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The personal web log of Mike Lee, a web information architect, and teacher working in New York City "I surf as much as I eat." curiouslee in...   Hiptop Nation Mirror Project Google Images The City Paper UMBC TechPort email me past monthly... 2000:10.11.12 2001:01.02.03.04.05.06 07.08. 09.10.11.12 2002:01.02.03.04.05.06 07.08.09.10.11.12
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Monday, December 31, 2001
Info graphics grab bag To close the year, here are a bunch of information graphics looking back at aspects of 2001:
Saturday, December 29, 2001
Sackler sights This day started with a nice lunch at the Fado Irish Pub in DC and ended with another viewing of Lord of the Rings at the Muvico 24, but the main event was a trip to the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery to see the show of artist Xu Bing's work. The show The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning Without Words runs until May 12, 2002, and I highly recommend a visit. Not only is the exhibit free, but photography is allowed.  The largest installation is this hanging sculpture of the word "monkey" in 20 languages to illustrate a Chinese poem about monkeys grasping for a reflection of the moon. This is looking up at the skylight. I've extracted 12 of the 20 script monkeys from the museum web site's Flash file:   This is looking down at the reflecting pool.  The entrance to the exhibition is an installation called "The Living Word" which depicts a morphing of the Chinese word for bird through several stages of abstraction and representation. This is a close-up of the letterforms.  Probably the most popular aspect of the show are Xu Bing's experiments with what he calls Square Word Calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy strokes are used to compose English word monograms. Here is the name of this web log generated by an experimental software demo in the exhibit.  At the end of the exhibit is an actual calligraphy classroom. You can even take a free set of booklets, brush and ink to practice at home. Of course we stopped at the gift shop to pick up the show catalog, and a cool Sumi-e Board that simulates black ink brush markings with plain water. Audio odyssey Lately, I've been enjoying archived programs from WBEZ Chicago Public Radio's Odyssey: A Daily Talk of Ideas hosted by Gretchen Helfrich. The guests are typically professors from universities around the Chicago area, and the range of topics is quite broad. There's an archive page that goes back several years. Here's what I've taken in lately:
Friday, December 28, 2001
Adapting to ground zero On NPR, All Things Considered presented a nice report (about 12 1/2 minutes in RealAudio) on how the people who live and work around ground zero have adapted. Reading mortality This article at The National Post describes the voracious reader's lament of life being too short to read all the good books on your pile. Thursday, December 27, 2001
Cheapest wireless chat network? I see that an AOL Instant Messenger client is now available for the wireless CyBiko toy, which I have two of. If this works, I'll be able to set up one of the CyBikos as a gateway next to my computer, and use the other one within 300 feet to chat on AIM. I'll be trying this at our office where 802.11b wireless has been banned. The older CyBikos like mine are going for $49 and less at places like Staples, so this makes a cheap short-range wireless system. Joliet access for macs Buddy Bucky sent along a link to Joliet File System, a handy utility for Mac users that provides access to PC formatted CDs with long file names. There's a basic freeware version and an updated shareware. Views from our nine-hour car ride Images from the long ride home:  On the outskirts of Greenville, we saw this message on the gas pump at the Sunoco.  What I saw for several hours in the car. Tuesday, December 25, 2001
Christmas day at Hickory Top Here are scenes from our annual dive into a Norman Rockwell Christmas at Amy's parent's house in Greenville, Ohio.  The star-capped tree.  A picture perfect dining room awaits visiting family.  A painting of the Kilgallon family house, affectionately known as Hickory Top. It was built in 1850, and Amy's family moved in around 1970.  And what's Christmas without cute kids? Monday, December 24, 2001
A rare snowy xmas eve  With snow becoming a rarer occurence in some areas, I look forward to any we get (at least at first). Today, we had enough of a dusting here in Greenville to declare a white Christmas. This is the view through our car windshield. One ring brings an epic  We went to see The Lord of the Rings today, and the three-hour epic boldly goes on to my list of all-time favorite movies. The scene where the fellowship journeys through the abandoned Mines of Moria kept me at the edge of my seat like no other. Why can't George Lucas make an epic like this and release it in one-year intervals? American Cinematographer.com has an article on the making of the movie and the January issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a concise article about the life of Tolkein. A fan site has scans of the pages. Sunday, December 23, 2001
High bandwidth at this old house  We arrived at my in-law's house to find a brand-new cable modem! Broadband has finally reached the Ohio-Indiana border. The icing on the modem is the firewall and DHCP server that Amy's brother set up.  On the ride out, I spotted this vivid evidence in eastern Ohio of how frost has finally set in on the unseasonably warm fall/winter. Friday, December 21, 2001
Away ... We're heading west to Greenville, Ohio tomorrow morning to spend the holidays so today was a quiet day at work wrapping up paperwork and visiting co-workers. I also judged the local elementary/middle school's door decorating contest. One of my favorites was the showing from Ms. Adams' class, but she didn't place in a category because her class covers several grade levels. You can't tell in this photo from the school, but the red background is covered with signatures of students.  Thursday, December 20, 2001
Tide point december The unseasonably warm fall has been pushed aside by the normal December weather. My ongoing visual observation of the Tide Point area is now carried out in bitter cold.  In between gusts of wind, I got this photo of our decorated building sign.  The sun sets way off to the left of this skyline photo, but a bright reflection from a building marks the area of summer sunset.  The steam from the Domino Sugar plant is directly backlit by the setting sun. My next challenge is to look for beauty in the season's first heavy snow. Wednesday, December 19, 2001
VRML hierarchy visualization This old experiment in visualization of search data in VRML intrigues me as a nice piece of software code to render web site hierarchies in 3D. All that would be needed are text node labels. The demo files still work in the Cortona VRML Viewer in Windows 2000. Tuesday, December 18, 2001
The paper behind a web site  Here's what the paper documentation for a 1.2 million dollar web project looks like. Monday, December 17, 2001
Things to do while you're sick I've had a nasty flu for a few days, and when you're immobilized with aches and fever, your choices for entertainment are very limited:
Amy also suggested rubbing my eyeballs 'till stars appeared, but I didn't take her up on that. Thursday, December 13, 2001
Online communities a hot topic again? I see an uptick in articles about online virtual communities again. There's lots of advice, but most writings on the subject are lean on concrete and sustained success stories.
 Page 9 of Wenger's document has a competitive chart of software products that is very similar to one I compiled in 1999. Here's a larger 65k JPEG of the chart. The Online Community Report is still humming away, but alerting readers they have no job postings. Wednesday, December 12, 2001
The classroom of 2025 Newsweek Magazine asked a group of 11 teachers, inventors and entrepreneurs their vision of what schools will be like in the year 2025. Predictably, the commentators for the most part envisioned technology infused environments, but educator Linda Darling-Hammond calls for more intimate physical environments, and Deborah Meier proposes a return to the popular 19th century notion that schools should produce good citizens. Monday, December 10, 2001
The first american web page CNET has a story on Paul Kunz setting up the first US web server after visiting Tim Berners-Lee. Here's the first web page. Sunday, December 09, 2001
Manufactured culture  I was immersed in making some close-up photos of tree ornaments at a friend's house and encountered this ironic scene. Saturday, December 08, 2001
Mall sights  While doing some Christmas shopping at Towson Mall, I encountered an unintended ethnographic exercise in subtractive shopping. The remains of Lechter's six week going out of business sale: red towels and wooden bowls.  I also note with some sadness the digitization of Santa at the visitation booth. Looking at the digital camera picture enhancement system screen, I see he's one step away from a clip art library item. If you remove the need to have Santa hear your wishes, all that would be needed is a stool and blue screen. You can even select your photos online. Friday, December 07, 2001
Scott McCloud's idea tree Scott McCloud has created a WebTake or short visual improvisation in response to five selected passages from Brenda Laurel's new book, The Utopian Entrepreneur. Both are worth a good look. Thursday, December 06, 2001
Absolutely bad powerpoint While pulling together a talk for some middle school teachers about using PowerPoint, I found that someone at Ohio State University has post the full text of a great article from the New Yorker on the history of PowerPoint. I quoted some passages from the article in a blog entry last May. Seth Godin, noted author of Permission Marketing and Ideavirus has published a little booklet called Bad PowerPoint. It's really aimed at sales and marketing types, but is worth a quick read. Don't waste your time buying it at Amazon, where I found it. The file is freely distributable, and I offer it here (right-click to download this 789k PDF file). Tuesday, December 04, 2001
Wicked problems I happened on a paper about Wicked Problems and Fragmentation, by Dr. Jeff Conklin. Wicked problems are large complex situations such as world hunger, global warming and legacy software that defy an easy solution. And they are exascerbated by fragmentation of understanding in groups. Some of the key points in his paper hit home as key characteristics of large, difficult web development projects we've seen recently. Characteristics of Wicked Problems: 1. You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution. Indeed, there is no definitive statement of "The Problem." The problem is ill-structured, an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. I don't fully understand Conklin's solution to Wicked Problems, Dialog Mapping, but it reminds me of some of the knowledge mapping work done by Robert Horn at Stanford. Monday, December 03, 2001
 IT makes you think forwardDean Kamen's secret project was revealed today on an exclusive Good Morning America feature. What was code-named Ginger debuts as the Segway Human Transporter. It really is an impressive self-balancing transportation scooter of sorts. Speculation began when a book proposal was leaked by an Inside.com reporter last January that hinted boldly and broadly about the product. A definitive Segway web log has been started. I'm as excited as most people about this, and really believe it's a breakthrough that will lead to more amazing transportation devices. In a post from last January, I fantasized that the Segway would be more like Syd Mead's vision of a gyro-stabilized transporter pod, which he visualized about 25 years ago. Seeing the Segway inspires me to believe that Mead's concepts are within reach. I also poured over the Flash demo on the Segway site, and admired the simple user interface.  The Segway's intelligent ignition key.  The Segway's user interface. Sunday, December 02, 2001
My brother's wedding, part 2  About 72 guests converged on Good Fortune Restaurant in Wheaton, MD this evening for his wedding reception. Saturday, December 01, 2001
Boats dazzle  Tonight was the annual parade of lighted boats on Baltimore's Harbor. Large yachts down to kayaks cruised counter-clockwise around the harbor arriving at Tide Point towards the end of the evening.
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