I have an admission to make. I’m a person of peculiarities.

I like to adapt, re-configure and re-arrange things until I maximize utility and personal convenience from whatever technology I’m using. This, I believe, is a reflection of typical human creativity and curiosity. We all like to customize our environments: our homes, our clothes, our cars, our desks, our own bodies (anything from a simple ear piercing to plastic surgery) etc etc etc………The list is endless because humans are infinitely inventive and innovative.

Personally, my love of moving things around may stem from learning to play chess when I was about 5 and realizing that if I moved Piece X to a different square it completely changed the nature of the game. The adaptation trait first manifested itself when — before the advent of automatic pencils and earning any pocket money to buy lots of new pencils — I prolonged the usage of my pencil stubs by putting them into old felt-tip tubes which I’d widened by getting my Dad to gently heat them so the plastic would expand and I could push my pencil stub inside them.

In any case……..if something doesn’t exist that makes your life more convenient or beautiful……CREATE IT!

(Or move towards the mountain and climb it, step-by-steady-step, instead of fearing it from afar.)

The mountain before me is quite substantial. I want to code a genuine collaboration wiki-hub-whatjammijig. Instead of getting into a blind “headless chicken” panic about it I’m using the work of others to guide me.

For several years now, I’ve been in awe of Alan Kay and the development work which has taken place with the SQUEAK-TWEAK object-oriented languages (OOLs and OOPs to tech aficionados). Why? Well because it enables you to move things around at will. In certain respects it’s equivalent to the code version of biochemical mechanisms like proteins and DNA. Bits of code and UI objects can attach/detach to X,Y locations in a similar way to how molecules attach/detach to each other at X,Y locations. These concepts I understand well having studied organic chemistry in some depth.

To gain more insight on the processes I mean, please watch this YouTube video:

Now, in normal programming lexicon this ability to move objects around is known as “drag+drop”. It’s been shown on sites like iGoogle, netvibes and more recently Kosmix:

(incidentally, I’m excited by Kosmix’s potential as a search+browse alternative to Google as well as by the MeeHive offering which is being developed by the same company.)

In my quest to create a collab hub, I’m looking beyond the standard wikis like Wikipedia or even Wordpress Mu / multi-user Typepad. Here are three examples I’m looking at:

* GE’s Imagination Cubed

* Google Docs Draw

* Swarmsketch

So far, this is what I have in mind and have managed to code whilst I’m architecting as much user flexibility and collective wiki-ness as possible into Project ART:

Ideally, it will get to the stage where people can co-create a magazine online (graphics, video embeds et al within movable and editable panels) and not simply more UGC text of comments and opinions. This is all very valuable but there is nothing like working towards an end-product around which…

CONTRIBUTORS WILL EARN A SHARE OF THE ADVERTISING SPACE REVENUES because they helped to create it!

Ok, more time in the code bunker ahead for me…………..

I’ve been in code bunker to think of other ways I’d like art work to be represented online. Above is an example using a pop-up generated with prototype.js. Below is an example of using Immervision to generate a 360 zoomable panorama. Please click on the image and experience the rotation for yourselves. Panning is incredibly smooth and the vector rendering near flawless.

I’m going to try and re-create this using Monet’s Water Lilies as my image tomorrow.

I just posted the start of my latest knol, How to LOL:

* http://knol.google.com/k/twain/how-to-lol/31fjy9fjsu1×2/25

The Google Docs embed of my ‘Comedy genres — a Twain guide” hasn’t worked as well as it should; Docs isn’t converting the text and fonts correctly so I’ve sent a message to the Knol Help team whether it might be possible to embed the Scribd version instead.

Here it is:

Two years’ ago today, I received arguably the worst phone call any child could. The hospital called me in the very early hours to say that my father had passed away. Although time is a great healer and my family has slowly come to terms with our grief and his loss, I’ll never forget the series of events which followed that call nor will I forget what happened in the preceding fortnight when he was in a coma.

I’d like to share these tips so that they may help others who are ever in a similar situation of unexpected family tragedy:

(1.)   Be good to each other in life.

(2.)   Let the emotions come forth. Don’t suppress anything no matter how silly it seems.

(3.)   Accept that birth and death are on the same string of Life’s mysteries.

(4.)   LISTEN.

(5.)   A physical hug is often more reassuring than words alone.

(6.)   Do what is in your power and responsibility to practically provide a sense of security and continuity: emotional, physical and financial.

(7.)   Expect unexpected eruptions of emotion.

(8.)   SHARE.

(9.)   Supplement family + friends’ support with professional counseling if needed.

(10.)  Celebrate, protect and respect your loved one’s memories as much as those left behind.

We gave my father a traditional Chinese funeral and chose to cremate him. Then we scattered his ashes so he’s now at liberty to travel the world as happily in spirit as he was in life.

This is the poem I wrote especially for his memorial service:



OUR FATHER’S HANDS


He sat on the flagstone,


Glowing in the throw of a noon sun,


Mid-way through our school spring break,


With a penknife and a branch in his hands,


And a spark of mischief in his eyes.



Next to him my older brother watched on,

Already sensing adventures ahead,


As our Dad shaped the tools,


With which we would go hunting for fish,


And later, much later in search of life.





One autumn we stood by a kerb’s edge,


Eyes open,


Heads checking,


A light glimmering in the distant horizon,


Closer and closer it called.



“Is that a car?” I asked my Dad,


He shook his head and smiled.


“Something better — the future,” he said.


By his hands we crossed our first road,


Looking towards that bright light that wasn’t a car. 





For a whole summer he lay on his back,


In the middle of a glorious park,


As our youngest brother crawled all over him,


Held safely in my father’s loving hands,


Surrounded by Nature’s green and gold.



“When will he start walking?” we asked Dad,


So curious about the little one’s new blossom,


Dad lifted him off his warm belly,


Until the baby was upright and cycling his feet in the air,


“We’ll have him running in no time,” he laughed.





We felt our father’s hands,


In these small but important events,


From holding our chopsticks to tying our shoelaces to
 turning the pages of a book,


Hands that gifted us roses in the garden, 


As easily as build wooden chairs and fix broken machines and heal our wounds. 



As he lay in hospital,


Eyes closed in coma,


It was these hands we held,


His connection to us of the senses,


Our love in our father’s hands.





Now once again we stand with him by a kerb,


Eyes open,


Heads checking,


All the best tools we can give him for the next life
 we have given,


His family and friends by his side.





A bright spark rises in the horizon,


It is the future and it calls him,


Be happy because he knows this and welcomes it with an open heart.


He’s reaching out to hold our hands a final time,


Love and memories in their touch forever.



Be good and brave and let go now,


So that he can wave us his last goodbye.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

They say that death, divorce and childbirth are life-changing events and can completely change our perceptions as well as the way we live our lives after they happen. Well, my father’s situation certainly brought out certain emotions and qualities in me which weren’t there before and some good things did arise from what was an awful experience.

Would my father be proud of us? Unequivocally, yes.

Last Friday I met up with my friend, Marta, for lunch at Galvin @ Windows.

She flew in from Madrid on Wednesday night, caught up with a now-married former childhood sweetheart and his wife on Thursday and was completely exhausted by the time our lunch date arrived. Just ten minutes before I had the table booked for, my mobile rang. It was Marta. She was still the other side of town while I was already arriving at the Hilton on Park Lane. She estimated that it would take her 10 minutes to get from where she was to where I was. I said I would wait for her upstairs in the bar.

The video shows the view from the gallery in the bar, on the Hyde Park Corner side. The other side shows the skyline towards Piccadilly, Pall Mall and St. Paul’s. I sat in the bar lounge area and ordered a spicy tomato juice and started to nibble on the complimentary roasted nut assortment; wasabi pecans, almonds and hazelnuts. I was just turning to put my mobile camera away when I felt a pair of hands pinching me in the sides.

I turned and there was Marta! Only 40 minutes late this time! I love her dearly but she has a thing about lateness which is a wee bit bewildering. She will always under-estimate the time it takes to get from A to B on public transport by about 80%.

Anyway, I was really happy to see her. The first thing I noticed were the spotted tie-up loafers she was wearing. The dots were dark green, light green and silver discs and it all looked really cute. So we had lunch and talked about the usual topics we cover:

* our families

* finance — Marta keeps on bumping into Merrill Lynch people and since we’re all from broadly similar educational backgrounds, i.e. went to management school, we always cover whatever perspectives we have on the banking sector.

This time there was the added topic of the GBP693,000 per annum pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, former CEO of RBS Bank, against whom various discussions were being held about possible legal moves to make him give up his pension claim.

* technology — we both have friends who have start-ups (music, marketing analysis tools, design) and five years ago did scope out the possibility of creating our own version of etsy (the online handmade gifts store).

Plus, obviously, FOOD. She tried kedgeree for the first time and ended up really liking it, saying it was a cross between a risotto and a paella. I stuck with the a rabbit pate and then for my main had the roast halibut. Marta had the chicken. For dessert, she ordered the rich chocolate slice whilst I asked for the vanilla pannacotta with rhubarb — slightly unusual but delicious. It was a great lunch.

After lunch we went window-shopping at Selfridges and then to Libertys where Marta bought some presents for her friends. Thereafter we made plans to meet another friend for dinner and to go to a bar where another friend was DJ-ing……

But that’s probably another post!