JPV PDX

Moved

2008-12-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

Matt was kind enough to remind me that not everyone reads every tweet, so some of the people who read this blog (people read this blog?) might not have noticed that it's been migrated to http://voilleque.com. Go forth and sin no more.

World of Goo Releases for Mac!

2008-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

2d Boy has released World of Goo for Mac! Go forth and make tarry snot bridges to DESTINY!

Because I can't. Because I'm 16,000 words into NaNoWriMo and must continue to beat some words into submission. But in December, just you wait.

The People Have Spoken...

2008-11-05T16:40:00.001-08:00

...and the results are here: The PDX Breakfast Tweetup Survey was a tremendous success in terms of response (what? What else would I be talking about?). Twenty-six people laid it on the line and told me what they wanted out of a Breakfast Tweetup. In true "um, DUH!" fashion, I did not answer my own survey. Rawk! My comments are appended to the end of each question.

How Often should the Tweetup Breakfast Occur?

Weekly - 7 votes, 26.9%

Every Other Week - 11 votes, 42.3%

Monthly - 8 votes, 30.8%

Leaving alone that this question is butterfly-ballot confusing (the proper inquiry is "how far apart should the breakfasts be?" or something), it was also very close - deadlocked, in fact, when I went to bed on Monday. I woke on Election Day with Every Other Week the clear favorite. "Monthly" made a late surge to actually overcome "Weekly." I expected the "Weekly" voters to be people who also selected "I would probably always attend," but only 3 of the 7 did so. My feeling is every other week makes sense.

Should Each Breakfast Have a Topic? (multiple answers allowed)

No, I just want to hang with friends and have eggs. 9 votes, 34.6%

Yes, but continue the "suggest but don't enforce" policy. 16 votes, 61.5%

Yes, and formalize the topic somehow. 1 vote, 3.8%

I'd like to see an actual micro-presentation on something cool. 3 votes, 11.5%

Comments:

1. I think we should set it up as an official Geek Breakfast in the style of geekbreakfast.org. The three rules of Geek Breakfast are: 1. Everyone is invited, attendance is free (excluding food, beverage and gratuity). 2. Pictures, audio and video should be licensed under Creative Commons and tagged using "yourcitynamegeekbreakfast" and "geekbreakfast". Please add them to the Geek Breakfast Flickr Group. 3. Geek Breakfasts shall never be sponsored. If a company approaches you about sponsorship opportunities recommend they sponsor local unconferences instead, like a barcamp or podcamp. It's important to note that if the breakfast gets sponsored you'll wind up with many people turning up for a free meal, rather than being there to contribute to the conversation.

2.Micropresentations are AWESOME! Show, don't tell!

3.Micro-preso would be cool, but isn't absolutely necessary. Time to just hang and eat eggs is nice too.

4.breakfast should be delicious, healthy, and quick. lets keep breakfast away from being a camp or a meetup. i think techies benefit from being simply social.

I thought the same as the vast majority of people, that we should suggest a topic but not push it. So far the conversations have been awesome, with no need to resort to canned conversation starters. I definitely want to check out the Geek Breakfast concept, especially as our rules appear to be (mostly) congruent. But I'm not sure it needs to be specifically any kind of thang, so for now it remains unaffiliated.

Assuming that your calendar was free, what are the factors that would convince you to attend a Portland Tweetup Breakfast?

Restaurant choice; 11 votes, 42.3%

People attending; 11 votes, 42.3%

Suggested conversation topic; 5 votes, 19.2%

Scheduled presentation; 3 votes, 11.5%

Bacon; 12 votes, 46.2%

I would probably always attend; 8 votes, 30.8%

Proximity to where I live/work, 17 votes, 65.4%

Chance to take a breather from work; 5 votes, 19.2%

Exchange of ideas with crazy people, 11 votes, 42.3%

Other; 3 votes, 11.5%

"Other" Responses:
1. not at the crack-*ss of dawn. =) i.e., one week breakfast, two weeks later after work drinks would be my preference, cuz i don't think i would ever make your breakfast times.

2. Proximity to MAX line or streetcar ... if it's not in SW, I'm gonna have to jump on the train to get there and back.

3. Proximity and time. 8AM=too early 9AM=maybe 10AM=done deal. Hey, I'm an artist and a 45 minute bike ride pre-breakfast + sleep deprived is tough! How about a SE venue?

Not surprisingly, no one wanted this to demolish their entire morning. "Proximity to me" won by a wide margin (bacon was hot on its heels for a while, but cooler heads prevailed). Good argument to continue finding new places on both sides of the river, so that interested folks can get to one.

Comments:

1. I'm happy you made this, Lawduck. It's totally Sweetopian. I had no idea the Breakfast Tweetup would become a PortlandTechTradition

2. What about moving it later in the day? Portland Tweetup Lunch or Dinner (focused on eating + conversing rather than beer) seem like a natural extension. w00t!

3. Move it around, including, if you dare, different sides of the river!

4. Juniors in the SE. Might be too small though.

5. Restaurant suggestions! Rumpspankers (700 NE Dekum. Okay, it's down the street from my house and that might be considered cheating...) Tin Shed (1438 NE Alberta) Milo's City Cafe (1325 NE Broadway)

6. This is great! I'm probably not as techy as most twitterer's. I love the Stepping Stone. Also like J&M and Bijoux and Genie's.

7. nice survey, lawduck!

8. i keep forgetting to not eat breakfast w/ the fam that morning!

9. I think they're wonderful, and *thank you* for organizing them!

10. weekends would be great. many of us have office jobs and leaving mid-morning just isn't feasable

11. You are my personal hero.

Some good suggestions for places to eat, and thank you all for the accolades - at least two thirds of the credit goes to the Fuller's crowd that showed up for the first one, and the fertile minds of Amber Case, Bram Pitoyo, and Don Park.

So that's it. Every other week, suggested topic, roving around the city. The next one will be next Thursday, on the east side (leaning toward Milo's City Cafe). My suggestion for topic would be preplanning/brainstorming for @neophiliac's Startup Workout.

Thanks for all the responses. This is how democracy works. I wish there were a more momentous demonstration of the principle that I could point to, but what is more momentous than bacon?

50 ways to lose attorney-client privilege

2008-11-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

Inspired by this tweet from Josh Bancroft. I might not really get to fifty...

The classic "shield not sword" argument applies when you disclose partial documents that would otherwise be privileged to prove how awesome your case is.

Similarly, talking about privileged communications in a way that makes them part of the dispute will waive the privilige, because those communications are now "at issue" in the litigation.

Perform an internal investigation into potential patent infringement before retaining outside counsel.

Loop people into emails about pending litigation.

Engage in shenanigans around your preservation process during discovery

Engage in shenanigans, generally, and then cooperate with the Feds to save your ass.

The Yale Law Journal appears to be having some server problems, but they've got an article about Contractual Waiver of Privilege if they ever get back on the interwebs.

Sixteen Ways to Waive Attorney Client Privilege from the Government Contracts Blog.

As might be expected, ACPrivilege.com, a clearinghouse maintained by Professor Paul Rice from American University, has a bunch of articles and resources. Sadly, since his big fancy book was published, he appears uninterested in keeping any information up to date, so this contains resources up to 2000 and not much else. Still, there's a bundle of reading.

I think that'll do for now. :)

Not so bad. Famous last words.

2008-11-01T18:37:00.000-07:00

When I get 11 hours of sleep and then everyone leaves the house for an hour, it is totally not a problem for me to crank out 1000 words. So, from the standpoint of "days that will never happen again," I'm golden for National Novel Writing Month. I wish I could say the same for the website, which seems slower than molasses on the tin roof of a cabin in winter. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Nanowrimo gods, I think I'm going to mostly post updates of my word count on Twitter.

My novel is rad. It's the story of a starving law student who takes a part time job as a clerk with a solo practitioner. A solo practitioner who practices law in the realm of Faerie. And other courts. Dark courts. Courts that do not concern themselves with bar credentials so much as true names. Jim Butcher and Simon Green walk into a bar with John Grisham, blah blah blah.

So far it's a lot of fun. And it's got the advantage of being really easy to write. I've often said I could fill a book with snarky comments about law school. Now I get to, and write spooky nonsense as well. Wahoo!

RSS Terms of Use - Really?

2008-10-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

I was perusing as usual in Google Reader and came across this interesting little tidbit -

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

The Terms of Use are fairly tame, and seem mostly concerned with traffic - please don't "host" our article on your site and pretend it's your news. I can imagine that this is a concern but hardly think that this is the way to go about it. There also seem to be implications for feed aggregators or shared feed sites like social|median...many such services have pages with some (though not all) of the content, and a place for comments by users of the service. I only glanced at the terms of use, but that seems to inch pretty close to their concept of "misuse" at first glance.

This is where attribution licenses are extremely worthwhile. Although I can understand an ad-driven blog-o-palooza being concerned about impressions, this seems a ham-handed way to go about it. I'll update when I have more time to look at the Terms with my lawyerin' goggles on.

In the meantime, your thoughts?

The Content You Use Today May be Licensed Differently Tomorrow.

2008-10-27T10:17:00.001-07:00

In Verifying the Commons, the Creative Commons folks point out the tricky subject of attribution licenses converting to traditional copyright. What happens if you used a photo under a CC attribution license and the photo was subsequently re-licensed as fee-for-use? How do you prove that you didn't pirate it? The post points out that there are multiple ways to timestamp or otherwise verify that you first utilized the photo during the license period (note that CC licenses cannot be revoked, so anyone who used content in the "open license" window retains the right to use the content):

As for the question of verifying whether a work was ever released under a CC license, the innovative ImageStamper.com can provide this exact service for flickr photos. We used ImageStamper to time stamp all 157 photos used in Jesse Dylan’s ‘A Shared Culture‘ so that we would have proof, going forward, that a particular work was released under a given license. WebCitation.org’s archive feature provides essentially the same functionality for any given webpage and also provides a permanent URL for the snapshot.

Useful to remember that we're not only responsible for attribution, but for verification of the license. Even in the goody goody world of shared content, you need to watch your back.

Hidden Object Fun for a buck, lots of games half off at Big Fish Games.

2008-10-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Jay is Games noted on Friday that, until Monday, the 27th, you can pick up Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst for only 99 cents.

I'm not a gigantic fan of hidden object games, but the Mystery Case Files series makes a bigger effort than most at maintaining a cohesive narrative throughout the game. And, really, a dollar is the right kind of price in any event. If you try it and like the gameplay, you can Return to Ravenhearst when the title is released later this year...

Edit: Holy crows, I didn't realize until I dinked around on the site some more that Big Fish is selling a bunch of older stuff for 50% off, in addition to the Ravenhearst sale. If you just use the coupon code "Octoberfest" at checkout you'll get a great discount on the games on that page. If you sign up for the game club you can also get branded swag for buying the Oktoberfest games. I have to admit, the prospect of another coffee mug isn't going to make me any more excited one way or the other, but the sale is a chance to get game club prices without actually signing up. Always a good thing.

KlatchPDX Becomes Breakfast?

2008-10-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking - this whole notion of a salon of sorts. Why can't we steal the momentum of the Portland Twitter Breakfast and make the "discussion of interesting things over coffee" into "discussion of interesting things over coffee and a variety of breakfast items"? We (well, three of us) are already having breakfast once a week - if we shrank it to every other week and slated topics, my work here is done, yes?

We'll make the most anti-Rotary breakfast-eating organization ever. And once per quarter Brambercaseyo will show up, and it'll be super big funz.

Governor of Poker

2008-10-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

There aren't very many sites out there with a ton of Mac content, but Big Fish Games seems to be making a concerted effort to bring a lot of casual gameplay to the platform with a minimum of fuss.

My current addiction is Governor of Poker, a Hold 'em game that combines table skills with stake management, heads-up, tournament and cash games. You play a diminutive man or women who speaks softly and carries a big hat. In the game's "quest mode," you start with $300 and a dream, and by the end of the game (in theory) you own the entire state of Texas. The progression from dirt farmer to wagon-owning tycoon is very reminiscent of the old lemonade stand games, and is pretty dang fun (plus, duh, poker).

My only quibble is that I have yet to identify a marked difference in AI/computer play styles based on the difficulty level selection. The AI is fairly sophisticated (for example I have seen intelligent check-raises from computer opponents), but the starting hand standards never seem to get much better than "pretty dang loose." You have to account for that in your own play style, but on the other hand, that's probably excellent practice for all those charity casino nights or your Saturday game...

Thank heavens I'm free of my terrible Fairway Solitaire addiction, but now I'm afraid that Gov. of Poker will occupy just as much time and space...

50,000 Divided by 30

2008-10-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

1,666.6 repeating. That seems oddly satanic for a writing event, a celebration of right braininess, but in any event, that is the number of words you need to write per day if you're going to make it to the end of National Novel Writing Month with a 50,000 word fictional work. You could also go by rough number of double-spaced pages per day, which rounds up to six.

Rounding up is key. For example, if you hit 1750 words for ten days (a nice running start), you have effectively given yourself a half-day respite - you can have a day where it's just not in you to crank out the words. The biggest deal about the daily number is that you cannot fall behind too much or it just becomes impossible. The 25th of November arrives and you have to write for three days straight to get back into sync with the terminal goal.

This is half by way of pep talk to my #nanoPDX tweeps and partly to remind myself that, as the sun rises on Carmen's birthday and the candy hangover subsides, I have an assload of writing to do.

Good luck to everyone!

Victory was Mine

2008-10-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

So after much haranguing from east-siders, I ventured over the Hawthorne bridge to the Victory Bar (on Twitter as @victorybar) for some of this:

(Photo by DLReamer.)

That, my friends, is spaetzle. Baked spaetzle with gruyere and crispy shallots. And a tiny pot of very tart apple sauce. Very, very good. Texturally very similar to a gnocchi (less like mac & cheese than some have made it out to be), warm and toasty with lovely crunchy shallots. It was worth the trip, and because the Victory happy hour stretches to 7:00, it was a mere $5.

Not satisfied to report on only one thing, I also tried the jalepeno and cheddar hush puppies. You get three of them, with some house made ketchup, and they too were delightful. It was during the hush puppies (unabashedly fried but not greasy) that I was alerted to the George Foreman Fry 'n' Spin by Gizmodo. Thus my evening was complete.

Thanks @xolotl, @betsywhim, and @natronics for badgering me into crossing a bridge. :P

Fantasy President '08

2008-10-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Better than brackets, Peritus Pundit has a fillable electoral map allowing you to call the election. At the moment, the consensus is that Obama will win with 282 electoral votes, but of course that will change as others log their maps. The great thing - if your prediction is right (I'm assuming that means exactly right, plus multiple tiebreak methodologies, as there's only one first prize) Peritus will donate $1000 to the charity of your choice.

But who cares about that? We all know that the real point is to get all your friends to sign up and then talk trash about their decision to give South Dakota to Obama...

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Now playing: MC Frontalot - A Very Unlikely Occurrence
via FoxyTunes

Size

2008-10-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

So I know it's Fox Soccer Channel. I understand that that's, like demographically enticing to specific types of products. But what the heck are you doing trying to sell me: A) A Bowflex home gym, and B) stroke-inducing penis enlargement supplements in a single commercial break? I just want to know what happened in CONCACAF. I'm happy as a clam about my penis. I'm admittedly less happy about my physical fitness but I'm certainly not stupid enough to buy a home gym to remedy that (if I don't use the one that on the first floor of my building, what possible justification would I have?).

This is an open question to the universe - is the ad model for cable (satellite, whatever - specialized, small-slice TV) so far gone that the offers that automatically redirect into my Gmail spam folder are front and center on the tube? Are we at the place that entrepreneurship and mass media are mutually exclusive? What about bitchin' gadgets? Where are they advertised? If I switched to G4 would I not have to sit through the same fucking ads for Maxoderm?

And while we're on the topic. The only time "she actually got it for me" and "penis enlargement product" are in the same hemisphere is when you're advertising the aforementioned product. Pure fiction. I have it on wifely authority.

As I type this rant, I am treated to a Life Alert commercial. Y'know, fallen. Can't get up. Suffice it to say that the targeting is not exact. Lawdy lawdy lawdy.

Migration Imminent

2008-10-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

CamiKaos has inspired me to make the Wordpress jump sometime pretty soon. Between her and this amazing post about plug-ins I don't figure I can go that wrong. Plus it'll finally give me a chance to give Thesis a whirl.

Of course, I'd be a lot happier about it if I had an @verso following my every misstep, but we'll just have to plow forward...

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Now playing: MC Frontalot - Wallflowers
via FoxyTunes

Aggro-Gatored

2008-10-06T16:17:00.001-07:00

I'm having serious issues with the number of aggregators that I'm using to aggregate my activity on other aggregators...just saying.

Can't there be one central clearinghouse without everything becoming the competition for clearinghouse-status? Is this like really hard?

More later, just complaining.

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Now playing: MC Frontalot - A Skit About Vocations
via FoxyTunes

Peanut Butter (Slight Return)

2008-09-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, Claire was on soy nut butter sandwiches last year because of peanut allergies in the classroom. This year, no such restriction on peanut products, but she announced that she didn't actually like peanut butter anymore. This has been a sticking point in a variety of contexts, most of them involving us wanting to offer her peanut butter or being somewhere where a PB & J would have been a lifesaver in terms of mood.

Last night, Claire was trying celery filled with various things, which of course was a disaster because the foods were touching each other (see below). So Carmen (bless her) suggested that Claire just treat the celery as a spoon of sorts - a yummy stuff delivery mechanism - until all the good stuff was licked out of the middle, at which point it could revert to food and be eaten. Snack saved.

And more to the point, Claire ate all the peanut butter ones, and none of the soy nut butter ones. Ha HA!

These are the things that sustain me, in the dark moments. Peanut butter back on the list.

Will you stop touching me?!?!

2008-09-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

Not actually a back-seat problem for us, having only one kid. (If it does start happening, as Cosby says, we'll have a different set of problems.) Rather, this relates to a different aspect of Claire's life - her food. She doesn't like her foods to touch. When they touch, she doesn't eat them. Because they're touching. With the possible exception of soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches, she doesn't eat things that are touching.

Have I said touch and its various derivatives enough?

That is why she positively lost her mind when she saw the lunch container from Klip It. It has three compartments, one for a sandwich, and two for crackers/veggies/whatever. Fits right into her lunchbox. It's a win-win, really - none of her food touches, and we're not using eight million ziplocks to ensure the non-touchingness.

I sound like an AM radio commercial, but I've been looking for a bento-style container for her lunch sack for a while now. There's an easy solution, so long as you don't already own a lunch sack, which we do. So this was a coup of epic proportions. The closest I had come was a hecka-elaborate thing that was originally constructed for diabetics or something, and that was way to complicated to fiddle with on a daily basis.

Test run tomorrow. Rawk!

Fridge Frittata

2008-09-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

We're heading out for Danielle's wedding this week and the fridge was full of delectables from a week's worth of cooking lunches and whatnot at home (part of the New Austerity, but also capitalizing on the freaking incredible abundance at the Farmer's Market right now...). So what else but an Everything Frittata? Stuff it included:

Beet greens, most of the stem removed and chopped up a bit

leftover home-roasted peppers, already chopped but chopped a bit smaller (no long strips, more of a 1/2" dice)

heirloom tomatoes from that crazy guy at Farmer's Market who has like 27 varieties in one booth, diced

small amount of leftover BBQ chicken, diced small (practically minced)

two knobs of pepper jack and cheddar cheese, shredded

Truckload of eggs

Salt and Pepper

It was enough to make two with my handy dandy frittata pans. (Note that these are totally unnecessary. Using a regular fry pan you just stir more aggressively before allowing the frittata to set, then finish the top half under the broiler.) We ate half/two thirds of one and had a discussion about how to save the rest. The end result is that we froze pieces in three separate quart-sized freezer bags. I will report back when we actually crack one open (probably next week), but I'm told by the innernets that souffles of various types have held up nicely under similar treatment.

Had a lovely little new potato along with, and lots of salsa and sour cream. Yummers. This is not the first but the latest in a variety of new cooking thingies I've been doing. Massively inspired by Cook with Jamie, Jamie Oliver's latest and an amazing love song to the art and craft of cooking.

I have a lot to say about Neal Stephenson but I'm waiting to finish the book.

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Now playing: Diana Krall - You're Looking At Me
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Timbers Dominate, Lose 2-1: The Story of the Season

2008-09-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

A spectacular cross, ball into the net, and a dominating performance in the first half. Then two (literally, two) chances for Charlotte, and they converted on both. The core truth of this season is the absence of that kind of game-changing power up front. We're not making plays. We don't convert like that. Not that we didn't have the opportunity - we were seriously all over them, even down to ten men.

We're left hoping for some serious voodoo math to make the post-season, at which point we will travel everywhere.

I dunno, it's disappointing. We have such a solid midfield and (normally) effective backs. We just need to put the ball in the net.

Thanks, though, to Dietrich for the opportunity to hang out. Next year!

Articulating KlatchPDX

2008-09-11T11:42:00.001-07:00

This has been percolating for a while, and after attending the inaugural Refresh Portland talk last night (and btw, go give Tyler Sticka all your money - dude is sharp), and some tweets/chats back and forth about the loss of OSCON, I thought I'd write out the manifesto.

What's a klatch?

Specifically, a kaffeeklatsch? It's German for, essentially, sip 'n' bitch. The idea is similar to a salon, with a little less emphasis on a topic. In my case, I just like the sound of the word. Salon sounds somewhat pretentious, and anyway Creative Commons has that particular "geeky gathering" definition space locked up. KlatchPDX could be a periodic uncon or perhaps a Shizzup, with loosely defined topic sets and the expectation that you come ready to pony up a relevant take on a topic or topics included in the evening's roster.

Why do it?

I'm not sure - I feel like we're missing the chance to get people with different backgrounds and experiences into a room for talks about stuff that matters. Even more, I feel strongly that cool chats are at least as useful as cool talks. There's also the potential to record these and provide some additional shoutouts to the PDX tech/creative community.

How often?

Once a month? Yeah? More?

You are an evil genius, what can I do to help?

Obviously, we should meet for coffee and discuss. :P Leave a comment and let's figure out a time.
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Now playing: MC Frontalot - I Hate Your Blog
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Unpacking InVerge '08

2008-09-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

InVerge is in the books, and there were a lot of amazing presentations and takeaways - and an equal amount of space for critique and comment. Everyone's a critic, of course, but in this case I think that my (thoroughly informal) polling of audience and presenters, the Twitterstream, and Eric's chats with people at the W + K reception, all combine to give me some standing to make some points about the conference as a whole.

Crack open for meaning and discard the shills

I'm not alone in my belief that the Big Names at the conference were there to hawk products, position themselves as vendors for the potential customers in the audience, or both. Disney was easily the worst offender, delivering (badly) a scripted tour of crackforkids.com, er, excuse me, "Disney immersive media properties." The toy czar sounded like the worst kind of mercenary for the entire presentation, and his minder (a VP?), while less robotic, had even less interesting things to say. They unclenched a lot during the Q & A, and I'll revisit the value of that in a moment.

Others (dome entertainment guy, Tony Uphoff from TechWeb, etc.) were in the "I did this!" camp; an interesting "convergence" technology was introduced/talked about, pretty pictures were shown, with no unpacking or deeper discussion, and overall I think the audience was neither blown away nor likely to buy. I was looking forward to the Nike+ guy (cancelled due to illness) but I fear that the presentation would have been no better. I can't begrudge their right to be there - everyone's presentation was germane to the subject - but none of it qualifies as "thought leadership."

Contrast that with the academicians from USC and MIT, who both got into the meaning behind "I did this!" and also pushed the standard "oooooh, interaction!" rhetoric into a place where ideas happened.

My point is this - if you're a suit, you sit on a panel and get asked questions. This allows you to unbutton (the Disney guys said pretty smart stuff in the Q & A) and also limits your ability to bombard us with pitches. This includes, in my opinion, media (as opposed to thought) leaders like Mr. Uphoff. I'm sure he's really good at speaking off the cuff. Hell, have him moderate. He's more than capable of that.

So instead of a full day devoted to commercials, you give two hours - one to dome guy/Verizon guy/"look at our cool app" people, one to the Fortune 50s. And yes, we are honored that you're here. We just don't want to hear rewarmed investor relations horseshit.

Know your audience

People who escaped the "buy me" trap (Renny Gleeson, Karl Long) were still aiming low in terms of audience expectation. Eric mentioned early on in day one that he'd never seen a more Twitter-headed audience (and he should know). So the "survey of the landscape" talks are never going to be more than preaching to the choir. I thought they both did an admirable job of surveying that landscape, but seriously, push the envelope. I'm harping on "thought leaders," but it's on the front page of the InVerge web site - it is the point of the conference. If you're going to lead on content and strategic thought around Web 2.0 then you for damn sure better have some thought leaders available. Both Renny and Karl should come back, using Josh Green's or Scott Kveton's speeches as the bar over which they must leap.

We should be having great discourses about the future of this Intertron thing. The Simulacrum is forever shattered! The audience is not passive! For god's sake, get cracking.

Amatoor theatricals

The partnership with Portland Center Stage is awesome! Push that envelope a bit more and consider some actual stagecraft discussions mixed in with the rest. I think there's a real opportunity to open the discourse to the arts within the InVerge conference. And no, it's not better placed in Cre8con, it belongs in both and for different reasons. The MC got it - and I bet he knows who to talk to to get behind/beneath the surface of our newfangledness and find the narrative thread.

This is all "new" only in the sense that the medium has changed. Shame on Karl Long, for example, for not talking about the weddings-by-telegraph, some of which ended bitterly when the bride and groom (who had never seen one another) discovered that they had entered a mixed-race marriage at a time when that was really, REALLY not okay. The artistic/historical perspective would bring needed context to the flux that's occurring at an individual level.

In sum
Push harder. Less nonsense, more provocation. And, in case it's not clear, THANK YOU SO MUCH for putting it on. This isn't "I won't attend again," this is "When I come next year I hope the preceding has occurred."

Chrome Sweet Chrome

2008-09-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune to have scheduled a coffee date with Marshall Kirkpatrick long before Labor Day and a certain leak of a certain comic. So he arrived all in a flurry trying to get RWW ready for the beta launch of Chrome.

This gave me a chance to help out (splee!) but also to be right there at the launch. I have XP installed as a virtual machine on my Macbook, so I hopped over to the other OS and downloaded.

Initial impressions on my end are in line with pretty much everybody else - it's wicked fast, the interface is intuitive, and (with some minor hang-ups regarding plug-ins working correctly) there aren't really any buggy bits that I could find. Though not a power user, I did open my standard 10-tab Firefox start page, and then tacked on as many rich media sources as I could think of. It really seemed to handle them all effectively.

I'll wait for the Mac version before I really test on it, but so far the outlook is good.

2008-09-01T18:33:00.001-07:00

Labor Day 2008

Poor grandpa ended up with all the sticks and no s'mores...
Labor Day 2008

Kickin' it old skool - no marshmellow required.
Labor Day 2008

Nom nom nom.
Labor Day 2008

Peeling the crispy outside off the marshmellow.
Labor Day 2008

Sugar shock.
Labor Day 2008

"That's an excellent s'more." "I know, I'm such a badass."
Labor Day 2008

Braving smoke in the face to get melty marshmellows.
Labor Day 2008

Justin demonstrates proper marchmellow torching technique.
Labor Day 2008

S'MORES!
Labor Day 2008

Top of Justin's head. :P
Labor Day 2008

An expidition through uncharted hiking trails...
Labor Day 2008

Jessica at riverside.
Labor Day 2008

Justin's turn to ham it up.
Labor Day 2008

Hamming for the camera.
Labor Day 2008

Chillin' on the rock.
Labor Day 2008

Carmen & Kathryn
Labor Day 2008

Jessica checking for crawdads.
Labor Day 2008

All up in the river's face.
Labor Day 2008

Checking out something awesome.
Labor Day 2008

Confab at the riverbed
Labor Day 2008

Making a triangle
Labor Day 2008

Boy with stick.
Labor Day 2008

Justin digging in the riverbed
Labor Day 2008

Karate chop!
Labor Day 2008

Andy and Claire - on the way back from the falls.
Labor Day 2008

Susan Creek Falls - as low as anyone's ever seen it.
Labor Day 2008

Andy and Claire on Susan Creek Falls Trail
Posted via Pixelpipe.

Coriander Sparkle Kitten!

2008-08-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

This week and the upcoming weeks are so crazy that it requires the help of world-famous superhero kitten, Coriander Sparkle Kitten.

So freaking cute...

And speaking of junk food...

2008-08-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

Going to the State Fair today! Woo hoo! I've really been enjoying the TV spots for the fair, the best one involving a giant corn dog on a flat bed semi being hauled down to Salem. I mean, the chicken's good, but there's something about a massive corn dog.

Suffice it to say that Claire will get her fill of nonsense today.

I've been playing with pixelpipe and so far it's really nice. I'm awful at updating folks on photos and now I have a way to send them out into the aether without having to log into everywhere. The only problem is that the iPhoto add-on makes iPhoto crush, but the uploader is just as simple to use...

Be Nice and I'll Stuff you Full of Crap

2008-08-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Overheard recently was yet another parent's plea for polite behavior in exchange for a trip to McDonald's. It struck me this morning that it's a small wonder that we have a childhood obesity problem. It's a question of how you define "treat," of course (and I'm just as guilty as the next dad) but the prevailing custom of cutting deals with your kids struck me as horrifically bad all of a sudden.

It might just be that it's the end of summer and all of the socialization has evaporated in the summer heat, but it seems to me that I've seen and made more concessions to grumpy kids recently. Granted, I'm not the first parent to pray for the return of school, but I'm going to try to find better ways to make bargains - bargains that honor the need for awesome kid experiences but don't resort to Rice Krispie squares all the time. Bargains that engage and inform rather than stupefy.

Yeah. And then I'll make peace in the Middle East.

Summer is all kinds of awesome for PDX Kids

2008-08-14T09:35:00.001-07:00

So a planning snafu led to next week being campless! Ack! In an effort to remedy the situation (ha! Might as well count all the sand in Hawaii), I dug up two amazing camps that I had missed on the first pass.

Zenger Farm will put your kiddo to work in the dirt, which we get by driving to the grandparents in Roseburg. But they also do lunches with the kids using the produce that's coming out of the ground, which is a very cool connection to the whole circle of life thing.

Oregon College of Art and Craft has amazing workshops up to and including high school, and like many places they offer year-round options for folks with especially crafty kids.

Suffice it to say that competition is fierce for summer planning, and that in general I need to be a lot more on the ball next February (yes, February) to get all of the ducks in a row. Meantime, it's off to the museums next week...

Large Hadron Rap

2008-08-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

Whilst investigating nerdcore, Matt stumbled across the Large Hadron Rap. Awesome.

I am late to this party as usual, but as you'll see below, I am completely blown away by the Front. More in a bit.

----------------
Now playing: MC Frontalot - Secrets from the Future
via FoxyTunes

Sand in the City

2008-07-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

These guys are awesome, and their annual display of awesomeness is happening at Pioneer Courthouse Square this weekend. I was there at about noon, enjoying a hot dog and watching teams of people crafting monoliths of sand into...things. Really it was too early to tell. There was a sort of sea lion/Buddha figure, and one of the sculptures looks to be topped with bananas. Probably going to swing by tomorrow and take a closer look.

There is much to be said about puppets, narrative, the projected self, Avenue Q, and so forth. For now suffice it to say that you should kick down some bills to the felt people.

Ha ha, overconfidence

2008-07-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

So, the second stratum is kicking my butt. This is the classic Etrian Odyssey moment - "dude, I own this Labyrinth...ow, what's that guy? Oh noes, random encounter! Trap floor! Where's my warp wire...too late."

I'm not sure that saving map data is kosher, but I suppose that you could say that your guild recovered your map along with your remains...anyway, I always say yes.

Etrian Odyssey II

2008-07-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

W00t! Who woulda thunk that the thing that brought me back to this blog would be a turn-based RPG?! Hard to imagine.

Anyway, now it's better, with more classes and burly craziness. I just beat the bejeebus out of the Chimaera (sp?) at the bottom of the first stratum, and it turns out that I might have been a little more cautious than necessary in the first stages. I went after the boss with full Force bars on all five of my level 20 characters and the first round left him stunned and whimpering. I'm not actually sure that he got more than one attack. I also have no idea who all the swarming baddies were - they never got to the battle.

The familiarity is awesome, but I fear that I'm missing things due to my expectations of the older title. For example (and I swear to god that this is new) you can now sidestep with the L and R keys. That is sick mojo when marching along. The "Auto" button in combat also seems to have improved targeting (or maybe I'm just lucky). You also get to start with Ronins, although I didn't immediately take advantage - I started with landsknecht, warmage, landsknecht, alchemist, medic, per Awesome Party of Destiny (APod) in Etrian Odyssey I*, but it just felt too mechanical. Plus, although it's nice to get the "mono-axe" and "mono-sword" versions of the Landsknecht, you miss out on 2-Hit that way. So, the party that is rolling upon restart is landsknecht, ronin, survivalist, gunner (ooh!), medic. Gunners are like Alchemists only with, y'know, guns. They get 2-Hit but can also hit with elemental ammo. So far I haven't felt the lack of an Alchemist. He also seems to hit his Force bar hard and since the Force skill for gunners is - wait for it - a really big gun, there are obvious advantages to that.

I'm liking APoD 2.0, just because the combination of mad beats with dead useful passive skills lends a certain evil genius-ness to combat encounters. Also very unlike my previous forays, I'm utilizing "resource slaves" for mining/taking/chopping missions. No skill points for gathering, thanks.

You gain the Beast class when you clear the first stratum, and I have to say that the prospect of fighting baddies with a panda is pretty delightful. The skill set, however, is really foreign, and I'm not quite sure how/what to make the most of my panda pal. Plus, he's named "Ettin," which is awkward, because I figured he'd be more threatening than a godsdamned panda. In Ettin's defense, I could have chosen portraits of tigers or grizzlies, but dude, you get a panda option, you take the panda.

The mapping is so much better, now, too. There's multiple colors of floor paint, item spots, etc., as well as a variety of directional arrows for the passages through the wooded walls of the labyrinth.

I'd geek out more, but really, you should be playing the game. It has completely supplanted The World Ends with You, and that's saying something.

----------------
*I say "per EO I" although of course in EO I it was a Survivalist in the front row, not a Warmage. The point is, Tank Utility Tank is the front row of choice. APoD 2.0 re-articulates this strategy, only with more diverse character mix. I still see absolutely no use for Protectors.

Now playing: Dungeons & Dragons - Episode 6: Penny Arcade (these are must listens)
via FoxyTunes

On Nomadism and Thin Clients

2007-11-27T11:13:00.000-08:00

Chris Brogan recently posted that we should all be prepared for digital nomadism - i.e. working from anywhere, anytime (although having watched my wife make this transition, I can say with some authority that "anytime" is really "all the time"). I don't disagree that we all need to prepare for the long trek from coffee shop to hotdesk to lunch meeting to bus stop, but I was surprised by the first section after the intro, entitled "Get a Smartphone." His first sentence, "Your regular cellphone won't cut it," strikes me as a bit dire.

It could be that I'm in the dark ages, or else overly concerned about the portability and pocket-friendliness of your average smart phone. It could be that I've had two phones that were irresistibly attracted to water (washing machine, lake, whatever), and don't really want to face the prospect of throwing $500 down the drain on one of my absent-minded moments. Perhaps it's like first class - once you've been there you can never go back. I would like to posit, however, that one can be perfectly nomadic without one. Before iPhone, when all of a sudden our phone really could do everything (bless you iPhone), there was not a single smart phone that held any allure for me whatsoever. It comes down to how I use the phone. I am always able to download a Gmail app for whatever phone I have. Similarly, most phones are able to sync with my computer to share calendar data and contacts. And they have all had longer battery life than the behemoths.

Really, what else do I need? When will the day come that I can't get to a terminal of some type to drop my crucial edits into crucial document X? And how much pleasure will I get out of trying to do that on a smart phone because I can? The point of all this modularity/portability/mobile access is to be able to utilize what amounts to a thin client to retrieve and manipulate centrally stored data. Yes, a smart phone can do! It! All!, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest that a phone is a phone (unless it's an iPhone). My wife checks her email (just like me) but if it's a detailed issue, she closes the email program and calls the person (just like me). Sure, she's become adept at buttonmashing quick replies out to people if needed (just like me), but on the whole the phone is a data device as needed and first and foremost a means of communicating via voce. Just like mine.

Just sayin', nomads travel light and make do with what they have. If you've got the killer tool, by all means. But I'll continue the voyage with an endless succession of little toy phones that end up, mysteriously, in the dishwasher.

Yay for continued Heroes! Maybe!

2007-11-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Nikki Finke reports that the two sides of the writer's strike have crossed a milestone and have the bones of a deal in place. She's quick to point out that nothing is confirmed.

As a writer who enjoys being paid, I'm happy to hear that the strike (and the blogging about the strike) has had an impact. As a consumer of Heroes, I say get back to your typewriters! Half a season of Heroes is about as bad as socks for Christmas.

Bee blight

2007-11-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

The Willamette Week has a review about a certain movie that mentioned that we are in the middle of a massive bee apocalypse. The movie is unsurprisingly disappointing (it is not the first time that Dreamworks has brought in top talent only to squander it), but I found the bee die-off to be rather stunning. Consider:

What's causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon - Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) - and a list of symptoms.
In hives hit by CCD, adult workers simply fly away and disappear, leaving a small cluster of workers and the hive's young to fend for themselves. Adding to the mystery, nearby predators, such as the wax moth, are refraining from moving in to pilfer honey and other hive contents from the abandoned hives; in CCD-affected hives the honey remains untouched.

Emphasis mine. Now, far be it from me to be hysterical, but what is wrong with the honey? (By the way, if you want hysterics, I'd recommend reading the comments after the article - awesome.) If the pathogen is food-borne, how do the other insects know? Or is it more like when your dog growls at a stranger for no apparent reason and later you read that the same man mugged a grandmother and kicked a kitten - just some kind of bad bee mojo emanating from the vacant hive?

The CCD Working Group reported four months later that the culprit was likely viral. Just last month, Nature aired "The Silence of the Bees" (nice), an excerpt of which can be seen as a PBS podcast.

As a huge fan of honey and, of course, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, I found this all extremely interesting. Then again, it is the weekend and I'm undercaffeinated. Your results may vary. Just...maybe buy local honey, yeah? Good for the allergies, anyway.

Two Tugs

2007-11-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Claire's third tooth in the lower row of incisors came out today, but not without help. There was already a tooth growing behind it, so its time had come, but it was clinging to life with the same ferocity that allowed it to survive an incident when she was three. This was when I was in law school, and I got a call (I think in class - can't actually remember now) from the Moss St. Center that Claire had fallen and smashed her face into the slide. I was prepared, I remember, for some blood, what I wasn't prepared for was the angle at which all of her lower teeth were sitting. Her lower jaw had slammed up and over her upper teeth, jamming all of her teeth forward and (we are now learning) breaking them off at the roots. The dentist sorta snicked them back into place as well as he could and then said "odds are they'll turn black and die, then you can come back and we'll pull them." Turns out they're feisty little chompers and have stayed around, crunching carrots, for all these years.

Now that the big teeth are coming up these scrappy bits of calcium have been jumping ship with abandon - and you can see the shears across the roots from the slide incident. (For the sake of brevity I'm skipping over the story from her Montessori school, six months later, when she got a clean bill of tooth health from the dentist on Tuesday and then smashed the same teeth in during a game of chase at recess. Oy.) And now we're to the third, the one that already has a big kid tooth behind it. It was disinclined to acquiesce to Claire's persistent wiggling, but this morning she crossed a threshold - it was pretty much just hanging out of her mouth.

So as you might suspect, tug one was me yanking a tooth out of someone's head for the first time. I can report that my daughter is crazy and that I have no tolerance for inflicting pain. She says it only hurt a little right at the end, but still. And the third tooth goes in the purple pouch, awaiting its dollar in change. Inflation, right? Poor kid can't even buy gum with less.

The second tug was the one that caught me by surprise. It was the cavalier way in which she marched into class upon arriving at school. This is a new school for her, a new experience of first grade and actual work and relating with older kids, peers, teachers, all that. It is a big kid school, requiring big kid teeth, and skin, and guts, and heart. It's been hard. But there she was, ready to launch, one tooth short but with all the confidence of someone who knows, somehow, its absence will not slow her down. Now nothing will slow her down. And there I am, standing at this other, bigger threshold, with one hand gripping a tiny, courageous tooth and one hand stretching out to this tiny, courageous girl, my role diminished, my new role unknown.

Two tugs. And all before coffee.

Social Networks - actually transformative?

2007-11-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

There's no shortage of discussions about the value of social networks in contemporary society, ranging from "there is none" to "there's a lot." How's that for a summary? I tend to lean toward the "there is none" side, somewhere between "there's a middling amount" and "there's a teeny bit." But a Talk of the Town article in The New Yorker this week made me rethink. Particularly, this quote:

Hungry Upper East Siders were hovering over the table by the time Cohen returned to his themes of Middle Eastern youth: “You meet these young kids and you party with them, and they know the world has misperceptions of what they’re like. Every single young person is reachable. Ask them what dating is like in their country, ask them if they have a girlfriend, ask them what their type is. There’s nobody who’s too conservative to talk about that.”

The article is talking about Jared Cohen, a member of Condi Rice's Policy Planning Staff, who has had a lot of success with the new détente of going to raves with Iranians. Whether or not this is brilliant diplomacy, his comment raises interesting issues surrounding how Facebook, myspace, and the like could actually be positioned as tools for peace. For the first time, I looked at the growing universality of English as a common language as something other than a scourge - what if the younger generations could connect and create meaning within channels that their elders could never hope to understand?

People more connected than me will probably immediately say, "but it's happening! Look at blankthingie.com!" and bless them for knowing this, and having spent more time with the ramifications. There's more to say, clearly, and I'll try to say it as we move forward.

Do we need a Creative Commons Salon in Portland?

2007-11-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

Creative Commons, as you probably already know, is an organization dedicated to digital rights management, the dismantling of data fiefdoms, and generally being awesome. (This last bit is not a stated goal of the organization, I don't think, but pretty much sums up my opinion of them.)

They have salons, a word which here means "opportunities for smart people to hang out and discuss cool stuff." Currently there's no salon in Portland. What do people think about having one? Comment here (ha! assumes there's anyone reading) or shoot me an email...

Making Game Design Pay

2007-11-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

Emanuele Feronato has an interesting experiment running, where the goal is to make a bit of money on flash game design. The game page hosts Google Adwords and mochiAds in-game. The post has an interesting breakdown of effort vs. payoff, and the consensus from the comments appears to be that committing a week of time to make a polished, engaging game would probably yield the best results.

It's a useful experiment and y'all should stay tuned for the next two experiments.

PS - the game's pretty fun as well :)

The Reveal

2007-10-31T08:56:00.000-07:00

We're back with Micheal Transbottom the Third, to reveal to our homeowners the transformations that have been wrought on their lives;

"Okay, Sub-Saharan Africa, we know that you've been through some rough times. AIDS, constant war, and famine can really wear a person down. So for your room we've decided to provide you with an in-home SPA!!!"

"New Orleans, San Diego, you guys worked really hard to recover from devastating acts of natural violence. We wanted to make sure you knew we had your back, so here's random support across the country for your sports teams!!!"

Etc. I don't mean to be down on Extreme Makeover, or any show that attempts to better the lives of others through community effort, but the shocking truth is that the poorest family in America is richer than some 90% of the world. As we click past Halloween and into the season of avaricious lusting after stuff, let's all consider doing something bigger than ourselves.

Places that can happen (local and otherwise):

Heifer International
Oregon Food Bank
CASA of Multnomah Co.

And of course you can test your mad vocabulary skillz and feed people at the same time - Free Rice, yo.

Ignite was awesome.

2007-10-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows this by now, but Ignite Portland was a smashing success. Good food, lovely beverages (although this didn't affect me, the alcoholic ones ran out), GREAT speeches. Some highlights:

Steve Morris' talk on pitching to investors was both relevant and engaging, although the slides were a little "slidey" for my taste - fairly dry, and often too full to successfully absorb in 15 seconds. The guy clearly knows his stuff, though, and was in the right room.

Adam Duvander's talk was great and provided me some solid reading. I met Adam at an open coffee last month and was glad to see him do so well.

Both the StepChange guys were great, but Kevin Tate's talk on emergence was absurdly revealing and packed to the gills with references to books that I should have read by now but haven't. I like unicycling as much as the next guy, but I think hands down one of the best presenters was KT.

Crystal Beasley's presentation had hands down the best slides in the first half. Visit I Hate Hummer for a peek at her latest project, which involves, well, hating Hummers.

The second half was substantially lighter, although hilarious. You just had to be there, or wait for the video, for a lot of these. Of particular note in the "awesome slides" category was Hideshi Hamaguchi, who presented on "thinking like the Japanese" and had beautiful slides.

The dog of the bunch was Keith Gerr's random assortment of comments about things. He was out of time with his slides, didn't really have a single "burning idea," and generally speaking was baffling to try to understand. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but this one was really quite weird.

That aside, it was great! Kudos to all sponsors, presenters, and

Is Apple the new [Insert Here]?

2007-10-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Jason Kottke suggests that the Apple = new Microsoft rhetoric is coming. I have no reason to disagree, but I like a different metaphor, and not only because it's October; is Apple the new Red Sox?

Lemme 'splain - I believe that the Red Sox will win the series. I believe it despite the removal of Wakefield from the roster, despite the Cinderella streak the Rockies are on, despite my general love of the NL. Having won two in the last four years, the question then becomes, "who are we kidding with this lovable underdog nonsense?" They're as big as the Yankees, their budget is as big as the Yankees. They're an 800 lb. gorilla. But the questions surrounding the public shift in consciousness about their massiveness are bigger and more varied than "are the Sox the new Yankees?" The human takes on popularity, mind and market share, and cultural shifts are interwoven.

So back to Apple. Yes, they're the Red Sox. They are flying high on devices that make all the spouting about portable tribes a reality. They have incredibly beautiful computers (well, they always did) that put the "you" in Unix, and can even run Windows if you must. They are an 800 lb. gorilla. The reaction one way or the other is going to depend more on the service culture they generate than anything else (though I concede that there are many, many anythings that will impact this). Apple is currently famous for cool, but one of the things I've always liked is that they're growing famous for service and support. They don't just design products that are (to me) intuitive, they help people who don't find them so intuitive. Just ask my mother, who started with an iMac (at my insistence) and now has a little MacBook for travel.

Red Sox won the Series, and Apple launched the iPod. The fans cheered and hooted and raved, and then there was a small moment of "omg, now what" among Red Sox/Apple Nation - we're not the underdog! The curse is broken! What the heck do we do with ourselves? What they did, by and large, is stay the course - Sox are awesome, and so is Apple. Win a second series/release the iPhone? You're still awesome, and the fan core still thinks so; it's the rest of the world that will swirl, the people who saw an iPod and said, "yeah, that's neat" or who read an article on the 0-3 comeback and thought, "those scrappy millionaires, look at them go." NOW you're, how you say, hegemonic. Now there's an outsider looking in, hoping for a shot at the big time, dreaming of wrestling the Badass Motherf*cker wallet from your iron grasp.

Microsoft, as you may have heard, plans to solve their own nipped heels problem by buying everything in sight. Apple probably won't do that - doesn't fit the model. They'll have to differentiate the old fashioned way - by earning the respect and trust of an ever-growing clientele. Shocking, I know. I wish they could just synergize some mindshares, or something. Sounds better, less "brick and mortar."

OBT Starts with a Bang.

2007-10-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

The first program of Oregon Ballet Theatre's 2007-08 season has its last performance tomorrow, and having just been I strongly encourage you to beg, borrow or steal tickets and go see it. Christopher Stowell seems to have that great Director's knack of finding the right roles for the right people, and this program positively brims with promise of things to come. At one point I thought to myself that these dancers both understand and honor the burden of being the company for an entire state.

(That's not to say there's not other dance out there, but let's face it - you look to ballet as the harbinger of quality. These folks get that, and they mean business).

The program started with William Forsythe's "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude," new to OBT this year. The piece was something of a standby at SF Ballet, and so it's no surprise that Stowell would want to bring it here. Forsythe wasn't kidding when he said "exactitude" - this is a hard dance for all five dancers, and only Stephen Houser performed flawlessly - but the energy was there and the missteps were minor. It's a great dance and I hope Stowell keeps it close. With such a small season (four programs + Nutcracker) it's unlikely to see an immediate repeat, but every other year this is a great chance to give young dancers some serious work.

The juxtaposition of the big, spacious, shape-centric "Thrill" with "Mostly Mozart," a return performance from its 2006 premiere at OBT, was fascinating. The dancers, for the most part, remain within a hand's grasp of each other, and although there is a great deal of movement one can't help but think that you're watching a much smaller stage. That combined with the call-and-response, introductory motif and then silence during the dance, made for a haunting and physical performance. With breath cues and sliding feet clearly discernible, particularly during the trio dances, this was a heck of a spectacle. The pas de deux was absolutely amazing, and the re-introduction of music took the narrative force up a notch - or two, or three. Dazzlingly sensual, great fun, and an entirely different kind of thrill (but no less exact).

At that point I would have been fine even if Stowell had concocted some maudlin nonsense out of "Midsummer Night's Dream." He did not; he chose instead to bottle the wit and wisdom of the bard and pour it into dance. See, I'm the one concocting maudlin nonsense, but seriously, this was a delight. Stowell has created a place for the whole company, plus kids, to roll around in the leaves and enjoy. It's not worth recounting the story (you know it already), or dissecting the choreography (it's a comedy). Just go and see it, either tomorrow (today by the time you read this) or whenever it's on again. It's a flagship ballet for OBT, a stake in the ground, a triumph.

End dance geek moment. We now return to our regularly scheduled ephemera.

Ignite Portland lineup is set!

2007-10-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, hey, we have presenters! Sadly, none of them are me :P But I'll bang the drum again next quarter, and in the meantime the deadline really helped me develop the concept. I'm bout 7/8ths done with the speech and will have lots of time to make funny ha-ha slides.

Meanwhile, it's not too late to sponsor the inaugural Ignite Portland. I've been telling attorneys that this is a chance to show up amidst a flock of techies wearing a gigantic "I get it!" button, but so far no dice. Will follow up once this is posted.

A plug is a kind of item...

2007-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

So in my perusing of the 2007 Interactive Fiction competition, I came across Inform 7. Inform is the language that Infocom used on all those awesome text adventures of our collective youth - Zork and whatnot. The 7th iteration is heavy mojo, because it's meant to be a natural language, object oriented narrative device. You use Inform 7 to tell a story about the story you want to tell. For example, if I wanted to make sure that the player in my text adventure could accuse people of crimes, I would tell Inform something like this:

Accusing is an action applying to one visible thing and one value. Understand "accuse [something] of [crime]" as accusing. A crime is a kind of value. Crimes are sabotage, murder, theft, blackmail, and arson.

Check accusing:
if the noun is not a person, say "Reifying stuff isn't going to get you anywhere - try accusing a person." instead;

and so on. I'm actually trying to figure out how to ensure that the [crime] is limited to the "approved list" enumerated in the code. But that's not the point.

The point is that the wonderful world of IF authoring has taken a leap into the darkness that is natural language programming. I'm slightly surprised that this didn't generate more of a stir when it was released (although I may have just missed the buzz, and anyway, in the world of teeny communities the group of people who write and play interactive fiction is one of the teeniest). For someone who is used to thinking of IF as a series of stage notes, the freedom of the system is amazing.

It's also just enough rope to hang myself, of course. It's already quite apparent from my perusal of Usenet posts on the subject of Inform 7 that I need to be brave and work on learning Inform 6, which represents the heart and guts to Inform 7's brain. However, if one was mechanically unambitious and just wanted to write a good story, they could do it in Inform pretty dang easily.

Which makes one wonder why we can't create all sorts of relational databases this way...probably we can.

Compare Adrift and TADS, which appear to be the two other "easy" authoring systems. I have some experience with Adrift, which I was using to author a "print your LRW paper" law school adventure before my laptop, in a fit of irony, imploded. TADS I know nothing about, except that it's got more multimedia-style capacity (little embedded sound files, images, etc.).

Ignite Speech Kicks Local Man's Ass

2007-10-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

So...taking a lot of time to get my shtick ready for Ignite Portland. There was a time that this would have been a piece o cake, but the format restrictions plus my natural state of repose/procrastination is making it hard to get any traction on the text.

This is one of those posts that might as well not exist, but I feel strongly that I shouldn't let my pokey puppy nature completely kill the blog. So, I'm alive, I gots stuff to say, yada yada. :P

Taste of Mexico - viva upscale taquerias!

2007-10-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

So I've seen this place on 21st a couple of times and we finally got a chance to get over there for lunch (it helps that it's in the same row o' goodness as Ken's Artisan Bakery and City Market NW). We were both pleased as pie with what came out of the kitchen, both in terms of presentation and in terms of actual, you know, eating.

Carmen had the flautas, which were quite tasty, while I went for boring and got a taco/enchilada combo. All the food was yummy, but as usual the portions were enough for two meals. I'm actually getting ready to bust out the leftovers for lunch today.

Anyway, go check it out. There's tons of options down there (and the great great coffee house next door) so even if not in the mood for Mexican, you can find some way to feed yourself. ;)

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Now playing: Top8Magic.com - Mockvitational Part 4
via FoxyTunes

Casual Gameplay Design Competition 4!

2007-10-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

The entries are starting to appear over at Jay Bibby's Casual Gameplay site. This competition is becoming quite the marquee event, with around 50 (!) entries this time around.

If you have some spare time or need an excuse to create some spare time, go check it out. I only had time to glance at the entries that have revealed so far, but they both seem like fun. Now if I just had the time to play them :)

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Now playing: Richard Ashcroft - Money To Burn
via FoxyTunes

It's not easy being green.

2007-09-29T21:57:00.001-07:00

Two games that were simply astonishing this past week both ended badly for Oregon teams. In the first, the Portland Timbers lost on penalties to a severely outclassed Atlanta team. The Silverbacks owe the goalposts of PGE Park the full salaries of their defensive line, as it was the goalposts and not the defense that kept the game scoreless. The loss is made somewhat less painful by the stellar season the Timbers had and by the recent announcement that rookie head coach Gavin Wilkinson was named Coach of the Year in the USL First Division.

And of course, today, we had a heartbreaker at Autzen, where it seemed as though the Ducks might be able to grind down what is arguably the best Cal team of the past decade. Alas, it was not to be, as the tying drive was stopped at the one. I'd link it but anyone who cares is probably watching College Football Final right now, like me :)

Alice Is Lost!

2007-09-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

Things are heating up over at Alice Is Lost!, a puzzle adventure by Eric Harshbarger. If you're looking for a lot of puzzles (a la Valentine's Day Massacre) for a small cost, you might want to take a gander at the prologue and the FAQ.

In other puzzling news, I've finally got the full plotline for the first Bosephus Jones mystery. Now I just need to weave in some puzzling opportunities and I'll have a legitimate roadmap to writing the thing. Pretty exciting.

Written while waiting for the top 8 of a TPF Sealed PE to start on MTGO. :)

The geolinguistics of soda/pop.

2007-09-21T18:45:00.001-07:00

So i was in an elevator recently (it happens), and I got into a conversation with my boxmate about La Croix sparkling water, a case of which I was holding in my hand. It's basically club soda with a twist in a can. What I told the guy (who had professed to love the beverage) was that we could give it to our daughter - and she could think it was a treat - without actually resorting to soda. He immediately and enthusiastically agreed (it was kind of a weird little moment, two devotee dads discussing sugar-free options for kids). Only he used the word "pop."

Now, I remember first hearing "pop" in the same way that I remember hearing the Southern universalism "coke" to refer to any carbonated beverage. But it got me to wondering about distributions - like, is it purely valley girl to say "pop?" Is anyone mapping this?

Thankfully, the internet is chock full of useless information.

Busy busy getting everything in order for the move. Come Thursday we'll be in la Civic. :)

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Now playing: Silversun Pickups - Little Lover's So Polite
via FoxyTunes

Civic Duties

2007-09-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

So we're moving to a new place, and the odds that I will be all that free to blog are slim and none. That said, I will definitely try to keep up.

In the meantime, I have an absurd amount of stuff to sell. Tiring. My mad craigslist skills have been pushed to the limit. ;)

Forest Park Guided Hikes for Kids

2007-09-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

There's still time to drop your kids in the wilderness, assuming they're 10 or older (some of the hikes are for younger guys too, but most of them have come and gone). FFP.org is generally just a great place to learn more about Forest Park, its trails, and its troubles.

Found/remembered while looking for a decent day hike for the doodlebug today. Now if the sun would just burn off this overcast nonsense we'd be set.

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Now playing: Franz Joseph Haydn - Adagio
via FoxyTunes

Movin'

2007-09-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

So, we're moving out of here to be closer to the middle of downtown/northwest. It doesn't hurt that it also brings us in walking distance of Claire's school, also. ;)

Anyone know any good places for rent?

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Now playing: Franz Joseph Haydn - Andante (Theme And Variations)
via FoxyTunes

Activity at Ignite Portland

2007-09-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

So the Constitution is up for Ignite Portland, which currently has no set date (late October is the idea). But if you want to micro-pitch a concept or just talk about something interesting, you should check out the background post to figure out what the heck I'm talking about and then consider subscribing to the site's RSS feed for future updates.

I have a hard time understanding how I lived without...

2007-09-14T10:21:00.001-07:00

...FoxyTunes for this long. Thankfully that's been remedied.

My wild hair idea about solving the bloated, inefficient, and inelegant IT solutions that law firms currently suffer with will not go away. It seems to me that within ten years everyone should really just be building their own databases and screw Amicus/PCLaw/whatever nonsense you're using.

Listen: law practice is about relationships. Ergo, a relational database that allows you to consolidate client notes, drafts, and contact information, that has a timer for billable work and a search function that can serve as conflicts check and navigational front-end in one just seems to make the most sense ever. No more cludgy dBs that can't even sync with billing software. No more "compose email" buttons on crappy Windows systems. And particularly relevant to Federal practice, complete control of paperless filing information.

The revolution is not the billable hour. The revolution is freeing the billable hour from its current fetters and being as holistic about your IT solutions as you (hopefully) are about your client solutions. And I do not intend to wait for the current generation of dinosaurs to die. For one thing, most of them seem downright unwilling to depart. For another, my lord, how long must the wageslaves work with pure crap? You could do it all with one of those fancy Google pizza boxes.

At least I think you could. I intend to ask at the next Open Coffee.

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Now playing: Regina Spektor - Better
via FoxyTunes

Thank Yous

2007-09-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

A la Hermux Tantamoq:

Thank you for change. For questions that shake precepts to the core. Thank you for good friends, and brisk walks in the drizzly autumn. Thank you for canutos de quinoa y maracuya. Thank you for stories, and the movement of stars in the firmament overhead as we tell them.

The Wave

2007-09-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

So I just finished The Wave, by Walter Mosley. I've read a couple of the Easy Rawlins novels, and it seems like I've read quite a bit about Mosley without reading an awful lot of his work, but I'd known I wanted to get around to this novel eventually.

It's hard to know where to begin. It echoes so true to both contemporary America and other popular narrative - Heroes springs to mind - that it's difficult to categorize is as science fiction. Even speculative fiction, a term I have to admit I like more, is a little on the not-quite-right side. It's more Jonathan Lethem than China Miéville, you know what I mean? More hard-boiled.

After a series of creepy late-night phone calls the protagonist goes to his father's grave, and discovers a young man in rags who claims to be his father. The boy (for truly, it's just a kid, maybe 20) knows things about his life with his son that only the father could have known. Whole pages of psycho-babble could be written at this point, but the hook is lightly set, so craftily that everyone (including the reader) simply falls into believing that this is somehow dad, back from the dead by mystical force.

"Dad" identifies himself as part of the "Wave," which the military has in turn identified as some sort of alien amoeba. Big surprise, they consider that a threat (again the Heroes echoes. Did I mention ever that there's only one story?). The Wave is old as earth itself, living in the core, in the midst of massive violence, heat, and danger. It has become an entity capable of undreamed-of feats, including assuming the form of those who have passed.

I won't spoil anything further, but it's a ripping good read. Mosley, as usual, is on the top of his game in terms of dialog.* His pacing is great, slowing down in deep, vibrant places only to bring thins to a head in a paragraph. It moves like a memoir, which it is meant to be. I'm not one to blithely tell people to read books but you could do worse than this one.

And if you have time you should check out Lethem and Miéville as well. And then read a bit of Neal Stephenson or (heaven help you) Mervyn Peake.

*This is not the first time and probably not the last that my British standard spelling gets in the way of the spellchecker. I don't care who you talk to, it's dialogue.

Conception Day in Russia.

2007-09-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Seriously?

I mean, apart from the fact that everyone has their own special "conception day," they set it for nine months before Constitution Day. They're giving prizes for women who give birth on June 12.

Standard gestation is 40 weeks, there, buddy.

Oh well. Politics trumps biology, amiright?

A plug for Laptop Lunches

2007-09-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

A Google search for "kid's lunch ideas" revealed two things.

First, people don't know the first half of a snippet about how kids eat. Or at least how my kid eats. I'll grant that she's finicky, but when I can go through a list of recommendations and find one that would work if I removed four out of five ingredients and prepared it completely differently, then I think I can safely say that the list is not helpful. On the other hand, each kid is so different that it may be that such lists are never actually going to work out.

But! The second thing I found was this place, which has the cutest little bento sets ever. The one thing that I have found that works is to offer visible variety on plates - somehow all of a sudden lots more gets eaten. So this is awesome on a stick. And the containers, I suspect, would encourage people to be creative with recipes/combinations. After all, you have to fill all the little things!

Also suitable for grownups. :)

Oscar the (Hospice) Cat

2007-09-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Jason Kottke posted this today, and I can think of no better thing to talk about today, when the news is flooded with images of W looking distinctly uncomfortable about his legacy. I'd far rather look at this mug.

Oscar lives at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, RI. Since being adopted by the center as a kitten, he has sat with patients on the day of their deaths 25 times. The article talks about him essentially doing rounds, but the most poignant part of the whole thing might be this sentence: "His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families."

So, we ask ourselves, juxtaposing against the sudden and insane events of six years ago, what sort of warning do we want? Do we want to build an invisible shield in the sky? Blast the asteroid off course? Do we want a cat to act as harbinger, so that when our loved ones go we can be there? Do we want, in the classic words of a New College classmate of mine, to simply "be ready to go?" Why/how do we pretend that any day is more or less precious than the one before or the one that follows? This is not meant to deliminate one's approach to death into tidy categories, but simply to open the question.

I think, given that we all end up in the same place, we really ought to be better neighbors in the meantime. You can chalk this up to petty ecumenism or some sort of nihilistic "in the now" hokum, but people are in the foreground of every scene of tragedy and desperation over the past couple of centuries. Doesn't matter what you believe; gotta get together to find meaning, gotta find meaning to begin understanding, gotta understand for the madness to stop.

I personally hope I have an Oscar. Warm fuzzy good, and I'd like my peeps there to wail and lament at the passing of my great genius from this rock. And once the fetters of the flesh have cast off, I can finally teach myself to do a back flip.

"There was a time in Colombia that this would happen every week."

2007-09-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Petroleos Mexicanos had some issues with explosions this morning, when six bombs went off along three pipelines carrying crude, natural gas and propane. I don't know whether I'm more surprised at this attack, the fact that this is the third since July, or the quote from analyst David Shields at the bottom of the linked article. Seriously, every week? It's embarrassing that I claim to be a bit of an energy wonk and knew very little about this sort of sabotage.

EPR, the group that claimed responsibility for an earlier bombing, is quiet as of this blog entry.

O!

2007-09-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

My parents attended Michigan for grad school, so moments like this are always a little awkward. Not that my mom cares (she would rather see college football replaced by competitive problem solving), but dad has a little pride in the Blue. He's also a Buffalo, so his teams and Oregon have developed a rich history ever since the Harrington era.

Anyway, I can't pretend to be all that huge a booster myself, but this is a nice bookend to Michigan's loss when they came to Autzen a while back.

"You can expect to live approximately another 18500 more days."

2007-09-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

That's what the machine said, anyway. I don't know where they're pulling their data - actuarial tables are everywhere these days - but the risk factors that the program asks about are sorta the Top Ten.

Depressing but amazing how much difference you can make in your life expectancy with small changes to the sliders. I don't think I cheated that much, but the temptation is strong...

Stride - psychological masterstroke or really bad gum?

2007-09-07T10:01:00.001-07:00

So I just got done reading Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink. I am therefore not unconvinced that a certain gum is not in fact attempting to hoodwink the gum chewing world into believing that the gum possesses unnaturally long lasting flavor simply by saying it over and over. It would not, according to Wansink, have been the first time that positive expectation leads to a wholly illusionary reaction to the product in question.

Stride is not, in fact, long lasting, unless the benchmark for flavor-lastingness is your average stick of Juicy Fruit. (I got the Fruit version, since I get my mint hookup from a much better gum to be linked later.) Also, it is not chewy. You know what I mean - it's a bit too close to the rubber side of the equation to be considered a pleasurable chewing experience. I actually got a slightly achy jaw after munching away. My current theory is that they attempted to subject the flavor bits to some sort of polymerization process, and that process A) made the gum the rough equivalent of an inner tube and B) didn't work. Because seriously, about the flavor? It degenerates in mere minutes. Perhaps it's easier to make a minty gum be minty longer, but whatever efforts they've made with the fruit version are a big fat nothing.

Compare with the mysteriously named 5, which not only has better ads but also lasts for freaking ever. My (unverified) suspicion is that it takes five hours to wear this gum out, ergo, "5." The lesson here is, I reckon, don't f*ck with Wrigley when it comes to gum. Stick with the peppermint, though - in my opinion the spearmint is a little grassy and cinnamon gum is an abomination. And if anyone has a lead on a sugarfree fruit gum that doesn't suck please let me know. So far Trident tropical splash is the closest.

Remember Blackjack? Good times. Turns out Cadbury-Adams is now too busy making Stride. What dopes.

I mention all of this because one of my "Mindless Margin" checklist items is to chew three pieces of gum a day and another at night. Why? Because if you're chewing a piece of gum you can't chew other things, and I have a little obsessive tic that tends toward chewing whatever is at hand. So I have returned to the land of my youth, the pack of gum (they're very cool now - perhaps to help smokers feel like they're opening a pack of cigs rather than minty freshness). Top five gums of the moment:

5 "Cobalt"
Orbit Mint Mojito
Trident Tropical Splash
Orbit Crystal Mint
Orbit White Spearmint

Chew on!

Living Room Theaters

2007-09-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

Stop whatever you're doing and go here. Pick a movie. Arrange for some friends to meet you. You are in for one of the greatest experiences of your life.

Living Room Theaters is a concept movie house from the ground up, with roomy captain's chairs, club chairs with low tables, and ottomans scattered about. And those are just the theaters. Outside there's a bar with a happy hour that stretches to 6:30 (perfect for dinner-and-a-movie shenanigans) and a fun, loungey ambiance. The flat screens set within and around the bar area are mostly self-promoting, but there are rumors of morning-time newscasts, espresso, and so on. Free wifi, natch.

The films are the kinds of films you would expect at an art house. We saw Broken English, which was quite charming, and saw previews for two other films (Black Book and Other People's Lives) which we knew we would come back to see. I cannot express how astonishingly cool the place is, so instead I simply urge you to go there yourself. Myself, I'm going to figure out a time to see Paprika (no amount of cool is going to get Carmen to accompany me to that), and keep a weather eye out for splendid celluloid things on the horizon.

Best. Toy store. Ever.

2007-09-05T15:35:00.001-07:00

And considering that I live ten blocks from Finnegan's, that's saying something:

Fat Brain Toys.

Luminous Arc, yo.

2007-09-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

So if this "good" game is anything like the last good game from the same publisher, I should have grabbed a copy already. As it is I've been having a devil of a time completing Etrian Odyssey, let alone getting the next epic saga.

Unlike various Fire Emblem titles, which I have never quite managed to care about enough to finish, I suspect that Luminous Arc will pull me inexorably to the denouement, like a lamb to...some place that lambs go. 4H, perhaps. So long as I get to level my archers into super mojo flingers of some type, I'm good.

Speaking of Etrian, I know that the Odyssey has gone undocumented recently. You can partially blame NYT Crosswords, which has taken over my DS time recently (despite the persnickety refusal to recognize my "Y" unless I treat it like a math equation - less than and then a straight line beneath). But you can also blame the eventual burn out that comes with the post-story "bonus levels." I mean, is there another mystery to solve? I'm just killing mega-badass frogs and whatnot. Plus, the levels cap at 70, somewhat disappointing. Of course, from a replay standpoint, it establishes the limit. The vertiginous thrill of exactitude ain't just a ballet - it's the small pleasure that comes from plotting every skill point over the course of your Landsknecht's life span.

Of course, as I promised myself, I'm going for all-Alchemist for the second run through the labyrinth. Expect serial lamentations as I try to keep the little goofballs alive.

Y'know, it just occurred to me that there's only four pieces of character art for each of the classes. I wonder if I can duplicate, or if the guild simply won't admit more than four of a class type. If that's the case it will be the 80% Alchemist run, probably with a Protector (whatever - the shieldy types) in the middle of the front row.

This is what I think about, btw. That and the sorts of puzzles you could reasonably expect bunnies to solve...

School!!!

2007-09-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

Oh thank the heavens, school starts tomorrow. Summer was quite the adventure, and at the end of the day I wouldn't have missed a bit of it, but it's time for the crazy monkey to learn, like, stuff. And things. We're all out of enrichment. I gotta tell ya, teaching a gifted kid ain't easy.

Anyhoo. School!!!

Fantasy Roster, 2007

2007-09-01T20:00:00.001-07:00

So, my MTGO clan is running a fantasy league again, and this looks pretty good:

D. McNabb
M. Hasselbeck

Steve Smith
Donald Driver
Plaxico Burress
Terry Glenn
Chris Chambers

Larry Johnson
Deuce McAllister
Ronnie Brown

Alge Crumpler
Tony Gonzalez

Nate Kaeding

Defenses are Pittsburgh and Seattle. Meh, but not so bad. Anyway, off to the races!

TV, accelerated

2007-09-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

So all the furor over the Heroes DVDs obscured another blessed event, which has been a long freaking time in coming. Suffice it to say my queue runneth over with quality television at the moment.

When you have a kid, the odds that you can follow shows are nearly nonexistent (unless we're talking about the Suite Life of Zach and Cody...). But thanks to the miracle of TiVo/Netflix/Blockbuster, we can plug the doodle into a DVD of her own and then watch several hours of network television in roughly two thirds the time. And until I either get a media edition PC or a DVR that doesn't require a subscription, I'll be taking the "mail me lots of DVDs, please."

Blockbuster's "endless exchanges at the store" tap did just tighten up a bit. I was informed last week that I would only get 5 per month anymore, unless I wanted to pony up another four or five dollars. I'm actually fine with the limit (they were very much in danger of the online business eating the brick and mortars alive), and will probably stick with the modified plan. We were probably at about that level anyway.

No one tell me what happened last year on House, mmmkay?

Jam Sessions

2007-08-29T08:24:00.001-07:00

Not much can be said about this title that hasn't already been said, but whoa nelly, is this exciting. It even sounds reasonably like an acoustic guitar. I have my doubts about calling it a "guitar," when clearly its primary function is more reminiscent of an auto-harp. that said, I'm obviously going to go get one immediately. It solves two problems - first, that I have no guitar, and second, that Claire would really like to learn some guitar but has itty bitty hands.

Probably the most absurd thing I saw was the guy from Vietnam recording a rhythm loop and then accompanying his DS on electric guitar. That doesn't suck. I'd also be interested to see whether or not the effects package allows you to do some kind of pre-gain adjustments, because some of the sample videos feel a little brassy. Like the attack that you get from the stylus is too strong for whatever compression they're using (the Slightly Stoopid guy was just using his thumbnail, and seemed to be getting better strums). Again, I'm complaining about a bona fide guitar sim on my personal favorite handheld, so my life is pretty good.

Somebody with waaay more Garage Band street cred than I should figure out how to use Jam Sessions as a midi controller for software instruments. I mean, I think it can be a line input with the current guitar voice, which isn't bad. But if I could use it to, say, control some sort of gamelan, or less esoterically, control one of the GB guitars, I'd be a happy camper. Get right on that, will you?

Where to begin

2007-08-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

So, the puzzle questing has been taking up a fair amount of time, not to mention job hunting and other silliness. So there's a great deal to talk about.

I'm in the process of completing my application for Write Around Portland (see website here) so that I can do facilitator training the next time around. It feels like a really good way to use my MFA and hopefully will also get me into the scene around here. It's hard to feel so very disconnected from the writing community, and for so very long (really the last illusion of a scene I was even participating in was New College, so very long ago) and still get up the energy to write things. So this should be exciting.

Speaking of exiting writing, I found Barrelhouse to be a pleasant surprise when I picked it up at Powell's the other day. I can recommend it pretty highly. I'm also so out of the journal/zine scene that it's almost embarrassing to even be mentioning a mag at all, but you gotta start somewhere.

Current projects: Slacker's Guide to Law School and Bosephus Jones and the Missing Malamute. One of them is a kid's book (I leave it to you to guess which). Also getting back into the poem-a-day habit, though that's a tough road.

Anyhoo, many many other things, but I'll have to stack them in a queue and actually, y'know, post.

Potter redux

2007-07-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's sad. People pass on, but are remembered. The living struggle to finish the greatest evil in recent history. Why is it that we must constantly struggle to demolish the most recent evil? Rowling doesn't say. She has written a Bourne Identity for book 7, a sprawling travelogue of pain and danger, love and redemption. Friendship.

Plus, Mrs. Weasley is a badass. Not that that's any freaking surprise.

What was possibly more interesting than the book (which is pretty damned interesting) was the line at the Powell's mothership here in Portland. We woke Claire up and wandered out into the night waaaaay too late. Both in the sense that it was, y'know, late, and in the sense that really, one of us should've been in the line starting at 6:00 pm. Long story short, I remained in the line and the ladies went home for bed. I was in line behind the Chudley Cannons. With, like jerseys and all. It was fairly nifty. Since I can't find Quidditch jerseys online, I'm assuming they had them custom printed, which is even more impressive.

Anyway, more to say once we're out of the spoiler zone. Y'all have a week.

The joys of walkups

2007-07-20T11:22:00.001-07:00

So Carmen and I are in the NW neighborhood today, working at an amazing coffee shop on 21st (Coffee Time), and generally being pleased at the cutie patootieness of the whole place.

As I see it, the tradeoffs (vs. the Plaza) are as follows:

Parking - not guaranteed an actual lot, and street parking can be a challenge down here. Associated issue is parking for visitors - in the Plaza there's usually a spot free for folks coming to dinner, etc.

Access - the Plaza is sooo very central, but by and large the key thing about the Plaza is four blocks from the 5, both north and south. Less so NW, where my guess is you have about 15 minutes worth of puttering along before you get to a road that will take you to the freeway at more than 20 mph. So that's definitely a consideration.

Cost - obviously this is in NW's favor. When you have no view (or more specifically, no skyline-style view), you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars off for the same space.

Amenities - Plaza wins. Still the best value in terms of perks of any condo building in Portland.

Cutie Patootieness - This has to go to NW. The shops, the restaurants, the same accessibility to the Pearl and downtown (i.e. you lose nothing that you had at the Plaza), and the streetcar access all make this a pretty good bet for adorable heart-of-the-city living. Plus, non-corporate coffee.

Anyway, it's not like we're moving, but any conversation about moving is dangerous for us. Our record to date is (I believe) 32 months. Poor Claire.

Slacker's Guide to Law School

2007-07-17T10:47:00.001-07:00

So it's been nearly a month (dear lord) but I have an excuse - between job hunting and working up the first chapter of the above-titled how-to book, I've been all writinged out.

Speaking of the wise and magnificent tome that is the Slacker's Guide, if any alums (and who else reads this, really) have any awesome stories to share about the LSAT, I would love to hear them. That's the first chapter (obviously) and what I need to complete in order to start sending out queries to publishers. Full attribution and maybe a beer would be included.

I haven't had time to fully digest Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but it is my opinion that the film follows the trend of doing better and better with the spirit of the books as time goes on. Chris Columbus should be pilloried for making kid's films out of the first two, but I suppose I can understand the pressure. Now they're gritty, the effects are much more seamlessly woven into the work, and they do not skimp on story.

More on that and Ratatouille soon, promise. In the meantime, study your fallacies!

Halo 3 ARG is up and at 'em

2007-06-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

Fresh from Penny Arcade today, the Halo 3 alternate reality game is beginning its nefarious crawl through the web-o-sphere.

I have to say that I remain a devout fan of Perplex City, even though there is literally no chance in heck that I'm going to be able to complete it. If only there was one that you could get into on the ground floor - and I mean literally, like as in "build it yourself and make a mint." I have great respect for whoever puts together the Halo games - good stuff.

Cartomancy

2007-06-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

Back to the unabated ramblings about Etrian Odyssey. It really is a joy to use the mapping feature, but at level 14 (and not to give too much of a spoiler) I ran out of memo tags. My guess is maximum 20 per level, though it may be a bit more.

The reason I needed so many darn tags was that it was not immediately apparent how to map the level. However, you'll discover when you get there that the big picture makes all things clear as a lily. So to speak. Just get to the level, all right?

Huge boss on 15, therefore level 13 must (hopefully) contain the closure of the mission from the Radha. Otherwise it's another two nights of slog 'n' blog. :)

Morons in the news!

2007-06-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

We're gonna build a gigantic missile shield in Europe! Wheedly do! Despite persistent reports to the contrary, our esteemed leaders are pushing forward with the porkiest project ever.

This is a demand-side nonproliferation advocate's worst nightmare. "Heh, what do we care? We can shoot the missiles out of the sky!! Except you can't. The most recent test involved no countermeasures, and resulted in General Obering thinking there was a "good chance" that we could hit a missile launched from North Korea or some other hotspot. This would be laughable if it wasn't so insanely expensive, both in monetary terms and in diplomatic ones (alas, ABM Treaty, we hardly knew ye).

Anyway, this is old news at this point. It's depressing that the same rhetoric not only carries force but is gaining momentum now that they can, y'know, kinda intercept something. I'd also like to see our fancy missile shield stop, say, an airplane. Or a suitcase bomb. Or all of the things resentful and creative people dream up in lieu of purchasing a missile at the local weapons mart.

Les Poissons

2007-06-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

So I've been fiddling with a UW aggro deck in standard that has led to a great deal of trading and re-assorting of my collection to get the requisite lands, etc. It is relatively quick, taking advantage of Infiltrator il-Kor and Glorious Anthems. It's a "fish" deck only in the sense that it has inexpensive disruption tricks and wants to beat down as quickly as possible. In this context it does its job pretty well. Don't know if it does it well enough to deal with Dragonstorm though.

The card that inspired the deck - Delay - seems a natural and useful answer to D-Storm (hit them in the middle of the mana ramping and give them RRRRR in their mana pool in some random upkeep). It's become apparent, however, that Grand Arbiter Augustin IV might actually do more in the storm matchups than counterspells in the traditional sense. The only problem is the speed with which I can get him down - I'm running a slim 22 lands and no Karoos. So, Trickbind stops the worst part of the Storm spells. I'm running two and two, maindeck sideboard.

Two more spots main/side deal with the other very problematic deck, dredge. There are currently two Jotun Grunts main with two buddies in the sideboard. I'm of the opinion that this is not enough, but with Trickbind countering activations (and Azorius Guildmage potentially doing so as well), I think the initial matchup is not so horrible. Alas, this is completely untested, as I don't have any clannies who are interested in playing dredge.

Anyhoo, I think it's a pretty fun deck and it can certainly race control. The combo matchups are not abysmal thanks to the available tools, and generally I think there's hope. I'm going to do a bit more tuning and then march it into some queues to see if I'm even close to right...

Off Topic: Dude, where's my President?

2007-06-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

I'm required to note that this post has zero to do with the land of Etria, or my travels therein. Sorry, I know that has been awesome for all of us.

It has come time to address the looming presidential hootenanny in some way that is more engaged than "meh." I mention this because, believe it or not, the primaries are (in electoral terms) mere minutes away. I don't know where the time went, but I have gone from smirking at the earliness of it all to thinking that I ought to make a valid choice, and quick like.

So, my top five. Have answers to these and you get my vote:

1) Weapons Proliferation. I mean small arms, chemical, nukes, domestic (i.e. Brady Bill) and foreign (e.g. NPT, CTBT, the continued absurd discussion about missile defense). I mean tools of violence getting into the hands of millions. It's gotta stop, and we must lead by example if we have any hope of it stopping.

2) Retirement Boom. This is purely an "our backyard" issue, but man there are a lot of old/aging people out there. They all need health care, most will need long-term care, and many of them plan to tap the gummit for retirement money. Sort it out.

3) Kyoto/sustainability. This has become so much the buzz word that it almost makes me throw up a little. Nevertheless, it remains true that the deadline is now for articulate, inclusive, policy on the environment.

4) France. Seriously, they're going to create a giant sucking sound where once there was a European Union. Sort that nonsense out.

5) China. Okay, perhaps France was a joke. China is not. Taiwan is an issue, globalization is a bigger issue, and human rights/impoverishment of body and spirit are colossal issues. Engage.

I'll report back. Y'know, between trips into the Labyrinth.

Stratum 2 Boss Handled

2007-06-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

So the good news - I took out the demon. The bad news, only my back line survived - so the Alchemist and the Medic got a juicy 4000 XP. Counter is a gnarly, gnarly ability, and might be a reason to have a Protector (assuming it can gain that ability via mad Shield skillz).

Anyway. I'm a big dork.

Etrian Actuarial Services

2007-06-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Odds of getting trampled by a big red elephant: high. The only way you survive these encounters is willpower - I will not, after all I have done, die at the feet of a big dumb cartoony elephant. That and Disable will get you a long way (ditto Moas, although they're obviously far less scary).

It's obvious (or at least heavily foreshadowed) that there will come a time that the Labyrinth will be populated by sentient creatures, instead of merely big dumb beasts. There are, for example, curses to be avoided, and I can't even create two of the character classes, indicating at least more NPCs and likely whole concertos involving human or sub-human foes. I alternate between thinking that I'm ready for these showdowns (especially after the "Explorer's Guild" quest - five days on level 8. Pff. Was that supposed to be difficult? I got so bored running into random monsters that I spent the last two days just pacing by the fountain. Clearly I was too high powered, at that point?) and remembering with deadly clarity the first run-in with aforementioned elephants. This is not a game where small britches are helpful. It will get you killed.

Anyhoo, I have some cleanup to do on the white crystal walk of death in Stratum 1. Now that I know that it's only extremely likely that I'll die to a big dumb elephant (as opposed to, you know, inevitable), I will probably go mop up there before taking on Stratum 2's boss. He's named after a god! Ooooh...

Etrian Odyssey - are you sick of this yet?

2007-06-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

So I have to share the essential truth:

CARRY A WARP WIRE.

Yes, it's a little bit cheaty. But imagine you're unlocking crystal key areas and you accidentally get stuck in the Land of Endless Bosses. Wouldn't you feel silly if 6+ levels and a ton of loot was wiped out in one stroke? And all because you've been eschewing the Warp Wire? And wouldn't you feel even worse if you leveled your Alchemist, gave him Warp, and then needed to mise one lousy TP from anywhere to use it? Whilst being pursued by a big red elephant?

I'm just saying. Warp wire. Your little 100 en. friend.

I was beginning to think that all the "OMG, so hard" talk was just people failing to pay their dues at the outset. It's now apparent that every time there's a significant power creep in favor of characters, the game is just about ready to open a serious can of whup-ass.

Still More Etrian Odyssey

2007-05-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

So I battled down to level 3 only to discover that the FOEs that inhabit the first rooms are far and away too tough for anything below, I'm guessing, level 17. I think it's possible that I could take them out earlier, so long as I had a preemptive turn and could also double-hit with both of my landsknechts. But I'm just saying, at the moment there is no freaking way I'm doing anything but running the edges of the rooms (the good news is that they've got short-term memory issues, so you can maneuver them out of your way and then carry on). That leads me to suspect that I should work to complete the Wolf King (Fenrir, nice touch on the name) quest first, see where I'm at, then consider beating down on the slayers. Of course, it will be extremely gratifying to add their stats to the Pokedex...er...I mean, Monstrous Codex.

These (and other) comparisons are obvious but one relevant point is that there is absolutely no freaking comparison in depth of play, or maturity of title. Having slogged through my share of precious gems, I find myself totally uninterested in Diamond/Pearl, despite having picked the game up like all the other good little DS'ers in the world. But Atlus has it beat by a looong way with Etrian Odyssey.

I should say, "for gamer dorks like me who remember interactive fiction and whatnot, Atlus has Pokemon kold." I'm pleasantly surprised to discover the reviews being kind to the game even though it's clear that this title will actually excite an extremely narrow segment of the DS audience. But those mesozoic denizens will be so happy over the next month that they wouldn't care if the reviews were uniformly horrible. Heck, I played "Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder" on GBA, if you want to discuss bad titles...

Just remember to run from the Slayers. Seriously. Like 95 points per hit.

Roguelike

2007-05-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

So, in Etrian Odyssey, there's like a home base on top of the Labyrinth, right? And you can manage characters in your party, buy stuff, sell loot, whatever. Sometimes when you sell loot it enables the shopkeeper to make new items that were previously unavailable. There's odd jobs to be had at the tavern and plot-line quests at the castle. So you get your marching orders, head in, mapping your merry way through the maze, and grab loot from random encounters and side quests. Then you dash back to the surface and regroup. The myth is that no one's ever been to the bottom of the Labyrinth...

In other words, it's a roguelike, but pretty, and with a more robust skill tree than ever before attempted in, say, Nethack (but maybe ADOM, which everyone says is awesome but which I cannot for the life of me bring myself to play, has more depth in that area?). And like all roguelikes, it's crack - at least to that very odd subset of people who like getting all the way down to the bottom of a massively multi-level dungeon.

This game will afford you hours of entertainment in the same way that Random, the Evil Human Tourist, afforded me months of entertainment in Nethack. Then he got sandwiched between a passel of orcs and a tea party of jellies, alas. At least in Etrian Odyssey there's no guilt associated with returning to a save point...

I have not yet investigated what happens if you try to solo. If the game adjusts to the number of PCs then you can probably go old-school. If not, you'll likely just die a lot with the more interesting classes. One of the hack-n-slashers could probably do it, though...

New Media Matters

2007-05-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just a heads up that a pretty smart blog on narrative in all forms can be found here. Authored by Chris Kubasik, it explores narrative across media and begins the difficult work of investigating hybrid narratives, told cross-platform and/or poached and/or ported into different platforms. Haven't read enough, but like what I see to date.

DM of the Rings

2007-05-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Too funny. This guy nails a lot of the perils of pencil paper pillage, as well - I believe one might refer to that as value-added.

If only I could be clever and wield a pen! Alas...

Generating Buzz

2007-05-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

All right, I couldn't help it. After all, it's not every day a comedy legend jumps off a roof at Cannes. I will say that "Bee Movie" is the first Dreamworks animated film that I will not immediately sneer at. I find the prospect of any animated film authored by Jerry Seinfeld to be enormously promising.

So I have eschewed my Puzzle Questing for the sake of a run at Touch Detective. Never mind that I'm horribly behind the times on this one - it was in the interest of finding a Scooby-Doo-esque title for the pumpkin. Turns out it is a bit to text-heavy to properly share with the little bug but it's amusing for her to manipulate the objects once they've been found. Also, dude, it's a tiny little Polyanna detective with saucer-eyes and a butler. What's not to love? I thus far have found the puzzles (especially post-intro/tutorial/whatever) to be legitimately challenging, if somewhat burdened by Holmes' maxim that, after all other avenues have been tried, what remains, however improbable, is the solution. It seems to defy credulity, for example, that you use your sentient mushroom pet's spores to jam the planetarium's central apparatus. (Man, that sentence should win an award.) Similar examples abound. That said, I think it's pretty adorable.

It's been a pleasant intro into Atlus, as well, considering that I'm growing increasingly needful of Etrian Odyssey despite having absolutely no time for another diversion...ah, the perils of gaming.

Then I can get that +5 Skull...

2007-05-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Being something of a slave to the RPG, and having managed to catch the second wave of copies flooding into stores, I am now happily enmeshed in Puzzle Quest. The idea that Bejeweled + Progress Bar is enough to make me engage in high level spatial reasoning in the name of mana development is, I think, some comment on my desperate wish to be considered clever by machines that do not consider me one way or the other. My humble DS can, of course, parse the ramifications of a specific rearranging of the game grid far faster than I can, and seems to smirk at me as I miss the obvious Four of a Kind that I could have done in advance of the cool thing that distracted me.

Until I got the Ultimate Troll Ring or whatever it is, that regenerates three points per turn so long as my blue mana pool is at some level (15?), I was getting schooled. I firmly believe that I was spending waaay too much money on my citadel in the early game, and not enough on bling. This is perhaps a function of not reading the manual, yet. I mean, how hard can it be, right?! On the other hand, much of the Shop is level-locked, so I don’t quite characterize it as misuse of funds, really. Suffice it to say that with the ring my little wizard is rocking the kazbah. Need a new burn spell, though. Fire Bolt is weak sauce.

Anyway, the point is that having acquired an “RPG” which promises dual-dialogue cut scenes aplenty, I was aghast and agog to discover that a bona fide contender in the RPG genre was released today for the DS. Looking a little like the prettiest Hunt the Wumpus you ever did see, Etrian Odyssey has a lot going for it on paper – a mapping subtheme that allows you to remember your own damn way out of the Labyrinth, rich graphics, and spritely anime heroes to level up to your heart’s content. I was a little bummed to see that the dialogue and menu options appear to still require the use of the direction pad and A spamming (as opposed to the immensely more gratifying tap-spamming) but all in all it looks like a pretty darn good game, and a no-brainer for people like me who just can’t wait to spend skill points like a mad fiend…

In other news, I also picked up Touch Detective today, in the hopes that it would be appropriate for the boo boo to play along. She is a fiend for the mysteries. I’m beginning to think that I’m just going to have to design a scenario-based tabletop detective game for her - a la 221B Baker Street, but in this case more like 221B Sesame Street.

Has anyone come up with a workable solution to the “tiny chip, gigantic box” problem with DS games? I’ve seen some tacky little folios that solve the “where’s my game” problem, but I have no idea where to stick the cases…might be time for a purge.

For those special times when you're waaaaay on edge...

2007-05-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

Just be happy that you're not as crazy as this guy.

Hershey Plant to close in California

2007-05-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm torn between feeling some remorse for a hallowed American institution (and in particular, its workers) and thinking that Hershey was due. The product line is not exactly winning the hearts and minds of the newly health conscious America.

One wonders how big that demographic actually is, though. After all, we're fatter than ever.

I suppose the other hit to Hershey is the discovery of real chocolate - and on these very shores, no less. Now that all the snobby gourmands can get actual chocolate, why ever go back? I certainly don't know, although I do enjoy the occasional caramel Kiss. Yummy.

More McCain - the IED

2007-04-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

So there continues to be some blowback related to McCain's gift of ordinance to John Stewart.

The whole thing is a little like W telling Gary Trudeau to "tread lightly" during Daddy's term in office. People who can't take a joke should acknowledge that before engaging in criticism of people who make jokes. It's grim humor, but humor just the same, and I would point out (briefly - late for lunch) that the message is not a light one - he's not making fun of death, he's making it a reality for people at home. This just doesn't seem like poor taste to me at all.

And before I start to sound like a McCainophile, I disagree with nearly everything he says about Iraq (and Iran, and probably health care). But the dude's got spirit.

McCain says Gonzales should resign...

2007-04-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle has an AP blurb about Senator McCain's opinion of Alberto Gonzales' current difficulty with those pesky Democratic attorneys that the DOJ sacked last year. It's the first move regarding the current Administration debacle and a smart one on McCain's part, methinks. He again is positioning himself in the "partisanship is stupid" camp without sacrificing principles. One need only look at his most recent showdown with John Stewart on The Daily Show to realize that this guy does not relent, will not soft-pedal, and generally speaking comports himself with more dignity than many of the buffoons in the capital.

One wonders whether that is enough. After all, straight shooting didn't exactly get him anywhere in 2000, when he had substantially more chance of appearing to relate to younger generations. Still, it is a rare day when one gets to use the word statesman without cynicism.

Meanwhile, Barak Obama and Hil are getting ready for their first debate. Hmm? SIX others? Who are these people? Oh, right, VP contenders. ;)

Millions Spent, A-Rod aflame, and yet...

2007-04-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

This is not a frequent occurence, but a quick (like, in the next day or so) peek at that link will reveal the Yankees in dead last in the AL East. Yes, that's behind the Devil Rays. Bad beats.

Mr. Rodriguez appears to have settled into a New York state of mind, slapping homers this way and that with the sort of grace that one attributes to Tiger's swing or the subtle bend of a reed in the wind. And YET. They struggle. Their closer inexplicably becomes useless. They get swept by the Sox.

All of this, of course, fills me with a quiet glee. It is not a sovereign specific for the abysmal start of the Giants, but it is some consolation.

Meanwhile, across the pond, another clash of the Titans is coming down to the final blows. England's version of Yankees v. Red Sox has been incredible to watch, and culminates with a match between the two sides on May 9. Man Utd has the much easier way out, though, and barring some calamity should hold on. More's the pity.

Okay, enough sports.

Coda - "One Window Web Development"

2007-04-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

A new Mac OS X app called Coda may or may not be a godsend for people who aren't particularly super-skilled when it comes to web design. It seems to me to be a pretty robust web development tool that has a lot of bells and whistles, but not enough to baffle (power users, of course, will suggest that it doesn't have enough bells and whistles, but to have everything in one place seems pretty cool).

I'm going to download it and report back, but this seems good for folks like me who know enough code to get in trouble but not enough to fix it without reference to a manual. Being able to monitor the effects of your code at the same time is handy.

Nitwit - Cross-platform microblogging tool

2007-04-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Compatible with Jaiku, Twitter, IRC, and probably other stuff. I'd download it but putting it on my work machine seems like a recipe for disaster:

Link.

Montessori Bound

2007-04-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

So it looks like the monkey is going to Childpeace Montessori. The switch is halfway to do with the challenges of skipping a grade in the International School, and halfway to do with our belief that Montessori method is one of the better ways to go with a gifted child. Finally, the ACCESS school (Portland's answer for exceptionally gifted kids) is stuffed to the gills, so she's waitlisted.

This has been one heck of a struggle, but at least we're settling on an option.

More Medicaid Musings

2007-04-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

So having had a chance to read the methodology of the Public Citizen study on Medicaid, and take a closer look at the rankings, I have this to say:

The good news is that Oregon missed top 10 by a tiny amount. There was a small cluster at 8-12 that was separated by something like 10 points (out of a 1000 point scale). Hawai'i and Oregon are 11th and 12th by a hair's breadth.

The bad news is that, even if we had made the top 10 - indeed, even if we had ended up first - the top 10 is an accolade only to the extent that it indicates that those states are markedly less broken than the states in the rest of the rankings. No one reached 700 out of 1000 points. 30 states ended up in the bottom 10 in one of the statistical categories (Oregon did not - it was 31st in one, but that's as low as it went). Generally speaking, the states are not doing the job.

Across the board, the hands-down biggest problem for most states is quality of care. Actually, no one knows if that's the problem because very few people are actually attempting to measure it. Problem number one. Problem number two can be found in the lack of standards within state Medicaid programs for quality of care. In short, no one pays any attention to the problem, and even if they did, they would not currently know what to do with the data. Surely there are benchmarks for this sort of thing? Maybe the gummit is on the case? (Not exactly - it's much more about communication to served populations, but it's a start.) Actually, the AHRQ has quite the clearinghouse for information on quality standards. Oregon specifically is falling down pretty hard here, so a bit of light reading might be in order.

It's not apparent that states care much at the moment about improving their measurements of quality, let alone actually improving quality of care. But they'd better start, because the boomers are entering Medicare and Medicaid years. And ignoring the strain on the system, our elders deserve better.

PS - If you're old, impoverished, pregnant, or some combination of same, and you live in Mississippi, move.

OHP ranks 12th in the nation in Medicaid study.

2007-04-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Public Citizen has just released "Unsettling Scores: A Ranking of State Medicaid Programs," and Oregon came in 12th. The report notes that the state would have placed substantially higher were it not for a ranking of 31st in the "Quality of Care" area. Two things within that category dragged us down: nursing homes and percentage of youth immunizations.

Oregon actually got negative points for "Deficiencies in quality of care," and zero points for immunization percentages, which effectively tanked the overall point values. I haven't looked at the kind of stuff that allows them to award less than zero, but if I were a legislator (which I ain't) I would take a long hard look at whatever it was that was causing that particular statistical beatdown.

I also wonder what sort of impact Oregon's home health care industry has on a study like this. Like many states, home health appears to be thriving. I'd be interested to see how, if at all, that impacts the overall quality of nursing homes (fewer nurses available to staff the homes, stronger competition for dollars in the home health area, whatever).

Still and all, twelfth is pretty good. Despite repeated claims that the Oregon Health Plan is broken, it remains one of the most robust and innovative plans in the nation.