A Small Squee of Delight

When I was little, I thought sewing machines were the most amazing things ever. I loved threading, how the thread got wound around the machine all over the place. I used to pretend I was threading a sewing machine by winding yarn around all the knobs on my dresser. I could never quite understand, though, how the little needles managed to make so many stitches so fast.

Then I found this description of how the mechanisms of sewing machines work on How Stuff Works and literally sat there and stared at the little Flash movies for half an hour. So that’s how it does it! [the picture below is a pause of one of the Flash movies]. The whole article is just interesting, if you’re a fan of figuring out how stuff works. Finally knowing how my machine works is FABULOUS. I’m incredibly thrilled by this, and the next page in this shows the internal gears.  You can tell it really bothers me when I’m not sure how things are doing what they’re doing!

While I’m blathering on about learning how stuff works, I thought I might also mention these lovely pieces of knowledge as well, for minds of neverending curiosity.

In honor of putting in a zipper: the Glue-Set Zipper for a skirt from Sew, Mama, Sew; sewing a zippered pocket into a bag lining from U-Hanbag; a flat fly-front zipper for clothes video with Sandra Betzina on Threads (really the clearest of these tutorials, but maybe that’s the video); various other zipper types (lapped, invisible) also from Threads.  And the one I’ll be hopefully using this week or next, a concealed bag zipper with casing also from U-Handbag.

How dress forms are made -  I always thought seeing your shape via dress form was probably the best way to figure out how a piece of clothing will work on you. Well, this is a video about the process of professional dress form construction. I find it odd they start out as a base of wet cardboard.

Just noticed Margaret Wertheim’s TED talk on coral reefs and hyberbolic geometry, as modeled by crochet. It still seems funny to me that something as simple as crochet increases could so easily model a mathematical concept as difficult to conceptualize as hyberbolic space.

I’ll leave you with this: speaking of crochet, still one of my favorite explanations of how stuff works is the structural/sculptural possibilities of crochet as demonstrated by Jessica Polka of Wunderkammer for a class she taught. One day, I will make one of these. It’s not only useful, it’s pretty!

Opinions, I has them … 2009 SXSWi

I have been attending the South by Southwest Interactive conference here in Austin since last Friday. I have promised myself that in light of all this technology stuff I’ve been doing these last few days, I will actually participate in technology this evening before running off to crochet.  Et voila:  blog post.

I go to this conference hoping people will argue with one another. I want expert panelists who don’t agree on stuff answering interesting questions, and I want to be around my tech peers.  That was sort of the case this year, less than I’d hoped.  This year the public relations, marketing and monetization crowds were out in greater numbers than I’d seen before, which alters the conversation from one of “what are the challenges and joys of making better interactive technology” to more “how does this materially benefit me.” The latter question is difficult for those of us who are here out of love for this stuff, particularly when the asker is only there because they feel like they have to be. Takes the joy out, you know?

As a very longtime Internet user (I got my first two email accounts in 1993 and learned HTML in 1996), I am hopeful the Internet continues to be a place where people can form positive communities and relationships, and where diversity of opinion and freedom of  self-expression are the rule. I hope more people can come to it and have that same kind of good experience.  I understand needing to make money from things, but I don’t want it to become another place where I am bombarded by commercialization and pitches. I want people and businesses to see the Internet’s value as a collaborative medium beyond pushing their agendas and advertisements in the never-ending quest for a piece of the pocketbook.

So I thought I’d note a few of the points that I saw over the course of the conference, little nuggets of wisdom to chew on.

1. Googolplex: Everyone reminded us that there are billions of people out there on the internet, all of whom come with differing motivations, levels of experience, beliefs and intent. No one can even begin to predict what all that communicating will produce each day, but the possibilities are endless.  Still, they will be guided by the same thing that has guided every other major human institution:  human behavior.
2. Quiddity: Adaptive Path would like us all to think about what will make our corners of the internet better.  What will make the web a transcendent experience, instead of just a collection of mediocre brochure sites no one particularly enjoys or cares about visiting. And then she suggested a bunch of ideas on how to go about doing so.
3. Be Great: Merlin Mann of 43 Folders and John Gruber of Daring Fireball (pictured before their panel began, to the right) would like us to please try to be the best (better than 80%, anyway) at what we do, if we’re going to bother to try to do it at all. Even if we don’t achieve the heights we aspire to, at least we’ll get a lot better at it. To not be  shill or a jerk, either.
4. Relationships: Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic would like us to use our websites to talk to others as if they were people. She would like even corporate writing to be comprised of engaging, well-written communications instead of just dry press releases and company messages.  A fellow panelist, [updated] Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction, would like to encourage companies to treat their customers/clients as relationships instead of potential transactions.
5. Respect: The community managers of Etsy, Flickr, YouTube, Metafilter, Current TV would like us to participate in their communities (and others), but to please do so in a way that is respectful of others.  Don’t call them names.  Don’t be That Crazy Guy or That Crazy Woman who can’t seem to operate without being uncouth, churlish, coarse, inconsiderate, boorish, etc.
6. Data Warehousing: You have no idea how much data is being collected about you online, and you have no idea to what purpose that data is being put. Don’t you think you ought to?  Checked out those privacy settings lately? Read any good Terms of Service? It’s fast becoming another credit reporting system, but larger, and right now there’s no way to find out what items are attached to your name or dispute them.
7. It’s a Good Idea: Nonprofit personnel (chiming in for the billionth year in a row to say the same thing) would like to please, please have senior management buy into the idea of having a web presence, and especially to buy into the whole social web thing. Even if they don’t use it themelves. And please, can we not have the PR department doing it?  We promise we’ll be good and stay on message, and we might even make some money.  But we want to do it right and get new people involved with us.
8. A Matter of Trust: Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer believes that blogging is about community, and community is about trust.  In a world where we don’t trust the institutions in our lives to tell us the truth, care about our troubles or connect with us on a personal level, we have formed our own networks.  The masses of people involved are creating a responsive, interactive media that’s proven to have a powerful political, economic and social impact.
9. Reciprocity: If you want people to pay attention to what you’re doing, you need to pay attention to others. Why should people have time for you if you don’t have time for them?  Social media is all about two-way conversation, whether it’s blogs, Certain Unmentionable Uber-Popular Sites (everyone was pretty sure they were tired of talking about those), Flickr, forums, YouTube or anywhere else that comments are enabled and preferences are collected.
10. Heart: The stuff that the best, most interesting online folks produce is about heart and belief and philosophy, not money.

You can see recurring trends in the messages I’ve picked out.  The internet’s applications and communities are no longer in their infancy and no longer the province of a fringe group of nerds or young people.  Like any other social medium, the internet has its guidelines, appropriate behaviors and social norms.  We’re in the process of trying to negotiate that in this time when it’s becoming a commonplace part of so many people’s lives.

How do we manage it?  What do we do with all this data?  How can we make it better?

Hero of Canton Hat?

It’s easy being a nerd/geek AND a crafter.

Particularly on days when you find entire interviews with cult-fantasy master Joss Whedon done by crocheter extraordinaire Kim Werker.  I laughed, I cried, or something like that, and snickered at the “desperate war between crocheters and knitters” (which has long been one of my pet peeves – I mean, really, how pointless is it to rank the ways people make knots with yarn?).

You should read the interview too, if you haven’t seen it already.

Craftzine has the links to the  story of how the interview came about, which is one of those lovely webernet stories where something just takes on a life of its own. I love that it’s an interview that asks different questions instead of the same old boring drivel. Kind of reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson talking to Nixon about football.  Must be refreshing for these oft-interviewed types to say something new!

And now to make a couple of these Jayne Cobb hats.  My brother would absolutely wear one, I think.  He is the King of Crazy Hats.

In Other News …

We continue to be  under the weather in our house.  I have had a bad case of the the flu for a week and have very little voice or energy left.  Audrey is still tired and sick, although she’s home now and is acting mostly like her usual bright, cheery, loving self.  We still don’t know what went so wrong, or whether she will make a full recovery, but we are hopeful and stubborn, and so we are going for the best possible outcome.  It’s been a long and painfully anxious couple of weeks, and a real eye-opener in terms of what people and vets will or won’t do for animals.  Maybe you are an animal person and our worry makes sense, maybe you’re not, but Jeff and I are doing our best to do what our hearts and minds tell us is the right thing to do for Audrey, and that’s all we can do.  As I always say, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.