Join me at Ephemerisle 2010!

In case you missed all the fun last year:  Ephemerisle is a floating festival of art, culture, and politics, kind of like Burning Man on the water.  Last year was the first year, and it was an awesome, chaotic, and intense experience as we all figured out what the hell we were doing.  Burningman is big, safe, and established, whereas Ephemerisle is a small and rapidly evolving group where you will have a chance to leave a big mark as you shape its culture and traditions.  If you're curious for mine and others' experiences, look here:
http://nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com/236560.html
http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/Ephemerisle2009Coverage
http://nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com/tag/ephemerisle (all my blog posts on Ephemerisle)

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It's just been announced!  Ephemerisle 2010 is going to be July 22-25!  I want to put together a theme camp.  Here are some things I'd love to see the camp do:

- Rent a houseboat (or 2) and fill it with cool, interesting people
- Hold talks and demos on various topics related to Ephemerisle on the roof of the boat
- Do a couple of floating art projects that let people play on the water (Let's brainstorm!)
- Bring back the Ripple Theater
- Play around with various lightweight forms of government in organizing and running projects

Running a theme camp takes lots of different types of people  Even if art is not your thing, we will need people to run the boats, coordinate transportation and construction, organize talks, and handle cooking.  Let me know if you'd like to join the adventure!  I'll be starting camp meetings in couple of weeks.


Here's the Ephemerisle newsletter:

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Final laptop advice -- 13" vs 15" Mac Book Pro.

I'm planning on getting a MacBook Pro to replace my aging laptop and perhaps my desktop as well.  (Covered earlier in this post)

I'm thinking that most (say, 80%) of my computing will still be done at home in front of my two huge monitors.  However, I'm sick of dragging my aging laptop along when I need to go somewhere else -- I want something good. 

I'm trying to decide between the 13" and the 15" Mac Book Pro.  I'm leaning toward the 13" as it's smaller and lighter, but the 15" has a good bit more screen real estate.  The 17" feels way too big and heavy.  Have any of you had regrets either way about the 13" or the 15" MBP?

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Why it might be hard to replace my desktop:

- The MBP only supports one external monitor.  To support two, I'd have to buy an additional piece of hardware (almost $200), and even then the combined resolution of the two monitors (3360x1050) may be too high for the graphics card.  I could replace the two monitors with one ginormous one, but I think I'd have to go all the way up to 30" to get as much space as I have now.  Plus, I like having a "central" monitor and a "side" monitor.  I can have itunes, email, or some other occasionally used window on the side monitor while having my work on the central monitor. 

- I have a lot of software that I don't have the original CDs for.  There's probably a way of handling some of this gracefully... except that I'd be jumping from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

If I don't replace my desktop, I'll need to figure out how to effectively share large amounts of data across the two machines.  I haven't used DropBox and its ilk for things beyond a few tens of megabytes. 
 
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Also, is there anyone at Apple who'd be willing to buy it on an employee discount for me?

Neural rerouting around injuries is fast

I injured my hand slightly a couple of days ago.  The injury is such that I want to avoid using a couple of the fingers in my right hand for a few days.  I was amazed that my brain quickly and subconsciously came up with new ways of picking up and moving objects, getting dressed,  carrying out other daily tasks, and even typing, a skill that ordinarily takes a very long time to learn and one for which I have subconsciously developed a nonstandard approach I cannot verbally describe.  Accidental stresses on the hand have been very rare. 

I want to harness this sort of rapid rerouting for other types of physical motion learning such as improving posture or riding a snowboard properly.