Last week, I posted to the Kodak blog a brief how-to on making handmade christmas ornaments with photos. You can check it out here.

As of September 14th, 2006, I have been blogging for Kodak’s A Thousand Words blog. There are several Kodak employees contributing to this blog, so I will only be posting once every three weeks. So far I have two posts, which you can check out here. Different people are focusing on different topics, but I will mostly focus my posts on tips and projects. If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback related to the Kodak blog, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Alas, it has been quite sometime since my last post. Here’s a short summary of what’s been keeping me from writing here…

How I spent my summer… in somewhat of a “what were we thinking?!” move, we actually installed our own roof on our house. I’ll add some pics soon, but by the end of August, we essentially had our “hooray we have a roof!” moment…. It’s a good thing it is a 50-year roof!

How we spent September… we quickly installed windows over Labor Day weekend and have moved on to stucco’ing. Someday soon, we will be officially “water tight”!

How I spent the last week of September and the first three weeks of October…I am actually on jury duty for the first time. By orders of the judge, I can’t say anything about it until it is all over, but suffice it to say, I am getting an extended real-life lesson about our judicial system.

More entries coming soon!

A little more than two weeks to go and DCamp will be here! More than 85 of the usual and unusual suspects are signed up to attend so far, which is what will make the event a unique experience!

We still need sponsors for food and for a temporary network, so please sign up on the DCamp Sponsors page, if you can help. Alternatively, you can contact me or Rashmi directly for more info.

There’s still time to sign up to attend and present. Don’t delay — sign up today!

Rashmi has organized a great line-up for the BayCHI panel on Tuesday evening (April 11): Beyond Search: Social and Personal Ways of Finding Information. The panelists include Neil Hunt from Netflix, David Porter from Live365, Tom Conrad from Pandora, Kevin Rose from Digg, and Joshua Schachter from del.icio.us. It should be an excellent panel and discussion for all who attend. Wish I could be there too, but alas, I will be in Rochester. I’ll look forward to the podcast, which should be posted within a few days after the talk here.

Hooray! The DCamp wiki opened this week, so the event is moving into full swing now! In the spirit of BarCamp, DCamp is an unconference focusing on the Design and Development of the user experience. The price is right (free, with a suggested donation of $10), so sign up and join in on the fun!

Participants make an unconference successful. All attendees of an unconference participate in one way or another — presenting, volunteering, etc. Do you have something you want to share? Go to the Presenters page to sign up!

Sponsors make an unconference possible. High-speed internet access and food are currently the big needs. If your company is interested in sponsoring DCamp, you can sign up on the Sponsors page.

We’re looking forward to a great event. Hope to see you there! The DCamp wiki will be the main hub for communications, so be sure to check there for all of the latest updates!

If you are having problems “getting things done,” you can procrastinate a little more, have a few laughs and pick up a few tips along the way by listening to the podcast of Merlin Mann’s talk from the March BayCHI monthly meeting. Check it out here!

According to wordpress blog stats, the most common way that people are currently getting to my blog is by searching for “wall texturing.” Who knew so many diy’ers search for blogs about wall texturing? At any rate, I am now feeling compelled to include some of my tips about physically texturing walls.

Disclaimer: I am more novice than expert in this area. These tips are provided in hopes that they might help some other diy’ers avoid some of the mistakes and worries that we had when applying our wall texturing. NOTE also: these tips relate to basic wall texturing — no fancy Italian special look or anything like that. However, the tips are for the type of texturizing that goes beyond the bubbly look that you would get from simply using a loop roller.

Tip 1: pick your tool(s). If you have an air compressor, you can buy a wall texturing “hopper” and use a flat trowel or wide putty knife to flatten the spray. You can get such an air paint texture gun at Harbor Freight. If you don’t have an air compressor, the job will take more time and effort by hand, but you can get the job done by simply using a wide putty knife. Either way, you may also want to have a sanding block and appropriate sandpaper for touch-ups.

Tip 2: pick your goo. You can go to Home Depot or your favorite home improvement store and find all sorts of goo related to wall texturing. There’s spray-on stuff, bucket o’ goo, and so on. Truth be told, my husband and I think that these are all mostly watered down (and higher priced) versions of joint compound (i.e., the type used for taping drywall). So, you can purchase the pre-mixed goo labeled for “texturing” if you want, but it is actually cheaper if you buy pre-mixed joint compound or if you buy dry joint compound (NOT the “quick dry” kind!) and mix it yourself (just add water). Note: how thin you mix the goo will determine the amount of texture. You may need to experiment to see how much texture you want (see next tip).

Tip 3: practice. My friend Suzanne is more of a perfectionist than I am, so she actually practiced on spare scraps of drywall. I have to admit, if you are trying this for the first time, it would not hurt to test out your application “technique” on something other than your target wall(s). This will allow you to test everything from how it applies and how it looks to how long it takes to dry.

Tip 4: go for it. Keep in mind that one of the characteristics of wall texturing is irregularity. Wall texturing is designed to be imperfect and inconsistent. Thus, if you are applying your goo by hand, you can put randomly sized and irregularly shaped blobs of goo, randomly onto the wall. I also found it helpful to divide the wall into smaller, more workable, areas. If you are using the hopper/compressor method, you can randomly spray the goo on the wall. Once the goo has started to dry a little, but before it has hardened too much, you should flatten and smooth your goo blobs with a flat trowel or wide putty knife.

Tip 5: touch up. Once the texture has dried, see if there are any areas that need “touching up.” If there are areas where you think more texturing is needed, you can just add some in by hand. If there are areas where you think the texture is too thick or bumpy, you can sand the areas down with a sanding block. (You should wear a mask if you sand, though.)

Tip 6: don’t worry. If, after touching up the walls, you are still concerned about how they look, don’t worry. Most people won’t know the difference. However, if you are super subconscious and want some other “masking” tips to help the job look better, here are a couple of suggestions. First, paint the walls with a lighter color. This is based on my experience and opinion, but I think that darker paint colors seem to expose “issues” with wall texturing more than lighter paint colors. Second, use a ceramic paint additive such as Hy-Tech to your primer or paint. This adds a kind of fine grained look over your texturing and (in theory) has the added benefit of providing more insulation for your room.

Tip 7: paint it up and then stand back and admire your handiwork. When all is done, stand back and enjoy the view

There’s nothing like a circus to take you back to the childlike wonder and awe of amazing acts that seem to defy reality. And, there’s no jaw-dropping experience that compares to a cirque circus. We went to Cirque du Soleil (Corteo) on Friday and I think my jaw hit the ground so many times that my chin may need a band-aid! But seriously, anyone who has been to a cirque show can tell you that it is not a show that can be adequately described with words, but must be experienced in person.

This got me thinking about “jaw-dropping user experiences.” What examples of jaw-dropping user experiences do we have with respect to software, devices, or internet applications? I.e., experiences that bring childlike wonder and joy, those that suspend disbelief, or those that transform the way we do things? I think most start-ups believe that they have found a holy grail of some form or another. For some new ideas, the “aha!” moment for the user is immediate, for others, it takes time. But, for the ultimate jaw-dropping ideas, it takes a first-hand experience. Take Apple’s iPod nano, for example. Seeing it on the website brought on a “looks cool” for me. Seeing it on tv made me think that Apple must really be trying to market these things. But, seeing it in person in the Apple Store was the “wow, what’s not to like?” moment for me. The nano was the first mp3 device to defy the expected ratio of features to size — thereby changing our view of reality and what’s possible. For me, Yahoo Instant Search was another great experience for me, while services like del.icio.us did not really start to shine until they had enough critical mass to leverage the social network effect and advantage.

How about you? What jaw-dropping user experiences have you had?