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Maker Year Project #11: Letter Apps

Letter apps are apps whose icon’s primary visual element is a letter. For instance, Hyperlapse, Gmail, and Groupon are letter apps.

icon-mistaken icon-abstracted icon-letter

I looked through the top 10 000 apps on the iTunes App Store on January 1 2015. From those, I found 834 letter apps. Then I visualized them. Tap or click the visualization below to see it in its full glory.

It looks really good really big. 1 MB

When using a colour background, white is almost always used for the foreground.

For the letter C, over half of the icons have white backgrounds. No other letter has such a high percentage of white icons.

Many names of the O apps don’t actually begin with O.

M and S are very popular letters (62 and 57 icons). This is probably because a lot of app names begin with M and S.

J, K, and I are least popular (6, 11, and 11). Most likely because there aren’t many apps beginning with J, K, or I. But I like to think the dots on the i and j make them particularly unpopular.

Sometimes apps like Guitar Master Class are letter apps and sometimes they’re not. In some, the icon dominates the letter. In others like Gmail, the letter dominates the icon.

I didn’t include apps like CamCard because there’s more than one letter. But if I did, there’d be 386 more apps in the set.

Please stop designing for your mother

In the past 10 years of designing software, I’ve been repeatedly told by co-workers:

“Make it easy enough for my mom to use.”

“So simple my 97 year old grandmother can figure it out.”

“Imagine you’re designing for your mother.”

The requests have good intentions – make this software easy to use so people who aren’t experts can use it easily. But three things bother me.

1. Women

Not once have I been asked to “make it so simple my grandfather can use it.” Or, “imagine you’re designing for your dad.” Never, “make it simple enough for a 22-year-old frat boy.”

No, it’s always making it simple enough for a woman.

Where does this assumption that women are the lowest common denominator of customers originate? When a colleague was asked to make it simple enough for her mother, she replied, “my mother teaches computer science at the University of Texas.”

It’s a small thing, but small things add up to big things. Big things like systemic sexism, and this is an example of it. Sexism isn’t always overt – it’s also subtle and happens when people reinforce negative stereotypes under good intentions in ways that seem innocuous.

2. Age

When people ask me to make things simpler, it’s always for someone older. Parents. Grandparents. Old people. Like the previous example, I’ve never been asked to “make it so simple a 12-year old can use it.”

Old = slow and physically limited
Young = fast and dexterous

Old = luddites
Young = tech savvy

Old = poor eyesight, big fonts
Young = sharp eyes, small fonts

But the world is diverse. Young people have physical limitations, too. I certainly did when I was 20 and my wrist was broken for three months.

Old people can be tech-savvy too. My grandfather introduced and explained the internet to my family in 1994.

Font size and ease of use – something widely believed to be correlated with age – isn’t at all. Research has found that small text is just as difficult for teens as it is for older people.

How many other assumptions about age are off base?

3. Measurement

It’s tough to measure success if the only metric is, “so simple my 97-year-old grandmother can use it.”

My grandmother is an artist. Does that mean it should be easy for artists? For people with short-term memory problems? For people who use a computer frequently? For people who use a product only once? Or many times in one day?

If you want something a certain way, state a goal, be specific, and make it measurable so everyone has the same understanding.

Why is this a problem?

Entrenched stereotypes make it easy to make false assumptions about people, and when unchallenged, those false assumptions lead to faulty product decisions, which can lead to major problems in a final product. It goes like this:

  1. I think I’m smart and understand the world and everyone in it
  2. I am making a product
  3. I don’t need to validate anything with anyone because I already understand them (they’re stupid)
  4. I release my product
  5. My product has usability, desirability, or content problems

When I hear someone say “make it simple enough for your mother”, I’m really hearing, “I’m smart and people who aren’t like me are stupid.”

But they’re not stupid. What they are is completely uninterested in software. Those stupid people are doctors, teachers, and bakers. Aid workers, architects, and sanitary workers. Waiters. Taxi drivers. Flight attendants. People who make the world function as much as anyone else. Having no interest in the tech industry does not make someone stupid.

If you understand your product and your customers don’t, they’re not the stupid ones. You are. Because you just spent a lot of time and effort releasing a product that’s hard to use and makes people feel stupid.

It’s not about simplicity

Simplicity isn’t the goal. Rather, as Don Norman writes, it’s about managing the complexity of a system so complex things are possible. It’s about making software usable and learnable, and making people feel confident about themselves.

What I’ve found effective is using measurable outcomes that avoid stereotyping anyone. So instead of, “so simple your mom can use it”, try these alternatives:

  1. Using it for the first time requires no training
    This is applicable to anyone and implies a level of ease of use.

  2. 100% task completion when people use it for the first time
    For a specific task, this helps indicate what’s important: completion rate in the context of first time use.

  3. 100% task completion within 5 seconds
    With a specific time attached, the expectations are obvious about what’s an acceptable goal for whatever’s being measured.

  4. 100% task completion within 5 seconds and a 100% satisfaction rating
    By measuring satisfaction, the goal isn’t just efficiency, but how people feel about it in the end. People might be able to finish something in 5 seconds, but how helpful is that if they feel terrible at the end of it?

Clear and measurable goals make obvious what matters and what doesn’t when making something. And ideally, what you make is usable by anyone – not just an assumed stereotype of someone.

Flat is a misnomer

I worked with someone fond of saying “I reject your false dichotomy.” Any time he was presented with an either/or option, it was most often rejected. Presenting a false dichotomy often meant I hadn’t thought in an integrative way to make the best of both options work together.

In software user interface (UI) design, flat vs. skeuomorphic is a false dichotomy to me.

Skeuomorphism is the use of shadows, textures, and patterns to make things look like real world objects. The intent is to make software easier to learn and use if it mimics real world objects, interactions, and metaphors. Even if there isn’t a real world equivalent of what you see on screen, an object’s styling can provide enough cues on how it should work.

“Flat” is the name that’s been given to the removal of skeuomorphism.

Right now there’s a popular belief that flat is better, as if there’s a binary choice between flat and skeuomorphic. But making it an either/or choice seems misguided. Discard everything helping discern depth? Discard everything providing affordance? Discard everything supporting metaphors?

Instead of flat vs. skeuomorphic, I thought it’d be interesting to look at things in different terms: Ornament vs. Metaphor

Ornament: How much detail and embellishment, like shadows, reflections, and textures, is applied to the appearance of UI?

Metaphor: How literally does the UI represent familiar objects and concepts?

I always find visualizing things on two spectrums reveals insights, so here’s some “flat” and “skeuomorphic” UI elements arbitrarily compared by ornament and metaphor.

The button metaphor is consistent and literal, but the ornament varies quite a bit.

Looking at the window controls, all are quite abstract concepts. The windows icons only make sense once you know what the buttons do (hide, full screen, close). The OSX metaphors are extremely abstract, as they follow the patterns of north american traffic lights: Red = stop (stop using this window), Yellow = slow down (hide the window), Green = go! (make the window big and start using it to its full potential.) Regardless of the styling, the metaphors are the same.

These are all over the place and present extreme opposites: The original iOS style looks like a literal volume slider on a 1970s hi-fi amplifier, complete with a machine milled aluminum knob. The Windows Phone slider is abstracted as far as visually possible. Even the slider knob has been removed. It’s conceptually pure, representing only the percentage of progress or used space. But does that make it more compelling?

Again, Windows Phone is extremely devoid of embellishment. The iOS 7 toggles are interesting: They look exactly like the hardware switch used on the iPod shuffle and iPad switch (literal), yet also appear abstract.

And here’s everything in one diagram because it’s fun.

I didn’t know what to expect from this exercise. But in doing it, I realized my compelling aesthetic is less about flatness and more about subtlety. Removing all ornament in a puritan idealism reveals stark, sharp, high-contrast controls that touch on brutal and is in no way subtle.

At the other end we see extremely rendered lighting effects, shadows, and reflections that (while I have a soft spot for them) are also not subtle can be seen as distracting.

But that spot in the middle? To me, that’s where everything feels right and balanced. Notice the iOS 7 sliders and toggles are greatly reduced in literalism, yet still use shadows and highlights to convey physicality. However, the OK button uses nothing. While iOS 7 is deemed “flat”, it’s certainly not. Instead, it’s subtle.

Subtlety isn’t about not using ornament. It’s about using ornament where it’s necessary.

Milton Glaser gave a fantastic talk decrying “less is more”, articulating it better than I ever could:

Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realize that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

I’m not writing this to say you should use “flat” or “skeuomorphic” or that one aesthetic is better than the other or that you can even come to major conclusions without considering other experiential aspects like colour, motion, or sound.

Instead, the next time you’re making an either/or decision between A and B, consider whether A and B are appropriate labels and whether they’re obscuring parameters that might reveal more insights.

Then visualize the conversation on those parameters.

If you’re interested in false dichotomies and integrative thinking, I highly recommend reading The Opposable mind by Roger Martin.

Thanks, AT&T

Today I called the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) to suspend my phone account. Since I’m traveling for a year and AT&T has awful international roaming options, my best option is suspending my account for a year and buying prepaid SIM cards in every country I visit. This ends up averaging $20 per month for data, calls, and texts. This is significantly cheaper than adding a $30 per month international package to my existing AT&T bill.

Since account suspensions have a maximum of 6 months and I’m halfway through the year, it was time to re-suspend.

I was greeted in the typical fashion.
“Hello, and thank you for calling AT&T. My name is Ebony. How can I help you today?”
“Hi Ebony, I was wondering if you can help me suspend my account for 6 months.”
“Sure, I can do that. May I ask why you’re suspending it for 6 months?”
“Well, I’m traveling the world and I won’t need my –“
“WHAT? You’re traveling the world for 6 months? That’s amazing…” her voice trailed off.
“Yeah, it’s really fun! But I’m actually traveling for a year which is why I need to re-suspend it.”
“Oh, wow… I wish I could do that. How can you even do that?”
“Well, I started saving eight years ago. And a lot of cost reduction. Like think about your cable bill. Let’s say it’s $25 per month. That doesn’t sound like much, right?”
“But if you think about a full year of cable, that’s $300. And over eight years –”
“That’s $2400.” She was much faster than me with the arithmetic.
“Yeah, and that’s just TV. Imagine what you’re paying for a car with insurance, gas, upkeep, and the car itself. Or anything you pay for in life.”

We ended up talking about finances, travel, and other non-AT&T related things for 10 minutes. Knowing these calls are recorded for quality purposes, she started winding down because Tom from Delaware probably needed help suspending his teenage daughter’s account.

“Well, I’m inspired.” she said.
“I’m so happy to hear that! It was nice chatting with you.”

After hanging up, I got a giddy feeling. I never thought my journey for inspiration would be something that could inspire others. But this conversation made me realize some people want to do what I’m doing but can’t imagine it ever being possible.

So, thanks Ebony. You’ve inspired me to start sharing how I planned this year off and how to overcome the fear and doubt that prevents us from believing we can do what we dream of doing.

This is Maker Year

I had a habit of doing side projects outside my day job, but a few problems existed:

  1. I was more interested in side projects than my actual job
  2. I have more ideas than time to build them
  3. Working at a computer day and night leads to repetitive stress injury and poor health

Instead of working on side projects while half-assing my job, I quit and dedicated a year to working on personal projects. I’m calling this Maker Year.

The plan for Maker Year

Do 8 one-week projects. After that, work on the best project for 4 more weeks.

Do this 3 times.

Work on the best project of the year for 12 weeks.

In the end, there will be:

  • 24 seed projects
  • 3 incubated projects
  • 1 developed project

It’s a process that should provide great breadth, great depth, and great iteration. Something I’ve noticed about ideas is they’re amazing until you start working on them. One week is enough time to learn how amazing something is or isn’t. And with the 4 week and 12 week blocks for further development, I can easily abandon a project at the end of a week to start something new.

In an ideal case, one or more of these projects can generate income and I can keep doing this. In the worst case, I won’t do any projects and look back at my year with great regret.

This is Maker Year

It’s exactly like a paid sabbatical, except there’s no pay and no job to return to.

It’s exactly like unemployment, except there’s work. Work that’s 100% self-directed, and doesn’t feel like work.

It’s exactly like school, except there’s no classmates, no credentials, and no teachers.

This is Maker Year. It’s exactly the opposite of “Don’t quit your day job.”

Why I’m okay with someone stealing my idea

Ten years ago in 2004 I made The Collective Type Project, an online experiment where anyone could draw letters of the alphabet. Everyone’s input would be averaged together for each letter of the alphabet, and in the end a typeface (font) representing everyone’s contribution would be created and made available for free. The project completed in 2007, but you can still download the font and see all the letters.

2 contributions averaged for A

255 contributions
255 contributions averaged for A

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 3.42.43 PM
The final typeface for The Collective Type Project

Recently, The Universal Typeface Experiment was posted on my Facebook feed:

It was posted because I also made a globally crowdsourced, mouse drawn, eventually downloadable font 10 years ago.

Here’s the description of Bic’s Universal Typeface Experiment:

This experiment allows individuals from all over the world to contribute their handwriting. A specially developed algorithm then calculates an average, allowing us to merge contributions into a single, ever-changing and always evolving typeface.

Ten years ago I’d be livid to see this because I would have thought they stole my idea.

But today, after ten years of designing products, I feel the opposite. I don’t think my idea was stolen. In fact, I’m excited for Bic’s project because I’ve learned a few lessons.

Lesson 1: Ideas are rarely unique

Before I make something, I keep the following in mind:

  1. Before starting, assume what you’re about to make has already been made
  2. While making, assume other people are actively making the same thing
  3. After you’re done, assume other people will make the same thing, whether intentionally or unintentionally

It’s just how things work. Ideas are cheap, plentiful, and tend to repeat. Don’t take it personally when they do. But some people do take it personally, and that leads to the next point.

Lesson 2: I don’t think anyone stole my idea

It’s a marvelous conceit to believe someone stole your idea.

The first time someone stole my idea was in Mrs. Small’s first grade classroom when I was seven years old. At show-and-tell, I was going to show off my transformer toy, but Scott shared the exact same toy before I could.

Two years later I discovered a large quartz deposit in the backyard of a house next to the schoolyard. A chain-link fence separated me from some dirt, so I used a stick to dig at it, scored some sweet quartz, and quickly became the first quartz baron of Oakwood Public Elementary School.

A week after showing everyone my quartz haul, dozens of quartz-greedy children abandoned a sweet playground for poking the dirt with sticks through a rusty chain-link fence, allowing me full reign of the swing set.

But still, they STOLE MY IDEA.

Things like this happened for years. All the time. Even recently when I worked at Microsoft designing the thumb keyboard for Windows 8.

We were so excited to reveal it to the world at the D9 conference in 2011. Months of work led up to this moment. After the big reveal, there were like, three tweets about it. It was that monumental.

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 2.01.15 PM
I remember where I was when the world was changed forever.

Four days later, Apple revealed updates to their forthcoming iOS 5, which included a thumb keyboard for iPad. What!? They must have seen our keynote, and in 96 hours scrambled, strategized, planned, designed, coded, tested, and integrated a fully functional thumb keyboard into iOS. Because there’s no way they could have had that idea without seeing my idea first.

If the theme of STOLE MY IDEA doesn’t sound completely ridiculous yet, it should. Because saying someone stole your idea (lacking evidence) is like saying humans are incapable of independent thought. That ideas are not intuited, but only exist by stealing from others.

Ask anyone “Who released the thumb keyboard first: Apple or Microsoft?” and you’ll get a consistent answer: “Who cares?” No one cares who’s idea it was. No one cares who was first.

In the end, screaming “they STOLE MY IDEA” only makes me sound like a petulant first grader in Mrs. Small’s class.

Lesson 3: Influence is inspiration

If you want to influence and inspire people, you can’t be upset when their work reminds you of your own.

Averaging many visual things into one visual thing isn’t a unique concept. I was probably influenced by Jason Salavon’s work where he averaged every Playboy centerfold into one image:

Jason Salavon’s Every Playboy Centerfold, 1988-1997

One of my all-time favourite songs is A Warm Place by Nine Inch Nails. Interestingly, the melody is nearly identical to David Bowie’s Crystal Japan.

In an interview with the two musicians, Reznor talks about writing A Warm Place and how it sounded too good to be original. Unintentionally, he re-wrote elements of Bowie’s song. Was Bowie pissed to find out? No, because Bowie wrote it 14 years prior and had written, evolved, and released a whole pile of new work since then.

But not only was he not pissed, the two collaborated on “I’m Afraid of Americans.” Similarity and influence doesn’t have to end with antagonism.

Did I influence someone involved with the Bic project? Maybe someone saw my site ten years ago and was unconsciously influenced. Maybe not. But what I do know is I now have something in common with MediaMonks (the people who built the Universal Typeface Experiment.)

Honestly, I’m really excited for MediaMonks because the project will reveal some really cool data, insights, and human behavior just like Collective did. It’s really fun stuff. And I hope I’ll be able to meet or at least chat with some of them to learn how they approached the project, where they’ll take it, and some of the cool stories they find in the data.

I’m sure they’d love to hang out if the first thing I said was “HEY ASSHOLES, YOU STOLE MY IDEA. We should get coffee some time!”

Lesson 4: Execution > idea

The Universal Typeface Experiment is being executed in a way Collective couldn’t. Because I love the concept of aggregating mass participation into an unpredictable and functional end product, I’m just super stoked to see it evolve.

In 2004, no one had a touchscreen, web servers had bottlenecks, and mass participation was difficult.

In 2004, people had to “write” letters into Collective with mice connected to desktop computers. My web server limited me to storing 255 contributions per character. Rallying mass participation was difficult unless you were mentioned on a major design site like K10K or NetDiver.

When I built Collective, Facebook was only for ivy leaguers, Twitter didn’t exist, Reddit didn’t exist, YouTube didn’t exist, and DeviantArt was a lot of drawings with bad lens flare effects. The best I had for rallying mass participation was combining MSN messenger, email, and Friendster and hoping it’d appear on SlashDot.

In 2014 things are different. Ubiquitous touchscreens make drawing letters easier and better. Cheap computing allows Bic to get over 1 million contributions instead of 30,000. And mass participation is easy thanks to the powerful sharing methods of the social network du jour.

On top of that, Bic is bringing in user data for things like handedness, country, age, and gender to make things even more interesting.

I had fun building Collective, it was a cool portfolio piece that helped me get a job I loved, and then I moved on to the next thing. If I cared about it that much, wouldn’t I have evolved it by now? How can I be mad about someone doing something similar when I practically abandoned the project eight years ago?

Lesson 5: Protect when necessary

Everything I’ve written so far has been lovey-dovey. But there’s always the chance someone intentionally took Collective and re-implemented it.

IP theft is horrible, frequent, and can destroy people and businesses when it happens. But if you’re in a position where someone stealing your idea results in you getting fucked, your job description has a new bullet point: Protect and defend IP. If someone steals and implements your IP, you need to get better at your job.

In conclusion

Know what’s valuable, know what’s worth defending, and protect it. Because it will be replicated intentionally or otherwise.

Maker Year Project #1: The Steven Seagal Turing Test

I’m happy to share my first real project for Maker Year: The Steven Seagal Movie Title Generator. If you’re familiar with Steven Seagal or his films, I’m sure it will make you laugh.

Project Origin
On June 5, I arrived in Cambodia’s capitol, Phnom Penh. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and disoriented, I sought reprieve in my hotel room after a long “short walk” through the city. Trying not to sweat too hard in my 35° C room, the television presented three options:

  1. Watch Twilight with Khmer voiceovers
  2. Watch Force of Execution, Steven Seagal’s 2nd newest film
  3. Watch nothing and turn it off

Naturally, I chose #1.

But I was quickly confused. Why does this gentleman always have a 10,000 foot stare? Why does he sparkle in the sunlight? Why is this girl’s lip not scarred and scabby from two decades of pensive biting?

That’s when I turned to Force of Execution. A film with a Tarantino-esque title sequence followed by a 99 minute plot hole.

On learning the title of the film, I realized it means absolutely nothing. It’s just random words that conjure imagery of detectives, criminals, or courtroom proceedings. Yet it sounds intense, serious, and legitimate. Something that would impress a 12 to 15 year old boy. So I look into Seagal’s other films to see if this naming convention is “a thing”.

Not only is it “a thing”, I quickly learn Seagal has starred in over 40 films since his 1988 debut, Above the Law. And all titles follow this theme.

And this is when I invented the Steven Seagal Turing Test. “Can a computer fool someone into thinking an algorithmically generated Steven Seagal film actually exists?”

Thus, in Southeast Asia a seed was planted. The Steven Seagal Movie Title Generator is but a seedling, ready to grow into a sturdy tree bearing sweet fruit.

What problem does this solve?
Boy, do Eric Ries and Startup Weekend love that question. This doesn’t solve anyone’s problem at all. This solves my problem: How do I transition from building things in Flash to building things in technologies that work on any device?

I figured it was time to learn me some SVG and jQuery.

What I learned

  • SVG needs major improvement in the typography department. Word wrapping doesn’t exist.
  • Use getBBox() to find the x, y, width, and height values of SVG elements.
  • Don’t create SVG elements with jQuery. The elements won’t be recognized as SVG and things like getBBox() won’t work. Instead, I use this method provided by a helpful person on Stack Overflow.
  • At the moment, getBBox() doesn’t work with anything in a <tspan> in certain browsers, so use <text> if you’re programmatically measuring and positioning text.
  • SVG attributes like textLength are case-sensitive, so they’ll break if you define or manipulate them with jQuery’s attr() function. Attr() converts everything to lowercase.
  • You can get the raw HTML object from a jQuery object like this: $(‘#elementName’)[0].
  • When learning a new language or technology, the project I’m applying it to needs to be well scoped, easily understood, and devoid of ambiguity. Otherwise I’m figuring out two things at once and I’m easily overwhelmed by not knowing anything and having to learn everything. I’ll rapidly stall out and resign myself to watching Terminator 2 with Khmer voiceovers.

Next steps for this project

  1. Make the posters savable and shareable
  2. Apply the actual Steven Seagal Turing Test by letting people vote whether they think a title is real or automatically generated
  3. Create more poster variants
  4. Improve typography: layout, sizing, and typefaces

Fun facts about Steven Seagal
Steven Seagal is 62 years old and people say awful things about him “becoming old, slow, and fat”. To those people, when you reach age 62 I invite you to compare your appearance and achievements to those of Steven Seagal’s. You’ll beat him on total number of internet comments written. That is all.

Steven Seagal is prolific. To date, he’s been in 45 films, and not a single one involved being a kindergarden cop, acting alongside Danny DeVito, or doing a voiceover for a baby or cartoon character. Every single one involved crushing someone’s bones or joints.

Here are all his films:
Above the Law (1988)
Hard to Kill (1990)
Marked for Death (1990)
Out for Justice (1991)
Under Siege (1992)
On Deadly Ground (1994)
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
Executive Decision (1996)
The Glimmer Man (1996)
Fire Down Below (1997)
The Patriot (1998)
Not Even the Trees (1998)
Prince of Central Park (2000)
Exit Wounds (2001)
Ticker (2001)
Half Past Dead (2002)
The Foreigner (2003)
Out for a Kill (2003)
Belly of the Beast (2003)
Clementine (2004)
Out of Reach (2004)
Into the Sun (2005)
Submerged (2005)
Today You Die (2005)
Black Dawn (2005)
Mercenary for Justice (2006)
Shadow Man (2006)
Attack Force (2006)
Flight of Fury (2007)
Urban Justice (2007)
Pistol Whipped (2008)
The Onion Movie (2008)
Kill Switch (2008)
Against the Dark (2009)
Driven to Kill (2009)
The Keeper (2009)
A Dangerous Man (2009)
Machete (2010)
Born to Raise Hell (2010)
Deadly Crossing (2011)
Sheep Impact (2011)
Maximum Conviction (2012)
Force of Execution (2013)
Gutshot Straight (2013)
Dark Vengeance (2014)

The most intimidating part of creation

If you’re doing it wrong, the most intimidating part of creation is starting. An empty page, a blank canvas, or the first entry of a diary terrifies you.

I said “doing it wrong” because the potential for creation should be inspiring. An empty page, a blank canvas, and the first entry of a diary should excite you, fill you with anticipation, and spark an impatience that you can’t start soon enough because the act of creation is more alluring than the end result. If you’re doing it right, the most intimidating part of creating is stopping.

When you’re doing it wrong, the act of creation is terrifying. You feel fear. You’re anxious. You procrastinate. You’re distractible. You’ll do anything but start. The only things you create are excuses.

“I’m tired.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“Just one more.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“I need to decompress.”
“There’s not enough time.”
“I have to ______________ instead.”

Excuses and procrastination are acts of self-preservation guarding you from something worse than death: discomfort and isolation. But let’s back up and ask “why” a few times.

Why aren’t you creating?
Because I’m procrastinating.

Why are you procrastinating?
Because the empty page is intimidating.

Why is it intimidating?
Because I don’t know where to start.

Why don’t you know where to start?
Because I need to organize my thoughts and do my research.

Why do you need to organize your thoughts and do your research?
Because I need to be prepared.

Why do you need to be prepared?
If I’m not prepared, I might be doing something wrong. I might make a mistake.

Why would you avoid making a mistake?
Because mistakes are bad.

Why are mistakes bad?
Because mistakes lead to criticism and I don’t like criticism.

Why don’t you like criticism?
Because criticism is judgement. With judgement comes the potential of failure.

Why avoid failure?
Failure leads to rejection.

Why avoid rejection?
Rejection leads to isolation, discomfort, and a harder life.

The blank page is terrifying because you’ve judged your work and witnessed failure before you’ve even done anything. And what better way to avoid failure than abstaining from activities that bring failure?

What better way? How about reframing “mistake”, “failure”, and “criticism”, and embracing serendipity instead.

1. Redefine “mistake”
We’re taught from an early age to avoid mistakes. But mistakes are how we learn. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. Growth makes you better, resulting in better work.

“Mistake” can be subverted too: You’re not making mistakes, you’re experimenting.

2. Prioritize failure
Mistakes add up to failure and we’re taught from an early age to avoid failure.

Fail the test and you’ll get a bad grade. Enough bad grades and you’ll fail the class. Fail the class and you won’t get into university. Fail getting into university and you’ll fail at getting a well-paying job. Fail to make enough money and you FAIL AT LIFE.

It’s hard to shake the failure mindset because it’s taught at an early age and it helps us survive as a species. Consequences are severe when you fail at drinking water, crossing the street, or flossing and brushing your teeth. Consequences are not severe when writing a blog, drawing a picture, or journaling.

For everything you do, ask “How severe are the consequences of failing what I’m doing?” Most times the answer will be “Not at all.” It’s incredibly liberating.

3. Good criticism makes you better
Good criticism doesn’t judge. It allows other perspectives to reshape your work in ways you can’t. It helps you grow.

Here’s good criticism:
“This part is working for me because ______________. That part isn’t working for me because ______________. That’s my input and it’s your choice to use it or not.”

Here’s bad criticism:
“I don’t like it. This sucks. That’s stupid. You should do ______________ instead. ______________ would be better.”

Good criticism brings new perspectives, entices conversation, and builds trust. Bad criticism is bossy, judgmental, and hinders growth.

Reject bad criticism. Especially bad self-criticism.

4. Embrace serendipity
Removing expectations and allowing yourself to be taken in new unexpected directions results in great work. Expecting to create A and ending up with Z is one of the greatest outcomes of creation. You surprise yourself, you end up with something better than you expected, and you grow along the way. This is embracing serendipity, and it’s a lot easier when you redefine “mistake”, prioritize failure, and focus on good criticism.

This is my first post for Maker Year. It took me seven weeks to actually sit down and write it because I was intimidated by the blank page for all the reasons above. I started writing this with the expectation of creating A (sharing my plan for the year ahead). But by embracing serendipity, I unexpectedly wrote Z (what you just read), grew in the process, and got excited about creating again.

What do you want to create and what’s preventing you from starting?


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Best Of Failures

This is my 200th blog post on Maldives Complete.

I’ve covered a range of topics focusing, like the website, on useful tips and help for prospective visitors to the resorts. The Maldives’ rich diversity of the 100+ resorts provide an unceasing source of inspiration from the quirky to the spectacular for the most popular section – ‘Best of the Maldives’. As it happens, I have another 80+ ‘Best Of’ posts already researched, outlined or drafted just waiting for the most apropos point to post. I am also starting work on a project to assemble all of the ‘Best Ofs’ into a published book for those who prefer that medium. My next visit is already planned for July when I will visit 14 new resorts which will only add to the trove of material.

Not all prospective Best Ofs work out though. As it happens, my other major writing outlet covers the topic of ‘Embracing Failure’. And by coincidence this weekend’s post is also my 200th on that topic. In that spirit, I thought that I would celebrate #200 here with some of the blog posts that didn’t work out. But as you will see, they presented enticing possibilities…

Kandooma – Radio Station: Kandooma used to have a radio station on its resort that broadcast a combination of music and DJ commentary to guests. It sounded great but shut down before I could do a piece on it

Kandooma Radio

Equator Village – Golf Course: One of the ‘big’ attractions that the Maldives lacks in the eyes of many high end travellers is a golf course. This omission is in itself enough to keep many high flyers away. Despite some valiant efforts like Kuredu and Meeru, the situation is still acute enough to inspire desperate ideas like the well publicised ‘floating golf course.’ The island of Gan is home to the Equator Village as well as the one full 18 hole golf course in the country. It was built to serve the RAF base there, but has since fallen into disuse and disrepair and no visitors are allowed on it.

Gan Golf Course

Equator Village – Sky Diving: Gan is also home to the Hanimadoo Airport which had its own intriguing reports of sky-diving. Unfortunately the parachuting appears to have been a one-off event.

Gan Skydiving in Maldives

Six Senses Laamu – Slide: The most recent dead end story was the Six Senses Laamu ocean slide. It appeared on the design drawings when the resort was underdevelopment. Unfortunately, the resort decided not build the two story building in the end (and I guess ground floor slides just don’t have much thrill).

Six Senses Laamu Slide

4 Thoughts on “Best Of Failures

  1. maldivian on May 25, 2011 at 3:22 am said:

    Hanimaadhoo Airport is in Hanimaadhoo. Gan International Airport is in Gan.

  2. maldivian on May 25, 2011 at 5:04 am said:

    You're absolutely right.  Had Gan on my mind with the golf course.  I will update the post.  That would make it closest to Dhonakhuli the closest resort.  Thanks for the catch.

  3. Pingback: 600 Posts Later « Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage

  4. Pingback: Best of the Maldives: Radio Station – Finolhu - Maldives Complete Blog

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Sunday, November 10

Let's get catty for a moment. We just have to say something about the Winona Ryder ta-do, right? Well, here's what we have to say (two things): 1) Who cares?! 2) Maybe instead of stealing from Saks, she should steal some acting lessons. This girl over-acts so badly that she's consistently put to shame by her supporting cast members. She was good in Edward Scissorhands, but not much since. Thank you.

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Sunday, 27 January 2008

Reality 3 – 0 Romance

Liverpool FC badge
After waxing lyrical to a friend the other day on the current state of Newcastle FC (it was more of a grind than a wax), they duly completed the story by getting whooped 3 – 0 by Arsenal. I never was any good at stories. Never mind, there are a number of factors that mitigate this disappointment. One being that they were beaten by a fabulous team; Arsenal play football the way you dreamt about it being played as a kid.

There is another game starting shortly (in about 15 minutes), Manchester United versus Tottenham Hotspur. Good people the world over will be saying a prayer (and it will probably take a prayer) in the hope that Tottenham can somehow overcome their opponents. Bad people the world over will be praying for another victory for the red menace so that darkness can descend upon the land.

But in the interests of fair play, and also because I'm a Liverpool FC fan and can't take any more disappointment, I shall remain neutral...

Tuesday, 8 January 2008

That was the year that was 2007

Atonement filmMoving house. Company taken over. Redundancies at work. Economise. Move out of house. Detached. Harry Potter. Move in with parents (temporary). Redundancies at work. Move into new house. Semi-detached. Bigger mortgage. Atonement. Economise. Wife quits work. Redundancies at work. Lose my car keys. Economise. Christmas.


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Adding Video To Your Virtual Tours

Video Sample

PreviewFirst has just made it a lot easier to add video to your virtual tours.  Since the conversion to the new platform several months ago, you needed us to help you.  Now you can do it yourself, instantly.

Just log into your account and click “Manage Tours”.  Choose the tour you want to manage and you’ll see the embed code field there.  It’s super easy.

If your video is MLS compliant, which means there is no signage, company or personally identifying information in it, you can click the “MLS Compliant” box and the video will show up on the MLS version.  Otherwise the video link will only appear on the Branded version.

If you’re interested in video production services, please inquire within.  We’ve always offered it, but only upon request.  In the coming weeks, we will share more about our services and prices.

Here are a couple of great video samples…

Hawaii Home

Jenny Craig Ranch

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Monday, July 11, 2011

Win the book from the researchers who revealed your brain in a virtual collaboration environment

Our blogging crew recently interviewed Jim Blascovich, Ph.D., about what happens in our brains when we're interacting in a virtual collaboration environment.

We've posted the podcast and transcript from our interview with Dr. Blascovich, where we delved into some profound psychological and sociological implications of working and training in virtual environments. But if you want to go on an even bigger mind-bender, I've got the goods.

We're going to give away two copies of Dr. Blascovich's new book, "Infinite Reality," which he co-authored with Jeremy Bailenson, Ph.D. Their book explores the science of virtual reality -- the good, bad, and ugly of what the virtual revolution has in store for us as business professionals and a society as a whole.

It's a great book, and a must-read for anyone who follows virtual technology. It'll get you thinking about how far we've come with virtual technology, and more important, how far we can go with it, especially in terms of how we interact, learn, and experience everyday life and what it means to be human.

So how can you win your copy? Here's how to enter.

1. Follow @ProtonMedia on Twitter if you aren't already.

2. Tweet your answer to the following question: In what industries do you think virtual environments have the most benefit?

3. Include the #engage in your tweet so we can track entries.

BONUS: If you also leave a comment on this post, we'll count you for two entries, so you'll double your chances of winning. Your comment must answer this question: By what year do foresee virtual environments on every worker's desktop? Please include your Twitter handle in your comment so we can match you up. If you just comment, please include an e-mail address where we can contact you if you win.

The giveaway starts now, and runs until July 15 at 5 p.m. ET. We'll randomly draw two winners from the submissions and announce them on our blog.

Tell your friends and let the tweeting and commenting begin! Good luck!

Anonymous said...

I can definitely see this happening in the pharmaceutical industry where I currently work. Not only does virtual collaborative environment benefit the business but the customers/ patients as well!

Ron Burns said...

Thanks for writing in. Could you please leave your Twitter handle (if entered on Twitter) or an e-mail address where we can contact you if you win? Thanks!

Fred said...

Education - perhaps at all levels for some subjects - but certainly for more mature and self-motivated students in high schools and colleges would greatly benefit from collaborative and computer-assisted learning environments.

Fred said...

Maintenance & Service Industries - imagine having a service guide for a complicated piece of machinery encoded as an interaction between the service technician and a collaborative environment. You can see pictures of the machine, drill down through various parts explosions, troubleshooting steps, or diagnostic procedures.

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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Freebase at Google

Kirrily Robert of Freebase (and now Google) gave a presentation at this month's GTUG meeting, describing the technology stack, queries, and data management.

This is a collection of information gathered at the talk, though it is mostly just an amalgamated Twitter feed. Still, there are links to all the resources one would need to get starting programming against the Freebase platform.

Freebase has been around for years and was recently acquired by Google. It uses a semantic web model of linked data with dynamic ontologies, more or less. It features a public REST API whose parameter is a structured query (which can be treated as a subset of SPARQL) and returns results in JSON format. It can also return results in RDF.
Twitter: @fbase

one example of a site using Freebase data is

Metaweb Query Language MQL (pronounced like pickle) used to access Freebase data

Freebase MQL Query Editor available online

best supported library is freebase-python and there are others too

Online Freebase App Editor

Acre is also a server-side javascript application framework for Freebase

Freebase 102 demo application done using Acre

Full data dumps of every fact and assertion in Freebase are available weekly

the Freebase RDF Service

RABJ (pronounced like cabbage) Redundant Array of Brains in a Jar

Freebase Gridworks for dealing with messy tabular data and cleaning it up

Kirrily Robert @skud runs a regular Freebase meetup in San Francisco too

OpenCalais can give you freebase identifiers as part of its analysis. Some news organizations (NYTimes, UK Guardian) have built linked data APIs which can be integrated in a mash-up with Freebase or other linked data applications.


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On magic

05 Apr 2018

I think about magic often, and what that word means to me.

I think that magic means that something occurs, and we do not need (or really want to find) evidence of how it occurs. Magic means that the emotional truth of the occurrence is enough.

Cambridge is a place where atheism can feel like the predominant religion. There are not many people who are outwardly religious, although they might be inside.

But every time I had an appointment to see the ear surgeon, a man would sit across from me on the bus, urgently crossing himself, clutching rosary beads. He was not an old man and not a very young one either. Maybe in his thirties, slightly overweight, wearing brown leather shoes, a black peacoat, and on some days, a blue collared shirt, which is how I noticed that his eyes were blue.

In other words, he looked perfectly ordinary. The only reason he stood out because his prayers were so fervently strong, and everyone else on the bus was so mindlessly in transit.

Every bus ride I took, he would take too, even though the appointments weren’t all at the same time. He would sit, mumbling to himself, crossing himself, praying as the sun streaked through the bus and people bumped and jostled around him.

I live next to a big, beautiful cemetery. The first time I wondered if he was a priest and he was going to a funeral to lead a service. I grew up with so little concept of religion, even as an adult I’m not sure if all the words I just said are the right ones for that sentence. But he never got off at the cemetery.

The third time I shared a bus with him, I decided that it must have been more than coincidence. I eyed the man on the bus, and followed him ten steps behind as he took the subway, in the same direction as me, from Harvard. I sat with him in the same train car, but not in the same row, so that I could peek at him in my periphery.

I expected him to get off at MGH with me, because where else could one go in such feverish worry if not a funeral or a hospital?

But he didn’t.

After I got better and no longer needed to go to the hospital every week, I often wondered who he was praying for. But I never asked him or even spoke a single word to him, although we made eye contact once. The eye contact was neither warm nor suspicious, it was simply weary.

I thought that he might have been a magical creature and when you see a magical creature at work you should not stop to question their magic. I thought he might have been praying for me.

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Rainy Day Poem (2016)

08 Jan 2018

Rainy days in suburbia are dull and depressing,

but in New York City they are calm and beautiful.

The City itself shines so bright that on sunny days,

the compounding effect verges on manic.

Rain, not just April showers but the

gets into the best-made plans and

best-shopped shoes of New Yorkers

forcing pedestrians and subway-goers alike to

curse at the sky,

and come to terms with their own soggy mortality.

There is a unified serenity in the defeat of perfection.

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Originally posted on Medium.

This is Mayfair Street in Northeast Philly.

It looks like any other street in the city, with little row houses packed together like sardines. Not unlike the Philadelphia row house I spent the first year of my life in after my parents immigrated from China to the States.

But if you squint at the vines crawling on the wire fences, you’ll see that there are bitter melons hanging off the vines, not just purple morning glories.

Yesterday morning I woke up way too early and hesitantly joined my sister and her friends to Get Out the Vote in Pennsylvania, a “battleground” state. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate approaching strangers, least of all to ask them to do something.

The day started off slow, with the sun beating down on a unusually warm November day. Most people were at work, and once a little boy peeped through the blinds — only to bolt the door shut.

Halfway down the street, I knocked on a door and an older Asian gentleman answered.

When I began my spiel, he gestured with his hands. Expected to be waved away again, I began to back off.

But when I leaned closer, I realized what he was saying was no to English, not no to me. Unfortunately, he began speaking in Cantonese, a language I don’t know a word of. As a last ditch effort, I tried to ask him if he’d voted in my third-grade proficiency Mandarin.

He replied!

Mr. Lee* (whose name I learned at the polls) told me people had been knocking and calling all week, but not a single person spoke a word he could understand. He tried to vote this morning, but it was too confusing.

He went home.

Did I know who he wanted to vote for, I asked? He did.

“The Woman,” he said.

Reluctant to abandon my check sheet of addresses and names, I called the voting hotline. Did they have translators at the polling station nearby? No one who spoke Chinese, no. I could, however, help interpret for a voter, and accompany them to the polls.

Ten minutes later, we walk together to Creighton Elementary School. Along the way, he tells me a little bit about his life. It’s isolating to not speak English here, but he’s too old to learn. Mr. Lee casts his first ballot, and we both get an “I Voted” sticker, me for the ride.

On our walk back to Mayfair Street, I ask him if any of his friends need help too. He calls some friends he can think of, but most of them are at work at this time of day.

A young woman in a Cal t-shirt runs past and he shouts her name and they start chatting faster than I can understand for a few minutes. Excitedly, she turns to me, and then runs down the street. “Let me just grab my ID!” she says in Mandarin.

Together, I go with her again to the polls — but unlike with Mr. Lee, there’s no time for small talk. Hurry, we have to walk fast, she says. She works 8am to 8pm so there’s no time for her to vote, but she managed to get someone to cover her shift just now. I add another sticker to my shirt, to the smile of the polling volunteer.

                                   Picture from Equality PA

In more than three hours of walking and knocking and trying to come up with a universal language with the people I meet, I’m able to help three voters make the long journey just a few blocks away.

For a scientist who is used to observing human behavior through “big” data, three seems like a defeatingly small number. But in terms of human lives, it is infinite.

Yesterday I was reminded that despite all the observations we can do from 3,000 feet, it’s important to get on our feet. Not only to be reminded of what’s at the heart of it all, but because many issues are impossible to comprehend without knocking on the doors of strangers.

By meeting potential voters like Mr. Lee, I realized that there was a real shortage of interpreters in Philly, especially for Asian Americans. Later, I learned that this has been a contested issue in many districts since the 2014 midterm elections.

Although Election Day was only a single date in the calendar, I have spent the past two years analyzing, speculating, and writing about the elections during my Master’s degree. Yet I rarely discussed politics outside of my circle of friends and colleagues.

If data science is about the art of drawing patterns from numbers, there is a stronger and more difficult art in drawing the human stories out of data. Although the introvert in me wishes to disagree, there is no way to write a story without looking at another human being in the eye.

In times of disappointment, when it seems so hard to move the needle forward, find solace and meaning in the words of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. She reminds me of my purpose:

“To pursue the human project — which is to remain human and to block the dehumanization of others.”

* Name has been changed for privacy.

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Two pieces today.

Take this one with your morning coffee and cake– it’s Christmas Day, and whether you celebrate or not, you need something sweet because you deserve it.

Then, when you’re fully caffeinated and ready to face the New Year and the end of civilization as we know it, read “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene.” Sometimes, you need to look down into the abyss– I promise that you’ll still have to go to work tomorrow. So it goes.

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My newest writing piece: a profile on Pulitzer-winning data reporter, coffee-addict and Bostonian Matt Carroll!  His story is being told in Spotlight, a movie that has rave reviews and is in theatres now.

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There are people whom I admire and then there are people for whom every moment I spend with them, I want to soak up every possible molecule of being in their presence. Tai Jimenez is one of those people. Her dance class can only be described as a spiritual experience, because the focus is never on just the steps, but the intent and purpose of every step.

And that is what ballet should be all about. It should be a artistic and introspective life-long practice, just like yoga or meditation, because it is a beautiful and thoughtful practice. In reality, this is just about the polar opposite of how things tend to go down: even in the small beans non-professional no-name classes I go to, bitches be fightin’ for the barre, and everyone is feeling extra fat in their tights today. It’s a hierarchy of competition and insecurity that dissuades people and stifles creativity, even though the medium is so ripe for creation. Not always, of course, but often enough that it’s always a shadow chasing close behind the joy of movement.  On a larger scale, this feeling works in tandem with existing institutions that reward people of a certain build, skin color, class, and attitude, not always for the best results.

(This is often how I feel about the tech industry and academia as well.)

Anyway. Tai, who also writes, posts a great response on her blog to Peter Martin, the chairman of the School of American Ballet (SAB), when he asks her to join a new “diversity initiative” for the SAB. As the all-too-frequent token girl / token minority in many lab settings past, present, and future, to whom all the “women in tech”, “minority”, “gender”, and “diversity” inquiries are directed, I can relate to her frustration. Her response is gold:

“I have been giving the matter of whether or not to join the Diversity Committee some thought. With all due respect, if the School of American Ballet is serious about diversifying, they can start by hiring me as a ballet teacher. I am great.

This is not about me, and it is about me. Please tell Peter Martins that true diversity means the whole structure has to change. Is he ready for that?”

In a follow-up blogpost, she explains:

“My approach to teaching ballet is too different from theirs. They want to create dancers. I want to create an ecstatic moment of dancing. They teach one to master a certain style and technique. I teach dance as a tool for self-mastery. They teach people how to squeeze themselves into a certain look. I teach people how to love themselves as they are and to dance from there. They promote an ideal. I expose the myth. They teach competition. I foster community. They teach hierarchy. I restore sovereignty of self. They pick favorites. I acknowledge everyone’s medicine and stir it up good.

And sometimes, I play hip-hop. SAB ain’t ready for this jelly.”

Read her original posts here and here. And, if you’re in the Cambridge/Boston area, definitely, definitely take a class with Tai! She teaches at  Harvard (the classes are open registration) and I believe Jeanette Neil’s.

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Living in Holland

09 Jul 2015

Eight days before my twenty-third birthday, I embarked on what can only be described as a truly magical journey to three completely contrasting cities: Reykjavik, Amsterdam, and Prague. Along the way, I met a number of fascinating characters– some of them related to me. Here is an excerpt of my great aunt’s life, which she handed me a photocopy of on my way to the airport leaving Holland.

* note: interactive version cross-posted on FOLD, a new publishing platform made by some friends @ the Media Lab.

Living in Holland

(a completely unbiased autobiography

written by my great-aunt Lenore

for the AWCA)

I am Cantonese but was born in Shanghai, then and now the most cosmopolitan city of China. Already at birth I was touched by the American brush. Both my parents had studied in the States, my dad receiving degrees from MIT and Case Institute and my mom from Columbia University.

There were seven of us, four girls and three boys. I was ‘sister three’… and we were naughty. One day, to give you an example, our gardener was taking a nap, snoring with his mouth open and we put a spoonful of salt on his tongue. My mom scolded us… severely I might add.

After the happy years trouble came, first, the Japanese occupation and then, finally, the communist takeover. We had to flee and since my dad was Minister of Transportation, he had the use of a government plane and we escaped by flying to Taiwan just in time. This all happened a few months before I was supposed to graduate from high school. Fortunately the government in Taiwan granted my diploma, which enabled me to go study in Michigan.

I enrolled at Michigan State University and turned into a party girl, within the limits of decency. Although I didn’t study too industriously, I succeeded in becoming a member of Pi Mu Epsilon (mathematics honorary), Iota Sigma Pi and Sigma Delta Epsilon (chemistry honoraries).

After obtaining my MS in Physical Chemistry I was ready for the world. But was the world ready for me? I decided they and I were going to find out, but in a somewhat warmer climate than Michigan. Go West young woman! I descended upon innocent Seattle (those were the days) and by my first day I had fond a small apartment and a job at the Analytical Department of the University of Washington. All I needed was a husband. So, I spent my weekends dancing and dating (Sleepless in Seattle). The Chinese boys didn’t want me. They want their women, demure, soft-spoken and obedient. A loud-mouth like me was out of the question. So, I had to turn to other prey. At the foreign students club, Cosmo, I cornered Jack Wiegman, a student at the School of Communications, and made him my husband, like it or not.

After he graduated, we moved to New York, where I found a job at my mom’s alma mater, Columbia University. After only one year, out of the blue, I was approached by American Cyanamid, Princeton, NJ, who invited me to an interview and then offered me a position as a research chemist. I succeeded to invent two chemical processes. My boss quickly put his name to one and the other one I was forced to sell for the generous sum of one dollar.

My husband was transferred to Amsterdam and so I was back at point zero. I decided to interrupt my career by having a son. However, when he was two and an intelligent big boy, I felt he was ready for kindergarten and, for me, it was time to resume my career by joining a division of the Dutch Akzo Chemical Corporation in Amsterdam. To put it mildly: I didn’t like it at all. Fortunately, after almost two years, opportunity struck by way of an ad for a position as a research chemist at the Dental Materials Science Department of the University of Amsterdam. Thanks to my work in the States I was chosen among 40 candidates to become Hoofdmedewerker which you could roughly translate as Associate Professor. This you could call the turning point of my life. I came up with two more inventions but— it’s an old story— the head of the department tried to usurp the credit. I fought all the way to the Board of the University and won, but, of course, I had to move. I joined the Electrochemistry Department where I started in a PhD program. In 1979, I obtained the degree with the thesis “The Kinetics of the Hydration of Calcium Sulfate Hemihydrate and Cement, investigated by an Electrical Resistance Method”. (Wow)

To complete the bragging: I am listed in the Marquis Who’s Who in Science and Engineering (US) and also in the International Biographical Centre (Cambridge, England). I also have been a long-time member of the ACS (American Chemical Society).

Six years ago I suffered a stroke. Since then I’ve been confined to a wheelchair.

Now, I have time to catch up on reading and to play with my grandchildren who live in the same building, a canal house on Keizersgracht. And then, of course, there is the AWCA of which I have been a member 29 years.

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Post-Barbeque Blues

05 May 2015

Post-Barbeque Blues

NOW the daffodil is beheaded

    and floating in her vase;

MAY has sunk into our bones.

    tortilla chips &

        beer &

        burnt sausages

fight with strawberry ice-cream

    on red Solo cups.

a restlessness halfway between

    play & EXHAUSTION:

        our skin is hot, but

        now the air is cold.

the little girl will go home

    & refuse her dinner

        just as surely as WE

        are HOPELESS to do anything but

            crawl into the sheets sun-drunk /

            on soccer-sweat;

listen to tapes of Jack Kerouac

    spin tales of desolation angels

                subterranean blues

                & wine.

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In my last post, I lamented a bit the potential for advanced technologies to reinforce existing biases at a quicker and larger scale, without either our awareness nor consent.

The issue of algorithmically detecting gender that I briefly mentioned is one that I’ve been struggling with this semester. Inferring gender can be crucial in revealing lags at publications and harmful disparities in behavior where diversity data is not provided, yet the act of classification can be morally and socially harmful.

Nathan Matias is a Ph.D student at the neighboring Civic Media Lab who has been a great ally in helping soften the steep learning curve of grad school and also in tackling gender/identity related projects. His master’s thesis work in Open Gender Tracker has led to many great posts on the Guardian’s Datablog.

Like a truly great friend, he not only answered my questions with regard to ethically detecting gender, he wrote a comprehensive blogpost about it. He highlights the practical realities of keeping work both computationally effective and ethically responsible. A must-read for anyone considering work in this area. Thank you Nathan!

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At the beginning of the seminar I’m taking in Race and Racism, we examined the historical origins of race– smirking at 19th century attempts to neatly classify and digest mankind into square boxes of color, things like Blumenbach‘s 5 categories (Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, Malay) and his offensive descriptions of the capabilities of each, how misguided they were, how clearly politically incorrect they are to us now.

One image stands out in particular– a chart, on the left axis, the races; on the right, a marking in each category of human competence, such that, summing up the checked boxes, one might literally rank different humans against another by racial category. The White man wins, in every grouping. It’s a glaring embodiment of early racist ideology, printed on paper, long since dismissed. It would be improbable to imagine a chart like that printed in a 21st century publication; the author would be fired, no doubt.

Yet the chart seemed eerily familiar to me. At first I couldn’t place it; I hadn’t seen it before. Then I realized: what it reminded me of was my own education, not in sociology or anthropology, but in Computer Science. As a graduate student, with a focus on Machine Learning and social applications, the very core of many of the algorithms I study and write is statistical classification, a major topic of research. What we are doing now– what Google does with its personalized search, what Facebook does with its unsettlingly accurate ads– is automating that same thought process of 19th century anthropologists. We look at a person, here, her technological imprint on the web, the traces she leaves, her purchase history, friends, and log-ins, then say: “what sort of human being are you”? And then, using our charts and tables– no longer printed ones, but weights on variables in our algorithms and databases of records– we first classify her, and after, yes, we rank her (sometimes we rank her first and then classify her, as well).

Users are commonly classified by gender, or what a machine can predict your gender to be, often quite accurately, and yes, different genders are ranked very differently. In the goods-driven world of online advertisement, a woman is worth differently than a man depending on what the product is, sometimes more, sometimes less. This entire pipeline is problematic to say the least; first, in the binary classification of gender; and then, in the ranking of different gendered individuals against one another; but our algorithms only reflect the constructs already driving these approaches.

Algorithms don’t quite yet classify users by race, or at least not outloud, because race is such a charged issue in most countries. But that doesn’t mean that when an algorithm doesn’t label a category outright, it doesn’t profile users. Algorithms, which learn, much like humans, based on history, only reinforce existing social constructs wherever they are used, because that is what they do: digest data, find a pattern, and make predictions according to that pattern. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney discovered that searches for racially-associated names were disproportionately causing targeted ads for criminal background checks and records to appear. These searches could go beyond offensive because targeted ads are reinforced by user behavior; if I click on that ad, I tell the machine that it was effective in targeting, reinforcing prejudiced thinking. Automated selection processes, which are beginning to gain popularity, such as automated admissions to schools and credit ratings, could cause real, harmful, physical ramifications.

This isn’t to say that there is anything inherently “evil” in Machine Learning itself; it’s a fascinating field of study, and could become a major tool in public health, disaster relief, and poverty alleviation. The machine is doing nothing new in its actions; it is merely a force multiplier of human behavior. I believe that classification is core to human cognition; and yes, we label others upon contact, always. Whether we like it or not, there is no way to escape being classified and classifying others. It’s impossible to meet someone without assigning some kind of underlying worth to them; it sounds ugly out loud, but our classification are essentially value-laden in order to be useful.

Ultimately, our machines only reflect our selves: it is vital to realize that computers are human, raised on human values, and there is no such thing as objective computation. The question that remains is: what kind of value systems will we feed our algorithms?

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Ohio’s Beautiful Things

Last week my family traveled to Ohio for our annual family reunion. We have been going to the Hudson family reunions (my mom’s side of the family) for as long as I can remember, though we missed some years. It’s a familiar drive, through the Tennessee mountains, past the picket fences in Kentucky, and along the flat highway lined with cornfields in Ohio. It’s a long drive, but a good one, because there are always memories to be made and lots of  laughter and fun awaiting us.

Along the way,  there were  many beautiful things to add to my journal.
Here’s a few:

Pillow fights!
(This  is what happens when three teen-age siblings share a hotel room, and I happen to be the eldest.) :)

A lady on the elevator who smiled at Faith and me and said, “It’s so nice to see happy faces.”

This book, that made a lovely travel companion

A sign that a farmer put next to his field that said, “Choose life. Your mother did.”

Dad giving random historical trivia

Visiting Uncle Dan & Aunt Rose’s Victorian home in Michigan
(It was built in 1876.)

There were many beautiful things at the reunion too:

Aunt Debbie’s vibrant plants and flowers

This praying mantis must have thought her flowers beautiful too :)
(Thanks, Dad, for spotting it!)

Splashing in the cold water on such a warm weekend

Friendly neighbors across the street sharing their pond with us

More beautiful flowers :)

Taking a walk down the street together and enjoying the country scenery,
including blue spruce trees

Picking off a couple of the needles and smelling the woodsy scent

It was a wonderful weekend

with lots of laughs

adorable babies and toddlers to snuggle

games to play

and memories made

I’m thankful for Uncle Dave and Aunt Debbie who host the reunion each year to bring our family together

I’m thankful for everyone who comes and makes it a celebration

And I’m thankful to Yahweh for family

traveling grace

and Ohio’s beautiful things

“For יהוה  is good; His kindness is everlasting, And His truth, to all generations.”
Psalm 100:5

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4 thoughts on “Ohio’s Beautiful Things

  1. Joy, good to hear from you. Glad you all had a great visit and are safely back in Alabama. Hope to see you this Sabbath. Thanks for such a beautiful journey which is part of your wonderful memories. Love all of you. Janice and Grady Freeland

    1. You’re welcome, Miss Janice. I’m glad you enjoyed the pictures. :) Hope to see you both tomorrow too! Ahavah v’Shalom ~Joy <3

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A unit of what?

A knol, Knol says, is a “unit of knowledge”. I don’t think so. But I do think Knol is already becoming a den of spam.

My cursory research, at that link, suggests that the answer is yes. “Anemia“? No results. “Hair“? 12, including several (supposedly) by the top guy at the Beauty Network. “Cancer“? 38, so far, inncluding three in the first page of results for the biggest spam giveaway, Mesothelioma. Search for anything. Watch the results.

If this is about a fight with Wikipedia, I’d say it’s no contest. But it’s not. It’s about the corrupting influence of pure scammy ambition. Even if Google doesn’t have that, it plays host to plenty. And Knol (born on 23 July) was barely out of the womb before it got infected with it.

The only antidote, perhaps, is more knols like Bernie DeKoven‘s one on Pointless Games. That’s how I found Knol, by the way. News of its birth had escpaped me.

Bonus link.

  1. david cushman’s avatar

    Knol: Trying to answer a problem nobody had.

  2. Robert W. Anderson’s avatar

    The definition of “knol” as a “unit of knowledge” is ludicrous. Does a “knol” article contain one unit? Do these units have any standard weight / size / shape / word count? Are they comparable in any way? Are they dividable into sub-knols? Isn’t each spam-link its own knol?

    I don’t really know why, but the definition rankles (me).

  3. Arik Jones’s avatar

    I have to agree with Robert. This is rather lacking of intelligence and common sense.

  4. Don Marti’s avatar

    Google is good at search and apps, but terrible at hosting users’ original content. For a while most of my comment spam was linking to a Google-hosted page.

  5. Peter Turney’s avatar

    I recently searched on Google for Avast anti-virus software – the personal version is free. I clicked on the first link, a Google sponsored link, because it seemed to be what I was looking for. After a few minutes of looking around on the website, I discovered it was a scam. The website had nothing to do with Avast. They were trying to trick me into buying their own software, by pretending to be Avast. Why does Google allow this website to have a sponsored link? What happened to “do no evil”? How many of Google sponsored links are scams?

  6. Mike Warot’s avatar

    Amazon has a wiki as well… discovered it my accident this morning

Comments are now closed.


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Car Alternator Repair

A car alternator is the main source of electricity and charging system in your car. The key role of the alternator is to provide power to the ignition, battery and other systems in the car that require electrical energy in order to function. This means it is one of the key car components that you must always pay a keen attention to in order to get the most from your car. Whenever a problem is encountered in the alternator, there are several components of the car that will be affected, which could prevent you from using the vehicle.

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Considering the wide range of roles played by a car alternator, sooner or later it will experience wear and tear, which is among the common causes of alternator failure. Besides, problems on the car alternator can also be impacted by failure of one or more components that are linked to the device like, the car engine, headlights and radio. Whenever there is a problem on the car alternator, there are some signs that you will see or experience. One of them is a warning light on the alternator. In most car models, the light appears in the form of a battery, which could confuse you into thinking it is a battery problem.

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Gardenscape Design is a successful and revered panorama design studio, established in 1998 by Principal Sandra McMahon, after she graduated as an award-successful pupil from Burnley Horticultural School. Austin’s was created by one of our artists for the desktop model of the sport in 2007. We would have liked a butler character with a slightly aristocratic appearance, the one that girls 30+ would discover charming. First variations of a personality with a pipe in his hand or with a watering can weren’t fairly on point. It’s obvious that previously century The Beatles dictated the fashion for a very long time. The general theme was the attribute shape of hairstyles, mustaches, sideburns and whiskers… The artist left the whiskers and changed the hairstyle – he gave the butler a bald head, because he is not younger, and time doesn’t spare anybody. The rest was made along the way, and the audience favored him. The main thing in Austin is his character and reminiscence, he feels alive. And by the best way, the artist who created Austin continues to be in Playrix creating new interesting characters.

We offer a variety of upkeep providers, tailored in your wants and landscape. We provide unparalleled excellence in commercial floor and backyard upkeep, acreage garden mowing and trip-on garden mowing, hedge trimming, weeds management, landscaping, and earthmoving in preparation for brand spanking new gardens or greenery. Gardenscapes is free to play, although some in-sport gadgets will also be bought for real money. If you happen to’re not one of the thousands and thousands of people that play Gardenscapes and Homescapes, you’d in all probability recognize how you can play it immediately if you noticed it. It’s a match-three recreation, the place players combine colorful tiles to earn factors and clear missions. There’s also a visual novel ingredient, the place players use their accomplished levels to improve a sequence of gardens or homes.

Gardenscapes is a free to play cellular and browser -primarily based farming sim and puzzle fixing recreation that combines match-three gameplay with an thrilling storyline to revive an old garden to its former splendor. The gameplay is familiar; move tiles to make rows and columns, and work in the direction of completing the objective for the level. Objectives vary from simply clearing the display, to finding a hidden backyard gnome, to all different manner of challenges. As you clear levels, you’ll earn stars which can be utilized to progress to the following a part of the story, where you will face ever more durable, but extra rewarding, challenges, and little by little, rework this overgrown mess into a good looking backyard. A effectively-designed waterfall could be a focus of your panorama. It may provide a relaxing and delightful addition to your back yard. We can incorporate water in design, create and install it in your enjoying pleasure.

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Playrix: Playrix is fairly unique in this respect, and we like our innovative strategy. Although we don’t see the distant work and totally different time zones as that a lot of a problem. It all comes down to good management. What is most necessary to us is creating an worker-oriented tradition that offers everybody at Playrix the opportunities they should grow professionally and notice their potential in a friendly atmosphere. I feel this is key on the subject of organizing workflow and growing successful projects. Gardenscape is a family owned garden and backyard provider for the wholesale market. In business for over 50 years Gardenscape has grow to be an trade chief, supplying backyard facilities, retailers and growers with the very best high quality line of garden and garden soils, mulches and other merchandise.


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Native American Woven Baskets

The seller is michaelstacyart and is located in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Antique 1800′s native american hand woven polychromed wicker basket indian art = it has some damage to the top edge along with some cracking, refer to photos. Thank you for visiting Dusty Treasures and please feel free to browse through.
July 3, 2021 at 8:57 am by admin
Category: polychromed
Tags: , , , , , , , ,


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Town Square Theater Hat Store

Main Street, U.S.A, Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World

As if the Hat Store in Town Square wasn't enough, this store just along the way is stuffed full hats and caps as well!

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Pictures of Town Square Theater Hat Store


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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Fresh Strawberry Mousse

I just heard that my sister Devina might not be coming down to India and I am thinking of ways and reasons to get her ass down here..she LOVES strawberries and I cant think of a better way to tempt her than this..simple Fresh Strawberry Mousse which will definitely keep you asking for more..hope it works..fingers crossed!..(on the offside that this plan doesn't work on Devina I am sure my baby sister Neetu will definitely come home to stay with me for a week! )

  • 200gs Fresh Strawberries
  • 400 ml Cream
  • 3 tsp Gelatin
  • 60ml Water
  • 1 cup Powdered sugar (more or less depending on your taste)
  • 1/2 packet Strawberry Jelly (optional)
  • 10 Strawberries (optional)

  1. Transfer the cream into a bowl and keep in the freezer for 10 minutes.Keep the whipping blades in the freezer.
  2. Roughly chop strawberries and blend to a coarse paste. Keep aside.
  3. Sprinkle gelatin over 60 ml water and let stand for few minutes.
  4. Beat the chilled cream till thick and pouring consistency.Place in the fridge.
  5. Place the gelatin and water over low flame till the gelatin dissolves.
  6. Add gelatin liquid along with sugar and strawberry paste to the whipped cream and mix well.Place in freezer for 20 minutes(till its thick,do not let it set).Adjust sugar according to your taste.
  7. Remove and beat with whip or electric beater till smooth.
  8. Pour into a serving dish or individual glass and let it set in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
  9. Prepare strawberry jelly by following instruction on the packet.Let it cool a little in room temperature,pour over the set mousse and refrigerate till set.
  10. Garnish with strawberries.

  1. mouthwatering nd colourful..

  2. What a sweet intro to such a delectable dessert! Pic is lovely. Devinaaaaa....fly down!!!!!!

  3. Wat an elegant and pretty irresisitible mousse.

  4. lovely mousse..i'm sure your sisters are def going to be tempted!

  5. What a sweet idea! I love how you've used jelly crystals for the stark contrast. Looks super pretty. I don't know about your sisters, I might just come and stay with you

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