Lehrblogger

My final 4-in-4 project was originally going to be “Plan Trip to SXSW” – including buying plane tickets and book a hotel – but not quite enough people seemed like they were ready to commit yet (props to Liesje for being decisive).

It was during this realization that I went to post my finished blog entry for the M[]leskines, and noticed that DreamHost was down. I spent a while trying to diagnose the problem (before they finally posted a proper status update) and researching other web hosts.

Somewhat simultaneously I received another flurry of random Twitter followers, and, since I hadn’t looked at my feed in days, decided that organizing them was more urgent, and made that my project. There’s a blog post that will come soon about some UI design thoughts that were crystalized by this project, but I don’t have time to finish it now.

I went through the 107 people I was following on Twitter, and copied their user names and real names (if specified) into one of five txt files based on my relation to them (click for full size) –

Those groups are Friends, ITP, Networking, Unknown, and Bots. I then used those lists to create groups using the functionality in TweetDeck, and now my Tweets are sorted (see rotated image below, or click for a horizontal version). This should make it easier to keep up with the groups which are most important and look through the less important feeds when I have time. I’ll keep both sets of lists up to date as I follow more people. It was a small project, and not as creative as I would have liked, but it needed to happen anyway and my day didn’t quite go as expected.

I was in NYC for a couple of weeks during the summer of 2006 after I finished the Career Discovery Program in architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and I went to see the exhibit of the work of architect Zaha Hadid at the Guggenheim. I enjoyed exploring the variety of her built and unbuilt design work, but it was her sketchbooks that made the most lasting impression (image by Ivar Hagendoorn, same books different exhibit) –

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that a rectangular piece has been cut out of each page so that a pen can be stored inside when the book is closed. I had started to use a Moleskine notebook during the program at Harvard, and when I finished my first one I cut my second one like Zaha’s using a ruler and an X-Acto knife. That particular brand of notebooks is relatively popular and often recognized, but I think the reputation is deserved, as they are quite durable. I carry them everywhere, and with some black electric tape on the binding they will last more than six months.

I was shopping for architecture supplies at Accent Arts in Palo Alto, and noticed a short black lead-holder style pencil that looked like it would fit horizontally across the top of a notebook rather than vertically next to the spine. I compared it to one they had in stock, and it fit perfectly. My notebooks since then have all had a whole cut out at the top, and I’m currently on my eighth.

In addition to the pencil, Gabriela gave me a fountain pen that fits nicely, and I’ve been using Pilot G2 Mini’s more recently for their simplicity and reliability.

It takes an hour or two to cut each notebook, and I decided to try getting them laser cut. I took one to Canal Plastics, and talked to Raymond, with whom I had worked to get pieces of acrylic laser cut for architecture models at Kevin Kennon Architect. Both covers of the notebooks bend back, allowing for a cut straight through all of the pages, and he agreed to give it a try.

The experiment was a success, so I ordered ten more moleskines from Amazon. I had planned my third 4-in-4 project to be to set up a store on Etsy on which I could sell the lasercut Moleskines.

He agreed to cut those too, but had some trouble with burning on one of them, and didn’t want to cut any more. I cleaned off the ash –


- and will probably give a few to the friends that have requested them (Dan, Kabir, Jorge, Cassidy) and save the rest for later. It’s a somewhat scaled back third project, but my second one was pretty ambitious, so I’m satisfied.

For my second day and second project of the 4-in-4, I flew to San Francisco to present my TwiTerra project at the monthly meeting of the Bay Area Scala Enthusiasts. The group was set up by Dick Wall and Carl Quinn of the Java Posse podcast, and my friend Jorge Ortiz is a member and helps organize the speakers each month. He asked if he could present TwiTerra or if I wanted to come present it myself; I initially thought it infeasible because of my commitment to the 4-in-4, but decided I could do it in a day as my second project and be here in NYC for the other three.

The presentation was to a group of two-dozen-plus programmers at the Twitter offices in SOMA. I gave a demo of the application and then walked through much of the code, focusing on Java-Scala integration, Actors, Lift’s Object Relational Mapping, and the World Wind SDK. It was nice to give a much longer (80 minute?) presentation of the project, in contrast to the <5 minute presentations I gave at the show and at the NY Tech meetup. The presentation went well, and the Twitter employees seemed to particularly enjoy the visualization - Steve Jenson asked if I could put the .app file on the Mac Mini connected to the TV so that he could show the rest of the office in the morning.

My flight left from JFK yesterday at 9:00am, arrived in SFO at 12:45pm, and I had time for lunch with a friend before meeting with Jorge to prepare for the 7:00pm presentation at the Twitter offices. I was in a cab back to SFO by 9:15pm and at my gate with plenty of time before my 10:55pm flight, which landed back at JFK at 7:15am. I used Twitter to document the day as it went:

• Good morning everyone! I’m going to document my trip to SF on Twitter, but I’ll @ reply to @twiterra so that seeing them is opt-in. #4in4 at 5:49 AM
• @twiterra Somehow managed to wake up after only 15 mins of snoozing, oatmeal and espresso now. #4in4 at 5:56 AM
• @twiterra Almost to the airport, thinking about what to say about learning Scala, looking forward to napping for 3k miles. #4in4 at 7:31 AM
• @twiterra Advertisement for gogoinflight wifi with cool *-)- logo (a plane)… hm I wonder how much $$? I’m sleeping regardless though #4in4 at 8:21 AM
• @twiterra Window seat with no one next to me!!! #4in4 at 8:39 AM
• @twiterra my flight landed 35 minutes early, cutting short my otherwise great nap. On the BART to SF for lunch with a friend. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra done with lunch, Jorge caught his train, finding coffee+wifi, the weather is flawless. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra At a cafe called Epicenter near the Twitter office prepping for tonight with @jorgeortiz85, their [sic] playing chiptunes music. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra Ahhh presentation in 35 mins, somehow there is code I want to improve. And by ’somehow’, I clearly mean ‘of course’. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra In a cab on my way to the airport, presentation went well :) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra At my gate, plenty of time to spare, glad I could get a window seat for flight back, looking forward to another nap. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra I meant to tweet this earlier – “Such was life in the Golden Gate / Gold dusted all we drank and ate /” (1/2) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra “And I was one of the children told / We all must eat our speck of gold” – Robert Frost (2/2) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra And I’m back in my apt, subway back wasn’t tooo painful (but why does the J go sooo slooowly), time to write some blog posts #4in4 at time

My first 4-in-4 project was a physical wiki, or ‘phyki’, on which ITP students could mark the locations of their apartments and find out who else in the program lived nearby.

Although all ITP students live within a relatively small distance from 721 Broadway, and despite the fact that there are significant advantages for each student of knowing which other students live nearby (sharing cabs after TNO, going out for a last-minute brunch, etc), there is currently no good way to learn who lives nearby. Several people on the student email list have proposed the creating an online (Google) map on which everyone could mark the location, but nothing has come of it that I’m aware of. There are issues of security, privacy (even if it’s protected), maintenance, and difficulty involving people who don’t read the list.

The solution I had in mind was to use an actual physical map hanging from a wall on the floor, with labeled push pins that people can use to mark their locations. It would not be as searchable as an online map, it can’t be easily archived (if one took a photograph facing the map, the labels would be perpendicular to the plane of the image and thus unreadable), the pin holes would not need to be particularly precise, it could only be accessed by people on the floor who could see the map, it would be easy to update, hard to forget about, and everyone would be aware of it.

I envisioned a giant map of all five boroughs, so I went to the Hagstrom map store in midtown. They did have a large map, but the scale was still relatively small, it did not include Jersey City, and it was expensive ($150). They did have other individual folded maps of each boroughs, and those had somewhat larger (although different) scales and were much cheaper ($5). I bought the maps for Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey City, since I couldn’t think of anyone that lived anywhere else) –

Opened up and spread out, they look roughly like this –

I mounted them to foam core with double-stick tape (which brough back memories of architecture models)(thanks Meredith for the photos!) –

And here they are mounted to the foam core and leaned against a wall –

And viewed from above –

Since everyone knows where their apartments are, I decided to cut off the visually distracting street-finder tools on the sides of the map. The resulting shapes are irregular, but it should look cleaner against a white wall on the floor. It would be nice if they could all be part of one map and at the same scale, but for these purposes it didn’t really matter since this is for locations within the boroughs and not travel between them.

Finally, I bought pins at Kmart and labels at Staples. There are 75 of them right now, but I hope to get a second color (so the first and second-years can be differentiated) before the semester starts –

An additional use of the maps is specifically for people who were looking for apartments – I’ll have extra blank piece of foam core people could move their pins to if they were looking for a new place, and then people could see who else had pins there and find roommates. Furthermore, those people could see who lived where, and easily decide where to look for a new apartment based on where their friends were.

Once the construction is done on the floor I can hang the maps, and I’ll post more pictures then. Hopefully people use it!