connecting*the*dots

Happy three-years to Andy and Angela (I can’t believe it’s been that long!) and a very special happy birthday to G’ma Coon who is 102 years-young today! I love you all.

Bonus picture of the happy couple.

In the “you learn something new everyday” category, I didn’t know that John Battelle was the “band manager” / 5th Beatle of BoingBoing. Now I get all those references to his blog…

So, the squad is now officially a five-some. They’re cosmopolitan, modern and geeky, but give ‘em a handful of number 5 patches and they could easily one up this tired foursome:

Xeni even has the Jessica Alba, thrown-back shoulder pose down pat.

This shot was taken during the Homeless Count, last Wednesday night, at a homeless camp found between a couple of abandoned businesses. I’m still processing the experience… I’ll be sure to write something of more depth in a few days.

More pictures from that evening can be found at flickr.

(originally uploaded by Drownedrat)

Diseases Of the Rich vs. Diseases Of The Poor, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Song: Whitey On The Moon

==========

A rat done bit my sister Nell (with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell (and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bills (but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still (while Whitey’s on the moon)
You know, the man jus’ upped my rent las’ night (’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights (but Whitey’s on the moon)
I wonder why he’s uppin’ me? (’cause Whitey’s on the moon?)
I wuz already givin’ him fifty a week (with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin’ my whole damn check,
The junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin’ up,
An’ as if all that crap wuzn’t enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell (with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an’ arm began to swell (and Whitey’s on the moon)
Was all that money I made las’ year (for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here? (Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I jus’ ’bout had my fill (of Whitey on the moon)
I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills, Airmail special… to Whitey on the moon

Autoblog
Tesla Roadster unveiling in Santa Monica
by Sebastian Blanco

[…]

“The car is low to the ground, and smooth in all possible ways. But this vehicle isn’t just a sports car. It’s also a green car. There are zero tailpipe emissions. There isn’t even a tailpipe. Tesla Motors is working to provide purchasers with a photovoltaic panel that will turn the driving experience into an actual net producer of energy, according to Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk.”

[…]

The initial sticker price is $80k - $100k, with the majority of the profits earmarked for further R&D efforts. In five years, this might just be the better option to Hybrid vehicles (with a similar sticker price). It’s definitely the sexier version. I wonder if there’s a way to reserve one for my mid-life crisis in a few years…

(via TerraBlog)

BarCampRDU came and went this past weekend and I completely missed out. With the stress of moving into the new house, completing my proposal work and working on the number of scattered projects I’m on, I just couldn’t find time to make the trip. But truth be told, as much as I wanted to check out the BarCamp experience, I was much more amped about spending some quality time with the Bonnie and Clyde of Web 2.0 themselves: Chris Messina and Tara Hunt.

We stumbled into connecting last year through one of my posts, followed up by chatting a bit via email and Skype and eventually met in person in a group lunch at SXSW in March. Since I couldn’t make it to Raleigh, I pinged Chris late last week with an offer to crash at my spot if they needed a place to stay. Low and behold, they did.

(shot at Finnegans, before we realized they didn’t serve breakfast and split to Jimmy’s Corner Cafe)

So… what do you do with a couple of uber-progressive, multi-tasking, San Fran geeks in Greensboro, NC with 18 hours on your hands? Keep it simple, stupid; beer, grub and talk shop.

Once they arrived and got settled in, we ended up walking downtown, settling in on MCouls rooftop and chatting about our latest geek ventures over Fish ‘n Chips and pints of Guinness (Tara, you’ve got to get the Guinness tolerance up).

Even though we all share a bunch of the same philosophies regarding business, marketing and technology, it’s still kinda amazing how much overlap our latest ventures have with one another. Both Citizen Agency and dotmatrixproject are efforts to:

• support our passionate desires to consult, design and build technology independent of a full-time gig
• work smarter (not necessarily harder) with great clients and interesting projects
• network with loosely connected, brilliant talent instead of building a salaried bench
• using collaborative blogging to generate credibility, trust and thinktank-like conversations — across our own teams and with the community of folks that participate in the resulting discourse

I’d like to say something grand, like, it’s the sign of how we can all work in the future, but I know that’s not true… at least not yet. Major props to Chris and Tara on that front though, as they believe 1000% in documenting their every success, failure and step along the way with the hope that their efforts can provide building blocks for others on a similar journey.

I completely share that philosophy and enthusiasm, but aside from transparent blogging, I’ve yet to implement it in tangible ways across my everyday (note to self: do that).

We ended the evening with a pretty intense conversation about geo-specific social networking, the digital divide and citizen media, or to be more specific, The People, Yes.

In a nutshell, Chris and I started off with slightly different perspectives of community. The concept of a geo-specific network didn’t seem to register with his quixotic stare, but I think we both nudged a bit closer to each other’s thinking by the end of the conversation. I’m all about working with people who’ve been there and done that, but I’d like for the majority of the grass-roots work and business and technology development to run through the people in this community.

Tara seemed to get my desire to work specifically with the people of Greensboro to build out a Greensboro-specific social network — as the more we work together as a community, the more we’ll come together as a community. Essentially, I want to start local and focus on the needs and strengths of the entire community of Greensboro to flesh the project out.

I mean, who knows what nuggets we’ll find in these fields and streams and underpasses and buildings?

In any event, I’m sure it wasn’t the last conversation we’ll have on the project. Both Tara and Chris are revolutionary thinkers, with their heads constantly spinning about with progressive ways to use technology to help us work, play and function better with one another. I’m only in the embryonic stage with The People, Yes, so I’m looking forward to many more chances to imbibe and share knowledge and perspective.

This weekend came and went way too fast.