Hi Folks...

I just moved my blog to WordPress. Here's a link to it:

Richoid's NEW BLOG on Information Architecture, and other thoughts.

All new posts will go here. I'm leaving this up because there are lots of links out there to it.

It still needs some aesthetic work, but it's a start.

Well, I'm not THAT poor, but it is the holidays, and the web design business is always spotty for a freelancer, so the extra $400 and counting that I'm making from selling the "Worst President, Ever" merchandise through CafePress.com is very welcome.

If I go past $500, I'll donate half the additional proceeds to a good cause. I think I'll try to come up with merchandise to battle John Doolittle locally. He's been a Bush Thinkalike since before anyone ever heard of Bush in California.

He's opposed the efforts of Robert Matsui (who recently died, and has been replaced by his wife Doris Matsui) to improve the levee system around Sacramento forever, because he wants to build Auburn Dam. The levee repairs are necessary regardless of whether a dam is built, and can be addressed more immediately than a dam. Oh, and the dam was being built on earthquake faults. But of course, conservatives don't believe scientists when they say that's a bad idea.

Anyway, if we can make people aware that he's Bush, Jr...

Thanks for all your comments, including the angry ones!

Yes, I am a bit of a hippie, raised in Northern California. I haven't smoked pot since college, but some of my best friends do. I find it hard on the lungs. I miss the giggles, though. It also helps with anger management, so maybe some of you should try it.

Many have noticed that this is based on those "W" stickers that were ubiquitous before the last election. Others have had the same idea, but weren't technical enough to get it "good enough". The "Worst Ever" line has been around for a long time. But, it is important at this point to make it clear that the decision in '04 was a bad one, and we have learned from our mistakes.

One guy suggested that the quality of stickers at CafePress isn't that good. If this isn't just a flash-in-the-pan, I'll set up an ecommerce site and have the work done at a higher level. CafePress is awesome for having a brainstorm and putting it out there... but the choices are limited, for obvious reasons. It tends to push the prices a little high, too. I do hope the quality is satisfactory, please let me know if it isn't.

If you want to order in quantity, or to get wholesale pricing, drop me an email. I can get a much better price for you!

You still have to worry about the 37%, but the trend is in the right direction, Bush is in trouble.

Keep in mind, people, that Bush has not vetoed a single thing out of congress, and that means that any blame that goes to Bush, goes to the Republican Party as a whole. Bush may be the point man on the lying, cheating and stealing, but there is an organization that created the institution that he rode in on. That's the Party.

Still, I had to whip this up:



I've made these into bumper stickers, oval stickers, buttons, T-shirts, golf shirts and more at CafePress. Go to my store there, to buy!

Note: I used CafePress to do this quickly, but they charge quite a bit. If you want wholesale or volume purchases, I can get better pricing. Email me




PS. Thanks, BoingBoing

Here's some useful tips for business bloggers via Lifehacker.

And, on a related note: Ten Blogging Hacks from Micropersuasion.

This guy's doing some cool things: EcoLanguage

These animated diagrams are great to visually show how economics works. He should switch to Flash, so the images are clearer, and larger, without the download time. And a professional voice-over would be good. But this is by far the clearest way to explain economics.

And people need to understand economics, badly.

This is Information Architecture approaching it's highest potential.

We wrapped up our DC vacation by going out to Virginia.

Actually, the day started with a trip to the National Zoo. Laura and I found the zoo a depressing place. We saw pandas (the new baby panda was not out in public, yet) leopards, and more. But we were glad when we got a call from my brother-in-law Richard saying he was ready to go on an expedition. We cut the visit short and headed to the gate on Connecticut Ave. NW, where Richard picked us up.

Our final destination was the beautiful Harper's Ferry National Park. Richard took us there in his new Honda Accord, which is equipped with a navigation system. We set the destination as the National Park, and it took us there. Only, it didn't take us to the entrance. Instead it took us the the nearest border of the park, which is across the river, just under the railroad bridge. This is some distance from the actual entrance to the park.

This turned out to be a good thing. Instead of turning and going back to the highway, we looped out through the Blue Ridge Mountains, lovely farm country, in full fall colors! It was stunningly beautiful.

When we looped back around to the highway, it was a short trip in, over the river and along it, up to a parking area, then a short (about a mile) shuttle ride in. By this time it was late afternoon.

When we finally got back through traffic to DC, we met Wendy at McCormick and Schmick's, a really great restaurant! There are about 50 restaurants started by the same guys. All of them that I've tried have been really, really good. Our favorite was Splendido's in San Francisco, which unfortunately seems to have closed. The Kuleto's restaurants seem to be related to these, too. The Apple Pie was the best I've ever had, and I've had a few.

We flew out from Dulles at 7:30pm, and with the time change we arrived in Sacto at 10:30, but it felt like we'd been on the plane all night. It was windy and bumpy on approach, but the landing was smooth. We stayed at my sister Betsy's overnight and made our way home the next day.

Great Trip!

After our marathon day (previous post) we slept in a bit, had a relaxed breakfast at Bread & Chocolate, and caught the bus and Metro to the Smithsonian Station (with one transfer, to the Orange Line).

From there we walked to the Air & Space Museum. This place is incredible. The scale is huge. Rockets, airplanes, lunar landers and re-entry vehicles, skylab and more fill the lobby areas. Side rooms include a hands-on exhibit -- which the kids love so much the adults can't get in edgewise -- to a complete exploration of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Oddly, my favorites were the more recent additions of the Gossamer Condor (first human-powered flight across the English Channel), the Voyager (first nonstop around the world) and Spaceship One (first commercial spacecraft). Two out of three involved Burt Rutan, who is the coolest aircraft designer since the Wrights.

Every exhibit here is amazing, because they have almost every unique item in aviation history.

From there we went to the Hirshorn Museum which had some cool stuff. There was a great video display of tops spinning in big crowds which is hard to describe but incredibly fun to watch. My usual experience with museums is that most of the work gets a glance, but the few that are fun really hold my attention. There were several fun pieces here. I also tend to appreciate those with the greatest craftsmanship and complexity. So the prized exhibits often don't get the reverence they presumably deserve.

We made our way back and had dinner at a nice Greek place in Chevy Chase, with Wendy and Richard.

The next day (yesterday) same pattern. We did the Natural History Museum and the Freer Gallery. The Natural History Museum had bad food, good Gelato and a wide array of displays. For me the Geology exhibits which range from explanations of plate tectonics, rock formation, earthquakes and volcanoes to displays of gems, including the hope diamond... was clearly the highlight. I'm fascinated by natural crystal formations.

There was lots from Northern California in this section... Gold from our own Grass Valley mining district, much about earthquakes and volcanoes (extensive mentions of the Lassen area), and the raising of the Sierra.

A huge display of animal skeletons was pretty interesting, and off to the side was a history of the Sikh culture and religion which I'd been curious about for some time topped it all off. After that, we came back to CC join up with my sister Wendy at Guapo's, in Bethesda. Great Mexican food!

After my last post, we've done 3 more days.

The marathon day started with a tour bus. The Old Town Trolley left from Union Station. It runs approximately every 25 minutes in two loops that intersect. You can get off and on as many times as you want, for one not-so-low price. One benefit is that it provides easy transportation to the memorials, the National Cathedral and Embassy Row, which are not convenient to the Metro lines.

We visited the Jefferson and Roosevelt memorials. The first is classic the second modern, but they're both great in completely different ways. I won't bother to describe them here. Then we bussed back to lunch at the American Indian Museum (for the second time). Then we took the second loop up to the National Cathedral, then caught the last bus from there (at 4:30) back down embassy row, through Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, to the Chinatown area. We thought we'd eat dinner in Chinatown, but ended up at Georgia Brown's where we had a 45 minute wait to be seated. In Washington, you can't smoke in restaurants, but you can in bars. And at GB's, the bar is the waiting area to be seated. Naturally we waited outside.

Despite the smoke, the folks running the restaurant were so nice and the food was so good, it was worth it, in a big way.

After dinner, we walked around the White House, where there was a demonstration by (I think) Nigerians. We went around the other side for the view then walked down to the WWII Memorial. This is a really great piece of work. Then we walked along the reflecting pond to the Lincoln Memorial. From there we went to the Vietnam, and then the Korean War Memorials. These are all really brilliant. I think the Vietnam Memorial really set a standard for modern public architecture that the Korean built on. The WWII is more classical and it's own thing. But they're all truly great, and capture the nature of each conflict in many subliminal and symbolic ways.

We saw all the three after dark. I think the Vietnam is somewhat better during the day, while the other two are good either at night or daytime.

Now it was late, about 10pm. We went to a bus stop to catch a ride back to the metro station. It was a long-time coming -- about 25 minutes. A very nice older man, who worked the concessions at the memorials, reassured us that it would arrive, and he told us where we would transfer. Once we got on the bus it was a short ride (but would have been a loooong walk) to the Metro station in front of the IRS building.

From there we rode to Metro Center and transferred to the Red Line back to Chevy Chase circle. Late at night, all the trains and busses run less often. At each transfer, it took 20-25 minutes until the next ride came. We didn't get in until after midnight, exhausted.

The American History Museum is really amazing... it goes on and on, has hugely significant stuff in it, and is really fun. The most fun was Julia Child's kitchen. They took her real kitchen and moved all its contents into the display. You look into the kitchen through glass doors, and see how the most famous cook in America organized everything.

There was a great presentation on Brown vs. Board of Education. It has a classroom in it. On the left: Linoleum floors, metal desks, blackboards, books... On the right: unfinished wooden plank floors, benches with no writing surfaces... and that's it. It was spooky seeing a real KKK uniform, and you could follow every step in the legal struggle to overcome segregation, city by city.

In another section was a military display titled "Freedom isn't free" which you see on bumper stickers all across America. Of course, for blacks, freedom was won with lawyers and with marches. The bloodshed that happened was less organized than with war. But we should see that throughout history, the real freedom for real Americans mostly came from fighting in the courtroom. And that was only possible because we had a good constitution in the first place.

For American Indians and for other minorities, including blacks, the enemy wasn't "over there." It was right here. For Rosa Parks, there was a noble battle to be fought, but it was fought with words and actions that did not include guns.

Recently we had an option, as a nation, to solve a problem with legal action, backed by enforcement. Instead, we opted for force without legal authority. We opted for pre-emptive war.

The enemies of America mostly are the enemies within. Others can attack, but only sporadically, only effecting a few in our population. But the people running the House, the Senate, and the White House are destroying America from within. It amazes me that 39% of Americans still support Bush, and that those who are criticizing Bush don't all seem to realize that it is the entire party working together to create this nightmare.