Luis Blackaller and Kyle Buza just released the E15:oGFX site, with software downloads, tutorials, and documentation. They’ve made it incredibly easy to get up and running. Nice work dudes.

My friend and Taco Lab accomplice David Merrill gave a fantastic talk at TED last week on the Siftables project that he and Jeevan have been pursuing. The video went up today. Congrats Dave!

The Magic Garden makes a wonderful inexpensive gift for that special someone. Simply add the magic solution and watch it grow.

The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie surprises and delights.

Crocheted Owls (amigurumi) are a top seller, from what I hear.

Beeswax crayons are high quality and come in a variety of thicknesses.

Link: http://store.sfelectricworks.com/

The Taco Lab, LLC is pleased to announce a radical new collaboration with world famous bitwise biologist and curiosity curator Prof. Engd. For the first time ever, Engd’s massive collection of fine miniature creatures will be published in its entirety, one each day for all of 2009:

View these mini monsters online: Professor Engd’s Étagère of Hypnopompic Hexadecimal Miniature Monsters.

]]> http://blog.brentfitzgerald.com/2008/12/the-daily-mariks/feed/ 0 http://blog.brentfitzgerald.com/2008/09/john-maedas-inauguration-speech/ http://blog.brentfitzgerald.com/2008/09/john-maedas-inauguration-speech/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:09:02 +0000 brent http://blog.brentfitzgerald.com/?p=485 I felt a lot of PLW and MIT Media Lab pride reading John’s RISD inauguration speech, Start Here. I particularly enjoyed the last bit:

The creative mind is not limited to black and white. It is comfortable with ambiguity, and “doing both,” as I like to say. You can be both a designer and an artist, a humanist and a technologist, a student and a teacher, a hand craftsman and a Photoshop guru, a global and local thinker, a leader and a servant, a president and a citizen. And we can start as many times as we like when we are open to the spirit and rigor of the creative way of being.

It’s a wonderful start to just the sort of boundary-bridging creative imperative kick in the ass I’d hoped he’d bring to his new role. Read the whole speech…

monday
woke up in marin. excellent soy latte, meetings upon meetings in the morning, but all necessary and with good peeps. afternoon got some work done. went home and read my signed copy of spook country, gibson’s voice echoing in my head.

tuesday
even longer work day. much accomplished. significant coffee intake. got home at 12:30am, wired, read more spook country, didn’t want to put it down.

wednesday
mid-week relief. lots of work. then tasty sushi and sake at moki’s with great ex-girlfriend-now-friend faith. general life catch-up and commiseration, feeling happy and proud of ourselves for not being estranged. afterward, sitting on milk crates outside her sister’s house while she expertly rolled and smoked her cigarette.

thursday
coded. created icons. learned about accuracy versus precision marketing. phenomenal joe bonamassa show at the palace of fine arts, courtesy of excellent uncle rick. i did not know that blues could rock so fully. would not have even known to go to such a thing. horizons substantially and permanently broadened.

friday
worked, encountered difficult bugs. after work, brent/katie fest 2007, found ourselves at the world changing party, people seriously getting down on the dance floor, a little disconcerting actually. then to bernal for faith’s goodbye night at the wild side. pinball, friends, and big daddy ipa’s.

saturday
not enough sleep, and no coffee. exhausted most of the day, but somehow managed to take care of little errands. stopped at revolution cafe for a bite, watched a cute little girl eat strawberries. home, hardware store, home, deconstructed our bed frames to move them up from the garage, then reconstructed them. lygia made us a tasty salad for dinner. overall a great, much needed house/roommate day. reoriented my bed to face the window, and vastly improved the space.

sunday
back where i started. slept in. soup for lunch. now pondering technical jackets, relationships, bikes, javascript code, and the best place to get a haircut this week. wondering about the balance between blog entries that simply record life events versus taking on bigger ideas and issues. thinking about my little moleskine, and how i always want it to be more than it is, but it always ends up just being weird todo lists, doodles, budget calculations, scrawled ideas i get that don’t make any sense later, but in retrospect i actually my notebook the way it is, because it is faithful to how i actually think and live. considering that perhaps my blog should be like that. simultaneously chastising myself for spending too long on this entry.

There were actually two ferris wheels…

And some fireworks that were fun, though I have to say they were nothing compared to Boston last year on the roof of the lab. Poor CA and its fire danger.

Assuming technology keeps going the way it is, someday we won’t choose between flash and exposure time. We’ll get crisp shots whether we like it or not. So those blurred out, weirdly exposed digital photos are going to be even more nostalgic in their imperfection.