ALL ART BURNS

So I started this blog a billion years ago for art/design stuff. Then I went to design school, then a Masters in Tangible Interaction Design (aka “physical computing”), then lots of interesting career paths.

I’m going to start writing about design and related stuff on my professional blog at functionalprototype.com; I’ll keep this blog for history and comments on old posts.

I have another blog for Pittsburgh, nerdiness, and stuff that isn’t design thinking at flatline.net.

Sorry if I spammed any real comments.

Last fall I taught Intro to Physical Computing and this spring I’m teaching Making Things Interactive, a class I helped develop when I was earning the first Master of Tangible Interaction Design. The TID program is being shut down and I have the last candidate in my class, but I’m glad that CMU developed IDeATe.  I think TID could have evolved in to something like IDeATe, but not being a career academic I have no idea how that would work.

Teaching a class of mixed undergrad and graduate students is interesting.  I have undergrads who’ve only taken the pre-req (Intro to Phys Comp) and considering an IDeATe minor along side graduate students who have engineering or software backgrounds looking to learn more about making interactive things.

After nearly a month’s vacation from my personal Facebook account, I think I’m not going back any time soon.  I still have my business FB accounts, but personally, I feel a lot less stress in my life away from Facebook.

I think the biggest problem is that FB doesn’t have easy access to organized group discussion.  The events are ok, but the groups are basically a disaster when it comes to conversation over time.  Mailing lists, USENET groups, and conferences on private forums (like the well) are a great way to organize discussions on topics of interest.  These groups can have agreed upon rules, ranging from “no spoilers” to “no political discussion.”

One benefit of group conversations — I can avoid topics where I simply DGAS.  I can’t remember the last time where I’ve wanted to discuss sports with anyone, especially in a public place where every fan’s team is the best ballsporter or whatever.  So I don’t read those groups and I never have to see any words about fantasy teams or the sweet sixteen.

It works both ways, I do care quite a bit about politics and am involved at the local level.  I’m on several vintage motorcycle mailing lists and I’m pretty certain people on those lists have voted for Dotard, but politics has no place in a vintage bike discussion so it never comes up.  Same goes for gardening and cooking.  I like to do both, and I think I can have a civil discussion with someone who is a vegetarian or who has similar-but-different food allergies and have religion and politics only come up for curious reasons, not ranting/yelling matches.

So, back to words.  It’s been a year since I’ve had anything to say about design in a public space, but maybe I’ll give it another go.

Another new thing, a music clip for holding your book open.