John Labovitz

about me

Raised in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, I later spent a decade in the San Francisco Bay area, both in the city and rural Sonoma County. I moved to Seattle in the mid-90s, and watched that city grow and grow. I now base myself in Silverton, Oregon, in the foothills of the Cascades.

Currently:: At home in Silverton, OR
Weather:: Clear, 88°F, with a moderate breeze from the north
Email:: johnl@johnlabovitz.com
AIM:: jslabovitz (online)
Skype:: jslabovitz (offline)
Twitter:: jslabovitz

life

I’m currently building a ‘housetruck’ — a house on wheels — in which I will explore and live. I’ve been designing it for over a year, and am currently constructing it. I’m trying to document the building, as well as the musings & philosophies on which it is based.

Off to Astoria

Monday, 16 August » It’s the long end of a day spent journeying to Astoria, cutting northwest from Silverton through the Yamhill valley. Classy vineyards and tasting rooms grow like fireweed out of the bones of decayed farms. The small roads zig and zag around fields, through towns, across freeways I see only momentarily before I’m again humming along a country road. Here in these dry valleys that angle up to the coast range, the heat hangs like moss in the hazy air. » read more

Housetruck: Show & tell at OSBridge

Wednesday, 2 June » I had a wonderful day showing the housetruck to many interested folks at the Open Source Bridge software conference being held this week in Portland. I’d proposed a presentation and it was accepted — Housetruck: Building a Victorian RV — and the conference organizers were kind enough to offer me an opportunity to put the housetruck on display today. And not just any display, either: in the public courtyard of the downtown Portland Art Museum! Despite the drizzle, several dozen folks came by throughout the day to peer into the truck. Interestingly, only about a third were from the conference; the remainder were museum employees & volunteers and passers-by interested in this strange installation. » read more

Housetruck: Housetruck

Tuesday, 1 June » Current status: The housetruck will be on public display in Portland, Oregon, this coming Tuesday, June 1. As a part of the Open Source Bridge software conference, the truck will be installed for just one day in the courtyard of the Portland Art Museum (map). I’ll likely be there at the truck 8am–9am and 10am–1:30pm; at other times, a volunteer will be on hand. If you’re attending the conference, you’ve invited to come to my talk Housetruck: Building a Victorian RV.I am building a ‘housetruck’ — a house on wheels. It will serve several purposes: » read more

art

Photography integrates my diverse interests in architecture, culture, history, travel, nature, technology, design, and sense of place. I continue to explore these themes in my ongoing international travels, as well as around my home.

Flickr Photostream is currently unavailable.

See more of my photographs at Flickr Photostream

travel

I have always loved to travel, and as I get older, I find I want to travel more, and more deeply. Along with frequent short travels around the US to visit friends and family, I am starting to experiment with longer yet slower journeys to other parts of the world.

Upcoming trips:

travel_blog is currently unavailable.

tech

I have been programming and using computers for a very long time. From my first computer in 1978 (a COSMAC VIPER I assembled from a kit), I’ve experienced a great deal of what used to be called the ‘microcomputer revolution.’ I was also fortunate to be involved in the pioneering days of the early Internet of the 1980s, though the explosion of the Web in the 1990s, and into the boom and bust.

These days, I am primarily interested in desktop and mobile technology, as well as the general impacts of technology on our culture as a whole. I’m especially fascinated by the impact of digital technology in artistic fields like photography and music.

See my professional profile at LinkedIn.

Why I don’t program for the iPhone

Friday, 23 January 2009 » Drifting off to sleep the other night, I realized that what turns me off about developing for the iPhone isn’t the overcrowded market, or the hardware with its limited resources, or even the multitude of fart apps. What turns me off is that the iPhone is a brilliant platform, but an awful ecosystem. Programming the iPhone means, simply and solely, writing an ‘app.’ And an ‘app,’ that modern, pithy term for ‘application,’ as currently defined, means a narrow, vertically-oriented, resource-constrained program: an ivory tower. My ivory tower could be beautiful, comfortable, functional, even life-changing: but it is still an ivory tower, and one that is torn down in full whenever the iPhone user decides they want to run another application. Another ivory tower is built; it, too, eventually falls. » read more

An unexpected sense of place?

Sunday, 27 July 2008 » In Great To See You. Just Not Around Here (full article), Jan Chipchase outlines the darker, edge effects of location-aware technology. In summary, the advertisement of location destroys anonymity – not just one’s own, but others’ as well. » read more

How Flickr could make the world a better place for copyright

Friday, 11 July 2008 » Flickr has come under fire recently for not enforcing licensing terms on images accessed through their application programmer’s interface (API) and syndication feeds.Comply with any requirements or restrictions imposed on usage of the photos by their respective owners. Remember, Flickr doesn’t own the images — Flickr users do. Although the Flickr APIs can be used to provide you with access to Flickr user photos, neither Flickr’s provision of the Flickr APIs to you nor your use of the Flickr APIs override the photo owners’ requirements and restrictions, which may include “all rights reserved” notices (attached to each photo by default when uploaded to Flickr), Creative Commons licenses or other terms and conditions that may be agreed upon between you and the owners. In ALL cases, you are solely responsible for making use of Flickr photos in compliance with the photo owners’ requirements or restrictions. If you use Flickr photos for a commercial purpose, the photos must be marked with a Creative Commons license that allows for such use, unless otherwise agreed upon between you and the owner. You can read more about this here: www.creativecommons.org or www.flickr.com/creativecommons. » read more

discoveries

The sphere of information is full of inspiring or interesting bits, waiting to be discovered. Here are a few of my discoveries.

What would happen if a state was to physically disappear but people want to keep their nationalities? It could continue as a virtual state even though it is a rock under the ocean and its people no longer live on that piece of land…. As independent nations they receive certain rights and privileges that they will not want to lose. Instead they could become like ghost states. This is a pressing issue for small island states, but in the case of physical disappearance there is a void in international law. Increase in sea levels due to global warming could lead to ‘ghost states’

Floating Gold: The Romance of Ambergris » “Now of all the things presented for the inspection of that faithful servant of the public, the museum curator, the most romantic, and the least likely to be true, is ambergris. I say inspection, because identification is preconceived in the mind of the finder. His treasure, stumbled upon along the sea beach, recognized with the sudden surmise that dawns like knowledge from a previous incarnation, is encountered where ambergris belongs; it looks, and feels, and smells as ambergris should and, since it bears no resemblance to anything familiar, it follows that riches are already within his grasp.” » read more

BART swings » “Somebody decided to make the world just a little bit more interesting, and three red swings appeared on the BART Public Transit System in San Francisco for the public to enjoy.” » read more