The Secret Museum

Ambient Orb

Ambient Technologies, while already pretty well covered in the press, deserves a mention, for threatening to tear us all away from our keyboards and Internet connections by seamlessly integrating wireless communication of everyday data into our daily lives via cute, colorful interfaces shaped like orbs, pinwheels, panels, and key fobs.

So that we might actually be able to get up and go do something not tied to this chair and CRT.

Ok, well, anyway: Wil Wheaton really loves his Ambient Orb.

Heck, buy a bunch of 'em from Amazon and maybe I'll get a few cents in the mail.

Pet Architecture: Windsor Terrace 1

In my Brooklyn neighborhood, Windsor Terrace, there are examples of small frame houses, like this one, alongside townhouses, brownstones or apartment buildings. Although none of these structures are objectively massive, the frame houses end up looking anachronistic and small--they're sort of oppressed and adorable as a result of the company they're being forced to keep.

The photo shows that overall, we're living in fairly spacious conditions in this part of Brooklyn. In that sense, it's a pretty generous pet architecture.

Pet Architecture: PATH station

A temporary pet architecture, seen in the lower Manhattan PATH station earlier this week.

Scale is easily determined by the size of the man sitting inside the structure. It's unclear what the purpose of this little station might be. Perhaps it is a makeshift office and/or guardhouse for the construction effort going on along side it. Although it gives the occupant no privacy whatsoever, you can see that the worker inside was pretty relaxed; although he was completely visable to people outside, perhaps the coziness of the enclosure and the separation from the vast underground space outside gave him a relaxed feeling.

I would like to have gotten closer to take this picture, but felt a little uneasy using a camera in a public transit hub—even with my Palm Zire 71, which looks nothing like a camera. Earlier in the evening I had seen police patrolling the PATH station in body armor, armed with slim, matte black machine guns. This is not unusual anymore, objectively, but does not feel usual, or particularly reassuring.

Master lock recovery plan

If you, like me, have one or more Master Locks laying around (see schematic, right), sadly separated from the combinations that would open them, go to the Master Lock web site and download the Lost Combination Form.

Fill it out, get it notarized, send it in, and voilà — Master will send you the combination!

Cool.

And now a message from our sponsors

Well, not exactly.

I've updated my Current Cultural Intake on my arts and publications vita. Yep, little ol' Amazon Associates links. So click on thorough and check 'em out.

If you buy anything from Amazon while looking around the store with my associate's id in the URL, I'll get credit. Once 26 things have been bought with my id attached, apparently I'll then start to earn a percentage on sales.

This is sort of an experiment. After working on e-commerce projects on and off for years, I thought I'd see what it was like to set up one of my own. Eventually I'll try expanding it, and maybe switching the books links to Powells for the indie bookstore cred.

Anyone else have luck with this sort of thing?

A swift tilt

"I once asked L'Engle to define 'science fiction.' She replied, 'Isn't everything?'"

- "The Storyteller: Fact, fiction, and the books of Madeleine L'Engle," by Cynthia Zarin, The New Yorker, April 12, 2004

West 11th Street, New York

So lately I am on the lookout for pet architecture in New York City. We don't replicate the incredibly compressed conditions of Tokyo, so ultimately New York pet architecture will probably not be quite as small, although it could be just as cute. Here is a small residence on W. 11th Street.