see a puffin eat a fish

Now that Dennis and Alex have parted ways with ‘the goog’ everyone is wondering what Google is going to do with their ITP asset, Dodgeball. Will they shut it down? Roll it into Orkut? Make it in the next Loopt? I was watching Kate present her excellent Ovu yesterday when it hit me: Ovu + Dodgeball = The future of social networking. Why should only your partner receive a text message when you are ovulating? Why not your whole social network? Someone else may be closer, like a friend of a friend or even a crush! You heard it here first.

I’m all thesis at this point. Only three weeks left of my time here at ITP. I’m looking forward to whatever is next. Also considering scrapping some of my Python work and making my app be WAP compatible. It isn’t sexy but more people will be able to use it. The Dodgeball approach. So there you have it, website, presentation, website, application development, paper, presentation.

Vonnegut died this week.  So it goes.  I devoured everything he had written when I was a kid.  Wish he’d hung around longer, given the present administration one more back handed compliment.  Here he is at the 92 street Y reading from his yet to be published Breakfast of Champions.

Werner Herozog is now blogging daily. I like to start my day with some words of inspiration from the great master.  Below is a sample:

I have just returned from buying pepperoncinis at the supermarket for a salad I mean to create. While I was in the aisle a woman mistook me for her husband, who had ambled away while she was reading the ingredients of a banana salad.

“I am sorry,” she said. “It’s just that he was right here, where you are.”

“I know,” I said. “For the shortest instant I must confess that I too believed I was him. Now I feel the onrush of my familiar self returning to my body, reinhabiting what I feared was lost. The sensation is that of an incomprehensible joy. For this I thank you.”

I went to my first R Generation event last night. I’ve been on the list for close to a year but never made it out to anything. The crowd is a mix of immigrants (like me) who came here fairly young and have a foot in each culture and people who came here when they were older and are culturally much more Russian (like my sister). Last night Laura Vapnyar did a reading and answered some questions about adjusting to the United States and her ‘fictional’ accounts in her books are spot on. From the mesarubka that her aunt brought from Russia (and still uses) to her uncle telling her Americans are idiots. “They buy the expensive cereal with the nuts and raisins. But you can buy the cheap cereal and then add your own nuts and raisins.” All the while he is kneeling on the floor, sweat on his brow, crushing nuts with a stool. “I don’t want you to think I do not have a nutcracker. I do. I just prefer this method.” I am paraphrasing but these descriptions are very warm and familiar. Lets just say that although my parents didn’t crush nuts with furniture they had their own special way of opening them up. I had a really great time and met some really nice people. Plus I picked up a bunch of books. Lenny, one of the founders, said what he often sees is when someone brings their wife to an R Generation event she immediately understands why her husband is the way he is, why he wants to eat fish for breakfast and opens walnuts with chairs.

Roommate Nate has resurfaced! I lived with Nate for a few years. He’s a really good guy and though a little flaky, he does know how to cook.  One day I will run into Nate at Blanchard’s and it will be awesome.