The Journal of his Delights

Yesterday, the entire office was invited to spend their lunch break working on the Flutterfrog. It went surprisingly well, and I’m sure the extra hands were appreciated. Here are some pictures that Chris made:

The full slideshow can be found at Flickr.

Last Wednesday, I brought the above chocolate chip cookies to work, and it was officially dubbed “The Day of the Cookie”. Yes, they were that good — a crisp outside but still chewy inside, with chocolate running through them in layers and chunks.

They’re probably the best cookies I’ve ever baked. Perhaps the black and white chocolate chip cookies I made in London might outdo them, but since I haven’t been able to reproduce those, I don’t know that they’re any competition. I wonder— if I somehow merged the two cookies, would it produce a super-cookie?

Here is the recipe for the above Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. Three things to note:

1) Use good chocolate! This is true for any chocolate chip cookie, but it’s absolutely critical in this recipe. It calls for 20 ounces of dark (at least 60% cacao) chocolate, which means the cookie will live or die by its quality. I used Scharffen Berger semi-sweet (62% cacao).

2) I decided not to go with the disks. Instead I just chopped up baking bar chocolate. That’s my preference anyway since it provides a variety of sizes (including shavings), and I like that kind of diversity in a cookie.

3) I followed the recipe and let the dough sit in the refrigerator for 36 hours. It made a huge difference in the taste, picking up a kind of toffee flavor in the process. Yum!

I’ve been meaning to do post these for a while now — here are a handful photographs from the Fourth of July celebration here in Redwood City, California. It was a crowded affair with lots of folks out with their children to enjoy the day. The highlight for me was the car show — hot rods galore.

There’s a slightly longer slideshow at Flickr.

Even when I worked at Amnesty International, I had an interest in the way people were using online tools for advocacy. It comes from having grown up a geek, I suppose.

And over course of the 12-13 years I was with the organization, I saw the dramatic effect the Internet was having on the way people communicated, strategized, and implemented their advocacy. Eventually, there came new opportunities for action that only existed online.

You only have to look at something like MoveOn.org or Project Chanology to see that the times, they are a-changin’. For example, Chanology’s campaign was born out of an online community, strategized and implemented across geographic and temporal boundaries, and used the tools and spaces of the Internet to meet its goals. They’ve even used these tools to organize “traditional” demonstrations, although they’re heavily flavored with Internet memes.

It’s this mix of strategies that interests me, because the skills used in “traditional” advocacy—communication, organization, mobilization—still apply, but they get adapted for the new medium.

And new opportunities for online advocacy are proliferating. There’s even a beta of a mashup that will let you search 19 different social action platforms for actions.

Sally Kohn wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor saying that real change happens offline, and that online advocacy is a distraction. Naturally, I’m going to disagree. Advocacy happens when people come together in an attempt to create change. Just because the bodies aren’t in the same room doesn’t mean that that can’t happen.

People are people wherever they are, and as Second Life and the other virtual worlds show (I’m looking at you World of Warcarft and the other MMORPGs), people live their lives in multiple manifestations, real and virtual. Sure the medium will affect the way the interactions happen and favor certain types of communication over others, but the essential act of communication will remain the same. And where and when people communicate, change can happen.

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P.S. If you’re curious, my colleague LiAnna wrote a response to the article for the Care2 Campaigner Blog.

Chris posted two more Flutterfrog videos. If you like power tools, you should check out the first. If, on the other hand, you are entranced by that which is different, the second will likelier be your cup of tea.

I wasn’t able to make either of the work sessions so you won’t see me in either video, but you can blame me for the choice of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Flutter Frog Rough Cut #4 – Slice and Dice from Chris Smith on Vimeo.

Flutter Frog Rough Cut #5 – LSD from Chris Smith on Vimeo.

My colleagues — they’re a talented bunch.

Over the weekend, I watched Citizen Dog (Mah nakorn), a Thai film that came out in 2004. A cross between Amelie and I’m a Cyborg But That’s Okay, it’s a bright, charming love story that pokes fun at the illusion and disillusionment prevalent in Bangkok.

The story centers around a country boy named Pod who moves to the big city and falls in love with Jin, an obsessive-compusive maid. He follows a winding road in his pursuit, meeting along the way—among others—his grandmother reincarnated as a gecko, an undead motorcycle taxi driver, and a chain-smoking, homeless teddy bear.

Yes, it’s that kind of film. Plus the opening song is catchy. Check it out.

I found this again other day, and it’s a good lesson that more words do not necessarily make a better story. Hemingway wrote a short in just six words:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So concise, and yet so much emotion comes through. The trick is that each word is perfectly picked, and its brevity works for it. The story leaves enough room for imagination to fill in the gaps.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a creation of Joss Whedon of Buffy and Firefly fame. Born out of the writer’s strike, Dr. Horrible is three fifteen minute acts jam packed with awesome.

The whole thing is incredibly clever, and Neil Patrick Harris is brilliant as the megalomaniac yet sympathetic super-villain. I even liked the parts where they break out in song, which is quite often (note the title).

You have until Sunday, July 20 to watch all three acts for free online at Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. After that, according to the Master Plan, it’ll be available for download for a nominal fee.

This is a great example of what can be done on a small budget, outside of the Hollywood system, thanks to the Interweb (the real hero in this story).

So I’m crawling in the dirt; struggling with writing fiction. I had stopped work on my novel, because I felt like my technique was not where it needed to be. I switched to short fiction as a way to learn, to improve, to practice. But then one of the shorts kept bucking to become a novel, and I was at a loss for what to do.

So I switched again; this time to poetry, which I understand much better. I know the ebbs and flows that come with playing in that ocean. And while poetry and fiction aren’t the same, it was an opportunity to build a foundation that supports writing in general; a disciplined schedule, a gratitude to the writers who’ve gone before, an opportunity to work with rhythm and description, and a confidence in my ability to write.

Now I’m back to short fiction, working with the same story, navigating a rocky path. But that’s good, because there’s a time to crawl in the dirt–when it’s right and proper to drag yourself forward, dust in your mouth and every pebble and rock a point of struggle.

American culture doesn’t much like this view. It’s all about keeping your head high and building self-esteem. But you’ve got to take it all apart before you can put it back together. Before you can fly, learn how to run. Before running, walk, and before walking, crawl in the dirt and struggle with the stones.

But it doesn’t have to be an actual struggle. If you flow around the stones like river water, eventually you’ll wear them down. How does that work? I imagine that the way is different for every person. For me sitting with the stones seems to work. Becoming familiar with them, understanding them and then using that accumulated wisdom to shift them.

It’s so tempting to try and break break through, but that just means you’re dealing with a multitude of smaller pieces. And I’ve never heard of an instance where arguing with stone was ever a productive experience.

No, for me, right now, wearing the stones down seems the best course. It’s a slow process, but sure. It requires a constant but flexible pressure against the stone. It needs patience and discipline, which is a funny thing to say about water, but true none-the-less.

So for the time being, I’m crawling, which is to say that I’m flowing; a muddy, rock-strewn river slowly finding its path. And you know what? As frustrating as it is sometimes, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. Nothing that compares to the satisfaction of writing and the discipline of water.

It’s rare to have good environmental news, so I thought I’d share this bit from Grist.org.

The Canadian province of Ontario will permanently protect a gigantic swath of boreal forest in what green group ForestEthics says is the largest conservation deal in Canada’s history and one of the top three forest protection initiatives anywhere, evah. Some 225,000 square kilometers of trees — that’s more than 86,800 square miles in American — will be kept safe from resource exploration and development. The conservation commitment applies to nearly half of Ontario’s boreal forest, which houses more than 200 species of wildlife and sucks up nearly 13.8 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. “It’s unspoiled and undisturbed, and if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s not going to stay that way forever unless we do something,” said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, adding, “We need to prepare for development and plan for it. It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now.” Wow, foresight! How very refreshing.

Pretty cool, huh?