Uma, Fernando and the magic of You

I know many of you only visit this site in Bloglines, or NewsFire, or whatever your favorite RSS reader is. I am happy to have you read; really, it is all I ask. The actual prettiness of the site (or lack thereof, which I'll get to) is beside the point.

But if you've been reading from your RSS reader and not the site itself, while you've been spared some wonky-ass-ness from old code, you've missed the phenomenon of the UMAmeter and its meteoric rise.

Even if you've only read via RSS, you've had access to Uma and her bizarre tale of woe: a series of seizures a month ago in a New York bed; (not) waking up in a stage 5 coma at the St. Vincent's neurological IC unit, surrounded by doctors and worried loved ones; the green hearts on UMAtine's Day, at the very least.

So I'm-a spell it out for you about UMA: this is a girl who wants to L-I-V-E. She has beaten all odds, she is fighting her way back like a champeen, and soon, so soon, she will be wending her way back to L.A. via air ambulance at the staggering price of $20,000. That's, um, one-way.

What you've been missing these past coupla days, my RSS friends, is the aforementioned rise of the aforementioned UMAmeter. To the tune of $10K in two days. And this girl is theater-actor, MediCal poor, with broke-ass L.A. theater friends. But the call has been sounded around the world, and one ignores it at one's own loss.

My prediction? Even with slowing returns, we'll hit $15K in one day, maybe two. DO NOT LET THAT STOP YOU!!! She has got a staggering fight ahead of her, with staggering attendant costs. I know; I was sick once, four years ago, and my bill came to $80K and change. For 11 days. And I had good insurance!

I'm posting a big-ass thing on blogging.la tomorrow that covers the story in detail, so I won't belabor it here. Go. Give. All you people who asked what you could do for me when I was sick, and I said "no, it's covered"? Give now. Give to Uma. She needs your help. The people who are helping her need your help.

Be a part of a winning trend! Be able to look back years from now, when Uma is president or Chief Troublemaker or whatever Major Thing she's destined for and say, "uh, yeah, I made it happen." Go here now and give, bruthah!

And then mosey on over to fernando_graphicos, designer supreme, who graciously sent me the fresh code for the communicatrix website so it'd look purty for all you people. Oooh and aaaah over his juicy design goodness and uber-mensch-ness.

And then get on back to your regular lives and raise some fucking hell. Because that, more than anything, is what Uma wishes she was doing right now.

xxx c

Give to the Uma Fund. Go to blogging.la for more details (on Feb 28) now!

What money really means

One of my dirty little secrets has to do with money: I'm afraid of it.

Between role models who lived it up with cavalier disregard for cash, dying either in debt or indebted to loved ones (myself included) for covering them towards the end, and others who destroyed their health and emotional life in the pursuit of money, it's a miracle I'm neither pushing a shopping cart nor wedged between walls of newspaper, tying used paper bags together with twine against some future disaster, like a Depression-era baby gone whack job.

While I'm not rich, I'm also not in debt, and there's no wolf at the door. For my age and considering my nutty career trajectory, I'm actually doing well, living proof of the magic of compound interest. I socked away whatever I could as a Young Corporate Tool, living in rat-traps (okay, mouse-traps) in Brooklyn on overtime meals and happy hour appetizers while maxing out my 401k contributions. And this was back in the golden '80s, with dollar-for-dollar matching employer funds. Yes, you heard me: dollar for dollar.

And I've never exactly been a slacker. I was fortunate enough to have my college paid for, received gifts of cash here and there from my generous relatives and yes, I was subsidized to the tune of $50/week for the first six months I lived and worked in New York. Still, I've always worked, and never lived off the largesse of a partner or spouse. There were fat times and lean, but I managed to stay afloat, buy and sell a condo, keep clothes on my back and food in my gut, have health insurance (the good kind) and, while I've never been one to live high on the hog, even enjoy some luxuries like nice dinners out, nice food in, travel, cars (every one of which, of course, I've owned outright).

So this is not the story of someone who suffered the financial equivalent of being raised in a locked closet and never knowing light or human touch until age 16. I was good, I was fine, I looked completely normal, even together, compared to some people I know.

And yet, I am so conflicted about money, so filled with anxiety and conflict and trepidation, I cannot balance my checkbook. I mean, I have, at times, but I won't do it consistently. I've let money languish in low-interest accounts rather than make the simple step of moving it to a higher-interest vehicle because somehow, keeping it vague is more comfortable to me that keeping it real. I stubbornly resist getting a handle on my money which, believe you me, is not the best modus operandi for anyone, much less a sole proprietor.

But I've never really understood why until today, when I read something Suze "Yes, I'm Gay!" Orman wrote in her column for the March issue of Oprah's magazine. Orman was counseling a woman who's in a relationship with a guy who sounds kind of creepy about money, and she suggests that maybe this chick should bolt, because...

When a person can't share his financial life, I question his ability to share his heart. The way we handle money is a manifestation of who we are inside, and how he approaches the subject signifies his love and respect for you.

I tell you, I almost burst into tears reading this. Because it suddenly struck me how much of my life I have lived in fear, how worthless I have often felt about myself and my abilities, how much better it felt to look somewhere, anywhere, else, to tap dance a little faster, instead of sitting in the feeling I was really having until I owned it and could move on.

I have a lot of work to do yet, but I feel like the worst of it is over. Because at least for this last stretch of uncovering myself, thanks to a freshly-out financial guru to the masses, I have some direction and a little more light to find my way...

xxx c

Image by Simon Pais via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Thursday: The Buffer Zone

People say they don't understand how drunks keep drinking how addicts keep shooting how smokers keep smoking how (your favorite group of degenerate wastrels here) keep doing (something you don't give a crap about, here)

I say: heroin poker Thursday nite Comedy Lineup YouTube--

Same difference

It's all just a buffer between you and your feelings between you and your work between you and what's really going on

Anything done too much too many times in a row takes on a life of its own takes you on a trip away from the Truth

You see I've never shot up but I've watched a full season of Dragnet smoked an entire pack of Marlboro reds drunk an entire bottle of wine in one sitting

Same fucking thing, my friend... same fucking thing

Comfort comes in many shapes and sizes and delivery systems

True access takes work and questioning and prodigious quantities of terrifying solitude of deafening silence

And too much of anything is no good at all, including surfing, including fucking, including poetry, including goodness

Especially goodness...

xxx c

Image by bob degraaf via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Admin: New! Make the communicatrix come to you!

While I love this beautiful template (headspace, by fernando_graphicos, if you're reading this in shouting distance of 2/20/07), its super-minimalist search feature has long been the gimpy-legged straggler of the site, something that became more and more obvious as the information grew broader and deeper.

With my new Lijit widjit, however, I have leapfrogged over my 2.0 templated cousins, and probably the next several releases of WordPress, as well. Just enter your search term in the box to your immediate right (if you're reading this in shouting distance of 2/20/2007), hit "go" and your search will be conducted to the farthest reaches of the communicatrix literary landscape, or at least, every one of the 20+ sources I've entered so far.

It uses Google's search engine and some, um, other stuff to pull sources from my all blogs, my aggregators (StumbleUpon, delicious, etc) and any other site you list (places I comment a lot, like 2Blowhards.com, or other, random pages I've entered). There is some duplication of results and it's definitely better on very specific searches than general ones, but overall, I'm pretty happy to have the means to find those precious words I've misplaced somewhere.

If you despise it, you can still use the old-school search box at the bottom of the sidebar. But I'd be interested to know what you guys think of this here Lijit, and how it's working for you.

xxx c

Flickr was down for the count, so here's a little pic from my place circa last December. Nice light!

Nerd Love, Day 21: Happy Uma Day

When I started this series three weeks ago, it was with the very conscious notion that it'd be winding up on one of the most ridiculous holidays in the world to be coopted by modern consumers, Valentine's Day.

Let us make no bones about it: Valentine's Day sucks. Having any designated day to buy things for other people sucks. Not that buying things for other people is bad; it can be excellent, when offered up in the right spirit of freedom, love and joy, just as most things are. But to know which holiday is on the rise two (or three months) out by the color of the merch poking out of the pallets in the CVS aisles as last holiday's tatty crap is offloaded from the "seasonal savings" ghetto to the final dumping grounds of off-price land, well, call me a cynic (as if you haven't already), but that, my friends, is one step away from hailing Big Brother in the streets.

So fuck that flowers and candy shit. Seriously. Fuck it fuck it fuck it. I have a far better way to honor the true spirit of the day, a festival! of love!, and save yourself money and help some people in need at the same time.

My friend, Uma, is in a hospital in New York City, fighting for her life, following a brain aneurysm two weeks ago. She's got people all over the world rooting for her recovery because yes, of course, she's one of those Fantastic People we really, really need more of on this planet. (And for you hopeless romantics who need your gooey icing on the cake, she's 27 and just got engaged.)

Her fiancé and her best friend have been sending out updates daily with news of her health or lack thereof, so we have a way to focus our thoughts. (You can read much of them online starting here.) It's a scary mix of not-good and good right now, with the not-good being about massive stroke and swelling of the brain and the good (the excellent) being about rapid neurological recovery that no one can explain.

This morning's request was a simple one: wear green. Draw a green heart on your hand, if you have no green. Send waves of good, positive thought out there towards Uma.

Uma was no more a fan of the crappy Valentine's Day that's turned us all into February scrooges than you or I. But as her best friend, Erik, points out, Uma is pro-love, and in a big way. And, in her more active times before this fall, was a hell-raisin', law-unabidin' rebel who viewed acts of rebellion small and large with glee.

So I cannot think of a better way to end this series than with an ode to Uma, and a plea for you to perhaps take a moment of your Wednesday to send a healing thought, or a minute to draw a green heart on your hand.

Except, perhaps, to end-end it with this:

Uma, wherever your thoughts are at right now, I know they approve...

xxx c

Nerd Love, Day 20: "A" is for alpha channel

Some days, you just get by.

Tired Fearful Small and crawly

on no sleep (troubles, troubles) and a too-early dentist appointment made in good faith a year ago kept in resignation and out of more fear (bad gums, the family curse).

And then after a day of throwing down too many cups of caffeine (all flavors)

and an afternoon of pushing through too many scary jobs,

tired and fearful, small and crawly

you straggle home exhausted from An Event (really, it was lovely, we were just fagged out and not in a gay way)

and The BF gives you a tutorial in alpha channels and makes all the bad things disappear.

This is why I love being a nerd

This is why I love being in love with one.

xxx c

Image by Colleen Wainwright and Brenton Fletcher

Nerd Love, Day 19: 10 reasons nerds LOVE the Apple Store at the Grove

1. Conveniently located to Los Angeles' fashionable East side. 2. Get to watch Vegas-style timed musical fountain whilst walking to/from personal transpo device. 3. Better porn than Hustler store. 4. Retro-calming, Holly Golightly-esque, "Nothing bad could ever happen to you in a place like this" design vibe. 5. No rats. 6. Close proximity to wide variety of foods legal on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. 7. New! Urban equivalent of Wal-Mart greeter at front door! 8. New! Validated parking with ANY purchase! 9. New! Apple staff can ring up (credit card) purchases via handy/scary device around neck. 10. New! Apple staff can print out receipt on spot or email it to your .mac account.

Which leaves only one question: what is keeping you PC boneheads from drinking the Kool-Aid and getting down with the program?

Silly PC users...

xxx c

Image by Chet Yeary II via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 18: Nerd retirement

Every nerd has her weakness, and I have finally acknowledged mine: I am no longer providing adequate value for my beloved blogging.la. So rather than fuck it up, I'm bowing out to let some young (or old) and vigorous type step in.

It was a damned fine couple of years, and I'll be sad to let it go.

On the other hand, now I can go nuts in the comment section like all the rest of the old cranks.

Maybe that's what happens to old nerds: they don't actually die, or even fade away; they just become full-on, yarnspinnin', pants-to-the-nipples-hitchin' geezers...

xxx c

UPDATE: Just so we're clear (because certain comments lead me to believe we might not be), I'm not quitting this here blog: I'm leaving blogging.la, the L.A. flagship of the metroblogging empire. They don't need me; you cats just might...

Image by Todd Ehlers via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 17: Offline!

Yes, when Chief Nerd and Bottle Washer takes a day off, she engages chiefly in elective nerd activities. Yesterday's project was a long put-off expansion and reorganization of communicatrix HQ, adding file cab #2 and getting the G5 back online at full operating power.

This is notable for two reasons:

First, nerds have unaccountable phobias like everyone else. Mine is change. When the G5 had a hard drive cramp way, way back in July of last year, my solution was to move everything onto my 12" PowerBook and ignore the fact that it took me a third again as long to get the simplest task done. Why? Because I was too scared/lazy/stubborn to bring the G5 into the Apple store, which makes no sense because it was still under warranty/not that heavy/no comment. And then, even after it was abundantly clear that there was nothing wrong with the drive that a clean install couldn't fix, I still resisted loading everything back on because...oh, well, because clearly, I am out of my mind.

Second, pulling everything, and I mean everything, apart meant that I was offline for the better part of 12 hours, also known as a nerd eternity.

I could post a photo of my spiffy new setup (or the heinous tangle of wires it seems I am cursed with until the lights go out), but this morning, when I got back online, I woke up to this wonderful photo of my newly 40-year-old sister posing in some parking lot with Robert Plant. It was so random, I had to run with it.

So happy belated birthday, my beautiful Elizabeth, and may this decade be your best 10 years yet.

xxx c

Nerd Love, Day 16: Obsession, a.k.a. Nerd Koan

To you, it is a collection of keys (and affinity tags) on a key ring. (Okay, carabiner.)

To me, it represents dozens of man-hours of thought:

One ring or two? Or three? And what diameter? Fob choice? Fob size? What is too heavy? What is too light? What feels good in my hands? What feels so good I'll forget about it? Is that too good? Is that bad? What would be useful? What would be more useful? Is yesterday's 'useful' no longer so? Where to forgo elegance for functionality? What is the nature of elegance, anyway?

The difference between being a baby nerd and a grownup one is that grownup nerds know to enjoy the process or abandon it altogether, because the "goal", perfection, will continue to recede in the distance as you move toward it.

The key ring of my 20's is not the key ring of my 30's is not the key ring of my 40's.

In my 50's? There may not be a key ring at all.

And maybe that is what I am working towards.

If, indeed, any of this is a working towards anything...

xxx c

Nerd Love, Day 15: Nerd Math

10:15 am: Nerd gets e-newsletter from Vonage announcing deal for 20% off phone service for prepayment.

10:17 am: Nerd has phone service through 2/7/08 and $59 dollars in pocket.

10:20 am: Nerd mentally spends entire wad on six additional URLs for future blogs...

xxx c

Image by Fatty Tuna via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 14: Stealth Nerd, #2

Let's review:

Obtains Ivy League undergraduate and law degrees. Check.

Clerks for U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Check.

Chucks it all to do nerdy research and write books. Check.

Yes, Gretchen Rubin is beautiful and polished and living a life of chic Manhattan mommyhood. Don't let that shit fool you! Not only has girlfriend written four books and spent a year researching happiness from all angles, which she is now writing a book about...

...she has a blog about it.

I call nerd.

xxx c

Nerd Love, Day 13: Nerd Wayback Machine

Yes, that's communicatrix-dot-com, circa December, 2004, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.

Just shows what a couple of years and a couple of hundred hours at the computer can do for a girl.

And her blog...

xxx c

Click the image above for rollover commentary and larger sized display of my shame. Or click here.

Nerd Love, Day 12: How to write a bulletproof newsletter

I've been sitting on this post for what seems like eons. Every time I sign up for a new newsletter, I cross my fingers and hope and hope and hope. And almost invariably, I am disappointed.

It's very hard, apparently, to get a newsletter right, and really, really easy to fuck it up.

And so, in the interest of me, me, me...

The communicatrix's top 10 tips for creating a newsletter people will read every time it hits their inbox:

1. Content is king

I'm a designer. I like things to look nice. My two favorite newsletters? The only ones I will recommend at the end of this post? One is text-only and one is, um, ugly. There, I said it. Who cares? I read that sucker every Friday morning, stem to stern. Like I said, content is king.

2. Leave me wanting more

People who subscribe to newsletters usually subscribe to lots. If yours is too long, guess what? There are others that come just as regularly, and aren't. Of course, there is almost no such thing as too long if your content is good enough. But why kill yourself? You've got 51 more weeks to fill, cowboy. Besides, the point of the newsletter, as I understand it, is to get someone interested in your business. I would think the two greatest ways to do that are to tell me incredibly useful information, thereby establishing yourself as an expert, and to leave me wanting more of your expertise.

3. Watch the ads

Hey, it's your dime and your time. I can understand an ad or promo here or there. Just be careful. No one's content is that good.

4. Be as regular as taxes.

Those "when I feel like it" newsletters? Those are articles. Unless you are one of maybe 25 people whose words I hang on, I'm not interested in your articles. Really, I'm not.

5. Regular means once per week, per two weeks and if you're amazing, per month.

I mean, go ahead and send me that once per month email. But know that there are some people sending me an emailed newsletter with great content every week. Which means maybe consider #1 & #2 and go back to the drawing board.

6. Think long and hard before using that email I gave you to send me something else.

I'll give you one, maybe two shots. Then you're outta there.

7. Keep the self-congratulations for friends and family.

I almost never care if you've won something. Unless it directly affects me, in which case, knock yourself out.

8. An HTML email with links back to your site instead of embedded content is not a newsletter.

It is a pain in the ass standing in the way of me and information. Don't do it.

9. Keep it within your purview, but useful to me.

This is incredibly hard to do, but it's really how you hit it out of the park. One of my new favorite newsletters is Mark Silver's Business Heart. It's all text, has a dopey-ass name and is outstanding almost every single week. Silver's area of expertise is "heart-centered business practice", in other words, how to do business without feeling like a tool. He's focused and passionate about what he does, and communicates simply and elegantly about all sorts of things I find helpful, like how to approach writing a book, how to think about marketing in a way that doesn't make you cringe, etc. He's consistent, respectful, gives openly and doesn't push. Guess who I'm going to refer someone to first when they're looking for a coach like him? (UPDATE 6/17/09: Mark's newsletter is HTML-beautiful and easy to read. Slam dunk, baby!)

10. When in doubt, offer tips.

Everyone loves tips. Well, everyone who subscribes to newsletters, anyway. Rebecca Morgan and Ken Braly's SpeakerNet News gets read first, every Friday, even before I click on my Salon links. I'm not even a speaker, but (UPDATE 6/17/09: I am now!) It's chock full of excellent tips on stuff like self-promotion, marketing, travel, organizing, systems, etc. In fact, if someone has a newsletter for me that is as good as SNN and has only organizational stuff, I will pay you five American dollars. (I must subscribe to it for at least one month before you receive your prize.)

xxx

c

UPDATE: I just found another great point about what makes a great newsletter in, you guessed it, a newsletter!

11. Don't forget outbound links.

This is kind of a corollary of Rule #1, but enough of a good point to bear mentioning on its own. I like goodies! All people like goodies! Give away goodies! Lots of other good stuff in this article, although the newsletter itself breaks Rule #8, so it doesn't make the hit parade.

Nick Usborne in "Four Ways the Best Newsletters Are Like Blogs," from the MarketingProfs.com newsletter (link)

UPDATE (11/30/07): I'm going to start a list here of additional newsletters to add to the canon:

• Michael Katz's newsletter (bi-weekly) continues to hold up to the test of time. Great writing, good information, highly motivating. It should be: he wrote the book on it. (And a great book, which I still recommend for people starting out.)
• Robert Genn's newsletter (bi-weekly) is crafted for fine artists, but great for any kind of creative soul (and possibly, inspiring for those who don't consider themselves creative)
• The Lefsetz Letter (mostly daily) is a different sort of "newsletter", really, it's blog posts, sent out via an email service. But it's addictive in the best way that newsletters are, filled with interesting things to check out. Bob's beat is the music industry, so if you're in any creative industry undergoing upheaval, you'll find lots of great info here.
• Power Writing (bi-weekly) Professional writer Daphne Gray-Grant has tons of useful things to say about writing more easily and having more fun doing it.
• The MOOsletter (bi-weekly) Outstanding tips on marketing from one of the smartest companies around. A joy to read and chock full of awesome, week after week.

Image (and headline) by Eammon via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 11: When nerds travel

Nerds want...

1. ...free WiFi in all airports.
2. ...more outlets to plug in...
3. ...that actually work.
4. ...people on cell phones to use their inside voice...
5. ...or hang up.
6. ...maps in the "L" cars.
7. ...people watching movies on their laptops to use headphones.
8. ...to be there when rude lady hogging outlet finds out five minutes after her three-hour flight takes off that outlet she was hogging was not getting any juice.

xxx c

Image by caribb via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Nerd Love, Day 10: Nerd porn for a Saturday afternoon

I can't wait to see who finds me via Google search with this one...

xxx c

Image by lantzilla via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Nerd Love, Day 9: Nerd counsel

Fuck Robert Young. Screw the stiffs syndicated in most mainstream publications. You wanna know something about something?

Ask a nerd.

Giving really good advice is nerd territory, period. Because all nerds (a) burrow deep and (b) are compelled to share. Seriously. Like crack-addled monkeys, nerds cannot resist getting their advice on at any opportunity. It provides a kind of physical release for them.

In fact, the Nerd Advice Trajectory is very similar to that of the perfect bowel movement. It requires a variety of input, the precise application of both internal and external resources, a gestation period, and, after a mild and pleasant interval of anticipatory urgency, provides an ecstasy upon release matched only by orgasm or an elusive sneeze that finally finds purchase.

Here, for your enjoyment and edification (because the highest form of enlightenment is served up in an entertaining way, i.e. a way that will land), a list of Smart Nerds with Good Advice:

1. Randy Cohen (a.k.a. "Ask the Ethicist" from the NY Times)

Yeah. We need religion to be moral. Yeah. Right. (link)

2. Cary Tennis | "Since You Asked," Salon.com

No one gives better advice than smart, sensitive recovering alcoholics. Or, apparently, engenders such lively discussion in the comments section. (link)

3. Heather Havrilesky | Rabbit Blog

You may know her from Salon's "I Like to Watch" TV column. She's better here. Link leads to a particularly fine example. You may wander from there. (link)

4. Dan Savage | Savage Love

Hilarious, smart, no bullshit sex/relationships advice columnist. And gay. Whatever. Only a pinhead would see that as his chief identifying feature. (link)

5. Sue Johanson | Talk Sex on Oxygen.com

Demystifying sex for the masses. Everyone's favorite Canadian sexpert. Makes Dr. Ruth look like a showboating piker. (wikipedia link) (showtimes link)

6. Carolyn Hax | Tell Me About It, Washington Post

So smart I almost don't hate her for being younger than I am and graduating from Harvard. Almost. (link)

Who am I missing, nerds?

xxx c

UPDATE: D'oh! Forgot...

7. The Car Talk Guys

Excellent advice, expertly delivered (i.e., with humor and sass, thank-you-muchly) each week on NPR. (Thanks, trillwing!) If these guys can entertain someone on her third Toyota Corolla (i.e., someone who could give a rat's ass about cars), they can entertain you. Love those accents, too! Grrrrr... (link)

Image by jamelah via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

the communicatrix elsewhere: Man up, actor-girl!!!

Years ago, while living in New York, I had a recurring fantasy:

As I was walking to or from my miserable job to my equally miserable apartment, a stretch limo would pull up alongside me. The smoked glass window would roll down smoothly (this is when plebs still had to roll down old-school), a hand would extend out from the darkness of the cool interior (it was always August-hot in the fantasy) and a well-manicured finger would point at me...me! I was being selected for some nebulous form of greatness, to be lifted up from my sadly unappreciated existence to...well, some nebulous form of greatness TBD.

Laugh all you want; this is how most actors operate on a day-to-day basis. Hell, it's how most Americans operate, we of our First World sense of entitlement and lottery mentality. I wasn't acting back when I had this dream, after all: I had a job, what some would say a dream job, as a copywriter at a top Madison Avenue consumer ad agency, writing TV commercials for cars and packaged desserts.

Imagine if you were an actor, always one audition between you and your million-dollar contract on a hot episodic; often one job between you and living in your car. Now laugh it up, motherf*cker.

It's about time someone started explaining How It Really Works to these poor kids...

"How to Get an Agent...or Not: The Best Advice You Will Never Hear from Anyone in the Business," in The Networker, on LAcasting.com, now.

xxx
c

Image by A@lbi via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 8: Nerds on Holiday!

Chief Nerd and her hot Nerd Arm Candy are off to Chicago for the next four days, because nerds travel when:

1. prices are low
2. they feel like it
3. they need a break from the relentless taskmistress that is the 21-Day Saluteâ„¢

Kidding on that last one.

There may be some posts of the canned variety until our return. No whining. It is, after all, winter in this part of the world. That's when you're supposed to have canned goods...

xxx
c

Image by never mind her via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Nerd Love, Day 7: I {heart} Edward Tufte

When normal people play hooky, they go to the movies or the beach or Vegas.

When nerds take the day off, they go to see this guy, and come home 8 hours later, drunk with possibility, clutching a set of books so beautiful in both thought and execution, you get a little dizzy just opening one up.

I took a ton of notes, which I'll share with the class at a later date, but the topline is this:

Edward Tufte really is "the Leonardo da Vinci of information" (New York Times quote, not mine), and seeing him in person really is worth every penny of the not inconsiderable sum it costs to do so.

You get all of his books, he's up to four, which are impossibly priced at the low, low figure of $40 apiece. I say "low, low" because from the little I know about book production, there's no way you could print these conventionally for that price. (Tufte has his own publishing company, Graphics Press.) They are exquisitely produced works of art so full of wonderful information it will take me months, nay, years to absorb it all. And if you go to the lecture, he uses them as the support material! Makes those crappy PowerPoint leave-behinds looks pretty lame. Which is, of course, the entire point.

Edward Tufte is not as anti-PowerPoint as even he says he is.

The essay that put Tufte on the map with the hoi polloi (he'd been rockstar-popular with the geniuses for far longer) was, predictably enough, the one where he tells everyone's favorite meeting crutch where to get off.

He hates PowerPoint, to be sure, but he was careful to qualify his hatred:

1. ET says that PowerPoint does not ensure sloppy thinking, it just makes it more likely
2. ET reserves the bulk of his wrath for those who misapply PowerPoint in "serious" presentations, people who are cutting off feet to fit bodies in beds, either unintentionally (well-meaning scientists who abandon their language of notation and explanation to fit PowerPoint's low-resolution, limited character set world) or intentionally (evil people obfuscating or outright fudging data with visual double-speak, and he hates those people no matter what medium they're using towards their nefarious ends)

If you wanna do a PowerPoint about kitties, I don't think ET is gonna have a problem with it. PowerPoint as infotainment is relatively benign. So my work as a presentation designer is not moral compromise, provided NASA or the Federal Reserve don't engage my services. As if.

Watching Edward Tufte is an exercise in head-exploding newness and, simultaneously, a joyous feeling of coming home.

My brain is still reeling from playing catch-up with some of the finer technical points, but the rest of my body is still vibrating with the shock of recognition. Over and over in my notes, I have little asides with stars and underscores where I realized his points were essentially the credos I've been living with for the past 10 years or so: "Tell the Truth" and "Form Follow Function" and, less pithily, "Figure Out How to Say It So People Will Get It, Asshole."

It's the content, stupid.

'Nuff said.

Now, back to the business of delivering information in an elegant, useful fashion...

xxx c

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of Edward Tufte, here are some good places to start:

• Edward Tufte's website (link)
• Salon review of Tufte's book, Visual Explanations (link)
• Jason Carr's notes on a Tufte speech several years ago (link)
• A brief post by a software engineer on Tufte's relevance in new media (link)
• Wikipedia entry (link)

Image by unertlkm via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license