I was in NYC this past weekend for the Mobile Tech for Social Change conference. Got to stay up way too late at Mohan’s in Brooklyn and hang out with Snuggles:

so there won’t be too many updates. my pear tree site is not loading (who knows why?) and i spent too much time programming an interactive map in scratch for my workshop class; now there is no time to read a 120-pg thesis and write an analysis paper on it. i am, however, excited to be the new TA for Ed Barrett’s digital poetry course next semester. i need to get back to writing poetry, although i also need to do a wipe & redesign of my other new website. so, anyway, i’ll be back when the dust settles.

meanwhile, you can check out DD’s new photo site: NOPARTICULARPLACE.NET, which he works on diligently now that i’m never around.

MCE and I are working on a project for our workshop class under the assigned theme “urban/natural”. Without completely giving it away, it involves this homemade website (see what you can make with $15, five hours and an internet connection?) as well as a sticker that may or may not resemble this:

Meanwhile, I’m heading to Manhattan this weekend to attend MobileActive’s barcamp (one-day working conference), in the hopes of making some strategic alliances for saving the world through mobile phones. Wish me luck.

My favorite documentary right now is Please vote for me, by Chinese director Weijun Chen, about third graders in China taking part in a fascinating democratic election for class monitor. Amazing. Beautifully directed. Here’s a clip — you can watch the full video on Netflix streaming, if you have an account:

< geekout >

I’ve been spending the week battling with web design, front- and backend. I want to have a homepage (on one of my sites) that pumps in a little of everything — the latest twitter, latest Tumblr, latest flickr, videos, Google Reader bookmarks, etc. To this end, I tried adapting Nick’s code from his page but couldn’t seem to tweak the Twitter & Tumblr javascript well enough. Then I discovered Kevin’s site, which he has built using a combination of Yahoo Pipes and homemade js code.

As such, I’ve plunged into Pipes — a very cool app that allows you to mix a million feeds with sorting info and maps and customize it as much as your tech skills allow — but so far have only been able to create a superfeed of my own content, my friends’ content, world news feeds, media & tech, and mobile & ICT updates. I still need to feed everything into a static html page (oy).

Meanwhile, I still can’t post mobile photos to Utterli (no idea why it stopped working), therefore they are no longer crossposting onto this blog. I had to go back to posting to Tumblr at m.tapioca.tv.

< /geekout >

In unrelated news, it feels like a day in 1997. I can remember sitting in Peter Shippey’s class at Emerson and watching the rain throw down out the window. One of those moments where it’s not spring, but almost, and you can smell it.

For my workshop class, we have an assignment this week to “get lost” and document the experience. DD convinced me to drive around with him, blindfolded in the passenger’s seat, and call out directions while he drove until we got lost. It pretty much worked, and we ended up at Nut Island in Quincy.

Welcome to episode one of This Bostonian Life. I’ll warn you it’s a little boring to outsiders, as it’s more a mundane and vaguely sentimental commentary on our relationship than an objective documentary about the lost experience. But in case you’re interested, here it is…with some photos below.

Click to play

I have to post “real” photos now because Utterli.com is having technical difficulties posting my phone photos. This one’s for BB in Prague: our actor pal Greg formed a band in NYC a while back — Maybe the Welders — and I went to see them play on a freezing Thursday evening at a lonely Kenmore club this past week. As expected, he jumped off the stage in character during the last song and writhed around on the floor with mic in hand. Classic.

Found out today that our landlords are indeed quite serious about returning to Cape Verde stat — which potentially means compromising on a lower price for the house, and both them and us moving out. Stat. We didn’t take the threat of moving very seriously until a large family swarmed the house today, accompanied by the ambitious realtor (as seen in Landlords Try To Sell The House During Housing Crash – Take One). I wasn’t home to witness the spontaneous showing, but to DD it seemed like a potential sell, with a potential offer. Which brings me to a call to internet people in my neighborhood or beyond:

Do you know of any apartments opening up (in the next ~1-3 months) in Savin Hill? Cheap apartments? And by cheap I mean 12 Benjamins or less, sans multiple deposits, because we have been spoiled here by our kind landlords. Small places are ok. Just has to be near the T (JFK works too, or really anywhere on either end of the red line between SH & Alewife) and absolutely rid of even the possibility of insects. We are clean! So clean! And responsible and studious and audio/visual and respectable professionals beyond our 20s, without pets or cigarettes.

Yes, I am still bent on moving to Europa in summer/fall of 2010 with DD in tow, but we need a place until then. Kendall would work too, since I spend 88% of my time at MIT anyway, although I would sorely miss Savin Hill. Dear Boston internet people I may or may not know, if you hear of anything, can you please share?

During my workshop class last night, our modern artist teacher gave us a 15-minute assignment to find someone and ask them to draw us a map — of anything, anywhere. (The session was on the history of maps.) I found W. online and, from her dorm room in Rome, she drew this map of her walk to school:

i walk by the jewish ghetto, by a temple. then by a fountain with turtles, called the turtle fountain, whatever that is in italian. well over the tiber island first.

*** UPDATE ***
Part II of our mapping assignment was to design an animated version of the map in Scratch, a programming app for kids. E. is a video game programmer and turned W.’s map into this interactive game (controlled via your arrow keys). I had it embedded but the music kept playing automatically, which was annoying, so just follow the link.

Uncle and niece got quite competitive the other day.