space exploration tool called Zooniverse that I want to be a part of, too!
• Legends of Druidawn interactive creative writing game (click the link at the very bottom of the page to see the genesis of this site - creative writing solutions it says.)
• A site to convert text to multimedia, like the bunny/mouse characters speaking in tinny computerized voices reading scripts that people wrote....whatever that one is called. Note to self, this would be great to use in Media and Design classes...
• The requisite Lego recreation of something totally AWESOME, this one is Middle Earth.

Anastasia's folder:

• Tree of Life web project - collection of information about biodiversity compiled by amatuers and experts alike.
• How to make friendship bracelets (I'm totally in the clear on the website name since she thinks WTF stands for Why the Face?)
• A music video of an 8 year old girl singing a hardcore (punk rock) song. She's always making videos herself and I think needs a little inspiration, since the script is often the limiting factor.
• A make your own snowflake picture (online) site. Love this.

So I challenge you to go forth and make a folder for each of your children and drop in fun tidbits and cool sites that they might like. Also a good place to put book recommendations, particularly if you're parenting a tween who might not want to actually ASK you for ideas. (P.S., if you don't know this about me already, know that I can talk your ear off with recommendations for books for kids ages 8-18. Please ask! Give me an excuse to talk your ear off!)

Come back and report on the great sites you found! Perhaps one day we'll do this all in pinterest... ;)

Ode on a Wireless Access Point that Does Not Suck

Ode on a Wireless Access Point that Does Not Suck

 

Thou access point of doom,

How you taunt me with,

Your wavy bars of signal and glowing green lights,

Indicating neither signal, nor strength

 

Your suckage pulls at me,

Dragging my productivity down, down,

Until I cling to the edge of the pit of despair,

Fearing to never see another silly kitten video,

 

But what, fair Wireless Access Point?

Thou just wanteth me to reconfigure my wifi?

But do yet you not understand?

I am on a tosh de macin, this device excels beyond my limited intellect,

 

Spirits again dashed like paint on concrete,

I contemplate a roof-test for your beloved countenance,

And as I gently lift thine metal body from thine shelf,

What? The internet is back up? ...Meow

 

The most memorable gift of the year?

Reverb10 challenges me today to write about the most memorable gift I've given or received in 2010.

By far, it would have to be this, which is not an iPad:

(The chaise, not the dog, who was not a specific gift to anyone, though she is pretty nifty and we're glad to have her.)

If you don't know what I'm talking about, clearly you don't read my blog regularly! Here's where I explain this.

Best part? For Christmas I got...an ottoman to match the chaise! (Oddly enough, it came in an iPad box. Strange.)

The death of newspapers? Maybe the paper-versions...

People moan and groan about the death of newspapers all the time these days. Oh the kvetching! There's even an entire website devoted to the Newspaper Death Watch. All the media houses I like and appreciate, as well as some I don't, talk about it.

It's to the point where honestly some day soon I expect to go out the door to get the newspaper [1] and find that they just stopped printing it last night.

But then...how is it that about 30% of the windows open in my browser right now (which is 30% of a considerable number...I have an addiction to opening windows to "read later" - soon. ish.) are links to not just any news site, but one particular one? Interestingly enough, the local paper (which we receive each day and read) is NOT the site that I have open, but rather the New York Times.

From articles about Facebook hackers to random sh!t from the Freakonomics guys' blog about parents being addicted to parenting (snort, snicker) to cerebral stuff like this about your brain on metaphors, I'm addicted to reading news articles! From actual news sources! And even aside from the New York Times, I read articles on NPR.org, The Huffington Post, and all sorts of other places. The least-read sites for me are my local sites, but of course when I want information on a local event I need those sites to work, to have the information I want exactly when I want it.

But honestly, what is all the malarkey about the death of newspapers? If they want to narrowly define their business as print, perhaps (and that might explain why I don't have a bunch of links to my local Chicago Tribune open right now, they aren't as prevalent on the web it seems to me) but if they can conceive of themselves the way we consumers have *always* conceived of them - as purveyors of information and opinions - there's more of a role for them now in this big confusing morass we call the Internet than ever before. We need these information curators, the collectors, the sifters, the people who help us find the good stuff among the ten thousand offers to "lose belly fat with this one simple but wacky tip!" - now more than ever!

 

[1] Okay, this is a lie. My husband brings in the paper almost every day. When he's travelling, it causes me no end of consternation to have to get the paper myself - brr!

On email accounts and backing up and general digital hygeine

Found myself writing a long post on a yahoo group about why and what I do to secure my email inbox against catastrophic loss, and thought it was worth boring to tears sharing with my blog readers. So what do you do? What's your solution or insurance policy for your email?

Note: This is going into my Tales from my Science Fiction Life file because honestly, email is something that came into being during my adulthood. When I was in college, no email. Grad school, we used IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and sometimes we found information on newsgroups. Post-grad my first work email was a ccmail [1] account. One of my email addresses has the number 99 in it because that's the year I created the account. So, it's been only a bit more than 10 years, really, since this stuff has mattered, and today it matters a great deal. But enough about history, back to our regularly scheduled lecture information session about email and backups.

For email, I've switched over to gmail for my primary email storage, although that is putting my eggs in *their* basket, it's a pretty reliable one (they have multiple redundancies and things like bomb-proof bunkers, I trust them, your mileage may vary.)

I use email accounts that run the IMAP protocol, which who the heck knows what it stands for, but means that the server and the email clients sync with one another. Contrasted with POP and/or POP3 (which tries to do something similar but does not.) Main point - there are copies of all messages on the server, until you manually delete them from one of your readers (sometimes there's another copy, if it was synced down from the server before you deleted it and you haven't synced back up to the server again yet, but this is temporary and somewhat rare unless you're a freak like me...)

I use Thunderbird as my email client (mozilla free download - same people that bring you Firefox browser.) I have it running on my iMac and my macbook. I also then have my iPhone hooked up to my email accounts (yes, there are multiple email accounts, and yes, there are a lot of computers/tech in my house. Geek, remember? I prioritize tech over almost every other household purchase! Some days the cats don't eat because mamma needs some new tech. Just kidding. Meow.)

When I check mail on my phone while out and about, it fetches me the latest from the server, which may mean 5 new messages, as well as 8 or 10 deletions from when I was at my desktop earlier in the day. Very convenient for checking mail from many places. I can check on a computer at the library using gmail.com via a web browser, and again those changes will be fetched down to my other computers next time I log in on them.

Can't beat the convenience, and because it's all server-side it means I can't really lose that email inbox. A local copy is stored on each of the other machines (the phone carries only the last 50, though you can dig back into your inbox deeper by fetching more messages manually) so there's a quasi-backup there, plus the server copy.

Again, all my eggs are in gmail's basket, but it's giving me the convenience of what I need. I even run one of my other email accounts through a shell gmail account because I prefer gmail's way of handling messages and I was having a spoof problem with that account. The only hitch is that the first time you download the mailbox to a new machine, at least in my case because I'm a digital packrat, it takes a while (I have 5k messages in my inbox. I delete a lot, but get a LOT!)

I predict this kind of mobile connectivity will be standard in the future, in fact I'm waiting for my invitation to download a copy of RockMelt, a new browser that's more tuned into the social web because I think they're starting to head that way - basically more awareness of the constantly moving user, one who uses multiple types of devices all day and needs access to their core "stuff" be it email, files, images, movies, music library, digital books, friends, contacts, etc. Stay tuned for ... more tales from my science fiction life!

 

[1] If you actually follow all the links from this note to the wikipedia articles, you can get a nifty little primer in Ancient Internet Tech, aka "You kids get off my lawn!" stuff. Lovely. When, exactly, did I get so old??

 

Ah, Ira Glass and Violent Video Games, thank you Jon Stewart

Tying in with my post of last week about violent video games, The Daily Show has applied some of their own (unique) perspective. Clearly they read my blog.

For those of you with short attention spans, or those of you who are actually squirrels, you should watch the one-minute round-up from the Daily Show.

If you have four minutes, the whole segment on violent video games is really hilarious. I should have thought of these. ;)

More tales from my science-fiction life

I'm sitting on our patio right now, fire going in the fire pit. I'm on my computer, which is only about the size of a textbook I would have used in fourth grade. Little smaller, now that I think of it. Apparently my computer is sending bits and bytes of data through the *air* to this thing called the internet.

Meanwhile, I've got some work to finish, which I will do using this neato program that lets me capture my thoughts in typing instead of having to write it all in longhand and lets me make corrections right here on the page even while I'm writing. And then I'll send the document through the *air* to my printer, which will reproduce my words *exactly* on paper. Like magic.

Then I will use this link in my electronic mail program to check in for my flight (through the *air* in a newfangled aeroplane.) I'll also send my boarding pass through the air to that aforementioned printer. I will carry it with me to the airport tomorrow where someone will use a scanner to scan the bar code on this piece of paper I printed from my house and that will tell them who I am (and all sorts of other personal information like my shoe size and the last time I had my hair colored, I'm sure.)

Oh, and just because it's cool, in the morning I'm going to present a 90 minute talk on oversupply in breastfeeding. On a video call. From my couch.

 

I know you rely upon me to bring you news of technology

Because of that heady responsibility, I scan and scan the technology headlines to understand what's coming out, what's new, what you should know about.

So without further ado, I bring you the latest technological innovation. It's coming to you through the global world wide web, but have no fear, the information is subtitled.

  

 

Edited: hmm...I have no idea how to actually integrate a you tube video, perhaps it's not allowed. In that case, check out the link to the you tube video I tried to embed above about this fabulous technology that it's possible you've heard about before.

Link Salad - a few of the things that interested me this week

That should say "a few of the things that interested me and sucked my time away from the things I should be doing this week." But that seemed like an awfully long title.

• La Leche League of Illinois' area conference is next weekend - I'll be speaking via virtual conference (video!) on Saturday morning at 8:30. Lots of good stuff for moms, lactation professionals, health care providers, dads, families, everyone. You should go!
• Diaspora* - a new social network being created by a bunch of geeky kids. Looks interesting. I'm all for owning and controlling my personal data MYSELF. I've been watching this story for a while. Props to my friend Carf who has been watching it and posting the links, too. Makes it easier to watch a story when someone else promotes the links.
• I posted two different links to Single Dad Laughing this week. Though I find the writer a bit over-long sometimes, he does make some great points, and they apply to all parents, not just fathers. 
• Hoagie's Gifted keeps producing links that are fascinating to me. This week one of them was this article about genetic aspects to ADHD. The more we know...
• Lots of my geek friends posted a link to this article about a planet found in the habitable zone orbiting star Gleise 581. The best part? My National Novel Writing Month project last year was set on a colony ship heading toward Gleise 581! I also find the idea of a tidally-locked planet cool - one side of the planet permanently faces the sun, the other permanently faces away. Holy climate changes, batman.
• Another Hoagie's Gifted link with some analogies to arbitrarily grouping children by things such as shoe size or height (comparing to birthdate.) It goes well with my redshirting of kindergarteners' rant of recent days. We should group children by where they ARE, not when they were born. Some are ready for school early, some not so much. 
• A satirical post about what science reporting is like. The comments were hilarious, too.
• A reminder to local peeps that the Northwestern University Midwest Academic Talent Search testing registration is open. If your child seems ahead of the curve on academics, this testing can help him or her qualify for gifted programming in your area. Grades 3-8.