All posts by Chris

tales from the mash pit

Making Stuff, Technology, Travel, Web 2.0

(Author’s note: Chris Messina implored us to blog about Mash Pit. I didn’t want to just parrot other excellent posts, so here’s my demented version of the event.)

Four thirty. A.M., as in oh-dark-thirty. Ben and Karen will be asleep for another three hours. Uh huh. Why am I up this early? Because I have to leave for the airport in an hour. Uh huh. Why is that again? It takes me a moment to focus, to remember. Oh yes. It’s because I go into berserker paroxysms of geeky hyperactivity whenever the triggerword API is spoken, and I don’t stop until some kind soul utters the safeword.

In this case the fiend is Chris Messina, and the cause of the utterance is Mash Pit. It’s the latest bud from the BarCamp bush, a one-day test to see if meatspace interaction can produce cyberspace results. If successful, a number of Mash Pits would follow, each building on the the code and content of the last. It’s in San Francisco, of course. I’m in San Diego, of course. “It’s not that far,” I think, glossing over the realities of security checkpoints, delays and AirBART. “The flight is barely as long as my old commute to Encinitas.” Uh huh.
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i am internet famous

Fun

Not really, but my entry in the “Mashup Camp logo contest”:http://www.mashupcamp.com/index.cgi?PreviousLogoIdeas was chosen to be the official logo. Yay! (Not bad for half an hour’s work on the bus.)

our active galaxy

Space

The galaxy is a more exciting place than you might think. From Space.com:

bq. A new “X-ray movie of the Milky Way Galaxy”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060119/sc_space/exclusivenewxraymovieshows10yearsofmilkywayactivity shows stars erupting and black holes pulsating over a full decade of time.

It’s strangely compelling, like signal lights from a distant shore… [Thanks to Bryan for the link.]

commentary on Alito

Government

There’s been lots and lots of chatter lately about the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, but it wasn’t until this morning that I read Senator Kennedy’s excellent summary of “why Alito is so wrong for the job”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/AR2006011902515.html. I specifically appreciate his comparison of Alito’s recent testimony against years of writings and judicial records.

off to pluto!

Space

The NASA “New Horizons”:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html probe launched successfully today on it’s way to Pluto. (It’s the first probe to visit our distant icy cousin.) My favorite part is that even though it’ll take 10 years to get to Pluto, the probe is flying so fast it’ll zip past Jupiter in only a year.