Music: Soundtrack for a Road trip

Diane and I drove up to Dallas for Anju & Brad's wedding last weekend. We left in the afternoon and returned the same night: a lot of driving for one day. But the tunes and conversation made it a great trip. Here is what we listened to:
Coldplay - Parachutes: I had forgotten what a wonderful album this was. More mellower than their follow-up Rush of Blood to the Head. Chris Martin's vocals get under your skin.
New Order - Get Ready: Ah, all time favorite band. Their latest cd from 2002. Back into good form. First heard it when I was driving up from San Diego to LA with my cousin Parisa.
Verve - Storm in Heaven: I have written about this album before. It was 2AM when this was on - perfect soundtrack for driving through the bleak landscape around Waco - swirling guitars.
Underworld - A Hundred Days Off: Another one of my fave bands. I have written about this album too before.
Stereolab - Dots & Loops: Top 5 band. This was the first album I heard of theirs (thanks Darrell). Great place to start if you have not heard this band.
Dandy Warhols - Welcome to the Monkey House: I heard them first at the Austin City Limits music festival last year. What a great live show. I went straight to the Waterloo Records tent and bought two of their cds. This one has a very 80s new wave flavor.

Art (Photos): Subhankar Banerjee

My friend Clint sent me a link to Banerjee's photos after he saw my Deep Eddy photos. I am flattered. Here are some of Banerjee's photos from the Arctic Refuge Series. I remember reading about him in the NY Times - I think there was some controversy over the captions that went along with the photos in a Smithsonian exhibit.

Music: Live Music this week

On Tuesday I saw Stereolab at La Zona Rosa. What a great show! I love their music - not sure what to call it - avant-rock? And they did an amazing job of performing it live. Latetia Sadier, the lead singer, has such presence. Stereolab is definitely on my Top 5 list of best bands. And this show confirmed it. Also, La Zona is definitely one of the best places in town for live shows. They also get some great bands there.
Last night I saw Blonde Redhead. Opening for them was Secret Machines from Austin. Both were pretty good. It was at Emo's which I had never been to before. Good venue. Tickets were so inexpensive. I am seeing Zykos there next week. They are opening for TV on the Radio. I discovered Zykos, a local Austin band, when I was streaming tunes from Epitonic a couple weeks ago. Right after work I went to Waterloo and picked up their cd. They have a great sound, a bit unpolished, but great potential. I am looking forward to seeing them live.

Technology: Gmail

Just signed up for Gmail. It will be interesting to see if it is any improvement over my yahoo account. Using web mail is so much more cumbersome that using Groupwise or Outlook. I hope gmail will be an improvement.

Music: Record Stores

I go to Waterloo Records (or Video) at least once a week. The best thing about it is that you can listen to any cd they have in stock and they have a 10 day exchange policy. Waterloo is as Austin fixture.
Yesterday, I found another record store: 33 Records CDs on Guadalupe north of UT. Not a wide collection of stuff, but a focus on indie stuff - a lot of which I have been listening to lately.

Art (Photos): Deep Eddy Photo Blog is up

I got my Deep Eddy Photo Blog up and running about two weeks ago. I am using My Expressions - a blogging tool built by and for visual artists. It is pretty inexpensive. Not super easy to use, but it is good enough.

Zeitgeist: Mouse Potato

I heard this word mentioned a couple weeks ago to describe people who surf the web a lot: mouse potato. That's me! I rarely watch TV, but web-stuff - I can spend hours skipping from one site to the next.

Technology: Cool Tools For Change

I attended this very engaging and interesting seminar last Friday and learned about all these useful and no/low cost open source tools that non-profits can use to enhance their web presence and improve how they operate. A lot of the things I learned can be applied to my current work on the Intranet Redesign Project. We will experiment with some of these open source Content Management Systems as an alternative to the $1/2 million cost of one from a traditional vendor.
This seminar was organized by students at the UT LBJ School of Public Affairs. Here is their website: CommunityNetworking.org
I am so pumped. I love learning new things and especially love learning about tools that democratize technology.

Technology: Gmail announced

I love google. Today they announched that they are launching an email service: gmail. Here is an article. Can't wait to try and use it.

Music: A fellow New Order & Underworld Fan

These are two of my favorite bands and I found a fellow fan who describes them perfectly. I love how New Order combines guitar and synth - old and new. And I love the energy and sound textures of Underworld.
I also found some interesting content on his website Design by Fire. On the home page today is a swipe at Jakob Nielsens' most recent Alertbox.

Books: Typography

Someday I might have a book and this will be useful in designing it. I prepare reports and documents at work every day and this would be helpful.
The Elements of Typographic Style

Music: There is something as a free and legal music download

Download music for free from Epitonic.comc. Completely legal and a great way to discover cutting edge new music. Man, this is a good day for finding new stuff on the web.

Music / Technology: GNOD: Global Network of Dreams

I am always trying to find new bands that I like. How about this nifty tool called Gnod that lets you put in some bands you like and then will suggest others that you might like. It is a self learning system that learns as more and more people input what they like and don't like. Pretty cool stuff.
Google Sets does something similar, but there is no human input. It suggests what you might like based on google's technology.

Art (Photos): Bombay through young eyes

Some great B&W pictures of Bombay taken by young teens.

Technology: Experiential Computing

Garnter interview with Dr. Ramesh Jain about experiential computing.
The Gartner Fellows: Ramesh Jain's Interview

Musings on technology

I came across a great article (from 2000) about what a Blog is and why they are so great. It is written by Kevin Kelly, a technology visionary - co-founder of Wired magazine, editor of the Whole Earth Review and currently, publisher of a neat website called Cool Tools (which I read about in Monday's NY Times).
So, why has blogging become so popular. Self publishing is appealing - and blogging let's you have your say and share it with anyone is the world for free. The web is wide and deep, and blogging is a way to share this diversity with others. The links you add in your blog take your readers deep into the web and show them your web neigborhood.
I am really enjoying being a blogger. Besides sharing my thoughts on various topics, it will be my personal archive of all the interesting stuff I come across on the web. My favorites folder does not have space for all these random sites I come across. Blogging allows me to put them in context with what I was thinking/doing at that point in time when I came across the site.
Today, I returned to a site I found a few weeks ago - Joel on Software, to see what new things were on there. I was thinking about software development and some of the issues that I face as a project manager on development projects. Joel had a great recommendation for a book - Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. A true gem of a book. You just have to read the table of contents (see link) to get a sense for some of the pitfalls of any development project. Like: The most imprortant factor in software work is the quality of the programmers. I totally agree. Developing software is hard. And a majority of people are not made to do it. Sure, you can dabble in it. My first semester at KU, I was a computer science major. My first class in programming was disaterous. Thank goodness. If it was good, I would have plodded away at it. But I was doing so badly, that I decided to change my major. I love technology and I would like to always work in the technology sector. But I am not a programmer. I don't think like one. And when you come across a talented programmer, you realize why your efforts are mere dabbling.
Here is an interesting approach to redesiging a website - Harpers.org (great magazine). I came across this article while I was on the XPlane Xblog - a good site for information design and architecture. The Semantic web - hmmm - I need to read this article a few times, but my first impression is that Paul Ford has found a powerful way of relating and linking content on a site. Here is a fictional piece by him about how the semantic web could turn out.

Back in Blog
I am a blogging perfectionist. That is my excuse for not having an entry for alsmost three weeks. I want each entry to be a perfect capsule of comment and links. And as busy as I have been over the last couple weeks, I have not had the time to mull over each post.
My other excuse: I was in Phoenix for thanksgiving and my cousin's computer had dial-up access, which was soooo slow compared to the broadband access I am used to at home and work. Spoiled.
Doggie is still with me. My brother Mimo has named her Husku. She looks like a small husky. I have no idea what breed she is. Mimo's girlfriend has named her Goosfand Sag - Farsi for swan dog - she finds the names of animals in Farsi amusing. I still call her Doggie.
I will be on my way to Bombay in less than 24 hours. Three and a half weeks of down-time, family-time, friend-time. I am going to read Tolkien's Return of the King. I only read the first few chapters of Fellowship - the first book. But I would really like to read through a full book before I come back and watch Return of the King. I will also carry along The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (click the link to read the review by one of my favorite reviewers - Michiko Kakutani of the NY Times).
I will also have a whole load of unread New Yorkers that have been sitting on my kitchen table. There are so many good articles that I don't want to miss. I try each week to read the Comment section, the poems and cartoons. And then over time, I try to get to the longer articles.
I am debating whether I will take along my book on Information Architecture that I began reading a few weeks ago to get myself up to speed for my current project (redesiging our Intranet). Have I told you - I am really enjoying this project! I have always wanted to work on a web project. I was an early adopter of the web and am so in love with it. You know how people say that they watch too much TV. Well, I spend a lot of time on the web and don't watch TV. Yesterday as I was driving home from work I was thinking, you know, I can't judge people for how much TV they watch. I spend a lot of time on the web and that is not particularly "better" that watching TV.
Anyhow, I digress. I am looking forward to all the work we are going to put into redesigning our Intranet. I did some Usability testing this week (go here for the Guru of usability) and it was so great to get feedback on our early designs. There were a number of small changes and adjustments we made that has improved our design. We are going to do a lot more usability testing as the project progresses, and if anything, it will help us develop a site that will be useful as well as easy to use.
As I have written before, I am all for breaking down heirarchies, and the democratic sharing of information is one way to do it. Web based techologies allow the sharing of information in a powerful way. The web is not a bunch of pages and links - it is about the connections and the relationships between people and things. And a well designed intranet with good content and tools will help break down some organizational barriers and improve productivity here at LCRA.

Doggie
A lost dog showed up on my doorstep on Saturday. Diane and David were here helping me trim trees and rake up dead leaves (which I refer to as "natural mulch" in the spirit of what I call my "no maintenance yard"). We let her into the back yard since she kept walking into the street almost getting run over a couple of times. Well, she is in the house now, lying on the floor next to me as I type. She is a small white dog - sweet and gentle - with a dark brown bandit like mask on her face. I am not sure what kind of dog she is. She has no collar but has been well cared for with good teeth and trimmed toe nails. I call her doggie. I have not named her yet because I don't know if I am going to keep her. I have put up signs all over the neighborhood, but no one has called yet. I seem to think that she is not far from home, but I may be wrong.
Although I love dogs and would love to have one someday, I am not sure if I am ready to take doggie in. She is sweet and I am already falling in love with her, but I do hope her owners call and get her. I am sure they miss her company terribly.

Presentations: To Point or to PowerPoint
Even the name of the product is hyperbole. And yes, I have used it often, but have realized more and more how limited slide presentations can be. Five or six often vague bullet points on each page - what a waste of paper. Two pages of a well written document is richer with information, and since it is written with full sentences, will probably make sense when it is read a few days later - even by someone who was not at the presentation. Sure, bullet points are a powerful way to make a point (no pun intended). But they also are an effective way to hide what really needs to be said.
Ed Tufte, the guru of information design, rails against PowerPoint in a 28 page essay and in a poster (a one slide poke in the face of the product). If you would rather save your $7, here is a summary of the essay done ironically, in the style of a PowerPoint outline. It is titled aptly - PowerPoint Remix.
PowerPoint works well when you have graphical information you want to share. For example, if you are presenting screen shots of various web page designs. When you have text to present, hand out a written document using full sentences. You will save paper and your audience will leave the room better informed. As this short article states, PowerPoint is not evil, people who misuse it are.

Friday Night DVD: Adaptation
I thought of renting the extended version of LOTR2: The Two Towers, but was not up for a long watch. So - Adaptation - with Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.
This exchange in the movie is the takeaway. Susan Orleans (Streep), the New Yorker writer is doing a story on John Laroche (Cooper), the orchid theif:
John: Do you know why I like plants. Coz they are so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
Susan: But it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. You know, they just move on to whatever is next. For a person, adaptation is almost shameful. It is like running away.
I bet John would beat Susan in a game of poker, even if he was dealt a bad hand.