Big Action!

Hello, Baby

Hey Big Actioneers:

I'm writing a letter to our soon-to-be-born baby, and I'm telling her all the things that have changed since I was born. I'm not really talking about the big social movements here -- the fall of Communism, or whatnot. I mean the bits of the future that have worked their way into our everyday lives, sometimes without us noticing. The things that you never would have expected to see when you were a kid, because you were busy waiting for the jet-packs and the cities on the moon.

Here's what I have so far:

• Phones used to only come attached to houses. There was only one company you could get a phone from, and it was called the Phone Company. Also, you couldn’t buy your phone – you had to lease it from the Phone Company. If you weren’t there to pick up the phone when someone called, it just kept ringing until they gave up. No voice-mail, no answering machines, nothing. If there was no one there to answer the phone, then there was no one there to answer the phone. And dialing a phone meant putting your finger in one hole on a small wheel, then dragging it around in a circle until it spun back from the number you wanted to zero. You did this anywhere from seven to eleven times, starting over every time you screwed up or wanted to dial again. You didn’t call outside your local area very often, however. Calling someone in another state was a decision that had to be weighed carefully: phone service was expensive.
• Nobody had a personal computer, unless they built it themselves. Most computers were enormous, bulky machines that filled entire rooms, costing hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars. Your uncle Bryon and I didn’t get a computer until I was eleven. It was a Commodore 64 that hooked up to our TV for a screen, and didn’t have a hard drive. The phone I use now has 134,000 times as much memory as it did.
• Most people got their TV for free, through an antenna on the top of their TV sets. Some of those TVs only showed black-and-white pictures. In most cities, there were only three channels, and they stopped broadcasting around 1 or 2 a.m. My hometown didn’t get cable TV until I was ten, and it seemed like an amazing amount of choices: 36 channels. And if you missed a TV show, it would be months before it came on again in reruns – or maybe never.
• Music came from large, vinyl discs, or magnetic tapes. You had to go to the store to buy it, or order it by phone from the TV. It would arrive in 4-6 weeks. (However, some people, like our friend Steve, still insist that vinyl is the only way to listen to music. We will go visit him in the crazy person’s home and he can tell you all about it.)
• Coffee came in one flavor: coffee. And you didn’t go to a coffee shop to drink coffee – you went there to eat.
• Your Grandma couldn’t get a credit card, because she was a single mom. Banks were reluctant to loan money to women, who were not really supposed to have jobs then. Before I was born, she was actually required to leave her job as a flight attendant because she got married, and her employer fired married women – because they might get pregnant and have babies, and they didn’t want to pay for that.
• People typed on typewriters, which used paper, and had no screen.
• People got their news from newspapers – which were delivered both in the morning, and the late afternoon. Or they would watch the TV, which dedicated just a half-hour every evening to the day’s top stories. You sometimes had to wait hours, or even days, to find out what was happening across the planet.
• The Internet didn’t exist.

I know I'm missing things. I would love to see what you can add in the comments, or in your own posts.

Baby Farnsworth and I thank you.

The K-Tel Knitter

This is really just for Jean and Leslie, and maybe Brill. But I bet they will love it.

e! i! ooohhh!

I've been waiting for the right one of these, and Amazon's Kindle may just be the one I'm looking for: A good eBook (ePaper, eWhatever) reader. Light, small, long battery life, wireless download. I'll be heavily lobbying my employer to get involved, because the main thing I'll be reading on this will be periodicals, not books. The one thing that worries me: Does it display pictures (they show one in a still photo, but not during the video demo)? If not, the $400 may be too steep. I want to see a newspaper on the screen, but an iPhone makes it too small to read comfortably. If someone came up with this, but with pictures, I would carry it on the subway every day.

Loving Leopard

I was deep into magazine deadlines (then a week of recovery) when Steve posted his inquiry as to whether the Leopard Mac OS 10.5 upgrade is worthwhile. I've been using it since launch day and must admit that I've become quite enamored of it in a "the wife got a new hairstyle and it's hot" kind of way (rather than a "I got a hot new girlfriend" kind of way). It's my same old trusty Mac but it's a bit sexier in a new and slightly unfamiliar way. Yeah, it has a few glitches but, as with the wife's, I've already learned to live with them.

My mash note to Leopard continues after the break.

What could go wrong?

Just what most of the BA! folks have always needed: a bed-mounted shotgun.

"The only possible way to improve this product would be to make it somehow hold beer."  Amen.

Twitter Love Is The New Black

Twitter is proving to be a valuable emergency communication tool.  People who probably had no clue about Twitter three days ago are using it to stay abreast of fire evacuations and the latest news; I have been following LA and SD feeds.  The immediacy, character limit and accessibility - the annoying stuff? - mesh perfectly with needs/abilities in these fires.  Go Twitter. 

"Twitter hate is the new black."

Look out, Twitterers: Google wants to own your micro-blogging, too.

Oh yes, and this article made me laugh....

Twitter is like an RSS feed to every boring aspect of your friend’s lives. And your friends are boring. How could they not be? Hourly updates on your best bud’s activities get dull pretty fast even if your best bud is Jack Bauer:

“woke up feeling all angsty…left arm tingly”

“oh noes…shot curtis today :-(”

“thinkin i gotta torture this guy. oh well”

“can’t remember last time i peed”

What would be awesome is if someone Twittered about this post.  Synergy!

'Scuse me while I wipe up the drool

I haven't Twittered up yet, so pardon the brief and old-fashioned post.

But this? Awesome. Too bad I'm renting. And that, you know, it costs a good year and a half's pay.

(Also: Greetings from Virginia!)

Foot Fetish

Yesterday, I told Jean, "Hey, my Vibram Five Fingers just arrived."

She looked at me like she was considering locking herself in the bathroom. "What is that? It sounds like a sex toy."

No. They're not. (Well, maybe for the creatively deviant, but really, those types can use anything...) They're my new shoes, and yes, they're awesome.

Basically, they're like a combo between running shoes and scuba gloves for the feet. They're supposed to mimic the experience of walking or running barefoot -- which is, in turn, supposed to be better for your stride, posture, and joints -- while ensuring you don't come home with a dirty syringe in your big toe. They're growing in popularity among people who do stuff like kayaking, hiking, surfing, yoga, ChiRunning (yeah, I'd never heard of it, either) and bouldering.

Plus, they just look cool.

I took them for the first test drive this morning, while walking the dog. The fact that these shoes came with instructions was a little disquieting, but I went ahead anyway.

First thing I noticed: years of wearing running shoes has, in fact, numbed my toes. This makes it difficult to slip into the Five Fingers, especially first thing in the morning. But it only took a few moments to get it right.

Next: they really do force you to walk differently. I had to stand up straighter, put more weight on the balls of my feet, and work my calves more. In a cross-trainer or running shoe, you can slam your heel into the sidewalk. But that feels more like plodding in the Five Fingers.

Next: they got compliments from the other dogwalkers out at that hour. Because they're bright red, and, like I said, they're cool.

Finally: they felt good for most of the walk, except for the blister that cropped up on my left foot. I almost never get blisters, even when I was running and hiking every day, so this worried me. But I've since adjusted the shoes, and the seam that was rubbing me the wrong way has moved. I'm willing to chalk this up to the initial adjustment period.

And did I mention they look cool? Glenn often says humans will eventually lose their toes and develop a "flat bony ridge." These could totally reverse that evolutionary trend. Instead, the future could look like this:

And I think we can all agree, that would rock.

The Great Twitter Experiment

See what happens when Big Actioneers get together and drink? We get ideas.

Thanks to Glenn enlightening me to what exactly Twitter is, and us as a group having a natural inclination to make everything into a project (see: Shacked Up, Bad Sweater Guy, Brill & Eric Watch TV, etc.), the rough concept of The Great Twitter Experiment was born.

What we're thinking is that for one month -- say, September -- each of us Big Action members will twitter our random thoughts and actions during the day. Since you're limited to 140 characters at a time, you can't write a novel, nor should you. Fed the cat ... Checked the mail ... Watching "Married ... With Children" reruns ... Eating 50 eggs ... Shaving my legs. That sort of thing.

Will this bring us closer together or will even small glimpses into the minutae of our day-to-day existence be too much?

Rumor has it that there's even an RSS feed, so our random twittering could be followed on Big Action as well.

Since I'm a dork, and like to get some practice in before embarking on such endeavors, I've already signed up for my free account. Once you're signed up you can add people you want to follow, and thus the sharing of even more of our lives can begin.

PS: Discovered a new drink last night at Rick's going away -- Rose's Garden: vodka shaken with cucumber and crushed mint. I highly recommend.

Wow. I totally could have Twittered that recipe.