Nutgraf

The Internets can be fickle. Social media is so in that it’s now a big yawn. The shark has been jumped, Twitter has been twa… er… tweeted, and nothing against all of you foursquare fans, but I know nothing about foursquare and still cannot stand it. I’m not even interested in where I am most of the time.

My pocketbook is smarter than me

But as we all stare ever more raptly into the tiny screens we carry around, I’ve been thinking about how isolating it all really is. We don’t talk to people on the metro (though honestly, that’s kind of a blessing), we don’t ask for directions, we can get book recommendations at the tap of a finger, find out how much that house cost, compare prices around the world with the flick of a thumb, and tighten our tether to e-mail and work all in the name of convenience. What I haven’t seen, though, is a really good implementation that combines social media, the Internets and the big, bad, real world.

The other week I was invited to try out the goSmithsonian Trek scavenger hunt across the Smithsonian Institution museums and – to be honest – I thought “Ugh. Trying to navigate the real world with new technology. How annoying is this going to be?” I was wrong. It was actually pretty fun, even going it alone.

• Read more about the Trek on the Around the Mall blog

Basically, you download the SCVNGR app to your iPhone or Droid (because you are a nerd) and it takes you on kind of a guided tour of several of the museums. You are invited to answer a series of questions or “challenges,” featuring trivia from the exhibits, and earn points for correct answers. It’s kind of addictive, and I found myself plowing through school groups and dashing up stairways to find the answers.

Dodging tourists and photographing elephant butts

One of the things you’re encouraged to do in each museum is snap a photo to share. Here’s mine from Natural History. I’m also not entirely proud of the way I behaved in the Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, where I tried to move quickly through lolly gagging families to efficiently complete one challenge before moving on to the next.

I think the Trek has great applications. As a DC native, I’ve long seen school groups going on pen-and-paper scavenger hunts in the museums. This takes it digital and really makes it work with the technology that’s already in your pocket. I could totally picture going on this Trek with a bunch of kids (assuming a bunch of kids each have iPhones or Droids or whatever) and setting them loose to conduct the challenge. Or maybe as a group activity. DC is riddled with bright-eyed young things who love organized fun. And curmudgeons (such as myself) can also learn a thing or two. Even those (also such as myself) who used to work at Smithsonian Enterprises.

To fulfill the challenges, I actually looked around the Smithsonian Castle for the first time in years, saw the crypt where are kept the remains of James Smithson, the man who donated the bags of gold (literally) to found an “Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge” in a country he never visited during his life. This is just one of the amazing things to know about this amazing place.

Focus on experience, not interface.

As I said, I was pretty reluctant to try this thing out. I’m no luddite, but am congenitally cranky. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make the interface either too complicated or the activity dangerously dull. They’ve managed to make a really simple-to-use tool to guide users through what is at heart a much more complex activity. And keep the focus on the content, and the experience rather than on navigating the freaking phone. Strong work, guys.

But don’t take my word for it – feel free to download the free SCVNGR app yourself and head to the national mall. And don’t forget to drink plenty of water, it’s appalling out.

Plans for the future

I just spoke to the charming Beth Py-Lieberman, the editor of goSmithsonian who managed this whole shebang. She said that they’d love to take it further after this one-month trial is up. Maybe monthly treks, since the exhibits (particularly in the art museums) change so frequently.

“One of the takeaway lessons for me,” said Beth, “is that some of the visitors are going to have to be challenged more. We’re going to have to make them work hard for the answers, and get them into the back corners of the Smithsonian where the great stuff is.” I somehow failed to mention that I just couldn’t get one of the answers from the Hall of Oceans, so I may be in big trouble if they smart it up too much.

But it takes a lot of work to put one of these together. The one that’s live now? Beth says they started development during the DeathSnow and launched it during the heat wave, and that is something of a time commitment. It went through a lot of rounds of edits, a couple because the exhibits changed and threw the trek out of whack with reality, and one round Beth called “riddle-fying,” which is where they made lots of the questions rhyming and/or funny, which is pretty cute. No one asked me, but this all seems rather perfectly in line with the Institution’s stated goal of taking the whole of the Smithsonian digital, a project that is so exciting and of such appalling scope I can’t even get my brain around it. Maybe my pocketbook can.

• Check out the Smithsonian Commons prototype

Disclosure: I used to be an employee of  Smithsonian Enterprises. I have not been paid, compensated, bribed, cajoled or threatened to try this trek or write this post.

Read more about the goSmithsonian Trek from these fine bloggers:

Going places and completing challenges with the goSmithsonian Trek mobile app

Winning an iPad from the Smithsonian!

You know you’ve been in DC too long when you know for a fact that this has happened before:

Northwest Washington residents capture runaway horse

“A runaway horse, without saddle, bridle or rider, galloped through the streets of upper Northwest Washington on Sunday evening, provoking concern and astonishment, and many calls to the police.”

My parents love to tell the following story from when I was a tiny kid, and we lived on Yuma Street in Northwest D.C.:

A Park Police horse got loose and went galloping up the street past our house. It was followed closely by a cop on a motorcycle. Apparently I was so taken by this that I pulled a little chair up to the window so I could watch for it to happen again.

Let it be known that I was not wrong! I just didn’t wait long enough.

During the 3094809803 months I was pregnant, I ate a lot of Dum Dum lollipops. Like, more than you’d think possible because I am congenitally incapable of leisurely sucking on one, and instead crunch them into oblivion instantly. This creates a lot of candy wrappers. You used to be able to cash them in for cool things like t-shirts and frisbees and other branded merchandise, back when online stores weren’t yet ubiquitous and people listened to cassettes. You can still trade ‘em for schwag (the wrappers not the cassettes), but it’s less of a challenge since you can also just send in $6 or whatever without having to suffer through the candy. But suffer I did. My friend Manda likes to say that I built a human heart out of Skittles, and she’s probably not far off. And now I have to wear large slacks. But that’s a story for another time. Back to the lollipop wrappers.

I had a bunch of small, colorful squares and wanted to do some kind of fun art project with them. After discounting some paper weaving projects as “too much effort,” I decided to try to make a small, delicate mobile that can be gently buffeted in the natural air currents of the baby’s room, to the delight of all. Origami is a natural application for small squares of paper, and I was sure that the Internets could hook me up with some simple instructions that even I could follow successfully. And so it came to pass…

How To Make An Origami Mobile

1) Eat a lot of lollipops and conserve the wrappers. Tip: Sharing the candy with your coworkers will mitigate their concern when they see a ziploc bag full of candy wrappers on the desk of the enormous pregnant lady.

2) Pick through the wrappers and discard any torn or mangled ones.

3) Flatten them clumsily by hand, and then – because you are a maniac – iron them individually. Place them between two layers of kitchen towel and smooth them gently on a medium setting without steam. Use a light hand and be careful not to melt them to the towel. Like I did.

4) Conduct many individual acts of origami! Instructions for many fanciful animals can easily be located on the Internets. Search terms I used included: origami, easy, for dummies.

5) Tie together to pieces of (in this case) floral arrangement wire with nylon thread for the armature.

6) Make several strings of several paper birds (or whatever) each and tie them in an artistic manner to the armature. If your piece does not balance well when held from a loop tied to the center of the armature, you can scootch (technical term) the strings to different places on the bars, or add and subtract birds as needed.

7)  Once you’re satisfied that it is structurally sound and well-balanced, declare your work of art complete and try to suppress any flashbacks to things you’ve seen on Regretsy.com: “Where DIY meets WTF.”

My family is full of enthusiastic walkers. We walk long, we walk often, we walk kind of fast. I love it – I get to look around the neighborhood, see what’s new, catch some vitamin D, run errands without having to figure out parking. It’s good exercise and a great tool in the stress management arsenal. And it gives you a pedestrian’s-eye view of your environment – which allows you to see more detail than you can from a car.

Details like this, found on a bike/running/walking kind of trail near my house:

Thanks for this, Sport. Very motivational. I was thinking of writing below it “Surrender Dorothy,” and then I lost interest.

And this little number in the window of one of those shady rug stores that are perpetually going out of business:

A nice twist don’t you think? To Prevent Bankruptcy. I think the subtlety may have been lost on some folks, since they have since reverted to the standard issue Going Out Of Business signage. It was cute while it lasted, though. And I would have totally missed if it I had been in a car. Not because I’d have been whizzing by, mind you, but because I would have been blinded by apoplectic rage. Traffic in my neighborhood sucks.

Interestingly (to me), I think the rug store owner is either acquainted with or is the same person as the owner and landlord of two group houses on my street. Folks who have known me since we bought our place knows that an adventure those houses have been. It looks like I’ve deleted my old posts about the neighbors. But they were a real treat. Once in a while, in a surplus of high spirits, they’d celebrate “Call Each Other a Motherfucker” hour at four in the morning, while slashing one another’s tires. I invested in earplugs and learned how to grind my teeth in my sleep.

Ah. Memories.

But the landlord remodeled the house a couple of years ago and implemented a total tenant turnover (after an attempt to sell for an outrageous sum failed – which I figure is probably helping him skirt some other regulation about owner occupancy, or rental permitting). The group there now is great and I have no complaints. But the owner is apparently a long-time scammer, and is up to some old tricks. I refer you to this old CityPaper article about The Going-Out-Of-Business Business – it’s a good explanation of the never-ending bankruptcy sale, and references my rug-mogul-turned-real-estate-tycoon right at the tippy top.

See? You can learn some stuff by getting out of the car and walking around.

There's work to be done.

The weather outside is deeply disturbing. And something about the air pressure make me keep tipping over on the sofa like a buffalo with a dart in its flank, napping randomly. But I am delighted to report that I have successfully worked my way through this pile of New Yorkers, and resolve to stay more on top of things moving forward.

• Winter wonderland photos and Deathsnow Challenge Part I
• Bare shelves at Safeway, and Deathsnow Challenge Part II

February 8, 2010, continued

Okay, so after the Keyser Söze piece, I did enjoy the profile of gospel singer Tonex, and his complicated past and present. Best of luck to him in all of his future endeavors. ‘William Burns’ by Roberto Bolano was a dark and disturbing piece of fiction that I was happy to end. Castle in the Air – about a ginormotron skyscraper in Dubai – Vegas of the Middle East, but without the class – was honestly pretty cool. No matter how repulsive  a city it is, they do build some cool stuff. None of the other reviews/critiques really moved me.

And on to the big, fat 85th Anniversary Issue, the last in my series.

Feb 15 & 22, 2010

In Talk of the Town, comparing the week’s takings for Avatar to the federal budget deficit is an unspeakably depressing thing to do. Thanks.

And so we move on to “The Trial,” and Eric Holder’s battle about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Lots of bloodthirsty people on all sides of this equation who don’t want this to go to trial. Easy for them to say, seems to me. And while we’re at it – if none of the places where people died on 9-11 want to host an expensive and divisive trial, they should just have it here in DC. We never make our budgets anyway and public transportation is already a disaster. Also, c’mon people, due process and human rights are what America’s all about. Love it or leave it, man.

Mules? By the way? Are awesome. And this piece about alcohol and alcoholism across different cultures is really interesting. As is the incredible civil rights photographic portfolio by Platon and introduced by David Remnick – a class act.

And with that, I’ll get back to obsessing about the weather and the poor performance of WMATA. I thank you for your kind indulgence.