Wind Energy, and the Swine Flu

Next week is the AWEA Conference in Chicago, the American Wind Energy Association, and man I want to be there. I've been working with a company I like very much, Rope Partner, and they offer something really cool to the Wind Energy Industry. Eco-Wind Farm Maintenance. They (we, since this is what I've been working on this year) have a new website and a booth at the AWEA Conference. But this is day three of what the news is mumbling is a pandemic, something I'd really rather not have to contend with in my lifetime. Granted, the images of spreading biological disaster are only etched in my mind from movies, but even knowing that, i'm convinced it's not good.

Do I want to leave my small coastal town and spend a few days moving from here to airport to O'hare International, the crossroads of the friggin' world -- to McCormick Place, a convention center that I am familiar with?? I'm thinking about entering a room full of handshakes and thousands of strangers bumping into each other in public spaces. I am at least convinced that whatever the odds are of getting this thing, astronomically small at this point, they are multiplied to some large degree by going mobile.

Frankly, as badly as I want to be in Chicago, I just can't think of a better time to stay close with my family, close to my home. I can do plenty of work in this way. It is absolutely inferior to meeting in person. But the cost / benefit is creeping me out.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that every day will bring enormous new information about this thing. In five days it's either going to be terrifying, or totally not as bad as it could have. At best this will be a wake up call about globalization, and with luck, a bullet missed.

I'm certain that in the next few days, either large things will be canceled, or safety will be established to a credible degree. I hate being so last minute in important plans, but of all things to bet your life on, is this? And then I think of the guys at Rope Partner. Not the executives but the kids who climb those windmills and fix the blades. Unlike me in Chicago, at a convention, they sit high in the air, almost totally alone, listening to the wind blow by for hours, as they are suspended, working quietly. I haven't spent any time up there, but I can imagine it is the absolute antithesis of McCormick Place, Chicago. It's often cold for them out there. But I think, out there, they're at least safe from the flu.

(Keep an eye on Swine Flu News here)

(Photos Courtesy of, and © 2009 Rope Partner. It's unbelievable what they do.)

The Susan Boyle Talent Video

My dad sends me stuff he finds online, stuff his friends email him. He's 75 and does not have a Facebook account nor does he peruse YouTube. Still, he sent me this the other day. It had already been circulating by email through his friends:
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE, AT YOUTUBE (one of dozens of sites online showing it.




If you're reading this than you are probably one of the 47 million views of this during the week. There is a fascinating discussion of the popularity of the Boyle video here, at visiblemeasures.com. If viral effects online are of interest to you, it's worth a click. I think the thing that struck me most was that this isn't only a popular viral video today, but this is the MOST viral video ever. The next three most viewed videos certainly spiked at some point, but none were views in one week, as this was.


I find it sort of interesting that the other three videos on the list were political in nature (one satire, and one self-satire, but still); and not only political, but surfing the waves of pro-Obama spirit in the last year. It took that kind of force to push videos to these levels of virality. By contrast, Boyle's video is infectious and by being non-political, totally socially benign with a very wide appeal. It's not edgy, it's safe, but still fun to send along. It's sort of a perfect storm of attributes that makes it appealing... Anyway, read the article (here's a graph that highlights the relative degree of popularity of these big viral stars):

The death of the keyboard...

I was messing around on my iPhone the other day, and i had this notion wash over me in queasy moment of clarity: hardware keyboards are not only heading towards extinction, but that moment is probably closer than i had realized.

Let me back up here. I used to design editing systems, and the best ones had customized interface devices that you placed your hands on. They had an array of buttons, but also great tactile nobs for shuttling video forward and backward. The EditDroid had a console that mimicked a KEM editing table; the Lightworks had one that emulated a Steenbeck. These devices made editing far more nuanced (and fun!) but that elegance came with a price: they were custom designed, expensive to own, and hard to manufacture. Ultimately, a keyboard won out. Keyboards were ubiquitous, and they had so many buttons you could map virtually all functions to one of them. Editing could be like typing at some level. Film editors rejected this style when it was associated with videotape editing, but when nonlinear film editing eventually arrived on a keyboard, it wasn't quite as bad, and in time beat out all the custom devices invented for editors. I was a snob. I hated editing on a keyboard when I had tasted what an elegant interface device could do. But I couldn't argue with the economics, or the efficiency. I had seen the problem from both the manufacturer's side, and the editors'. I loved those consoles, and I watched them rapidly disappear.

But I'm not only an editor, i'm a writer, and I love a good keyboard. I like them when you have just the right kind of feedback when you press down. Pianists might describe the nuances of pressing a key and the sound produced... the attack, the decay... pianists for years have debated the pros and cons of electric keyboards and how they miss so much of what real pianos offer in terms of "user interface". Typing is about the same. I don't really think literature will suffer as keyboards evolve, but there is no doubt in my mind that they will be missing something.

Keyboards, for all there ubiquity, are manufactured objects with many pieces, complex connectivities and wasteful materials. As computer screens get more tactile, it is simply too advantageous to put a keyboard on a pane of glass. You may type on your laptop, but the future is the iPhone, and its ilk. And not today, but soon, one manufacturer after another is going to stop building these hardware keyboards and start replacing them with hardwareless customizable softkeys on touchscreens. I don't really like this. I like the click of typing. I like feeling the edges of the key, of the letter, with the tips of my fingers and it allows me to type quickly and confidently. Will a virtual keyboard ever produce the wonderful feedback of a real one? I doubt it. But that isn't really the point, is it? Old timers will always tell you about what is being lost with the newfangled devices -- of the yummy pops and clicks of their old albums, of the joys of shifting gears in a sportscar, of the warmth of light projecting through celluloid onto a screen, of the taste real farm fresh eggs or, perhaps, of classic Coke...

And in all cases the argument is rarely that those archaic attributes aren't great, but rather than the benefits of the new technology (speed, access, freedom, safety, cost...) outweigh the nostalgia of the old. Kids don't miss record albums, and I don't suppose they're going to miss keyboards either. I'd say inside the next half decade, keyboards as we know them today will be gone, and i'll adjust. But i don't have to like it.

For Sale: One Old Kid's Desk...

It’s just an old desk and it’s cute and worn. I bought it for $25 and that’s what I’m going to sell it for. I was just going to put it out on the street, for anyone who wanted a cute little desk, but I wanted whoever took it to know its story. The little desk has been with me since I was just out of college, and I always really liked that little desk. So...

I purchased the desk the summer I arrived to Marin from the East, at a sort of yard sale at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. It was 1985 and I just started working at Lucasfilm at the time, and the Ranch was still being built. I had never been there before, and I was interested in going to the sale mostly just to see what I could of the newly forming Ranch. I believe they were unloading a bunch of old furniture that had been in use prior to the “getting fancy” years, or perhaps it had been in one of the ranch houses of the BullTail Ranch property, which Lucas had purchased in 1979 to build Skywalker Ranch. I don’t know. I’m reasonably sure that George Lucas himself never used this desk. He probably never even saw it. Anyway, It’s too tiny for him. Nothing famous was written on this desk, unless you count "Nonlinear", and I don’t think you would. It’s just a simple desk, nice for kids, messy and stained. I’m selling it for $25. But if you get it, you have to keep its story.

I hope it finds a good home.