Julie had a long day yesterday. She is in her yearly crunch time with the end of the year stuff they do and yesterday she also had an appointment to disguise her true hair color from me ;) So Hannah got me up at 5:15ish in the morning and we saw her off and then played games. I took her to school and then finished up my testing on how to automatically convert a range of productivity documents into images or pdfs based on the file extension. It works and I hope it helps ease the users pain so that they can work with the tools their company provides for them in a way that interacts more seamlessly with our tool. Perhaps thats what life should be about. Finding someones pain and creating a way to help deal with it. No one can take pain away. I can ease some of it away through acknowledgment; ven implied acknowledgement with a new workflow in the application, can go a long way to easing someones pain. And then they can redirect their efforts towards things that are important to them which will hopefully ease their pain. Then I picked Hannah up from school and boy did we have a good night. We had mac n’ cheese and she had some other snacks while I made a turkey meatball sandwich. Then we playes some card games - war. Hannah does not like to lose. She tried to talk me into giving her my jokers (which in our games is higher tan an ace). First she asked outright, then she tried some sweetness. I told her no way, that the game wouldn’t be fun for me if I knew I was going to be lose but that’s not entirely true. I just didn’t want to explicitly give them to her. she just happened win my best cards in a series of wars and double wars. Then we watched the first half of the animated movie ‘Rango’. At around 7pm, we went upstairs to play another game and get ready for night nights. After she got ready I sent her to get the next game. It turned out to be the story telling card game. I think she got it for her birthday. We played it like this. You lay the cards out in a grid and then get lucky when Julie comes home to join us. Each person takes a turn and picks three cards. Then they make up a story with forests and castles and animals and princesses and lakes and happy endings with ever afters. Then the next person goes until all the cards in the grid layed out are gone. It worked out that the deck was evenly divisible by three and Hannh told the last story. Julie finished off night nights and I went downstarts for a pleasant surprise. I watched the movie ‘Ink.’ It streams from netflix and I would highly recommend it. Its a low budget but creatively produced story. The beginning is very weird and a little creepy. Actually, it was a lot creepy but I think that is because it deals with a sensitive subject matter with the focus on the child/childhood aspects of life. As the creepiness fades away the story progresses past the battle between goon and evil and develops characters that are real by highlighting a series of those important moments that sear themselves into out minds as memories. I won’t spoil it but I really liked it and the only movie I can compare it to is ‘Pans Labyrinth’ or ‘The Devils Backbone’ by Guillermo del Toro. Creepy, fantastical in a way that is most poignant during the transition between childhood innocence and grown up realization. Going to sleep I felt a twitch in my Idea Muscle. I want to reccomend this movie as well as others like Pans Labyrinth and The Devils Backbone but she is only four. As vivid as her dreams must be adding really scary monsters into the mix does not seem like a recipe for a good night sleep for either of her parental units. So the problem is how do I recommend these movies to her, leave her a digital eater egg that is not depended on a code like easter eggs in video games are triggered. I think it should be triggered by her age - when she is eighteen to twentish how do I give her access to this thought but keep it hidden from her until she is ready. Ready as I understand it? This idea of digital easter eggs is interesting because it might not just be limited to linear time and I wonder if they approach it in video games as how the user wanders through the story … as they gain proficiency they unlock more game areas. So it’s not just time but my main use case is time. It will take time for Hannah to grow and mature enough to watch a movie like ‘Ink.’ I think that average is about nineteen years old. She will be able to handle the scary creepiness and understand the subtle story that develops behind it. The digital easter eggs are more than just movie and book recommendations that I want to leave for her. Advice that occurs to me for her sometimes goes unsaid simply because she is not focused enough to understand it or it’s just not appropriate to discuss some aspects of life and love. Dud, but someday she will have questions and I want to make my thoughts now available to the Hannah in the future. With this idea of a personal digital archive that is passed on to my future generations how do you give someone age appropriate access - even better, how do I give age appropriate access to nine generations from now? I believe that it is important to know my ancestors and I was better off because I was lucky enough to have two sets of grandparents. But past them I don’t know a whole lot about my ancestors … I know a bit about where they were from but nothing about the wealth of conventional wisdom they must have accumulated during their lives. Perhaps I should state it more simply like this with Hannah in mind: I want a tool that lets me leave advice, tips, tricks and knowledge that I think is important. This information can range from good books and movies to read (and why I think so) to relationship and career advice. All of this needs to be reveled to the user in layers that are age (context?) appropriate. Also, this information is very likely highly personal and not for public consumption the way blogs and social media has evolved the concept of sharing. Facebook at least seems to believe that if one has something to say you should say it to everyone - even if thats only so they can make money. I doubt they are concerned about providing tools to pass on the wealth of digital information that we accumulate to nine generations down the line. Thats what I want to do. I want my children’s grandchildren’s grandchildren’s children (can you spot the palindrome) to be able to discover things that are important to me. It was an odd day. One where early morning interactions with my daughter lead to thoughts of empathy for the users which circled back to reflections of my interactions with my daughter that were triggered and inspired by a science fiction/fantasy movie about good and evil - there were many pleasant surprises today.
11/10/2011 ~ 7 min read
