Lemme esplain: say you’re planning a big life-changing travel trip – like a year in India or something – you sit there with your airline tickets all reserved and ready and you know you’re about to spend thousands of dollars and have untold wild adventures in unknown lands, yet you sit, hesitating over the mouse with your finger slightly raised and beads of sweat building around your temples.

Nervously, you finger the button, but don’t push it. You’re flirting with it. You get up, have another cup of coffee. You sit back down and the ‘complete transaction’ icon stares you in the face, but so does the ‘close browser’ button. The action to commit is so clear – just *push the button* – make friends with the unknown future, extend your hand, embrace it. And then, finally, once you do, you’ve crossed to the other side. Take a deep breath. You’ve committed and there’s no turning back. But it feels damn good. You’re all in.

Rare are the opportunities in life as clear as this. Go with it.

The Design for Life blog posted absolutely brilliant, simple instructions for creating your own yard torches. Say goodbye to all those crappy tikis stuck in the mud. Just be careful you don’t burn your house down…

I’m absolutely going to make a few of these for my lil’ backyard patio. Yay, fun house project!

First, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System in mass transit map style:

Update: Jackson West at Laughing Squid found the artist behind the map:

Boulder, CO artist Chris Yates created an abstract, London Tube-style map of Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system which you can buy as a print for $12 plus shipping.

(via Notcot, Amy Kathryn)

And then, sorta related – a graphic estimating how many years we’d have left on this planet given that we continue to consume resources at the rate we do today:

(via Caitlin Hill)

File under: WANT. The ingenious folks at the sustainable product design and engineering shop called Studio Gelardi came up with this masterful lil’ tool for your bike. Seems as thought it’s still in ‘concept’ mode, but I can’t wait until it gets manufactured. Given the buzz it’s getting, I won’t be surprised if that happens soon.

Cool Hunting sez: “The small apparatus attaches to any bike’s seat tube and applies a thin layer of chalk powder in one of several colors to the rear tire. The result is an eye-catching streak that traces wherever you ride. In addition to visually enhancing the street, it serves as a directional guide for subsequent cyclists and a constant reminder to motorists that they should share the road.”

I’m not normally one to plug products on my blog, but I thought it’d be nice to throw a good word out there about the people at Tom’s Shoes. My mother-in-law bought me a pair of these shoes last Christmas and they have grown to become one of my favorite pairs. They are extremely comfortable, good looking and fun to wear.

The cool thing about Tom’s though, are that they are donating a pair of shoes to children in need around the world for every pair they sell. I can dig that.

Plus, they are very stylee kicks!

Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.

Bright Bike is a Retroreflective Vinyl coated bike. It is like coating your bike with a big sticker that turns ultra-brite in headlights. Right now we are in the prototyping stages, and hope to offer a DIY Kit soon. If you can’t wait that long, contact Beacon Graphics in NJ for Scotchlight 680.

[Thanks, Rocketboom!]

Allow me to say a few words about grouping music by genre: it’s a stupid concept. I wish the world would banish it to the annals of mid-20th century mega-rcrdlbl company dinasaurs. There is no use for such vague labels as genre. What the hell do they even mean? Look, for example, at the image above – just a small segment of the, oh, 200+ ‘genres’ I have in my iTunes library. I think maybe 10% of them make any sense at all.

Okay, now, many of you probably noticed that iTunes launched a new version of it’s software this past week. Cool, if you use it a lot. But for some ridiculous reason, they decided to disable the ability to get rid of the ‘genre’ column while browsing in the old (and my preferred) boring, spreadsheet style layout. Luckily, I found a quick and painless solution for us Macheads on MacOSXHints.com.

Quit iTunes, launch Terminal, and enter this command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE

Relaunch iTunes, open the browser, and you’ll notice the Genre column has vanished. You can reverse this by quitting iTunes and repeating the above command, but with TRUE instead of FALSE.

Bing. No genres.

This does get me thinking about the ways in which people initiate their music listening sessions is changing. People once touched, held and looked at at the records on a shelf and pulled out something cool and fresh and in-the-moment. Now, iTunes looks more like a spreadsheet than anything else. And oddly, even with their fancy new CoverFlow layouts, I still use the spreadsheet look. Because I’m used to it? I’m not sure. When I want to listen to something, often times it’s specific and browsing by title is the easiest way to get there. CoverFlow kinda works when I have absolutely no idea of what to listen to, but that’s usually when I default to shuffle. Or ditch iTunes all together and hit up Last.fm or the Hype Machine.

What’s the solution here? How do we recreate the analog, physical experience of listening to records in an immediate digital world when memory is no longer based on a physical object like a record, but rather a name of a band, or how recently I bought something?

Go buy a record player, I guess.

Who doesn’t enjoy a good Martin Luther King, Jr. quote for some inspiration, eh? I just read this and it made me happy:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.

Thanks, Tim.

Allow, if I may, to re-blog – without comment – a quote I just read on one of my favorite all-things-freak-folk blog, naturalismo:

Q: How do you think your present image as world traveller, bawdy singer, etc. combine with your image as a writer of children’s books?
Shel: I don’t think about my image.
Q: But if you are a spokesman and leader of your generation with millions of followers, don’t you care what they think?
Shel: I don’t speak for anybody but me; I am not a leader. I just want them to let me alone so I can do my thing.
Q: What is your thing?
Shel: I don’t know. That depends on the day, the time of day, and what I did yesterday.

Our friends Lord Whimsy and his wife Lady Pinkwater joined us recently for a soiree chez nous (at which those photos above were taken, making our big, drafty loft look all warm and cozy!). Whimsy and I got into a discussion about ‘microcelebrity‘ and what it means to us as media makers. After further reflection, he’s written a great post about it on his blog, and I encourage you to check it out if you’re interested in such matters.

A snippet:

The timing of this more recent article on microcelebrity seems a bit odd; this technology-fueled social phenomenon has been around for quite some time now, although it has certainly grown and intensified in recent years. We are all becoming more adept as self-mediators: It has become one of those necessary twenty-first century life skills, right up there with knowing a few key phrases of HTML or knowing how to put one’s cell phone on vibrate mode. To quote Clive Thompson: “The truth is that people are developing interesting social skills to adapt to microfame. We’re learning how to live in front of a crowd.” In the words of Quentin Crisp, we’ve learned to “urinate with style”.

On a side note, Whimsy’s amazing book “The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Vol. I” is going out of print soon, and I highly recommend you pick yourself up a copy before they disappear (or before they have the Johnny-Depp-Based-on-the-Book print run).

Being that I am a big advocate of riding a bike to save gas, every now and then in our lovely suburbanized America, we can’t avoid using a car. (News flash: those of you think you’re saving the environment by driving a hybrid: you’re not.) Today, I got this email from my grandfather’s buddy in the oil and gas industry. Not sure if this is a spammy email forward making the rounds, or if he really actually knows this dude, but it sounds good.

Behold, a geek’s guide to saving gas (other than driving less!):

1. Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground; and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands, so if you’re filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and temperature of the fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products) are significant. Every truckload that we load is temperature-compensated so that the indicated gallon age is actually the amount pumped.

A one-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for businesses, but service stations don’t have temperature compensation at their pumps.

2. If a tanker truck is filling the station’s tank at the time you want to buy gas, do not fill up; most likely dirt and sludge in the tank is being stirred up when gas is being delivered, and you might be transferring that dirt from the bottom of their tank into your car’s tank.

3. Fill up when your gas tank is half-full (or half-empty), because the more gas you have in your tank the less air there is and gasoline
evaporates rapidly, especially when it’s warm. (Gasoline storage tanks have an in ternal floating ‘roof’ membrane to act as a barrier between the gas and the atmosphere, thereby minimizing evaporation.)

4. If you look at the trigger you’ll see that it has three delivery settings: slow, medium and high. When you’re filling up do not squeeze
the trigger of the nozzle to the high setting. You should be pumping at the slow setting, thereby minimizing vapors created while you are pumping.

Hoses at the pump are corrugated; the corrugations act as a return path for vapor recovery from gas that already has been metered. If you are pumping at the high setting, the agitated gasoline contains more vapor, which is being sucked back into the underground tank, so you’re getting less gas for your money.

5. Do not top off your gas tank, when the pump shuts off, do not keep trying to add more gas………………a friend who owns a gas station says that by doing this, you are actually giving the next customer a $1.00 worth of gas. The gas you pump stays in the hose and never makes it to your tank………..good to know.

Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than an undeserved police beating. I hate gawking at them. I spend a good deal of energy trying to NOT be pissed off at the state of the world, at brutality, injustice, oppression and the like. It ain’t easy, as many of you know. But now that witness to unwarrented police violence in America is more readily accessed than in Rodney King dayz, I have a hard time staying calm. This latest video making the rounds got me thinking. And because tasering incidents are a dime a figgin’ dozen on YouTube, because America tends down a path of self-destruction, because we lose control of our freedom more and more every day (and Lord knows I love my sense of freedom), I feel like this is a good time to bring up some of my all-time heroes, the White Rose movement:

White Rose was a non-violent group of German philosophy students in the early 1940’s, who, against all odds, printed out and distributed dissenting literature against the Nazi regime. With their friends and neighbors being carted off by the truckload to concentration camps, these kids had the cohones to try to do something. Anything. No, they weren’t going to stop the Nazis. But at least they didn’t just accept things and turn a blind eye. Here’s a film about them.

This gets me thinking about the importance of speaking up. About the power of self-publishing – blogging and video blogging – in an age of a censored corporate mass media. About how we should protect this neutral Internet with our lives. About how everyone should be learning how to use these mediums for when the time comes. Because if you ask me, it’s coming.

You might be interested in giving Naomi Wolf’s new book a read. Here’s her thesis – the ten steps all dictatorships have taken in a quest for power:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

While Audrey and I were talking about money, jobs, careers and all that crap the other day she turned to me and said, “We just have a high sense of freedom requirement.”

It’s true. When balancing out the decisions in life, all people take the obvious factors into consideration. Does buying this house without running water or electrical outlets make sense? Is this cubical farm job not-so-bad because it pays okay and is relatively secure? Will this video of me pole dancing in a speedo make me rich and famous? You approach these quandaries with care and penitence while your mysterious internal mechanisms begin to weigh the options. Thing is, of course, we all have different factors that dictate our happiness. Money. Fame. Security.

She hit the nail on the head, methinks, for us. Freedom. We just need a lot of it. We can’t function without it. And therefore, we have pledged to ourselves to make sure we don’t live without it. Free time. Free thinking. Free as in speech. Free movement. Free food. Yeah!

Okay, that’s my liberating thought for the day. Don’t forget the freedom, peoples. Over and out.

Technorati Tags: work, povertyjetset, free, wisdom, freedom, jobs

(photos not quiet as mouth watering as the shots on my pal Taylor’s blog Mac and Cheese Review)

Technorati Tags: health, howto, food, juicing, povertyjetset, idea, love

What will our world look like if we disappear in an instant? How long will it take to wipe our mark from the planet? Not long, it turns out. It’s a fascinating look into the fragilities of human-made creations and systems. But also a great reminder that, heck, environmentalism is a human-focused pursuit. The Earth is gonna do fine without us. I like that thought. Frees me from the shackles of recycling anxiety, if nothing else.

(thanks for pointing this out, Audrey!)

Technorati Tags: experiment, books, worldwithoutus, environment, sustainability

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

8 Things about Mark, randomly selected:

1. My first concert ever was The Beach Boys on their Kokomo Tour. Oh yeah!
2. I’m way into this drink: 3 parts sparkling water, 1 part 100% pure cranberry juice – oh yeah!
3. I always name my cars. My first car was Sparky. My first blog post ever was about him. Now, I drive Lil’ Red, a 1980 BMW 320i. He rulez, too.
4. I never lived in one place longer than two years during my 20’s. I’m tired of moving.
5. My first pet was a turtle named Jeffrey. My second pet was a turtle named Jeffrey. My third pet was a hamster named Jeffrey. Hmmm… Maybe I was like this kid.
6. The first CD I ever owned was Nirvana’s Nevermind. The last CD I ever bought was Pissed Jeans Hope for Men, from the band, at a gig here in Philly.
7. I’ve been to nearly every single National Park in America. And 46 of 50 States. Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota and Vermont remain. I’ve got to savor those.
8. I’m a serial Partial Continuous Attention practitioner. I’m wrote most of this blog post while listening to a discussion about mobile devices and blogging and Twittering other people sitting in the room.

Okay, now I’m tagging you, dear friends from BlogPhiladelphia!
EricSmithRocks
StellarGirl
Girls Can Tell
Blankbaby
Dangerously Awesome
knowHR
Jen Simmons

I love freeganism. Though lately, I haven’t done much dumpster diving (mostly for lack of time, but lord knows I ain’t stopped ‘cuz of money). Nothing really beats getting stuff for free that’s in perfect condition. People love to say they’re saving the planet by buying organic food and driving a hybrid car, but I’ve said it before… it’s all a just a sham. Recycling cans won’t save the planet. Not buying them in the first place is a start.

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

I love that the topic gets its time in the New York Times. (Thanks, Steve!) Weird that it seems to be happening more often. Since when did the NYTimes get so fringe? Here’s another great quote from the article:

As people began to load plates of food, he leaned in and offered a few words of wisdom: “Opening that first bag of trash,” he said, “is the biggest step.”

Technorati Tags: free, NYTimes, freeganism, concept, recycling, povertyjetset, environment, stevekurutz, freedom

I’ve got more video of Daniel singing some far-out songs on my Live Music Journal. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: dreams, Philly, poetry, art, philosophy, danielhiggs, video, psychedelic, people

Technorati Tags: idea, lo-fi, projecting, homebrew, gadgets, motorcycles, film, filmfestival, art

Seems like I run across one of these projects every month or more recently. And yet, I’m still enamored by them.

In this iteration of the long-distance-bike-adventure-cum-video-blog-slash-documentary-film, I present you Dominic Gill picking up would-be hitchhikers to ride on the back seat of his tandem bike while he rides it from the top of North America to the bottom of South America. That’s a long way, baby. His project is called Take a Seat: Cycling the Length of the Americas in Search of Company and while he’s not yet vlogging the trip, he does have lots of cool photos and a blog.

And of course, he has a trailer for the coming documentary of the trip:

If you’d like to delve in even deeper into this one, check out Kristen Pope’s interview with Dom over on Vagablogging.

Technorati Tags: nomad, adventure, documentary, bikes, technology, povertyjetset, vagabonding, biking, video, backpacking, blogging, travel