I had a good – possibly great – day today.  In the afternoon I took the kids to the Puyallup Fair.  If you’re a native of Western Washington you probably have lots of great memories of your own about past trips to The Fair (no adjective required; they have the url thefair.com ).   My kids gave me some good new memories of my own today and you can see the photo album here on Facebook if you’re interested in a visual montage of the day.

The best part of The Fair?  For me, it was a simple thing – purchasing Original Fair Scones.  Careful readers may possibly (correctly) conclude why.  Sometimes, it’s the little things – the things that recall past memories; the things that establish or strengthen our connections with friends; the things that top off those needful reservoirs in ourselves with hope or warmth or care or meaning or love – that are the most important.

There was a laughable moment when I paid a guy $5 to guess my weight – and he overestimated my actual weight by 19 pounds.  I haven’t been on a scale in a couple months, but with all the exercise I’ve been doing (and to be fair, a sensible diet), I found that I’m now as lean as I’ve been since I competed in a triathlon in 2004.  Yay me!  I say “a laughable moment” because I paid the guy $5 to win a stuffed animal that probably cost sixty-nine cents, imported from Bangladesh or Ghana or something.  You don’t go to The Fair to save money, that’s for sure.

The great day didn’t start with The Fair, however; I also had a fantastic morning at work.  It’s Monday, right?  Strange.  But I was very productive, starting with a 5:30 AM trip to the gym to continue my exercise streak.  The team had a good start to a new iteration at work with a retrospective/planning meeting that went really well; and I had an excellent time catching up with friends over coffees.  I wish all Monday mornings went this well.

I picked up the journal again – no big surprise to me, all things considered; the timing was predictable, given all the thoughts running through my head over the weekend.  A couple more pages of disintermediated thoughts, direct from brain to page.  I predict that some point in the future, at my commitment hearing, they’ll break out the journal as proof of the crazy train I hopped on a few months ago.  Fair enough.

I also found out today that the friend that I’d been really concerned about is hanging in there; no real change in the situation, but strength and patience and the support of friends can help see us through even the toughest times.  I’ve reiterated my blanket offer of support, in whatever capacity I can offer, and hope that my friend will be able to accept offers of support and consolation and expressions of concern.  Sometimes it’s hard when you’re feeling raw to let people to close, for fear of getting overwhelmed with the pure NOWNESS of the situation.  I understand.  But I care about this friend very much and want to be there, both in tough times and good times.

In closing, I almost can’t believe I’m writing this, but – I can’t wait for tomorrow.

This is a classic Tarantino film; the only odd note was that there wasn’t a single samurai sword or chop-socky fight scene to be found.  But in the classic QT tradition we have lots of in-your-face violence; a woman gets strangled, another woman gets shot, point-blank, in the abdomen and chest, several hapless extras get machine-gunned; a score or more of German soldiers get scalped (yes, you read that right); a British agent and a Gestapo goon shoot off each other’s testicles; and in the most gruesome scene, the “Bear Jew” beats a German sergeant to death with a baseball bat.  Lovely.

Tarantino loves filming violence, but he also loves filming women, and the close-up scenes involving the cinema proprietress Shoshanna  Dreyfus and the fading German film star Bridget von Hammersmark are cinematographic lovemaking of the first order.    He’s able to bring out the full range of emotion in his women leads that he’s just not able to with his male leads.  Case in point: Brad Pitt, playing Lt. Aldo “Apache” Raine, a good ol’ boy whose one goal in life is to “kill me some Nazis”.  Pitt’s a good actor, but here he plays the same note over and over again, with the same throat-bouldery accent, and it gets a little tiring.

Of course the movie couldn’t have been released without a good helping of humor; for example, the side-story about Hugo Stiglitz flashes in with the signature QT Comic Sans labeling superimposed on the screen.  Hitler himself makes an appearance, slamming tables and showing an introspective side consistent with the state of the war in late 1944; Sylvester Groth, playing a simpering, weak Joseph Goebbels, gives a performance that simultaneously make one’s skin crawl and fists clench.

Despite the title’s focus on Pitt and his motley crew of underground Jewish-American butchers, the movie really revolves around – and is owned by – the performance of Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa, the “Jew Hunter”, a detective, a man of immense talents at his assigned task.  In the first scene of the movie, he purrs and cajoles and eventually persuades a French dairy owner to give up the Jewish family hiding under his floorboards, and in happy coincidences, is able to stalk and thwart the Basterds through the remainder of the film.  The final scene of the film involves a visual of Colonel Landa that one isn’t likely to forget – a signature QT fetishistic violence-fuck involving a Very Large Knife.

So am I glad I saw it?  Yes.  It was typical, but not predictable; the film maintains its tension throughout and has some really stunning and blunt scenes.  Was it QT’s best work?  No; but for QT fans it’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen.

Love to hear your review in the comments!

I’ll be using my favorite coffee shop, Zoka Coffee Roasters, as a case in point for how NOT to do social media marketing.

• There’s a new Zoka store that just opened up in Kirkland. The store is not listed in the “Locations” page on the Zoka website. I did end up finding the address and phone number when I googled “kirkland site:zokacoffee.com”, but 95% of internet users won’t know the site: trick.
• Doing a Google Maps search for “Zoka Kirkland” returned zero results in Kirkland.
• No Twitter account? Surely thou jesteth.
• The Zoka account on Facebook is a normal account, not a “fan page”, and gets updated about every solar eclipse. Looking at the feed, you’d never know they’re opening up in Kirkland.
• GetSatisfaction? Nein! Wuhoo! Nyet!
• Zoka has had a lot of success in regional and national barista championships. Phuong Tran won the 2005 national title, Jen Prince (who at one time was my favorite Seattle barista, hands down) won the 2005 NWRBC championship, and Maki Campbell took 2nd place in the 2007 Northwest regionals. You can find this info deep in the Zoka Blog if you search for it via Google, but these sorts of spectacular achievements should be made more front-and-center.
• Speaking of the Zoka Blog, 6 posts this year.  Total.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love love love Zoka, but their social media strategy needs a significant boost in the arm.

What other Social Media Strategy snafus can you find?  What would you recommend?

From an undated(*) “Best of Seattle” roundup on the Seattle Weekly website comes this shout-out to Zoka:

BEST COFFEEHOUSE: Zoka Five reasons why it’s our favorite: Great espresso drinks, beautifully roasted single-estate coffees, rarely a wait for a table, nonstop free wi-fi, and most important, no fucking attitude. 2200 N. 56th St., 545-4277, and 2901 N.E. Blakeley St., 527-0990; zokacoffee.com.

Of course, this immediately blew the mind of every coffee nut in Seattle, as we all have our own favorites.  Mine just happens to be Zoka, but I wouldn’t have complained too much about any of about a half-dozen worthy candidates.

I found this while researching whether or not the new Zoka store in Kirkland is open yet.  I found this Seattle Times article by Melissa Allison that indicates that Zoka Kirkland opened last Wednesday, the 5th of August, so I’m definitely going to head out there tomorrow morning for a little coffee and coding.  By the way, for coffee lovers, you might consider following Melissa’s Twitter account CoffeeCity; she publishes local coffee-related news on a pretty consistent basis, and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s relevant, interesting, and not spammy.

(*) I mean, come on guys, you’re a FUCKING NEWSPAPER.  Put a dateline on your shit.

Ignite! Seattle 7 was held last night at the King Cat Theater and….wow.  The geeky juggernaut established yet again why it’s a must-attend event for geeks, nerds, makers, coders, hackers, organizers, hobbyists, scientists, gamers, foodies, and playful sorts of every persuasion.

My brief reviews of each of the presentations, below:

Yoram Bauman – Principles of economics, translated
A bottle-rocket of an opening presentation; Yoram got the crowd laughing along with him right away.  He crafted a thematically consistent presentation whose main takeaway was that “people are stupid, but they’re not that stupid.”.  Loved it.

Mandy Sorensen (mandercrosby) – What To Do With 60 Minutes in Whale (and How I Learned to Use a Machete!)
Mandy kept us enthralled with a tale of a Rarotongan whale necropsy.  Life on the scientific frontier, as it were.  A final surprise had the greenies among us nodding our heads in agreement.  Complete with CSI-style photos of whale innards.

Daniel Westreich (danielwestreich) – Causal inference is hard; or how I learned to stop worrying and love counterfactuals
Possibly the most pure-nerd presentation of the evening. Daniel packed his deck in order to deal with a complex and confusing subject.  The friend sitting next to me liked this presentation best of all.  I never really knew what a “counterfactual” was until this night.

Lee LeFever (leelefever) – Where Goldfish Come From
A fun, feel-good, no-sharp-edges family tale of the history of American goldfish farming industry.

Rob Gruhl – How to Take Better Pictures
Rob did a great job reinforcing his takeaways: Practice, practice, practice. Show only 3% of your photos. Manuals are useless. Buy a mid-range DSLR.

Vanessa Fox – (@vanessafox) – Life’s Too Short To Eat Bad Food
OK, these slides – of cheese, figs, tomatoes, crackers, pancetta, and more – had me drooling on to my shirt.  Vanessa mentioned that she likes “test subjects” in her ongoing foodie experiments.  I’m free next Thursday!

Todd Sawicki (sawickipedia) – How I learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina
Right at the start, Todd hooked the guys in the audience by showing pictures of abused, mutilated dancers’ feet.  From there, a broad survey of the subject, perfectly targeted at an audience for whom ballet is probably a very unfamiliar subject.

Dan Shapiro (danshapiro) – Making Benjamin Fly: Geeking out aero-style for about a hundred bucks.
A survey of the RC aircraft scene, which apparently is mostly about trying to achieve the most noteworthy crashes. It’s the Jerry Bruckheimer of hobbies!  Dan has an RC event planned for September 13th – see more at

Mehal Shah (mehals) – Fighting Dirty in Scrabble
All I’m saying is, when you play Mehal in Scrabble, bring a sack of doorknobs.  He’s that dirty.

Jessica Hagy (thisisindexed.com) – Lies To Ignore
Jessica presented a selection of some of her best graphics from thisisindexed.com.  Although I love the blog, I think the Ignite! format fails to do justice to the work, for two reasons: (a) some of her stuff requires more than 15 seconds before you reach that “a-ha!” moment (at least for me), and (b) Jessica’s output is intrinsically visual, not verbal, and Ignite! presentations work best when the slides are equal partners with the talk.

Scotto Moore – CPU
A spectacular mindfuck in PowerPoint format, I couldn’t decide if Scotto’s main influence is Lynch or Cronenberg.  Fabulously creative and original.  A nice programming counterpoint to the typical bullet-point fare.

Lauren Bricker (brickware) – Geek Generation
I loved this presentation because it touches on two topics I love: computer science and kids.  Another solution-oriented talk on how to get involved to start “generating geeks”.  Are you a software pro?  Start to get involved at http://www.csta.acm.org/.

Elan Lee (elanlee) – I Wish I Was Taller
A funny story about a real-world bug report filed against Elan’s height.  The slides were repetitive, unless you like looking at 20 different pictures of the same short, dark, handsome man.  It would have been great to see text snippets from the actual bug report.  During the presentation, someone tweeted that “he looks shorter on stage.”  Elan’s got great stage charisma, has presented before, and will probably be back at future Ignite!s.

Willow Brugh (willowbl00) – Creating Communal Creative Space
Willow’s collaborating with some others on a new communal space called Jigsaw Renaissance (“because the name was cool”).  I think everyone in the audience would agree that spending time out and about with smart, interesting, motivated people is infinitely preferable to saying home in your one-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment.  Check out the progress at http://www.jigsawrenaissance.org/.

Gregory Heller (gregoryheller) – What Makes The Greenest Cab?
Gregory gave a very well-researched and solution-oriented talk about the greening of the taxi business.   As in several of the talks, there was a family connection – his grandfather started a taxi business last century.  My big takeway?  Hybrids have tradeoffs.

Mónica Guzmán (moniguzman) – Addiction! Staying afloat in the age of the stream
Mónica had some great points about information addiction.  I’m not sure that, given the 5-minute time limit, we got deep into the answer(s) to the problem, but we are closer to an understanding and acceptance of the problem.  Mónica gets my vote for best single slide – the “I’m txting while drving” cartoon was HILARIOUS.

Deepak Singh (mndoci) – Big Data and the networked future of science
Deepak surveyed the new problems facing scientists who must now deal with massive datasets.  I found myself wishing for a specific scenario or anecdote relating how a specific person or team is overcoming these problems.

Matthew Amster-Burton – (@mamster) What is Baby Food?
Matthew has a new book coming out called hungry monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater.  His talk culled anecdotes from his foodie adventures with his daughter, Iris.

So a few closing thoughts.  The Ignite! format is set in stone – 20 slides, 5 minutes, no dithering – but what if there were some latitude in the presentation format?   Scotto Moore did some creative work with (I assume) animated GIFs, but who is to say that video couldn’t be part of one or more slides?  Or how about a pair presentation – a sort of Martin and Lewis comedy teamup.

What about props? Hillel Cooperman had a LEGO house on stage at one of the recent Ignite! events to support his talk; it was a good addition. What about an audience-driven presentation, a la Cortazar’s Hopscotch? Let the audience clap for A or B, and whichever gets the loudest applause drives the presentation that way. Fan fiction writ large.

I guess what I’m saying is that Seattle has such a wealth of creative, talented people, shouldn’t we be thinking about the next generation of Ignite! – before it happens?

Final congratulations to Brady, Justin, Randy, Alexis, Bryan, Josh, and I’m sure I’m missing one or two.  All of you deserve massive kudos.

So – to my readers – which presentations moved and/or amused and/or enlightened you the most?  Why?  Share below.

Last month Merriam-Webster added 100+ new entries to it’s Collegiate Dictionary, in keeping with the times. Among my favorites:

EARMARK: How the hell did this never make it in before? I’m pretty sure that George Washington himself was bitching about Federalist earmarks as early as 1792.

FLASH MOB: Having mobbed a time or two myself, I love the inclusion of this phrase. There’s a wonderfully novel social experiment going on with flash mobs that I think both helps explain, as well as open new lines of inquiry into, ways that we interact with each other.

FRENEMY: Beware the second-level frenemy: Someone who seems like a friend, acts like a friend, *thinks* they’re a friend, but are just bad news for you six ways from Sunday.

Of note is that my friend Ben Gerstein was involved with the launch of the original Frenemies Facebook app back in December 2007-ish. So again, this is a word that is overdue for inclusion in the dictionary.

STAYCATION: I’m on one now, so of course I like this term.

What are your favorite new words?

(h/t Julie Bourke)

First, the puddles: when a kid walks by a puddle, he/she stomps it. There’s a simple, instinctive drive to do the thing that gives the most immediate pleasure.

I’m reminded of the classic 5th-season Simpsons episode “Bart’s Inner Child”, in which a self-styled self-help expert, played by Albert Brooks, urges Bart to just “do what [he] feels like,” i.e. pay no attention to consequences. The whole town of Springfield jumps on board the bandwagon. Mayhem, of course, ensues. The moral, taken in isolation, is that short-term grasping can ruin long-term happiness, especially when one considers the sum of both one’s own personal happiness as well as the happiness of those around us.

But is this *always* true? Is there a threshold at which, having suffered the pangs of regret following hundreds or thousands of lost opportunities for short-term, revel-in-the-moment happiness, we actually end up on the wrong side of the equation? Our sober, duly considered choices that are intended to bring long-term happiness end up being, in retrospect, not so happy at all?

Insert your domain of choice here: Career, relationships, religion, hobbies, friends, etc. etc. etc. The ageless recommendation to work hard to prepare for the eventual winter, probably best explained in modern terms by Max Weber, fails us if winter comes and we still find ourselves unsatisfied.

Is there somewhere a 50 year old man, sitting alone at his desk, contemplating his 10,000-item stamp collection, and thinking What. The. Fuck? Or is there a woman on her deathbed, who has followed dutifully the tenets of a particularly restrictive church, having a personal realization that there is no God? Can you imagine a woman who, having made the safe choice in her youth by marrying a good provider – even if he was a little boring –, wakes up, post-menopausal and wild with anxiety that she has lived her whole life on the wrong side of a choice made twenty years earlier?

I suppose that this is one of the – well, if not *fun*, at least *interesting* parts of being human – nothing is predictable, nothing is preordained, and every day we’re confronted with choices, large and small, whose net effects can be monumental.

If you have never had the pleasure of reading 20th-century American humorist James Thurber, you might want to visit your local library and pick up Fables for Our Time, which is Thurber’s modern take on historical fables. I liked this description of Thurber’s work I found in a critical essay by Ruth Maharg:

Thurber demonstrates the complexity of life by depicting the world as an uncertain, precarious place, where few reliable guidelines exist.

Indeed. What guidelines (unconscious or otherwise) are you operating under? Should you spend some time thinking about them? Hit me up in the comments.

If you’re a fan of unique and slightly disturbing imagery, you should check out Morbid Anatomy.  This blog, by Joanna Ebelstein, is a treasure trove of anatomic visuals from around the world, both human and animal.

There’s also a Morbid Anatomy Flickr group.

This is a great find.  Joanna obviously has a great love for the subject, and it shows.  This blog is a real labor of love.  Check it out!

I’ve never even heard of this movie – and now, probably never will again. Kyle Smith of the New York Post sums it up thusly:

The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of "Good," a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.

What were the most annoying, most repetitive, most mind-numbingly banal phrases of 2008 that you hope die and stay dead before they can infect 2009?  Without further buildup, here are mine:

1. Ready on day one
2. Maverick
3. I can haz <anything>
4. You betcha
5. Commander-in-chief
6. Boots on the ground
7. Hockey mom
8. Look
9. Bailout
10. President Bush

What are yours?