In fact, almost always, I get something like this:

I’m purchasing it for my cousin as a gift.  I’m presently out of town (offshore) so I can’t pick up, but I will offer you $[MORETHANYOUASKED] including shipping expenses via USPS Express Mail to him as he schools in Belgium
Let me know if we can make the transaction asap, and I’ll send the money through my paypal account.
Regards
Susan

So, recently, I’ve starting responding like this:

Oh, wow, that sounds great!  However, I looked into it, and it’s going to cost US $4963.00 to send this ITEM overseas. If you send me that amount, plus the $1750 I’m asking for the ITEM, plus a US $3722.00 packing fee, then once the cashier’s check has cleared (in about 90 days) then I will send the ITEM right out to you!

Let me know if you agree.

I’m hoping I get a bite one of these days and make a nice return on my time…

I have thought about taking one up on their offer some day, and then sending them wet phonebooks instead of the “item” but since I don’t go to great lengths to hide my identity, I just figure that would backfire and find me in trouble. Dang legal system!

~w

That upset me a bit because Cambridge is a very pedestrian-friendly town, the van was in an area that has no less than five crosswalks crossing Mass Ave within about a three block section, and with behavior like that, the driver is going to hurt someone some day. I like to look after my fellow humans, and my righteousness was flaring, so I ducked around the corner where the van was parking and began to write down the number to the plumbing company that the van belongs to along with the license plate. The driver jumped out at that point and began yelling at me, telling me to be sure to tell the company that I jumped out in front of him when I call and that he would have killed me had he tried to slow down since he would have locked up the brakes. Yes, apparently he was unable to slow the vehicle over a 2/3 block distance without locking up the breaks. Honestly, if he thought that it was too rainy for me to be using the crosswalk normally, then doesn’t it follow that it was too rainy for him to be driving so fast as not to be able to safely stop in that distance?

Anyway, at that point he started getting belligerant. He claimed to have a witness who would testify that I jumped in front of him and demanded my name so he could file a police report before the morning. Of course, that is just a waste of resources for a petty situation, so I told him we could just drop the whole thing and leave it be. He would hear none of it and instead called me a douchebag. Yes. A douchebag. It’s funny, he looked older than 12, but I guess not.

I left at that point, unwilling to put up with any more from this silly person. After talking with my husband, I did choose to call his workplace and leave a message, calmly explaining the situation, stating that I was calling them because it was their vehicle that was being driven irresponsibly and dangerously, and mentioning that I would be happy to let the situation pass if the driver would as well. Then I shrugged it all off and headed home. I can’t imagine that anyone of sound mind would make anything of this, but if he choses to do so, I wanted to put down my recollections of the incident while it was fresh.

Now for some pure speculation…

I have no idea what was going on in this guy’s head, but I imagine that he legitimately thought that I was misusing the crosswalk because he was in a situation where he needed to make accommodation for a pedestrian. (comments he made like “I know you pedestrians think you own the road” made it clear where he stands in regards to the most healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transportation we have) I imagine, though, that he quickly realized he was in the wrong when he noticed me taking down the information on his van, and in typical macho-man fashion, chose to embellish, expand, and vigorously defend his story so as to have something to fall back on if he got called on his actions. Unfortunately this is a vicious kind of person – the person who knows he’s wrong but has followed the lie so far that he can’t get out of it. I find these people to defend their positions so irrationally and vehemently as to be scary, impossible to deal with, and dangerous.

I made only one mistake in this entire situation. I gave him my business card when he demanded my name. I have absolutely nothing to hide, and so I should not be worried about this, but, honestly, when dealing with an irrational person like this, I do have some misgivings having given him too much information about myself. It will all work out, of course.

The Obama administration essentially must grant permission for this pipeline and they are likely to do so without a lot of pressure. With the money thrown around by the large corporate stakeholders, it’s essential that those of us who oppose this short-sighted and dangerous project are even louder so that we may be heard.

Late this August and into September, volunteers will be marching and protesting at the White House in an attempt to get President Obama to pay attention to non-corporate, non-profit-driven interests. I was scheduled to go, but my injury has prevented that from happening. I am inviting and encouraging as many others to take action and join in the protests as possible.

Please take a moment and read more about this critical issue here: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/invitation/

There may be some “alarmist” speech on that page, but I, for one, have begun to feel that raising the alarm is no longer premature.

~w

There are a few things you should know about when looking for spaces. (Warning: this could get a little long)

What kind of zoning fits your needs?
This can be a big one, and is going to vary a lot depending on your location and goals. If you are just getting a private space to have a few people share as a studio, lounge, hackerspace, etc. then you may well be able to get by with a residential place. This will generally keep everything cheaper, but you could run into issues with the landlords (who often frown on non-traditional use of residential space), neighbors (people coming and going at odd hours, suspicious of what you are doing, noise complaints), and government agencies (running many businesses out of a residence is illegal, gathering of people for commercial events is problematic, etc.).
A popular co-working facility I know started in a residential area, which served them well for a while. But with their growth and popularity on the rise, friction with the neighbors and landlords have forced them to look for a new space.

How much space do you really need?
Space is a paradox. It simultaneously goes further than you might expect, and is always smaller than you think. It pays to think this one out well. Get too little space, and you won’t have anything better than the corner of your bedroom where your soldering iron is threatening to send the bed up in a blaze. Get too much space and you may not be able to afford it long enough to get your community off its feet.

I highly recommend pulling out a program like Visio, Illustrator, or even just a sheet of graph paper. Mark out a reasonable space, say, 300 square feet. Now measure out some of the average pieces of furniture you would like to have – chairs, couches, desks, workbenches, server racks. Make shapes (either electronically or physically) and arrange things in the space. (Allow for things like doors, clearance for chairs, etc.) This will give you a much better idea of how much space you need and want. Scale up or down the room as needed – and keep in mind, you may not get a single, big rectangle of space, so be prepared for odd corners and niches. (Great for mini lounge areas!)

What amenities do you need?
This is where you decide if you need a bathroom (or if the one down the hall will work), a shower, utility sink, kitchen, lots of windows, no windows, 220V power, and more. There are a lot of things that fall into this list, and it’s easy to go overboard. (Of course we need a full bathroom, kitchen, back yard, porch, parking, hardwood floors, 220V, fiber internet, and a live-in housekeeper!) Prioritize things into “requirement”, “important”, and “nice-to-have” lists. No space is likely to have everything, but you can use this list to evaluate what it does have against other potential spaces. And, depending on the space, landlord, and funds, many of your amenities could be added after you move in.

Where should your space be located?
This can make or break your space. Put your hackerspace down a dirt road four miles from the nearest place to buy coffee and snacks with no parking for visitors and a scary/grimy back alleyway leading to the entrance and you’ve likely doomed yourself from the start. (There are exceptions to this, especially if you have a closed group of people who *like* grimy alleys, like to be left alone, and you aren’t looking at starting a open/public group.)If you live in a car-centric area, make sure you have parking. If you live in a transit-centric area, make sure you are convenient to the bus or subway. If most of your members live on one side of town, don’t put the space on the opposite side. The convenience of getting to/from the space is key in making sure people use it regularly.
I don’t think you can overestimate how important this is. (But it’s all a balancing act – you probably can’t get a floor in a high-rise downtown no matter how convenient it might be!)

What kind of lease are you willing to settle for?
There are a lot more to leases than just the length of the lease term. Residential leases are going to be about the same from place to place in your district, but they all need to be read carefully. (What if they don’t like what you are doing and kick you out on a technicality – are you still responsible for paying for the rest of the lease?) Commercial leases are a different ball of wax and will vary greatly from place to place and landlord to landlord. If you are going with a commercial place, you are probably going to be better off going with a space that you lease directly from a person. They are more likely to work with you to understand your needs and to give you reasonable terms on a lease. Corporate lessors are often more interested in tenants they can put into a pre-defined category (“office workers”, “restaurant” or “manufacturing”) and their leases are often much more strict owing to the army of lawyers who have made their mark on them.
One of the most important things you can understand about commercial leases is the concept of a “Gross Lease” vs “Net Lease” – and the variations between. In the residential lease world, if your stove breaks or toilet leaks, you are used to calling the landlord who (usually) comes and takes care of it. Not necessarily so in the commercial world. Residential leases are usually gross leases which means the landlord takes care of pretty much any expense that arises from the ownership of the property, including repairs and taxes. There are commercial gross leases available. On the other hand, a full net lease could leave the lessee holding the bag for all repairs (regardless of original condition of the property) and even the taxes! Often, you will find leases fall in the middle somewhere, but you should expect to take care of some of the repairs of the space that come up over time yourself – and by that, I mean you foot the bill for the plumber or electrician unless you are *well* qualified to complete such repairs.

Also, a note on pricing terms. You may see commercial spaces advertised at “$25/sf” or “$3/sf” – this usually means “per year” or “per month” depending on the going rates in your area. Once you get a feel for what space is renting for around you, you’ll know at a glance whether they are talking per year or per month rates.

Landlords and listing agents lie in online ads.
Ok, so that’s a bit harsh, but in my experience it’s true more often than not. They aren’t always big lies, but things like the convenience of the location (especially when an address is not supplied), the total square footage, the actual lease payments, and even the city in which the property is located are misrepresented more often than I ever expected. I remember calling on a series of promising properties listed on Craigslist only to find that it was the same property, listed by three different people all likely on commission. That same location varied from 250sf to 600sf and the rent fluctuated by $200 depending on who I was talking to. So, don’t dismiss ads you see, but be prepared for some part of the property to be dissapointing. (Really, this isn’t much different from apartment hunting. At lease commercial listers don’t usually use “cozy home” or “cute apartment” as euphemisms for closets.)

Branch out beyond the online ads.
If your community still has printed papers, check them. Visit real estate agents. Drive/bike/walk through the neighborhoods you are interested in. Non-tech-savvy landlords may be your best find as they may be more willing to deal with you on a person-to-person basis. (I don’t know about you, but I like to be treated like a human.) Keep in mind that going through an agent may mean paying a fee or commission, but that can be worth it if they have the perfect space for you. And these fees can be negotiable – try to get the landlord to foot the bill, split it with you, or lower the rent a bit to compensate.

Check out the property thoroughly and make sure it meets your needs.
Make sure it’s sturdy. Be sure the sinks/toilets work. Check the outlets, A/C, heat and anything else you need and may be responsible for repairing. Make sure it’s going to work for your purposes – big tools generally don’t work well in third-story walk-up wood-framed units from 1902 no matter how beautiful the crown moulding is. It’s not worth taking a space simply because it’s available and well-priced if it’s not going to work for you.

Think carefully before entering into a lease – it’s a legal contract.
Consult a lawyer if you can. Consider who will be named on the lease – a person, or do you need a partnership/LLC/etc? Think about how long you and others can commit to paying the lease – and if those commitments are feasible. What happens if half your members walk away on one day and take their rent payments with them?  Defaulting on a lease can have real and terrible repercussions – especially in our credit-score-centric society. You don’t want your experimental hackerspace to keep you from renting an apartment next time you have to move.

Whew – and that’s just what I can say about searching for a space. There will be more coming. I hope someone finds this helpful.

AFP has a moderately sized, but rabidly loyal fan base. This is not an accident, she is not simply “lucky” – she reaches out to her fans, cultivates the fields and, above all, remains honest and approachable. Such an interested and loyal group of fans seems to be a far more valuable asset to AFP than any record company ever will. And recently, she has really begun to figure out how to tap these fans for what they will gladly, emphatically give to see their favorite artist continue to create.

Unlike many other smaller-scale artists, AFP know how to do merchandising at her shows, on her website, and, more recently, on Twitter. It’s more than just being able to pick up a “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” t-shirt or album at a show or even snagging a “WKAP World Tour” poster. She makes merchandise that is tied to the specific event, the actual performance, and other items that while less specific, are nonetheless honest reflections of AFP, her music, and her fans. (You will find military-punk style shoulder bags and screen printed “Property of AFP” thongs. You won’t find cheap, gaudy crap or silly “tour date” posters.) At a recent concert at Wellesley College she had the entire audience feign a 2-minute nap and then produced a couple hundred t-shirts emblazoned with “I slept with Amanda Palmer at Wellesley College.” (Not the first time she has done this.) It was very popular and it seemed many, many more people were buying a shirt than would have otherwise. It was unique, tied to the experience, and meant something to the buyer that a generic WKAP shirt would not.

Recently, Amanda Palmer took this idea even further, though an inspiring, organic “meeting” of hundreds of people on Twitter. Being alone at home on Friday night, with her computer (AFP is a very tech-savvy artist) and, of course, a bottle of wine, she began tweeting, quite simply, about how she was alone at home on a Friday night with her computer. Thus was born the #lofnotc hashtag – losers of friday night on their computers. It spread, hit the top spots on Twitter’s trending topics, pulled in hundreds of people to the “party” and went on for a couple of hours of AFP asking and answering questions, making observations, and avoiding cleaning her apartment. There’s that honesty again.

What came of this – again, quite organically – were a couple of simple drawings AFP made as a “logo” for #lofnotc and posted webcam pics of. This quickly became the idea for a printed t-shirt, which even more quickly became available to purchase via her web site though a simple paypal cart. Keep in mind that this took less than a day from conception to ready-for-purchase. She began giving away prizes (like the original artwork) for the 100th shirt sold, then the 200th, and it continued through the 400th(!) shirt sold. At $25/each, as AFP put it, “you’re all paying my fucking rent!!! i love life.”

I cannot imagine how many copies of WKAP would have to sell for Amanda Palmer to net the same amount that she has off a couple of hours on Twitter. And this was all without her record label, and made possible though her amazing fan base who can see where their money is going and are happy to support their favorite artists.

I love tools. When I say “tools” you probably think about screwdrivers, hammers, power saws and the likes. Yes, I do totally love those things. And drills, and Dremels, and bits, and blades and all sorts of others. But I also love paint brushes and art boxes, word processors and idea databases, drum pads and synth keyboards, soldering irons and multimeters. I have a fascination with the tools and the processes that people use to create, make and produce. And chisels.

I have such a fascination with these tools that I buy a lot of them. I have the curse of being able to pick up just about any medium of creation and make something pretty darned mediocre, and sometimes a little better, my first try. (You may think this is a gift but, uncontrolled as it is in my case, I assure you it is not.) Paradoxically, this leads to a lot of boredom for me in my creative life. It’s why I keep buying tools and paraphernalia for different, usually only slightly different creation mediums. I like using these tools, being in the process, but I get bored with it as soon as I see that I can do it. Not necessarily well, mind you, but I seem to be satisfied about the time that I understand what it takes to get to something good. What I actually seem to be good at, mostly, is understanding what it takes to make something of quality in any one of these areas – woodworking, painting, writing – but what I’m bad at is actually going through the process to the end, over and over, until I not only understand what is needed to go beyond the mediocre-or-a-little-better phase and into the something-that’s-actually-good phase, but actually do it.

The good news in all of this is that, after years and years, I finally began noticing and understanding this a few years ago. I’ve been confronting it and tackling the monster and things are getting better. I do more now, and dabble less. (Oh, I still dabble plenty, but mostly in a few more focused areas instead taking the shotgun approach to hobbies.) I’ve begun to finally admit to myself that I need and want to be good at something, not just passable at a lot of things. And those things I want to be good at are getting the attention.

I know that this is working because, finally, I seem to be rather uninterested in the fiddly mechanics of other writer’s processes. Sure, I am still entertained and even enlightened when Cory Doctorow repeatedly tells aspiring authors to “write every day” (something I totally understand the importance of now) but I’m not so concerned about whether he uses an antique Underwood or the latest version of Open Office to write his novels. It is liberating to realize that I’m finally (mostly) past this barrier. I should point out, though, that I have found some very useful tools that do actually help me write (Scrivener/Evernote/DEVONthink and similar idea-drawer databases in particular) and without my previous levels of interest, I am sure I would not know some of the useful things I know about writing today, but it’s a relief to realize that, finally, I know that above all writing is about putting words down, hopefully in an interesting arrangement. 

Who needs fancy tools to do that?

There are several pre-existing eBook readers for iPhone. Bookshelf (which has a great sync service with Baen Webscriptions and could support others, $5.99), and Stanza (my go-to most of the time, $Free) are the stand-outs.  They both have good interfaces with the important bits – text size, options for tap- or swipe- to-advance, bookmarks, library management, etc. Most importantly, they also offer landscape reading.

Kindle for iPhone has an unsurpassed syncing model with what I think is the largest eBook provider out there: Amazon. It’s slick, although, like Webscriptions, not integrated. You must purchase the books via Amazon’s Kindle Store from a web browser (mobile Safari reportedly works) but then the titles are automatically sync’d to your iPhone the next time you run the Kindle app. It also supports bookmarks (which reportedly sync to your physical Kindle device if you have one), text size, and other basic features. However, it does not have a landscape mode! (At least not one I could find)

Granted, a portrait reading mode is more “book-like” in that it mimics the orientation of most printed pages, but at sensible text sizes, you get 5-8 words across the screen. That’s, maybe, half a sentence for the most part and often less. So here’s why that’s a problem – for me at least, and others I’m sure. To read a book on Kindle for iPhone, your eyes flick back-and-forth, back-and-forth, a LOT. (About 18 times/page)  Then, as with anything featuring a relatively small screen, your eyes flick up to the top of the page every time you advance. In a landscape mode, you still have the same number of page turns since you have roughly the same number of words on the page, but you have the back-and-forth eye movement only 10 or 11 times per page, and only half the distance to flick back up to the top of the page on advances. Really, it makes a difference to me (40% less eye flick!) and I found my eyes becoming fatigued much faster in portrait mode – just like I did when I was originally trying Stanza and Bookshelf and the reason I very quickly moved to landscape mode exclusively.

This, for me, is a fatal flaw in an otherwise great app. (Though they also need tap-to-advance instead of the silly swipe-only they have now.) Now, I would like to think that they did some usability testing around this app, and maybe they have good reasons for not offering landscape mode, but until they do, I’ll be sticking with Stanza and Bookshelf and not buying any Kindle content.

So this got me thinking that static snow’s days are numbered. Static snow has become, over the years, an instantly recognizable indication that there’s a glitch in the system, but has the advantage of letting you know so much else – like the fact that the power is on and the picture tube is working. Things that a non-standard indicator (the varying black, blue, or message) is not going to universally convey.

Have we taken a step back in usability?

What happens when all our radio becomes digital and, flipping though the dial (uh, dial?) you get nothing but silence? Is it your stereo? Antenna? Speakers?