maps

while flying to canada, i spent an hour or so listening to maps by the yeah yeah yeahs (thanks L). great song. really awesome video. but when you hear a song that much, you start to notice everything. and there is a very strange cymbal beeping sound at time 3:04 that is driving me bonkers. it kind of ruins the song for me.. just a little. i need to figure out why they put it in! here's the song:

Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

friendship buckets

(i realize now that this post is on the order of a lara post.. something i try to avoid, noting that blog readers have no attention span these days [i certainly don't!] .. but i feel the temptation to leave it all in)



a friend recently used the phrase "friendship bucket" as a metaphor representing the state of a relationship. when i read this phrase i thought of leaky buckets, buckets with patches, refilling a bucket with water, or leaving a bucket out in the sun and seeing all the water dry up (the bucket above represents a really really old friendship!).

but then i got all geeky and started thinking about the effectiveness of such a metaphor (i think we can thank jono for that, who often pontificates on things like this over on his blog). for example, the state of a relationship is really an intersubjective thing -- so either friends share the same bucket and compromise on the representation ("i thought our bucket had two holes, a small patch and was 3/4 full -- how could you think it was only 1/2 full!") or, more reasonably, the friendship bucket is an individual's view on a particular relationship.

ok. but there still seems to be something missing. for instance, if i had a metaphor for the state of a relationship, i'd want it to either cleanly capture the current state, or the history. ideally, both. i don't think a bucket does either of these very well. for instance, if your bucket is meant to capture history, then how do you make sense of the current "fullness"? obviously there was some reason we'd say the bucket is 3/4 full (it got there somehow?) -- but what was the pour history? if that seems a bit ridiculous, and your bucket is really just a reflection of now, then you also run into problems because the way we (or at least i) think about relationships is hardly ahistoric -- the history is there and immediately foregrounds when i bring a friend to mind. and a bucket is an object i think of as having history -- indeed, a patch on a bucket was placed at a particular time, and in this metaphor might represent some form of friendship repair that may not be immediate but is nonetheless important.

so friendship bucket isn't resonating with me. and you probably think this is quite ridiculous -- who meditates on the effectiveness of such a metaphor? well, i do! :)

i think a few elements are missing in this metaphor. here they are:
- a clear distinction between what i think of the relationship, what i think the other person might think, and maybe some objective measures (when we last met up?)
- a way of tracking the movement of the relationship
- a method for thinking about this relationship in comparison to other similar relationships in your life

this actually leads me to discuss a fantastic work by intel seattle. in elder care homes, a major problem is social isolation amongst the elders. having had a grandmother who was in a nursing home, i intimately understand the problem. workers at homes really try to keep the elders engaged with various others (family, friends, people at the home).

so what intel did was create a very simple display. it shows a solar system, with the central object, the sun, representing the elder. the orbiting "planets" are people in the elder's social network. the distance between a planet and the sun is a reflection of the social closeness of the elder and the person, at that time. in this case, the proximity was based on interactions (phone calls, visits, length of these interactions). the display showed preliminary success when compared to a control case. indeed, elders who used the display would try to bring in outer planets by getting in touch with the represented people.


so, now the question -- why is this just for elders? it likely seems strange to think of having such a detailed reflection on your relationships. we keep this stuff in our head. but as a mechanism for self-reflection, and potentially as a mechanism for mak

i'd want to incorporate a few things into this display:
- reflection of my impression of the relationship. maybe just an emoticon on the planet?
- a method for seeing the movement of the planets over time, so you can see how different relationships have evolved. the faded trajectory above tries to do that

anyway i think i'll end here and continue these thoughts in the future.

omar khan is a common name

at least five people have sent me this story (and here, and here).

it is amusing, no doubt!

but then i remembered how damn common my name is. so, to give you a sense of this, i did a google search for omar-khan (the hyphen forces the words to appear together, kind of like quotes). anyway, i get 93,000 results as of 6/21/2008. i then googled the names of everyone who told me about this story. no one comes close. go ahead, google your name, see how it goes.

my name is pretty damn common. it's not john smith levels, but now you perhaps know why my name was on a list of suspected terrorists.. ie, it wasn't me, just someone making my life miserable :(

paper or plastic? how about both

while shopping today i observed the most annoying and interesting thing in the checkout line. the cashier asked the patron "paper or plastic?" she thought for a moment, and then said "both." both! the cashier looked at her funny and then she said "you know, paper inside the plastic." -- ah it's for ease of carrying, very nice.

oy.

waste -- we don't even think about how much we waste. today while shopping i thought "huh, it's sort of dumb to use these new plastic bags for my vegetables when i have the same ones just sitting at home." well, at least i took a canvas bag to the shop -- ease my conscience a tad.

oy.

on my birthday my net stuff accumulation was +12 toy horses - 10 marbles.. give or take. oh, and of course gifts of wine. and a poster.

oy.

looking around my room now, i realize i have so much junk, and i wonder if anyone would find much of it useful. like, what the hell is that easter egg basket with the frizzy pieces of string going to do to improve anyone's life? waste. though, maybe i can get raja to ride in it.

hmm... maybe it is better that it just inhabits a spot in my room -- who knows, it may end up in the landfill otherwise.

oy.

baby mama, videoblogging and chompin the bit

tonight i saw baby mama with some friends. all the friends were women. i went to a chick flick with a bunch of women. warning bells? meanwhile, men all around me were cozying up to iron man, which looked far more appropriate for me.

but i baby mama'd anyway. and instead of typing up my thoughts, here's me, video blogging! what? yeah!



i have to work on my delivery. could use some plants behind my head. i'll work on presentation and the set, i promise, if you think this is worth doing.

finally, i chose a wolf parade song that i thought was an appropriate contrast to this one-shot, easy-does-it-margaret culture.

undulating hand skin

last night in boston i encountered the most power hand drier i have ever used. the way it man-handled my skin made me want to film it. and i did! WARNING: the video is a bit disturbing.



after making this video i realize i need more powerful video editing software. there were things i wanted to do that just aren't easy or possible in windows movie maker. i'm learnin..

self-experimentation

seth roberts came to my games class yesterday and spoke about self-experimentation and games. seth is a UC Berkeley psychology professor who experiments on himself to learn more about how the mind works, and has published his results to quite stirring successes (one being the shangri-la diet).

anyway, he spoke to us about omega-3. he found that taking three tablespoons of flaxseed oil (high in omega-3) in the morning had a huge effect on his ability to: balance, perform well at certain memory games, aim at targets, sleep.

he also told us to stop eating breakfast (he eats nothing before 10am) and see life-size faces in the morning.

anyway, with nothing better to do, and intrigued, i bought flaxseed oil today and took three tablespoons. that's a helluva lot (you could do less fish oil, i'm told, but i am starting from his observations + flaxseed may have other magical benefits). i'm going to see what this does to me. in reality, we are constantly doing crazy things to our body and very often experimenting, but not consciously. so i'm going to try and be conscious about this move. brain tests, here i come :)

oh and games: seth takes a lot of self-measurements. in some cases, he needs to take many measurements a day, and that gets very, very tedious. he came to the class to show us a game he had developed to make it slightly more fun to take measurements. he then asked us if we could help him improve the game.

as a final note, of course i looked up what others were saying about taking flaxseed oil (didn't want to miss any research that says what i'm doing is completely nuts). found this article that talks about potential danger of taking flaxseed oil for men. anyway, author recommends flax seed oil with lignans. that's what i got.

babysitting fun

today i babysat my cousin's son. despite being two, he was not terrible. in fact, he was pleasant. that is, until he started grooving to my daft punk but refused to dance with me. hope you enjoy his alternative dance partner suggestion, shown in the video below:



also, while babysitting i constructed some situations which amused me to no end. below you'll see alien vs predator :)

and here's alien vs predator requiem:

do what you want. ask why later. or don't

as i told grant: "ok i'm just going to post my lame meta post that's me reflecting on the post i won't post." so here:

do you ever destroy things when you start to think why?

i had written this post on a fun memory i have about dancing. pure fun, a fond thing to look back to..

but then i dig and dig and dig and things pop out and suddenly i'm like, wait, maybe this memory isn't so perfect. stop asking why omar, just enjoy....?

and i do the same thing with things i plan to do.. "so why do you want to do this event omar? what if X, what if Y, what if ..?"

dear god if i could just switch that off, occasionally (and no, don't tell me to drink, that's not what i'm saying!) what fun it might be. oh but look i'm questioning already bah bah bah

driving tired

yesterday was the google holiday party. it was actually decently sized, not like oversize-06, and i ran into a number of people i knew and hadn't seen in some time. that was nice.

but. i was also the designated driver back up to san francisco. that was just plain scary for the last 5 minutes or so. i was far too tired. i told myself i would never drive when i'm that tired but i did, which was pretty dumb. it's that tiredness where you're dozing off for just a few moments. but those few moments can be so dangerous. luckily it was only right at the end-- i slapped myself a few times, and continued on.



when i drove to montreal a few times the same thing would happen to me near the end. what complete torture. when that started, i went on red bull, and i will swear by that stuff for distance driving. i don't drink energy drinks otherwise.. i don't want to become immune to their powers. i remember my mind going a mile a minute and my pulse racing. hmm, that doesn't sound healthy, but i made it to montreal, in the rain and snow and drudgery of fall and winter.