All right, I've been a bit slack lately. There are extenuating circumstances. In the last week I experienced the most excruciating work day of my career - layoffs. No fun and a couple of my friends didn't escape the blade. But I'm recovering from my PTSD. Seriously, I wasn't sleeping and am only now getting back to normal.

Thanks go to my friend 'Killer' for giving me a little gem to blog about.  We were swapping stories about nicknames.  My theory is:

For a nickname to stick you either you assign a nickname that is a preposterous non-sequitur or one that is so finely tuned to the intended that it seems like the consummation of some longing in the natural order when it is applied.

Which is why Cobb is so perfect, but I digress.  Needless to say 'Killer' isn't really named 'Killer' but yet I predict the nickname will stick.

We were swapping stories and I was offering, what to some, is the old hoary chestnut about a friend of my little brother who I dubbed "Ox" well over 10 years ago.  I am awaiting confirmation but I'm pretty certain it stuck.

Approaching a mid-length post... She responds about telling me about a friend of hers who has fallen into a man hole THREE times - once in India.  She went on to mention that her friend was from Mexico and had likely done the other two there.  Neither of us could recall ever seeing an open man hole without all kinds of protective barriers.

Quick hop and a skip leads me to the phrase of the day "Mexican Man hole"...  I don't even know where to go with this.  I don't work blue, and this is generally a PG-13 blog, but I can't let it drop.  At any rate, fill in your own visual here all I have are some stock images:

Oh, and I'm back!

Thank you Mr. Harvey... this is beautiful

My team and I left a little surprise for about 60 co-workers this morning.  Let's just say it involved the little stickers pictured here and the optical sensors or trackballs on the bottom of their mouse.

Actually, thanks go to Noam for giving me the idea by pulling the prank on me a while ago. It takes people a bit to figure it out. Usually one or two unpluggings of the of mouse and a restart - or at least that's how long it took me.

And, before they try and weasel out, my accomplices:

If you've seen the Google April fools joke, it's a good one, but there is an Easter Egg.  If you expand the browser further and further to the right the image of the Martian landscape keeps going.  It should be mentioned that I have a dual monitor setup that extends 2560 pixels across.  Now I haven't been able to reproduce this, but when you expand all the way out to 2560 a little text bubble appears at the far right on the martian horizon in the photo that says "Welcome to Mars. Nice monitor". So pay attention as you do it, and if you figure out how to reproduce, please let us know.  Guessing it's a cookie thang.

Here is what it looks like on my screen (click the image for the full size):

I have yet to explore the questionnaires, etc.  But you better believe I'm signing up.

I love April Fools.

Feeling like I'm neglecting both of my readers so I thought I'd offer a morsel on Patents (that I stole from Wired).  At any rate, Venice, March 19, 1474 the following law was enacted:

"Any person in this city who makes any new and ingenious contrivance, not made heretofore in our dominion, shall, as soon as it is perfected so that it can be used and exercised, give notice of the same to our office of Provveditori de Comun [State Judicial Office], it being forbidden up to 10 years for any other person in any territory and place of ours to make a contrivance in the form and resemblance thereof, without the consent and license of the author."

Interestingly enough, according to Wired, it was about attracting foreign investment.

As a "Creative Professional" who does work for hire on a daily basis, Intellectual property law is something of great interest.  I've recently had to fill out a disclosure of all "prior works of authorship" to distinguish my own creative endeavors from things I've done for hire.

In that vein, I'll pass along some advice I received from a friend who conveniently happens to be an attorney:

When describing your works of prior authorship, cut as wide a [creative] swath as you can in as few words as possible.  Put the onus on them to get clarification to try and diminish the scope of what you're claiming.

So, to give you a bad example that is completely fictitious, rather than claiming my new sock knit as a work of authorship I would claim "new solution for sox".  Pretty wide swath, eh?

This is the part where I clarify the bits you've read above:  This advice from from my friend was offered as a courtesy to me and is being paraphrased by me to you as a courtesy.  This does not constitute legal advice to you and I make no representation that I have specific expertise in this area and I further make no claims as to the validity or utility of this advice.  Should you choose to act on these statements you do so at your own risk and are advised to seek competent legal advice prior to acting. This is posted here because it just sounds reasonable to me.

I just love legalese.

I guess clowns have to get ready for work too., originally uploaded by astoriahermit.

I was a little surprised to see a clown getting ready for work on the subway this morning, but no more surprised than you ever are to see weird stuff on the subway.

Chumby has landed in the US.

For those of you who know, KEXP is a sweet set of letters.  To the informed it means good independent radio with a challenging edge.  Those of us who no longer live in Seattle have little choice but to subscribe to podcasts and stream, but that is all about to change for us current New Yorker Seattle Ex-Pats.  In about 1 day 10 hours and change we will get Radio New York (91.5 FM) which is aligned with KEXP. This is a huge day for all of us here in New York, now if only you could get radio in the subway.

If you're curious you need to head over to http://www.kexp.org/ and catch some of their stream or do as I do and listen to their Song of the Day podcast.

Immediately after I saw Noam's post on SearchMe, I busted over to their site to sign up for the beta.  And today I'm pretty stoked to report that I got into the beta.  I think visual search is the next thing in search and I think SearchMe, by emulating the iPhone album "thumb through" interface, whether intentionally or not, hit the nail on the head.  My biggest problem with search results is something they talk about in their promo video. The constant forward back of going through the crappy results looking for the relevant one is annoying.  I love being able avoid those crappy ad site with keywords sprinkled in to draw search.

It definitely is a beta, and I was slightly disappointed there wasn't a gesture based interaction.  The index is small but the concept and overall execution are pretty huge.  I know someone is waiting in the wings to tell me that visual search is not new - true enough, but visual search that looks like it has a change to succeed is. Hmm, I wonder if the prospective buyers are already circling?

Here is their Promo Vid:

So, I guess I've just never had anything shipped to me directly from China, but this is kind of interesting. Here is the latest tracking data and a map of where we've gone so far.

(If you're catching up here is the first post and the second post)

View Larger Map

You may remember me blogging about wanting a Chumby day before yesterday.  Well, I couldn't resist and I ordered one, a latte one.  Then last night I get a shipping notification, my Chumby has shipped.  So of course I click through to the tracking page on UPS.  I guess I've just never seen an item direct shipped from Shenzhen, China, but there it was 7:18 PM today (wait, that's the future) it departed.  Come to think of it this makes two firsts, I've never had something from the future.   Here is the UPS tracking page:

The New York Times has an article about the basics of blogging and some tips from the 'pros'.  I want to score a link to my blog on the New York Times site.  I guess I should put some ads up if I'm going to Mahir like that. (Don't remember the verb to Mahir.  Well, I blogged about it here)

So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?

By PAUL BOUTIN
Published: March 20, 2008

Successful bloggers with successful non blogging careers offer ways to think about getting into the business of blogging.

This actually is pretty straight forward and interesting. If I were to add my own tip, which is something that really helps me keep up a regular pace, it would be:

Post Ahead - When I have time to compose a couple posts I'll take one of them and kick it out into the future.

By posting ahead I can keep up my pace and also have "new post insurance" where I can skip a day or two and keep you on the line. This also gives me the ability to publish a longer post midweek when I usually have time for as I slog my way through the week

To keep this all above board, I st-borrowed this photo from The Whole Enchilada: Thoughts on life, work, tech & biz and the whole enchilada.