I Blocked Pinterest on Facebook

Posted on 24 February 2012 by Debbie

I have been happy for days. I blocked Pinterest on Facebook! So thrilled. Why is that so great? Two reasons.

Firstly, I feel like Pinterest is like standing over everybody’s home bulletin board. Every time they think something is cute or pithy or interesting or whatever, they pin it. I don’t need that kind of continuous stream of what my friends are thinking. Facebook and what you can post/share to Facebook was already quite enough of that! And probably quite enough FROM me as well.

Secondly, I don’t know about your friends, but if I had to “judge” my friends based on what they post, share, and pin, I would think that they are all depressed, dowtrodden people who need every possible reminder that they’re OK they way they are! Or hard work will achieve goals! Or don’t give up! Or if you are down, a baby’s smile will warm your heart! Or don’t frown… someone might be falling in love with your smile! Or strong women have to do this and that, even if nobody else likes it! Or stop making excuses and do it! Or do it or don’t do it but Jesus loves you!

I was starting to feel like I was thrown into a group therapy session I hadn’t signed up for. It was motivational, captioned photo after home-made pseudo-motivational, captioned photo-taken-by-someone-else-but-I-grabbed-it-from-Google-images-hope-nobody-minds. Pinterest seemed to ramp this up, and I was not lacking this in my life.

Sure, there was also all sorts of pins of clothing and accessories my female friends coveted. Doesn’t jazz me. Pins of CRAZY images going around the web. I was probably not missing those. I guess I am just not catching Pinterest fever.

I was happy to find the Hide All button on Facebook. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything now that it’s blocked, and that’s the test. If I blocked it, and then wondered, “Hmmm… what am I missing now that I can’t see this,” then it might be something of value. But I can’t find the value. If I want to pin something for me, I’ll put it in Evernote. If I want to pin it for you, I will do a Facebook share and/or blog about it here.

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When Anaesthesia Isn’t Anaesthesia

Posted on 20 February 2012 by Debbie

I have a rotten tooth that has to be removed. After some bad childhood experiences with dentists and oral surgeons, I absolutely insist that any procedure include general anaesthesia. I’ve been looking into places that’ll do that, and I learned something I found very uncool.

Sedation dentistry and “deep sedation” are not what I thought, and maybe not what you thought. It was explained to me that you get shot up with propofol and a few other things, but you might be responsive. They might ask you a question during the procedure and you might respond. They told me I’d feel a pinprick.

Well, then won’t I be aware of the whole procedure? And doesn’t that defeat the purpose of getting general anaesthesia?

A friend told me he had that for the removal of his wisdom teeth. He said he has no memory of the procedure, but he was told later that he was “awake” and “talking” through it. Wellll, I know that given my insanely good memory, I’m pretty sure I would remember bits or all of it… and that’s why I want to be completely out. Not aware or talking or able to feel stuff. Completely out.

To me, deep sedation sounds like what you hear on Dateline reports when someone goes in for surgery, they’re not really put all the way under, and can feel what’s going on or have an awareness. Always a horror story (perfect for Dateline). Why would I want to sign up for that!!! I can’t IMAGINE what I would be thinking or feeling while half-sedated and experiencing oral surgery!

Don’t want to know.

So evidently, I have to find someone who has a real anaesthesiologist on staff (or who they borrow). Evidently, you don’t need to be an anaesthesiologist to inject people with a bunch of stuff and put them half out! That sounds messed up too. But that’s what I need to look for. It evidently costs more, but there is NO WAY I want to be at all awake or have any awareness of the removal of my awful, rotting tooth.

Buyer beware!

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How Roger Nichols Changed My Life

Posted on 14 February 2012 by Debbie

On Sunday, during the Grammys, something happened to me that never happened before. I knew one of the people who they showed during the montage of who had passed away since the previous year’s Grammys.

Roger Nichols was best known as Steely Dan’s recording studio engineer. I was the weekend manager of a NYC recording studio owned by Donald Fagen when I was just out of college. I worked there from Sept 1993 until late spring 1995. So many wonderful experiences and memories there. But spending time with Roger probably tops it all.

Roger was in town in 1995 to work on Steely Dan’s barely live album called Alive In America. Too many in-jokes there to explain. He was Pro Tools’ing the hell out of stuff that never should have been put together by a man and his machines. It was some of the most impressive work I’d ever seen. He was just amazing. Nobody like him.

And we pal’ed around a bit. I was 23, and he was the same age as my parents, so don’t get any ideas. We became friends. We ate lots of quesadillas. I taught him some Spanish so he could order them the way he wanted them because the local place kept wanting to put mushrooms in everything he ordered. “Quesadilla de espinaca, sin hongas.” We went to see Blue Man Group when they were in a small off-Broadway theatre, where it had been playing for a few years already. We got covered in cereal and toilet paper as nobody gave us macs.

He told me stories of inventing the drum machine. Stores of spending $3500 each on two 5MB hard drives in the late 1970s. So many stories, all of them fun, positive, and engaging. It was a lot of fun, considering most people like to tell negative stories and complain. Not Roger.

Without getting too personal, I’ll just say that he had a personal issue he thought was going to go a certain way. I told him it was going to go the opposite way. I told him every day to just wait and be good because it was going to work out. That’s the shortest version I’ll say publicly.

I had a Macintosh, and he was the Zen Master of computers. He gave me some software, including an early copy of Adobe Photoshop. This was before I was a web designer. And today, I own a website design company, and I do lots of UX and IxD work. Roger Nichols changed my life. And I eventually became a paying customer of Photoshop.

We kept in touch for a while after I quit working at the studio. He believed in me, and linked from his Digital Atomics website to my website design company. So sweet.

When I read wikipedia on Sunday, and saw that when he passed his wife and family were around him, I felt this huge Butterfly Effect feeling. Maybe we changed each other’s lives. He didn’t deserve cancer or what he went through, but I’m glad he had his family and so much love around him. I was always be grateful for the times I got to hang out with him in NYC. Thank you, Roger, for everything you did for me, everything you did for music, and everything you did for technology.

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Facebook Is Missing An Opportunity: The Adventure

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Debbie

Facebook is missing an opportunity that I’m going to call The Adventure. Someone in marketing can name it something else. The idea goes like this.

You are on a trip or adventure of some sort. You are posting pics to Facebook. Maybe you created an album just for this adventure, or maybe some or all are hitting the “Mobile Uploads” folder. You’re also posting to your wall, checking in to places (Facebook and/or Foursquare), and putting up other content. It’s probably about your trip or related to it… or maybe just inspired by it.

Why aren’t all these things grouped together? I just got back from a vacation that was possibly the best I ever took. So many wonderful memories! They are tied to photos, videos, and posts that I put on Facebook to share with friends… and document. It’s the new LiveJournal, right? So why can’t Facebook put together my photos, videos, and posts in a sort of album that documents my entire adventure?

When I want to look back at this trip, the pictures weren’t the only things that have memories attached. I posted to Facebook about some great things I was experiencing, but those had no images associated with them. They were just thoughts and stories. It makes a lot of sense to be able to assign a video to an album (which you can’t do now), or even assign a POST to an album (which you can’t do now). That way, my “album” can really have ALL of the thoughts, multimedia, check-ins, and other tidbits from my adventure.

And since albums already understand levels of privacy/sharing, I can decide who can see it and who can’t. Imagine that your new “album” could include just your posts during that time, or it could include friends’ posts too! Maybe your Adventure is your wedding, and you want to include in your memories all the wall posts you got during your wedding weekend. Maybe you’ll include photos/videos where friends tagged you. Sure, we’ll let you hide stuff from the album later. But you can start with including all of them by date, or add things one by one. Facebook already has “hide this from the timeline,” so this is a similar action.

When I went to the f8 conference in Sept 2011, they talked about trying to understand what content was more important, and what content was lighter, like you ran out of toothpaste. Facebook’s Timeline is also about marking important events. There is now an interface where you can add a “life event,” like marriage, new job, etc… I think a big adventure is a perfect life event to organise and drop into an album. My idea matches where Facebook seems to be going with “cataloging” your life.

The Adventure. It makes sense. It’s the ultimate scrapbook. I don’t think Facebook Scrapbook sounds right, so let’s stick with Adventure for now.

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I’m On Vacation

Posted on 1 February 2012 by Debbie

Are you looking to connect with me? Well that is sweet of you! I am on vacation. I will see email from time to time, so please know that if you reach out, it may take a little more time than usual for me to reply. I am unlikely to answer my office line while not at my desk, so email is your best bet.

I return the night of 7 February, and then it’s back to my new and wildly exciting (yes I’m serious) contract gig!

Have a good week.