Spring, travels, etc.

The leaves are largely back on trees now -- the world looks green again here around Boston. Just before all the green was all the pollen and the almost two boxes of tissues used up and my body felt like it was hijacked to produce goo out of my nose. That plus a bit of a cold has mercifully subsided and I'm able to enjoy the longer and warming days.

Work's been moving slowly toward getting something evaluated for patentability, and I've been talking with a few potential collaborators and networking in the mean time. I've also started mentoring two people in the design field. That's been fun and interesting.

I've been doing a chunk of traveling.


Most recently I was in Atlanta for the big Computer Human Interface conference. It was interesting in unexpected ways, but I'm not sure it'll be worth going next year. It was nice to see some people from Raleigh at the conference and a few people I know from other places. The conference organized a trip to the CDC, which was kind of interesting.


While in Atlanta I got to walk around a bit and visit the High Museum, the main art museum. I was impressed with the John Portman architecture exhibit. His Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Atlanta has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in high school. As I was walking around downtown Atlanta I also noticed some resemblances between buildings and finishes and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, and found out at the exhibit that he was the architect of that complex, too. It all fell into place. I also was impressed with the Renzo Piano museum building and am looking forward to the local Gardner Museum building under way by him. And the High has a nice collection of american marble figure sculptures -- really quite lovely.


A couple weeks before I drove north of Toronto for a short (three-day) meditation course (that I wanted to get in before summer rowing season). That went well, but felt very short -- I felt like I was finally really arriving and settling in when it was time to pack up and go. I got to visit a few college and work friends along the way, and see a community ice show rehearsal. 


Before that was a trip to Scottsdale, Arizona for a pretty mellow bachelor party. We went to a spring training baseball game, which fulfills my baseball quota for at least a year. We also went to the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West compound for a tour and visited a friend who lives there for a barbecue and tape ball. Fun weekend.

I took a short trip to New York, largely for work market research (to see what products are sold at electronics retailers there like J&R and B&H and find out what people say about them). While there I saw the new Addams Family musical, visited the MoMA and Cooper Hewitt museums, and spent some time at a friend's 40th birthday party. The week before I made a quick trip to Providence for another friend's 40th birthday party, too.

Around here I saw this year's Hasty Pudding Theatricals production of Commie Dearest!, and the Gold Dust Orphans' Phantom of the Oprah with Varla Jean Merman. Fun! Also went to a couple of orchestra concerts, with highlights being Stravinsky's Rite of Spring by the Boston Philharmonic and the Beethoven Septet Op 20 by the BSO Chamber Players.

With the warmer weather, it's time to get back on the water to row. Before my regular Community Rowing season began, there was an event called the Snow Row, an open water race that some people from the club went to. It was a beautiful, warm, calm early march day -- no jacket required, and a fun event. Rowing at Community Rowing is going strong again, though I've missed a chunk of time on the water with travel and the bad luck of the draw being assigned to row on machines. But this morning we had some fun races, so it feels like we're back on.


Chorus rehearsals have started again for the June Pride concert, titled DIVAS. Yes, it'll be as gay as the name makes it sound. (I was disappointed I missed performing in the winter concert because of rehearsal conflicts and travel. I'm glad to be back.)


So those are the highlights for the last almost two months. Next up a wedding around this weekend with some visiting and two-stepping while out there.

Savannah and Startup?

Highlights in February:

Interaction Design Association conference in Savannah, Georgia. Nice conference, particularly a talk by Nathan Shedroff on, among other things, designing for meaning (PDF here). Savannah itself is really lovely. I'd seen lots of pictures of oak trees with hanging Spanish moss, and they were there in spades. The thing that really struck me, though, is how lovely it is to have a park every few blocks, and how nice it is that the parks are the same size and similar, but enough different to be able to tell them apart -- lovely variations on a lovely theme. I don't recall ever being in a city with so many parks so close together, but the parks themselves reminded me of my favorite in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Summer Garden.

I also started work on job hunting and thanks to the Boston Globe found the company I'd been hoping to find for years (Global Relief Technologies in Portsmouth, N.H.). As I read about what they were doing and thought about the problems they were trying to solve, I realized that there's another set of approaches to solving the problems of understanding the situation in an emergency, so I've started to work seriously on a start-up myself. I've been reading tons of FEMA documents (fortunately, a little less dry than I feared, but more filled with TLAs than I'd prepared for), and tracking down interesting research projects (like Photosynth) and patents. It's exciting!

Along with the startup work I've been going to a bunch of professional meetings and talks for interaction designers, entrepreneurs, etc. Good stuff -- and there's lots of it around Boston. I could probably go to events five nights a week if I could stomach it. One to three a week has been more like it, though.

With all this activity in the evenings, I'm disappointed I won't actually be able to sing with the chorus this concert series. It'll be good, though, even if I won't be on stage with them.

Also in February I got to achieve something I like to practice: having fewer keys. I returned the keys from my old place and picked up the last of my stuff, and now I just have three keys (house, car, bike) and a few loyalty cards (cut down to be smaller). I like having a lighter key ring.

I've also been enjoying the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects. Art and history and economics and anthropology and lots of other stuff talked about in the context of objects in the British Museum's collection. I recommend it! (I don't recommend, and am exasperated by their 3D object explorer, though. Arg.)

Made it to a few shows and concerts (Mark Morris was the highlight), a friend's Non-Valentine Party (on the 13th, geared toward single folks to just hang out together), reading and the usual stuff.

This month I'm looking forward to making progress on (or, if I find a good reason, stopping work on) the startup, a bachelor party around Phoenix, a silent meditation retreat, Varla Jean Merman and the Phantom of the Oprah, and getting back to rowing on the water. Yay!

Be well.