Since no one was using one of the G5 Mac towers we have, I requested that it be installed at my desk. ITS came today to place the freshly re-imaged computer next to my standard issue company PC along with a KVM switch so I can share the same keyboard, mouse and LCD screen. I'm going to use this extra box to rip, mix, and burn some presentation videos to DVD while I work on regular stuff on my PC.

- mike lee - washington, dc

I'm reading NYC2123, the first full-length graphic novel for the Sony PSP.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

At lunch today, I finally caught a shipment of the CVS PureDigital One-Time-Use Video Camcorder at the drug store near our office. They are selling out fast when the weekly shipments arrive. For $24.99, you can shoot 20 minutes of digital video and return the device to the store to have a DVD burned. The camcorder has a pretty decent LCD screen and ultra-simple controls. Even better is the fact that these have been hacked so that you can download the video yourself and reuse the camera. People have even figured out how to increase the capture time to 50 minutes! With these tech notes in hand, I'll be firing up the ol' soldering iron soon.

- mike lee - washington, dc

A few people from the design team of the Washington Post web site came by for a Lunch 'n Learn with some of our web team. Their group is about four times larger than ours, and they constantly update their site throughout the day. Over great sandwiches from Cosi, we learned that they face the same challenges as we do. That was reassuring, although I am still dreaming I'll get magic bullets one day from one of these talks.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Today's visit to the lab was near perfect--a good blend of demo time and time for discussion and reflection. With me today was much of the staff and vendor team that runs our web site discussion boards. Here are just captions and some reference links for the photos you see here:

1) Professor John Maeda greets us in the 2nd floor boardroom. 3, 4) Ernesto Arroyo, Research Assistant in Ted Selker's Context-Aware Computing group demoed, among other things, Counter Intelligence, a smart kitchen of the future with a machine that can vacu-form dishes on demand and recycle them after use and a rubber sink that won't break dropped dishes. 5) Kelly Dobson of the Computing Culture group demoed some of her group's projects as well as her own work in "machine therapy" and wearable body organs. 7) Interesting detour: our group got stuck in the elevator for about 15 minutes. Here I am with John's assistant Vinnie. 8, 9) Dan Stiehl, of the Robotic Life group demonstrates a prototype Huggable Robot that is slated to go on clinical trials in a hospital in January 2006. 10) Carlos Rocha of the Physical Language Workshop (John's lab), demonstrates a new Sensetable prototype which has been ported to work with Mac OS X. 11) The letters P-L-W built up in Pixel Blocks. 12) Jon Gips demos the latest version of the Ubiquitous Experimental Research (UbER) badge which can map social networks that occur in real time between a group of people in a meeting wearing these badges. Not pictured were research updates from Push Singh,Pattie Maes, and Dan Ariely. John facilitated some closing discussion and then we were on our way back to the airport, my guests glowing from their big dose of unmitigated innovation.

- mike lee - washington, dc

We had the first of this week's two Lunch 'n Learns today with team members reporting on the Usability Professional's Association conference they recently attended in Montreal. While everyone munched on burritos and salad, Amy G. started off with a summary of a pre-conference seminar on planning usability tests. Then Michael W. talked about Bill Jensen's seminar on simplicity in the workplace. Kate went last on the eyetracking work being done at RIT. 20 minutes after lunch, some of us went to the Reagan airport for another of my trips to the Media Lab in Cambridge, MA. After boarding, they told us we have to wait 45 minutes on the runway. There's probably a line of thunderstorms somewhere north. The pilot said Boston is now 67 degrees to our 85. Good thing the plane's A/C is working, and I have plenty of reading and electronic gadgets.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Picked up the rental car, and at the Chrysler dealer got an estimate of $3000 for the body work on the car. Double hit! At least we're not making payments on a second car as long as we can make do with one. Photos here are of Cianna's new shoes, the first of many scraped knees to come, and her more-frequently-seen "oh, there's daddy with the camera again" look.

- mike lee - washington, dc

1) Cianna stands in the humid fog in our yard hoping for a breeze to spin her new pinwheel. She knows to say "hot, hot" now. By Sunday afternoon, the pinwheel was spinning a little. 2) Offical temps peaked at around 95 degrees for Wheaton, but because our house is under trees, our thermometer is 5 degrees cooler. 3, 4) Cianna and mommy prepped for some baking. I was drawing some simple symbols like duck and flower on a MagnaDoodle board for Cianna, and later in the day, she took the board to her mom, drew a cresent, and said "Moon!" Amazing. 5) Our refurbished Dyson RootCyclone "animal" vacuum arrived last week and we gave it a much needed run through the living room. There was an impressive furball of dog hair in the Clear Bin. I did a solo grocery run Saturday night after sundown to beat the heat. The Westfield Mall seemed unaffected by the gang-related stabbings that happened at Target last week. I picked up a small case (6) to hold my mobiBLU MP3 player, and at Radio Shack, some gel pads (7) for the earbuds, which slip out of my ears too easily. I also bought a simple miniplug-to-miniplug audio patch cord to connect my Pocket Wizard wireless trigger to an Alien Bees 800 flash head (8). This is one of the rare instances two companies incorporated a simple wiring standard to save me from having to buy an expensive custom cable. 9, 10) Sunday afternoon, an aspiring model named Jessica and her boyfriend came over to have me make some photos for her portfolio. She got implants about a month ago, and dreams of getting into Maxim or FHM magazine. I think she'll see some fame one day. 11) The right front bumper of our PT Cruiser was front-swiped on our way home Friday afternoon by a car making a fast turn past us at an intersection on North Capitol. The car sped off. The horn needs to be re-activated, and we'll need a new fender and bumber. So tomorrow, we're up a early to pick up a rental car and drop the PT of at the local Chrysler dealer. So at 12:01am Monday morning, it's a weekend's end.

- mike lee - wheaton, md - mike popovic tells me via instant messanger that i have about 1,355 posts here on hiptop nation...woo hoo!