We took a road trip to Western Massachusetts recently.  Highlights included a trip to Herman Melville’s house, where he wrote Moby Dick.

Mass Moca and the new Sol LeWitt Installation, on view now through 2033. (It feels weird to type 2033!)

and a trip up Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Mass during peak foliage.  Herman Melville could see this peak from his study, and took inspiration from it for Moby Dick because the snow covered profile reminded him of a Sperm Whale’s back.

All pictures from our trip are here.

Last month we had a nerd date and went to see wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales speak at Suffolk University.  The topic was Free Speech, Free Minds, Free Markets: Competition and Collaboration.  The Bostonist has a great recap of the evening.   Wales addressed the future of Web 2.0 and shared his latest project, which is a search-wiki called Wikia Search.  This is an open source search engine where user’s can rate results, pushing good results to the top of the page rather than those with the most money. 

Thoughts that resonated with me from the lecture:
1. Community Control of products leads to a more global/universal mind thanks to distributed intelligence.
2. A belief in the inherent good of people, meaning that there are more normal people than bad on the internet.  Yay Internets!

Generate a word cloud of your website or a document with Wordle. Here is what I got when I put my blog in:

Picture025_24Oct07

Originally uploaded by jayluker

Jay figured out how to change the message on the LCD of the HP printer at his office. Thanks to his message the Boston Red Sox completed mission World Series Champions part 2 successfully. If you are interested in pulling a similar office prank Ode to Code has instructions for the brave and nerdy.

My creation

Originally uploaded by jjzach

I was playing around with something called the Hockneyizer that allows you to make a quick collage from a single photograph. I’m a sucker for all the cool flickr tools out there.

Here is a fun Flickr tool called Spell with Flickr that lets you type in a word or sentence and it spells it with photographs. If you don’t like the first letter it gives you click on the letter and you can scroll through until you are happy. I may use this to make some cool signs for the walls at school.

Flea Market Find

Originally uploaded by jjzach

At our yearly trek to the wonderful Todd Farm we found an Incredible Hulk fist that makes smashing noises when you punch things. This great flea market find will make a great accessory for Jay’s cubicle. On that note, Think Geek has a whole category devoted to Cubicle Goodies and they even have The Cubes – Cubicle Playsets. Finally the humdrum of cubicle life has been captured in a toy for adults! Just think of the fun you could recreate near the water cooler with the delivery man, the corporate zombies and the sensitivity trainer.

Movie Night
Originally uploaded by jjzach

We had a movie night outside with the neighbors recently complete with a large tv, kettle corn, lawn chairs, bug spray and Austin Powers.

Here are some sites devoted to the art of throwing an outdoor movie night party:

Backyard Theater

FunFlicks Outdoor Inflatable Movies Screens

An Outdoor Movie Night Party

PBSKids has a new reality show called Design Squad that is set in the Boston area. Its goal is to get viewers excited about engineering. Eight high school contestants tackle engineering challenges for actual clients — and the person with the most points gets a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel Foundation.

I caught part of an episode where they had to construct a bike for SCUL (Subversive Choppers Urban Legion) using 3 bikes obtained from an organization called Bikes Not Bombs. I have been meaning to donate my old mountain bike to that organization for a while. It is a non-profit working for alternative transportation, community development, environmental education, meaningful employment, and safe sustainable communities in Roxbury, MA and abroad. I also noticed that in addition to bicycles they are accepting donations of the plastic containers with lids that Kitty Litter comes in for shipping parts and storage.