Another passing of a family pet, Jeannie, our chicken

Last Summer, we welcomed Jeannie to the family. She belonged to a large flock of chickens and didn’t fit in well in the pecking order. We adopted her and went all out and bought her a nice chicken coop from Saltbox Designs, a studio in Ballard. She was a loner, always afraid of everything. In our yard, she was content to wander around by herself. Over the course of the Summer, her feathers slowly grew back.

As Fall came and Winter drew near, we were concerned of having her out there by herself all Winter. We bought a New Hampshire Red, Lola, to join the flock. As beginner flock owners, we didn’t know that the new bird bullied Jeannie all night long in the coop. This was the first night they spent together after a few days separated. Jeannie lost most of the feathers in her back and neck. She was terrified. It seems that she was destined to be a lonely chicken.

We built her the coop below from scrap wood and kept her isolated from Lola. We later introduced Amelia to the family.

Jeannie had her moment. She lived contently in the small coop. Her roosting bar was smaller and the coop was cozy.

The neighborhood kids walked by every morning on their way to school and named her Blueberry. She was everyone’s favorite.

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A few weeks ago, Jeannie suddenly passed. A few days earlier, she appeared a little weak. After feeding her and making sure she had enough to drink, she regained her energy again. Two days later, we came out in the morning and did not hear her unique voice.

Our first chicken had passed.

Like when our cat Pepe passed, Jeannie was had a special place in our hearts. Our time with her was fairly limited but she was part of the family. Her voice will be missed. Her willingness to be held and hugged will be missed.

Jeannie, we’ll miss you. You’re now in a better place. No one will bully you anymore.

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PS: My wife made the headstone where she was buried in the yard. Someone came by and left the blue wind wheel. I’m sure it’s the kids that come by each morning and named her Blueberry.

Getting back to public service – joining the Seattle Technology Board

Back in 2008, I served as a member of the City of Davis Finance and Budget Commission. I wrote a post on my lessons learned. Today, I’m excited to announce that I have been appointed by Mayor Mike McGinn and confirmed by the Seattle City Council to be a member of the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (#CTTAB). I am deeply honored and humbled to be selected among so many qualified applicants and look forward to sharing my knowledge, experience, and expertise in public and private sector consulting.

When I first served for the City of Davis, it was my first attempt at being engaged in local government and a chance to exercise my Masters in Public Policy. Years went by as I continued on to consulting and I became disconnected. This is a great leap back into local government in a much bigger City. It’s very exciting to be a part of a thriving City in a tech hub and having the opportunity to inform the future growth of technology in Seattle.

A few of my interest areas include bridging the digital divide. We’re starting to see a flatter world. Although the economic divide continues to get bigger and bigger, closing the technology divide will enable everyone equal opportunity to education, communications, and employment opportunities. Platforms such as Coursera is enabling education to the masses at zero cost. Khan Academy is changing the way we learn.

My other interest is pushing for Fiber-to-the-Home. We’re already observing the Google Fiber pilot in Kansas. Having lived through the transition from no Internet to dial up to broadband, I’m excited to see the next evolution of connectivity. We are starting to pave the road for future data intensive applications such as streaming 4K video. Collaboration technology will push us further and enable us to share video, datasets, etc.

I look forward to contributing to the conversation. Leave a comment or contact me if you have opinions on the subject.

Visualization: Wealth Inequality in America

First, I find the content to be very mind-blowing. My perception of wealth in America is pretty similar to what the graph shows. It’s really hard to visualize what that much wealth really means. The alternative would be to use a logarithmic scale but that would also lose context. The visualization using simple shapes in the graph adds a lot of impact to the talk track. What do you think?

Find the connection, find the emotion

One of my favorite moments on TV is when Don Draper of Mad Men pitches the Kodak Carousel. The engineers were so fixed on the flashy technological innovation of the “wheel.” They wanted the ad to focus on the wheel and how innovative the technology was. Companies are so focused on showing off who has the best specs, they forget the story or emotion that comes with the product.

The 12 megapixel image sensor doesn’t capture 12 million pixels of color and data. It records a moment in time. It freezes time and brings us back to that moment when we were happiest. It takes us back to a time where we felt something, where we were connected to something.

Find the connection. Find the emotion.

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Three new ways to engage with technology

The way we engage with technology is rapidly changing. The days of “Minority Report” style interactions are quickly coming true. We’ve already seen touch interfaces such as iPhones and Windows 8 PC’s and tablets. Voice recognition is getting better. The integration between man and machine is become reality. If all this seems way too science fiction, remember that 10 years ago, our phones only did voice and SMS. Today, we have broadband access to the world’s knowledge on high resolution screens. The computing power of our phones today well exceeds the computing power needed to go to the moon.

MYO is uses hand gestures to send commands to computers. It detects the electrical impuses in your forearm as you move your wrist and fingers.

Leap Motion is another device that creates a field in front of you for interaction. It is similar to a very high resolution Xbox Kinect.

Finally, Google Glass is a new way to receive information in the form of wearable glasses. The device has a small screen that sits just above your field of vision and displays data. In my opinion, this won’t work until we’re able to embed the display into a contact lens or to integrate the information directly to the brain. Scary.

The Noun Project, a warehouse of wonderful icons

The beauty of communicating through symbols is that it’s universal. It is a language that is understood by all, regardless of what your first language or education. How can Ikea train so many people of varying skills to be able to assemble complex furniture items. They do so through the use of imagery.

One of my favorite sources for icons come from The Noun Project. By categorizing and tagging icons, they are able to create a repository that can be searched and browsed efficiently.

The files come in SVG (scalable vector graphic) format which can be opened with vector programs such as Adobe Illustrator or the open sourced Inkscape. Since these are vectors files, they can be enlarged with no limit and no loss of quality. Unfortunately, it’s also a format that’s not widely supported by all programs such as PowerPoint. As a result, you’ll have to open the file and save it as a .gif/.jpg/.png before using them.

What is your interpretation of the icon below?

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Software resources:

Inkscape – open source vector editor similar to Adobe Illustrator

Gimp – open source photo editor similar to Adobe Photoshop

To learn more about The Noun Project, check out the video below.