wwward.expressions

Delicious Cake at Yahoo Open Hack Day NYC 2009

My friends and I at NYC Resistor had an impressive showing at Yahoo's Open Hack Day NYC this year. The Makerbot Team (and fellow NYCRs) came up with an impressive "New York Toast" hack, which involved their Frostruder device and toast. You can read more about that here: http://wiki.makerbot.com/nytoast.

Alicia, Hilary, Diana and I got together to produce the "Delicious Cake" which was a rather remarkable bit of late-night hackery. The cake visually represented the sentiment - postive, neutral, or negative - of keywords as represented on Delicious.com, Yahoo's social bookmarking service. The sentiment was shown as LED "faces" on the cake itself.

You can find out more at my NYC Resistor post on the topic:

http://www.nycresistor.com/2009/10/26/nycr-delicious-cake-at-yahoo-open-hack-day-nyc-2009/

Great party! NYC Resistor hosts an "Interactive Party"

NYC Resistor (disclaimer: I am a member) hosted a fantastic Interactive Party last Saturday.  Such attractions included Ranjit Bhatnagar's solenoid-driven toy piano controlled by Eric Skiff's Monome, Matt Joyce brought his Stribe controller, and there was a rather large "Lite Brite" style art display by Justin Day, amongst other rather clever devices.

Take a look at Jared Klett's Flickr Set of the party in progress.

Thanks to Charles Pax, we managed to get three air conditioners running alongside one another (one must guess at the efficiency reduction of all those heat exchangers competing for airflow,) but without them the place would have been completely inhospitable.

We always have interesting people show up at our events, and this was no different.  During the event, we had a reality TV show come up and deliver a cake they had made for us.  That was a bit wild.  I'm sure more details will appear after the show airs.  I made sure to hang out behind the scenes to get a feel for what goes on with the business.  As far as I know, there was still plenty of cake left over in the morning after.

Next party: Halloween.  It'll be here before you know it.  Start thinking about it now!

New Phone Numbers: May 1st, 2008

Please note that my telephone numbers have changed as of May 1st, 2008.
If you've had trouble getting in touch with me, drop me a line via this blog and we'll connect.

Rough month...

I moved to New York City because my girlfriend dragged me here. I would probably have never made it this far if not for her. I *wanted* to be in NYC to become a better professional, and a more interesting person. More interesting doesn't require one to live in NYC; people can be interesting anywhere. But living in NYC demands a higher level of effort and tolerance than where I used to live. I figure, if I can survive here, I can make my way anywhere in the USA - perhaps even the world.

And with that in mind, I report that the last several weeks have been full of late nights. I was in Seattle for a week, and then camped out in a Times Square sign doing system installations. Last week was all about website troubleshooting. The weeks have been filled with challenges, learning, and personal growth.

But, the downside is that they've exhausted me. I'm still working now, trying to sort out some architecture issues with Microsoft Exchange. So while I'm cooling my jets this weekend (but not really,) I'm waiting for my cat to pass away. She has a terminal cancer, and it's slowly killing her. More slowly than I thought. She's happy for now, and we're spoiling her during her final days - but that's also a drain.

So, in short, I've been rather busy lately - but I'm still around.

Thoughts for Gregory McCullough and Judith Bailey (Updated: Greg is out of the hospital!)

Greg McCullough and Judith Bailey were caught in the epicenter of the steam pipe blast in New York City on July 18th, 2007. The tow truck they were riding in was directly hit by the steam blast, severely injuring both. You can read more at the New York Times article, "Explosion’s Human Toll". Or simply search for news on the topic through your favorite Internet search engine.

I wanted to publicly post my thoughts on the topic, because, while many tragic events occur every day around the world, we can't easily fathom all the suffering the world sees - but we can take an interest in our local community. Mr. McCullough is a neighbor, of sorts. He works in my city, and he lives just miles away.

My thoughts are with you, Greg, and with your family. I wish for you a full recovery, and peace of mind.

I also wish the best for Judith Bailey - who also has a difficult road ahead. I hope you too will enjoy a normal day again soon.

...

(UPDATED Sept 16, 2007)
According to the New York Times, Greg is awake and able to talk to his family. For the time being it looks like he's going to be stuck in bed. GO GREG!

My thoughts remain with you and your family.

(UPDATED Nov 7, 2007)
It looks as if Greg is out of the hospital, which is really great news. I know he has a long road ahead, but I'm still rooting for him. Take good care, man.

Donations can be made through the family website here: gregorymccullough.com
(I checked WHOIS and this site is affiliated with the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, where the family worships. Thanks to CCC for their support of the family. I cannot vouch for the site beyond this basic information.)

article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/nyregion/15Steam.html?ex=1347595200&en=311d21b4288bd198&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

FOUND: iPod, near 37 West 20th Street, NY, NY (Game Over)

After fruitlessly searching for useful bits on the iPod, and having a friend of mine in law enforcement check the stolen property database - I was unable to identify the owner.

In accordance with the law, a couple weeks ago I turned in the silver iPod shuffle to NYPD's 13th Precinct.

If you lost an iPod Shuffle, and your name is Erik, it can be found in the NYPD's lost property system. You'll need the serial number, most likely, or some other proof of ownership.

FOUND: iPod, near 37 West 20th Street, NY, NY (Round Two)

That iPod I found last week in the rain? Well, turns out the bloke who owns it is named "Erik" and enjoys some religious music. Unfortunately, *all* of the music on this iPod appears to be ripped from his own collection, rather than purchased from the iTunes store.

This is a big roadblock - there is no identifying data in these tracks.

I scoured the files that were exposed by several of the freeware iPod file recovery utilities and found no email address. I'm hoping that there is useful data in the deleted portions of the file system, but mounting the iPod to do a byte-level dump seems impractical on Mac OS X. I'm planning (when time permits) to mount it on a Linux machine and try to dump the data. Afterward, the goal is to run a regular expression search through the raw data.

As a backup measure, I've e-mailed the iTunes Store technical support and asked them to pass my contact information to the owner of the iPod. I provided the serial number, and hope they can match it. I don't know if they have a policy against that sort of thing, but it's worth a shot.

The last resort is dropping it off at the NYPD... I believe it would be improbable that the device would make it back to the owner that way.

New York Life: Living next to opera star* (wannabe? rising?)

New Yorkers are accustomed to noise. Most can complain about neighbors who yell and scream at one another until the sun comes up, or play their stereos too loud, or simply pace the floor with their pet horse.

I happen to live next to an opera singer (apparently.)

Maybe she's a student at Julliard or some other school of artistic ambition. My only concern is that she's taken to practicing in her studio apartment in the afternoons and evenings. Other than that, she's very quiet, and hasn't spoken a word to me in the hall or elevator, appears to be of Asian decent, and seems reasonably well mannered.

Hopefully she'll tire before my bedtime comes.

Just one of those bizarre moments of living in NY, brought to you by the letters S, T, F, and U - kthxbai.

FOUND: iPod, near 37 West 20th Street, NY, NY

I found an iPod laying on the wet sidewalk in the rain last Thursday. It still works!

I found the iPod along 20th Street near 6th Avenue in New York. I think this iPod will be going back to its home, however, despite the lack of identifying marks (other than a serial number.)

Apple marks purchased iTunes with the name and email address of the purchaser. Next week, I intend to extract any identifying information from the iPod and use it to contact the owner. If all goes well, I'll be able to send it home properly.

Will post a follow-up when I've made contact with the owner. If *you* happen to be the owner and have come across this article, drop me a line via the "About" link on this blog page.

This ties in to lifelogging in a way. While I hope I can end my data forensics work once I confidently obtain the contact information for the owner, if I dig deeper (and I don't intend to out of an ethical belief that I should only learn as much as I absolutely need to know to return the device to the owner,) I could probably make some educated assumptions about the mood of the wearer and their music tastes based on the play count and last song played data. Perhaps by checking the date on the file I could figure out how often they changed out their music. Just another little - perhaps unintentional - streak of life being recorded in a fragmented sort of way.

This particular iPod does not contain contact lists or calendar data, and I don't have cable necessary to access it at this time. One of my coworkers does, and I'm trying to convince him to bring it in Monday.

Should be a lot of fun.

Dorkbot NYC March 2007

Went to the monthly Dorkbot NYC meeting tonight.

Dorkbot is a social group that showcases the work of artists who use technology to express their ideas. It's a good way to experience new media projects directly from the folks who create them, and a source of inspiration for those of us who want to play in those spaces.

Tonight's presenters consisted of a painter who mixes physical painting with video to create images that evolve through time from non-linear images or clips superimposed on his own rendered image of the scene.

Another presenter photographed herself every hour of the day for 18 months. The resulting collection of photographs was then interpreted in a number of ways, from a linear timeline of her life, to a series of retrospective sequences paired with photos of her surroundings at the time of each photograph. The work was most impressive, not merely for the discipline required to photograph oneself so often, but because the material was so rich and flexible for interpreting and expression. She was certainly an extreme case of lifelogging, and carried it off very well indeed.

The final presenters were a team from Spain who approached equity trading firms to express the volatility of equities markets in an artistic medium. Their work was of particular interest to me. Some of the projects they showcased involved the 3D visualization of market data, something that is surely very common for commercial purpose, but probably not so common when mapped to bird metaphors or music. The core idea behind their work was highlighting the volatility inherent in the markets. I was naturally interested only in how they chose to represent that in metaphorical concepts.

Finally, a visiting musician using analog music serenaded the group. He was in the US from another country and planned to perfom street music using his novel analog instruments. It'll be interesting to see someone on the street musician circuit that isn't carrying around a cheap mass-market synth for once.

If you're in New York next month, check out the Dorkbot NYC meeting, the first Wednesday of every month at 7pm. Details here: http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotnyc/about.shtml