Some of my most common Flickr tags (click on the cloud to see it bigger on Wordle’s site):

The contents of the front page of my blog as of 3 July 2008:

I like how the latter captures our time in Spain quite nicely, and I really like how Wordle can intermingle the ascenders and descenders. Wordle can grind pretty hard on your CPU, but there are lots of neat options to play with and some very fun results to be had. w00t!

Thanks to banned photography inc for the tip.

As further proof of how cool PeeZed is, he just got an asteroid named after him! The little rock formally known as 153298 is now “paulmyers”, which is certainly easier to remember for the test. Visit MPR for an interview.

(The asteroid in the photo isn’t “paulmyers”; it’s a photo of the Toutatis asteroid from JPL.)

Bill Lamin is posting the letters his grandfather (Harry Lamin) wrote home from the front of WWI as a blog. Each letter is posted 90 years after (to the day) Harry wrote it, so following the blog is somewhat like being his family, waiting for news, hoping it’s good.

What a brilliantly simple idea, absolutely full of potential and possibility. Our family is fortunate enough to have a number of excellent diaries, letter collections, and such, and I’ve often thought of “doing something” with them. My thoughts had always been fairly traditional; this opens all sorts of doors.

Wow.

Just before we headed north for Xmas, I posted this shot of an odd little stencil I saw in Dublin. It’s a neat stencil, and a technically reasonable photo of it, but it’s hardly amazing. Yet it caught some traction (perhaps in part due to synchronicity with the season) and ended up on Flickr’s “Explore” pages. This has lead to 60 favorites in four days, over 4 times as many favorites as every other photograph I’ve posted with one exception. I’m thrilled by the response (it’s always nice when people see your work), but according to Flickr’s “interesting-ness” algorithm this is currently the 5th most “interesting” of all the photos I’ve posted, a “claim” which clearly doesn’t bear any significant scrutiny.

I realize that any algorithmic determination of “interestingness” is going to have substantial oddities and be subject to gaming in various ways. And I suspect that the “rich get richer” part of this is a common experience for anyone who posts stuff on-line or, more generally, puts any of their work out in the public. Still, it’s weird when it happens.

OK, I’m done navel gazing – you can go back to your holiday revelry.

Yesterday I posted a somewhat knee-jerk vote in favor of the idea of a science debate. Poking a little at the enormous lists of blog posts on this topic that A Blog Around The Clock has collected, one finds that while most people are definitely in favor, some people aren’t entirely convinced. The concern typically seems to be some variant/subset of “It’ll be too technical, the general public doesn’t care/understand, the candidates will get it all wrong, and there’s no way to correct that sort of thing in a live debate”.

These are real concerns. The NPR sponsored debate early in the year (involving non-politician panelists) on the question “Global warming is not a crisis” made me want to throw things. There should be a special punishment for dissembling people like Crichton, but unfortunately the scientists arguing that there is a crisis were largely ineffective in their responses. One was condescending to the audience and their ability to understand (and got rightly booed for his troubles), and they all allowed red herrings to distract the discussion, creating a “teach the debate” atmosphere depressingly similar to the whole creationist nonsense.

In short, there’s a good chance that the whole thing could go pear shaped if not handled well.

But that’s no reason not to do it.

Just because these issues are complex doesn’t somehow make them less important or worthy of public discussion. Their importance, however, does put a greater burden on everyone (scientists and politicians included) to step up their game and find ways to make sense of these issues in a public forum. I would argue, for example, that it’s part of the job of politicians to help the public understand complex issues, and if they’re not doing that we damn well ought to complain. I’m near the end of Goodwin’s wonderful A team of rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet, and it’s clear that one of his great gifts was helping both individuals and the general public understand the truly monumental issues that faced the U.S. at that time. He didn’t do this by talking down or over simplifying or dissembling. He did it through honesty, careful thought, and a keen intelligence. And he was largely successful.

I suspect that if we had a science debate there would be much that would be depressing and broken about it (especially in it’s inaugural incarnation). But that’s where the press (and the blogosphere) comes to play, taking it all apart, pointing out the misconceptions and unsupportable nonsense. The debate starts a vital conversation, says science and technology are crucial in our affairs (duh), and encourages us all to continue the debate long after the TVs are turned off. A debate like this isn’t going to convert creationists into evolutionary biologists, or hard core believers in climate change into denialists; it’s unlikely to affect the poles in any significant way. What it can do, however, is signal to the middle that these are important, complex ideas, and that asking questions and paying attention might be a good idea. That it matters where and how your food and energy are produced, how you move yourself around your world, and what medicines really make sense for a cold or earache.

So I’m full square in favor. Even if it isn’t gonna be perfect, it really needs to be done. Now.

Yup, crazy as it sounds. Eyetrack has collected some nice user data, which they summarize in “What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes”, which is then reorganized in “Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies” over at VirtualHosting.com.

At some point I should go through these with some care and think about how they apply here. I tend to generate pretty cluttered designs – I keep trying cram in the information, and I end up with more Redmond than Google, I’m afraid. Maybe I should rethink that a bit.

I just finished a long overdue upgrade of all the UnhinderedByTalent.com WordPress installs, so everyone’s all spiffy and shiny now.

The photo (from the Green Fair where we met the River Nene folks) is just there to fool you into believing this post actually had content :-).

Someone asked over on Flickr if I knew who this was. I didn’t have a clue who he was until the question prompted me to do my homework. You’re looking at Bob Breeks, the guitarist and singer for The Bad Terrorists, a band here in Colchester. They were played with (I’m assuming) reduced amplification at the fair, so you really couldn’t hear the vocals for crap, but the playing was quite fun.

So I blog, but erratically and without any real focus. You’d hardly guess that I’m a computer scientist by profession, or that I’m deeply interested in evolution and evolutionary computing. I keep fantasizing that I’ll write all these cool reviews (esp. music, but books as well), but that rarely happens in practice. I post photographs at random intervals, but not with any focus or arc.

Worse, I’m a truly terrible reader of other blogs. And there are dozens, nay hundreds out there that I know I would find useful, interesting, enlightening, fun… But reading is slow and I’m busy and scattered, so it doesn’t happen.

Every now and then I worry about it, but rarely for long. I occassionally fantasize about being some significant figure in the blog universe like my friend down the hall. Then I think about how much of his life he has to put into building and maintaining that status, and I know it will never happen.

And I’m usually OK with that.

Sometimes I think I need (not necessarily want, but need) to write a book or record an album (or seven). How else can I really make a difference? Leave my mark?

But that’s mostly illusory as well. Even books that top the best sellers list are usually forgotten in a few years, and a few decades wipe out nearly every semblence of significance for all but the tiniest fraction of authors, painters, musicians, etc. And lord knows, I’m not Plato or Da Vinci or Godel.

While a rare few get to place some rocks, or even boulders, on the beach of human experience, most of us get a few grains of sand if we’re lucky. And it really has to be that way; if everyone got a rock, then rocks would just become the new grains of sand. (But we can never understimate the power and importance of lots of people pooling their sand; 59 million U.S. voters dropped their sand in George W. Bush’s bucket in 2004, and look where that got us!)

So I muddle through, trying to balance my family, and my teaching, and my music and photography and writing and gardening and whatever, knowing that I need it all to be me, but that I’ll never “Be all that I can be” at any of them because I’m so distracted by the constant buzz of the world. But still trying to put my grains of sand in places that do some good, if in small ways.

Now and then, though, fate drops a penny in my bucket to remind me that sand counts. Sometimes it’s a former student writing back to say how valuable something I did turned out to be for them. (And I promise that every teacher worth sending something like that to treasures every such note they receive.) Sometimes it’s an unexpected thank you for something you didn’t even think was terribly significant at the time, but which meant a lot to that person.

And sometimes you find out you helped a near stranger break an addiction.

I posted the following about two months ago, both here and on Flickr:

This was mostly just part of my response to Dad’s illness, and something I knew would make Mom cry (in a good way). But it was also my small attempt to bring some attention to this issue, and how the decisions we make can have consequences, not just for us but for those around us.

I was very honored by the very supportive responses I received both here and on Flickr, and shared many of those with my family. We were all very grateful for the support and help, both from long-time friends and from people I only sorta-kinda knew from the on-line world.

And I figured that would be the end of it.

Three days ago, however, just as I was scrambling to get course stuff together and drive the 14 hours south to spend a few more days helping my folks out before having to come back for classes, I got a most unexpected comment on this photo on Flickr. csharp_gal has a wonderful eye for gorgeous landscape photography, and was also apparently addicted to nicotine. After describing her addiction first to cigarettes, and then to nicotine gum, she went on to share:

Then, one day I saw this photo and I read about what’s happening with your Dad. I left a comment and started thinking about it. That day, I went off the gum. It’s almost two months and no gum.

…

Just wanted to let you know that this posted picture helped me to end my almost relationship with nicotine in any form. It’s very important to me, former nicotine junky. I will always think about your Dad while being nicotine free.

I just about cried. It was so unexpected, and so positive, and just so cool! Huge thanks to csharp_gal for sharing her story, and best wishes in her fight against that nasty beast.

I know I’ll never be some giant of the blogsphere, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to writing a book or making an album or whatever. Regardless, I’ll have surprises like this, and my amazing family, to remind me that some of my sand ended up in a good place. And that’s pretty damn cool.