After the run

Super Duper Alan Cooper

So a gaggle of us went to see Alan Cooper speak, best known as the author of The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Ario took copious notes, a good read if you missed the talk (or even if you didn't).

It's nice that PS SIGCHI is bringing in such big names.

Dr. Mushroom

Here's Jeremy with one of his fungi specimens. You'll note that slung over his shoulder is the fishpurse, which has now become a mushroompurse - when not pulling double duty as the lunch sack.

Not Nielsen, but Mom

So I think i've finally ported the blog over here to the new home at a real domain name. Some people have asked if this is in response to Jakob's top ten blog mistakes , and no that wasn't the impetus. It's actually because I've been the proud owner of cafe-nation.com since the early days. Thanks to my Mom who one year bought it for me as a birthday present one year (how cool is that). Well it's been sitting on their servers with not much in the way of content for years. Well my mom has recently become a blog reader (hi mom!) and she said, why are you publishing to blogspot when you have this lovely domain over here?

So, here it is! The new home, cafe-nation.com. The reason I have the particular domain is because it's the name of the coffee shop that I will open. I used to think that I'd be in the coffee shop owning business by now, but I've been a little bit distracted by the other path my life has taken (usability, academia, consulting, west coast living). So it'll have to be on hold for now. Still it's nice to have my own little virtual coffee spot.

oh my lord is my dog cute

She is indeed.

Mycology

The bounty of last week's mushroom hunting hike. Over 50 kinds. The biologist/mycologist was in the process of classifying them, but they got too stinky and had to go outside.

We also went to the Puget Sound Mycology Fall Exhibit at Sandpoint this weekend. Full of fungi nerds, but it was a fun time. Think bird watchers, but a little weirder, but really friendly and smart. At least when it comes to our little friends of the forest.

America's Next Top Sassy

Here's Sassy on our hike from today. Doing her best pose, Tyra would be proud. She's all like "BAM!"

The "one fun thing" principle

So over the past year and a half, J and I have been getting up to quite a bit of fun. We've been on the big trips: alaska and costa rica. We've been surfing, hiking, camping, biking, all over Washington in search of outdoor fun. So now we're both back at school, working on graduate degrees and life is full. Full of homework, classes, teaching for me, and we're both still working too. It's hectic to say the least. The fun things we could just take off and do are a little less feasible these days, mostly due to time, but also money. Also, the light is leaking out of the day time as it does when seattle returns to its damp wintery state. It's hard to remember just a couple months back when it seems like the days never ended.

So in the interest of keeping things balanced and sane, we've come up with the "one fun thing" principle. Simply put, we resolve to do at least one fun, interesting, hopefully either outdoorsy or athleticy, mind enhancing thing every weekend. At least one. So maybe we won't be able to take off and to the penisula and go surfing for three days, or go on a really long hike followed by an evening with the guitar by the campfire, but we're going to do some things, get creative, find fun that's closer and cheap.

We started last weekend with a bike ride to West Seattle to meet friends for lunch. It was a great ride, not as tough as I was fearing it might be. Plus on the way home we rode down forth avenue and I got to discover the Sodo Urban Arts Corridor - a collection of over 50 murals that line 4th avenue in this very industrialized part of the city. The murals' themes surrounded hope, industry, and a reimagined idea of America (which i'm not sure exists in reality) was inspiring to see painted on the side of warehouses. On the grey day we road, the colors of the murals popped out creating a show as I whizzed by on the bike.

If you have suggestions or ideas for adventurous times here in Seattle, I'd love to hear them.

Dog adopts squirrel

Ok, as a change from reflections on our racist colonial past and extremist religious present, comes a heart warming story of a women and her Papillon (yes that's a dog) who adopt a dying baby squirrel and nurse it back to heath.

I saw the video on local TV the other night and it's about as cute as cute does get. Luckily you can see some stills of it here.

Who doesn't love puppies? Puppies are cute. And so are baby squirrels! And all togehter snuggling and sleeping, well it makes one's head explode with images of cuteness.

Ex-gay? Puh-lease

Here's more news from Seattle Times about the Ex-gay conference coming to Seattle.

Exodus International, an evangelical organization that claims to turn people away from homosexuality and toward heterosexuality, has a new initiative called Groundswell, which aims to help youth pastors and others who work with gay teens to convey the belief that homosexuality is sinful, though God still loves people who struggle with it.

Are there any confernces to help people who struggle with their contempt for evangelical organizations like this one? Cause I need to attend it.

Here, here!

Is there really any reason to debate this? I mean, La Push is 1, that's right 1 square mile. If the Olympic National Park can't give space to this community, it would be so entirely wrong in every way imaginable.

Come on NPS - get your shit together and your priorities straight!

In February 1889, an executive order by President Grover Cleveland established a one mile square reservation a LaPush which, at the time, had 252 inhabitants.... The tribe's lineage stretches back thousands of years to the Ice Age, making them possibly the oldest inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. (via Forks Web)

Today there are more than 750 members of the tribe. Learn more about the Quileure Tribe here

Mushroom-tastic

We're number 20! We're number 20

Ok, so being number 20 isn't always the biggest accomplishment, right. But how about being #20 on the list of all universities that exist anywhere? Including Mars Institute of Technology and the University of Atlantis, under the sea campus.

We rock.

I had to do it

Ok, I enable the word verification feature on comments. I swear the blog spam
(- what would that be blam?) i so completely out of hand, I'm just sick of it.

So take that you tea cart/trojan enthusiasts, go use someone else.

It's edumacational

So my course web site/blog is finally up. One thing that is kind of funny, is that before when I was working full time and part time faculty my web space was at faculty.washington.edu, now that I'm back working on the PhDizzle, they've changed my space back to staff.washington.edu. I love academia. You always know exactly where you are in the hierarchy...and not even the computing services let you forget it.

So I'm using a bright orange template, that I assume noone will love but me. I've disabled comments and instead linked to a catalyst dicussion board hoping that the students will participate more - based on feedback from last year.

Couple techie issues for any of you fellow edubloggers (did I just coin a new term?)

• Is it possible to edit the comments tags, so I can list a discuss link that takes users to the discussion board. They do it at the Slog, and I kind of hate it there, but I still want to implement it cause it would work for my small audience
  
• Can you have more than one sitemeter for the same acct, I have a sitemeter here - but just wanted to add another one. I looked on there site and couldn't figure it out.

I'm psyched to start teaching again. I think it'll be a good group and the class is really evolving or perhaps it's being really intelligently designed (thanks to the Mollusk for the link).

I'm off to hang with Conor from the link to the right of Conor does the world. He is winding down his trek around the world by coming to Seattle - should be fun.