Recently I’ve become really interested in letterpress. It’s basically a form of printing on a movable type machine that results in a print that’s sort of embossed as well. I recently bought a set of cards from Vince Letterpress:
Meaghan was really nice because she had originally sent me two blue cards and a yellow. I told her that I had intended to frame them as a set of three and she printed a red one and sent it to me for free. It was really good of her to do that.
I think the reason I like Letterpress is that it leaves a very tangible impression. The object itself is a representation of something that’s not quite 2d, but not quite 3d either. In an age of all things digital, when it’s so easy to reproduce something by printing it out on an inkjet or laser printer, it’s nice to have something that’s a bit more difficult to recreate. Sure, someone could scan the card and print it out, but there would be something lost in the translation from a physical object with physical properties to a digital representation back to a physical object.
I like that the printer works by smashing into the paper. It creates something that’s different every time. I like that you can touch the card and feel its texture. I like that you can see it from different angles in the light, and how it changes a bit. In the example above, I really like the colors.
So far my hobby consists of collecting letterpress’ed stuff. I’d really like to take a letterpress printing class some time. It seems like it’d be a good way to balance my love of new technology with some older-fashioned tech.
I brought home a bundle of joy yesterday. No, I did not adopt a child or animal. But I do have a new pet: the iRobot Roomba 530 vacuum-cleaning robot!
I’ve wanted a Roomba for a while. It makes perfect sense: it’s a robot, which I love. It’s a vacuum cleaner, which I also really like. It’s also kind of a pet. I have to say that the way it moves around is pretty cute. There are really nice, nuanced touches. Like how it beeps as it backs up when it leaves its docking station. Or how it slows down a bit when it knows it’s gonna hit the wall. And it hits the wall a lot. It also plays a sort of sad sound when it runs out of batteries. The Roomba definitely has a personality.
In addition to just being a cool nerdy object, the Roomba does a pretty decent job. It picked up a bunch of gunk the first time it swept through my apartment. It seemed to prefer the living room, maybe because it was dirtiest? Or maybe because it liked the feel of the shag rug. I’m not sure. The algorithm that determines where the Roomba goes seems non-deterministic. So it ends up doing something different each time, but I think the algorithm also ensures that it hits all the spots a couple of times, and it apparently knows when it’s found some dirt, in which case it goes back for more. There are some really nice details about the design of the robot. It’s circular, which means it can turn with a 0 degree radius. It has a rotating brush thingy that helps it get stuff that’s in a corner. It’s also pretty short, so it fits under my couch and my bed. It’s only gotten stuck like once, and that was an edge case where it used a table leg as a ramp.
So far I am very happy with my Roomba. It’s cute, functional and gives some serious nerd cred. I realize that it’s only a matter of time before my Roomba gains sentience and tries to kill me in my sleep. For now, though, it’s worth saving the trouble of having to vacuum by hand all the time.
What the hey!? Michael Jackson died today (yesterday)! Well that’s kind of a bummer. I mostly spent most of the evening listening to his music (I went to the library and grabbed History) and watching music videos on YouTube.
Also, I just remembered about the random Super Mario Bros. sprite animations that some Japanese person (sikamako) made using graphics from the old Genesis game, Moonwalker! I had only previously linked to one. So I thought that in tribute of MJ, I’d link to all of them. They’re all really weird:
Super Michael Bros.
I think this is the original one. I don’t remember where I got it. Seems sort of normal enough. Just MJ running through a few Mario stages.
Michael Quest
Michael Quest is a little weirder. Basically he comes in and pwns a bunch of video games. Then some red ninjas come in? Then MJ is revived by Luigi? And he turns into the metal thing from Moonwalker. Yeah, this really makes no sense. Just watch it.
Michael Fantasy
It actually gets weirder. There’s a flashback to Michael Quest (of course). Then the princess rides a gigantic Zangief from SFII to destroy the earth. This is foreshadowed before it actually happens, so then a bunch of random video game characters try and stop it. And of course, Michael Jackson saves the day again.
Michael Forever
I believe this is the last one. I think Michael finds some Dragon Balls, revives some characters, then has to stop Princess Peach again, this time riding a giant E. Honda… There’s a lot of Japanese pop cultural references (like Doraemon, Dragon Ball, etc) and I probably don’t understand all of them. Suffice it to say that MJ is still a badass in this one. Crisis averted.
Sometimes it’s fun to go look at what I wrote, say, two years ago and compare it to how I feel now. Case in point: Twitter. Almost two years ago, I wrote that:
Now, I actually use the Facebook updates now and then, but it seems like people who use Twitter do this to the max. Like they update multiple times a day. Are these people so self-centered that they think everyone needs to know what they’re doing?
…
In Twitter, the ability to update is the entire application itself. To me, Twitter is simply a subset of what Facebook already provides. Why would you ever need both?
This historical post is both illuminating and funny for a number of reasons. Apparently in the past I hardly updated my Facebook status at all. These days I probably do so at least once a day, and usually multiple times a day. I guess that’s just an indicator of how social norms have changed in regards to sharing personal information online: what was thought of as “oversharing” in the past is basically normal now. It’s also funny that I recognized that Twitter was a subset of Facebook. Recently I’ve come to believe that being a subset is actually a feature.
I think Twitter hit critical mass for me somewhere in the last few months. So really, my previous opinions of it being pointless weren’t necessarily incorrect. It just didn’t hold any value for me. Now that the value of Twitter (in my own usage) is improving due to network effects, I use it more often.
I think the appeal of Twitter comes down to this: There is a much better signal-to-noise ratio at this point using Twitter versus Facebook. On Facebook I get updates about everything that everyone I have ever known (and befriended) has ever done! I don’t care about pictures of drunk cheerleaders who I was friends with in undergrad. But Facebook feeds them to me. I really should remove them at some point, but oh well, such is social networking.
For now, Twitter has a much more relevant set of messages. I’ve also noticed that people are much more likely to respond to me via Twitter, versus commenting on a Facebook status. Probably due to the noise/signal thing again. It’s easy for me to simply “unfollow” someone who is not providing me with relevant or funny information. Sadly, the relevance factor of Twitter is probably a temporary quality. Facebook used to have a low S/N ratio until everyone joined it. Twitter may face the same problem if it can grow like Facebook did (lol at scaling).
It’s interesting to look at all of this in the context of history. I used ujournal before I used Xanga before I used livejournal before I used MySpace (ick) before I used Facebook before I used Twitter before I used (fill in the blank)…
In a few days, I am going to SXSW with my company, Troubadour Mobile. It’ll be cool. It’ll be awesome. I’ll miss lots of school.
Ever since I heard of SXSW, probably from Valleywag, I’ve wanted to go. There’ll be cool music, parties, swag, nerds, etc. I’m pretty stoked.
If you are also going to SXSW and you want to “follow” me (on the custom social network for conference attendees, my.sxsw.com, which is kinda cool), you can find me here.
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