Asymptomatic

In no particular order:

I’ve gotta do something to make this list go away.

Enough people were commenting on a gift guide from a previous year that I thought I might write up a new one this year. The items on this list are practically all on my own personal wish list. The prices listed are approximate – you can probably find deals on all of this stuff if you look even a little bit.

If you read here regularly, you will know that I like astronomy. There’s something about space that has piqued my interest since I was a kid. Berta got me a really great telescope for Christmas one year, one of the Meade models with the computerized star finders, but the aperture of the telescope is such that you can’t really see the full depth of the sky.

Last year, the kids got a ton of gifts. Many of them came in cardboard boxes. Yes, if you’re a parent (and perhaps if you’re not) then you know exactly where I’m headed – the dreaded wire tie.

See, they make this really nice display packaging for the store so that you can see the toy before you buy it, but because they fear that you’re going to walk off with the toy by just yanking it out of the display, they tie it to the box with these crazy tight strips of wire. The box is often reinforced with a small piece of holed plastic that the wire passes through and is tied behind. The actual tie is often so tight, and the wire so wound around the toy that by the time you’ve removed the first wire you just want to die. And then there are three more to remove. But now, there is hope…

Over the weekend, skippy flew in to hang out with me at BarCamp Philly. This was not my first unconference, but it was my first official “BarCamp” experience.

I would like to say up front that the BarCamp Philly organizers did a great job at building this event. Of the many free events I’ve attended over the past few years, this one was the best run of its style. Kudos to them and thanks for the wonderful effort. I want to spend a little time in this post going over not just what I think they did well, but also where I think all events of this type could stand to improve, either by following their example or doing just a little bit more.

I didn’t want to vote yesterday. I watched CNN last night, not raptly, but with a sense of knowing what was coming. As a sort of passive observer of the political process this year, it has been interesting to see all of the work finally play out, but I can’t help but notice that while, as usual, the election is not really about the issues, it’s also no longer about whatever nonsense it happened to be about before.

At a session I attended BlogOrlando this year, a presenter discussed his role in helping change the image of Fiskars, the scissor people, by bringing social interaction to the table to sit beside marketing and branding. In a very compelling part of his talk, he said that the challenge and success was in creating a movement. And yes, apparently, even if delicacy is required, movements can be engineered.