On the front porch pointing at airpanes and waiting for mommy.

- mike lee - langley park, md

The Sun made a very brief appearance at sunset to light the receding clouds that made the entire weekend grey and wet. I wish we were in a spacecraft that could outrun the twilight so that we could enjoy the sunlight that the west is enjoying. Rolling south on I-95 a bit brought us to our semi-regular stop at the rotisserie chicken place in Columbia, Md.

- mike lee

Today, while photographing M, a Japanese student, I made a hand on face portrait like those produced by South Korean graphic designer Ahn Sang-Soo. During our recent workshop in Cape Cod, John Maeda described the simple power of Sang-Soo's work in reducing the subject's face to the essentials while also showcasing the uniqueness of the individual's own hand. M's reaction to my version of hand on face was to ask that I be sure to fix her nails in Photoshop.

- mike lee - baltimore

Wife found in our basement this classic Geekware shirt made by Metrowerks about 10 years ago to promote Codewarrior. It still fits! I should put this up on eBay. Now we're off into the torrential rain for some shopping at the maul.

- mike lee - baltimore, md

That's Lily Liu and me (1) from yesterday as she tours me through our company's historical archives. She performing saint's work in preserving all kinds of important artifacts from our organization's almost-50-year history. On my ride in this morning, the company newsletter popped up on my Blackberry with a message from our CEO saying that starting Monday, access to our building's elevators would be denied to all staff (except those with a medical waiver) in favor of having everyone climbing the stairwells as a way to exercise more. Amy and I were thinking, how could they do that--what if someone had a heart attack? Clicking on the "more" link revealed that we had been April Fooled (2)! You've seen all the multi-colored rubber bracelets for showing support for cancer research, tsunami victims and our troops. Today, all 1800 people in our organization got red bracelets from RockTheVote.com that proclaim I [heart] Social Security (3). What we should do next is have MIT build us little digital solvency calculators to clip on. And, as I finish this post at the corner of 7th and Pennsylvania looking at magnolia blossoms and the National Archives (4), spring fever is settling in. I'll go innoculate myself against the fever by doing some paperwork back at my desk.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Wife took our one car to Baltimore last night to spend the day today with contractors to continue prepping for the sale of our house. This gave me a night and morning of mommy-free time with Cianna (but sharing her with grandma too). Sans car this morning, I had to take bus and subway into work. Five blocks from the subway station, our bus bumped into a ladder hanging off the back of a truck at an intersection. We passengers had to vacate the bus to hoof it to the station as the it was going to be there a while to file a report. I should have documented the accident scene, but I didn't want to be late for work. Later this morning, I'm meeting with my new web analytics person and having lunch with our group's new senior vice president (the new boss over my boss). So goes the beginning of the last day of March.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Somewhere between the stark simplicity of warchalking and the technical cleverness of semacode is a new public art project called Yellow Arrow.

I got set of 40 (2) uniquely-coded (3) vinyl stickers from them today. I placed one of the stickers -- coded j4m95 -- on the area in our office where everyone puts snacks and candy (4).

Then tonight, I registered the sticker at the project's web site, uploaded a photo of the sticker location and set a map point. There's just one sticker in my gallery at the moment. Now anyone can send an SMS text message with the arrow's unique code:

?j4m95

from their phone or wireless PDA to the number 1-646-270-5537 and a message about the arrow will be transmitted back. You can also send your own messages to the comments page for the arrow which you can view later on the web site. In our office, people will now be able to attach comments to this physical location which anyone can see by going to the link above or searching the project site for my username arrowlee.

Now I have to think of other places around DC to set up Yellow Arrows (without breaking graffti laws). Obvious places to place stickers in my near future travels will be at the MIT Media Lab, Stanford University and Danger Headquarters.

Read more about the project at Wired and Newsweek.

- mike lee - washington, dc

A photo I made of my friend Janet's back last summer was noticed on my blog by an ad agency who asked to licence the image for use in a trade show booth for Tempur-Pedic, the maker of Swedish mattresses and pillows. I license a few images a year this way. I imagine if I applied a concerted effort (several days a month) to meticulously posting and captioning some of my nicer unpublished images, I could generate a nice stream of gadget money (the sale of this image, for example, could buy me a Sony PSP}. Given that a significant portion of my traffic is from image searches, I wonder if a whole new market must be emerging out of communications professionals on a tight budget who are licensing stock images from amateur photographers. Converting my extensive photo archives into extra income would be nice, but between a busy new job in management and being a daddy, the best I can do at this point in my life is to continue to enjoy making photographs for fun before profit.

- mike lee - langley park, md

I didn't succomb to the hype around last week's U.S. release of the Sony PSP. While it's likely a PSP will appear in our household later this year, I decided to leverage my existing portable gaming capability by buying a second Nintendo DS. Now my wife and I can face off wirelessly in games like Super Mario DS. Tonight, Cianna sat in my lap and giggled as she watched me run laps around her mommy in the Sunshine Isles. It wasn't pretty.

- mike lee - langley park, md

Easter weekend with my little girl peep.

- mike lee - baltimore