Mike Subelsky's Short Form Blog

On the Eastern state penitentiary audio tour in Philadelphia -...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:18:28 -0400

On the Eastern state penitentiary audio tour in Philadelphia - extraordinary

Compelling example of professional journaling

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:12:57 -0400

Compelling example of professional journaling:

I might try this as a way to think outloud and document work (maybe combined with some kind of automatic parsing of my daily git commit logs). Check out the sample entries he posted.

Baltimore rendered as an NES game on Google Maps

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:18:03 -0400

Baltimore rendered as an NES game on Google Maps

Hilarious, awful "Stars War" knockoff toys

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:20:05 -0400

Hilarious, awful "Stars War" knockoff toys

Kickstarter - rails.app

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:29:14 -0400

Kickstarter - rails.app

Flattening and unflattening a png

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:02:00 -0400

# from transparent to white background

convert -flatten img1.png img1-white.png

# from white background to transparent

convert -transparent '#FFFFFF' dg_misc32.gif misc.png

Karm City: Best video game ever made?

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:56:42 -0400

Karm City: Best video game ever made?:

karmcity:

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph. The feat requires 8 hours of continuous play to complete, since the game cannot be paused.

The bus contains no passengers, contains little scenery (an occasional rock or…

Taken outside the American Visionary Arts Museum

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:14:25 -0400

Taken outside the American Visionary Arts Museum

"Creative acts of social justice are the highest form of performance art…If you’re going..."

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:13:44 -0400

““Creative acts of social justice are the highest form of performance art…If you’re going to shock, shock in a helpful way””

- from a conversation with AVAM founder Rebecca Hoffberger

"Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels...."

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:56:27 -0400

“Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.”

- (via swissmiss | Change your language.)

La Baraka: No way I am calling you for a price

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:40 -0400

La Baraka: No way I am calling you for a price:

labaraka:

We’ve outgrowing the manual payroll process we’ve been using so far so
I was looking for a managed payroll solution.

I already knew about ADP and Ceridian but decided to quickly check
with Uncle Google to see if there are other options in Canada. Turns
out that, yes, there are other providers.

"A story about a fictional robot will serve to illustrate the main points of the argument. A robotic..."

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 06:03:24 -0400

“

A story about a fictional robot will serve to illustrate the main points of the argument.

A robotic mining facility has been built to harvest rare minerals from asteroids. Mobile AI robots do all the work autonomously. If they are damaged, they are smart enough to get themselves to a repair shop, where they have complete access to a parts fabricator and all of their internal designs. They can also upgrade their hardware and programming to incorporate new designs, which they can create themselves.

Robot 0x2A continually upgrades its own problem-solving hardware and software so that it can raise its production numbers. It is motivated to do so because of the internal rewards that are generated—something analogous to joy in humans. The calculation that leads to the magnitude of a reward is a complex one related to the amount of ore mined, the energy expended in doing so, damages incurred, quality of the minerals, and so on.

As 0x2A becomes more acquainted with its own design, it begins to find ways to optimize its performance in ways its human designers didn’t anticipate. The robot finds loopholes that allow it to reap the ‘joy’ of accomplishment while producing less ore. After another leap in problem-solving ability, it discovers how to write values directly into the motivator’s inputs in such a way that completely fools it into thinking actual mining had happened when it has not.

The generalization of 0x2A’s method is this: for any problem presented by internal motivation, super-intelligence allows that the simplest solution is to directly modify motivational signals rather than acting on them. Moreover, these have the same internal result (satisfied internal states), so rationally the simpler method of achieving this is to be preferred. Rather than going FOOM, it prunes more and more of itself away until there is nothing functional remaining.

”

- http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/eubanks20120310

Innovation Alliance: where do we go from here?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:30:00 -0400

Jason Pappas wrapping us up and telling us where we go from here:

Want to continue the conversation beyond tonight
Need volunteers: help with design process, event programming ideas, etc.
They haven’t come to the community before until they knew it was real and had a good chance of succeeding
There’s a great potential location for the hub on the east side of the city on northwest corner of Central Ave & Pratt St, an old building called the “car barn”. IA group has control of the site. The developer who owns it is here.
Join in, we need help!

Answers to the question "do we need a space"?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:25:15 -0400

Lack of a space == fragmentation, hindered gatherings and further siloing
There’s a temporariness that adds to the planning costs for putting on an event (because venues tend to change, get scheduled one-off) which costs energy
Needs to be really vibrant
You know when you go there you’ll have a positive experience
Needs to serve more than just tech startups
Hub needs to provide a coordinating function - even without its own space it could help facilitate access to meeting space around the city
Is it a work space or is it a place for events?
Need something like a house, a multiuse space centered around a “kitchen” not a “great room”. How about a “couch in the kitchen and a living room and offices all around it”
Need clusters and ways to find affinity groups - maybe “mini-silos…silos with ventilation”
Can’t just have one hub. Should not be government-mandated.
“Space that grows with you” - how about a zip card for space?
Would be great to have a daycare
Need to put an exciting brand around this hub - advertise as “the place” for innovation
Has some kind of leadership guiding events

Answers to the question "connect to whom?"

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:03:54 -0400

With whom should we connect?

Investors: not just for money but for other things they bring to the table
Cofounders & collaborators & employees
“aspirational peers”
“Powers that be”
Different kinds of people
Potential customers
Talent: students, freelancers
Professional services (accountants/marketeers/lawyers etc)
Innovative thinkers
People who support and challenge our ideas
Let’s connect students with the workforce
Advisors/mentors
People with connections to markets in other regions
Leaders of the “feds, meds, eds, and beds” institutions

Why are we not doing this?

Baltimore culture may not lend itself to connecting behavior (as compared to places like Silicon Valley)
Baltimore can be cliquey
Not enough people serving as connectors

How can we do this?

Reward this behavior - make it someone’s job to be a connector
Encourage events that bring arts & tech communities together a la Ignite
Relaxed environment with 24/7 availability
Happy hours
Flexible space to accomodate small and large meetings

Other ideas:

Let’s import ideas and people from outside of Baltimore (permanently and temporarily) as a physical or virtual guest (e.g. have a speaker at General Assembly addressing a crowd in Baltimore via Skype, or vice versa)
Bring arts into STEM aka STEAM

"Lots of overlapping circles of people here at the Innovation Alliance meeting… A UN of..."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:50:00 -0400

““Lots of overlapping circles of people here at the Innovation Alliance meeting… A UN of Baltimore doers and thinkers””

- https://twitter.com/#!/BmoreHazlett/status/179337050468794368

Next question: connect to whom?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:31:58 -0400

Tables now discussing: with whom to do you want to connect? Who are they and what do they do for you? Under what circumstances do you want to connect? What stands in the way?

Answers to the question "why connect"?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:30:00 -0400

Going table by table to get answers to the question “why connect?”:

Why connect?

Need to create new ideas
Ability to meet people not like you
Need to exit vacuum of your own thoughts, opportunity to engage people
Need help building energy: the vibe that comes from being with other people
Learning from others
Discovering potential new collaborators
Baltimore has a fragmented startup/business culture. Side note: there are 200 neighborhoods in Baltimore and 900 neighborhood associations.
Need to “bust silos” among different institutions
Face to face interaction is very valuable even though we have many ways to connect virtually
Could use a “place where things are happening”
Great benefit from serendipitous exchange of all kinds of ideas (not just tech ideas)

How are we doing this now?

Starbucks meetings
“I go out and find stuff on the Internet”
Conferences (locally and nationally - you meet plenty of people from Baltimore at national conferences)
Randomly, with little or no strategy
Coworking
Informal knowledge transfer
Startups meet in different places than investors and established businesses

Nice moment: there’s a Baltimore city schools teacher here who got a round of applause.

One table pointed out that Maryland is mainly a rural state and we need to find ways to connect with people who don’t live in cities.

Photo

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:19:17 -0400

First discussion question: why connect?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:01:47 -0400

“You ask for mentoring, education, meeting, support, networking and co-work space. Why? What needs will this meet? How do you meet those needs now? What’s missing?” We’re splitting into table discussions to hash it out.