Read Some Stewf

N Kishishita on Stenograph

Watch her smash hit video debut now and soon you can tell all your friends, “I was kicking to N Kishishita way before she got famous!”

Brian Eno and Will Wright

Will Wright — creator of my favorite computer game, SimCity — and Brian Eno — collaborator with my favorite artist, David Byrne — talk about randomness and rule-based generation in the worlds of music and gaming. Either of these artists would be interesting on their own. Together, they are magical.

The site that hosts this video, FORA.tv, is everything YouTube is not: intelligent, elegant, informative, with quality, downloadable video rather than low-res web-locked crap.

Robert Coles, 1934–2006

A week ago, I took an unexpected flight to my hometown Salt Lake City to see my Dad who was suffering from Lewy body disease. After several years of gradual decline, during which we saw the disease take its toll on his strong body and sharp mind, there were signs that the end was very near. In his dependable wisdom and foresight, Matt moved up my previously-scheduled Christmas ticket and I left a few days early to say goodbye to Papa.

I was given a full day with Dad. He was unable to open his eyes or speak, but he could hear and responded with small movements as I read to him from the newspaper and from his own notes and journals. Among these was a list of lifetime goals. Nearly all of these he achieved, including “live to age 70”. Dad died the next evening, in his sleep, in his own home, surrounded by family, at 72. What he did with those years was always impressive to me, but only after this week’s memorial services did his impact really sink in. Thousands of people were influenced by Bob Coles. Many of those in a deep, life-changing way. But before I say more, I’ll leave you with Matt’s excellent obituary which does much better justice to his legacy than I can. My own personal experiences and photos will come soon.

Anyways Is Not a Word

“Anyways” is not a word. Thanks.

Update: Someone who knows Terry Gross personally, would you please clue her in on this? It may be her only fault.

Happy Thanksgiving

Despite many generous invitations, I kind of relished being ⬆ this guy today. See more of Chris Ware’s covers for The New Yorker »

The Military Commissions Act, Illustrated

My good friend Chris Rugen simply and beautifully describes the new Military Commissions Act of 2006 with words and pictures.

The day after the Act was passed by the Senate, another good friend read this column by Garrison Keillor aloud to her family. Twice. (It’s that good.)

I hear the Act will certainly be overturned. But my questions are:

1. When? For how long will the US consider alienable what it once defined as unalienable rights?


2. How angry is the public? Will they remember this Act at the polls on Nov. 7?

Claiming My Series of Tubes

claimID is a service that assists web freaks like me — who have profiles and content all over the internets — to claim and organize the pages that are theirs. This way, when someone googles your moniker, they see the stuff you deem most worthy of your good name.

I also hope it will help differentiate me from the gerontologist, Dr. Stephen Coles, who continues to gain PageRank due to that story last month about the dude who lived to 112 despite a diet of sausage and waffles.

Here's my claimID page and a live listing of the links thereon:

Just in case you didn't catch the meaning behind the title of this post, “the internet is a series of tubes”.

Pitiful in Portugal

The photos from ATypI (the Euro type nerd conference) have come in, and, as you can see, everybody had a lousy time in Lisbon without me.

Thanks for pretending, friends.

Goodbye MySpace. Hello Facebook.

I rarely visit the teenybopper juggernaut known as MySpace. And not because of the kids. I love kids. I rarely visit because it is slow, the advertising is intrusive, and the user-customizable layout and piss-poor UI combine to form a horrific train wreck of gaudy page backgrounds, misalignment, side scrolling, and stinky sock odor. I'm all for personal expression, but thanks to MySpace’s glacial page loading and auto song loading, it takes me three weeks and a headache just to see what's up with my good compeers.

This is why you can usually find me at Flickr and Last.fm.

And now, Facebook, the cleanest, slickest, most usable social network (just ask the 10 million college students who have been using it exclusively for years) is open to all. I cordially invite you to join me over there:

Good day, MySpace. I said, good day!

Jody's Peru

Click on that there arrow and see why I want a real camera. (A drop of her talent would be nice too.) You all have 10 months until my birthday. Save up. (And I'll learn up.)