kip/bot/blog

A friend of mine is plugged into many toy subcultures. This one is the most fascinating, strangest, trippiest and to some plain offensive. It’s simulated guns. These are toy guns that shoot air pellets, but are built exactly to the specifications of real guns. Tokyo Marui is the leading maker of these guns and you can find them on eBay and various other sellers. youtube is loaded with videos of kids reviewing them. There’s a lot of interesting stuff around these toys. The simulations are possibly more complex to design than the real ones. While the real ones have relatively simple mechanisms for striking metal on metal to fire a real bullet, these toys require the placement of air systems and batteries that are powerful enough to propel the pellet and create realistic kickback. They are freakishly real. I’ve never held a handgun and I felt weird holding this one. And the seller’s culture is full of warnings and complaints about people buying them long enough to shoot a movie scene and then returning them. Trippy.

The best part, of course, are the kooky Japanese warning illustrations:

Nicholas Carr blogs about Eric Schmidt’s evolving thinking about whether Google Makes Us Stupid. Carr wrote the Atlantic article that asked that question. Schmidt initially dismissed it out of hand, but seems to be wondering . . .

Darren Barefoot turns out to be even more skeptical than I am of the iPad — arguing that it doesn’t even make a good web browsing appliance. (Which is a fair point . . . I see its value for, and will buy one based on, for the scenario of managing my inbox and looking stuff up while I watch TV — Barefoot points out that mine is a very narrow use case.)

Scott Berkun posts Woody Guthrie’s approach to New Year’s Resolutions.

I’m getting some traffic from a few places where I’ll be speaking/visiting/workshopping next week and the most recent posts don’t make me look particularly good. So here are links to some posts which put a better face on me and might be interesting to read. And yes, of course, this screams of the need to re-design, get some WP modules, and making the thing decent again . . . meanwhile:

A revelation I had about the difference between design and creative (at least in interactive and marketing)

A curmudgeonly screed complaining about how simplistic our notions of design thinking have become.

More churlinshness about innovation and what a weasel word it is.

If your read only one (and why should you even bother with that?):

A happy post about innovation and craft and a jubilant post about that awesome young man who built the windmill in Malawi. You’re probably better off going to his site. I just wanted to counterbalance the crank with something positive.

Some thoughts on simplicity in web design, by way of tests I used to give IxD candidates interviewing for a job.

An overview of my obsession/fascination with emergent design

Several posts about craft and the XO people (additional obsessions)

A year ago, I tweeted the following about the election:

Nov 4 AM: “Smiling like an idiot at every polling place I pass.”
Nov 4 Noon: “Scratch that. I’m smiling like an idiot at everything.”
Nov 5 AM: “my face hurts . . . I think I kept smiling in my sleep”

Rmembering, I’m smiling again. (The World Series doesn’t hurt, either.)

Following the reading of The Power of Full Engagement, I picked up How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci which was frequently cited in the first. It’s a little embarassing to read (one of the times when having a Kindle obscure your reading material comes in handy), but whatever, it has some use.

I’ve noticed that, in addition to mentally processing things I might use for work, or quote for other purposes, I semi-consciously evaluate text or look for things that are tweetable. It bothers me, but I do it. So when I was reading the end of the biography material in the da Vinci book, I had a weird thought about da Vinci’s line on mortality: “As a day well spent brings blessed sleep, so a life well lived brings a blessed death.”

Not even a hundred characters! It seems like social media will eventually become a place for that kind of musing.

Just saying, is all.

Just posting a poem that came to mind last night . . .

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Tomorrow is National Punctuation Day. For the organizers of this day, it is an opportunity to ritually revisit Strunk & White, write notes in a leisurely well-punctuated fashion, and correct all those signs store owners mispunctuate and brazenly hang in their windows. (ex. Customers “ONLY” can use our dryers).

This is also a chance to take up pet punctuation peeves. I will be encouraging people to resume use of the serial comma. Others may take up the cudgels against the semi-colon, that mark despised by Kurt Vonnegut, who warned anyone against using them: “they are transvestite herm-aphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

I’m starting to think I should start expressing myself in movie and TV bits from now on:

- “Too many notes”
- “A little saucy”
- “Am I here to amuse you?”
- “We’re coming with you!”
- “There is no try. only do.”
- “He’s dead Tom. Nothing you can do to bring him back.”
- “One ping, Vasily, one ping only.”
- “We must give this _______ a wide berth”

KLPP is now on YouTube in ten short segments. A big thanks to Farrah Hassen for filming under challenging conditions (i.e., no space for a tripod, stifling heat). It’s got a nice cinema verite feel!
Capital Fringe Festival 2009 production of John Feffer’s almost-one-man play, Krapp’s Last Power Point. Written, directed, and performed by John Feffer. Audience member: Karin Lee. (I did the powerpoint that accompanies the play and vexes the one-man.)

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Part Six:

Part Seven:

Part Eight:

Part Nine:

Part Ten: