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Follow along @planetmozilla.

I’ve added the archives to the about:mozilla weblog, on their very own Newsletters archives page. The blog itself hasn’t been in use for quite some time, but I’m re-evaluating that now and there will likely be activity there again soon.

My friend phil lives on pretty much the opposite side of the planet. I talk to him a lot more (like daily) than I speak to most people who live in the same city. This is one of the reasons I really love the internet.

Update: I made coffee.

This post lives at the other end of a bit.ly link in the current newsletter which I’m hoping folks will click to help me gather some rough statistics about the newsletter’s readers.

If you’re here because you clicked the link, thank you! That’s all you need to do, and I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. If you have any other feedback about the newsletter, please leave a note in the comments here. Thanks!

The about:mozilla newsletter needs to evolve. It launched about 14 months ago and hasn’t changed at all in that time while the Mozilla project has continued to grow and expand. Based on the feedback I’ve received from a few people, I’m proposing that the newsletter morph from a “light and quick overview of a handful of interesting items” to a “full-blown newspaper for Mozilla project contributors”.

This is going to involve a lot more research and editorial work, and it could end up being longer, but it will have better structure and organization making it easier to skim and digest. As something targeted at project contributors, I think it will be more useful overall.

The following static sections were suggested:

Firefox
* Feature development, major changes, demos, etc.

Labs and add-ons
* Labs, labs projects, AMO, add-on news (Firebug, etc)

Other products and projects
* Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, etc.

Upcoming releases
* Shortform list of all known/announced upcoming releases

Security notes
* Quicklist of recent security issues and information

Infrastructure and IT
* All project-infrastructure related news - upcoming planned outages, upgrades, changes, etc. Bugzilla, tinderbox, graphserver, etc.

Project coordination
* Upcoming bugdays, testdays, l10n events/deadlines, community marketing events, etc.

Events and conferences
* Devdays, barcamps, meetups, labs nights, Mozilla-involved conferences, etc. Bullet-pointy.

Meetings and meeting notes
* Standard reminder about the Community Calendar and all the goodness that resides there. Link to meeting notes blog + rss feed.

In the media
* Recent important media mentions or other PR-related things of interest

Mozilla
* MoCo/MoFo/MoMo related news. EC stuff, goals setting, education program, governance, awards, etc.

Etcetera/Miscellaneous
* Anything else that’s interesting enough to include.

What do you think? Good idea? Terrible idea? Do the proposed sections cover everything? Are there other things that would be useful in a weekly project newsletter? What else could/should be included?

I really want this newsletter to be as useful as possible for our project contributors, so your feedback is really important. Please leave your comments here or email me privately at deb-at-mozilla-dot-com. Thanks!

1) Web feeds
2) Email gateway for reading/replying
3) Threaded discussions

Partial points for two out of three.

The Mozilla Labs team is launching a grand experiment towards rethinking, redesigning, and redeploying the Labs website, and we need your help. All the details are over on the Labs weblog, and you can join the discussion in the Labs forums.

This is going to be a fun and crazy project, and everyone is welcome and encouraged to take part. We want to build something amazing, and we need your help figuring out what that is, what it looks like, and how it all fits together.

As the Mozilla project grows ever larger, it’s increasingly difficult to stay abreast of the latest news and goings-on throughout the community. A little over a year ago I started the about:mozilla newsletter in an attempt to make it slightly easier to get a general overview of the project, writing about releases, events, and announcements about Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, the Foundation, the Corporation, Mozilla Messaging…etc., etc., etc.

The newsletter has been a pretty solid success, but it’s time to step things up a little, so I have three questions for you, dear reader:

More news than space

1) There are always more news-worthy stories than will fit in a single edition of the newsletter, and the number is increasing. Do you have any ideas about how I could cover more news without making the newsletter too long and unweildy?

Promotion and reach

2) How do you think I could better promote the newsletter? I’ve had comments recently that while useful, it just doesn’t seem to have the reach and impact that it could.

Overall quality

3) In general, what do you think of the about:mozilla newsletter? What do you think it does well? What do you think could be improved?

I’d really love to get your feedback on these things, or any other ideas or thoughts you have about the newsletter. Please leave a comment here or send me email at deb@mozilla.com. Thanks :)

Ingredients

• 1/2 c wild rice (before cooking), cooked and cooled
• 1/2 c quinoa (before cooking), cooked and cooled
• 2 ribs celery, sliced thinly
• 1/3 bulb fennel, sliced thinly
• 3-4 scallions, sliced thinly
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Juice from 1 lemon
• Splash of white wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp honey
• 3-4 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Method
After cooking and letting the wild rice and quinoa cool, mix them together in a bowl. Add celery, fennel, and scallions, and mix.

Now put shallot, garlic, lemon juice, vinegar, honey, oil, salt and pepper in a jar and shake well to make a basic vinaigrette. Pour all of this over the stuff in the bowl, and mix well.

Ideally, you’ll make this a few hours in advance so the flavours can blend, but you can just serve it immediately if necessary. Leftovers keep well and taste even better the next day. x

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above)
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. (see below)
• Let them know they’ve been tagged. (you’ll just have to trust me)

The Seven Things

1) I figure skated for many years as a kid and was pretty good at it. I quit when I was 17.

2) I haven’t driven since sometime in 1994. Until this year I just never lived somewhere where I needed a car. My license has since expired, so right now I find myself in the interesting position of owning a vehicle (a second-hand van I got for a song) but not being able to drive it.

3) I used to collect comic books. I still have two decent-sized boxes, most of which are old X-Men and related mutie titles. I am an annoying person to watch the X-Men movies with.

4) I didn’t get interested in food until around 2001 and didn’t really start cooking at all until 2002-2003. In 2001 I was living in Montreal, and it was there that I discovered that food can be f&*%ing incredible. The combination of cheap rent, high salary, and a city full of insanely awesome restaurants expanded my epicurean horizons by several orders of magnitude. Until then I’d largely lived on ramen, kraft dinner, and boiled potatoes with butter. I am not joking.

5) I was addicted to the Asheron’s Call MMORPG (an early precursor of World of Warcraft), and played it with obsessive-compulsive fervour for two years. Funnily enough, the game is still going, having recently celebrated their 100th monthly update. I hope they leave it going forever, if only so I never have to completely say goodbye to Dereth. Holtburg, represent.

6) I was a total goth in highschool (more of an early precursor to goth since goth wasn’t goth then). There is no photographic evidence of this that I am aware of, and I would like it to stay that way.

7) I really love camping, but never get a chance to go any more. I’ve even gone winter camping, which is crazy fun although your feet are basically wet the whole time.

Seven People

• Shaver - Because he introduced me to Asheron’s Call.
• Lilly - Because he’s fun.
• Melissa - Because she’s awesome.
• Mary - Because she’s also awesome.
• Zab - Because he’s Zab.
• Peter Rukvina - To get this meme over to PEI.
• Nicholas McDowell - Because I’ve known him since something stupid like 1994 but haven’t actually met him yet. Yay internet.

Ingredients

• 2 19oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 3-4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 med onion, diced fine
• 1 med carrot, diced fine
• 1 rib celery, diced fine
• 1 med sweet potato, peeled and diced to 1/2″ or so
• 1/2 tsp salt (and more to taste, later)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp (or so) chile powder
• 3-4 c chicken or vegetable stock
• Juice from 1-2 limes

Method

Put oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. When hot, add onions, carrots, celery, sweet potato, and 1/2 tsp salt. Saute, stirring frequently, for 10-15 mins or so. As the sweet potato gets soft, brown bits will start sticking to the bottom of the pot. That’s fine. By the time I finished this part there was a good thick coating of browned stuff on the bottom.

When sweet potato is mashably soft, turn the heat down to medium-low and use a potato masher to turn it all into a nice chunky puree right there in the pot. Add garlic, cumin, and chili powder and continue cooking for two or three minutes, stirring. Pour a cup or two of the chicken stock in and let that heat for a minute or two to loosen up the brown stuff that’s stuck to the bottom of the pot, then scrape all that up into the soup (brown stuff = flavour, it’s tasty stuff).

Add the beans and enough of the remaining chicken stock to cover, then stir well to combine. There should be enough liquid to make it soupy, but the mashed sweet potato should thicken it slightly. Turn heat up to high, bring soup to a boil, then turn down to low and simmer for 25-30 minutes or so.

After it’s simmered for a while, get the potato masher and mash some of the beans in the pot. I probably mashed just over a third of the beans, stirring frequently to check the consistency. The mashed beans will thicken the soup, so just mash and stir until it’s thick, but still more a soup than bean puree. Continue simmering on low for another 5 or 10 minutes.

When ready to serve, squeeze in the juice from one or two limes. The potato adds a level of sweetness that you’re looking to counteract here a little. I ended up using the juice of 1.5 limes. Just add the juice a half-lime at a time and continue tasting and adjusting until it’s nice and bright without being too powerfully citrusy. Taste again then add salt if needed. I had to add about another 1/3 to 1/2 tsp of salt at this point.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a few gratings of fresh ground pepper on top, and sharp cheddar cheese and tortilla chips on the side.

Notes

Next time I make this I will probably increase the cumin and chili powder by a full tsp each, maybe using a blend of regular chili powder and chipotle chili powder. The nice smokiness would work well here, I think.

101 Cookbooks - I love this site. Phenomenal, inspiring, healthy, and straightforward food accompanied by great writing and fantastic photography. This is one of the first sites I will hit when searching for inspiration or recipes.

A Full Belly - It’s a little scattered in terms of content and frequency, but I keep it in my feed reader because it serves up bite-sized and interesting bits and pieces along with a smattering of recipes.

Arroz y Frijoles - This is the latest find, recommended by Melissa (who is basically awesome in all the ways someone can be awesome). It’s all about Cuban food, and while I’ve only dug through a smattering of the archives I can already tell it’s a keeper.

breadbasketcase - Marie started this blog on Dec 25th, 2005, in her attempt to bake her way through Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. Upon completing that noble and worthwhile goal (which I have considered doing myself), she continued blogging and baking and making all sorts of lovely food.

Chocolate and Zucchini - This is one of the A-List elite food blogs, and is worthy of the accolades. Clotilde Dusoulier, the author, has gone on to write and publish two books (a growing trend among food bloggers) and her blog continues to inspire.

Coconut & Lime - Every post is a clearly written original recipe with some minimal post-script chatter and usually at least a photo or two. A handy page lists the published recipes by category if you’re just digging around trying to figure out what’s for dinner.

Culinate - This is a multi-author mega-blog that does recipes, interviews, articles, and all sorts of other stuff. Usually good for at least 2-3 good posts per day, and absolutely worth checking out.

David Lebovitz - Cookbook author with a penchant for desserts but who writes about all sorts of food and life in Paris, among other things. From his Amazon.com mini-bio: “David Lebovitz was named one of the top five pastry chefs in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle and nominated for an IACP/KitchenAid Award for his book Room for Dessert. He has been featured on Today, as well as in Bon Appetit, The New York Times, People, Cooking Light, and Gourmet. David lives in Paris, leads chocolate tours, and teaches cooking around the world.”

Epicurious.com - This site is from the more traditional/corporate side of things, having partnered with Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines, but those partnerships are what makes it worth subscribing to, with its veritable barrage of recipes and interesting articles.

Frugal Cuisine - Cooking inexpensively doesn’t mean cutting quality. I don’t subscribe to this blog because of it’s money-saving tips, however, it’s just full of great, simple recipes, often with an Asian bent.

New York Times Dining and Wine Section - It’s all great and one of my must-have sites (this goes for the NYT site in general, if they ever tell me I have to pay for it, I will (within reason, mind…don’t get crazy)). The star of this particular show, in my opinion, is Mark Bittman, the “Minimalist” who wrote How to Cook Everything, which I turn to constantly for recipes and information. I have the original hard-back yellow-cover version of the book but will probably pick up the newly revised 10th anniversary red-cover version, as well.

Passionate Eater - This blog, as the title suggests, is really more about eating than cooking, but it’s well written and a fun diversion.

Michael Rhulman - Not just a food writer, but one of the great food writers. His best-known book is probably The French Laundry Cookbook (which someone actually cooked through at home, blogging all the while), with the more recent Charcuterie bringing up a close second. His blog is great and anyone interested in food and cooking should read it.

Serious Eats - Another multi-author mega-blog that publishes piles of interesting articles and recipes on a daily basis. Today’s surprise bit of wisdom? Animal Style Fries at In-and-Out Burger. Dear lord.

Smitten Kitchen - Akin to 101 Cookbooks and Chocolate and Zucchini, Smitten Kitchen is a beautiful blog with great writing, great recipes, and gorgeous photography. One of my favourite single-author food blogs. I am so making the Almond-vanilla rice pudding this weekend. Yum. Oh, and the Squash and chickpea Moroccan stew is on the menu as well. This is one of those food blogs you have to be careful about reading idly — it will make you hungry, even if you just ate.

Stone Soup - Posting is infrequent, but still worth subscribing to so you can catch the articles when they do come.

The Bitten Word - A couple of guys with a minor addiction to food magazines. The premise of this blog, in their own words: “We love food magazines and subscribe to Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Cook’s Illustrated, Food & Wine, Everyday Food and Martha Stewart Living. Over the last year, we only rarely put the magazines to use, instead allowing them to form a not so tidy pile in our apartment. Inspired by this post on Serious Eats, we’re resolving to put our food magazines to work this year, cooking at least one recipe from each magazine. We’ll post our results, and show you how it turned out.”

Zaiqa - All about Indian (specifically authentic Hyderabadi) cuisine. I’m trying to learn more about Indian cooking, and this blog is a great introduction that often goes beyond the recipes to talk about life and food in Hyderabad.

So, that’s what I have in my feed reader right now. There are tons and tons and tons of great food blogs out there, I just don’t have the time to follow them all. Do you have some favourites? Leave a note and a URL in the comments!

• Time (magazine)
• CF-105 Arrow
• Pong
• Yellowstone Caldera
• Tricorder
• The Ant and the Grasshopper
• Five elements (Japanese philosophy)
• Fibonacci number
• Caraway
• Fiddlehead fern
• Teleprinter
• George Eliot
• Swamp Thing
• Black Stone
• Blipvert
• Chartreuse (color)
• Pomelo
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh
• Maltose
• Aircraft flight control systems
• Hadrian’s Wall
• Katherin Hepburn
• Abraham Lincoln
• Letterpress printing
• Shuswap language
• Nehi
• Sagrada Familia
• House Hippo
• Civitas
• The Education of Little Tree
• Clifton Cathedral
• Isobutane
• Vashti
• Oregon Death with Dignity Act
• Ashanti mythology
• Ozymandias
• Gecko (layout engine)
• Japanese map symbols
• Persian Empire
• Eurotas River
• Schrodinger’s cat
• ARM architecture
• Chaordic
• The Wire
• Kubler-Ross model
• Chac Mool
• Standing Stones of Stenness
• Chimay Brewery
• Brownie (camera)
• Gallia Narbonensis
• River Phoenix
• Molcajete
• Pelagic zone
• Containerization
• Horse archer
• Roger Tory Peterson

The list totals out to around $2200 which seems like a lot, but it includes a lot of decent quality gear you’ll only ever have to buy once. Most of it is spent on cookware (pots and pans) because good cookware really does make a huge difference in the end. Oh, and knives. High quality razor sharp knives are your friend. They’re not cheap, but you only need two anyhow. This isn’t everything you will ever need ever, just most of it. Pick up other bits and pieces when you need them.

Ok, here’s the list. Feel free to leave comments if you think I’ve included something silly or forgotten something essential. I will amend the list if need be…

Knives and knife-related items ($185)

• 4″ utility knife ($50)
• 8″ chef’s knife ($91)
• Bread knife ($10)
• Knife sharpener ($34)

Cookware ($935)

• 8″ non-stick fry pan ($70)
• 10″ non-stick fry pan ($110)
• 10″ stainless steel fry pan ($116)
• 4 qt stainless steel straight-sided saute pan ($88)
• Dutch oven - largish ($260)
• 2 qt saucepan ($63)
• 4 qt stainless steel saucepan ($55)
• Stock pot - 8-9 qt ($93)
• Lids for all of these (4 @ ~$20ea = $80)

Bakeware ($203)
Do not get non-stick bakeware except for muffin tins and pizza pans. You will just end up scratching the crap out of it and wasting your money. Never cut pizzas on the pizza pans — slide them off on to a cutting board first.

• 8 x 8 pan ($14)
• 9 x 13 pan ($24)
• Baking pans (2) ($17 ea)
• Cooling rack ($12)
• Glass pie plate ($8)
• Loaf pan ($14)
• Pizza pan (or two, non-stick are preferred) ($5)
• Pizza stone ($40)
• Roasting pan ($33)
• Roasting rack that fits in roasting pan ($19)

Electric gadgets ($157)

• Digital meat thermometer ($19)
• Digital scale ($50)
• Spice grinder ($25)
• Stick blender ($54)

Tools and fiddly bits ($610)

• Box grater ($15)
• Can opener ($20)
• Citrus juicer (just get the orange one, lemons and limes will fit too) ($15)
• Colander ($29, but you can get cheaper)
• Corkscrew ($20)
• Cutting boards - at least 3, plastic, var sizes, colour coded if you like ($12 ea, $36)
• Dish towels (many - get six to start, wash them all the time) ($16)
• Food storage containers, square, many (leftovers + storage)
• Glass liquid measuring cup (large, pyrex) ($32)
• Heat-resistant plastic spoons, spatulas, etc. ($3.50 ea, ~$12)
• Heat-resistant silicon scraper ($18)
• Heavy-duty utility scissors/shears ($32)
• Mason jars, 125 ml ($12/doz), 250 ml ($13/doz), 500ml ($17/doz), 1 litre ($15/doz)
• Measuring cups ($16)
• Measuring spoons ($20)
• Microplane grater ($12)
• Mixing bowls (glass and/or stainless steel - large, med, small) ($30)
• Oven mitts (not silicon) ($11)
• Pastry brush or silicon brush ($8)
• Pepper mill (the best you can afford) ($55+)
• Potato masher ($10)
• Salad spinner ($30)
• Small spray bottle for water ($4)
• Stainless steel ladle ($9)
• Stainless steel serving spoon ($7)
• Tongs (2 pair) ($10 ea, $20)
• Vegetable peeler ($8)
• Vegetable steamer insert ($5)
• Whisk ($14)
• Wire sieve ($20)
• Wooden spoons (at least 3) ($9)

Non-permanent

• Baking paper
• Paper towels
• Plastic wrap
• Tin foil
• Ziploc freezer bags (lg, and md size)

Essential references ($79)

• How to Cook Everything ($20)
• The Bread Bible ($24)
• Cook’s Illustrated website subscription ($35/a)

Things not to get

• Silicon oven mitts - they’re terrible. Get regular cloth mitts.
• Almost anything “single purpose”. For example: garlic press, grapefruit knife, cherry pitter, citrus zester, nutmeg grater, cheese plane, melon baller, corn stripper, etc. Notable exceptions: citrus juicer, pizza wheel.

You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”

I still need to solder some loops on it so I can attach a chain and hang it in a window, but I haven’t had a chance to get to the hardware store yet. Happily my glass order arrived as promised, in two business days, and shipping was much less than expected. (I budgeted $80 for shipping, it cost $23. Huzzah!) I’m really happy to have found the very friendly and helpful folks at Atlantic Stained Glass — having a relatively local reliable supplier just makes this all so much easier.

Spending a full two weeks offline turned out to be more interesting than I expected. Like many of my friends, I believed that I’d be itching for some connectivity or email or news or Twitters within a matter of days. But I wasn’t. I thought I’d end up feeling cut off and isolated having no access to Web feeds, news sites, email, or TV. But I didn’t. I thought that, by the end of my exile, I’d be relieved when I was finally able to get back online. But that didn’t happen either.

Instead what I discovered is that being online all the time is profoundly fragmenting, stressful, and distracting. It turns out that I really don’t need to be incessantly jacked into the Matrix, that having constant, up-to-date information about all the myriad details of global, economic, political, and technology news doesn’t make me better, stronger, faster, more knowledgeable, or better informed. What it does make me is more scattered, erratic, stressed, edgy, and flighty.

Yes, flighty.

During my two week exile from the Intarwebs, I rediscovered my ability to read long, complex pieces of writing in a single sitting. I regained a sense of calm and an ability to focus of which I had forgotten I was capable. Without the constant distraction of email and IM and IRC and Twitter and Growl and SMS and Web feeds and the telephone and everything else, I found myself more present than I have felt in a long, long time. By contrast, the constant barrage of interruptions and distractions feels very much like a system that appears stable only because all the subsystems are equally unstable. Let just one of those subsystems get out of whack and the whole mess comes crashing down. This, I’ve realized, is neither wise nor healthy.

I also discovered that the lack of a clear line between “work” and “not-work” makes me insane. Now that I have regained some tenuous grasp of my sanity (which I hadn’t realized I’d lost until I stumbled across it again), I’m going to try to hang on to and strengthen it by being very, very disciplined about establishing and maintaining work/not-work boundaries. I’ve been working from home for four years now so this could be a bit tricky, and I’m bound to backslide now and again (and crunch-times are fair game, of course), but it’s a worthy and necessary goal. So far it’s working out.

It’s just time to slow down. I’ve spent the past eleven years continually ramping up my information consumption and communications channels, while gradually blurring the lines between work and not-work to the point of invisibility. I’ve been boiling that frog so unbelieveably slowly that I really had no idea just how stressful it had become. But now I do, so now it’s time to start fixing it.

Vacation lesson #2: Slow isn’t just for food.

We stayed in a house in a small town called La Roque sur Pernes in the south of France for two weeks (pictured above). There was no internet, no tv, no radio. I didn’t take my laptop or cellphone. I did take a bunch of books, and there was a shelf-full already there. The result is that I read a lot. Here’s the list, with very short reviews.

• Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. Awesome, A+++, will definitely re-read it. Highly recommended.
• Moving Targets, by Margaret Atwood. Must read for Atwood fans, missable otherwise.
• The Good Earth, by Pearl S Buck. Fantastic.
• Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. This was a third re-read for me, so obviously I love this book.
• Toujours Provence, by Peter Mayle. Meh.
• My Life in France, by Julia Child. Fun and interesting. Julia was quite a woman.
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie. Excellent. My favourite of the trip. Short, one-sitting sort of thing, but absolutely fantastic.
• World Without End, by Ken Follett. Another medieval page turner, but very, very similar to his other medieval page turner (the story of which happened in the same town some 400 years earlier). Good, but not great.
• The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley. Erratically written and awkwardly paced. Feels like the outline of a more epic trilogy that just never got written.
• Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. Sadly, this one doesn’t hold up. Loved it when I first read it however many years ago, sort of slogged my way through it the second time. Luckily Stephenson has already completely redeemed himself with Anathem.

Vacation lesson #1 - I love reading. I’m going to be making a lot more time for it again, mostly by getting up at 6am and not opening the laptop ’til 10am. Turns out it’s a really nice way to start a day.

Rob and I just got back from a two week vacation in the south of France where we drank wine, ate cheese, and spent a bunch of time hanging out with Zab and Alice. Being the photo nerds we are, of course, we took a bunch of pictures. You can see Rob’s at his Flickr set, and mine are in my Flickr set.

Part of my vacation was getting away from the computers as much as I could (seriously, I was offline for 14 days, more on that later when I’ve had a chance to reflect), so I took a decidedly minimalist stance regarding what gadgetry I packed. I had to take a camera, of course, but I took a very, very stripped down kit that included only:

• Nikon D80 body
• Nikon 20mm f2.8 prime lens
• Nikon 35mm f2.0 prime lens
• 2 8gb memory cards (of which I used one)
• An extra battery, a lens brush, and a microfiber cloth

This all fit nicely into my de-badged Domke F-5x shoulder bag, which is about 1/3rd the size of my regular camera bag. The kit was a little limiting, but the limitations were challenging in a fun way. (More than once I did find myself very much wishing I had 85mm and 135mm lenses with me, a few instances where a tripod would have been good, and I really should have included a polarizer filter.) I ended up taking around 650 pictures over the course of two weeks, of which I’ve posted around 190. I’ll write more about the trip later on sometime, but it should be said that a good time was had by all, although I may be ruined for cheap wines and not-French butter now.

Rannie Turingan is a completely kick-ass photographer in Toronto. He was one of the Zap Your PRAM crew, and spent a whole lot of time chasing down the other attendees and taking our pictures. He’s now finished up processing and posting the formal portraits on his website: Zap Your PRAM portraits. It’s a really nice record of the event, so @Rannie: many thanks for taking the time to do this. You rock.

One of the earliest discussions to emerge during the Zap conference centered around the what seems to be a growing drive to record everything and every moment (by twittering it, Plazing it, photographing it, etc.)

The questions that emerged were: Does recording the moment change it? In recording it, are we essentially mediating it for ourselves, taking a step back and observing rather than simply experiencing? Are we stepping outside the moment in the act of recording (or thinking about recording) it, essentially separating ourselves from the experience to a certain degree?

Opinions were mixed. Thinking about it more, I believe that recording a moment does, in fact, separate you from it to a certain extent. And I think that the more you record or think about recording, the less present you actually are.

A few years ago I was in Amsterdam to attend a conference. Naturally we went a little early and stayed a little late so we could take time to experience the city, and during that time I took hundreds of photographs, most of which were just terrible. In spite of taking all these photos, however, my most memorable moment in Amsterdam was when I encountered the works of Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum. They are absolutely breathtaking. Looking at prints in books just doesn’t come anywhere close to the experience of seeing the originals. It was overwhelming and deeply emotional and really quite astonishing for me. I have never had so visceral a reaction to art before, and it was entirely unexpected. I will never, ever forget that experience. And I didn’t take a single picture while I was there. Not one. And my other memories of Amsterdam are of moments where I wasn’t bothering to take photographs. Dinner with friends and coworkers. Having drinks with Rob at a small side street cafe. Talking to some locals while exploring the city’s nightlife. Almost getting killed by a ravaging horde of cyclists before I figured out how traffic worked. Sitting in the lobby watching people walk by the hotel in the morning, drinking insanely good coffee.

The photographs I took? I don’t remember experiencing the thing in the photo, I remember taking the photo. Recording the moment separated me from it, and it now feels almost fake.

We’re going to France soon. We’ve never been before, and I’m really excited about the trip. While I expect I will take my camera with me wherever we go, I am going to be much more deliberate and thoughtful about what I photograph. Rather than taking hundreds of photos of everything, I’m going to take only a few — and only if they’re worthy of being photographs — and spend more of my time actually being in the moment, paying attention, experiencing. What I learned from Amsterdam is that the strongest memories are made this way, not by flipping through a shoebox of pictures when you get home.

The beginning

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be involved with what ended up being the best, most fun, and most inspirational “conference” I’ve yet attended — Zap Your PRAM, hosted by the ever gracious and ridiculously awesome folks of SilverOrange.

The conference (more aptly described as an “unconference” by those in the know) was held in lovely Dalvay-by-the-Sea in PEI, a mere stones throw (and a 1.5 hour drive including 12-odd kilometers over the Confederation Bridge) away from our Monctonian abode. When the time came, we just hopped in the car and drove over to the island.

The weekend

The conference itself was astonishing. I could sit here and write for hours about it, but I’ll hit the highlights now and maybe continue with some follow-ups if the mood strikes:

1) No name tags. I’m not sure if this was strategic or just because no one thought of it, but it doesn’t matter. The result was that when you walked up to someone the first time, you looked them in the eye and introduced yourself instead of the standard “wandering around peering at name tags ’til you find someone interesting to talk to” crap you get at other conferences. Sure, this may have also been the result of there only being 50 people in the entire hotel save for a few staff, but it was great either way.

2) No “ice-breakers”. We started with random rambling around the first floor of the hotel with pre-dinner drinks followed by a short introduction session that was maybe 5-10 minutes long. We then immediately broke for dinner where we all ended up at tables of 6 or 8 people. If you put a bunch of interesting folks together for three courses and wine over a 2 hour period, they’re going to strike up a conversation, no matter how shy or reserved they (*ahem* I) may usually be. People were given the space to interact however and whenever they were comfortable doing so, and so they did instead of withdrawing from an uncomfortable situation and retreating to their rooms.

3) The meals. Good lord, the food was incredible. The schedule allowed for 2 hours each for lunch and dinner, so the meals weren’t an “eat and run so you can get to the next talk” thing, they were an absolutely integral part of the experience. It was in the dining room where most of the conversations really got into gear (to be continued lingering over coffee, and later out by the fire with wine).

4) The talks. There was one track and everyone attended every session. Two days consisting of three one-hour slots in each the morning and afternoon, held in what amounted to someone’s living room (albeit with a few more comfy sofas and chairs that most of us have). Talks were generally informal, and the audience equally so — random questions evolved into discussions which further evolved into wild gesticulating and wandering all over the conceptual map. The hosts managed to cut each session off at the hour mark (which is good else we would have just continued the first discussion for the full length of our stay), but topics were inevitably revisited during meals or random-drinking-in-front-of-the-fire later in the evening.

5) The environment. Comfortable, welcoming, and, most importantly, isolated. Zap put 50 people together in a hotel all by themselves with nothing else to do but hang out and talk. The rooms had no TVs, telephones, or radios. There were no local bars or restaurants to wander off to and hide in. If you weren’t in your room sleeping (or lying awake wondering just how haunted the place could possibly be) you were downstairs interacting with the rest of the Zappers.

6) The people. Limiting attendance to 50 is a master stroke. It’s large enough that there was a great diversity of interests and viewpoints represented, but small enough that by the end of it everyone had spent time talking to pretty much everyone else. And everyone was…incredible. Smart, funny, inquisitive, engaging, knowledgeable, interesting, and insightful across the board. No giant overinflated egos, no primadonnas, no holier-than-thous. Just good, friendly, decent folk, all of whom had interesting stories to tell.

7) Which brings us to: the storytelling. Brad Turcotte (aka Brad Sucks, whose music you should go get right now, omg go) managed to establish “storytelling” as the underlying theme for the whole conference. It was wall-to-wall stories all weekend — how a song gets made, what the writer’s strike looked like from the inside, why the economy is in dire shape (and why you should get to know a farmer), how the internet and technology are changing the foundations of art history and how we interact with images, why design matters, how work is changing — and those were just some of the formally scheduled sessions. So many more stories were told in the time before, in between, and after. No bullet points, no sales pitches, no rapid-fire slickly-rehearsed committee-approved marketing “decks”. Just regular folks telling interesting stories about things they’ve done or experienced or thought about.

The fallout

I have never come away from a weekend of interacting with a large group of people this energized and inspired. My need to create something rather than just consume things is in absolute overdrive. My PRAM was definitely zapped.

I have only two regrets about the weekend. The first is that I didn’t stay up ’til 3 or 4 am every night, taking part in the wee-early-hours discussions that were apparently held. There is something in the island air (augmented by wine and so much rich, incredible food) that just made me a sleepy, sleepy girl.

My other regret is that I didn’t take the opportunity in the final wrap-up session to talk about the stained glass project I’m embarking on, because I think the Zappers would have appreciated the strange nerdish craftiness of it. So, since I’ll be pointing the Zappers at this post, I’ll just put it here.

Something I’m working on: a story

I love stained glass — the interplay of colour and light can absolutely hypnotize me, and I will sit and stare at it for hours. I also love making stained glass — even though I’m relatively new to the craft, I find it profoundly satisfying and meditative. Being a telecommuting knowledge worker, I live on the computer, so the act of creating something physical and tangible is incredibly gratifying. I don’t have very many moments in life where I can point at something and say, “I made this.”

What complicates things is that I want to make stained glass based on designs that I create — unique items that have never been done before, by anyone. One day when I was wandering around the internet looking for inspiration, I stumbled across (and this is where it gets a little nerdy) the Florida State University Molecular Expressions optical microscopy website. Here FSU hosts “one of the Web’s largest collections of color photographs taken through an optical microscope”. This may sound less f’ing awesome than it actually is, so here’s an example:

Paging through the gallery, I found dozens of images that are beautiful, abstract expressions of the interplay of science and nature. They also already more or less look like stained glass, so it wasn’t a huge leap from “those look like stained glass” to “I want to use them as the inspiration for stained glass”. The FSU Microscopy website has a relatively scary “Licensing Information” page, so I erred on the side of caution and sent an email asking permission to use the images in this way. They consented, and thus my project was born.

All of this happened the week prior to Zap, so I have no completed panels to show you, but I have more-or-less finished the first design I’m going to attempt. It’s based on the microphotograph of Albuterol, a bronchiodilator used to treat asthma, bronchitis, emphasema, and other lung diseases. (FWIW, I didn’t actually know that, I just read the website.)

Here’s the original image:

Here’s what my pattern and colour sketch look like right now:

Since this is my first complex self-designed piece, I figure I’ll make it relatively small…maybe 12×15″. It’s an experiment and a learning tool, so I really have no idea how it will work out. I’m super excited about getting started on it, however, and I’ll probably post copious updates while it’s under construction. I’m hoping to turn the microscopy idea into a series of at least 12 pieces, but there’s enough material in the FSU site to keep me busy for a lifetime. We’ll see how it goes.

The finish

Reading back through this post I realize that it is more or less in the very spirit of Zap, starting with “I’ll just hit the highlights” and then wandering at length into realms only tenuously connected with the original topic at hand.

I had such a great time. I learned so much. I want you all to be my new best friends.