I recently finished a book I probably should have read when I was 13. Who would I be now if I had read the character of Cyrus Smith the Engineer as a teenager instead of an adult? The Mysterious Island was written by Jules Verne and published in 1874. The novel takes place during the United States Civil War, with our main characters being held prisoners in the South. The five prisoners work together to escape, but soon find themselves deserted on a deserted island. (Man I could use an ice cream sundae.)

I don’t pick up island books very often. Are there a lot of them out there? I can’t seem to think of many. There’s that one where the kids are on an island, they get all crazy, then eat each other – I think. What was that one called? Never read it. Anyway, I never would have thought that an island would be a good spot for a book to take place, but it turns out if the island is mysterious, it’s an awesome place! You go Jules!

Back to Cyrus Smith, who shouldn’t be mistaken for Sirius Black from the Harry Potter novels, though he too is valiant, determined, courageous, resourceful, steadfast and has a name that starts with a ‘Sa’ sound and ends with a ‘us’ sound – they are not the same character no matter how much you wish them to be (having a wizard on the island really would have changed the cast-aways’ situation). Cyrus Smith is now my ideal man. I mean, should be considered the ideal man. He seems to know everything. The guy builds houses, casts iron, makes gun powder and other explosive devices. He plants gardens, makes an elevator using a waterfall, and helps create the coolest living space I’ve ever read about. I don’t think I gave anything away other than Cyrus Smith being a bad-ass.

What truly amazed me in reading the Mysterious Island was the way in which Jules Verne was able to describe Cyrus Smith’s discoveries on the island. His descriptions of how he transformed these materials into items that would make the castaways’ lives easier or more productive. By reading the Mysterious Island I have learned a few important things about myself. First, I want to own a smart dog that cares about nothing but me, and what I want it to do. Second, If I had to live off of natural resources on my own or with a few others, we’d have well put together clothes, and could probably grow tomatoes, but I’d really have to work my memory to make strong bricks – and unless we had a match and wanted to keep a fire burning year-round, I better learn to make fire. Oh and I need to learn some hunting skills.

Luckily I live on a peninsula and not an island. I don’t have to make all of these things, I can buy them. I am warm in my house while I read my book, this too is nice. Now I either need to pick up a book that teaches me all of these skills before our world is flipped inside out from global warming and we all have to fend for ourselves (deep breath)… Or, I need to come up with a plan to save the planet so I don’t have to learn all of these things.

Now it’s time for that sundae.

Reasons:
1. BP is a texbook psychopath – If i’ve learned anything from cyclops, it’s don’t trust psychopaths.
2 – 7. Six reasons not to trust BP – You had me at six.
8. BPGlobalPR: This is the real PR firm for BP; it even says it in it’s twitter account. They tweeted this;
“So YOU want to see pictures of dead animals covered in oil and WE are the bad guys!? Sick bastards. #bpcares”. Think I’m making that up,

Here is the link. Proof.

9. Because of Sean’s blog post.

About 2 weeks ago my coworker Thomas Knoll and I were sent a forward from our boss who had received an e-mail from Julia Roy about the Fiesta Movement. (I love when my blog posts start with sentences like, “my fiance’s sisters boyfriends sister works for the Golden State Warriors” – sounds super legit.)

What is the Fiesta Movement you may be asking yourself… or asking me?
Well it looks as though it’s Fords ad campaign for the release of the Ford Fiesta schedualed to release in the US in 2011.
What it really is is a very smart ad campaign by Ford to get people to post videos on YouTube and send it to all their friends, Tweet about it and write blog posts like the one you’re reading.

What we have to do: Send in a video saying why we would be good “Ford Agents”.

What we did: We just posted a video of us driving around San Francisco and talked about how cool we are. Which is not very (cool that is)…

Also worth noting:
Ford posted our video on their site 2 days after we posted it.
We made teasers for our video, 9 in all, they’re short, but decent.

More importantly then winning the Ford Fiesta, Thomas and I think we should try to enter all the video competitions we can find online and make a show out of it. If you have any leads be sure to let one of us know.

You know those photos of your dad with a thick beard taken 4 years before you were born. They’re grainy, and the color is filled with amazing oranges and yellows, either because photo technology was still working out some kinks, the colors actually looked like that back then, or they were trying to match the colors of the wallpaper and couches of the time. Whichever it might be… LOVE IT!

I hope that 27 years from now, when I look back on the photos of me and my friends today, they are grainy, lost of color, and we have beards.

I think what i’m getting at is that my new D90 is “way” exciting to me right now. I don’t know where to begin with it, but apparently I like making the photos look like old photos.
This particular photo is of Drew, it was taken in 1937. Here is another photo that I’ve played with that was taken in the late 60’s maybe early 70’s, I can’t really remember.

If you know of any decades of photography I should try to create please let me know. Also, you should know I do portraits for $150. What you get is a photo of yourself. I’ll even make it look like an old photo for an additional charge of $20 or a wheel of smoked Gouda.

Any publicity is good publicity, right? Today Seesmic made it into the New York times business section. That’s a good thing for our name as a company, but the article was about downsizing—not so good of a thing. Now I don’t want to get to caught up in what the article says, I want to milk the whole “being in the New York Times” thing instead.

So here we are, smiling because the camera guy was standing on a shelf, and we were all joking about it being a photo of just Loic’s forehead. I wanted to post the photo, so you, my loyal reader, could see me, your loyal writer, on the cover of the business section of the New York Times. Check. Done. Now I would like to commit to all of you, that the next time I’m in the New York Times it’ll be the front page of the Sports section right after I streak Wimbledon.

If you looked at this photo and thought “wow, that looks a lot like Whit” – well, I think you’re crazy. But truth is, I am in fact related to this fine looking man.

I’d like to introduce you to William Cubbery Richardson, my grandfather’s grandfather on my mother’s side. I don’t know much about William… in fact I know nothing… but it seems to me that he probably chopped a lot of wood. He looks like someone who chopped a lot of wood – don’t you think? I also think he shaved two times a day, and at the end of the day his beard still looked like this. Actually, this photo was taken ten minutes after a shave.

Cubbery – as his friends called him – once wrestled a grizzly bear, then invited it over for dinner where he cooked some fine salmon with some lemon (straight off his farm’s lemon tree, of course), over a fire that was burning wood that he had chopped with his bare hands because the neighbor had borrowed his ax.

Will was also known for collecting suits.

-So this was what I wrote yesterday in the iPhone wordpress App. Since then I have not been able to get this post up using my iphone. So I am transcribing what I wrote; So ironic. I digress.

An interesting thing I just realized is that I have gained 27 “followers” on twitter since my iPhone purchase. I’m not exactly sure what gets you followers on Twitter, or why anyone chooses to follow me, but I do think that my new phone has been a factor in my twitter spike.

If I had to guess, the increased amount of twitter posts I have had since the iPhone directly correlates to the spike in new friends. In other news I just had my 1000 twitter post, connected is a photo of it.

The iPhone functions perfectly for me. It’s made for the person who wants to be able to connect to the internet and surf easily (like me). I can listen to music through Pandora instead of the radio, use GChat, Twitter, and keep up on RSS/ Blogs I like to read. I can also listen to NPR through their site, as well as check in on when my bus is coming to pick me up (I like to think it’s coming for me personally)

These were all things I could do before, but not on my phone while I was on the bus. This has been the greatest upgrade in my life since the purchase, my commute is awesome.

I find myself taking photos and posting them online just because I can, and why not, I don’t have to store the data; twitter, flickr and all the other sites I use will do that for me.

A couple observations:
-I have noticed that I sit on the toilet for longer, just so I can check messages, and do some blog reading.
-I’ve been listening to “This American Life” via podcast while i’m out on a run once a week, but what I’d really like is an application that will map my run from start to finish and tell me how far i’ve gone. The GPS is already there, someone who knows what they’re doing just needs to build it. Go!

More to come on the iPhone i’m sure.

Then I got back to SF, went in to work for a few hours then headed up north to Stone Lake Farm where I camped for a couple nights, and helped move some stoves around. That was an oversimplified explanation of the weekend.

Seesmic du Jour Season 1 ended. Below is the last episode. It’s crazy that it’s over now, I don’t know how I’ll be able to count how long I’ve worked at Seesmic now. Just imagine having a video archive of every day for the past 168 work days. For me, even though it was not a show about me, it was a show that I was there for every day. I shot it, I edited it, I came up with ideas for it, then at the end of the day, every day, I posted it all over the web and blogged it for Loic. And now I don’t. That is a crazy feeling, but it’s also a ton of weight off of my shoulders. Now I can use my creative energy on other Seesmic production projects.

All signs point to summer. It’s time to unlock the creative box and get some projects going. I have a few in mind, tell me what you think.

1. Break out the sewing machine and get crafty.
2. Edit some personal videos as well as videos for friends and family.
3. Write and read some Screenplays. I’ve never done this, but I think it would be fun.
4. Focus full time on Ultimate Frisbee.
5. Focus on my online persona, building Whit Scott as a brand.

I’m open for suggestions.

Last weekend I went with Ben Metcalfe to the Maker Fair at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. The best way I’ve heard this fair described is, “Burning Man meets the tech world.” The Maker Fair showcases Arts, Crafts, Engineering, Food, Music, Science and Technology. Above is a video of the two guys you’ve seen a million times on YouTube dropping Mentos into Diet Coke.

Here is a short list of some of the other awesome things I saw:

Mouse Trap, the old game, but blown up on a huge scale with bowling balls instead of marbles.

A machine that etches in wood and metal at ridiculous speeds. Basically a printer except it’s carving with a laser.

Bags made out of old rain jackets by City Bag Trade.

A huge city made out of Legos with running trains and whole districts.
Goats in a petting zoo!

Huge Metal sculptures of people. See picture.
exc…