Life & Research Notes

Taco Lab is a design and prototyping firm that I am co-founding with my friend and fellow Media Lab grad Jeevan Kalanithi. Our clients so far have included Hallmark, Panasonic, HandsOnToys, and Qixen-P. This week we’re settling into some studio space with our friends at Electric Works, and soon we’ll have a real portfolio up online, plus maybe even an occasional Taco fanclub newsletter.

I’m also happy to watch Swivel continue to make real progress after I change my relationship with them. With Swivel Business now in a public beta with real customers, plus a strategic redesign of certain key interactions in the works, Swivel’s future looks really bright. Plus the transition is happening on good terms for everyone, so I know we’ll all stay in touch and probably even continue working together.

Thanks to all you friends who bother to read this and who have supported me in this big change! You have an open invitation to come design, code, build, and dork around with Jeevan and me in our new TL office v1beta (which I promise will be way better than alpha), coming very soon.

Tomorrow afternoon Sara and I are heading to Sacramento for the InfoVis conference, where I’m participating in a panel on The Impact of Social Data Visualization alongside Martin Wattenberg, Fernanda Viega, and Ola Rosling. I’ll be representing Swivel, in particular our market driven approach to data sharing, collaboration and visualization, and emerging topics of data ownership and provenance, privacy, and so on.

This is going to sound shallow and simplistic, but I think things changed for the better a few weeks ago when I got a new car. Like, new as in new, a 2007 Honda Element (EX / 4WD / manual / silver). Somewhere around here I’ve got some photos, and once I dig em up I’ll post them. OK, it’s dorky, but I like pictures of people with their cars. And it’s a nice car, very friendly looking, definitely a little yuppie, but hopefully forgivably so. The car was a key step because it meant I didn’t have to keep taking the bus to and from work, which was a huge time sink. And it also meant I could once again listen to music while driving, which generally increases happiness.

And then only a few days ago I moved into a new home. I’m living in the city finally, in Bernal Heights, a couple blocks from a lot of good stuff, near my favorite record store and taquerias, yet peaceful and quiet up a (very) steep hill, with a great back yard and a garage. I’ve got an excellent housemate, and a comfy room, although at the moment I’m sleeping on some borrowed twin mattress pads. The hill is a killer, but it gets my blood flowing, and I’d much prefer to be more up and away from things than smack in the middle. We can see both Sutro tower and the bay, and it all feels very SF. My first day involved getting slicks and flat pedals for my bike, cruising around, getting lunch at revolution cafe, and hanging out in Dolores park with my sister. Very pleasant.

So it’s funny how things both fall apart and come together in waves. A few months ago I was totally discombobulated, taking things one step at a time. And I’m still in transition, but now on an upswing instead of a down. At the same time some of my great friends have been going through all sorts of interesting life events, with babies, weddings, engagements, sabbaticals and trips. So with some patience and some effort, things do come back together.