ADMIN: Catestrophic Data Failure

I hate Windows.

I came down at about 4am while feeding my son to see that my machine couldn't find my harddrive. Yay. I decided to ignore it until morning only to find that the HD has been corrupt. So I went out to grab a USB External HD case and mount it on Kirky's laptop.

Trying various shareware/freeware data recovery programs - GetDataBack at the moment - to see if it works. If I have the drive plugged in, Windows takes a LONG time recognizing it's even there...and even then doesn't let me do anything. We'll see.

Last resort is data recovery service.

My Son has Arrived

Kimberly Ringer DeLong and Benjamin Kirk DeLong are proud to announce the birth of their first son, William "Will" Kirk DeLong, born 5/22/2004, at 6:13am ET, weighing 7lbs, 15oz.

Pictures and information will be posted at Will's new Web site- http://www.wkdelong.org.

Feel free to send well-wishes and greetings to will@wkdelong.org.

My Own Personal Library

So my mind is lingering in MeNow land. All of this waiting has gotten me anxious and bored so I've decided to pick up a book for a bit. Which reminded me to go to AllConsuming and mark that I was currently reading it. Then that made me think - so how would I get this in my MeNow document? I'd have to handcode the MeNow:isReading entry and get all the metadata for the book. Pleh. TimeConsuming, if you ask me.

At some point I'll be making a personal database of my book collection. It's huge and I often forget just how much I have - if I did, I'd spend less time on the machine and more reading. But think of it - I go to my "MeNow Dashboard" which has a pulldown yanking data from some MySQL DB of books under the isReading item and all I have to do is select "The Woman of Wyrrd by Lynn V. Andrews" and the ISBN added to my MeNow:isReading. Of course, futuristically-thinking....I'd have some sort of device either on me or on the book to say when I was reading it - if I were really lazy. I could totally see me eventually wearing an EyeTap instead of glasses someday.

Quiet is Loud

My house is incredibly quiet right now. All I can hear is the clicking of my keyboard, the whirring of the fan in the kitchen, and occasional "whooshes" as cars drive by my house. My adorable cat is curled up next to me on a pile of recipes and a duvee cover and I'm here waiting for the arrival of my son.

Kirky is out with her mother shopping. My weekend has been filled with massive surges of cleaning and then loud periods of quiet as we prepare the house for its new arrival. The house is impeccably clean aside from the kitty-litter area, which is always in some state of disarray. All of the laundry is done, everything is vaccumed & dusted - I don't know how we would have done this without my mother-in-law.

But there's something eerie about the quiet. I'm getting anxious for things to start happening. We're ready- we've been ready and my body feels like I'm sitting here signing as I tap my foot and click my fingers on an imaginary watch about my wrist.

The due date isn't until the end of next week but we're as ready as we'll ever be. Time to go watch the pot of Mother Nature just to make sure she's not boiling in secret.

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BrainDump: Digital Convergence scratchpad

What follows is a braindump from one of my morning walks around campus. Unfortunately, I did not have a means of recording this braindump so I had to "go over it" again at my desk. I hope to begin taking some sort of recording devlice with a hands-free mic that I can use to start capturing these live.

A brief intro to the below unintelligible jabbering: I have recently started getting involved more in the semantic web community - specifically the development of the FOAF or "Friend Of A Friend" RDF metadata schema. This has lead to alot of thinking and dreaming on my end about the future of the Web, the Internet and human use of technology in general.

Recently on the main list for FOAF discussion, rdfweb-dev, there was some line-drawing between what constitutes a FOAF document and what makes up a "presence" document. Danny Ayers, a frequent muser himself, coined the phrase "MeNow" on-the-fly to describe something that gives contextual presence to what a person is doing at any given moment. Joel De Gan has ran with the idea and begun work on an RDF vocabulary around the idea with Chris Schmidt hacking together a concept of what a MeNow document might look-like.

This idea led me to contact the researchers at MIT's Wearable Computing Lab, (and Joel contacted Steve Mann), to discuss how such a semantic language could be used in those creating a personal, live digital presence of themselves.

In thinking about wearable computing, I also started thinking about Home Networking and the convergence between various devices in the home and the people who reside in it. That, of course, raises incredible privacy issues so I've touched on some ideas to allow for privacy while also allowing for data to get to the right people.

Madness.

See the below braindump for more details.

I have got to come up wityh a way of having some sort of voice recorder during my morning walks. Something that could be converted to text via voice-recognition and then posted into Weblog format.

Translation: look at latest voice recog software

So all this work with MeNow comes down to convergence and really fits in with the wearable computing crowd. See crschmidt's MeNow document.

Being able to have book metadata for your reading list and ownership schema for things you own including media of all sorts. being able to pull metadatafrom your tivo live - what are you watching "this second"? What is the metadata for the show? What is the episode information, what channel etc.

How about a real-time status feed from your tivo itself - what is it recording and doing? Seems to me this is where the convergence really happens. Digital sensors everywhere in a house - what is the temp of the fridge - what is the various states of "filled" of objects in the fridge - RFID - what is IN the fridge and RFID -what have you thrown away - disposable RFID tags?

Is the oven on? Is the pilot light lit? Where is the dog in the house? What is currently on your iPod or Nomad Jkebox? What are yu listening to? Which lights are on in the house? Are any of your windows open? doors? Who is in the house? are windows ad doors locked?

What is the baby doing? What are the baby's vital signs? RFID's on legacy stuff like VHS tapes. When in the VCR, it is detected and posted what is playing.

Privacy and Encryption is key. how to prevent neighbors from snooping outside the house? House needs RFID protection -RFID signels are encrypted before "leaving" thehouse against keys only certain people can read based on trust/relationships. Electric company has key to read meter, gas company has key to read gas meter, police and fire or alarm company has key to read security and safety information.

Back to MeNow - digtal media schemas? casettes, cds, dvds, vhs tapes, television or just music and video schemas with media type designations?

Wearable computing Blackboxes - vital signs, gps, aural feed, visual feed, sensory?

User agent representations? How are you "accessing" the net at a given time? Hardware designation, connectivity designation - phone, pda, laptop, desktop, some other method? television? Kiosk? Wireless, cable, dsl? Speed check?

Low Carb Corn - Not Really Sure

Low Carb corn? I'm not so sure about GMing food to make it low carb. It's.....unnatural.

That's what bugged the snot out of me while doing Atkins. All of these Atkins friendly products have sugar replaced with Sugar Alcohol and various checmicals to make it "lower carb" and I didn't really think about it until I fell off the wagon for the second time - hard.

Then I finally went on South Beach for a few months and learned a new way of eating. Good carbs, high fiber, low fat, and lean meats are the way to go. I will admit I do have Fat Free, No Sugar Added Edys on occasion though we just got an Ice Cream Maker from my In-Laws so I'm going to try and make my own. I also have the Carb Counter bread but it's 100% Whole Wheat - good carbs and they don't add any sugar.

I mean, hell - we still don't know how GM foods will effect the human body. We're still in the midst of testing and who knows over a generation or two whether we will have doomed the human race.

Happy Birthday to....my Gastric Juices

So yeah, it was my birthday yesterday. Because I'm lazy - always go to my wish list to find out what I want or need. I update this on a daily basis and use it to store anything that looks intriguing and rank them from "Must Have" to "Don't buy for me". Keep in mind the most recent additions are the ones I'm currently most interested in.

Anyway, the real purpose of this post. My gift to myself - food. I've lost roughly 45lbs since January 5th, 2004 on the South Beach Diet as previously mentioned. I wanted to take a binge break to keep muself from truly falling off the wagon this day. So I did and here's a bit of what I treated myself to:

Tuesday - At Baby-Prep Class

• A Chocolate Chip Cookie
• A Date Cookie

Thursday

• Lunch with manager - Fried Cod sandwich on a hamburger bun with mayo
• French Fried
• Dinner - a Hamburger Pizza and small chicken wings from local pizza place.

Friday - The Birthday

• Bought 2 dozen + 1 Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Ate 6 for myself over the morning and left the rest for friends at work. I used to do fundraising with Boy Scouts where we sold boxs of these things out front of Supermarkets and we'd end up with several dozen in our freezer for weeks afterwards. Heavenly.
• Was feeling both full and slightly ill from doughnuts. Had a Thai Chicken Wrap for lunch.
• Had a small piece of my own cake - Chocolate Flourless - that my wife bought for me. Absolutely scrumtious though I sabotaged true enjoyment with doughnut indulgence. Described by Milk Street Cafe as "Rich, dark, fudgy chocolate cake topped with white chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache. Made with a pound of chocolate in every cake!"
• Ordered Chinese Food for dinner - General Gao Chicken, House Special Fried Rice, Beef Lo Mein, and Crab Rangoon.

Saturday

• Lo mein and leftover pizza for breakfast.

Tonight is a planned foray to Macaroni Grill. I will certainly enjoy that.

Now, the interesting thing about this is the food tastes good but I have no urge to continue eating like this. When I did Atkins, every few months I'd go on a massive binge and fall off it. With South Beach, I'm almost ready to go back. I think the fact that I've lost so much weight with a balanced diet and whole foods, my body doesn't feel deprived. Yay me.

Attrition vs. Chick-Fil-A

Its things like this that make me reminisce being part of the Attrition.org staff. Its pretty much a one-man show these days with Brian Martin running things. Here's his latest bit of sarcasm, sharp wit, and curmudgeoness - Chick-Fil-A threatens to sue Attrition.org

Happy Beltane!

I'd like to wish you all a Happy Beltane or May Day to you Muggles and Mundanes out there. Beltane is an ancient Celtic holiday translated from Gaelic as "fire of Bel" with Bel being a Celtic Sun God.

Beltane is a fertility holiday celebrating spring. It is still celebrated throughout the Ireland, Scotland, and England. This Fire holiday has been continued in some Pagan traditions and adopted by others as part of the Wheel of the Year - Midsummer, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, and Ostara. It is the anti-Halloween or the opposite of Samhain, representing new life as opposed to observing death.

My views on spirituality have been changing throughout the years - definitely so since I last posted my thoughts a few days from 3 years ago. Unfortunately, I've not made time for my own spiritual needs since I began working at MIT. I have become disillusioned with the Pagan community in Salem as it seems it is plagued by Witch Wars. There are a handful of powerful women and a few men in the Pagan community of Salem and they all spend time exerting their authority and power. Not conducive to community at all. I've also moved away from refering myself to Wiccan, practicing Wicca or being a Witch practicing Witchcraft. I am a Pagan. Simply put, I am a non-Christian spritual practitioner choosing to worship nature or polytheistic incarnations of the Earth. I like to point to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series or Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality books to illustrate what I mean.

In the past year I have been reading more about Shamanism through books authored by Lynn Andrews. One of my good friends, Charel Morris, is a Shaman herself and produces several of Lynn's shows as well as helps with her Shaman School. Two years ago, I participated in a Spirit Animal ceremony and found Athena, a female Brown Bear. She's a very important part of who I am.

Similar to my discussions with Michael Gleason about Witchcraft and Santeria, Charel is an amazing person to talk with about Spirituality. There's no secrets, no "you have to be a 3rd level initiate to learn about that", its all an open book- with both of them. They are truly my spiritual mentors. I regret I have had no time to spend with Mike for almost 2 years and will be missing my first yearly conference where I work with Charel. This will become more difficult once the baby is born, but I want to recognize their important contributions to who I am as a spiritual person.

Last night, I was musing about how gorgrous the weather was and how beautiful it was that it is spring. Of course, I only think this in morning & evening when the humidity is still low. But I still have the need to commune with my spiritual representatives of the Earth and nature around me - that will always be an important part of who I am.

Happy Beltane - or May Day. Be you always be spiritually fulfilled.

Orkut Reinvites Your Friends Who Didn't Join

According to Scott Allen, Orkut has taken it upon themselves to reinvite friends who I originally invited but did not join for one reason or another. I'm posting this mostly because I hope those people will come here first before asking me about it, since many of them declined. It's very embarassing because most declined to me personally via email. So how dare Orkut assume to reinvite them- in MY name no less?

This is another reason why I find Orkut to be behind the times and a cheesy, non-useful social network. It's all about "collecting" friends and getting people to rate you high. It's like a high school click. But what do you expect from a social network who takes its name from the founder of it. Frankly, I expect a lot more from the team behind Google - moreso after the announcement of their 2.7bn IPO this week. I've recently purchased "Google Hacks" and think maybe Google should stick to Search Engines. Or at least listen to why people like the successful sites in the multitude of YASNs out there.