Twitter has appeared in numerous blog posts recently. I thought Darren’s reasons for not Twittering intriguing. While I wouldn’t sign up with Plazes either, I don’t see Twittering as disclosing where I am all the time. There can be a definite TMI aspect to it. And yes, who needs another feed to read especially one at a tedious level of detail?

At first Twittering didn’t appeal to me, but after Ted signed up, I decided to try it too. The girls like Twittering on behalf of their pet guinea pig. It’s typing practice combined with pet diary. Good for composition, vocabulary and spelling as well as basic observation skills and lots of giggling. A little break to take in between long division and Julius Caesar.

I find Twitter refreshing: less is required of me. It’s a guilty pleasure, candy or even cheesy. Hey, I can even write about the proverbial cheese sandwich and not worry about boring or offending everyone: it’s an appropriate channel for material that may not be so appropriate for blog posts. I see it as an exercise – and challenge – in concise creativity, entertainment and expression, with the side benefit of some actual conversation, communication and relationship building. It’s fun. And as long as it’s fun, I’ll Twitter.

On Monday my new machine arrived: a 12″ PowerBook. [Elisabeth conveniently played with a piece of packing material while Ted took the picture!] It’s officially the first computer for me. The laptop I use now is a leftover from Ted’s consulting days. Before that, I shared Ted’s machine, getting up early so I could email.

This ThinkPad doesn’t have a CD drive and long ago reached its limits, constantly complaining about a lack of memory. I don’t ask much from my machine, but my meager requests can’t be satisfied in this situation. Although it is a laptop, it is not easily portable: no battery life and no built-in wireless card make it difficult at conferences. It’s time to say goodbye. We’ve been waiting for Tiger to arrive so I could depart from this dysfunctional relationship.

However, I am not writing this post from my PowerBook. Ted has commandeered my new computer until his machine returns from the repair shop. I hope to have it back within a week or two.

My main goal at the moment is to prepare the PowerBook for Gnomedex. Already I see work ahead of me. Transferring my PowerPoint slides into Keynote produced an unsatisfactory result. It appears that I will need to locate the original 80+ pictures in my presentation and import them again into my Powerbook. As with all changes, there is the initial investment in training. Creating the picture at the top of this post took longer than I imagined in iPhoto.

So far though I’ve enjoyed using the PowerBook. It’s vibrant and fun. Already I have a list of ideas what I want to do with it. The high school and college computers I used were Macs. When we married, Ted brought his Mac into our marriage for a while before investing in his first Windows machine. I’m looking forward to being back with Apple again. It’s time for change!

The magazine has a masculine feel to it. The ad on the back implies that the Make reader would fantasize about creating a shapely robotic woman. As I had the page of contributors open on the table, my six year old daughter glanced across and declared “Four men and one woman!” But Make doesn’t succumb to Ikea’s failings: there are women featured in some of the photos (even a girl in one?) and female authors such as Dori Smith (her first paragraph is especially good).

The highly-detailed technical sections were difficult for me to understand, especially while supervising three children over lunch, but I enjoyed a number of articles, including Bruce Sterlings’ piece on flintknappers, Merlin Mann and Danny O’Brien on Yak Shaving and Mark Frauenfelder’s description of ecto.

Reading the magazine, I thought it would be fun to do some of the projects with Ted. I like working together with him. Make would make a great date night.

After I wrote this, I read Paul Boutin’s review at Slate.com

If you are just starting to get into camping, my advise would be to get as little as possible. Part of camping fun is learning about what you need for the next trip.

He also shared a list of essentials. This tip I found curious If you enjoy hiking, you would already have the right shoes and cloths. If you don’t, don’t get any so you won’t have to hike. Hmmm. Fortunately the recommended bigger car probably the most expensive item mentioned, we already own…

While flipping through a recent L.L.Bean catalog today I saw something that would be fun to take along on these camping trips: UCO Ice Cream Ball.

Dip into a sweet, cold bowl of homemade ice cream after a long day of hiking or on a hot day at the beach. Fill the bottom of this durable, lightweight Lexan® plastic ball with ice and rock salt, add ice cream ingredients to the top and just shake, pass or roll the ball around your campsite. In 20 minutes, scoop out about a pint of soft serve. Ice cream recipes included.

Ted was less than enthused when I showed him the bright blueberry ball on the catalog pages, but since my lactose-intolerant love can’t eat ice cream, I probably shouldn’t expect a roaring response from him. I wonder why this UCO Ice Cream Ball didn’t make Don’s list. Has anyone tried it?

Another big announcement this week was the launch of Ourmedia.org. Cool! San Jose Mercury News piece excerpted from Marc’s blog.

Tapping into a growing interest in so-called grass-roots media, two Web sites launched this week that aim to become repositories and clearinghouses for a wide variety of digital content created by the public.

Ourmedia.org, started by Pleasanton writer J.D. Lasica and Walnut Creek technologist Marc Canter, is offering a central place for people to upload and store any digital media they want to share with the world, including video, audio, images and text files. The service is free.

The founders say the service (www.ourmedia.org) could help content producers find new audiences for their work. And it could become a cultural archive for researchers and future generations of Internet users that want to view history through an alternative media lens, say ourmedia’s founders.

The idea for the site, Lasica said, came to him while attending a digital storytelling conference in Sedona, Ariz.

“Here was this new storytelling form, and it needed an audience,” Lasica said.

Grassroots media has enjoyed an explosion of interest in the past year, fueled by the increased credibility of bloggers and the growing popularity of video and audio tools such as camcorders and editing software.

Look at the group blog and highlights of a grassroots media organization. Also the AP news article linked from J. D. Lasica’s blog. I plan to try to spend more time at Ourmedia to see the storytelling unfold. What fun! Congratulations to dads Marc Canter and J.D. Lasica for their accomplishments!

Ted was heading out the door to go to his local group which has named themselves “Geeks”. Our daughters like this four letter word and started chanting their mantra they created last year: Geeks! Geeks! Geeks! Out and About!” Even Elisabeth chimed into the chorus.

Then somehow it started…I think Ted asked Abigail if she knew what geek meant. She was stumped. You shouldn’t use words if you don’t know their meaning, Ted admonished her.

So we headed for the dictionary. And I was shocked.

Between gee and geepound, Ted’s college dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary Second College Edition, 1982, revealed that a geek is

a carnival performer whose act usually consists of biting the head off a live chicken or snake. [ Per. < dial. geek fool < MLG geek. ]

“You’re kidding! ” I yelled. “I had no idea Alice Cooper was a geek!” Call me ignorant: I didn’t know the root of the four letter word, and would never have associated biting animal heads off with hacking computer code.

Ted said my education was sorely lacking. Indeed.

My old dictionary (copyright 1983) didn’t include an entry for geek.

So of course we turned to the computer for confirmation…

Next Ted looked up answers.com

geek (gēk) pronunciation
n. Slang.

1.
1. A person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy.
2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.
2. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.

[Perhaps alteration of dialectal geck, fool, from Low German gek, from Middle Low German.]

Wikipedia’s entry on “geek” didn’t answer my etymology questions but offered extensive background on the social implications of the label. Hey, I didn’t know there was a different between “dork” and “nerd” and “geek”.

I started to tease Ted: How do you know you’re a geek? You have to be both technically skilled and socially inept. This was a backhanded compliment: I don’t think Ted is socially inept.

Then the girls wanted to know if I was a geek. I don’t think of myself as one. Geeks were the guys in my high school class who wanted to get into MIT and lived in the computer lab. In high school, I wasn’t into anything enough to deserve the title “geek” in the Wikipedia sense.

Ted thinks I’m a “blogging geek”. Perhaps.

But not a geek circa 1982 definition. I’ve written about geek boyfriends. I’ve had one, and now he’s a geek husband. But who would want to kiss one? Ick! It would taste like raw chicken and feathers…or actually, Ted said they were going to practice on snakes last night…so I didn’t kiss him when he came home…;-)

Jon Udell’s screencast of the Wikipedia entry Heavy Metal Umlaut (via Scott Rosenberg) is a fun eight minute exploration of the way free encyclopedia Wikipedia works and what a small army can do given passion and time (also what Jon Udell can do with screencasting – cool!)

Here’s an approximate quote I noted from the last minute of the screencast: …it’s amazing to see how a worldwide federation of volunteers can get from here to here in a couple of years…

Joi Ito made some wikipedia music too.

Now I can play these pieces for my daughter and say this is what volunteers do…among other examples, of course.

The girls have enjoyed it too. Once they heard that Michaela’s doctor had sent me an email, they wanted to write him. Monday afternoon Abigail helped her younger sister type a sentence and then she did one. Our sweet doctor replied to them as well.

Our new-found ability to share information with our health care provider – and his staff – through the Internet reminded me of topics discussed during the medblogger session lead by Enoch Choi at BloggerCon III. Jon Udell’s Economics of health care IT posted earlier this week also reminded me of ideas we mentioned then. Later Doc Searls continued the conversation and shared a bit of his experience. I know that our opthamologist’s ability to dialogue with us on-line is a big reason why we are choosing his services for our daughter’s needs. Doc responded to Jon Udell:

All of our various disciplines, from medicine to education to sports to retailing and even (right here) to publishing, will need to leverage the connectedness of individuals who publicly exercise their obsessive private interests.

In the medblogger session, we mentioned the power of patients. I wonder what kind of effect we patients would have if we made public our desires for on-line communications and connections. One aspect of health care that I would appreciate finding through on-line communication would be billing and financing. In order to determine the cost for a particular procedure, I have to call four separate offices at the hospital. What if I could type a code into a page on the Web and then receive an itemized estimated bill? More on health care and insurance later…

The other revelation our emails to the opthamologist provided was the way our daughters are growing up using the computer for communication as if it were the phone or pen. They don’t think twice about it. Mommy and Daddy do email. So do they. On special occasions. To the opthamologist.

Earlier this week Ross Mayfield watched his children interact with the computer and marvelled

How fantastic that his expectation is the computer is a door, not a box. Not just a door for one person, but for anyone he knows to be present when he demands. He may be conditioned otherwise in the coming years, fit in the boxes of other’s designs, but there is something to be said for listening to formative social desires.

The computer is a door. As Clay Shirky wrote, it is an entrance to a social space. They are learning to communicate with others through their interactions. And it is also a window. Through my daughters’ blog and what they write in their occasional emails, such as the one to the opthamologist, I get glimpses into their perspectives. I get to see what they think life is like.

I can only imagine what life will be like for them, when they are my age, maybe when they are mothers, taking for granted social spaces and ways of communicating across professions and cultures that do not yet exist today, in my world as their mother.

The article focusses on David Levy, a professor in the University of Washington’s School of Information as well as the technological rapids of cognitive overload.

Today, we can do more. And do more, faster. And do more, faster, from anywhere, all the time. You can work at home or the coffee shop or even the beach. Is this a good thing? How do we navigate these rapids without eventually drowning? Are we allowing life to be the sum of tasks, the short term always the priority? Are we so connected that we’re actually disconnected? And has anyone had enough time to focus long enough to mull a question that requires a long, complicated answer — if there is one?

Levy, whose Ph.D work at Stanford was in computer science and artificial intelligence, has made it his mission to ask these questions.

He’s already hosted a conference — titled “Information, Silence and Sanctuary” — that pulled together an unlikely roster that included not only technologists and sociologists but a storyteller and a cardiologist, a poet, an economist, a monk and a CEO. Now he is working to create the Center for Information and the Quality of Life — a living laboratory where work and workspaces are constantly studied, redefined and redesigned so that well-being is an equal to labor. He has chosen the perfect place for such an ambitious plan in Seattle, which is part technology, part caffeine, part rolled-up-sleeves simplicity.

“Part of what’s missing from our discussion about technology, even the technology in relation to our lives, is a more positive vision of where we’re trying to get to,” he says. “What are the measurements and criteria of well-being in the workplace? How do we even begin to talk about that? How about someone who answers all his e-mail and makes all his sales calls, but develops a heart problem? What is that?”