Well, I'm a Kevin Fox, but if you're from the Chicago area and this is the first time you've come to the site, I'm probably not the Kevin Fox you're looking for.

Seems another Kevin Fox has been arrested under suspicion of murdering his 3 year old daughter, in a story that's gotten quite a lot of media attention, at least according to Google News.

I have no feeling as to whether the guy did it or not. Being my namesake doesn't mean I'm prejudiced towards him, though I hope he didn't do it if for no other reason than it would lessen the chance of my being stopped at airport security because my name matches that of a suspected murderer.

CAPPS II, the airport security system that causes anyone whose name is similar to that of a 'person of interest'to be flagged for extra security measures or barring from flight, is one thing I would be really happy to see eased or eliminated under a Kerry victory. As it is, I'm selected for security screening when I purchase my ticket less than two weeks in advance, but not in other cases. I'll keep you posted on whether I get screened more frequently on my upcoming flights. It's an interesting test.

Three more days. God, just three more days...

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Positive reenforcement has been proved successful time and time again. Expressing joy at another person's kindness, gratitude at their thoughtfulness, or mirth at their jests, it all feeds back into the mix to produce more of the same. Somewhere along the way, quite non-deliberately, I took this principle and internalized it, and now I wonder if I'm alone.

I love to create. I like to make beautiful things, useful things, things that other people enjoy. It's probably a good thing that I'm an interaction designer, because when I put something out there I get far more satisfaction from seeing the impact it has on others than I feel from the simple creation of the work. On the basic level, public reaction is the loopback in my positive reenforcement feedback loop. I make good things, and people like them, making me want to make more good things. But the desire to make good things isn't enough.

Some time long ago, possibly in high school, maybe a lot earlier, I got in the habit of giving my subconscious positive reenforcement. In grade school I was always a procrastinator (who am I kidding? I'm at work at 10pm writing a post when I should be finishing the presentation I'm staying late to finish) and when it came to writing papers, I'd often spend the first 13 days of a two week assignment with the subject in the back of my head, taking up spare cycles in the shower or on the bus. Come 10pm the day before the paper's due I'd crack open the word processor (or piece of paper) and empty the tank that had slowly been filling in my head.

Thanks to spellcheckers, I often didn't even have to read my paper before turning it in the next morning.

It usually worked out okay. Somehow while distilling in my think-tank the thoughts polymerized into strands that came out well without doubling back or making logical knots. Sometimes it was disastrous. By the time I was a senior in high school I'd determined that anything I write had a 2/3rds chance of being terrific and a 1/3rd chance of being absolutely awful.

I used to brag that I never knew which it would be until it came back with a grade. In truth that probably has more to do with my frequent skipping of the proofreading process than any auto-aphasia relating to my own writing. I'd never add that part though. I preferred the mystery.

But I digress.

Inevitably, the paper would come back with a grade on it. As Miss Griffith walked around the classroom, handing back papers, I honestly had no idea what I'd find on mine; the subjectivity of grading prose multiplied by my own inability to judge my own work. The uncertainty always came to a sudden clarity when the paper made its way to my desk. (Ever notice how some teachers place the paper face down on your desk, forcing you to execute the revelatory act yourself, like pulling off a band-aid, or possibly a scab?) Either way, seconds later I would know whether I'd written something good or bad. The marks of red completed the greater, outer feedback loop.

This moment is when my own inner feedback loop begins. If I got a bad grade, I'd file the paper away in my backpack, never to be read again. If I got an A I'd re(?)read the paper carefully from beginning to end. I'd read it with pride, and that warmth would drift down to my subconscious, telling it that this is what good writing looks like.

The funny part is that I didn't have the intention of making my own writing better, only to read what I sound like when I'm doing it right.

Nowadays, now that I realize the net benefit, I do it more than ever. When someone gives a particularly laudatory comment on this site, I'll frequently re-read what I wrote, often re-reading the same piece several times. It's like watching a well-worn videotape, looking for clues you missed the first five times. Sometimes I find alliterations and nuggents of metaphor that were so buried in the stream of prose that I don't even know they were there until the fifth time I panned for the gold within.

It's not just papers anymore. I'll relive conversations, re-examine designs, sites, even code. I try to view each with the fresh eyes of he who provided the praise. I wipe my own mental slate clean and pour the sand down slowly and metered to experience not only the resulting work, but the formative process of taking the work in.

I don't know what my bad writing looks like, but as time goes on I seem to have less and less of it, because I understand much better where I find my successes. This might be true in the broader context of life as well. I don't dwell in the past, and when I do, I find it filled with nostalgia, and only very rarely pain.

It may be that I'm doomed to repeat past mistakes, but I don't think so. Tromping through the forest of life we all build trails, and if we backtrack to relive the more enjoyable ones, we can set forth in the future using these well-trod paths as guides, without the need to set warning markers on the rough paths traversed but once, all illusory allusions to Robert Frost aside.

Perhaps it's a form of egotism, or maybe selective memory, but I like to think of it as taking good care in raising my own homunculus.

As a parting thought, I wonder now how far this rabbit hole goes. Does my inner creative self encompass a homunculus of its own? The spark of creativity? Is it a tiny flame that is constantly fed, or one like I, who feeds on his own successes and starves on his failures? Food for thought, as it were.

I wonder if I'll ever read this.

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San Jose Mercury News, that is.

Today Michael Bazeley did a great write-up (registration req'd) of the Randompixel project for his bi-weekly tech column in the business section. He was also gracious enough to mention the tremendous help that Rachel, Ammy, and Rick have been contributing.

The story is on page 3 of today's Business section if you get or have access to the paper version. Go, go Randompixel!

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If it's Tuesday, it must be Randompixel! This week we follow Bob, from Berkeley to Stanford to parts unknown.

For those of you in the SF Bay area, watch out for a piece on Randompixel in tomorrow's San Jose Mercury News! I can't wait, and I'll post the link to the online version when I see it.

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The many stages of my cool day (elapsed time: 15 minutes):

• My friend (and my best friend's sweetie) Paul got offered a job here at Google!
• The Gmail team had a small a one month anniversary (mensiversary) party!
• Al Gore showed up at the end to say 'hi'!
• I got to shake his hand!
• I gave him a Randompixel camera!
• He took a picture of Sergey and handed it to him!
• Sergey asked me, "You're a part of this Randompixel thing? I saw that and it looks neat"!

Oh yeah, and there was cake. :-)

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A dotcom veteran who refuses to lay down his arms, Kevin Fox is currently a user interface designer at Google Inc.

Kevin left his ancestral homeland of Los Angeles in the Fall of 1991 to attend UC Berkeley. After four leaves of absence, he completed his bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science in the Spring of 2001. During his sabbaticals he was a reviews writer for MacWEEK magazine, a seeded developer for Apple's Newton MessagePad, a webmonkey, a perlmonkey, web technical lead for Segasoft, Petstore.com and Hewlett-Packard, an invited member of Microsoft's Internet Advisory Board, and the webmaster and technical lead for Levi Strauss and Co. (where, incidentally, he co-invented the online wish list in 1997).

After graduating from UC Berkeley, Kevin worked in Yahoo! Inc.'s User Experience Design group, leading the interaction design for Yahoo! Messenger, Chat, and other properties.

In 2002, Kevin left Yahoo! for Carnegie Mellon University where he earned his Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction.

One of AOL's first beta-testers in 1987, Kevin now prefers small software foundries where the love for the product gives more karmic dividends then VC dollars. Kevin is now 96% dark-side free, and tries not to be evil.

Labeled 'usability guru' by New Yorker magazine and 'miscreant' by Wired, Kevin enjoys creating personal projects that play off the Internet's nascent communication metaphors. Most of Kevin's online exploits pass unnoticed (and unfinished), while some have made the front pages of the Wall Street Journal, Harpers Weekly, and CNN.com.

Currently residing with his girlfriend in Mountain View, Kevin has finally realized his dream of living within jogging distance from his job at a world-leading internet company.

Kevin is an avid ballroom and Irish dancer, and tries to write a thousand personal words a day. His current goals include learning both kiteboarding and the mysteries of love. Kevin's secret wish is to live in a spacious geodesic dome in the forest, with an attached sprung wood ballroom for entertaining, and an easy commute to the city.

He also likes cheese.

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Before there were any dotcom stories I used to ride the bus to junior high school every day. Attending a magnet school, I and most of my classmates were bussed in from outside the school's area.

One of my best friends in junior high, and pretty much my only local friend, was Josh. Josh lived a few blocks away from me and together we explored the depths of geekdom. He taught me how to use two 10-sided dice (err, 2D10) to simulate a hundred-sided die and I'd challenge him to read tiny passages from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and time me to see if I could find the passage within 60 seconds. We both camped out in the computer lab (ahem, back of the math classroom (with a teacher I didn't discover until three years later was a post-op transsexual (not that there's anything wrong with that))) every lunch, playing Sands of Egypt and Hunt the Wumpus on donated CoCos, a Kaypro II, and an Osborne.

We weren't alone. We were part of a cadre of geeks. Erik, Vincent, and a few others. One thing that set Josh and I apart was our innate competitiveness. We'd always try to one-up the other. I'd let him play with my Colecovision, and a month later he's show me his Intellivision. We both took the SAT in 9th grade.

Nevertheless, there were differences between us. I had a self-deprecating bent, and Josh didn't ever let up. I would admit to vulnerabilities or insecurities as a part of who I am, the step backwards that can lead to steps forward in relationships. I still do this even now, though only with a few friends who I know are either ultra-supportive (Karen, Rachel) or who will be critical (Ammy, Ali), and I expose that side of me to one friend or another, depending on whether I need a confidence boost or a reality check.

Back then I didn't know myself very well, and I certainly didn't understand other people as well as I do now. Back then I based my sense of self-worth on the respect of those around me. What thirteen-year-old doesn't? At any rate, in the ninth grade Josh and my relationship changed. Maybe it was that I wasn't confident enough in my geekiness, or just that I didn't feel right sequestered away in the 'computer lab' or that I started dating that year, but the rest of the group tightened up, and as they endured the perpetual social ridicule of the non-geeks, they turned that antipathy towards me, the sub-geek.

This shift turned out to have significant consequences in my life. The next year when we all went to high school I left the magnet program to go to a high school with a very strong all-around AP program, but not a hyperfocus on one area, as is typical of the high school magnet programs. Josh and that group went to a math and science magnet. Though he still lived closer to me than any of my friends in high school, we had virtually no communication. We'd see each other rarely at competitive events like Academic Decathlon, where we each represented our schools, but we really didn't do anything more than measure each other up.

Ironically, when it came time to go to college, I intended to leave the computer arena and focus on liberal arts but, through twists of fate to be chronicled in a later post, I ended up going to Berkeley, sealing my fate firmly in the forthcoming dotcom bubble. Josh went to Reed, studying math.

Years passed, school gave way to work and back to school and back to work and back to school. One day about three or four years ago, as I do at least a few times each year, I googled friends from my former lives to see what they're up to. I was surprised to note that Josh had finished his degree and come to Berkeley to get his PhD in math. At that time I was in the 'school' sweep of the pendulum and shared a campus with him, but I never looked him up. It might have been because, with only one current friend I'd made before meeting Josh, I'd completely moved on in my life, or it might have been because I knew that we'd instantly fall into that 'sass that hoopy frood' cooler-than-thou modality, and not only would it be sad to instantly devolve ten years, but I'd probably lose, not having even finished my bachelor's degree. Another year later I noticed he got engaged at Lake Tahoe and later got married.

Josh, like Denise, Carina, John, Steve, Jeff, Dahlia, Dana, Rhett, Ethan, Nellie, and so many other faded friends, only entered my mind in the abstract, thinking about how lives are like branches, winding, sheltering, separating and diverging from common origins.

So I was taken by surprise when I got a call from my mom a few days ago, asking if I knew that Josh was working at Google.

Way.

I went to the intranet and looked him up, and there he was. It turns out he finished his PhD in May and started at Google a few weeks before I did. Different building.

The first impulse involved dropping by his cube to say hi, flashing back to the scene in Hitchhikers when Ford and Arthur are sucked on to the Heart of Gold and Ford walks in to the bridge, intent on outcooling Zaphod. To follow that storyline though, his cubemate would probably end up being Maggie or someone similarly astronomically improbable, and the whole phenomenon is better left unobserved.

My second thought was that he mush have known that I was working here. In my six weeks here I've sent out a few company-wide emails, and was introduced at an all-hands meeting. Then again, he might have said hi and I might have just not recognized him. How's that for playing it cool?

I decide to loop in my cubemate and tell her the story. She asks if I can show her a picture of him. "I've met him! He was asking about you!" She goes on to tell me that he told her he talked to me but doesn't think I recognized him, and that now he'd have to plan some elaborate situation to surprise me with his presence...

I should probably just drop by next time I'm in his building. I'll just be sure not to ask him how he did on his GREs.

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So now I have an iSight and nobody to talk to. what's a boy to do, but set up a webcam?

Quelle retro

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In my apartment this morning...

Ring... Ring.... (Actually, that's not true. This is the sound my phone makes.)

Just as it gets to the truly funky part, I get to the phone, carefully unplug it from the charger, check the caller ID (614? where's 614?), and even more carefully press in on the scroll wheel to pick up the call without accidentally scroll-clicking them to voicemail, which I manage to do fully a third of the time. "Hello?"

...pause... "So what kind of cheese do you like?"

It's a man's voice, which tells me almost nothing. I'm bad at recognizing voices over the phone, especially since I've been using the phone markedly less over the past several months, and moreover since my phone has a cruddy speaker, barely better than the loudspeakers on aircraft carriers that make anyone on the PA sound like a cross between God and Roz from Monsters Inc.

In short, I have no idea who I'm talking to, but this is familiar territory.

I immediately reply, "Actually, for the past few days I've been taken with this Amish Butter Cheese." Not only is this absolutely true, (and trust me, the cheese is great, and is remarkable as it's a Jack variant that you don't get tired of. I mean it. Rachel and I could have eaten a whole bar in one go, but we stopped ourselves), as I was saying, not only was this true, but I didn't even go on to elaborate on the Irish White Cheddar we'd found last month, or the Dutch Havarti we'd just broken in to last night, but is already a favorite.

Details such as these are reserved for the closest of friends, or at least people whose names I know... or who read my weblog, I suppose.

The guy paused. I think he thought he had me. Much like Ammy's collect call from love, my mystery telephonic compadre probably thought his opener was the punchline, and didn't expect a rejoinder. I could feel his brainwaves over the phone, thinking: Does this guy really like cheese that much? Is he a freak? ...a beat passes... "I was searching the web this week and I came across your resume. I'm uh, a recruiter for [a fortune 500 company] and we're looking for an interaction designer with a strong participatory design background..."

The funny bits were when he told me he'd wished he'd read my weblog earlier, since then he wouldn't have wasted a phone call on Micah, as he'd have known that Micah just accepted the eBay job. I made a short list in my head of people he might want to talk to, and before I could share it he told me the other people he had already contacted from my program, matching hit for hit. I told him I'm already signed on for Google, and we bantered a bit anyhow, talking about the Edsel, the dot-com bust and the revitalization, etc.

The other funny bit is that it's the fourth recruiter contact I've received in the last two days, after no such attention for the previous month. I've got no interest in anywhere else, as I've found my perfect place, but it's amusing nonetheless. I've considered taking my resume [PDF] down, but I've found it to be useful in a number of occasions having nothing to do with getting myself a job. Call it a formalized extended bio (which reminds me, my bio is terribly out of date. I've got to update that thing...) or call it a template that at least a dozen people I know have used when redesigning their own resumes, but having recruiters call still gives a little tingle, a little 'might have been' window into a parallel universe that I can feel spinning off when I tell them thanks but no thanks.

A few days ago I had this whole epiphany. Actually, it came over the course of several days, in a few quick moments, so I suppose it's more of a stuttered epiphany, if the definition of epiphany can be stretched enough to accommodate that. It's about work, joy, and the circus. I'll try and write about that next time.

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So there's this thing that happens to some writers, probably best typified by Piers Anthony, when writing the Xanth series.

The author sets out creating an original work from the soul, exploring ideas and delving deep into their own creative well. The work meets success and they do it again. Then they start to find out, in the case of Xanth, that most of the readers are in the 'young adult' demographic, and then he starts writing to that demographic. Happily for both him and his publisher, sales shoot up in that demographic, but what the sales figures won't show, nor would the publisher care, is that it's not the same young adults. The young adults who were enraptured by A Spell for Chameleon and the Gift of Magic are, by and large, repulsed by Heaven Cent, and The Color of Her Panties.

Piers provides another, even clearer line in the 'Apprentice Adept' series, the first three of which are great and inventive, and the second three lowered their sights to the Scholastic Magazine crowd again.

What's my point? I didn't write tonight to bash Piers Anthony, but instead to bash myself.

When I started writing regularly on Fury, I didn't know what I was 'supposed' to write about. I didn't know who I was writing to, and so I just wrote from my heart to the void. Wherever there was passion there were words, and from words came the blog. Before there were comments there was just the void when I peered out from Fury. I knew there were eyeballs, but I didn't know whose they were.

Now I know my audience, perhaps too well. I feel like I'm writing to a specific group of people, even if most readers never leave comments. I've been slacking off on the more inaccessible UI criticisms and insights, and therein lies the problem. They're not inaccessable, but I've taken on the role of a TV producer who want's everyone to get every joke, even if they're less funny on average.

I want to write about love, but i don't, because I know my audience.

I want to write about the interviews I'll be going on in the next month, but I don't, because I know my audience.

I want to write about stupid things that don't matter, but I don't, because I've come to respect my audience, and I have this stupid idea that I shouldn't waste their time.

I know what you're thinking: "Clearly, you don't know us that well."

Ahh, but you can see now that I do. I can read your mind.

And no, I won't do it again. I'm not going to tell you what you're thinking now.

...

Almost every blogger has that time when they go on hiatus, but I refuse to. Maybe it's an aversion to the melodrama of throwing up my hands and saying 'fuck the blog' only to crawl back to my computer master within a few days, weeks, or months, as everyone does eventually.

So instead I slack off.

For every post you read on Fury there are five interesting things I wanted to share, but don't because I feel it's not the right venue, or because I need to make it perfect and extracurricular perfection is the first sacrificial lamb of grad school.

...

So what's the point? I suppose I am saying fuck it, in a fashion. As was the case with all those temporary abandoners of blogs, in all likelihood you won't notice a difference after a few months, and things will be back to usual, but perhaps not.

...

So I'm going to forget my audience. I'm going to close my eyes and divest myself of the compulsion to write posts that will garner the most feedback (this self-serving distraction from schoolwork notwithstanding).

The steady dribble of posts is, at least for the time being, a thing of the past.

In its place, I'll be posting whenever and however I please. Out with the style guide, expectations, continuity, self-censorship to a point, anyhow [shhh!]

No, I'm not going anywhere. In a sense, perhaps, I'm coming back.

I'm so fucking melodramatic.

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It's meme time, and today's meme is 'the alphabet of you.'

I got this one from Karen, who probably got it from Rachel. Anyhow, here's me, from A to Z:

A - Act your age? How old would I be if I didn't know how old I was? I act older at work, and younger at play.
B - Born on what day of the week? Wednesday. Wednesday's child is full of woe.
C - Chore you hate? I actually like laundry when I get to it, and cleaning makes me feel accoomplished. It must be paying bills, because when I'm done I feel poorer than when I started.
D - Dad's name? David
E - Essential makeup item? Umm. Contacts?
E - Essential item of luggage when travelling? My Yahoo backpack. Plenty of room for a weekend's clothes, and a snug padded slip pocket for my powerbook.
F - Favorite actor? Val Kilmer tends to stay high on my list. I completely forgot until reminded last week that I'd met him in person. Go figure.
G - Gold or silver? Silver
H - Hometown? Hometown: Encino. Home base: East Bay
I - Instruments you play? A little piano, a little recorder, and my bowed psaltery.
J - Job title? Grad student. Probably an interaction designer again in a few months.
K - Kids? Just me.
L - Living arrangements? By myself in a one bedroom renovated attic across the street from a beautiful cemetery. Will soon be moving to a one or two bedroom in the SF Bay area, either Alameda or maybe Mountain View or Palo Alto.
M - Mum's name? Carolyn
N - Number of people you've slept with? 9
O - Overnight hospital stays? None!
P - Phobia? Failure
P - Paracetamol, Ibuprofen or Aspirin? Excedrin: Acetaminophen, Asprin and Caffeine. I often get dehydration headaches because I don't have much of a sense of thirst. Excedrin works like a charm at getting rid of the headache while several glasses of water fix the problem by the time it wears off.
Q - Quote you like? I'm not going to teach you how to vandalize a car. You're not even old enough to drive one!
R - Religious affiliation? Religion? No thanks, I'm full already.
S - Siblings? One older sistah
T - Time you wake up? Various. I usually sleep at 2am and get up between 6 and 10am.
U - Unique habit? I think of ideas all the time. I actually start work on at least 3 cool ideas a week, but almost never finish. Last night I took a dozen pictures of wristwatches, convinced that all our advances in miniaturization and technology let us build more elegant digital watches, but instead we just make more complex ones. I don't know if I'll ever write up my ideas on that or not. Oh wait, I just did! NEXT!
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat? Eggplant. It's not an egg. It's purple and squishy in the bad way.
W - Worst habit? Thinking I know everything about a topic. I need to respect other's opinions more, as well as their criticisms.
X - X-rays you've had? Plenty of dental x-rays. Not as many others. I can't even think of any. I've only broken two bones, my little toe (twice) and a rib (probably). Since the treatment is the same if it's broken or badly bruised (tape it and wait), there wasn't really any point.
Y - Yummy food you make? I make really good tollhouse cookies. Add 50% more salt and double vanilla and they're really, really good. I also learned how to make surprisingly good lemon chicken quesadillias from my dad.
Z - Zodiac Sign? Cancer

Got your own alphabet of you? Leave a comment and link us up!

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Google loves me.

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In preparation for the inevitable '100 things about me' list, I got this from Liz today and filled it out when I should have been doing a writeup for my seminar class.

Welcome to the next edition of getting to know your friends. What you're supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire email and paste it onto a new email that you'll send. Change all of the answers so they apply to you. Then, send this to a whole bunch of people you know *INCLUDING* the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you'll learn a lot of little known facts about your friends.

1. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? Varies from 6:30am to 11am, and that's weekdays. More interesting, I usually don't go to sleep until 3am.

2. IF YOU COULD EAT LUNCH WITH ONE FAMOUS PERSON, WHO WOULD IT BE? Right now? I don't know. I want a 'get in to lunch free' card, so at that one moment when it's absolutely vital, I can take that person to lunch and change the course of the world.

3. GOLD OR SILVER? Silver.

4. WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT THE CINEMA THAT YOU LIKED? Chicago is the last film that I saw, and I liked it.

5. FAVORITE TV SHOWS? West Wing, Buffy, Stargate.

6. WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? Totally varies. Sometimes I go back to Chai and scone, or blueberry muffin. Sometimes two lean-pockets make a nice brunch on the way to the snow-laden bus stop.

7. WHAT WOULD YOU HATE TO BE LEFT IN A ROOM WITH? Someone psychotic who hates me. Again.

8. CAN YOU TOUCH YOUR NOSE WITH YOUR TONGUE - Not while they're both attached.

9. WHAT INSPIRES YOU? People thinking of really cool things and following through on them. I wish I had more of that second part.

10. WHAT'S YOUR MIDDLE NAME? David

11. BEACH , CITY, Or COUNTRY? Beach, near a city.

12. SUMMER, WINTER, SPRING, FALL? Spring. Such promise, not much of the heat. and I love the Spring rain and lengthening days.

13. FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Double-chocolate-malted-krunch. When I'm not in Los Angeles, it's Breyer's White Mint Chip.

14. BUTTERED, PLAIN, OR SALTED POPCORN? I hate popcorn, unless it's in front of me. I love it then, until it's gone, which is when I hate it, which is why I hate it. Get it away from me! Fine then, at least put on more butter and salt, please.

15. FAVORITE COLOR? Forest green, which is funny because it used to be my least favorite.

16. FAVORITE CAR? Oh dear. Too many to choose from. I really like my mutant.

17. FAVORITE SANDWICH FILLING? Veggie Hoagie from I.B.Hoagie.

18. TRUE LOVE? Yes, please. I've been waiting patiently...

19. WHAT CHARACTERISTICS DO YOU DESPISE? People with no drive. Err, characteristics? Um, loafing. I loathe me.

20. FAVORITE FLOWER? I like proto-dandelions and those colorful little ones that grow in clusters you pick and they fall apart... And honeysuckles.

21. YOU HAD A BIG WIN IN THE LOTTERY, HOW LONG WOULD YOU WAIT TO TELL PEOPLE? There might be people I'd never tell. They already think I'm lucky enough. I'd make life better for those around me in ways not directly attributable to me. It's time I gave back...

22. FIZZY OR STILL WATER AS A DRINK? Still.

23. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM? White, with a big red heart-shaped bathmat. I need a good shower curtain.

24. HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR KEY RING? 6, plus a camera for my sidekick and a doodad from the Cal Alumni Association.

25. WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE TO? The bedroom? Oh, um, someplace where all my friends are, where we could dance and be free from the more mundane cares of the world.

26. CAN YOU JUGGLE? Projects? Yes. Balls? Three.

27. FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK: I like the promise of Fridays. And this semester I don't have class then either.

28. RED OR WHITE WINE? Cider. Cranberry, please.

29. WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR LAST BIRTHDAY? What *did* I do? Went to a barbecue at Karen and Crystal's (4th of July and all) and hung out.

30. DO YOU CARRY A DONOR CARD? Nope. I haven't made peace with making myself into pieces yet. Maybe some day.

31. SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE PERSON THAT SENT THIS TO YOU: Liz glows and she's always in a fond part of my heart. I mean it. She won't leave.

32. WHO DO YOU LEAST EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?? Ghandi.

33. WHO IS THE PERSON YOU EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK FIRST? The evil 'Undeliverable mailer daemon.' I hate that guy.

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For the interested, I updated my resume design last semester, and finalized the design and content in a hurried session in Berkeley's Crépe de Vine last Thursday morning with Ali, before running down to my TiVo and eBay interviews in the afternoon.

I think it's pretty.

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This post made my day. Read the comments to understand why.

Actually, lunch with Dawn made my day. But this was great dessert.

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So a few folks have been alluding to the Fury mention in Macworld this month.

Turns out that this is a print-only mention, unless they just haven't posted it online yet. I went out and got a copy (December Macworld, page 26) and was pleasantly amused:

(click to enlarge)

I've got to start keeping a clippings book...

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It's no secret that Fury is highly rated on Google. For dubious reasons I'm currently the #1 entry for "Strongbad", not counting the Strongbad site itself. I also get a bunch of search requests every day for things I mention on the site in passing. Most of the time they're relevant, but now and then I notice funny bits.

For example, the ever-changing tagline just under the main page header is responsible for at least a few google hits every day. I have about 40 different taglines that are rotated randomly, and so the googlebots get a pretty wide range of them, index them, and feed them to users searching for who-knows-what.

I am, for example, currently the 6th and 7th hit for 'I am currently away from the computer'. (this is where I was going to go through a bunch of my other taglines and show how highly they're ranked, only they're not. Mweh; how anticlimactic.)

Carry on!

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So the newest web toy on the block is Googlism.

The site takes the name of a person, place, thing, etc, and will throw back an impressively long list of definitions garnered from the web. Not definitive definitions mind you, but a list of phrases that begin (in my own egotistical example) 'Kevin Fox is a...'.

The output is really impressive, as you'll no doubt see. I'm still sifting through, but the one that caught my eye was "Kevin Fox is my soulmate."

Sadly I don't play the cello, and dimes'll give you dollars that she's lusting after my nomesis, musician and creator of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Fox".

Nevertheless, here's my complete list. I've put links on the ones that I recognize as referring to me:

kevin fox is a cellist and guitar player residing in toronto
kevin fox is understudy for the title role in the musical 'buddy
kevin fox is the bass player for the jimmy nations combo
kevin fox is his own registered trademark
kevin fox is currently an interaction designer
kevin fox is suitably perplexed as the antipholus who finds himself being given money
kevin fox is an avid team roper
kevin fox is sure to celebrated as this insanely talented songwriter / much sought after string
kevin fox is trying a
kevin fox is trying a neat experiment on qwer
kevin fox is technical director of the spa and has trained closely with alan over the past ten years
kevin fox is new to toronto
kevin fox is writing
kevin fox is an experienced wrestler with great technique
kevin fox is
kevin fox is all right once the spelling starts
kevin fox is sl 538
kevin fox is loaded with complexity and good dialog
kevin fox is someone i met in the sca
kevin fox is making me giggle
kevin fox is fueled largely by exposition that is taken to a whole new level by the engaging performances of
kevin fox is now based in indonesia and plays for the jakarta bintangs
kevin fox is my soulmate
kevin fox is opening
kevin fox is working with an outfitter in asheville
kevin fox is struggling
kevin fox is coordinator of the school
kevin fox is now operations manager at wfxa
kevin fox is refining pcl's program to pay for this equipment replacement through the use of a general obligation bond act
kevin fox is the most clever human being on the planet
kevin fox is a genius
kevin fox is purposely meant to be cynical
kevin fox is the new mayor of roxbury of the mayor’s committee
kevin fox is the one that had to go to the scene when these dogs were lose
kevin fox is fun to talk to

Of course, I don't know about a lot of the remaining items, but I'll be spending a little time on Google searching for the phrases to find out. It's like referrer-checking (aka backlinking) but on a linguistic, not a linky, level.

So what are you?

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'Bait and Switch' got written up in a Danish news site, 'media:mac'!

I wish I read Danish...

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TextAds: The most sincere form of flattery.

Someone paid Google good money so that people searching for 'AOLiza' would see their ad for free chat bots.

I'm waiting with baited breath for the first TextAd marriage proposal. "Honey, can you look up 'peruvian lizards' in Google for me?"

For that matter, it might be interesting to place a TextAd correlated to your own name, something like: "Yo, I'm the best Kevin Fox. Dis those wannabes. I'm the one you're looking for." that is, unless you already have first billing.

Are you the first google hit for your name? Are you feeling lucky?

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Today, France has officially surpassed California as the fifth-largest global economy.

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I am the first 4 links Google returns for a searh for the word Skeezy.

G'night.

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This thread on Slashdot, regarding Yoda's linguistics (which, fair warning, I partook in) really cracks me up.

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I'm happy to announce that Wednesday night witnessed the release of Yahoo! Messenger for OS X! This is the first software release since I started designing for Messenger back in mid-January. This version brings the Mac client closer to the Windows version, with support for typing notification, the extended set of smileys, idle-time notification, and of course, Mac OS X. Yay!

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A dotcom veteran who refuses to lay down his arms, Kevin Fox is currently an interaction designer at Yahoo!, designing the future of Yahoo! Messenger.

Kevin left his ancestral homeland of Los Angeles in the Fall of 1991 to attend UC Berkeley. After four leaves of absence, he completed his bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science in the Spring of 2001. During his sabbaticals he was a reviews writer for MacWEEK magazine, a seeded developer for Apple's Newton MessagePad, a webmonkey, a perlmonkey, web technical lead for Segasoft, Petstore.com and Hewlett-Packard, an invited member of Microsoft's Internet Advisory Board, and the webmaster and technical lead for Levi Strauss and Co. (where, incidentally, he co-invented the online wish list in 1997).

One of AOL's first beta-testers in 1987, Kevin now prefers Yahoo!, Google, and small software foundries where the love for the product pays better then VC dollars. Kevin is now 94% dark-side free, and tries not to be evil.

Labeled 'usability guru' by New Yorker magazine and 'miscreant' by Wired, Kevin enjoys creating personal projects that play off the Internet's nascent communication metaphors. Most of Kevin's online exploits pass unnoticed (and unfinished), while some have made the front pages of the Wall Street Journal, Harpers Weekly, and CNN.com.

An 11-year Berkeley resident, Kevin is an avid ballroom and Irish dancer, and tries to write a thousand personal words a day. His current goals include learning both kiteboarding and the mysteries of love. Kevin's secret wish is to live in a spacious geodesic dome in the forest, with an attached sprung wood ballroom for entertaining, and an easy commute to the city.

He also likes cheese.

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A few people are probably wondering why I'm here (or, rather, in the Bay Area) instead of Austin, where every weblogger ought to be right now. It's South by Southwest time, and at this moment a few thousand online journalists, strategists, pundits, and cyberliterati are sitting on and partaking of panels, telling stories, and partying it up.

I'd be there too if I wasn't a dork.

At last year's SXSW I had a cascade of good fortune, taking me from someone whose award entry didn't make the finalist cut and who was debating whether to attend, to an award winner and emergency panelist. Time of my life.

This year I was invited to emcee the first annual Iron Webmaster competition. I gladly accepted, and things started to go south. The even staff and I never really made the communication channels that we should have. Team selection happened late, and if I had actually lived up to the legend of Kaga Takeshi (or even William Shatner) I would have reigned in a lot more control, marshalled my forces, planned entertainment that would make good use of the 90 minutes allotted, a period to short to make a decent web site, and too long to try and entertain an audience.

I was still up for it though. Brainstorming with Derek gave me some great ideas, and the organizers asked me if I'd mind having a co-host in the form of the illustrious Ben Brown, a person I hadn't known until a month earlier when I became an instant devotee of the short-lived Ben Brown Show.

Part of the problem was that everyone had the strange idea that, like the organizers, and Ben, I lived in Texas. I didn't realize this until about three weeks ago, when they tried to schedule a brainstorming lunch to start shoring things up. Around the same time I came down with the flu, and a 103-degree Kevin had to miss work for a week, putting me behind on an already aggressive schedule at work. All told, things started looking a little dicey for a five-day Southern romp.

So now most of my weblogging friends are in Austin, and the others are complaining that their web traffic has gone down by 40%, since most people who read weblogs have weblogs, and many of them are down at the interactive face-to-face love-in.

Not so bad though, I got to spend time with friends this weekend, seeing a student production of a stage interpretation of Dante's Inferno (heh, more on that later), having dinner at Zachary's (mmm... Zachary's...), and going hiking at Black Diamond Mine natural park, trudging through sticky wet dirt that still clings to my shoes as I'm on the train to work.

The first report, thirdhand, about Iron Webmaster wasn't promising. I really hope it went well, but it sounds like some of my fears were well-founded. Also it seems that there was a debacle with the Fray Cafe 2 storytelling, and people were turned away at the door because it was full. Apparently even several of those scheduled to tell stories were turned away.

I'm sure there will be comments on other weblogs as webloggers drift from their hotel rooms to the cybercafe at the convention center. As for me, I'm still sorry I'm not there, even more so since I recently found out that despite being a major corporate sponsor of the event, Yahoo! doesn't have the travel budget to send all those interaction designers who want to go to the CHI 2002 conference in Minneapolis next month, and I'll be staying home then too.

I should probably refill my calendar module with other events, considering that the only two things I've had in there for the last four months are conferences I end up not going to anyhow.

Hey, in good news, my video camera should be delivered today! It's supposed to arrive at home, which means Jim the Manager might sign for it. Otherwise I'll probably pick it up at the depot tomorrow.

No matter what else, I had a great weekend, looking forward to a good week. Hope the same is true for you!

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If you haven't voted in the 2002 Bloggies Awards you only have until 10pm (pacific) on tuesday to do it! See Jane Surf. See Jane vote. Vote, Jane. Vote!

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The 2002 Bloggies finalists are in! Happily, Fury has been named a finalist in "Best Programmed Blog" and "Best Non-blog Content."

The first one I'm really happy about, especially since I'm in the company of notable sites like MetaFilter, and weblog-software developers Noah Grey, and DollarShort.org. Mena (dollarshort) brings up an interesting point about whether sites built on public engines should be in the 'best programming' category (wow Mena is altruistic!) but that's not for me to say.

Actually, the truly unexpected honor is getting nominated for best non-blog content. I started shifting into more personal storytelling a few months back, and I can't tell you guys how warming it is to know that you enjoy it. The distinction between a blog and a journal is a fuzzy one to me, but it amazes me that I'd get recognition as someone who's bridging the gap.

So go vote! And more importantly, go visit some of the other sites that people thought were good enough to warrant such recognitions. I like to think of the Bloggies as a swap meet where all the edges of the Blogging readership come together and say "This is cool, and have you seen that?"

The best part is finding out about other great stuff out there, and maybe have a few new people enjoying what I write. That, to me, means more than any award could. Thank you.

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So hey, the 2002 Bloggies finalists should be announced today, followed by one week of frantic voting.

Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get a mention for 'best programmed site' but even if, it's unlikely I'll get enough votes to win, my traffic not touching that of the kind of sites that were finalists last year.

Still, may the best blog win! You should check it out, and see what gems other people love.

A couple of asides: First, doesn't it seem silly that there's an award for 'best-kept-secret weblog' that's judged in a popular vote? By definition the most deserving sites would lose. Second, be wary of the competition's definition of a weblog. One of my favorites was inadmissable, because it doesn't have enough outbound links. Note to self: linkpimp:blog as stream-of-consciousness:journal. 'Weblog' looks to be a contested concept, to be sure.

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Hey! The Bloggie Awards are back for 2002!

The categories have been announced, and for the next three days (until Sunday) they're accepting nominations for the various categories.

(so here's the part where I lobby for votes)

Sure I may not have the funniest content, Fury may not be the best-kept secret, or the best Asian site (err, yeah) but I think it just might stand a chance in the category of "best programming of a weblog." If you agree, heck, why not nominate me? Those who are nominated most often make it as finalists, and who wouldn't want that?

Obligatory bulletpoint list of cool things techie things about Fury:

• The Timeline
• Fury 3.1 codebase, which brought Read by Topic, and enhanced google indexing among other things.
• Cell-o-scopes
• Qwer.org (explained here)
• Dynamic Look Ahead module
• Pseudo-static links which are nice, short, and dynamic.
• Half a billion whiz-bang sitelets in beta (Metacookie being a particularly relevant example, war as a timely one, and AOLiza as a timeless one)
• and all the normal niceties like permalinks, comments, and archives...

And that doesn't even get into the coolest innovation, 'Furynodes', an object-oriented, on-the-fly page rendering system so cool and dynamic it was used in the recent reprogramming of LinkStew and the forthcoming redesign of In Passing... Soon I'll have it documented and make a public release for those who are interested in a really powerful content-delivery and management system built on top of PHP.

Okay, that's my speil. I hope you agree it's worthy of a nomination, so head on over and nominate away! And while you're there, I'd also recomment LinkStew in the same category, for Benjy's supercool 'possibly related entries' mechanism, as well as In Passing for "Best Topical Weblog" and Wockerjabby for "Best American Weblog."

Okay, all done whoring for now. I'll talk about something totally differnt later: Reflections of an Expo (many of which have nothing to do with the MWSF Expo at all, but that's where I was when I had a thought and scribbled it onto paper).

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So I've done a little work on qwer.org to make it more useful.

You can still use qwer as a place to swap text and html easily between computers, but now it's also an ideal tool for making shorter links.

As an example, if you want to share a url with someone over the phone, in an instant messenger away message, an email, or anyplace where a URL with a hundred seemingly random characters would be messy, you can make your own shortcut at qwer.

Say you want to show someone this Calvin and Hobbes book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0740721356/ref= ase_kevinfox02/107-0203713-9114939 but you're talking to them on the phone, or the url breaks when it wraps in an email. You can go to http://qwer.org/calvin, paste in the long url, hit return, and now http://qwer.org/calvin will redirect you (and your friend) to the Amazon page.

Don't give me too much credit. Though I always planned on qwer acting this way, I took some cues from the folks at makeashorterlink.com. I think the qwre solution works better though, for two reasons: First, 'qwer.org' is shorter (and faster to type) than 'makeashorterlink.com', which is in itself an example of irony. Second, while you can make your own shortcut at 'qwer.org/matrix', the same link at the other site would be 'makeashorterlink.com/?C38242C2'. Which would you rather use? Which URL gives you have a hint of where it leads?

In the coming weeks I'll be putting in more code to deal with recycling links after 7 days or so. I also plan to provide an option for permalinks for registered users ('qwer.org/username/matrix' for example) and to let users decide whether a given qwer link or page should be editable by the public at large, the way 'qwer text pages' work now.

In honor of the new functionality, I've officially dropped the [beta] from qwer's name. Please feel free to use it the next time you need to toss someone a mapquest link over the phone or in email.

Visit qwer now!
(if you want to...)

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Okay, this one's just for Californians, or those looking for entertainment (okay, all of us).

Check the availability of your vanity plate. You can also do a substring search to find plates like yours, to get more ideas.

I'm thinking that if anyone ever steals GRR ARG I'll try for "OMG STFU"

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One more reason to go to SXSW in March.

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So the avid reader will recall a couple weeks ago when I almost got on the radio. Well, last Friday I did!

Sarah and Vinnie were talking about cloning, and the morality of making clones for organ harvesting. ("They're still people, clones or not!") I remembered a research experiment creating frogs without heads and called in to tell them people without heads might be the next step. My cellphone was on its last bar of juice, and the car adapter was broken (actually, it's the lighter plug in my car that's broken, but same diff), so I was a little worried about getting cut off...

Anyhow, they didn't revisit the topic, so after keeping me on hold for 20 minutes whilst in traffic, Uze came back to tell me sorry, but they weren't going to get to me. they were about to play the 'Daily Game' though (twice on Friday, 8 and 10) and so before Uze dumped my line I asked if I could play today. She said I'd have to answer the qualifying question Sarah was about to announce, but if so, sure. (They always ask a qualifying question asking about something that they talked about earlier in the show, so people don't just call in for the game if they haven't been listening all morning.) I'd been listening for about 40 minutes, and also a bit earlier when the alarm woke me up, so I hoped I could get it. The question was "What movie will Hooman be reviewing?"

I had no idea.

I quickly thought about what was coming out soon, but everything I was interested in seeing had already come out. I quickly grasped for anything, and remembered that there's an Othello remake, "O", coming out soon, so I guessed that.

Bingo.

So I'm on the air, they ask my name, where I work, that stuff... They ask what the environment's like at Yahoo! and I say it's really casual, and they ask what I'm wearing right now, and as I look down to see what I'm wearing my phone goes 'BEEP!' which I immediately think is it telling me that it's about to cut out from lack of batteries. "Shit." I say, then realizing that the phone was just telling me that my cellphone horoscope had been received, and then remembering that I'm ON THE RADIO, and I hear them scrambling, but they didn't bleep it out. Sarah: "The bleep button's so far away and we only have like seven seconds..."

Anyhow, the question was really easy "Which of the following was not present at the battle of Wounded Knee? General Custer, Crazy Horse, some other Indian, or Paul Bunyan?" It was the second day they asked that question (though I didn't hear it the first time) and the previous person got it wrong. Still, it'd be pretty stupid if it wasn't Paul Bunyan, so that's what I guessed. Bingo.

Four boxes of Clif Bars and two Blink 182 (warning, loud link) tickets later, I get to 'have my own show' for one minute, where I can talk about whatever I want. So, as promised the week before, I of course plugged Ernie-Aid, and the best part is that some friends heard me.

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Looks like AOLiza got a press mention. It got a whole slew of hits from Google searches yesterday, and a lot of people trying www.aoliza.com (which redirects to the AOLiza home page).

That usually points to a press or web mention without an associated URL. Anyone know where it came from? Clue me in?

Thanks!

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Everything happens at once! I'm working fervently on the Cameo design (and rebranding) and am also being innundated by hits from MemePool and cherished readers of Harpers magazine (still haven't seen the issue yet. Time for me to scavenge from my neighbor's mail!).

Also working on the promised additions to AOLiza. I'm working on a redesign there too, but I won't let that delay putting up 5 or 10 new conversations this evening.

And of course there's school, grad school applications, and possible job interviews (covering all my bases. It must be Monday!

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Okay, not an article, but Harper's did print AOLiza excerpts in the 'readings' section of the November issue. I can't wait 'till it hits the newsstands and I can read a copy for myself! Meanwhile, site traffic is taking a healthy upswing and I again feel compelled to put more into the site.

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I'd like to thank Rick Wayne for the great AOLiza article in the Wall Street Journal today (Section B, page 14). It's a shame that when the New York office trimmed the story from 20 inches to 11, they also omitted the URL for the site...

Update: Thanks go out to Jonathan Dube at MSNBC for adding a link to the WSJ story on that site.

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I couldn't help but notice the throng of people coming to AOLiza from Pixar, but the referring page is behind your firewall! Any chance anyone can send me a copy of the page so I can see what you've got to say?

Thanks!

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An 'ohiogozaimas' and 'shalom' to readers coming in fron the two latest AOLiza stories on opposite ends of the planet, one from Hotwired Japan and another from Nana Israel!

In a couple days when school and work mayhem level off I'll put up a list of articles on the AOLiza page.

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Hoorah! The Wired article is up, and they even tracked down Mr. Weizenbaum in Germany to let him know what his child has been up to and get his opinions on it. I'm really impressed by how the news stories have gone deeper than just the humor, interviewing sociologists, getting great quotes from AOL spokespeople, and generally doing a really fair job of reporting.

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I've found that with all the recent traffic to the site, I've been reluctant to write more in the blog because the biggest news is all the traffic coming to AOLiza, and for all you first-timers coming here, that sounds pretty self-referential (which is fine, this is a personal weblog, after all) and egotistical (which isn't as cool). So bear with me. I encourage people coming here for the first time to look around, and check back now and then to see what's new.

Anyhow, suffice to say I had to do a lot of work yesterday throwing up a few mirrors of the site to handle twin stories from ABCNews and CNN. I think Wired is going up today, and I've been getting a healthy flow of traffic from UserFriendly (thanks Rachel!!).

I love the different levels people think about AOLiza. At first it was all about humor at the expense of AOL folk (other people's take, not mine). Then the conversations turned toward the ethical implications, then the sociological implications (if people can't tell this is a bot, how will bot communications evolve in the future? Watch out AskJeeves!).

In a nutshell, a lot of very interesting questions have been raised and I'm looking forward to seeing where the discussion goes. I'll be putting up my thoughts here as time permits.

Alos, on the Cameo front: Due to the huge current tax on my bandwidth, I can't put up the cameo pictures for another few days, until the traffic dies down. Those who are interested in the project (and I hope it's everyone, no wait, then I'd still have the bandwidth problem, aw, hell!) should come back next week and take a look. If you don't thikn you'll remember, go ahead and go to the cameo home page now and enter your email address and I'll drp you a note when the content goes up!

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AOLiza's larger than life.

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