A while ago I wrote about “The Gamer Divide” and how I think we are approaching a time when gaming is viewed as normal or even positive, instead of some thing that you might want to avoid mentioning.

Just this week Forbes had an article on How Playing Video Games Can Boost Your Career. It features a guildie of mine (Hi Elliot!), and makes some good points about how game skills, especially multi-player games, can provide real career building skills.

I think my favorite quote was:

“We’re finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics,” says John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte.

But head on over to Forbes and read the whole thing.

Going from non-observant to an observant Jew has all sorts of challenges along the way.  One of the challenges is that the comfortable routines often go away as the places you hung out at become “not an option” due to reasons of kashrut.   Back when I lived in Santa Cruz my favorite way to begin the day was a bike ride to Java House – which was this big converted warehouse – where I would have a cup of coffee or chai and a croissant. I would enjoy the food and drink while listening to the classical music and watching the sunlight filter in to the room.   It was wonderfully refreshing way to begin the day before heading on in to work.

Queue the passage of time and the taking on of observance and even replicating that morning ritual was not so simple. For some reason the taste of a croissant was an essential part of the memory.  I suppose it is a bit silly, but sometimes I have food connections with a memory as much as a scent connection with that time and feeling.  Over a number of years I looked to see if there was any place online that sold real, with butter (Cholov Yisroel) croissants that I somehow could get shipped out to my in the middle of the country location.  As it turned out, I had no luck in my searches.

Finally a little more than a year ago I decided to take matters into my own hands and just make some croissants.  I found a recipe online that seemed to be from a likely authentic and good source. Gathered up the ingredients and made some croissants.  I did not remember the butteriness of the pastry.  Wow it was intense.  I don’t know if it was a lack in the old croissants or simply the lack of butter in most of my daily food but the taste was intense.

Amusingly not long after making my own I was planning a trip to Los Angeles to visit my parents and in checking out the kosher establishments available in the area, lo and behold, there was a kosher French patisserie that was Cholov Yisroel, that had opened in the Pico Robertson area.  When I made it to LA the first stop was to Delice Bakery to order some baked goods and a plain croissant and a cappuccino.  As I sat by the window to watch people walk by, and bit into my first piece of croissant I was in heaven.  It tasted very much like the ones I had made, but the pleasure of eating baked goods someone else had made, and enjoying the view and music was just such a pleasure.

Now when I come out to Los Angeles I pick up some pastries at Delice Bakery and each time I truly appreciate the baked goods.  Back when it was just grabbing something at the coffee shop, I obviously appreciated the food, but having it be a rare treat certainly has elevated my appreciation of such.  This morning for breakfast I was able to enjoy another croissant and realize how different food can be when it is not quite so every day.  Perhaps it is worth enjoying the more common food that way as well.

Oh, and if you happen to be in LA, not far from Pico and La Cienega, it’s worth dropping by Delice Bakery, whether you keep kosher or not.

A friend of mine tweeted about signing up for Ad.ly.  I went over to see what it was. Basically, for a twitterer, you sign up, select what types of ads you approve and once a day it will tweet an ad in your stream and pay you for that tweet. (The example they gave on the about page was a tweet about an episode of a show.)   My first thought was..umm….yeah I don’t think so.  But as I paused to think about it I wondered a bit.

Many people have talked about how they blog less because they tweet.  Tweets aren’t just “I’m having a cup of PG tips right now” (which I am), but are often advice, philosophical thoughts, commentary on something someone found interesting.  In short it is “microblogging” for many.  I don’t have an issue with people having ads on their blog, so why would I have an issue with people having an ad a day on their twitter stream?

I think perhaps there may be two parts.  One is, an ad on blog is separated from the content, and I know it is an ad.  In a twitter stream, given our conventions, it seems like the person is speaking the ad themselves.  The second is a blog seems like it has a potential to be more polished more a “work”, while tweets of 140 seem more casual, and so I run against the “wait you can’t make money for that” bias that is common in our populist movements of the web.

Ultimately, something like ad.ly makes me think.  I haven’t signed up myself, but I think my resistance may be based on old patterns.  When is ok to make money for something?  Is an ad in a tweetstream changing the nature of the medium?  What do you think?

I was just letting my dogs out and I was amused at how the “go outside” ritual has evolved.

Back when boydog was a puppy we decided that plushy toys stay inside.  Every time he trotted to the door with one, when he got there we would tell him “out” and he would spit out the toy before we would let him go outside.

Boydog decided that the important thing was not “don’t bring plushy toys outside” but rather “toys must be brought to the door as a token to get out”.  Whenever he wants to go outside he will bring the token.  We tell him “out” and he drops the toy and heads out.  If we take the toy too early he will go and find a new toy because the rule is, you must have a toy close to the door to be allowed out.

Girldog joined our family a couple of years ago, and she had no such ritual. The boydog ritual was nice because he would bring toys to us to let us know he wanted to go outside, girldog eventually learned that poking my arm will usually work in place of that.   However, she has been watching boydog’s ritual since she got here, and we’ve tried to encourage her to do the toy thing – it is convenient way to know the dog wants out and not just attention.  She has finally started to adopt the ritual but just as the “significant part” changed between the humans and boydog, she had her own twist on it.  For her, dropping the toy at the door is the important part. 

So boy dog will bring a toy to let us know he wants out.  We all head to the door.  As we get to the door, if she really wants to go out (rather than just being willing to go out)  girldog will pick a toy up, throw it on the ground, pick another toy up and throw it on the ground until I successfully wade through the dogs and get to the door, and then she knows the “go outside” ritual – as she has interpreted it – was successful.

Three different intents, all evolved from the initial “plushy toys don’t go outside.”  It makes me wonder about other communications and how often what we thing is the significant part of an action gets re-read by the person observing.

Once again it is quite late to be going to bed, and I am writing up my post for the day.  A couple of years ago I did a month of “Me Today” videos.  Each day I would record something on video and post it up to Viddler.   With the me todays the idea was to post a bit about your day, and I usually ended up talking about my thoughts of the day.  Since it literally was about my day I could just say “I did x y and z today” and be done.   The practice was a good one, and I ended up with quite a few videos that I liked that were more than just a “dear diary” on video.  Those posts ended up embedded on this blog.

Blog posting seems a bit more challenging.  Since this blog isn’t just a diary I don’t just post “Today was really cold and I spend a minimal amount of time in the sukkah”.  Instead I look for a bit more meat. The challenge is, of course, that the reason I set a goal of a post a day was to get me in the practice of writing.  Just like the me todays got me in the practice of sitting in front of a camera and speaking, here I am attempting to do the same with my words. 

Today I tried writing about some further thoughts on the “global town hall” view of new media.  My husband and I had a great discussion on it last night and I thought I had the post in my mind.  However, once I started typing the words I found that I had so many thoughts all jumbled together that they could not make a coherent post, not even a one that I could “get away with and edit later.”  So, that post is sitting in draft. Instead, this post is a “me today” sort of post.   We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

When I hear (or read) discussions on augmented reality usually it involves various devices – cool glasses that project data over physical reality, cameras that map physical and virtual onto a screen, and other devices that augment input.

The other day I was watching the below TED talk on the Design Genius of Charles + Ray Eames by their grandson, Eames Demitrios. Towards the end he started talking about his project, Kcymaerxthaere. In this project he has overlaid a fictional history on physical locations. They have placed plaques describing the historical significance of various locations in that fictional reality.

In an instant I realized that I had been limiting my concept of augmented reality. Simply by sharing this overlay they enable many people to experience a different reality that the traditional one in that space.

Of course this begs the question – have we been augmenting reality (although simply with “real” historical facts) with tours, placards and other physical information overlays all along? Perhaps what technology brings us is just a greater variety and reach for that augmentation.

If you haven’t seen the TED talk already check it out below:

As I look at new applications, services and games I see that more and more of them are using physical location as part of the information used. While the virtual can give one the opportunity to have an experience independent of any real world location, there is also an appeal to seeing where people are in the world, and sometimes who is local.

The virtual spaces (whether 3d, 2d or text based) allow people to connect without the limitations brought about by physical locations, but at the same time these virtual spaces can be used to help connect to people who are physically local – and the virtual becomes a way to augment our physical reality.

Last night we had huge winds around here, gusts up to 100 mph. As you might guess quite a few power lines were knocked down, including ours. I had wonderful surprise as I went downstairs and looked over towards our addition and noticed the lights on. When we added on to our house we put in a redundant 24 volt DC solar power system. We have a fairly small system, but it is enough to run a few led lights without a strain. So while everyone else was by candle light we had regular lighting in parts of our house. Unfortunately that didn’t include our kitchen. So we cooked and dined by candle light.