The human body is an astonishingly flexible thing. Grade school taught us to categorize our senses into five categories, but the boundaries between them is much fuzzier than most of us realize. I find myself fascinated by stories where senses are heightened are used for other purposes. Here are a few links to some fascinating stories of sensory manipulation that came onto my radar recently…

1. After a few minutes of “training” your ears can translate speach that has been distorted beyond recognition. While other people here noise you will be able to hear words. (Via Kottke)

2. Using an imaging device on a person’s tongue it is possible to rewire the brain to use the tongue like an eyeball. Will this be used to restore sight to the blind?

3. What would happen if a camera was used to turn visual information into sound? Answer: strangely interesting. (Via Retrothing)

Just a seasonal reminder that today marks day one of Taco Johnukkah! In case you forgot, the season of tacos is the eight business days before Christmas. Stop by your local Taco Johns and see if they give you a funny look when you ask for the Johnukkah special.

(If you are scratching your head in confusion right now it’s because this is a very inside joke. Somehow we started this tradition at our office a couple years ago and for some reason it has stuck. Seriously though if you haven’t had the cini-sopapilla bites you should give yourself a little treat. Yummy.)

I hate that the days are so short now, but the good thing about daylight saving time is that it makes it easier to make timelapse videos of the sunset from out the window of the office where I work. Here is what today’s evening clouds looked like:

I don’t know why YouTube messed up the first second or so of the clip, but you can at least get the idea. I am hoping to post some more of these in the next couple months.

I have redesigned this site several times over the last four years and I always thought it was a bit of a shame that the designs had to disappear from the internet after the new design is applied. So it has been in the back of my mind for a while to convert my old designs into WordPress themes that anyone can freely use. That turned out to be a bit more work than I had anticipated, but I have been making steady progress and it looks like I will have three themes available for download later this month.

The tentative names for my three themes are going to be Minima White, Zen Parchment, and Blue Wood. The themes will be hosted on Cath3dral, and I am hoping to use this as an opportunity to expand Cath3dral into an actual site, instead of the place holder that is currently there.

One of the unique things about my themes will be the integration of Font Burner. This will give users access to any of the 1000 fonts available through Font Burner without having to mess with sIFR at all. My Font Burner plugin was actually the result of the work I have been doing on my themes. It started out as just the control panel that gave the WordPress admin the ability to customize the fonts used in my themes, and grew into an actual plugin.

So stay tuned, and contact me if you are interested in testing my themes before they are publicly released.

I am proud to announce the release of my first WordPress plugin. The plugin is called Font Burner Control Panel and it allows you to easily add any of the 1000+ fonts from Font Burner to your site. The thing that is exciting to me is that this plugin lets you control the color and size of your headlines in addition to just choosing the font. That was the “missing link” of Font Burner since you used to be limited to black, white, and gray and the default sizes.

Visit the plugins homepage at <a href=”http://www.fontburner.com/the-font-burner-wordpress-plugin/”>FontBurner.com</a> or download it from the plugin directory at WordPress.org. If you use the plugin please give me any feedback that you have. Being my first plugin I know it can be improved and could use all the help I can get.

Since this was my first plugin, I wanted to take a few lines to describe the process. The rest of this post is pretty technical, so feel free to skip it unless you are interested in plugin development…

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Here is a list of music that I really enjoyed in 2006:

Begin to Hope, by Regina Spektor

Wincing the Night Away, by the Shins

Magic Potion, by The Black Keys

Ben Kweller, by Ben Kweller

The Information, by Beck

Wolfmother

Sunlandic Twins, by Of Montreal

Electric President

Gulag Orkestar, by Beirut

Garden Ruin, by Calexico

End of Love, by Clem Snide

i, by The Magnetic Fields

Deep Cuts, by The Knife

I thought we had put the car accident in our past, but a couple letters last week brought it back to the forefront of our minds. There are some big developments actually.

First, Betsy got a subpoena to testify in a case of the City of Evans vs. Eliza Hill. We were surprised to learn that Eliza is claiming that she wasn’t responsible for the accident. Whatever. Betsy will tell her story and it will be interesting to see how things turn out.

Then yesterday we got a letter from Eliza Hill’s insurance company. They are not going to pay Betsy’s injury claim. They said, “It has been determined that Nationwide Insurance Company is not liable for this accident. Therefore, we will not be making any payments to you for bodily injury or property damage.” Then comes the good part, “It has been discovered that Walmart was the cause of this accident due to negligence by the employee that was performing work on our insured’s vehicle prior to this accident. Please contact Walmart’s claim representative to proceed with your claim.”

So this is what appears to have happened: Eliza went to Walmart to get her car looked at. She left Walmart and according to Eliza’s sister, they pulled over because the car’s gas peddle was sticking. Eliza started driving the car again, the gas peddle stuck, and she ran a red light hitting three cars.

I would assume that the trial is now going to involve Walmart. I am not the judge, and I obviously don’t know all the facts, but it seems to me that Walmart isn’t completely liable for this accident. Eliza clearly recognized that there was a problem with her car because she pulled over before the accident. Eliza became liable for the accident when she got in her car knowing that there was a problem. She was negligent because she didn’t honk or try stopping when she reached the intersection. That is negligence despite the failure of Walmart to fix Eliza’s car. It will be interesting to hear what the judge says.

(Update September 14, 2006)
I talked with Wal-Mart’s insurance and the filled in a few more clues. Eliza went to Wal-Mart to get her oil changed. She alleges that the person who did the work forgot to put the oil cap back on. The cap became wedged against the throttle. The plot thickens.

Eric Karjaluoto of ideasonideas.com wrote an interesting essay about how in the American media there is no longer a distinction between entertainment and news. Eric says,

“…to the American media, news and entertainment, or even larger yet, fact and fiction, were no longer separate entities. The two had collided and left a free-for-all, in which both credible journalism and tabloid fodder were mixing to create something much more muddy and unclear. In this new mix, celebrity happenings were just as likely to headline American news programs, as national disasters were to consume entertainment programs.”

I think the first time I realized this was during the Tonya Harding scandal. The media milked that story until the public’s patience and appetite for the story was completely drained. The same thing happened with O.J. Simpson. And Columbine. 9-11. Hurricane Katrina. Time after time it seems that legitimate news stories morph into something else. It really doesn’t matter if it is a celebrity wedding or a murder suicide. It is all exploited with the same amount of shock and awe tactics that continues to plague TV news. It sickens me, and I really hate watching the news when it takes on this form.

Fortunately this isn’t the only form the news takes, however. I do agree that the media exploits stories, but I think this is a separate problem from simply confusing entertainment with news. What Eric fails to recognize is that the media (in terms of news) is dramatically changing (or has changed). There are so many different places that you can get the news that the “shock” method is no longer what is working. The most successful news outlets all have one thing in common and it isn’t voyeurism. The successful news outlets all present the stories through a personality that is allowed to speak in a human voice. The Daily Show, Bill O’Reilly, talk radio, and blogs are all attracting huge audiences while the traditional “empty suit” formats are dying (Dan Rather, newspapers, etc.). With so many different voices giving you the same news, the audience is given a choice about what flavor they want to take their news in. The people are all choosing the same thing: they prefer to get their news told to them in a human voice. They want to be entertained while they get their news. I actually think this is a good thing because it gives me an alternative to exploitation. That voice could be from a partisan blogger, a political comedian, a patriot, pretty much any personality you want. It is news, yes, but it is also entertainment. That is why I don’t see the danger of Eric’s concluding thought where he says,

“I refuse to allow news to become entertainment.”

Is it really wrong to be entertained while you receive the news? I don’t think so. The real enemy is exploitation of a story, not the entertainment value of news. I also find it hard to believe that this is a pattern found only in the American media. My guess is that the trend is global, but having never seen or heard news outside the U.S. I really don’t know.

Betsy got back from the bank today with bad news. “Don’t be mad. You know how the drive-thru at the bank is very narrow? Well, I kind of scraped up the side of the car.” As I hang my head in my hands and got ready to surpress the rage, I hear those two words: “April Fools!” She got me. Very well played indeed. How could I forget my favorite holiday? Next year, mark my words…

April is shaping up to be an exciting month. Next week I will be in Indiana on business (an RV photo shoot). Family will be in town for Easter. Betsy’s birthday. Possibly another photo shoot. May will be here in no time.

Businessweek.com has a good interview with Mena Trott, founder of Movable Type. Mena is a former graphic designer, and the interview talks about some of the design challenges that are faced by the maker of the leading blog software in the world: Movable Type. The highlight of the interview is when she is asked about the relationship of blogs and the media. She said:

“I think the biggest impact of blogs on mainstream journalism is the presence of a more personal voice. The popularity of the personal tone used by bloggers has caused traditional media to realize it’s O.K. for some reporters to use “I.”"

I agree completely. Blogs are just people talking like people. The human voice is an infectious sound that people want to hear. We don’t want to listen to empty suits. Now that we can get the news in so many different ways we prefer hearing it come from a real person.