Sean Bonner's Blog, page 15

Sparkfun Hackers In Residence, Part 1

[ Tara and I are currently in Boulder, CO at Sparkfun. This is the first post looking at what we’re working on.]

PROTOTYPE PROPOSAL

We’ve been thinking about personal drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) a lot recently. Both in the context of how these devices could be useful around a house or neighborhood, as well as how they can help with volunteer projects like Safecast – and if these use cases might apply elsewhere. When Sparkfun invited us to help kick off their new ‘Hacker In Residence’ program exploring this drone question a bit more seemed like the ideal project to work on. There are a number of personal drone options available on the market, but for the most part they are either difficult to work with or limited in functionality. Weight restrictions and limited flight time is a big issue with most commercial options. We wanted to see if we could easily hack an out of the box platform like the Parrot AR Drone to add extra functionality or if it made more sense to approach this problem from another direction entirely.

Mary Meeker announced in her recent Internet Trends report that we are entering a third computing cycle of ‘Wearables/Drivables/Flyables/Scannables.’ As founders of member-driven community spaces, Crash Space and LA Makerspace, we see these technologies being used first-hand and hacked on by both hobbyists and experienced hardware engineers. The scope of where they are headed is infinite.

In the days leading up to our arrival we had to seriously think about the use cases. Sparkfun carries a wide variety of environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure), Safecast has high quality compact radiation sensors… but would this appeal to a less scientific or less niche group of people? And what about the device itself – do we want something with extreme maneuverability? Or something with autopilot? The options were really unlimited.

We decided that the focus for our two weeks of prototyping should be to add a much better downward facing camera to a device that could remain airborne for a period of time well beyond the normal battery life. This would enable high-res event documentation from a previously unreachable aerial view or new avenues for personal security surveillance. We thought if we could solve this first use case, then it would be easy to swap out the camera for any number of other sensors.

SPARKFUN

We received a wonderful welcome when we arrived in Boulder. In addition to providing us with a place to sleep while in town, Sparkfun gave us a dedicated room to work from at their offices. Upon arrival we got the full tour of the building – from Engineering to Shipping – everyone was super welcoming and it was awesome to see where all the red box magic happens.

The team at Sparkfun have been incredibly friendly, helpful and accommodating every step of the way, especially considering we’re pretty much making this up as we go. They also provided us with everything from a shopping list we gave them filled with parts from their catalog as well as bits and pieces from all over the web. We’d like to give an extra special shout-out to Sparkfun’s Director of Education, Lindsay Levkoff for setting this whole gig up!

 

TWO PRONGED APPROACH

Two weeks isn’t a terribly long time to solve a problem like this from scratch, so it’s lucky that we’re not starting entirely from scratch having messed around with some of these devices before and relying on some already ready to go solutions like Dropcam which we hoped would save us some time, rather than spending a week (or months) reinventing the wheel.

In anticipation of things not working out exactly perfect the very first time we decided that a two pronged approach would keep things moving in the event that we ran into any major hurdles. The breakout looks like this:

PRÖNG 1\\\

Quadcopter as platform.

We are using a Parrot AR Drone as the base because it just works right out of the box with no tinkering and is something that pretty much anyone with $300 to blow can get ahold of. Having spent time with several other brands of quad and hex copters, we knew that not having to spend a week calibrating and fine tuning balance was crucial to making this work in our 2 week window.

We hypothesized that removing the battery and adding a tether for power might give us more weight to play with as well as extended flight time. For the camera we decided on using a Dropcam because of similar out of the box instant functionality and the bonus of live video over wifi. Combining the power source for both of these devices which have different requirements would be the main trick. For very specific movement control, this plan definitely comes out ahead.

The Parrot works great as is, but is perfectly balanced for it’s own weight, and we want to add more to that. By stripping off the top hull entirely we save some weight, and luckily the Dropcam that we’re adding is fairly light on it’s own. There’s also a good bit of space between the circuit board and the plastic bottom of the Parrot, so by cutting out a small circle and sliding the Dropcam behind it we were able to attach the camera without any additional materials.

After we confirmed that the Parrot was able to lift the Dropcam and it’s own battery, we quickly moved onto attaching the power cord so we could extend the time in the air (battery life maxes out at about 15 mins). After stripping wires, soldering, hot glue gunning and zip tying, we got the power cord split into 11v (Parrot) and 5v (Dropcam) and were ready to test.

The Parrot turned on and we heard the sweet sound of the initialization tones, then the propellers started going and we thought we’d see lift. Unfortunately after it draws power and goes into lift mode a brownout occurred. We’re currently attaching things to a scope to see what is going wrong.

PRÖNG B\\\

Balloon as platform.

Quadcopters are cool for sure, but they require effort to actually fly. We wondered if removing that concern entirely might be a successful approach. Using the hardware from a microblimp as the drive controls and a weather balloon filled with helium for the lift, we thought perhaps this would just stay up on it’s own, allowing us to spend all the time on perfecting the payload. We decided to mount a Hack HD camera to the bottom for our improved visuals, though logged to a card rather than live (a problem we’d need to address later). As a bonus, both the camera and motors run off 3.7v which we hoped would simplify things. While the balloon approach lacks the fine tuned movement of a quadcopter, it completely solves the “how do we keep this up in the air for a long time” problem without even trying.

HackHD – 1080p Camera Module Test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBNpg...

 

We’ve been trying to use components that anyone can get their hands-on so we bought some helium used for party balloons but quickly found out that it’s not even close to being pure and the tank we got didn’t come close to filling the 5 ft in diameter, 100g weather balloon. The weather balloon barely floated and thus the cardboard case with the HackHD Camera and Microblimp didn’t lift off the ground. We spoke to a company that sells helium and they said that they would sell some to us if we were using it for scientific purposes and it would cost about $100 to fill our balloon. At this point we are reconsidering the balloon platform and how to fill it without having to purchase a gas. Maybe hot air?…of course that will lead to a whole other set of tests.

NEXT

We have 6 working days left at Sparkfun and we will continue to hack away at our prototypes. We already have some possible solutions in the works but would love to get any feedback or ideas from the Interwebz on how to solve our issues!

To be continued…

 

ABOUT

Sean Bonner

http://seanbonner.com @seanbonner

In 2010 Sean co-founded the first hackerspace in Los Angeles, Crash Space. Sean is co-founder and director of Safecast, a nonprofit environmental monitoring company. They have been prototyping a number of drones for Safecast that will carry radiation and air quality sensors to hard to reach locations.

 

Tara Tiger Brown

http://taratigerbrown.com @tara

Tara is co-founder and Chief Encouragement Officer at LA Makerspace, a family friendly hackerspace in Los Angeles, and co-created Represent.LA to connect and promote the Los Angeles tech startup community. Tara has been working with youth on DIY skill building and following their passionate interests through the LA Makerspace and MacArthur funded Digital Media Learning Research Hub. She is a Forbes Contributor where she writes about Women in Technology and other tech tidbits.

‘Brunch Of The Dead’ Officially Released

So I’ll start this off by noting that Brunch Of The Dead is currently FREE in the Amazon Kindle store and will be all week, after this week the price skyrockets to $2.99.

Now that that is out of the way…. Brunch Of The Dead is a few things. It’s a short story around 5,000 words about old people and brunch and zombies that has been 12 years in the making. That’s trumped up a bit, it was written initially 12 years ago when my friend Morgen and I used to skip work to hang out coffee shops drinking coffee and trying to make each other laugh with crazy stories. This was one of the few we wrote down, but a serious lack of confidence caused us to shelve for most of that time. About a month ago I dug it out of the archives, still thought it was funny and Morgen and I decided to put some time in reworking and polishing and then publish it. Which we did. Hence the “official” in the subject up there.

It’s also the first piece of fiction writing I’ve ever published, which is a bit nerve wracking. More so than I expected. I really enjoy fiction when I’m reading but I have a horrible time writing it. It’s one of the things I want to do more than anything in the world, but whenever I try I end up writing something that actually happened. I’ve written before about how that scares the crap out of me. I’ve also written before — countless times — about the value of just going for it. About how if you don’t try you are 100% assured to fail. About how anything creative you produce can find a handful of people who enjoy it. So I decided to take my own advice and jump in.

I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s “good” but I will say that I know exactly what happens in it and I still enjoy reading it, and it still makes me laugh. And what I will go so far as to say is that it’s done. I actually made it, and actually shipped it. Which is a huge step for me. And somewhat amusing that it took 12 years for 2 guys to publish a short story that could basically be told verbally in 10 minutes.

But it’s out and that feels awesome. I highly recommend to anyone who is wavering on finishing/publishing something -just go for it.

Encryption and Suspicion

Why using encryption is seen as suspicious — the difference between privacy and secrecy.

(Originally posted on Medium)

Not long ago I discussed some of the steps I was taking to ensure some privacy online and since then have had quite a few conversations with other people about their own efforts to do the same. We most frequently talk about how easy or hard something is to implement and express shared desire to have more of these options baked in as standard features on normal applications used by everyone. If encrypting an email was as easy as CCing some for example, it’s safe to assume more people would encrypt their emails.

These discussions also inevitably note that the simple act of encrypting your email is more likely to draw the attention of folks like the NSA because to some people this is seen as suspicious behavior. But I don’t buy it — if encrypting your email is suspicious that’s only the case because not many people do it, which is only the case because it’s not that easy. And now we’re running in circles. But lets think about this a bit more for a second.

What’s so suspicious about it?

I was talking about this recently with Jonathan Foote (among others at the Catalytic Converter conference at the MIT Media Lab) and he made what I think is one of the most convincing arguments yet. He asked:

Would you mail a letter without putting it in an envelope?

For simplicity’s sake let’s keep the email/snail mail analogy intact. Obviously postcards aren’t in envelopes, but the content of a letter and that of a postcard are unquestionably different. A postcard is more like a tweeted reply to some — doesn’t really matter if others see it even if it’s intended for someone specific. But in thinking about a letter, perhaps a letter you might send to your doctor about a symptom you are having, your insurance company about a bill, your accountant about your income, a relative going through a tough emotional situation, or any number of other things — these are topics that you are likely to want to put in an envelope rather than put on a postcard. Why? Obviously, because they are private.

Which brings us to the discussion of privacy and how that’s different from secrecy.

Using the above examples, it’s not a secret that I talk to my doctor/my insurance company/my accountant/my relatives — but that doesn’t mean I want the world to know what I say to them. It’s not secret, it’s private. To further that example, I’m married and have a child: it’s not a secret how that happened but that doesn’t mean I would invite people over to my house to watch. That my wife and I have sex isn’t a secret, but it’s private. I eat food on a daily basis which results in trips to the bathroom. It’s not a secret that I poop, but that doesn’t mean I want to have people monitoring me while I’m sitting on the toilet. Because it’s private. Sorry about that, but you get the point I hope.

There’s nothing suspicious about being private.

On the other hand, there’s secrecy. Parking a few blocks away and then walking to your boyfriends house so that your husband doesn’t drive by and see you there, that’s being secretive. Using codereddit to prevent your manager from knowing your aren’t working, that’s being secretive. Keeping the curtains closed and the TV turned up loud to hid the face that you have a dog in your “no pets allowed” apartment, that’s being secretive. Covering your tracks to prevent your boss from knowing about the new job interview at a competing company you have planned later this week. These activities are suspicious because you are actively trying to hide something. Trying to cover it up. Being secretive.

Bringing this back to the point — we put letters in envelopes because we don’t want anyone in between us and the people we’re mailing them to reading them. If I write a letter to my accountant I want my accountant to read it. I don’t want my mail man or any number of other postal workers & delivery people who will touch that envelope before it reaches my accountant to read it. Again, because it’s private. I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have an accountant, I’m just comfortable saying it’s no one else’s business what I talk to her about.

Encrypting an email is the same thing. It’s not being secretive, it’s being private. It’s taking a step (like using an envelope) to ensure that only the person you are sending the email to reads it. If you email your doctor you want your doctor to read that email, you don’t want your system admin, your ISP, an advertiser, a different doctor (or maybe your accountant or insurance company for that matter) to read the email along the way. You want the email to go from you your doctor unread by anyone else.

When you send an email, it’s more like a postcard. It’s wide open and anyone who bothers can read it. Encrypting it puts it in an envelope to prevent prying eyes along the way.

Because it’s private.

But using an envelope for a letter is easy, and everyone does it so it’s not looked at as suspicious. Which brings us right back to the issue about encryption being too difficult. It’s only seen as suspicious because a person has to jump through a few hoops to get it running, and thus only a small number of people make that effort. But people shouldn’t have to make an effort, it should be simple.It should not be suspicious.

And we should demand that our web services and email clients make it easy for us.

Rule 34 for Creatives

[Originally published on Medium]

If you create it, there’s someone who will like it.

As citizens of the internet, we all know about The Rules, most referenced of course is Rule 34: If you can think of it, there is porn of it.

Some things are just such universally understood facts that there’s no point in arguing about them. Rule 34 is one such fact. But it’s easy to read at face value and then move on thinking it’s just a joke, but in fact there’s a much more important lesson here especially for anyone creative. I say creative but I should note that I think there are very few people who aren’t creative — maybe no one. Not everyone is a writer or an artist or a composer or a crafter or a hardware designer or whatever else you can think of, but as a people we enjoy making things and at some point you have to admit that requires creativity. Anyway, that’s another rant all together — back to the rule 34 discussion.

If you can think of it: Well that’s pretty much anything, because duh.

There is porn of it: This is the moneyshot of this statement, so to speak. Keeping things a bit abstract here, porn doesn’t just exist. Someone has to create it. But more than that, someone has to not only care enough to make it but also believe that someone out there in the world would also enjoy it. If you haven’t spent much time on 4chan you might not really be grasping the scope of what we’re talking about here, but seriously, anything you can think of, it’s out there, and someone enjoys it.

The way this relates to you, as a creative — that thing you’ve been thinking of… that thing you want to write, that thing you want to paint, that thing you want to sing, that thing you want to design, that thing you want to build — whatever it is, someone will dig it. Traditionally, producing things is scary. Will it be good enough? Will anyone like it? Will everyone laugh at you? Rule 34 applies to you.

If you follow through and actually do this (I don’t want to keep contextualizing this, but you know what I mean, whatever it is you are hesitating to do. For me it’s writing, for you it might be publishing some photos or starting a sketchbook) someone out there will like it. And that’s really all you need. One person to appreciate the work you put into. The catch here is that you may never know this person exists — but they do, and Rule 34 proves that. If whatever kind of crazy twisted freaky porn you can think of has at least enough enthusiastic fans out there to justify someone willing it into existence, then certainly anything you want to make but are second guessing can find an audience.

And better than that, if you keep doing it, those fans will tell their friends, and your fans will double in number. And before you know it you’ll have double digits of fans. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

I know I personally talk myself out of so much that I want to write because the stupid bullshit voice in my head tells me no one will care. No one will be interested. No one will like it. Rule 34 proves that voice wrong. I just need to know one person was glad I finished that thing and hit publish. Now I don’t have an excuse. How about you? What are you waiting for? That person is out there, don’t disappoint them.

Knowing the destination before setting out on the voyage

Earlier today I mentioned that there’s never been something I’m so equally attracted to and horrified of in my entire life – as writing. I’ve done it and not done it all my life and I’ve written about doing it and not doing it probably more than I’ve actually done it. I have this problem that I’ve become much more aware of recently, which might actually be making it worse now that I know about it, where I’m petrified of beginning writing if I don’t know where I’m going to end up. Depending on your perspective this has never/always been a problem for me to some extent – or rather, it’s been a problem in other areas that I didn’t realize were problematic, but hasn’t really been a problem with writing.

In my most prolific writing days I had no idea where I was headed until I got there and that was my salvation. Writing was incredibly therapeutic and with just a spark I could dig into my head and spill my guts all over a page and not only feel good about what I’d written, but feel better mentally as well. Like I’d worked through something. Solved something that I didn’t understand before and that drove me to keep doing it. At some point I got the idea that I needed that spark to give me the push, and then at some other point I realized those sparks don’t really happen on command. And then I started worrying about them and how to find them and what to do without them. The spark was like a quick strobe flash in a dark room that gave me an idea of what route to take to get through it, and without that I just keep standing there not knowing which direction to move in.

I told a story last year (and many times before actually) that as a kid I never took first steps, or said first words. I sat around staring at people for ever – much longer than I should have – and then just started walking, and just started talking in full sentences. It’s a story passed on to me from my parents and I don’t even know how much truth is in it. But I guess I convinced myself it was true, and then used it as an excuse by blaming some weird way my head works. I have to know I can do it before I start. Or I have to know the destination before I can embark on the journey. Which I think is bullshit, so that’s conflicting to say the least.

The thing is I love writing. When I’m in the groove it’s easily one of my favorite things in the world. If I could do that all day I would in a heartbeat. When I’m not in that groove it’s torture and I beat myself up about it all day long, which I’m certain only makes it that much worse.

I’ve talked to a number of my “writer” friends, or just my friends who write even if they don’t consider themselves writers. I ask them if they know where they are going when they begin. If they have a roadmap. If they just dive in blind. And their answers, of course – I knew before I ever asked them, are varied. Some people have outlines, some people have ideas, some people barely have a spark. So there’s no one solution, no one answer. And again, I already know that so I don’t know why I keep asking. But I do. I feel like I’m 1 year old just watching everyone walk around too afraid to try to take a step. Does that mean that at some people in the future I’ll just *get it* and suddenly be able to write without issue? I doubt it, but that’s a good excuse to not try today.

And it’s not even a fear of failure. I don’t mind if I suck. I don’t mind if what I write is stupid. I mean I don’t want to write sucky stupid stuff, but if that’s the result then I’m already OK with that because it’s a result, which is better than what I have right now. I’m afraid of getting lost. Afraid of staring at the blank page and not having any idea what to write next. Afraid of trying to tell a story and not having a story to tell. If I don’t actually write it then I can keep telling myself that I have a story that I just haven’t written yet. If I force myself to start writing it and hit a wall, then I have to admit that I don’t have a story. Which is where that desire to know the end before I begin comes from. And again, I know it’s stupid.

I’m not even looking for advice here, just trying to kick my own ass and sort through the crap in my own head so I can better grasp what it is that is actually standing in my way. Like with this post, I knew the first sentence because I’d already written it on twitter, everything else just appeared as I typed the line before it. So that’s something.

First 140 People On Twitter

(crossposted on Medium)

A conversation on twitter last night reminded me of a list I’d seen compiled many years ago of the first 140 people to sign up for Twitter – known as twttr at that point. The site where the list had been posted was down but thanks to The Wayback Machine I was able to find the list. I thought I’d repost it here just for posterity.

I find this list incredibly fascinating for a number of reasons. We all know what twitter is now, but no one knew what it would be then so if nothing else (with the exception of the people who worked at Odeo) this is a snapshot of a somehow connected (it was invite only) group of people who were willing to try out new things that likely made no sense to them at the time. Who is on the list is just as interesting as who isn’t – and seeing how it spread. Jason Cosper invited me and I invited both Xeni Jardin and Richard Ault who signed up immediately. I recall the first few days much more vividly than I do the following 6 months. Random text messages from people stating that they were making sandwiches or going to the store, and the feeling that this info was probably important in a context I couldn’t quite wrap my head around – which made it exciting. It was also annoying. But it found it’s groove and as I’ve said before the service went on to change my entire world and how I communicate with people, and I’d argue I’m not the only one who feels that way. I can’t imagine a world without Twitter today. And because those first few days and weeks were so new and weird, this list is a bit nostalgic for me. I don’t know how it makes anyone else feel, but like I said I just thought it was worth archiving.

(Note: Unfortunately it seems that a few people on this list, over the last 7 years, changed their usernames or stopped using them and someone else has snatched those names up. They are obvious when you follow the links below, so this list is more an archive of the names and accounts, no so much the current users.)

1 Jack Dorsey – Joined March 21, 2006
2. Biz Stone – Joined March 21, 2006
3. crystal – Joined March 21, 2006
4. noah glass – Joined March 21, 2006
5. Jeremy – Joined March 21, 2006
6. Tony Stubblebine – Joined March 21, 2006
7. Adam Rugel – Joined March 21, 2006
8. Evan Williams – Joined March 21, 2006
9. Dom Sagolla – Joined March 21, 2006
10. rabble – Joined March 21, 2006
11. Tim Roberts – Joined March 21, 2006
12. meredith – Joined March 21, 2006
13. rayreadyray – Joined March 21, 2006
14. ariel – Joined March 22, 2006
15. kellan – Joined March 24, 2006
16. Hook – Joined April 1, 2006
17. sara m. williams – Joined April 1, 2006
18. Kati – Joined April 1, 2006
19. Sarah Milstein – Joined April 1, 2006
20. Andrew Dorsey – Joined April 1, 2006
21. Tim Dorsey – Joined April 1, 2006
22. Daniel T – Joined April 1, 2006
23. Dan – Joined April 1, 2006
24. Greg Kidd – Joined April 1, 2006
25. Livia – Joined April 1, 2006
26. Dunstan Orchard – Joined April 1, 2006
27. Andy Keep – Joined April 1, 2006
28. donnie – Joined April 1, 2006
29. Marcia Dorsey – Joined April 3, 2006
30. Krissy Bush – Joined April 4, 2006
31. Allison Williams – Joined April 5, 2006
32. Mike Michon – Joined April 7, 2006
33. Alissa – Joined April 8, 2006
34. Dave – Joined April 13, 2006
35. Rob McCarthy – Joined April 14, 2006
36. Philip Kaplan – Joined April 14, 2006
37. ilona – Joined April 14, 2006
38. Steve Jenson – Joined April 28, 2006
39. Craig Calef – Joined April 28, 2006
40. Stacy Jenson – Joined April 29, 2006
41. jennycool – Joined April 29, 2006
42. Russ – Joined April 29, 2006
43. Phil – Joined April 29, 2006
44. Mom – Joined May 1, 2006
45. Ali Momeni – Joined May 1, 2006
46. Da Mystik Homeboy – Joined May 1, 2006
47. Nic Werner – Joined May 1, 2006
48. Dave Pell – Joined May 1, 2006
49. Victor – Joined May 2, 2006
50. Blaine – Joined May 3, 2006
51. Rael Dornfest – Joined May 9, 2006
52. leah – Joined May 10, 2006
53. Dan Arkind – Joined May 11, 2006
54. Jason Goldman – Joined May 20, 2006
55. Chris Wetherell – Joined May 20, 2006
56. Mai Le – Joined May 21, 2006
57. Ario Jafarzadeh – Joined May 23, 2006
58. Josh Kopelman – Joined May 24, 2006
59. ethan – Joined June 3, 2006
60. inactivesarah – Joined June 4, 2006
61. Ted Wang – Joined June 5, 2006
62. Chris Fralic – Joined June 6, 2006
63. Bob Johnston – Joined June 20, 2006
64. jo – Joined June 20, 2006
65. myles – Joined June 21, 2006
66. oof – Joined June 21, 2006
67. cher – Joined June 21, 2006
68. Will Turnage – Joined June 21, 2006
69. Mike Champion – Joined June 24, 2006
70. Gary Elliott – Joined June 24, 2006
71. Kevin S. – Joined June 29, 2006
72. asa – Joined July 3, 2006
73. Eric Case – Joined July 4, 2006
74. Jeffrey Veen – Joined July 5, 2006
75. Dennis Crowley – Joined July 5, 2006
76. Jason Shellen – Joined July 6, 2006
77. Katie Walton – Joined July 7, 2006
78. Richard – Joined July 8, 2006
79. Chris Baum – Joined July 8, 2006
80. Team Buckshot™ – Joined July 9, 2006
81. rae brune – Joined July 11, 2006
82. Mysteriously Unnamed – Joined July 11, 2006
83. Maggie Mason – Joined July 11, 2006
84. Lori McLeese – Joined July 12, 2006
85. Dave Gray – Joined July 12, 2006
86. Donna – Joined July 12, 2006
87. Rav – Joined July 12, 2006
88. Jonathan Markwell – Joined July 12, 2006
89. Jerry Michalski – Joined July 12, 2006
90. hans.gerwitz – Joined July 12, 2006
91. Buzz Andersen – Joined July 12, 2006
92. DocRob – Joined July 12, 2006
93. Ozlem – Joined July 12, 2006
94. Lane Collins – Joined July 12, 2006
95. Peter Berg – Joined July 12, 2006
96. charlie wright – Joined July 12, 2006
97. Chris Jones – Joined July 12, 2006
98. Cristiano Dias – Joined July 13, 2006
99. Noah Brier – Joined July 13, 2006
100. Nicole Mezzasalma – Joined July 13, 2006
101. Chris Sacca – Joined July 13, 2006
102. David Smith – Joined July 13, 2006
103. Naina – Joined July 13, 2006
104. Scott Fegette – Joined July 13, 2006
105. Matt Galligan – Joined July 13, 2006
106. Jerry Richardson – Joined July 13, 2006
107. Christian Harrison – Joined July 13, 2006
108. Fabienne Jach – Joined July 13, 2006
109. danah boyd – Joined July 13, 2006
110. Dick Hardt – Joined July 13, 2006
111. Pete Hopkins – Joined July 13, 2006
112. Scott Heiferman – Joined July 13, 2006
113. Mary Hodder – Joined July 13, 2006
114. Annie – Joined July 13, 2006
115. Mam – Joined July 13, 2006
116. alex vartan – Joined July 13, 2006
117. Satvir Dogra – Joined July 13, 2006
118. Yashwant Rawat – Joined July 13, 2006
119. Manu – Joined July 13, 2006
120. Jason Shugars – Joined July 13, 2006
121. mike mcguire – Joined July 13, 2006
122. Tole Hart – Joined July 13, 2006
123. Neha Narula – Joined July 13, 2006
124. Curtis Wilde – Joined July 14, 2006
125. Sam – Joined July 14, 2006
126. Grant Shellen – Joined July 14, 2006
127. Brian Walsh – Joined July 14, 2006
128. cg – Joined July 14, 2006
129. Matt Croydon – Joined July 14, 2006
130. Noam Lovinsky – Joined July 14, 2006
131. Jason Cosper – Joined July 14, 2006
132. Rod Begbie – Joined July 14, 2006
133. Robb M. – Joined July 14, 2006
134. Sean Bonner – Joined July 14, 2006
135. Xeni Jardin – Joined July 14, 2006
136. Verified Richard – Joined July 14, 2006
137. Jim Williams – Joined July 14, 2006
138. Kevin Fox – Joined July 14, 2006
139. Sean – Joined July 14, 2006
140. Deepak C – Joined July 14, 2006

Decisions Decisions

I feel like I used to be a lit more decisive. I don’t know if that’s true or if it’s just my head making shit up but I feel like it’s true. I feel like when I was presented with an option I would make my choice and run with it but at some point I started asking myself about the options and which was better and what might happen if I chose one over the other. I told myself that this was smart and it would help me make more educated choices and more thoughtful decisions. And that’s not entirely wrong, or bad, but the result of doing that more and more often hasn’t been making better and better decisions it’s been making some very well thought out decisions and being paralyzed in fear of making the wrong decision so not making a decision at all on far too many other things. Maybe I don’t have time to do the research I think I need to, or maybe the info that I found wasn’t definitive, or maybe I just didn’t feel like thinking about it – whatever the reason a choice left unmade was the result. And it’s been happening more and more often. It’s almost like I’m bikeshedding myself.

Anyway I sort of knew I was doing this but pretended I didn’t, and then I really knew I was doing it and thought I’d just ignore it. Turns out neither of those are really good ideas and it’s just been getting worse and worse. The anxiety. The indecision. It’s a bunch of bullshit, all of it. This morning I was at Costco with Tara because we needed to pick up a few things (protip: Costco sells a giant 26oz jar of MaraNatha Almond Butter which is amazing in smoothies for like $6, which is even way cheaper than Amazon, and the 12oz jar is $19 at my local grocery store – but anyway…) and we were walking down the office supply isle and Tara said “Oh we need printer paper” and reached over to the stack of paper packages closest to her, grabbed one and put it in the cart and kept going.

I stood there in shock. And then told her why I was in such awe.

There were no less than 8 different kinds of printer paper there. At even my quickest glance I could see they were all about the same price and about the same sheet count so there was no instant, obvious reason to choose one over the other. If I had been standing there and realized I needed paper it would have taken me 10-15 minutes of reading about each option and trying to decide which one was the wisest choice. I probably would have been googling them holding them next to each other to see how much of a difference there was between 92 bright white and 87 white. And I would have been unsure about my final pick. Did I spend extra for something I don’t need? Should I have gotten something brighter? What about recycled? Tara wrestled with none of that, she didn’t even care. She spent 3 seconds on it – if even – and then moved on.

I thought about this for the rest of the day and this afternoon realized why. I hadn’t really realized how much this indecisiveness was bothering me until I saw how little impact making a choice and running with it had on her. Because really, there’s no difference in any of those papers – they all do the job. So anything more than 5 seconds would have been a waste, but I couldn’t have realized that until I saw it in action. And so here I am, obsessing about that and promising myself that I’m going to stop wrestling with myself over shit that doesn’t matter and just make a decision and run with it, and be happy with it, and stop thinking about it so I can move on to the next thing. A decision made is better than a decision in limbo tearing away at me. I won’t even get into the months and months of disasterous mental hell I’ve been putting myself through over any number of choices that have been laid out before me. None of which deserve 1% of the time I’ve spent on them.

I’m feeling like this is a reckless decision but it’s probably not in anyway. But I’m making the choice to just start making choices. I’m committing to making a commitment and seeing where it leads rather than trying to know the whole map before I take a step. Maybe I’ll make the wrong choice sometimes, but I’ll be making choices and that’s better than where I’m at right now.

So we’ll see where this leads.

Message Boards might just be the solution to Comments

In the mid 90′s the community where I spent the most time online was Alen Yen’s ToyboxDX. This site was the epicenter of the Japanese toy collecting world, and naturally in our pre-twitter, pre-blog, pre-social networking world, the message board there was where all the action was. This was also a pre-wikipedia world so research was much trickier and that message board was invaluable for those of us trying to figure out what toys which companies released and when. I still have good friends who I first met soaking up details about rare chogokin and sofubi there. We had built a vintage toy nerd utopia… and then the Transformers kids showed up with their unrefined discussion about toys made in the 80′s. People threatened to leave the site because it had become a cesspool of US released plastic toy talk. It was a nightmare as you can imagine.

Until someone had an idea – what if, all Field of Dreams style – we could build something for those Transformers dorks that would be more appealing to them and would get them out of our faces. We made a special “Transformers” section of the message board (along with an “off topic” ghetto) and instantly the problem was solved and the classic toy threads returned to their previous unmolested toysnob glory.

In the years since then I’ve thought about this strategy time and time again when working with communities online. Adjusting where someone hangs out is easier than adjusting how they hang out. It’s not about getting someone to talk about something else, rather finding the right place for what they want to talk about.

We see some of the same conflicts a lot today with the comments on blogs. I have a love/hate relationship with comments. I love the interaction, I love breaking down the barriers between reader and writer and I love the unpredictable magic that can come from the right combo of people chiming in. At the same time, comments can often be quickly filled with the lowest common denominator of internet troll which serves no purpose other to detract from the original author’s work – and that’s on a good day. Anonymous comments, which serve a real pupose, can turn a excellent blog into a wretched hive of scum and villainy. And moderation doesn’t really help that, it just turns it into a constant battle.

Boing Boing recently killed comments entirely, opting instead to launch a message board where readers can chime in, or even create their own threads. I think this is an excellent move and I expect to see many other sites follow their lead. The brilliance here is akin to the Transformers forum I spoke of earlier – no one is trying to change the habits of the readers/commenters, so much as change where those habits manifest themselves. A built in message board, like what BoingBoing has implemented, keeps the original posts clean while still allowing readers to interact and be a part of the ongoing story. And better yet, lets them “have a say” so to speak, by letting them create their own threads about things they think might have been overlooked.

But best of all – this all happening in it’s own area rather than on the front page of the site, keeps one experience pure without infringing on the other. There are sites I can no longer read, regardless of how good the main content is, because the comments are such hellswamps – this could be the solution.

I hope blog publishers all over the web see the beauty of this adjustment and it becomes the norm. Fingers crossed.

Encryption and Privacy – What I’m Using

[Originally posted on Medium] Can you imagine if an email program shipped today without a “reply all” feature? Or a browser shipping without tabs? It’s a crazy prospect because those things are used so frequently used, to not include them would ensure instant death for this new software. I’ve often complained publicly that privacy and encryption tools aren’t thought to be just as crucial, and expressed some annoyance that developers don’t consider them mandatory. Afterall, if these options were baked in and simple people would use them all the time, right? Or at least much more frequently. Recently a friend threw this back at me and asked if we, all of us, are not to blame for these things having a low priority because we neither use them regularly nor demand their inclusion in our software?

I initially objected to this idea, but the more I thought about it the more it rang true. Saying “it’s too hard to use so I’m not going to bother using it” doesn’t provide any motivation for people to make it easier because hell, people aren’t using them anyway. On the other hand if people used these things regularly and “how hard it is” became a common gripe, then making it easier would suddenly be very attractive. Looking at it this way, maybe we really do only have ourselves to blame that these technologies and assurances aren’t ubiqitus. And when faced with a realization like that, I always feel like I have to at least try.

So I spent a few days looking back over the tools I’ve used in the past, the tools I want to use now and bringing things a bit more up to date. There’s always a balance between convenience and usefulness because I know myself and if something is a pain in the ass I’ll eventually stop using it. So one of my main criteria here is that is has to be easy to use, even if there are a few hoops to jump through in the initial set up stages. I’m a Mac users and do a lot of my work in the browser so I have a preference for tools that “just work.”

As I have these conversations with others from time to time, I thought I’d share what I found and what I implemented so that perhaps others might find something useful in the mix. I don’t pretend to be an expert here and welcome suggestions for improvement.

For browsing…



TOR [download] - This as the low hanging fruit of internet privacy. Everyone should be running Tor all the time. Tor doesn’t so much hide what you do on line as it scatters the breadcrumbs you leave all over the place making it incredibly difficult to trace traffic back to individual users –and the more people who use Tor the better it works. If you read TMZ on your laptop while using the wifi in a coffee shop, snooping eyes would be able to determine that someone at the coffee shop wanted the latest celebrity gossip, but it would be hard to pinpoint exactly who. For many years I complained that Tor was too hard to install and use, and that seems to be completely corrected with the tor bundle. The bundle includes Vidalia (which is the heart of Tor) and the Tor Browser which is a preconfigured version of Firefox designed to maximize your browsing privacy. Personally I find Tor Browser to be too restrictive for what I want to do online and how I want to do it, but I run Vidalia religiously and hope that what I lose by not using Tor Browser is covered by some of the other stuff I have installed.

That said, whatever browser you are using can be a bit more private simply by making sure to install these plugins which help limit/block collection of information about you:

https everywhere | adblock | disconnect | flashblock | ghostery

I also changed my default search engine in the browser from Google to DuckDuckGo which you can easily do in the settings. Most search engines keep records of all your search requests and can tie them back to you, DuckDuckGo doesn’t keep any logs at all. It’s a small thing, but it’s one more for the arsenal.

For mobile browsing, Onion Browser on iOS routes all your web traffic through Tor as well, though it’s slow as all get out which might make it a deal killer for many people who need speed on their mobile devices.

VPN - A virtual private network provides something of a private tunnel between you and whatever you are accessing on the web, shielding it from prying eyes along the way. Back at that coffee shop, if you’d been running a VPN only you and TMZ would know your secret – the coffee shop, their ISP and everyone in between would only see traffic between you and the VPN, without knowing what any of it was.

My favorite VPN that I’ve used for years is privateinternetaccess. It’s reasonably priced and works like a charm, all the time, from everywhere. It also has the bonus of having iOS/mobile support so that you can set it up on your iPhone/android device as well.

I’m also quite fond of iPreditor though admittedly I’m biased towards anything created by the team behind TPB. I don’t know if there is any value in doubling up on VPNs, but I do it from time to time.

For email…

This has always been the stumbling block for me. Setting up PGP/GPG was near impossible without hours of work, required the use of standalone apps and there was very little payoff since no one else was using it. Or relatively few people away. Recently I discovered the mailvelope plug in for Chrome and it’s a dream come true. It painlessly adds encryption options to your browser for web mail (such as gmail) and makes super easy to use. It’s for Chrome only at the moment (though they have a beta for Firefox on Github) though I’ve heard WebPG is does the same thing for Firefox, however I haven’t tried it.

Mailvelope provides a lot of tools right in the browser and is based on OpenPGP, but I installed the macGPG kit as well which I’ve found to be a little more robust and didn’t see any problem with using both.

Last year Google started alerting users if their accounts were the target of State Sponsored attacks, and shortly there after I and a few people I work with got notices alerting us to just that fact. While I’m not ready to move away from gmail for most things, I thought it might be prudent to have a backup plan as well and I registered for an email account with Riseup. This might be a bit more than most people need or are interested in, but I figured why not?

For chat…

Adium [download] – A confusing things for a lot of people who use Google’s in browser chat is that taking it “off the record” just means that Google doesn’t store the log in your email. It’s not really any more secure. For chat, even with gchat, I use a client called adium and religiously use the built in OTR option. This is true off the record chat encryption and ensures that no one between you and the person you are talking to can read along.

This isn’t everything, but it’s some things and I feel like, I hope anyway, that by using these things and encouraging others too as well, together we’ll help popularize them and encourage developers to make them simpler, and more often built in. This isn’t the end of the conversation by a long shot, it’s barely the beginning, but at least it is a beginning.

I very much welcome feedback on this set up (as I’m sure it’s not perfect), as well as suggestions and modifications as well. I know that it doesn’t matter how good 99% of your set up is if 1% fails, but this experiment isn’t really about making a 100% secure system as it is just integrating some of these technologies into everyday use to make them more common. Thanks for reading.

Further reading:

• The Atlantic: The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror

• Thought Crime: We Should All Have Something To Hide

•Daily Kos: Don’t Even Think Of Using Encryption Software To Escape NSA Scrutiny

Fight yourself, you always win

Everyday I tell myself to write and everyday I don’t. Everyday I tell myself to take photos and everyday I don’t.

That’s not entirely true but it feels that way, and I take more photos than I write words but I obsess about writing more than taking photos so there is that. For weeks, months I’ve been in this back and forth thinking about writing and having sparks of ideas but because I can’t see the full idea I give up before I start which I know is the 100% wrong thing to do and I think about that and then I do it anyway. I’m in this particularly awesome headspace of thinking that my work has to be brilliant (not that it should be, but that is obviously is) but at the exact same time thinking it’s complete crap. I don’t even know how to classify that particular brand of crazy but it’s a near perfect balance of massively over inflated ego and crushingly low self esteem. Which results in inaction. And either way, I’m right.

And here I am writing about that – again – rather than the things I want to be writing about. I’d guess that a batch analysis of the archives of this blog, all 15 years of it, would result in far more posts about struggling with writing than actual writing. Blogging about blogging. Writing about writing. It’s useless, and yet I keep doing it. Back in January I told myself that once and for all I was going to put all this behind me and write a book this year. I didn’t restrict myself to what, because while I’m horrified and clueless about writing fiction it’s what I really want to do. But I know how lost I get when I try, and given that I have actually completed some of the non fiction writing I set out to do I wanted to leave that door open to myself. But here we are at the end of June and I have, maybe… 35 words written? If even? I don’t want to count. And they aren’t even complete sentences. Just words.

Part of it is indecision. I realized that this year – it’s something that I fight through it other parts of my life as well but really holds up my writing. I don’t know if I’m making the right choice about what to write. This idea is good, but I like this idea too, but that other idea could be interesting – but would anyone actually want to read that kind of a story? Who cares what other people think, I’m gonna write what I want to read! Which could be this idea, or that one. Or maybe this other one could work too. Well shit, I can’t write about all these things at once, how do I even begin. And then I don’t.

Deadlines tend to work for me. When someone contacts me for a piece in a magazine or whatever and says they need X by next Friday then I nail that no problem. I think if I had an editor screaming at me to finish something I’d probably finish it. Or maybe better yet a group of friends (a writing group?) that were expecting to see something, and I was expecting to see something from them at the same time. I think that would motivate me. Or would it? I don’t even really know. But 20 minutes ago I told myself I had to finish a blog post before I left to go pick up Ripley from preschool, so there you have it.