It's Steve (now in blog form)

I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on.  Fortunately, my fearless Product Ninja Max wrote a great summary of the project on his blog.  I figure that since he works for me that it’s fine to crib it with attribution.  Check out the original post on 8bitkid.com.

I know I’ve been off of the radar since I left MySpace, and I’m happy to finally be able to talk about my newest project: gravity.com. We’re officially out of stealth now, and it is a great feeling to be able to now talk about something I have been pouring my heart and soul into over the past six months. We’ve assembled an amazing team here, and today we’re unveiling the site and the problem we are tackling.

The online conversation space has been historically undeserved, with outdated tools that create fragmented and unwieldy discussions. Our mission is to help people engage in meaningful conversations about their passions. Be it gadgets, cooking, Voltron, or whatever you may fancy, Gravity will provide users with a place to have discourse with other people who share their interests. Traditional tools like forums, group email lists, and collaborative blogs haven’t offered users with simple, functional, and fun way to interact and share. When we talk about what we’ve built, we like to describe it as a turn-based conversation site. This isn’t about allowing for chatter, but instead about creating a destination where we provide a framework for people to better share and communicate. We’re focused on building out the Interest Graph for the web to help people connect with their passions and discover people and topics that are personally relevant. Additionally, we’re embracing the distributed nature of the web, current movements in open API’s and technology, and are looking at how we open up our technology while inter-operating with others.

Please check out this TechCrunch post that delves into more detail on the company and our mission, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at: @gravity. This is an exciting moment for me personally and professionally, and I can’t wait to share more about the project, and more importantly, give everyone a chance to play with the product and tell me what you think.

Kunal and I have been working on a little woodwork project lately.  I was going to post about it eventually but he beat me to it (so it’s like that, is it?).  So rather than write something original I’m just going to hijack his post.  Originally posted on Kunal’s blog here.

The duck tale

One of my college roomates is getting married next month in Phuket, Thailand. As a gift to him and his wife, I’ve designed, fabricated, and painted a pair of stylized Korean wedding ducks. Before I jump into the details, I have to give a big thanks to Steve for providing the idea, guidance and resources that were necessary to achieve a tangible outcome.

So why Korean wedding ducks? Apparently it is a Korean tradition to give a pair of ducks as a wedding gift. Aside from being cute decorations, the ducks are a way to visualize the current state of a relationship: a happy couple points their ducks face to face while a not-so-happycouple points their ducks away. There are some pretty intense ducks out there.

The process got started two weeks ago when Steve and I picked up a band saw from Westwood. Look how happy he is:

Three days later, I met up at Steve’s place to learn the fine art of band sawing and earn my woodworking badge. Here is a shot of Steve showing me the ropes:

Band saw, meet wood. Wood, meet band saw.

Steve’s ducks are on the left and mine are on the right. We proceeded to smooth the corners and faces with a Dremel and fine sand paper. Here is what the ducks looked like post-sanding:

We proceeded to stain the ducks and let them sit overnight in Steve’s garage:

Four days later, I met back up at Steve’s place and saw the dried ducks in all their glory:

Fast forward to this morning when I decided to paint the ducks with acrylics:

I ended up mixing white, orange, and light pink and went to town on the ducks:

I then went ahead and mixed orange and pink together to create some highlights and stripes:

Here is a top down shot:

Here is another shot showing the patterns from the other side:

Making these ducks made me realize how out of touch I am when it comes to working with wood and fabrication in general. Overall, this was an amazing experience to attempt a radically different project. I hope the couple keeps their ducks endlessly pointed at each other.

I’m not sure what this joint is trying to sell me on.  I like hot wings as much as the next guy, but is suicide really a good upsell?  How about a free drink or some fries? That would be nicer than euthanasia I think.

I admit it, there are times when I wonder if the things I do will have any lasting impact on the world.  Can I, as an individual, really make any sort of meaningful difference?  Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have been been inspired.  Allow me to introduce you  to Thomas Midgley, Jr.

Midgley was an inventor.  Celebrated in his lifetime, he died with over a hundred patents and accolades from his peers.  He also singlehandedly jacked the environment six ways to Sunday. Midgely became a household name for solving engine knock by adding lead to gasoline. His tireless efforts to show how safe high lead levels could be, despite the numerous deaths from lead poisoning in refineries, legitimized the process and landed him only briefly incapacitated for lead poisoning (he publicly demonstrated the safety of lead by running his hands through a lead solution and nearly died after the press had gone home).

Now, the wide dispersal of lead throughout the environment for the next several decades is quite a legacy, but Midgely would not simply fade into obscurity. Remember that hole in the ozone from all of the Freon and CFC’s? Well Midgely is up in heaven right now looking down at you through it. He invented those too. Yup, the lead in the gasoline guy is also the CFC guy.

On an interesting note, in his later life he contracted polio. In designing an elaborate system of pulleys to help get himself out of bed, he became tangled and was strangled (the whereabouts of Captain Planet cannot be accounted for that day).

So the next time you run into someone going insane because their well was a little too close to leaky gas tanks, or you see a polar bear who misses the snow, remember one man really can make a difference.

I previously covered my fascination with Aardvark, the fancy question and answer service.  Today I got a question that, despite all of the obviousness of the answer, I’m not gonna touch with a ten foot pole.

(From Brianna B./19/F/Wilkes-Barre,PA — 10 minutes ago — sent via iPhone)

**dating**

My boyfriend and I just started dating a month ago and all we seem to do is watch movies and go for a coffee. Any suggestions on what we could do before we become boring?  (Kingston, PA)

(From *******/19/F/*****,PA — 10 minutes ago — sent via iPhone)

topic:  **dating**

My boyfriend and I just started dating a month ago and all we seem to do is watch movies and go for a coffee. Any suggestions on what we could do before we become boring?  (******, PA)

I’m a big fan of vintage travel posters, sci-fi, and space travel.  Steve Thomas has brilliantly combined all of the above into something I know I’m going to end up ordering.  Check out his collection.  I think I’m going to get the Shanghai poster first.