# Thu Apr 29 12:04:07
Organizing / Procrastinating
I'm working on arranging my various blogs, moblogs, work history, etc. into something somewhat more organized. Eventually I hope to import everything from the Vacationland blog, so they will all be viewable under the Vacationland category of this new blog. For now, I'll just keep posting and assume that will work later.

I'm not going to have any particular theme or plan for this blog. I'll just post whatever I want when I feel like it.

# Thu Apr 29 12:06:11
"Your call is important to us"
Apparantly, a good way to be put on hold for five minutes by the Maine department of unemployment is to tell them your previous job was "Webmaster" (I specifically went with what I assumed was a fairly common, if not entirely accurate, term)

# Thu Apr 29 12:10:22
My life, 2.5 years ago...
In this lean economy, are you looking for ways to cut expenses?

# Tue May 04 11:46:54
LUNCH
Although lobster rolls are the official lunch of Maine, I first came across them while living in New York. Out on the edge of Long Island there is a place called LUNCH, famous for its lobster rolls. I never tried them there, but pretty much everything is good and it is a fun place to stop on your ride out to Montauk/the beach/Billy Joel's house.

I just picked up their new book, the lobster roll, and can highly recommend it (the title recipe starts off "...10 pounds live lobsters").

# Sat May 08 20:01:47
Close Enough
I'm still working on integrating the moblog and want to adjust some formatting, but I am moving this public for now. So, hi :)

# Mon May 10 12:53:34
Hi, Robot.
Let's start the week off right, with a robot movie.

# Wed May 12 17:38:32
On a Map Quest?
Looking for a mapping tool that adds population, climate and other data to the maps? And then lets you customize the maps? Check out Map Machine over at National Geographic. Hours of time-wasting fun!

# Wed May 12 19:39:46
Moblogging Not Immune to People Getting Bored With It, Study Shows
A recent study on moblogging trends is making the rounds. The study shows the trend sending fewer photos the longer you moblog. At this stage in the game, I don't find it too surprising. The hardware tools (in the US) are relatively primitive (low-res cameras with poor UI), the backend tools are often ad-hoc or first generation code, and the integration between the two is relatively non-existant.

Whenever I get a new gadget, I play with all its features for a bit, and those that I keep using those I find easy/fun/useful and eventually drop the ones that are a pain to use if I don't desperately need them. I can use IRC from my phone right now, but right now it is not worth the trouble. For me, moblogging photos from my hiptop is easy enough that I'm still doing it almost two years after I started.

But these early users and experiences (good and bad) will help hone the tools for the next set of users. And eventually the pictures will be high quality enough, the backend tranparent enough and the applications intriguing enough that taking and somehow using pictures from cameraphones will be as commonplace as email is today. Although it will have its roots in moblogging, it's doubtful it will be called that or even bear much resemblance to moblogging as we know it today. But whatever form this picture augmented reality takes, I'm willing to bet it will be fun and fascinating.

# Sun May 16 21:08:21
Bugshots
Some great pics of the Brood X cicadas from Mike Lee.

# Thu May 27 09:37:18
Away From Keyboard
Hey there, sorry to be so absent. I was down in NY for awhile for a wedding and this week have been lining up some new digs. Details forthcoming. As always, peek in at the mobile blog for reports from the road if it seems quiet here.

# Thu Jun 10 10:15:48
Power Trip
So as part of the process of moving to a new town, I had to switch to a new power company (Kennebunk, where I was living, has its own little power company (with cheaper power)). While on hold with them several times while I tried to ascertain if they or my new landlord had failed to flip some sort of switch that would in fact give me power, I was struck by what seems to be their philosophy: "Hey, why not use even more power?"

PG&E in California may not be a model corporate citizen, but at least they have little ads and such that encourage people to conserve power (turn off lights when you're not using them, ditch that extra fridge in the garage keeping your beer cold, etc.). In contrast Central Maine Power let me know all the ways I could use more power. Did I know about the health benefits of running a dehumidifier in my home 24/7? They had a friendly doctor explain it to me. This was followed by a safetly lecture about porch lights. Included was the chain-letter sounding story of one customer who questioned the wisdom of leaving her porch light on every night so she turned it off — and on that very night her child's bicycle was stolen!

There is more of the same on their website:

"Ever thought about getting an air conditioner? Now's a better time than ever to make an investment in cool and healthy comfort."

"Use an energy-efficient air conditioner for a healthy and comfortable night's sleep"

# Mon Jun 14 20:44:51
Carb-Filled With Extra Carbs On The Side!
Perhaps you are someone who happens to like Krispy Kreme doughnuts. For your next potluck event, why not wow the crowd with Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding with Butter Rum Sauce? From the title alone, we see a triad of goodness: Krispy Kreme, Pudding, Rum. And prepping it is easy:

2 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  (not evaporated)
2 (4.5-ounce) cans fruit cocktail
  (undrained)
2 eggs, beaten
1 (9-ounce) box raisins
1 pinch salt
1 or 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Butter Rum Sauce, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cube donuts into a large bowl.
Pour other ingredients on top of
donuts and let soak for a few
minutes. Mix all ingredients
together until donuts have soaked
up the liquid as much as possible.

Bake for about 1 hour until center
has jelled. Top with Butter Rum Sauce.

Butter Rum Sauce:
1 stick butter
1 pound box confectioners' sugar
Rum, to taste

Melt butter and slowly stir in
confectioners' sugar. Add rum
and heat until bubbly. Pour over
each serving of Krispy Kreme
Bread Pudding.

I reprinted the recipe so you can go ahead and make it without looking at the calorie info ;)

In other Krispy Kreme news, I had a Key Lime doughnut today. It sort of tastes like a key lime surrounded by cake exploding in your mouth. That is to say, fantastic.

# Sun Jun 27 21:37:54
Driving mobile phone data usage with silly activities
is actually big business. Data traffic is data traffic, no matter what the content is. Sure, we'd like to think that the mobile phone community equipped with camera phones will lead to a smart mob of on-the-scene reporters and political activists working to make the world a better place, but in the end we know that most people are taking pictures of various body parts while drunk and sending it out to everyone in their address book.

This article in The Age (reg reqd) shows that Virgin Mobile gets this. Their latest effort is something called Ming Mong, which is supposed to be a sort of visual Ping Pong thing, where you try to out-clever your opponent with photos and captions.

What I like best about this campaign is the elaborately fabricated backstory and supporting materials that go along with it.

For more or less the same reason I set up things like Phortune Tellers - fun little things to do with your phone cam when bored. Not many takers yet. But hey, Virgin Mobile if you could use some more ideas, I am available for hire :)

# Thu Jul 01 20:17:20
Basil Lottery
You take certain things for granted when living in the SF Bay Area. Apparantly, one of those things is basil. As noted elsewhere, in California, basil is a vegetable while everywhere else it is an herb. That, I can deal with. What I find more difficult here in Maine is what is known (by me (and now you)) as the great basil lottery.

Basically, if you decide to make any sort of meal where basil is a vital component, you are taking a risk because every major supermarket carries exactly one (1) unit of basil per store per day. You better have a backup recipe in mind before you leave for the store, because there is a good chance there just won't be any basil. I've started affixing little "Thank you for playing, try again next time" stickers to the back of the basil-holding containers, to at least and try and capture the fun and excitement of a traditional game of chance.

This does at least explain why there are usually quite a few major chain supermarkets within 6 miles of each other (often times from the same chain). They think they have customer data showing people like to shop at all of them. In reality, it is just a handful of people driving around looking for basil so they can make a decent pasta dish.

The part that really kills me is that one of the chains advertises that going to their store is an adventure because you discover crazy new things like meter-long aloe leaves (basket of at least half a dozen) and giant sticks of raw sugarcane (special display case of ten). I guess basil isn't adventurous enough for them.

# Thu Jul 15 19:50:41
Hi, Robot
If you are not inclined to catch the opening of I, Robot today (and I haven't heard anything that would incline me that way), here are a handful of handy robot movie links:

NEC Papero (my favorite)

ASIMO movies

More ASIMO

cat + dog + aibo

must. kill. aibo.

aibo vs. thunder lizard

Qrio

USC robots

No movie for this one, but I must include the Hello Kitty robot

# (1) Sun Jul 18 19:12:27
Again with the robots
So, as another robot-related diversion from the release of I, Robot (see previous entry), I thought I'd start up a little robot limerick-writing competition. I'll kick things off with a terrible example that can only be improved upon:

There once was a robot named Aibo
Whose circuits were starting to fry-bo
he chased his pink ball
right into a wall
And promptly started to cry-bo

I've enabled comments for this entry so everyone can play along :)

# Wed Jul 21 13:14:58
Krispy Kreme Innovation Alert!
For those of you who can't eat your doughnuts quickly enough, now you can drink them:

Krispy Kreme Introduces Glazed Doughnut Frozen Beverage

Best quote from the article:

The Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company said it currently does not have plans to introduce low-carb versions of the new drinks.

# Fri Jul 30 13:58:37
Who needs a gun?
She fights crime...with her cameraphone! She's Keitai Deka! ("the cell phone detective")

"The keitai deka hurls her phone's charm across the room - lassoing the murderess before she can escape. Case closed!

# Mon Aug 09 13:30:47
over 21 million entries. at least 5 good ones!
The folks over at Eliyon claim to provide "the most comprehensive source of information on business professionals available." You would think a database with over "over 21 million executives" might be useful, until you actually, say, search it and find something like this:

Mike Popovic
Lofty Position of Vice President
Pig Exposure for Degeneracy

# Mon Aug 09 22:01:33
Art Skunks
Apparently[1], a sort of underground art-loving militia has formed in response to recent rampant vandalism against famous works of art in Rome. Whenever they catch someone attempting to vandalize something, they strike with they sort of non-deadly force favored by most riot police these days - most notably with a foul-smelling goo that sticks to its target for days (thus the "Art Skunks" moniker bestowed by the media). They are comprised of a core group of locals and are often assisted by various tourists who are aghast at the degree of vandalism taking place.

[1] well not really, but it makes a good story

# Tue Aug 17 11:07:43
The Back Shelves
Over at my moblog I have a few posts [one, two, three] from the back shelves of the kid section of the local library. I feel like I could poke around back there and read for weeks. And I've barely looked around the rest of the library. And this is a (perfectly nice for a town this sized) somewhat small library compared to most. Perhaps I should have taken up a career in the library sciences. I think I'd need a degree of some sort to get my head around a better way to re-arrange this children's section, because it could use some serious organization. The place does have an awesome exterior - I'll grab a pic later and throw it up on the moblog.

Speaking of the moblog, I'll be on the move for a while, so tune in over there for any updates, dear reader(s).

# Thu Sep 09 09:14:11
They'd like to buy your vote
Or get you to register to vote. Or raise awareness about voting. Or something. Whatever their reason, the people over at Hot or Not have launched the Vote or Not sweepstakes and are giving away $200,000 - $100,000 to the winner and $100,000 to the person who refers the winner. So while it is important that you go and sign up, it is even more important that you do so by following this link: http://mp3e6e.VOTEorNOT.org.

Also, hey, while you are there, you can register to vote if are not already registered. Even if you are not the type that usually votes, or aren't planning on voting this year you should go ahead and register. This way, if something inspires/infuriates you on Election Day, you at least have the option of going down and casting your ballot.

# Tue Sep 14 21:29:42
Picasso didn't low-level format his canvas - discarded painting recovered
Great article over at Salon about an entire painting (not just sketches) found under the "Rue de Montmartre". Thanks to x-radiographing, 500 pixel-per-inch scanning and the eyedropper tool of Adobe Photoshop there will now be an exhibit of the Rue de Montmartre and a digital representation of the painting under it.

Extrapolate this out a few decades: "Scientists were able to clone the famous author from some DNA found in an old museum exhibit, then read a previously unknown manuscript directly from the atoms in his brain."

Media are alive. They find ways of springing back to life after years of laying low.

# Wed Sep 22 08:00:11
Hiptop 2
I've been using it for a few months, but the hiptop 2 (in the form of the Sidekick II from T-Mobile) is officially available to the public today. Engadget sums it up nicely in this review.

As always, you can check out pictures I take with the phone over at my moblog.

# Wed Sep 22 09:33:55
Thinking my thoughts
A bit from a draft speech by David Weinberger caught my eye:

We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read, viewed or heard. An unpublished novel is about as meaningful and real as an imaginary novel. It needs its readers to be. But readers aren't passive consumers. We reimagine the book, we complete the vision of the book. Readers appropriate works, make them their own. Listeners and viewers, too. In making a work public, artists enter into partnership with their audience. The work succeeds insofar as the audience makes it their own, takes it up, understands it within their own unpredictable circumstances. It leaves the artist's hands and enters our lives. And that's not a betrayal of the work. That's its success. It succeeds insofar as we hum it, quote it, appropriate it so thoroughly that we no longer remember where the phrase came from. That's artistic success, although it's a branding failure.

This is very relevant to some thoughts I've had lately and a new site/project I am working on, and hope to launch sometime after Halloween and before Xmas :)

# Thu Sep 23 09:55:37
MIDIocre
If were ever in a trivia contest and got the question "what is the state song of Maine," and in a moment of panic bluffed "State of Maine Song" you would be totally correct!

"And tho' we seek far and wide
Our search will be in vain
To find a fairer spot on earth
Than Maine! Maine! Maine!"

Is that last "Maine!" really necessary?

There is also a MIDI file on that page that sounds like something you might hear while riding a carousel at the state fair. I'll have to dig around for an mp3.

Anyone have a favorite state song?

# Thu Sep 23 18:02:40
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
You want to spread your message, your idea, your words, your thoughts around the nation. Who better to help you than the USPS? They don't even have to know they are helping you. (quicktime w/ sound)

# Fri Sep 24 19:22:18
The Secret Lives of Barcodes
A post over at Boing Boing talks about a couple of toys that used bar codes as seed to create tribes of monsters and/or as a basis to do battle with other barcode-scanning toys.

I think it's a great idea, but I imagine when it came time to actually, you know, sell the toys, they weren't flying off the shelves. The problem being that it's hard to sell barcodes as something cool to a kid. And the names didn't exactly help. While an improvement on "Barcode Battlers", "Scannerz Commander" still had that lame "swap the s for a z and the kids won't know how tragically unhip we are" vibe about it.

Also mentioned in that post is "Monster Rancher" which was a step up, using music CDs as the seed instead of bar codes and having a better name, which explains why I at least vaguely recall hearing about it.

The next logical step is a system based on RFID tags. What's great here is that the kids don't ever have to know where the seeds/monsters/creatures originate. They'd unpack the device (some smallish RFID-aware blob, with a screen), from its box and instantly they'd be presented with a core group of seeds - input based on whatever RFID tags happened to be close enough when they activated the device. For a while, they'd be able to accept/reject potential inputs for a while. Eventually their core group would mature to the point they they had to actually defend themselves from new inputs. They wouldn't need to know it was the RFID tags creating the inputs, but they would learn quickly that everytime their parents dragged them into the GAP it would be like their core group was being attacked by the Borg.

That's just the first generation device. For the second generation, this functionality would be integrated into your cellphone.

Having typed all that in a stream-of-conscious moment, I must now retire from my day job and build this device.

# Tue Oct 05 11:14:45
Brrrr
Well, I broke down and turned on the heat for about an hour Sunday morning. The living room temperature was 49 degrees F when I woke up. On the plus side, at least it was October and I now know the heat works which is good since I have my parents coming to visit soon.

# Fri Oct 15 08:05:13
Close Encounter
Last week I spotted my first moose in the wild since moving to Maine.

I was driving home from work, rounded a bend, and braked hard since the moose was standing in my lane. After a few seconds he got bored and wandered off into the woods on the side of the road.

He was pretty small, as moose go, but still loomed quite large viewing it through the windshield.

Sorry, no pics - the camera was in the trunk and the cameraphone didn't make it out of my pocket in time.

# Fri Oct 15 08:12:43
Queen Mary 2
Last weekend, the QM2 made its way into Portland Harbor. As it happens, we had visitors in town, so we all made it down to the Old Port that night to see the giant ship lit up and watch the fireworks. Anyone on it had one of the best-ever views of Portland since there are no twenty-two story buildings around.

We also got over to the Fryeburg Fair, which is the kind of fair you (whereas I mean me, before moving to Maine) dont't really think exists anymore outside of old movies and books like Charlotte's Web. This was our second trip there and I highly recommend it if you are travelling through Maine in October.

Light blogging lately due to the aforementioned visitors and my working on yet another interweb personal project. Details on that next week.

# Fri Oct 22 07:08:11
What's in a Name?

# Fri Nov 12 18:26:29
Cool picture stuff
Oddly enough, in the past week, two of my pictures have been used professionally.

I was contacted by a graphic artist who wanted to use this picture for some company's holiday party invite. So there is a bit of extra pocket money.

Then, the local weekly paper used one of my pictures of a tree that was blown down and across a major road taking a telephone pole and some traffic signals with it (as moblogged here). It was a nice surprise to see it in print, considering they never answered my email or let me know they were going to use it. Also, they credited it as "Courtesy photo" but neglected to add the "by Mike Popovic". I guess they didn't think to look up at the FROM: line of my email. Good investigating there, American Journal editors.

# Fri Nov 12 18:36:50
My Stories Over at the New Creative Commons Library
I am happy and proud to have some of children's stories be included in the launch of the Creative Commons Library over at WINKsite.

Other authors in this project include Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig. No, I'm not sure how I got in on this either ;)

Along with being a cool project, the plan is for it to keep me writing and, just as importantly, publishing my stories on a somewhat regular basis.

It is also set up over at http://mediaarealive.com for those who prefer not to look at things through simulated cellphone browsers on your computer :)

It includes another blog for me to neglect, focusing on media-type stuff.

Enjoy! Any feedback is encouraged as always.

# Tue Nov 23 21:06:05
Boba Tea
Recently, we found some good Boba (or Bubble or Pearl Milk) Tea in Portland, which eventually led to this diversion of a project.

# Tue Nov 23 21:10:01
And They Say Videogames Aren't Educational
I picked up Tony Hawk's Underground 2 for an anniversary present. While playing the first level, it is possible for your skateboard to be set on fire. On seeing this, my daughter yelled "JUMP INTO THE WATER MOMMY!"

I am so proud :)

# Tue Dec 07 08:25:51
"A B Leet" - New Story
I have a new story, A B Leet, posted over at Media Are Alive.

© 2004-2006 mikepop.