7 Billion Friends

I moved! But not far

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:28:43 -0400

I’m only a click away. 7billionfriends.com is retired for now. I needed a new sheet of paper and found one at The Great American Pixel. See you there!

CAW!

The Nosebriidge Neighborhood, SF Events This Week

Sat, 15 May 2010 16:20:00 -0400

Mary, Larry, Krista and I are all connected up in San Francisco getting ready for this week’s meetups and presentations. Tonight we’re at Noisebridge at 7 for an open meetup (Facebook event page with deets). Tuesday Mary and I are speaking at Institute for the Future. And Tuesday night Larry, Mary, and I are demoing at SF Beta.

For the Noisebridge event tonight we’re trying something new that we’ve been thinking about for a while. We laid out a design for a neighborhood called Nosebriidge (spelling intended :)) and Larry drew it out on paper. Anyone who buys land tonight will go in the Nosebridge microhood and can draw on their land. We’ll upload the drawing onto the map on Hello World so the handmade marks will show up on the map.

If you’re in San Francisco, hopefully see you at one of these events!

"I want you to be there." Micro Meetups in Detroit and San Francisco this week!

Mon, 10 May 2010 18:24:00 -0400

OK first off, the new blog I tried to make is being a jerk, so long live this one for now! It’s good to be back in the neon green. :)

This week there are 2 informal micro meetup micro parties for LOVELAND micro real estate, one in Detroit THIS WEDNESDAY and one in San Francisco THIS SATURDAY. Mary and I have the honor of being flown out to west side for a talk about the project at a conference by the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and want to make the most of our trip there.

Here are the details on both:

* The Detroit event is this Wednesday, May 12th at 7 PM at our studio at the Russell Industrial Center, 2nd floor, building 2, suite 211 at 1600 Clay St. Here’s the Facebook event page with RSVP and here’s the google map.

* The San Francisco event is this Saturday, May 15th at 7 PM at the Noisebridge hacker space in the Mission at 2169 Mission St. Here’s the Facebook event page with RSVP and here’s the google map.

My cell is 908-343-1981 if you get lost, want to talk, or anything else.

Here’s generally what to expect: We’ll have some refreshments and things like that, and we want to share a short interactive presentation on the adventure-in-progress that is LOVELAND, brainstorm cool ideas, hang out and help connect some cool peops. It’ll be nice and casual.

LOVELAND rolls pretty punk rock and mysterious as far as startups go because we’re trying to create a culture and a brand that can constantly transform itself, and I can’t wait to share the more comprehensive and complete story of where this came from, where it’s at, what we’ve tried and learned so far, and where we see it going as we continue leveling up and adding definition.

It’s gonna be fun and interesting. We hope to see you there! : )

Begging For Batteries: What We Need To Make The Solar Streaming Property Camera Work

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:27:00 -0400

Update: Wow, great news! Phillip Cooley has stepped in and purchased the battery we need to stream the property. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar, and very worthy of Mary Lorene Carter’s newest trademark compliment: “You are a good person, and people say nice things about you.” We will do you proud, and you have made us and many inchvestors happy. Now everyone go eat at Slow’s Bar-B-Q. :)

Battery down. Everything else still applies:

—-

Alan has been nailing it on our Project Lemon Battery solar powered web cam ++. We have the solar panel, we have the first camera (an old iPhone that streams over 3G), we have the working software that automagically posts pictures to Flickr every 10 seconds, we have the 21 foot tall poll cemented in the ground with wires running through it, and we have the birdhouse in which the camera will sit.

What we don’t yet have is the battery we need to install at the base of the pole to make sure that the camera will be recharged by the solar panel and ensure the camera stays on even when the sun is hiding. The price of this badboy is $342 plus $98 shipping, for a grand total of $440. Look at this beast:

Check out the videos we’ve made using Lemon Battery so far. Both of these show us terraforming Plymouth, the first LOVELAND property of 10,000 inches for 588 people.

Here’s digging out the shape of Plymouth and digging the hole for the pole:

Here’s planting the pole in the ground, tying it in place, and filling the hole with concrete:

Further, Mike R has been working to layer graphical magic on top of the Lemon Battery stream like this:

So we have an awesome AWESOME package in place but we need help affording the battery. If you want to see this system happen sooner than later please buy some land in the new property, Hello World, or get in touch about becoming a sponsor of the battery.

You can buy micro real estate in Detroit here at $1 an inch, and you can call me at 908-343-1981 to talk. Remember, LOVELAND has been entirely bootstrapped from tiny inchvestments (inch sales) rather than large investments, and we’re doing our first grant program where we’re splitting money from inch sales with other projects in the city.

If you’re a Plymouth inchvestor, chipping in will get your land online faster and help get this unique system up and running. We’ve been getting interest from other projects in Detroit that want to use the system, and we’re down for that. So let’s get this battery and spread the love, sunshine, streams, and lemons.

Thank you and awesome.

Neighborhoods, Services, and Sponsors, Oh My!

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:09:00 -0400

These past couple of rounds we’ve offered a new inchvestor reward and feature. If you own a square foot or more of LOVELAND (144 inches) you’ll get your own Neighborhood that you’ll be able to control with the similar tools to what we use behind the scenes, allowing you to give away or sell your land to friends or anyone and lay out their property lines. We’ll feature Neighborhoods alongside the full property map, encouraging people to explore them in particular. It’s your own little Sim City.

As we build the Neighborhood tools we’re paying attention to how the tools could be applied to human-scale macro real estate. We’ve had some meetings with groups interested in using the mapping tool in their neighborhoods. So cool. Larry has been rocking it, and the first map like that we put together is of the second floor of building 2 of the Russell Industrial Center. This map represents all the studios and I’m just sending invites out to all the occupants so they can log in and fill out what they do there. See the interactive version here.

We’re also working on bringing back an older idea and implementing an Inch Services section. What’s an inch service? Well, hopefully it will be an immediate answer to the question, “What do I do with my land?” LOVELAND itself will offer a few basic services like, for example, if you’d like to pay for a seed to be planted on your land, we’ll go do that for you. And if people want to offer their own services to inchvestors, they can do that. For example, miniature model maker John Bell has been thinking about a new micro car factory called Packard II. Want a miniature car for your micro real estate? ~~There’s~~ There will be an ~~app~~ inch service for that. Want to offer a service of your own and make money if people want to buy it for their land? Get in touch.

We could also use more monetary support to keep going strong. Funds are always super tight, and it makes sense to offer a way for people and businesses to support the project without having to buy land. We’re working on a new map interface that will feature Neighborhoods, inch services, and property sponsors. Here’s a sketch Alan made as we work out the design:

If you’re interested in supporting the project and becoming a sponsor we can work that out. We’re not totally sure what to charge or how to handle it yet so I can’t be specific on what we’re asking for yet, but that’s all the more reason to get on the phone and talk about what’s fair.

As always you can call me at 908-343-1981 or email jerry[at]makeloveland[dot]com. And as always you are encouraged to buy land and have fun. :)

Jerry

"@makeloveland Chicken!" My Short Talk On Augmented Twitter at The 140 Characters Conference

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:43:00 -0400

Mary gives the fuller story, but the panel I was on at the 140 Character Conference was rocked by volcanic eruptions that stranded Josh and Rita in London while Tish Shute and I carried on in condensed form. Here’s my supershort superfasttalk that touches on inspiration for bringing elements from virtual worlds out onto the realtime web and the really real world:

@makeloveland Chicken! Augmented Twitter supershorttalk at 140 Characters Conference from Jerry Paffendorf on Vimeo.

Here’s the link to the @thekotel project I mention (Tweet Your Prayers — apparently my tweeted prayer for peace and pizza is on its way to the wall in Jerusalem, how crazy is that??) and the 3D Mailbox website (alchemically turning words into graphics = best concept ev-ar). Aaand here are some Augmented Reality pics Mike Rugnetta put together on inchvestor land in Detroit as we work on getting Project Lemon Battery humming with LOVELAND.

Augmented mARy:

Augmented Volcano:

Augmented Robot:

It’s been an inspiring trip to New York. Now headed back to Detroit all pumped up on passionate internet movers and shakers, with a few new ideas up the ole sleeve. <3 Got more to say about this stuff, but once again need more time. :)

/cue get-off-the-stage music

Buy land, have fun,

Jerry

908-343-1981

jerry[at]makeloveland[dot]com

First Day of Plymouth Construction and Lemon Battery Time-lapse

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:25:00 -0400

Yesterday Alan, Mary, James, and I (joined by two students shooting documentaries in Detroit) broke ground on the site of Plymouth, the first 10,000 square inch LOVELAND property. We dug out the shape of the grid so we can pour a concrete border and path into the middle and run the property lines for 10,000 square inches, and a 3 foot deep hole to plant the pole for our Lemon Battery solar panel and camera.

Alan brought the solar panel and the camera to record the work. Over the course of 2 and a 1/2 hours Lemon Battery snapped 636 photos and automagically posted them to its Flickr account. The photos were then pulled into a time-lapse video on Youtube:

Blows. My. Mind. We’ve got quite a powerful live and archival documentation tool to play with now, and we’ll be able to overlay the physical property installation we’re constructing at 8887 E Vernor Highway:

with the online property map:

Here’s the 21 foot tall pole the camera will go on:

And here’s the birdhouse that it’ll go in as a mount:

Thanks Tim! If you ever need a birdhouse in the greater Detroit/Hamtramck area, this is your shop.

Tell ‘im LOVELAND sentcha.

"The project is too weird for me not to do it."

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:43:00 -0400

If you want to see one of the cooler, weirder, more surprising transformations on the popular internet, this is what Flickr the photo sharing site looked like when it started out as an open-ended virtual world called Game Neverending (2002 - 2004):

link via Waxy

Now co-founder Stewart Butterfield and friends are working on a new game called Glitch coming out later this year, which, if history is any guide, will somehow morph into something that saves the publishing industry (or something like that :)). Here’s the trailer:

And! He also has himself 12 shiny new inches in Detroit, saying the project is too weird for him not to. This bodes well for LOVELAND in a not so weird way. I wonder what we’ll hatch into in the future, too, having created sufficiently weird conditions that hatching can happen. :)

I put Stewart on an open space of the map figuring there are some people who’d want to self-select to be his neighbors. So, who’s in? He probably doesn’t mind if you play your music loud at night or check the mail in your underwear. Become Stewart’s neighbor right here.

Welcome aboard, Stewart. Keep ~~Austin~~ LOVELAND weird!

What's Goin' On?! A Quick LOVELAND Update

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:07:00 -0400

Holy crudler, time flies. Here’s the quick scoop.

☛ We’re beginning to fill in the new 50,000 square inch Hello World property. Please inchvest here at $1 a square inch. We have a goal to hit over the next few days. 1/2 of the inchvestment money goes to 7 other grant projects in Detroit. The rest goes to us building rad stuff for you. Not that we’ve been prying into your affairs, but we have heard through the grapevine that you like RAD STUFF!

Here’s Hello World in progress, let’s fillerup!

☛ People are logging into the new site Larry made and saying Hey! Definitely try it if you haven’t yet and see who your neighbors are. You definitely see some interesting activity. :) Here are some clips I captured:

☛ The transformation of the Plymouth property begins this week! Here’s the property, pre-mowing, as modeled by Mary.

☛ Here’s what we’re constructing to define the 10,000 square inch property: a 9 x 9 foot grid with foot wide border and path into the middle. The pole is for the solar powered camera that will stream it online:

☛ We got our solar panel in the mail. Look at that badboy! (I’m talking about the panel, not Alan):

☛ Mike R is working on an Augmented Reality overlay for the camera feed so you can toggle the property lines on and off (by the way, he just did A Ticket for Rush ;)):

☛ And even overlay imagery of your choosing:

☛ We had a meeting with The Villages Community Development Corporation last week (Plymouth is in the East Village area of Detroit) which was very encouraging as regards scaling LOVELAND up in the future. Imagine that the property map you log into on the website wasn’t only for inches, but whole neighborhoods or whole cities. We’re going to meet again to see if maybe we can share some tools and data.

☛ Maybe we’ll try one out with the Russell Industrial Center first. They kindly sent over their floor plan and occupant map to us today. The RIC suffers from the same problem that a lot of communities do: How the heck do I know who’s here that I might like to meet or collaborate with, and how can we talk about what’s going on around us? Almost like a social network for space. Maybe we can use this as a real life test case, starting with the floor that LOVELAND’s studio is on.

☛ We’re also starting to look seriously at grants and alternative forms of funding for the project. It’s become hard enough paying for everything we need to, let alone want to. To support LOVELAND you can inchvest in land here, but also if you want to support at a higher or different level, or sponsor or assist with gaining additional resources so we can keep things going at the speed and scope that they should be, please call Jerry at 908-343-1981 and we can talk it out.

Much appreciated. Spread the word, spread the love, spread the inches. Back to it… <3

Upcoming LOVELAND Parties & Presentations

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:29:00 -0400

Oh man, we got event LOVELAND stuffs coming up in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit (The Third Coast!). On the presentation end:

☛ On April 20-21 I’ll be speaking on a panel at the 140 Characters Conference in New York. As they say, “This event is shaping up to being the largest worldwide gathering of people interested in the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and “we” the people.” Tickets are, appropriately, $140 for the two days.

☛ On May 17-18, Mary and I will be in Palo Alto, CA at a conference by the Institute for the Future where we’ve been invited to give a keynote talk about LOVELAND with the title “Persuading People To Care”. This one is a private conference for invited members of the IFTF network.

☛ On the 19th or 20th (to be determined) we’ll be in Mountain View, CA to give a talk at one of the Acceleration Studies Foundation’s Future Salon meetups. This one’s totally free and open.

And of course, more importantly, on the PARTY end we’re planning 3 events. Tellem, Andrew:

♥ LOVELAND Party West: San Francisco, CA
When: Saturday, May 15th
Where: Noisebridge hacker space
What: Drinks, hangage, a short talk or two over the course of a few hours

♥ LOVELAND Party East: New York, NY
When: sometime in June, date to be determined
Where: Rita King and Josh Fouts’ Imagination Age Salon in the Bronx
What: BBQ, hangage, and general awesomeness over the course of a weekend

♥ LOVELAND Party North (The Third Coast!): Detroit, MI — THE MAIN EVENT
When: Saturday, July 17th
Where: The Downtown Synagogue with Cafe D’Mongo’s Speakeasy wide open nextdoor and peops boppin’ on the street
What: Bands, video projections, a short talk or two, a video booth where people can record creative ideas for vacant land use in Detroit, all sorts of free-flowing awesomeness

If you want to travel for any of these events and need a place to crash, let me know and we’ll try and hook it up!

Breaking Ground On A Ground Breaking Work of Staggering Inches

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:59:00 -0400

Hear ye, hear ye. This coming Sunday we’ll be at 8887 E Vernor Highway, the site of Plymouth, the first 10,000 square inch LOVELAND property, to break ground on the construction of the grid, and the property lines for LOVELAND’s initial 588 inchvestors will be set in place.

Here’s the location again (google map) on Detroit’s east side, in The Villages.

Here’s Mary doing her trademark Motor City Badass pose. The other day Mary, Alan, James, Mary’s dad, and met there to finalize the construction plans

One of Courtney’s friends should be out there this week to mow the grass and then on Sunday we’ll be out there with some shovels, some bags of cement, a pole (gosh willing) for the solar camera, and some stakes, tiles, and wood.

Here are some great images that Alan made in Sketchup (flickr set) of what Plymouth will look like.

We made an executive decision (love those) when we were on the property to ditch the metal grid in favor of a wire grid strung between eyelets all around the interior frame. That will make the grid itself more fluid and inchvestors won’t have to deal with bars of metal on their land. If anyone wants to help volunteer in digging up some ground, setting some cement, or any other handiwork, please let us know!

If you’re an inchvestor in Plymouth, get your mind fired up for what you want to have happen on your inches. You can mail things that fit on your property (flag poles, models, pictures, seeds, etc, anything PG and safe) to:

LOVELAND
at The Russell Industrial Center
c/o Jerry Paffendorf
1600 Clay St
Detroit, MI 48211

You can see the online property map of inches along with inchvestor’s who’ve logged into their land right here.

See the original time-lapse of Plymouth being designed in tape form on the floor of the Russell Industrial Center:

Crazy Company Presents A LOVELAND Premonition from Jerry Paffendorf on Vimeo.

Which was scraped up and displayed as an art piece:

And then reincarnated in the form of Russell tiles (which will ring the installation on Vernor) in the new studio at the Russell:

So the on-site installation will be maybe the fourth incarnation of Plymouth. Wow. Thank you for your patience, all Plymouth inchvestors, as we’ve worked through this process. And don’t forget we’ve got a new grid to fill in on a new property (the exact location of which is still a secret, even from us :)). You can get inches there via the big green Get Inches! button on makeloveland.com.

Here we go…

Leveling Up!

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:48:54 -0400

Man, what a week. We’ve grown a bit, and you can take a look at LOVELAND’s people page to see the crew behind the curtain. Krista and Nicole are the newest entrants and over the last week we’ve been getting everyone up to speed and setting up our collaboration tools and responsibilities.

We invited Krista onboard to lead outreach for inch sales in Season 2, with our ambitious new goal of a 50,000 square inch property, and an ambitious new grant program where we’re splitting inchvestment money 50/50 with 7 other great projects in Detroit. Half of your inchvestment goes to help them level up, and the other 1/2 goes to helping LOVELAND level up, giving us the fuel we need to become awesomer and awesomer.

So far I think we’ve done a really great job being super interesting and laying the foundation of the project and the community, and proving concepts. Now we’ve got to level up on our resources and outreach to people and organizations who want to help build LOVELAND, because there’s more work to be done than we can currently do, and more to pay for than we can currently afford.

It’s super exciting to be at this point, and I want to thank everyone again for believing in and supporting the project as we progressively continue to evolve and realize this vision. As they say in France: le y’all rock!

New LOVELAND Site for Season 2!

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:07:00 -0400

OK! We’ve got a new site at makeloveland.com for the start of Season 2. Check it out!

We’re still getting some things into place and stacking and re-stacking words, but Larry rocked it, and we got it up just in time to see the end of the first full day of spring like we’d hoped.

Some very notable notes on the site and season 2:

First, if you’re an inchvestor, you can now log into the site, fill out a profile, see your neighbors, make yourself available for contact, comment on things, etc. Let me know if you have any issues, this is all new.

Second, we’ve set a new goal of 50,000 inches on a new property called Hello World. The name of season 2 is Building The Bridge To Everywhere, and the side story to that is LOVELAND is building a bridge across the Detroit River, which just happens to be 50,000 inches across in parts. Look out for more illustrations and cartoons and fun stuff about that.

Important and awesome to know, we’re trying out the first LOVELAND grant system. We selected 7 projects in Detroit that run along the spectrum of practical to creative land use: farming, community gardens, architectural rehabilitation, and art. The plan is to split the season’s inchvestment with these projects and follow along with what they’re doing and how they use it.

Our site is now about 3 trillion times cleaner than before and I’m eyeing that wide image spot at the top of each page as a place to frequently update wild images from the season 2 story. Keep your eyes peeled.

Working on a new video for the homepage now. Send us feedback on the site and have fun!

"I've Never Heard Of Logging Into Property Before"

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:00:01 -0400

Yesterday was the first day that some inchvestors started logging in and poking around the new site. If you’re an inchvestor and want to test it out and give feedback before we replace the old site, let me know. I’m sitting here right now with a piece of paper and a pen trying to condense the simplest bestest feedback directions for Larry.

Here’s the homepage after you log in right now, with some peops starting to fill things out. Full-size image. Almost there for season 2! :D Mary and Alan and I were at an Open City meeting last night and met a nonprofit working on vacant land development in the area of the first property. It was awesome to connect and see eyes light up at the idea of PEOPLE LOGGING INTO LAND. To be continued…

What's Up? To Do List Number 7,846.538

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:23:00 -0400

LOVELAND next to do’s for me, Jerry P:

The new website is alllmost ready! We need some inchvestors who want to login early to come test it out and refine things over the next few days. Get in touch if you want the access info. Basically, Larry has been kicking butt at it and it looks great. What we need are peops who want to poke around and send us feedback for the things they want added or clarified before it goes live. I’m jerryp[at]gmail[dot]com or 908-343-1981.

We’ve got a great list but we’re still finalizing all the grantees we’re sharing inchvestment money with during season 2. If you have or know of a project in Detroit that is somewhere on the spectrum of practical or creative land use (farming, gardening, parks, building restoration, or pure art work) please let us know ASAP.

Since I’ve been traveling for the project the last couple weeks I haven’t been able to do much on the physical installation of the Plymouth grid (besides make a breakthrough on materials via my dad), but now that I’m back and I hear the birds chirping and the bees buzzing, well let’s finalize the budget and get that badboy in the ground.

I need to buy art supplies for the 9- and 11-year old neighbors of the first property.

I need to coordinate with Jen about getting flowers and other things planted on the property.

I also need to get back into the database and move some people around to finalize the layout of Plymouth and stamp it with my seal of might (or something like that :)).

The illustration for The Bridge To Everywhere needs to be completed. (This is a virtual bridge that will progress inch by inch across the 50,000 inches of the Detroit River, measuring out progress through season 2.)

Mary and I need to go back to the city office to confirm the address of the season 2 property so we can buy it (you wouldn’t believe — or maybe you would — how difficult it can be to isolate exactly what property address is where: it would be embarrassing, but completely plausible, to think you’re getting something but actually get something else).

Mary’s rocking it on mailings and other creative and organizational work. She’s got her new (and first!) blog going at I Do Something. Likewise, Alan is rocking the camera at Project Lemon Battery.

Next week we welcome to Detroit from San Francisco to train for her job as Global Director of Inch Sales (or some title like that :)) for LOVELAND season 2. As a Canadian, she will be able to gaze fondly across the river at her Mother Land, and then we will lash her and say get back to work! (keeeding, Krista!)

And other stuff. But who’s got time for other stuff when there’s this stuff?! Well, I’d better, because I’m sure I forgot to list some things I need to do right quick.

/deep breaths

/cannnnoooonnnn baaallllllll!!!!

LoveMachine Collaboration: Can 10,000 Inches Become A Person?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:46:00 -0400

OK, so I don’t know if 10,000 inches can become a person, but I’m modifying that from LoveMachine Inc’s provocative self-description:

Right now we have three projects, in different areas and stages of development:

Work. Software for companies to work better and faster.
Money. A digital replacement for world currencies.
The Brain. Can 10,000 computers become a person?

LoveMachine is a new project run by friends Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, and Ryan Downe, creator at Second Life. I got a call from them last night asking if I was at SXSW to come hang out. (Nope, though I hear the Detroit Ice Potato may be making an appearance during the music portion, looking for an album deal…) We did catch up though about doing something together. I love LoveMachine’s live workroom and list of instant jobs that are constantly available for anyone to do on their site.

Those are both things we need on LOVELAND’s new site. It’s just a better way for us to keep things transparent and invite collaboration and build a creative army like we want to but can’t using traditional methods. I’m writing this post to make sure we hook that up together, and whatever else the machine has cooking that the land could use (virtual currency etc). Plus they need to come to come visit us in Detroit!

Isn’t this great? Again from their site:

We are also a different kind of company. Instead of interviewing to work here, you just get to work. If you’d like to join our team, first sign up at the worklist, where you can see and bid on the jobs we need done, then enter our live workroom and talk to other team members!

The Continuation of The Ghost Inches and Project Lemon Battery Test

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:04:00 -0400

Yesterday was the big St. Patrick’s Day parade in Corktown, Detroit. Thousands and thousands of people don their greens and go marching down Michigan Avenue right outside our house. It’s a pretty crazy all-day party.

In the morning I posted a new Kickstarter round and the next episode of the Ghost Inches:

The Legend of The Ghost Inches Part 2: Ghost Inches Unleash Ravishing Forces from Jerry Paffendorf on Vimeo.

Not to give anything away (EPIC SPOILER ALERT :P) but the little lemon dude who pops out at the end is the mascot for Alan’s Project Lemon Battery, which is the solar powered web streaming camera that we want to use to help record the properties.

Where Alan has it now, it’s a web service attached to an iPhone camera app that automagically takes and posts pictures a viewing page and to Lemon Battery’s Flickr every 10 seconds (note this will be very random and very down very often as it’s worked on). He attached the camera to his jacket and went walking around the parade while it captured and posted pics all by itself. Here’s a great time-lapse movie Alan made of all the pics:

Testing Testing Lemon Battery from Alan Languirand on Vimeo.

And a few stills:

Huh? You’re not posting this to the internet are you? Too late! :D

I had maaaybe a little bit too much fun drinking pineapple Faygo and vodka (it’s good, I swear :)) with peops that came over, crashed out pretty early, got up at 3 AM and watched more of the Jim Henson Storytellers series from the ’80s that Mary’s been introducing me to. Good times!

And now, back on the grind!

LOGINLAND! New Site In Progress

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:12:00 -0500

Larry just sent me the framework for the clean new LOVELAND site, where I was able to log in for the first time. Awesome! So pretty soon inchvestors will all have accounts where you can create a profile, link to things from your property, meet the neighbors, and so on.

I’m currently going through the site updating content and making notes for Larry. ¡Viva la inchvolucion!

Oh and look. The properties will still adjust placement a little more before they’re locked down (for example I need to give away some of the 288 inches I kept for myself to other people who came in at the end), but right now one of my neighbors is listed as my grandma.

There goes the neighborhood. Grandma, stop fixing my hair! You’re embarrassing me in front of all the inchvestors!! And yes I brought a sweater!!! :D

Animated Gifs + LOVELAND Fashion = <3

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:38:29 -0500

50 inch inchvestor Nicki Manchisi models her new LOVELAND shirt in San Francisco:

We were just catching up about the project and Nicki was reminiscing about its origins and all the inch grids I was leaving around the house back in the day, which are still hanging up on the walls. <3

w00t! Just Commissioned A Functional 8-Bit Map of Detroit Via Kickstarter

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:27:00 -0500

Awesome! I saw this pop up on my radar and went for it. It’s too perfect.

Brett Camper is making fully accurate 8-bit maps of real cities. His Kickstarter project advertises that for $200 he’ll make any city you want (there are also cheaper rewards, check it out). 8-bit New York City is live right here (also pictured above), and he’s got a list of the usual suspect cities he’s planning:

- San Francisco
- Los Angeles
- Boston
- Chicago
- Washington D.C.
- Seattle
- London
- Paris

Obviously Detroit needs to be on there! Whoever commissions a map can be credited as its “mayor”. This one is dedicated to LOVELAND’s inchvestors. Hopefully we can really functionally use the map in the project too, linking to LOVELAND properties etc.

Too awesome. Thanks Brett! <3