Well, I'm still alive. I've been having some busy, emotional and sick weeks. Lots of stuff to do. Got the flu and then my stomach acted up again. (Yes, the flu in July...that was delightful...) My emotions feel like they're slowly wrenching through a meat grinder.

I saw The Dark Knight tonight at the Berlin theater - holy shit and a half. Being the Emo Chick that I am, I tend to measure movies by their emotional impact on me. If I leave the theater feeling like I've just visited an alien world, the movie worked. If I leave the theater with roiled emotions, the movie worked. I left that theater with both feelings tonight, and couldn't even drive straight home. I found myself frightened to drive through empty lands, as if someone might jump from behind or shoot at my car from a tree or something. Yeah...that movie did evil well.

It was pretty long though. I had trouble sitting still towards the end, especially because I couldn't put my feet up without kicking the guy in front of me in the head.

I think tomorrow I should relax at the cottage. I have so much to think about, so much to write about, so much I've been pushing to the back of my brain. I need to spend some time facing myself. And I need to spend time with my friends again.

That's it for now.

Thus, the saga <A HREF="http://www.drhorrible.com/act_III.html>comes to an end</A>.

While Dark Knight started this weekend the best limited series comic ever, The Watchmen, had this trailer come out.

It looks like it could be good. But Watchmen is all about the characters. I am hoping it can be great. Anything else will be sad.

Tonight was the last Billy Joel show at Shea. This concert was added after the demand from the first show, the one that I went to, the one that was supposed to be the "last show", proved to be more than expected

In honor of it being the last show, BJ had more guests:

Paul McCartney
Roger Daltrey
Garth Brooks
Tony Bennett
Steven Tyler

I got John Mayer at my show. John Mayer. Of the riveting, timeless hit "Your Body Is Your Wonderland" fame. Yeah, that John Mayer.


I should have had Paul!!!!

So after the previously mentioned Firefox crash, as I was nashing teeth & wailing, my phone rang. I was asked to come into for an interview. Ok, this would normally be a good thing. However... the gal couldn't or wouldn't tell me what the positions were. My spidey-senses just told me it wouldn't be worth anything. And I was right. Telemarketing. Bleh. At least it was close to home so I hadn't put too much effort into it. On the way home I stopped at an estate sale and scored about 20 old Playboys, going back to the mid-60's. Changed clothes and headed out to lunch with james_the_evil1. Did some errands than much delight at Hellboy2. More errands then hanging out at home.

I think I'm going to switch OS X GTD apps soon, as well as revising my GTD process based on what has and hasn't been working for me. I've been using iGTD, and it's just too cluttered and powerful for me. I want less features and more ease of use. There are some great things about it - it's free, and the developer is very productive, so it has advanced rapidly. But it doesn't give me a "Mind Like Water"

I first checked to see if LifeBalance, my old favorite, had gotten a facelift or an iPhone version. I used it for years, and what I love about LB is that it actually prioritizes for you. Basically, at every level of the project hierarchy (from goals down to projects) you can set importance, and then LB sorts tasks based on those, and on what you've done lately, in order to try to keep your total accomplishments balanced by area. I love having it tell me what to do, and being able to yank up & down priorities on projects based on changing importance. I've never found this in another task manager, yet it's really simple & intuitive.

Anyway, LB improves very slowly, and still doesn't have an iphone version, so forget it.

The two apps that sounded really good from reviews are Things and OmniFocus. Both have available, robust iPhone versions. Any comments from those who have tried them?

http://www.gearbits.com/archives/2008/07/inoneweekend.html

This past weekend, I participated in the inaugural InOneWeekend event, an attempt to jumpstart a new dot-com venture by getting 100 volunteers in a room over a weekend to design and build, from scratch, a new company. More on what IOW is can be found on the InOneWeekend website and in this story on Soapbox.

I've written up some thoughts on the process and overall experience and posted them on the IOW blog. Rather than replicate them here, I shall use the power of the Internet to offer you a link: Reflections on the IOW Experience

Those who know me in real life are going to have trouble believing me when I say this, but I managed to go on the TV show taping today and SHUT UP. 

Last night's Eddie Izzard show? So. Much. Fun! I love that he's basically just a huge dork with (despite his seemingly random rambling) an impeccable sense of comic timing. Seeing him live, and being a part of the audience he's playing off of, was a fantastic experience, and I'm really happy we managed to score tickets.

It was also great to run into so many people I know--or in some cases, didn't know until last night. On the way into the theatre I caught an attractive woman staring at me, and she came up to me to ask, "Is that an IGIGI dress?" We chatted briefly about IGIGI and my dress before Paul and I went inside to find our seats. I was cursing myself for not finding out her name when I got an amused text message from a mutual friend who'd noticed that we'd both posted to Twitter about our encounter (yes we are all giant dorks SHUT UP). It turns out we have quite a few friends etc. in common, and now I know her name. ;) Then once we sat down, I looked up to see a familiar face being seated across the aisle from us: my former Terraspring cow orker sledge! I totally blanked on his real name and still feel kinda bad about it (though in my defense, half the people I worked with at the 'Spring were named Jason or Jeff :P), but it was nice to see him again, and to finally meet the amazing (and adorable) Amanda. Then on the way out, we ran into aforementioned mutual friend and his crew, and spent 10 seconds saying Hi and trying to introduce everyone to everyone else before we had to run off to catch BART home.

My friends clearly have good taste in entertainment, among other things. ;)

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

We slept in, but as the sunlight bathed the mountains and cleared out the deer, cars once again ventured up and down the roads and the traffic noise eventually work us up through our open windows. We did the usual morning routine, snapped a few pictures (the scenery was actually quite nice from the outlook) and the hit the road.

Enroute again we stopped in the city of Sheridan for some quick shopping. I once again made a few more phone calls to local repair facilities in an effort to find someone to attend to our still ailing truck, but being the Saturday of the fourth of July weekend it quickly became clear that everybody was closed tight.

Anxious to get to the Mount Rushmore area we simply pressed on - the truck was running better now that we had descended from the high altitude, seemingly having an easier time making boost again with the now denser air. It was far from perfect, but it was performing much better now, so my fear that we actually had fairly serious engine problems started to fade away as it seemed that the problem might be nothing more then a partially blocked catalytic converter. We could deal with that later - the roads ahead were easy in comparison to what we just surmounted.

We made good time and arrived at the KOA Campground we chose to stay at in the early afternoon. We discovered upon arrival that this was actually the second largest KOA Campground in the entire KOA system, and despite being borderline stupidly expensive (Really, $75 a night for a campsite?) it did offer a great deal in the way of entertainment, from several pools, a small water park, hot tubs, water slides, and a large variety of activities.

We checked in for two nights and crashed for the rest of the day while the kids played. We would save the tour of Mount Rushmore itself for tomorrow.

I am fascinated by how productive I have been in my last days at Google. I get my stuff done quickly enough that much of the time, I'm waiting for other people. Yet I'm also spending way more time reading and sitting in the sun then usual. I take more frequent breaks, and have been spending less time in the office.

The key to the apparent paradox, as far as I can tell, is that I'm much more focused and wasting a lot less time. I have no need to appear or feel productive, so when I notice that I'm reading pointless work email, or news about Google, or any of the other things I do to look & feel like I'm doing Important Company Work...I stop. I either do actual work, or I go take a break (more often the latter). As a result, I have more energy, so when I am working, I can more easily force myself to work on what needs to be done, rather than what will be easy.

An interesting lesson. Reminds me of the Results-Only Work Environment, and Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, and the 80-20 rule.

How many people on my friends list live near to Saint Louis?

Or "How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world".

I just read this great PDF (google it, I'm posting on my phone). It really isn't about controlling the world, but about being a purpose-driven, unconventional, successful person. I liked it a lot. There's something really fun about reading stuff like this as I prepare to quit my job to do crazy things. Maybe it's a case of finding a source that will tell me what I want to hear, but there's a lot of "yay, I'm doing the right thing!"

Currently hacking on Entranced, drinking bad airplane coffee and watching the clouds drift by, seemingly just below us.

… finally going climbing again, and dragging Jennifer along

… completely in love with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

… giggling about this Craigslist post

… pleased with yesterday’s writing and work on our collaborative project and hoping to do more

… glad my punalua survived his Mexican adventure

Originally published at approximately 8,000 words. You can comment here or there.

I've had the Weezer blue album for years, and I enjoy it. Particularly the songs Buddy Holly and Surf Wax America. But there are also songs on the album I don't particularly care for, such as Undone, Say It Ain't So, and Only In Dreams.

Lately, I've been hearing Pork and Beans a lot on the radio, and I really like it. So I'm thinking I should buy some more albums.

Those of you who know more about music than I do, given the songs I listed that I like and dislike, which album or albums do you think I would be best off buying?

Also, here's the awesome video for Pork and Beans. (They disabled embedding, so I have to link.)

One is thanks to zudini. Cool. Here's the product page. I had a sort of similar setup at home: a recumbent exercise bike w/ a special laptop stand, but didn't end up using it much. The stand wasn't great, and biking is somewhat distracting.

Somehow, while I am not a fan of long, repetitive cardio (like jogging), I am a fan of long, repetitive cardio (like walking while working, AKA "Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis"). Maybe there's some cognitive dissonance, or maybe they are really different. I don't feel like thinking about it :).

[Where boffo reviews films he hasn't seen, so you don't have to.]

The Dark Knight: I didn't spooge over Batman Begins the way a lot of people did. I thought it was reasonably good, but not amazing. Even though even more people are spooging even more over this, I suspect the same will be true. Still, being reasonably good puts it way ahead of most movies to come out in the last few years, so you should see this one.

Mamma Mia!: A lame pointless plot with terrible pacing and non-characters you don't care about. The only reason to see this is if you totally lurve Abba songs, and even then, you'd be better off listening to a CD.

Space Chimps: Nothing terrible, and reasonably entertaining for children. But there's no reason for adults to see this on their own.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia Reiterates His Desire To Crush Secularism

( As heard on NPR )

The Periodic Table of Political Interference in Science

( Nifty design, disturbing content )

Minnesota Science Museum will be Closed during Republican National Convention

( Irony! )

Excellent partners balancing video, via reinaness

From thefridayfive

1. If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?

Probably not, as I have no way to really know how it would affect that person. I can't claim to know what alternate history is the optimal one.

2. Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?

If you pick the right life partner, then being friends for many years is harder. Friends don't get the benefit of living together and having a common daily life, so it requires active effort on both sides to maintain a friendship, and if you're busy, it's a very, very hard thing to do.

3. Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?

I kinda feel I'm guilty of that in a lot of ways. It's not that I intentionally "walk away" from people, but the problem is that I am so endlessly busy that I feel like a failure in maintaining my friendships. When you're constantly treading water on your own things, it doesn't leave a lot of time to give your friends the attention they deserve, and it makes it look like I don't care.

4. If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?

It'd depend on the truth and the lie, I guess. If it's the sort of thing where I think my friend needs to hear the truth or if the truth would make my friend a better person, then I'd tell the truth. If it's something irrelevant such as whether or not a particular outfit looks good on my friend, then I'd probably not say much of anything.

5. Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?

Generally, I'd rather have a civilly worded painful truth. I'm a big fan of living in the real world.

So a couple of days ago, joreth, David, and I went to see the movie "Hancock."

This isn't actually a post about the movie; it's a post about transhumanism, human dignity, and the inevitability of death. Hang on for a bit; I'll get to that, I promise.

The movie is surprisingly good. I expected a kind of "Airplane!"-esque send-up of superhero movies, but that's not what it is at all. It's a thoughtful, and in some places surprisingly sweet, story. And it does something I've never seen a superhero movie do before; it makes characters with superhuman abilities (flying, immunity to bullets, super strength, all the usual ones) human.

One interesting twist is that the main character, Hancock, never ages.



And that's pretty cool. In fact, I'd take a write-off on all the other superhero powers for that one. Which is good, because it's the only superhero power that doesn't violate those pesky laws of physics, and the only superhero power we're actually getting close to in the real world.

To me, the value in this seems like a no-brainer. And yet, the majority--by large margin--of folks I talk to don't want it. And I find hat kind of interesting.

---

When i talk about living forever, most of the people I talk to, at least outside the transhumanist community, react with varying degrees of shock and horror. "But why would you want to do that?" is the most common response, by a mile.

Now, it seems to me the answer to this question is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. Before I go into that, though, I think it's probably a good idea to clear up what "live forever" means. That phrase can sound a bit scary, and seems to carry connotations of a kind of involuntary immortality to many folks.

When I talk about "immortality," perhaps it would be better to say that I think death should be optional. I'm not talking about forcing people to live who don't want to; I'm talking about changing the inevitability of death. Death should be an option to folks who want it, but it should not be compulsory.

I think that I may stop talking about "immortality" and instead start talking about "making death optional." It might address some of the mental images that "immortality" conjures up with respect to a burdensome and unwanted life.

It's also important to make clear that I'm talking about healthy life, as well. Any reasonable approach to solving the problem of death begins with solving the problem of aging. Life extension as an ever-increasing period of enfeeblement is a non-starter. For the purposes of radical longevity, what I'm talking about is a cessation of aging such that human beings have an indefinite lifespan with no upper limit, and that we will spend that time in healthy, strong bodies.

---

This kind of immortality, a life where people simply don't age, is not the same thing as superhero, immune-to-bullets-and-everything immortality. If we solve aging, which is a biological process that operates like all other biological processes and is therefore subject to change, that's what we will have.

As it stands now, we stop self-repairing and start falling apart in our mid 20s, and it's all downhill from there. Conquering aging means keeping the physical strength and health of a 20something indefinitely. Which, honestly, doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

A person immune to the ravages of old age would still not be immune to death; accident, violence, and other misadventure is perfectly capable of ending even a 25-year-old's life. It simply means that person no longer has a cap on the maximum time he can live, if he so chooses.

And that's really what it's all about. Choice.

Right now, we have no choice. The maximum possible human lifespan is somewhere around 120 years, if we make it that far, and that's it.

This has been the reality of human existence for a very long time, and we've built entire philosophies around that reality. "Death gives life meaning," we're told. (What a load of rubbish! If I burn down your house, is that destruction the only thing that gives your house value?) "Death provides dignity," we're told. (Nonsense; decrepitude and death are among the least dignified parts of our existence. It is our choices, our freedom to make ourselves what we choose, that informs our dignity and our value. Anything which reduces our freedom to choose for ourselves what we want to be, including the inevitability of death, reduces human dignity.)

---

If you go into the doctor's office, and he tells you that you have a bacterial infection, which will slowly grow progressively worse until it kills you painfully, then offers you an antibiotic pill that will completely eradicate the infection, I bet you'll take it. Even if you don't fancy the thought of living forever.

There's an important point in that. Even folks who don't much want to live forever still probably don't want to die today. Or tomorrow. Someday, perhaps, if that "someday" is held in the abstract; some future time when things no longer seem interesting. But not today.

And that's the point. A solution for aging puts the power to choose in your hands. Old age forces your hand; you don't get the choice to see your grandkids graduate from school, or to celebrate your fiftieth anniversary...the choice is made for you. And I don't see how that benefits anyone.

---

Now, some people have asked me why I would even want an extended lifespan in the first place. "Wouldn't you get bored?" I've been asked. "Wouldn't you eventually become too depressed at seeing everyone close to you die?"

The second question is easy. Presumably, if medical tech existed that could stop me from aging, it could stop the people around me from aging too.

The first question is a bit more baffling. Bored? With all the things going on in the world, all the time, who would ever be bored?



I think there's an idea lurking in the subtext of that objection; namely, the sense that the future is just like the present, only longer.

Which is silly. One only needs to look at how much American society has changed in the last century to see that isn't true. Within the lifetime of folks still alive today, we've gone from a largely agrarian society to a post-industrial society, with detours through powered flight, manned space exploration, and widespread electrification. A person born in 1900, in a one-room house with a dirt floor, has seen the advent of industrialization, the popularization of the automobile, manned moon landings, the taming of Niagra Falls, and the iPhone.

Who has time to be bored?

---

And that aint nothin'. Technology today, as interesting as it is, isn't qualitatively different from the technology of the Victorians. We still make stuff by starting with a bloody great lump of stuff and whacking bits off, pounding, molding, stamping, cutting, and otherwise hacking away at the stuff until all that's left is the bits we want.

Which is a wasteful, inefficient way to go about doing it. Smacks of stone knives and bearskins, really.

But what we're closing in on is the ability to make stuff from the ground up, one atom at a time. And when that happens...jackpot.

Windows made of diamond (because carbon is cheap and easy to work with). Skyscrapers grown from a single metal crystal. Efficiency which allows the entire world, including those parts of it currently mired on poverty, to live at the same standard of living as us decadent Westerners, without imposing additional burdens on the earth's resources or energy supply. Molecular assembly changes the name of the game completely.

Who has time to be bored?

And with that comes changes to all the assumptions we make about the Way Things Work. Many of the objections to improved longevity rest on assumptions that aren't necessarily going to be valid in thefuture; you can't anticipate the future by projecting current truths on it.

"But what about overpopulation?" I'm asked. Well, what about it? There's a close connection between population growth and technological sophistication; post-agrarian societies have lower population growth than agrarian societies, because children are no longer needed to work the farms and care for enfeebled elders.

"But don't we have to die to make room for the next generation?" I'm asked. No, we don't, and thank you very much for implying that my life, and your life, and the lives of all the people who are here today are worth less than the theoretical lives of people who don't even exist yet.

"But won't longer life put more strain on the earth's resources?" I'm asked. This assumes a continuation of the exponential population growth, when even now in the United States we actually have negative population growth, with immigration being what keeps the sum total population increasing. As lifespan increases, birth rate decreases; and, as I said before, nanotech manufacturing offers high standard of living with dramatically smaller environmental costs.

And if you find all that implausible, imagine what a person born in 1900 would say about owning a device that fits in your pocket, lets you talk to anyone in the world, and uses a network of satellites placed in earth orbit by rockets to help you find the easiest way to drive from your house to your friend's house on the other side of the country.

---

Why do I want to live forever? Because things now are better than they were in 1900, and things in 1900 were better than they were in 1462. Because the future is an interesting place, and I want to see it. Because death should be optional, not mandatory. Because the encroachment of old age and death is the ultimate insult to human dignity. Because we are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself, and that means that every single one of us has incalculable value. Because every death is a tragedy, and we have lost sight of that. And in the end, because I see us not for what we are now, but for what we have the potential to become, and we have potential that is beautiful beyond all imagination.

HELL YES:

San Francisco smokers are already banned from lighting up inside restaurants, bars and public buildings. Now Supervisor Chris Daly is proposing tougher restrictions, including no smoking in taxicabs, at outdoor cafes, in lines at the ATM, at farmer's markets and within 20 feet of the entrance to businesses.

The city's Department of Public Health says there's no safe level of second-hand smoke. "There's been research that shows the exposure in outdoor areas. The levels can be as toxic as indoor levels," said Alyonik Hrushow from the San Francisco Health Department.

Smokers may feel like pariahs in this city, but according to the American Lung Association, San Francisco is behind other cities including Belmont, Berkeley and Ross when it comes to trying to limit second-hand smoke.

This will be a slight hassle for us at the club, since we'll have to make people move farther down the block to smoke, but that's fine with me, because I find it absolutely disgusting to have to walk through that gauntlet of stench on the sidewalk in front of the exit door.

You're welcome to smoke, and to play with your own poop. Just keep your smoke, and your poop, off of me.

The temptation at any writing workshop is to write well. Which means, generally, that you're leaning on your strengths - whether that's your beautiful prose, your snappy dialogue, or your fine-toothed plotting.

My advice? Fail. Fail miserably.

Take something you're not good at and write a whole piece around that. If you're a prose person, write something actiony with explosions. If you're great at characterization, write a mood piece. Take your weakest elements and write a story that wraps them all up into one bundle, doing that terrifying high-wire act of I know this isn't working, but dammit I'm going to try.

There's no better place to fail. Yeah, you'll have a critique round where you miss out on the kudos, the feeling of accomplishment as people go, "Wow, I like that about your stuff." But good workshops will tell you where you fell short, explaining what tools you were lacking to make this work... Which in turn will tell you how to turn that weakness into - well, not necessarily a strength, but something you can lean on a little heavier in future writings. Another arrow in your quiver.

Let go of your schtick. Reach for the new. Experience the growth pains as you build new muscle.

Be free.

I figure I'll send it Monday.  Feedback welcome, particularly suggestions on trimming words, I think it's a little too long:

Subject: Leaving to work on grand visions of better government

Greetings.  I'm leaving Google next week, and before I go I wanted to thank you for building such an incredible company.  The amazing people, user focus, long-term vision, and "win-win" viewpoint have been truly inspiring.

I'm leaving because I've been given an opportunity to work on my own grand vision: building new city-states in international waters so that people can experiment with a variety of social, political, and legal systems.  While it is a very different field, I see this as a "Googley" goal: I want to make government more of a competitive, long tail industry, with a variety of providers of different sizes serving different niches.  More like the web, less like the OS industry.

If you're interested, I would love to talk about this idea with you, and perhaps get some feedback based on your experience in bringing visions of a better world to fruition.  I'll be here until July 29th, and after that can be reached at patri@seasteading.org.  For background, check out our Intro, FAQ, or press coverage by Wired, Ars Technica, and Gizmodo.

Either way, thanks for the inspiration, and for a great 3.5 years!