designstate

Crying doesn’t indicate that you’re weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you’re alive.

-Unknown

I’ve started playing D&D again, and in doing so I’ve learned to embrace my inner nerd once again.

So in my obsession with steampunk, the anacronistic, dirty, and slightly evil, I decided to create my own set of bones.  Part of this quest involved finding a non Arabic numeral system that I could hand etch or ink onto the faces of an icosahedron (d20). Roman numerals are too big for 18 & 19 (XVIII & XIIX), so I chose the Mayan numeral system which is base 20. I think I’ll do away with the Roman numerals entirely on the next set and use just Mayan. And instead of inking the numerals I’ll try to etch them. For those who are curious, bars = 5 and dots = 1; numerals are constructed virtically, with bars at the base.

This is one of the most amazing demonstrations of possible computing technologies I’ve ever seen. I don’t know that I believe Mr. Mistry has actually developed all the things he shows in his presentation—so much as created conceptual demos—but it really gets you thinking about how we do and will interact with computers and the dearth of information available to us today and in the future. This is really amazing, game changing thinking.

Are you bearing the weight of creative genius on your shoulders?  Or are you part of a collaboration with the daemons and geniuses of history?

I just watched a very interesting talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, at TED in Feb 2009.  She muses about how humans view creativity and the pressure that puts on the individuals channeling it.  Elizabeth suggests the numbers of creative people in the 19th/20th century brought to their demise, be it fatal or otherwise, by the pressure of being perceived to have god-like powers of creativity and thought. A very interesting twenty minute presentation. 

I’ve been housemate hunting the last week or so.  I’ve come up with what I think are some pretty smart things to make the process easier.

1. Use a junk email address (this is a no brainer).  I used GMail.
2. Get a free voice mail number from Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral)
3. I set up 30 minute interviews with candidates using GenBook.
4. Using Gmail, set up keyword filters and labels

1. I think I can skip part one, this should be fairly obvious.  I used GMail, so much of this article is GMail specific.

2. With google Voice I can differentiate incoming calls based on if they’re known callers or not, and have different greetings based on several different groups.  Once a call comes in, I can take the call, send it to voice mail, listen in on the voice mail, or take the call and record it.  This is so handy since I don’t necessarily want to take every single call that comes in about a room.  This isn’t as big an issue this time around because this time I didn’t list the number on the Craigslist posting.  But even so, it gives me one more level of separation and screenability.  You can tell a lot about someone by how they sound over the phone and the kinds of messages they leave.  If they ramble on and on and repeat themselves.  If they leave out important information or sound like Eor from Winnie The Pooh.

3. The last time I did a housemate search, it was useful to setup 30 minute interviews with individuals so they could feel at ease instead of the cattle call meetings San Francisco is so famous for.  It worked fairly well but was troublesome for me to keep track of all the different candidates and when they were available and when they canceled appointments with me.  So this time I found a service called GenBook.  With GenBook I can specify what my “open hours” are, and how long appointments last for specific services.  I only have one “service” for my purpose: candidate interviews.  So that was simple.  I can then give screened candidates the public URL to my GenBook and they can schedule a time that works for them in the blocks I’ve set aside for interviewing.  GenBook then emails me to tell me someone has made an appointment.  Tat saves me a lot of hassle. Genbook also lets me automatically give them the address to the apartment upon successful appointment scheduling so I can keep it hidden from the masses.

4. The tool I find the most useful is GMail’s filters & labels.  I set up a bunch of labels for various demographic attributes that are preferred in our search.  I won’t tell you what they are because I don’t want anyone yelling discrimination or anything like that at me.  I have preferences for housemates and I’m going to filter.  We all do.  Get over it.

As I was saying.  After making demographic labels I set up a bunch of filters based on keywords that fit each label and automagically applies it.  For instance: I have a label called “Animals” because there aren’t any pets allowed in our flat.  That being stated in our Craigslist posting, people still inquire when they have a cute Mr. Kitty.  So I have a filter set up searching for words like “dog”", “puppy”, “cat”, “pet” and various pluralities thereof.  Anything that matches that gets automagically labeled as “Animals.”  I know these filters aren’t very intelligent, so I will go through those inquiries that have enough other qualifying attributes manually.  But if that’s the only label attached to an inquiry, I probably won’t even look at it.

It’s sort of like getting an executive summary.  With the high volume of inquiries in San Francisco, it can be very time consuming weeding through the chaff.  It’s not a perfect system, but helpful and a step in the right direction.

Are you bearing the weight of creative genius on your shoulders?  Or are you part of a collaboration with the daemons and geniuses of history?

I just watched a very interesting talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, at TED in Feb 2009.  She muses about how humans view creativity and the pressure that puts on the individuals channeling it.  Elizabeth suggests the numbers of creative people in the 19th/20th century brought to their demise, be it fatal or otherwise, by the pressure of being perceived to have god-like powers of creativity and thought. A very interesting twenty minute presentation. 

Dell’s new Adamo laptop. Available in Pearl and Onyx colors.  I know it’s sacrilege for me to even consider comparing this to an Macbook, but I do.  The OS is still Vista, or XP if you’re lucky, and maybe even Linux.  But I don’t care.  There are so very few really sexy PC laptops available.  It’s as pricy as a Mac too, which is sort of sad since you don’t get the sexy OSX on it too.  But for industrial designers, or anyone who needs to do serious 3D modeling, this is a great looking option.  And I bet you can get OSX to run on it if you really wanted too, though I can’t imagine why you’d bother.

Post from: Spencer Rhodes

Dell Adamo