I have a new phone. It is Divide’s old Nexus S. (Thanks!) Alas, since I’m a paranoid freak who doesn’t believe in giving all my data to Google, I lost all my numbers. Entire address book: gone.

Have we ever communicated by phone? Does your phone contain my contact information? Text me, please! Send me your name. Thanks.

Floodland 2014 happens next weekend.

I’ve been trying to keep it small and focused, and these sorts of events have a way of getting out of control if you announce them too broadly. But we’re nearly down to the wire, this has been one of my major free-time activities for the last couple of months, and I’m really excited, so it’s time to spill.

We have art, music, shade, performance, cushy lounging, and awesome people. We’re going to go spend a long weekend in the sagebrush and make a beautiful temporary village there.

There will be a big “center camp” area for low-key lounging, workshops, craft projects, and socializing. We’ll have a big custom propane bonfire set up nearby – not that it gets very cold at night out in Eastern Washington during the summer, but a fire is still an important social center. And we’ll have some art projects, LED sculptures and the like.

A bit further away, we’ll have another big shade, covering a sound system and a DJ booth, with fabric and lights and some really impressive LED matrix displays…

It’s going to be a really fun weekend. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, this will become a new yearly event, akin to a “regional burn“. But this year will be special; it’s full of wide open possibility, and nobody really knows what to expect.

My phone got soaked in a rainstorm and no longer works. If you need to get in touch with me, use email!

I haven’t said much about work in a while. I’ve been part of a startup for the last year and a half, and our web site just went live. Development proceeds steadily… it’s all coming together and looking pretty good.

This is the clearest explanation I’ve read: “What Is a Bitcoin, Really?“

The fellow living next door to Rock Star Parking is 92 years old; he’s been living in the same house for 65 years. His grandson was out cleaning up the back yard this morning, and I said hello. We chatted a bit, and he informed me that the name I gave my house is more apt than I had any way to know: Jimi Hendrix’s first band apparently used to practice in his grandfather’s basement, immediately across the driveway from my bedroom window.

UrbanGems is a little hot-or-not style site that asks you to pick, from two photos, which shows the prettier scene. This data yielded an algorithm for automatically measuring the beauty of street scenes in photos from Flickr, which is now being used to develop a mapping algorithm which will find not the shortest but the most scenic route from one place to another.

That was the happiest, most satisfying festival experience I’ve ever had. A lodge in the woods, a couple of big grassy meadows, tall trees, a river, and a hundred or so friends, plus forty or fifty of their kids, throwing down years of Burning Man equipment and experience for a few great days of music and conversation and craft projects. I danced til dawn both Friday and Saturday night. We wore all of our most awesome and ridiculous outfits. We strung brightly colored lights everywhere. We had a big potluck and not one but two campfires going all night.

Sleeping in the back of the Rover is still a great solution for festival camping; I just fold the seats back, flip down the tailgate, and roll out a bunch of blankets. Super simple and comfortable. I think I will cut & sew the canvas tarp I’ve been using as a shade into something that fits over the car a little better, though.