This is a graph of the connections between members of my Facebook network produced by the Friend Wheel application (please note names have been removed to protect the innocent).

A few take away notes:

1. As I mention in the title of the post, I like this visualization because it spells out very clearly that my network exists whether I am a part of it or not. Note that, while this is ostensibly my network, I am not on the graph.

2. My law school friends have adopted Facebook in far larger numbers than my other friend groups. This is partially due to the fact that the average age of my law school classmates is ~5 years younger than my college friends. I imagine that this is also partly due to the fact the size of one’ school network diminishes over time.

3. My brother was a year behind me in school and we attended the same schools from pre-k through college. It’s cool to see lines connecting my brother to friends of mine (and his) from nearly every stage of my life.

4. I wonder what this graph would look like if I was liberal with my friend requests and acceptances? There are no real surprises here mostly because I know nearly everyone on this graph well. What interesting connections would I find if I opened up the network a bit?

5. The grouping by network has its advantages and disadvantages. I like the dense parts of the graph. It shows you the relative size of each of your networks when all those belonging to a particular network are grouped next to each other on the circle. It quickly becomes clear that not only is my law school network larger, but that it is also more interconnected than my other networks. But, such grouping makes it difficult to tell who the nodes are. I would like have access to a view that showed me who in my network are are super connected and, alternatively, who have fewer ties. It’s a blurry haze for the most part now.

6. Finally, I can’t figure out how this app determines its groupings. It’s clear that those who actually belong to the same network are grouped together. But this app is smarter than that (sort of). It manages to group my five cousins together despite the fact that I have only confirmed “friend details” (cuz details?) with one of them. More interestingly, it manages to connect five of my friends who all work together despite the fact that there is no network on Facebook for their employer. It makes sense, they are connected to me and to each other, and to know one else. But then why can’t the program figure out that my “random law school friend” should be grouped with the law school kids? While she opted for her work network over her school network, she is clearly tied to at least five people in the school network, and isn’t tied to anyone else.

   Anyway, I have over thought this, but it’s interesting to me. I like the visual interpretation of how my network is connected. While there are no surprises, I can imagine a time where my network becomes large and varied enough on Facebook that there will be.

Those who have hung out with me know that I stay up late and rise as late as I can. For most of my career this has been, at most, acceptable because I worked for startups. In that environment, one can at least make the argument that it is about how much you can accomplish, not when you accomplish it. But working at a law firm with my schedule is, how should I put this, mildly stressful. I finally realized I had hit a breaking point the other day when, without ever waking up, I grabbed both alarms and dragged them into my bed and tried to murder them. When I awoke, I had button marks on my chest where I had tried to smother them.

So, last night I made a promise to myself. I am going to attempt to shift my schedule to bed by midnight work by 8:15. Day one has been a success. I absolutely love being here before the rest of my team. I have already handled a couple of matters and I was able to read the whole paper instead of just the A and Business sections.

Why it is so hard to do things that are enjoyable?

I have a love hate relationship with the teenagers that stand en masse below my office and scream their hearts out for the guest of the day at TRL. I swear I thought Michael Jackson circa Thriller was visiting Times Square today given the size of the crowd and the decibel level of the screams.

(Michael Jackson circa Thriller)

Turns out, it’s Beyonce. Who knew?

I get a twitter message from Susan Wu saying she doesn’t get “cosplay.” I think, “Hmmm… I don’t either. What’s cosplay?” I open the browser and ask Wikipedia. Well, it’s a portmanteau of the English words “costume” and “role play” Got it, cool. Well, not really, but portmanteau is much more interesting. I can tell what it means from the usage, but what an interesting word! I wonder what the etymology is? I ask Wikipedia again, but before I can get to the etymology I am clicking links trying to figure out the difference between “nonce words” and “neologisms” (as a side note, basically a nonce-word is made up for one-time usage, but if the cat who made it up is popular and it catches on, then the word becomes a neologism… I guess that’s before the neologism gets a spouse and a mortgage and becomes a… word).

Luckily, I wasn’t totally side tracked by the nonce-word / neologism debate and was able to make my way back to the portmanteau article on Wikipedia, because if I didn’t - I wouldn’t have been able to share this little gem with you.

Portemanteau, from Middle French porter (to carry) and manteau (a coat or cover), formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one.

The modern usage of portmanteau was actually coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying,

“Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

A beautiful image isn’t it? Packing words.

His invention is making my life intolerably difficult. That said, some people disagree. Check out the sales pitch this company came up with (after clicking the link, you’ll be looking for the bold, bright blue text, three quarters of the way down the page).

There has got to be a better way (oh wait… there is… it’s called a PDF).

I love this map from National Geographic Magazine.

Check out New York. Now I have absolutely no excuse for being single. Damn.

via Strange Maps

I created another blog to hold onto all of the things that I am finding and loving, but losing somewhere in the gaps between delicious, my blog, and the favorite button in various applications (think Flickr and YouTube).

It’s basically a scrap book of my discoveries which I intend to fill with photos, videos, quotes, lyrics, and other found items that I don’t want to lose or forget.

Anyway, it’s at http://www.fullfathom.org.

We’ve discussed the etymology of fathom before.

I rarely have an out and out dress shirt calamity (when I was growing up, you could tell what one of my best friends had eaten for lunch by perusing his shirt… Doritos and a Pizza… Nice).

But nary a day goes by that I don’t get some little spec of a stain on my shirt. Today it was Jamba Juice. Yesterday, coffee. The frustrating part is that those little stains, if forgotten, end up getting baked into my shirts permanently after I wash and dry my clothes. So I lose a lot of shirts.

But all that is of no matter now. Because I have this:

After my Jamba Juice fiasco, I simply applied a bit of the Tide Stick and I was good to go. The stain is totally gone. Which raises the question: Why can’t Tide Detergent remove these stains while in the washing machine with a ton more product and a lot of water. Perhaps I should throw a Tide Stick in the mix and see if that works.

Bummer: When the beautiful woman you made eye contact with gets off the train before you can figure out how to begin a conversation.

Damn shame: When you realize - a station later - that she got off at your stop….

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