There is a band called Lipkandy.  That has Lipka in it.  heh heh.

I had previously written (in 2004) that my goal was Wisdom.  I think this was my 26th post.  However, I want to log a few thoughts on intelligence.  I had read somewhere that intelligence is the ability to see signal in what would otherwise be perceived as random noise.

For example, when I see numbers and statistics, it looks like a jumble of Sanskrit characters.  It might as well be random.  However, when I see a painting, I see a pattern to the strokes and composition that other people might consider random.  This book I am reading, Flow, talks alot about each person finding the intricacies and detailed signal in certain things in their lives.  These activities give us happiness.

When a grand master plays chess, he/she sees a pattern and a larger movement, where I see a bunch of random moves.  Sometimes people believe that luck or divinity is actually creating the signal in the randomness.  People who believe in Creationism are citing God as the driving force and suspend disbelief and rely on faith.  Scientists believe in Evolution and rely on scientific methods to derive their conclusions.  Both are seeing a pattern which would otherwise be seen as randomness.
So can this definition of intelligence be reconciled with this?  Maybe they are both using intelligence to derive their conclusions?  Is intelligence a ‘good’ thing or is it just a tool to see patterns.  Even if those patterns are made up.  Are the stars randomly placed or are there archers and crabs and heroes in the sky?  Were those ancient astrologers not intelligent?  It seems pretty creative and thoughtful to me.  Hmm, not sure where this is going, but it’s interesting to think about.

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In totally unrelated news, Jack White of The White Stripes has come out with a new album with another group called The Raconteurs. They have a song out called Steady As She Goes. (Lyrics)  I love the song.  Give it a try on their website.

I put Matthew down on his mattress on the floor next to our bed.  He starts chanting.

“dohwannaseep, Mama!”
“dohwannaseep, Mama!”
“dohwannaseep, Mama!”
“dohwannaseep, Mama!”
“dohwannaseep, Mama!”
“dohwannaseep, Mama!”

Insistent little guy.

In wonderful news, my cousin Andy had his first child today!  I know nothing of details yet.

This weekend was non-stop.  We went to Sacramento on Saturday morning and visited the Train Museum.  It was interesting, but didn’t really hold the kids attention for too long.  It was 3900 degrees that day.  3500 in the shade, which was nice, except there was no shade.

Then we went to Melynda’s house for her husband Dan’s 50th birthday party.  There were Polynesian Hula Dancers as entertainment.  It was fun for the first few dances, but then Matthew started screaming and I had to take him away.

Then Saturday night, we slept at the Larkspur Hotel, which was very nice.  It is across the street from a water park called Sun Splash.  It was going strong at 10:30 at night, with tons of kids sliding in the dark. Crazy.

Sunday morning, we ate breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe and then went to the park.  It was the same temperature as the day before.  My shoes were melting into the pavement.  We slathered on sun block, SPF 50.  Ethan liked it alot.  Jared was a little scared.  We went to the top of one of the rides, and Jared just couldn’t do it.  He cried, so we went back down to the bottom.  He enjoyed the wave pool and the kids area.  It was MUCH better being in the water in that heat.  However, I STILL got sun burned a little.

After that, we drove back Sunday afternoon.  We stopped by Penny & Jim’s for dinner.  Apparently, so did the rest of Berkeley.  Penny had 9 other people invited as well.  The temperature cooled down and we had a very pleasant outdoor dinner with lots of friends.  Finally, we drove back home and tried to go to sleep.  It was literally 89 degrees in the house and, despite cooler temps outside, we wouldn’t cool it down in the house.

Overall, a tiring and busy trip.  Hopefully, the temperature will cool down somewhat in the future.

Started to read Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Woof, what a name. It is interesting, but I don’t know if I am going to like it. Basically, he is saying that we can control if we are happy or not. Despite having said this before to people, something just strikes me odd about it.

Happiness. Such an elusive goal. Ethan is often unhappy. How can we help him to be happier?

I described to him what being ‘in the zone’ means when you are playing. When you can not miss and everything you do feels just right. Everything is so new to him. It is so funny to have to explain words in the middle of explaining happiness.

What makes you happy? How often do you do it? Could you do it more? Ooops, gotta run. Have a great weekend!

Ok, this is my new theme.  I hope it works for everyone.

Monday was Matthew’s birthday. On Sunday, we all went to Six Flag’s Marine World in Vallejo.  It was pretty fun.  Ethan wanted to go on the Roller Coasters, but he was 1 inch too short for them, thank god. (47 inches)  Jared and Matt had good times, but Ethan was so excited to be around so many people.  In lines for the rides, he would talk non-stop to girls in line beside us.  He loves people so much.

Matthew got a little heat exhaustion and threw up.   He was pretty happy though.  We had a good night’s sleep after that.  His language all of the sudden is getting really clear.  He is also eating a ton.  This marks the beginning of the terrible two’s.  His favorite word is no and he says it all the time.

One day, we will all be able to go to the tennis court and play doubles.  I am excited for that day.  Happy Birthday Matthew!  May you one day sleep in your own bed.

Well, I am still getting used to WordPress. It certainly works better in Firefox than in IE. This theme also works better in Firefox than in IE. There are so many features of this software. Truly, I am overwhelmed.

So, what do you think? Does this theme say commadot.com to you? Make a suggestion for a new theme. Just google Wordpress themes. What about this one?

Email me if this thing doesn’t let you post a comment.

I am working on a migration of my blog to WordPress. This is a test.

Wow. Ok, test complete. WordPress is pretty cool,although it took me a while to get it up and running.

A few things I don’t love. I will update soon.

If you have an Innie belly button:
Insert your finger deep into your belly button. Move it around slightly.
Now smell your finger.

I believe that all human beings cringe at this exercise. (All who have ‘innies’ anyway)

Many people are fascinated and afraid of their belly-buttons. It is not an erogenous zone, but it holds almost the same shameful obsession. People do not like you sticking YOUR finger in THEIR belly-buttons. Besides being a little ticklish, it feels like ‘penatration’ and evokes uncomfortable feelings. I often wonder where the bottom of my belly-button is. Does it go all the way to my stomach? Is that where God lives?

It once was our sole source of nurishment. Do we remember this dependancy? Do we resent the belly-button for once having dominance? What lies deep in our minds…and our bodies?

2006 can be terms the year JavaScript was reborn. So many great things are happening with JavaScript and the field of interaction design. There are many libraries now that can achieve goals that previously were incredibly time consuming.

Here some of my current favories.
http://www.jquery.com (Nice small tool for programming interactivity into your pages easier)
- jQuery supports CSS 1-3 and basic XPath.
- jQuery is about 10kb in size.
- jQuery works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

http://jstween.blogspot.com/ (Very well written, and small, library for adding motion tweens to any positioned object in the DOM. We are using it not in a couple of places for Account Management)

http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/ahah (Useful tool when AJAX is overkill, but you want to centralize some content. It basically allows you to pull in a static HTML snippet and append it to any node on your page. Has a much smaller footprint than the AJAX equivalent.

http://moofx.mad4milk.net/ (Accordion widget that works great in every browser)

http://dojotoolkit.org/ (Javascript framwork)

http://prototype.conio.net/ (Another framework)

Good times for an interaction designer.