These are the five six seven levels of “you’re invited” from one person to another:

Level 1) I’ll only go to this thing if you’ll go with me. – Sir Grubb
Level 2) I’m going to this thing and I’d love it if you came too.
Level 3) We’re going to this thing. Wanna come too?
Level 4) We’re going to this thing. You should totally go (you shouldn’t).
Level 5) You can come if you want to.
Level 6) I have to check with so and so, but I guess you can come. – Jay Zombie
Level 7) Just find me on Foursquare.

There ain’t nothing wrong with accepting a level four invite. Sometimes people give a level three or four  just to keep things casual, instead of dropping a level one pressure cooker on someone, as Timoni pointed out. But don’t skimp, give someone a Level One invite today. Oh, and did I miss any?

From my homie Craig AKA Mr. Peters.  - I can’t BELIEVE I am represented as a dentist machine – the B-TRON 201 – and didn’t know about it:

The wonderful people of the internet, being wonderful, have taken to putting various body parts on FourSquare as venues. Each venue has a category and some have addresses and a Mayor. Most of them have people that love to check-in there, because it’s hilarious when you are scanning FourSquare to see that six of your friends have left a party to go to someone’s boobs. So here are the best people parts venues that I’m aware of on Foursquare. Please send along if I’m forgetting any big ones:

• Maya’s Hair (Theme Park)
• Trammell’s Beard (Gay Bar)
• Dayna Steele’s Cleavage
• Jessica’s *Ahem* (Strip Club)
• Nate’s *Ahem* (Strip Club)
• Brian Shaler’s Mustache (Closed Now – thx Micah)

I believe that if we put all these parts together, it would live at the SF Embassy in Austin, and would be called a bonestorm.

Everglades Camping on the Southern Most Tip of The Continental US, originally uploaded by boltron-.

Paul Meets the Milky Way, originally uploaded by boltron-.

This is now my most interesting photo on flickr – crazy.

Along with two amazing photographers located in Chicago and New York, Paul Octavious and Steph Goralnick, and the ever awesome Laura Brunow Miner here in SF, I have embarked on a mission to let people control my Canon 5d Mk2 camera, see through my lens, and take photos remotely. As Phoot Camp alumni, we have completed two experiments so far. In the first, Paul art directed an entire animated photo shoot for “whimsical,” a stop-motion and time-lapse animation about a woman being chased by a monster. He saw through my camera lens from Chicago, and told me how to shoot each scene and where to move the characters over the speaker through Skype (more on that later). It was like we were collaborating together in the same place. In the second, where Steph has actually taken pictures by remote controlling my camera, while on the phone with laura and I, she told us to jump on the count of three. We jumped. And she snapped the photo from New York. Using my camera. Then she told me to put on a woman’s coat and spin around, but that’s not necessarily relevant.

THE POINT IS, THIS IS AN AMAZING WAY TO COLLABORATE WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

I use a USB cable to tether the camera to my Macbook. Then I use Remote DSLR Pro to control the camera, and get a live view through the lens. I share the macbook’s screen remotely using either Skype or Adobe Connect. The photographer in another location can actually press the shutter release, change ISO, and ask me (the human tripod) to move around, tilt the camera, pan, etc.

IN THE FUTURE ALL CAMERAS WILL HAVE REMOTE CONTROL.

And Laura sent me this fantastic interview about setting up cameras in the wild to remote take pictures of animals.

“What do you say to people that suggest using the camera traps is not the same thing as you taking the image?

Yes, some people like to say that I didn’t take them. My reply to them is, of course I did. I found the spots and rigged the cameras. I adjust how the camera functions. It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me. But to get the shot I want, I can’t be there. It’s not possible. They are very personal shots. Intimate. And a wild animal wouldn’t be in that same spot if I was.

Pro Tip: ‘Sometimes we rub dung all over the equipment so the animals won’t immediately smell human.’”

This is just a draft and I will have more information here on how you can get involved. Open to any other ways to do the shutter exchange as well!

Charlene has been my neighbor for the last two years, and I’ve been listening to her sing every now and then, because, well, the entire neighborhood can hear her sing. But until today I never knew where the singing was coming from. I’ve been tweeting some of her lyrics over the years, I think she is awesome, and I finally got the chance to meet her today. I wanted to post this to share with other folks how interesting her perspective on life is. I hope it’s not perceived as exploitative or condescending to post this – I really feel inspired and look at things a little differently when I hear her. It’s easy to dismiss what she says as just crazy rambling, but I think there’s something totally effing awesome about the way she talks and sings.

Some more quotes I overheard from a song 6 months ago. CHORUS: “thank you jesus. now get your fat ass up bitch. yeah that’s the way I talk to god, you got a problem with it?! thank you jeeeeesus (singing) oh yeah.”

“I got confused and thought yesterday was sunday. QUITE A DAY. Give a cut to jesus!”

1,383 photos over two days. Music is Bob by Otto: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeqKtHNicAI. Big thanks to Tom for helping with this one and the whole crew for such a god damned epic trip.

I spend a good part of each day procrastinating real work by reading tweets. A good portion of those tweets involve dramatic obscure relationship commentary. It’s officially a genre. The only requirement is that you divulge some very real emotions about a relationship, without providing any details about the other party, so that essentially nobody outside your closest circle will know what you were talking about. It’s most often women who do this, but guys do it too (shit I have). The male obscure relationship commentary tends to be a little more detached, like we are talking about a math problem. “I find it interesting how I am more broken up over a 2+ month relationship vs divorcing after 13 years.”  Dude that’s heavy stuff. While it is technically “interesting,” it’s also perhaps reflective of some larger issues.

Facebook doesn’t really have these kind of obscure comments nearly as much. Twitter owns it. Probably because of the difference in nature between followers and friends. Facebook relationship commentary is the opposite of obscure. It tends to be highly targeted. I’ve had several friends read status updates from ex-girlfriends or boyfriends that seemed designed to be read by them and people close to both of them. Things like “I’ll bring my entire voting history to my date tonight,” after a breakup around political differences. It signals that a) the person has a new date and b) they are pissed about breaking up over politics. Not obscure at all. Targeted.

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In 1999 I created an art project as part of my “digital technology and society” degree at U.C. San Diego. The official Research Scholar program there at the time allowed seniors to make presentations or papers based on their field of study, so I applied some of Foucault’s theories to the world of digital interfaces. Specifically, i found that his ideas about utilitarian philosopher Jeremey Bentham’s Panopticon worked inside the digital realm. Each image is supposed to address the question, “Is power articulated through interface design?” Now, almost ten years later on the nose I see my friend on twitter Soufron posted a link to a new digital panopticon article. Awesome!

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From dan “balls” soha:

So, let’s start off with a history lesson.  Yesterday, we celebrated Cinco de Mayo.  Cinco de Mayo celebrates  Mexico’s “shocking” victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862 (is a victory over France ever that shocking?).  They don’t celebrate in Mexico, but *we* do because we take every opportunity to get drunk.

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My Boyfriend.

Standard. It’s most often dropped right up front and has a very specific purpose. For example, “My boyfriend told me about this restaurant so I was excited…” The deeper meaning is that you should stop thinking you might click on my profile and check out my photos. However, you can continue reading my review once you take a second to re-adjust your mind set, perv.

The Boyfriend.

As in “I had eggs and the boyfriend had salmon.” This says that I’m comfortable mentioning I’m in a relationship, but secretly things are not as stable as I would like. Adding “the” in front makes it seem more solid. Like “the moon” or “the IRS.”

My Man.

Nobody says this. Ever. Except one dude to another. Especially one 70′s black guy to another.
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Starting Monday Nov 17th, i’m going to try (again) to not be late to a single thing for seven days. My last attempt failed horribly.

1. no flickr or facebook before noon
2. write down in the calendar when i need to leave for every appt/meeting/whatever
3. especially mornings
4. i have to pay $20 to every person i’m physically late to meet