Be Laughter: Guided meditation from an expert practitioner

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Be Laughter: A Do-It-Yourself Laughter MakeoverLaughing Laura AKA Laura Gentry is one of the top leaders of Laughter Yoga in the United States. She has led laughter yoga workshops all over the country and across the globe. Her latest audio CD is called Be Laughter: A Do-It-Yourself Laughter Makeover. The CD is available from Amazon.com.

In Laura’s previous CDs, she focused on the laughter and musical aspects. On this new CD, she guides the listener through more of the yogic experience. The disc begins with five different breathing exercises. They’re each about five minutes long. Laura sets up the exercise and then proceeds through the exercise itself. Even doing just one of these exercises will make you feel more relaxed. Music gently soothes in the background as Laura’s voice creates a warm environment in which to feel relaxed.

I’ve listened to other CDs with breathing exercises such as Andrew Weil’s Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healing, and I must say that Laughing Laura is a consummate professional. She’s really good at this. Better than Andrew Weil himself? You be the judge. I found Laura’s exercises very relaxing and very effective. The combination of Laura’s voice, the directive words she uses, and the gentle music to be an incredible combination!

After the breathing portion of the CD, Laura cues up some laughter exercises that are both upbeat and relaxing at the same time. She has three different laughter exercises that you can use in the morning to prepare for the day. Each focuses on the differences of laughter from varied body positions: seated, lying down or standing. Of course, standing is the most exultant, which leads into the next track called “Laughter Dance Party.” The dance party is her noontime exercise, and it’s fun and boisterous. You can let it all hang out on this one. It’s a fun break — just get up and dance and laugh it out.

The real magic, in my opinion, happens on the last track, which is a full, 30-minute guided meditation. It is a Yoga-nidra exercise. You can read more about Yoga-nidra on Wikipedia. The first fifteen minutes of the meditation focuses on sensing and relaxing different regions of the body. I’ve heard all of Laura’s CDs, but I was surprised at how much of an expert she is at guided meditation. Her voice is perfect for guided meditation, and she has a profound sense of what to say when. You can tell she has spent years honing her craft, and I can’t think of any other guided meditation experience that I’ve participated in that was this good.

The second half of the meditation focuses on specific visualizations. Laura guides you through images and scenes and feelings that deepen the meditative state and enhance your level of relaxation. Recent studies have shown that Buddhist monks who regularly meditate have measurably different brainwaves than the rest of us. That is to say that meditation is extremely effective even if you choose to do it once in a while. But with regular practice, it becomes much easier to reach that level of calm.

I’ve reviewed several of Laughing Laura’s CDs on this blog, and this one has quickly become my favorite. It’s a delightful mix. It begins with calming breathing exercises, moves into Laughter Yoga and ends with guided meditation. The tracks can be listened to individually or as a group.

Laura trained at the American School of Laughter Yoga in Pasadena, California. She has also worked closely with Dr. Madan Kataria of Mumbai, India, who is the originator and inventor of Laughter Yoga. Dr. Kataria is respected throughout the world for his work in spreading the ideas and practice of Laughter Yoga. Laura is a personal friend of mine, and I’m very glad that she sent me this CD.

You can order your own copy of Be Laughter at the Laughter Shoppe on Laughing Laura’s website or through Amazon.com. You’ll be glad you did!

PDF Culture: The underground literary movement

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What began in the early ’90s as a simple file format to preserve print document design in a digital world has exploded as a catalyst for fringe literary and artistic movements. These groups are loosely joined by networks of people. Files are traded and shared, but ultimately the goal of these groups is massive social change through digital print.

In Detroit, artists have setup a small storefront where one can gain access to their library for a price. There’s an evaluation. Some people are given completely free and unfettered access to the electronic documents, while others try earnestly day after day to get a look but fail every time. The fact that they are willing to return daily shows that the artists who are hoarding PDFs having something that people want. But by the rules of the literary establishment, only certain people have the privilege of access.

But the underground aspect of this movement disdains thoroughly the tiered, hierarchical system that has produced books for $25 at Barnes & Noble, $15 at Amazon, and $5 through Half.com. Marketing has overtaken the book industry, and whatever price point you’re comfortable with, that is what the industry expects you to pay.

Instead these literary artists in Detroit are mixing technology with the idealized design of print. By using PDF files as their format of choice, the artists are taking from the corporate world a symbol of control and deconstructing it into an agent of change. The PDF is not the goal in itself, but the PDF is held to a high standard. Fidelity with the design of the print book is of key importance, in their view.

“We are changing the whole notion of what a book is,” said one of the artists who preferred not to be identified. “Literature as art is all about fucking people over until they start saying that unreadable works from people whose range of life experiences is grad school and the writers’ bar are good.”

How the PDF came to play a role in the group’s ideas is not clear. What we do know is that the PDF for them encompasses a whole philosophy. It’s a bridge between the real and digital worlds, but it’s also a movement for change. “Ditch the book” is often said between members of the group. And yet, there is not another group so devoted to the nurturing and evolution of the book.

The book may not be art, but it is changing into something new. eBooks have given rise to a new casual culture of the book. “Anyone who believes that people will read books on portable devices is nuts. If you can do video or if you can do internet, then that’s what you’re going to do,” said Wendy, another member of the group.

Their belief then is that books can give rise to social action. But not paper books. The key is the carefully curated collection of PDF files on their main server. The server is available on the internet but only if an account has been setup for you. There is no way to request an account, unless you happen to go to their storefront in Detroit. But the artist members do spend a lot of time finding people they think are right for the distribution of the knowledge in the PDFs.

It may seem cult-like, but PDF culture is here to stay. The PDF format is no longer the province of a single company. It is an open standard. The artists have hired programmers to write tools to search out and index every PDF publicly available on the internet. They’re working on algorithms that will attempt to determine the transformative potential of the document.

The ideological goal in finding the PDFs is to find like political and artistic material. The artists see it as an act of curation. Documents that are found to be of exceptional quality and have a great sense of joie de vivre can be brought into the corpus. All manner of topics are contained, and there is some disagreement within the group about whether or not the algorithms are working as they should. “It’s a perpetual beta,” they’re quick to mention.

The PDF then is a route to political change as well as one of education and personal enlightenment. The aesthetics of a print work are maintained but brought to the world in a meritocratic fashion. These artists are like librarians who are tending the gates to a world of mystical knowledge. But instead of being judgmental, their philosophy is to optimize the networks of people with access. Instead of being a network with a limited number of connectors and lots of nodes, the artists are making the network such that each person in the network is a connector. It’s a network of people connecting with other connectors.

Will this network ever be complete? “Yes. We are bringing more people into the network and expanding its reach. We will reach the go-live state within three to five years.” What is go-live? “That is when people will get knowledge from two places. First, by personal interaction, and second, by PDF.”

It’s a dramatic goal the artists are proposing — the end of books as we know it. But will they succeed? The artists themselves don’t know, but their collection of PDFs continues to grow larger. Some say that information wants to be free, but the artists would add that information still needs a curator for maximum effect.

Digital Creativity: The fuzz of analog in a digital world

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One of the problems with using a computer as a creative tool is that it’s too easy to be clean. If you’re creating animations in Flash or designs in Illustrator, those tools will want to smooth the edges and simplify the lines automatically. Software is generally geared towards making things clean and easy. The perennial challenge then with creating things in the digital realm is being able to keep some semblance of dirt, fuzziness, analog, the real world or whatever you want to call it. When Swiss designers of yesteryear were creating clean and simple designs (or the Bauhaus Germans), they were embracing a stance of mechanism over the ugliness of an industrial age. It was like they were anticipating the age of digital cleanliness.

There are advantages to that cleanliness. It’s easier now more than even to create beautiful, elegant designs without ever reading a book on typography. The software will take care of the details. So the Swiss had to work to make clean lines, and now clean lines are the easy thing.

The ’80s gave rise to desktop publishing. But that was still a dirty process. On a DIY budget, photocopiers were usually the means of duplication, rather than, say, a laser printer. The heyday of self-produced print publications is long past. It’s now easier to produce your own one-off book or magazine with professional gloss. Putting something into print is almost a reactionary statement today. It’s like a yearning for something that once was. Long-form journalism though is one area where the online world distinctly fails. Much of the deep discussion on topical ideas happens still in print. You may be able to access the articles online now, but very few people will stop to read a 4,000 word or 14,000 word article in its entirety online.

The question though on creative expression is how do we bring that sense of the real world into the machine? There are several methods that come to mind, and perhaps you have a few more to add. One of the most common is photography. A photograph by its very nature brings in the imperfect real world into the digital. If you look around the internet at blogs, many have a cropped photo in the header. Why? A photo can be visually interesting. It’s like a connection to the real world. Some blogs are mostly just text. It looks dry, but can be a useful effect sometimes. Other blogs without photos use saturated color to pull the eye around the page. If you look at the new Tech Crunch redesign, for example, they opted for a retrograde (that’s not necessarily a bad thing) logo instead of a photo. It’s an 8-bit era look but with a modern edge. They kept the color palette simple, too simple in fact. There are three colors: saturated green, black, and white. It’s not a nuanced approach. Tech Crunch could improve the look of their redesign by using a wider palette of colors.

There are a variety of methods for generating color palettes. One arbitrary way that produces surprisingly good results is to find a color photograph that you find pleasing. Ideally it would have a range of tones or at least have some color to it that you like. Bring the photo into Photoshop and then use the Save for Web feature. Save the photo as a four or eight color GIF. And you have an instant color palette that will be interesting and reflective of the environment where the photo was taken. Maybe that’s Times Square in New York, or maybe it’s a hilltop vista. Either way those eight colors may be a great starting point for choosing colors for your digital work. If the photo itself is incorporated into the work such as on a blog header, even better.

Another great tool is the flatbed scanner. If you’re not downloading a photo, another way to get the real world into the machine is simply by sampling it with a scanner. This may include drawings or handwritten words. Or maybe photos from another source. This is a good approach for DIY sites, but one doesn’t see many examples online of people using that technique. Most likely because it takes a lot of work. It’s easy to create digitally with digital tools. Why would you want to scan in something you drew? Isn’t it just a big hassle? Perhaps, but you’ll also get something that is uniquely yours. It’s about personal expression.

Don’t limit yourself then to creating strictly through digital means. The fuzz of analog doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go for a grunge look, but it does mean that it’s okay to have some rough edges. It’s all about air. Breathe some air into your digital designs. Clean typography is within reach of nearly anyone these days. Do something that challenges the assumptions your software is making. Do something that surprises. Life has its messes, and so does art.

Password managers: cross-platform and browser integration

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LastPassWhitson Gordon of Lifehacker has an article today talking about alternatives to the online password manager LastPass. LastPass noticed a traffic anomaly on their network that they couldn’t explain, and they decided to be proactive. Just in case people’s passwords got stolen, some users were required to change their master password. It sounds like LastPass did the right thing. With recent articles detailing security questions about DropBox and cloud computing in general, people are a little bit jumpy about personal data stored online. LastPass uses end-to-end encryption though so your passwords are encrypted with a master password that you specify before they are sent to the LastPass servers.

The first alternative password manager that’s mentioned in the Lifehacker article is KeePass. I’ve been using KeePass for two years, and it works well. It’s a free and open source application, but it’s written in C# and .NET. It’s been ported to various platforms including mobile devices. I use it on Windows and also on Linux running with Mono, which is an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET technology.

KeePass has a somewhat technical interface, and the casual user may prefer a more polished option like 1Password. 1Password costs about $40 and used to only run on Apple products but now has Windows and Android versions, although it looks like Linux is not an option.

KeePass’ days as a cross-platform Wunderkind may be numbered. Mono, which is necessary to run KeePass on Linux, is a project of Novell, Inc., who also produce the SUSE Enterprise Linux distribution. Novell was recently sold, and as this post on ZDNet indicates, Mono is being shut down. All 30 developers working on Mono appear to be without a job at this point, which pretty clearly indicates that Mono is dead in the water. Microsoft doesn’t produce non-Windows versions of .NET or C#. If you’re using Mono to run KeePass or other .NET applications on Linux, then it may be time to assess your options.

Which brings us back to LastPass. LastPass is built seemingly with a similar philosophy as DropBox. They keep it simple and make it run everywhere. LastPass also has much better web browser integration than KeePass, which is an attractive feature. LastPass is free to use, but they also offer a premium version for $12/year. They have versions for basically any computer or mobile device you’d care to run it on. At the moment, their servers are getting hit with heavy traffic because of people changing their passwords. But if you’re looking for an easy, secure way to keep passwords synced across your computers and devices, then check out LastPass.

Balancing usability and security with your passwords

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Thomas BaekdalIn 2007, Thomas Baekdal, a Dane, wrote a simple article on his website entitled The Usability of Passwords. It inspired a lot of debate. His main thesis was that complex passwords are difficult to remember and may reduce actual security if you have to write it down or have some other means of remembering it. He suggests using three or more unusual words separated by special characters as a more secure password strategy. According to his analysis, multiple words used in conjunction with spaces or other special characters can be more secure than a shorter, more complex password.

Baekdal suggests that the approach of most IT departments is incorrect in this fashion. That is, passwords are typically checked strictly for complexity. Most password checkers that measure the strength of a given password simply use a method that matches upper and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols and so on. The more variety, the higher the security rating. But using a long password with multiple words that are easily remembered may be more effective.

Given the mix of opinions and questions regarding his idea, Baekdal followed up his original article with a useful explication of Frequently Asked Questions. This page gets more into the heart of the use and practice of online passwords. One point he makes several times is that the end user can only keep their password secure enough that someone can’t hack them through the website. But if someone hacks the web or database server that stores the password then the user’s security may be worthless. Therefore, from the server perspective, it is up to the server admin to devise a secure method of storing the passwords of a website’s users. If your password is stored on the server in plain text, then a hacked server will result in a hacked password. The user then is just responsible for devising a password strong enough to prevent someone from hacking it via the website and has no control over how a given website will store their password on the server.

In a follow-up article published last month, Baekdal makes further distinctions between the hacking of online and offline passwords. He also introduces the notion that when a server is hacked, the people who have to worry the most are the ones who use the same password for every site they visit. If you use a different password for your most commonly visited sites, then the collateral damage, to use Baekdal’s term, is limited. He uses the example of the Gawker Media break-in. People who had a unique password for Gawker’s websites could have a comment posted, say, on Gawker.com in their name, but that’s about the extent of it. But the hacked passwords were posted online along with email addresses, and those users who had used the same password on multiple sites had a much bigger headache to deal with.

Overall, these three pieces by Mr. Baekdal make for an interesting read if you’re interested in maintaining secure systems. He challenges conventional wisdom about what makes a good password and defends his idea well.

Cutting the cord: Ownership of TV sets falls in U.S.

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Brian Stelter writes in the New York Times that, according to Nielsen, ownership of TVs in the U.S. has fallen for the first time in 20 years. It went from a boggling 98.9% of households down to 96.7%. That is, 3.3% of households don’t have a television. According to this U.S. Census PDF, there were an estimated 114,825,000 households in the U.S. in 2010. So, 3.3% of that number is roughly 3,789,225 households without a TV.

The Nielsen Company thinks that the drop is mostly due to two demographic groups: 1) the rural poor who are increasingly unable to afford satellite service, digital TVs, etc. and 2) young people recently out of college who have decided to “cut the cord.” Poor people – whether rural or urban – are at a distinct disadvantage in today’s TV world. In 2009, TV stations stopped broadcasting analog signals in the U.S. Inexpensive tube TVs no longer exist or can’t carry digital content. Flat-screen LCD TVs are significantly more expensive than the CRT (tube) TV sets they replaced. Cable service has also increased in price at the basic levels and increasingly people opt for more expensive “tiers” of channels. So while wages have remained stagnant, the total cost of ownership of a television has gone significantly up.

It would be interesting to compare the rise of prices in the television industry as a whole with the rise of prices in the cellular phone industry. That is, as TV ownership costs have increased, so have cell phone costs. Most cell phone companies offer smartphones as the default choice, and non-smartphone cell phones are unavailable or available in only a couple of different models. Instead of paying for voice only, one pays for voice, texts, data, and so on. There are still some low-cost options for cell phones, such as prepaid plans, but overall the cost to consumers is rising in cell phones as well.

I sold my TV four years ago and haven’t looked back. My household is part of that 3.8 million that don’t have a TV. If I guess that an average household spends $60 a month on television service, that’s about $3,000 I didn’t spend on TV in four years. That’s a worthwhile cost incentive although that wasn’t my primary motivation for getting rid of the TV. When the internet was growing, there were reports that TV viewership had decreased, but it’s been climbing in recent years. Americans are spending more time watching television, especially those over the age of 65.

In my personal experience, there is a growing third and also a fourth demographic of people who don’t own TVs. The third demographic is an urban dweller who is neither poor nor right out of college and is someone who simply chooses to do without. Cities in and of themselves can be stimulation. The bigger the city, in my anecdotal evidence, the more likely they will be without a TV. The fourth demographic not mentioned by Nielsen are religious conservatives who choose not to watch TV for moral reasons. I know people in the third demographic and consider myself part of it, and I know people in the fourth demographic as well. How big are these groups? Relatively small if you look at the big picture. Most people own a TV, but several million more people in the U.S. are learning or choosing not to live with a TV.

What technology tools do you use?

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For a little over two years, The Setup has been profiling people of various walks who use technology in a significant way. There are four simple questions of which the purpose is to determine who the person is and what technology tools they use whether hardware, software, devices, etc. It’s an interesting look behind the scenes to see what people use to get their work done. People interviewed range from Gina Trapani to Jeffrey Zeldman to Warren Ellis. You can get at a list of everyone who has been interviewed on the Archives page.

This is not the first site to capture information about people’s tools. Flickr has had a variety of photo pools over the years cataloging what’s in people’s bags and such. Or here’s a site taking a look at what’s on the desks of creative people.

It’s a humanizing thing. Partly, you can see what other people use to get things done. But also you can read the stories behind the choices that led people to use a given tool. The Setup features technology tools used by technology-oriented people. It’s amazing to see how much penetration Apple has with the movers and shakers. Another trend that plays out on The Setup is the use of laptops. Even if people have a large, freestanding screen on their desk, more often than not it’s connected to a laptop.

So if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, go over and check out The Setup. It’s one of those little diversions that make the web such a fun place.

What AudioQuest doesn’t want you to know about Thunderbolt

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Thunderbolt TechnologyIntel in conjunction with Apple have released a new connection standard called Thunderbolt. It’s more than 20x faster than USB 2.0. It’s fast. But there’s one key piece of information that’s of interest to audiophiles in particular. Buried in the list of attributes of Thunderbolt is this little nugget:

Low latency with highly accurate time synchronization

This means that Thunderbolt will make the best digital audio connection possible. High-end audio reviewers, whether online or in magazines, spend a lot of time talking about jitter. You’d think the world was awash in poorly timed digital connections. The audio experts like to pass their expert judgments. But here’s a simple fact. Most of the people writing for audiophile magazines are over the age of 40. They simply don’t get the changes that have come and continue to come in nature of the high-end audio system. You have people claiming that one lossless file sounds different from the same lossless file.

High-end audio makes its money selling to older customers who want to show off. How else can you explain $1,000 power cords? But the lie and deception in all of that comes clean with digital audio. You have some high-end cable makers saying their very expensive USB cables are worth the money because surely “it’s more than just ones and zeros.” In fact, no, it isn’t, but the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) in high-end audio advertising makes it clearly apparent that audio manufacturers have their own interests in mind and not their customers.

A clear example of a 40+ year old reviewer weighing in his expert opinion that CD quality, if it’s on a computer, is not as good as CD quality if it’s on a CD. Talk about stuck in the ’80s. Here’s Steve Guttenberg in his own words:

So while lossless audio compression (FLAC or Apple Lossless for example) can be “expanded” to produce an exact digital duplicate of the original audio stream, that’s not necessarily the same thing as sounding exactly like an uncompressed WAV file or a CD. To my ears lossless files add a glare or edge to the music and flatten the soundstage. Please don’t misunderstand, I think FLAC or Apple Lossless sound perfectly fine, just not on par with a CD, when played on a high-end audio system.

Here’s a guy that just doesn’t understand modern technology. He’s approaching digital audio from an analog mindset, and he gets it exactly and completely wrong. He’s supposed to be the expert, and he’s trying to stay relevant.

So back to Thunderbolt. In short, Thunderbolt, as a low latency and tightly clocked interconnect, will completely eliminate the need for expensive cables, as digital technology already has. You can be certain that some will find some fault to justify their salaries. The experts will opine that the past was better. But Thunderbolt will bring in a new age for the digital music server. High-end audio will be accessible more than ever. And with a superior connection method, we can dispense with the FUD and look forward to an incredible sounding future.

Don’t believe what you read; believe what you hear.

Thunderbolt is just now making its way into the market. You’ll find it on some Apple laptops at the moment and by 2012 it’ll be in a lot more places. If you’re thinking about buying a media server or a HTPC (home theater PC), I’d say hold off a year if you can. Thunderbolt promises to make the best of the audio on your computer. Are you playing CD-quality FLAC files or Apple Lossless? Or perhaps you’ve discovered a source for hi-res audio. Maybe 24/96. That appears to be the emerging standard. Once the record companies dispense for good with the CD, we can move forward into full CD quality audio from iTunes (someday!) and hopefully, the availability of 24/96 files for those with the equipment to play it.

Some people won’t pay for music. But many people will. Record Store Day is proof of that. But who wants souvenirs? We want quality music and modern technology. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say no to $100 audio interconnects. Thunderbolt is the proof. Do it cheap. Do it fast. And do it on time. That’s the magic of modern high-end audio. Get some nice speakers. Get a nice amplifier. But put all that music on your hard drive and stream away!

Fedora 15 with GNOME 3 due out soon

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FedoraFedora, a community distribution of GNU/Linux shepherded by Red Hat, will be releasing a new version in a couple of weeks. Fedora has always been cutting edge, and it will be the first big Linux distribution with the newly-released desktop environment GNOME 3.

As I’ve written previously, GNOME 3 is a huge update and break with the past. GNOME 2 was first released in 2002, and now it’s time to jump into the future. Notably, Ubuntu has just released their new 11.04 version without GNOME 3 and have opted to develop their own desktop environment called Unity.

Scott Gilbertson at The Register wrote in an article entitled Sanity saver: Fedora 15 answers Ubuntu’s Unity that:

The planned new Unity interface for Ubuntu 11.04, that replaces GNOME, is [a] rough start. And while GNOME 3 – Fedora’s new default desktop – is considerably more mature than Unity, it’s still a radical break with the past that’s already bringing out the dissenters.

[...]

Although GNOME 3 will be a jarring shock for those accustomed to working with the GNOME 2.x line, once you spend some time with it, you just might discover it’s actually – gasp – better than GNOME 2.

Fedora 15 is currently in beta, and the final release will come out mid-May. GNOME 3 sounds intriguing. If you want to hold off on GNOME 3, you could always stick with Fedora 14 for six more months. It’s fairly easy to install LibreOffice and Firefox 4 on Fedora 14, if you want to replace OpenOffice and Firefox 3.6.

Until the release of Fedora 15 though, we won’t know if the naysayers are right or whether GNOME 3 represents a huge leap forward. Desktop environments like websites tend to catch a certain amount of flak whenever there is a redesign. It’s to be expected. The Linux desktop is changing in significant ways this year. Change is hard, but progress is welcome.

Empowering Designers and Developers

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Okay, there’s this guy named Mike Monteiro who started Mule Design out in San Francisco. He’s funny and a bit profane. But in March, he gave a half-hour talk hosted at the Typekit offices. It’s a good explanation about how and why designers and developers when working with clients should get it all in writing upfront. Mike is joined by his lawyer who gives some practical advice about dealing with clients.

The talk is definitely worth your time if you’re thinking about setting up a design shop.

Vimeo: 2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me.