Hi, I’m John LeMasney, a father, artist, photographer, and new resident in Charlottesville, Virginia. I have the honor of announcing that Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (JMRL) has agreed to let me speak in a free technology series in their beautiful downtown location. I love technology, and want to share what I love about it, continuing the work I’ve done for 20 years in the Northeastern part of our country. If you have a topic or a venue that you’d like covered, please contact me, and let’s make that happen. Let’s do something great together!
John LeMasney cc-by lemasney
Making Photos Great for Free.
Wednesday January 4th from 6-7pm
In this session, come and learn about how to take your digital photos and transform them into art with Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney. With great free tools for photo manipulation, illustration, and catalog management, you can do what the professionals do without the costs. Come and learn about photo technique, lighting, and more, while growing your toolbox beyond point and shoot.
Okay google, what year is it cc-by lemasney
Introduction to Internet of Things and Home Ecosystems.
February 1st from 6-7pm
In this session led by Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney, come and learn about the leading ecosystems that have emerged as AI assistants in the home. We will discuss all the major platforms like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple Siri, but we will focus deeply on the present and future state of Google Home, Google Now, ChromeCast, Chromebook, and related items in the Google Ecosystem in a in-session demonstration. If you are interested in having your lights blink when your partner leaves work, having an always listening all intelligent assistant in your home, or learning automatically that you need to leave a little early due to local traffic, you should join us!
wordpress statistics and analytics
Analytics, or the art of discovering your audience.
March 1st from 6-7pm
If you have a web site or presence in social media, that’s great! How many people visited it today? How about last week? Where did they live? Were they 15, 30, or 50? How many people saw that Instagram post? What is your most popular pin on Pinterest? What browser were they using? Analytics is any system that gives you insight about the way that your content was used. Let Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney help you answer all of those questions and others when you learn about analytics tools in social media, publishing platforms, and other places. We will discuss many platforms for analytics, including Google, social media, and more.
IFLL initial logo study by lemasney
Design for the Non-Designer.
Saturday April 1st from 1pm-2pm
In this session, come learn about digital visual communication with Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney. You likely did not encounter a lot of visual communication training in school, if you went to school in the US. The problem there is that successful contemporary mass communication is expressed today by artists and designers with specialized skills like visual literacy, software tools, and a sense of brand and audience awareness that graphic design can amplify. Design is important today, and if you are not sure where to start, here is a good place.
Hi, all. I’m refocusing from design, technology and teaching to universal human kindness. Some of this is going to sound kind of new age-y, but I’m not interested in any of that.
It’s March of 2016. Things are changing quickly. I’m writing to capture my feelings that have come over the last month. February was eye-opening. I’m strictly limiting participation in most social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. I left traditional media, like TV, a long while back. it’s pure, continuous, streaming propaganda interspersed with ads now. I don’t listen to radio though I sometimes miss NPR’s ‘driveway moments’™. I can choose when to listen or watch via streaming services. But otherwise, I’m cutting it all out. I feel that I need to. Many of my friends are surprised, some say they are worried. They are asking “Will you freeze?” and “Are u going to live in a hut?”, mostly by text. They remind me I have lots of gadgets, gizmos, computers, and even phone-controlled 24-million color lights that I can set with a voice command. Yet, I’m ready to go off grid.
Why would a connected, progressive, change-oriented, academic technologist walk away from that which he loved? It’s simple: I now feel like it’s all going quickly in the wrong direction.
There’s a cold civil war in America.
For many it is already warm civil war, but I think many of us have been shielded from it due to the Huxley-an Soma of highly filtered media, like Fox or NBC or Food Network, where we look at rich chefs prepare all the food we never eat, but firmly believe that we have had the experience after watching it. It’s different from other civil wars in that it’s actually pretty civil. Mostly talk and monetary support, unless you are not adult, male or white, in which case it’s less civil towards you. The combatants have many lines drawn, but mostly around money, resources, agency, charisma, faith, and power. I’m trying to drop my sides and allegiances, but we are usually snow-blind to our biases until they are revealed to us.
I’m no longer a democrat or a republican, I’m not the 99% nor the 1%, I’m not Kanye or Anonymous. I’m not Muslim or Christian. I’m not poor or rich. Even John feels false now. I just am. Those designations (labels) are all potential factions though.
The labeled differences exist because at each line, there is money to be made, power to be gained, shirts and commemorative tchotchkes to be sold, flags to be waved, crosses to be burned in five collectible colors.
In this civil war, no one will actually get hurt in the debates between groups, (unless guns are involved, and sadly, they often are and likely will be). The conversations between warring groups help the rich get richer, and help the poor to stay in debt in crowded cities. We work ourselves to death, slaves to a system we do not enjoy, we worry about our health, and predict 1.3 heart attacks per person because our land-of-plenty produces mostly high fructose corn syrup and fatty meats on five dollar foot long rolls, with veggies deep-fried. We all tend to overeat without manufactured tools, like diets and pedometers, to save us. That is a key point:
The diseases we suffer from are contrived and put in place: We sell you the diseases in the form of food and other pollution, so that you can talk with your doctor, who allows you to see a specialist, so that you can get hooked on the cure, until the cure wears off because you kept eating pollution, because nothing was actually addressed in your thought processes or decision-making, so we tighten a ring around your stomach, so that you can live with monitors and buzzers, and then eventually be put in an expensive wooden box, surrounded by Alma-mater-team-colors-coordinated-24-hour-turnaround flowers.
Money (and most other things we long for) is a socially agreed-upon idea. Money does not actually exist. We handle representations of it. We allow it with our recognizance. It is only in the absence of money, the influence of money, the handcuffs of money, and the propagandist messages of money that these things can occur. As a result, I am opting out.
What does opting out mean?
Living simply, linked from http://highexistence.com
I understand that not everyone will recognize anything but money for goods and services and taxes, etc., but I am going to reduce and remove its influence wherever possible. I’m not going to try to pay my taxes with woven baskets. I’m just going to try to pay less taxes.
I am planning, designing, forming, and practicing an escape.
I am going to practice and try to understand universal human kindness.
This is key for me: I want to find universal truths, and not fractional truths. Those exist most clearly out of earshot of advertisements, arguments, and pitches. I plan to find them in the woods and other quiet places. I want to cement my understanding that I am just the elements of the universe looking at itself, and the universe is me looking back. We are one, and we are the rhythms, echoes, and other frequencies between. I want to focus on humans, rather than labels or groups, or types of humans. I want to be a practicing anthropologist that filters out the manufactured influences of false media. I want to focus on our kindness, meaning our kinship, what we all have in common. I do not mean to use kindness in terms of niceness or courtesy, but rather very deeply on what we all have in common — the bits we share, all of us. That means removing false groupings, labels or differences that are purely superficial or socially determined. I may even include gender in those, after having some insightful conversations with people who do not recognize, associate or promote differences in humans via the concept of gender.
Part of that has been the giving away of my superfluous belongings. Another is finding the right property. It looks like an acre or two of land in VA with a small fully owned dwelling on it. Rent is, by far, my largest cost in life. I am ending that. I have credit card debt that I am about to pay off and I will forbid debt from returning. The debt has hung over me for years, threatening me. I’m taking away its power. I have learned and practiced in recent years how to live without addictions, threats to my health, and sources of depression. We get to choose our life path, and this path is becoming clearer each day.
Humans do not need McDonald’s. They need to eat. Humans do not need casinos. They need to exchange acts of value with others and the world. Humans do not need mansions. They need shelter. I want to explore these ideas.
In general, my new personal branding keywords are universal, human, and kindness.
I will likely write about my new path once a week or once a month. I’ll share photos when appropriate, I think my work will change, but I still love to help people and teach. When people heard about my new adventure, they told me to capture and journal the adventure. This writing is for them as well as for me. Thanks to all of my friends for understanding and trusting that I have not lost my mind, I just let go of my stuff.
Geodesic model for organic home framing cc-by lemasney
https://www.offgridworld.com/tag/cob-house/
I’m ready. I’m changing the way that i choose to live. A few things have happened recently, and I feel as if I have been struck. The weekly video series is no longer being developed, but that is only one small change. Here’s why:
I have given up several addictions, and this is a form of that.
On 2/20/2015, one year and one day ago, I was struck over the head at some point during the night. I was in LA, I was drinking, and I do not know what happened to me. I found myself restrained by police, in a hospital. They told me they found me in the street. I walked back to my hotel, several miles away, and have not drunk since. If I was drinking, none of what follows would be possible.
About a month ago, I gave up e cigarettes. I had smoked cigarettes and cigars in the past, and took up ecigs to escape a daily cigar habit. Several thousand dollars later, I am finally off a 24% nicotine habit.
I have researched and practiced many other forms of balance against addictions, including food and porn, and have learned a lot. As a result, I feel like I am ready to live more simply, in an unconnected way.
I’ve lost faith in media and tech. I want it to change.
I’m a technologist, but I am quickly losing faith in technology. I have seen it create factions (Windows vs. Linux), addictions (porn, gambling, gaming), new false economies (bitcoin). I understand the hypocrisy of using a technology like WordPress, but I don’t feel that technology is inherently bad, but that most people end up using it in bad ways, or more correctly, false ways.
I recently read Ernest Cline’s Novel ‘Ready Player One’. It upset me so – the idea that people would live in a diseased, dismal world, but would spend most of their time inside of virtual reality (VR). VR is making its rounds again as the next big thing. The novel is incredibly possible, and scary to consider as a likely outcome of our trajectory. Huxley’s Brave New World talks about dissolving society and humanity via technology and soma. Orwell has been proved right again and again and again in both Animal Farm and 1984. Their predictions and warnings have been mostly unheeded.
I’ve lost faith in ‘society’. I still love people.
I keep looking at the way that people are asked to live today:
working all the time in jobs that they don’t remotely enjoy.
Finding and emphasizing differences and not celebrating individuality.
Comparisons, ratings, likes, and follows are the only end goal.
Suffering physically, mentally, and ideologically in the effort of having the biggest, best, fastest, newest.
Struggling through stressors to make their means meet their ends.
Giving away money to keep a status quo which often never gets any better.
Striving for convenience over respect for ideas, processes, or outcomes.
The effort towards status, fame, and attention and not anything like universal human kindness or understanding.
Life is hard enough. We have to survive: make and prepare food, be temperate, find joy. I want to do those, and what I’ve concluded is that I need little more than a few acres of land, time, effort, and knowledge and experience.
Recently, in talking with my closest friends, especially those concerned with my announcement, I find myself saying repeatedly: We excreted before there were toilets, we were comfortable before we had central air, we had food before Walmarts, and we had houses before we had lumber mills.
I want to prove it.
I am escaping the traditional dream for a different one.
I’m excited to be learning a lot about a lot of topics to support my plan: Permaculture, technology anthropology, gardening, green housing, cob building, fire making, and so on. It will be difficult, interesting, and experimental. I’m happy that I am fit, sound, and prepared to learn what I need to.
Geodesic model for organic home framing cc-by lemasney
I’m leaving, to the degree that I can. I plan to move to a 3-5 acre plot, set up a tiny homestead with a wood burning stove, a clivus multrum, and a bed, and relearn what it is like to be human on this planet.
I want to remove myself of falsehood and manufactured debt, slavery, and despair. Above is a model of what you can do with well-connected 4 foot sticks and vine in just about every forest I’ve ever stepped foot in. Thatching and mudding are the next step.
I want to live in a little hut in the woods, and occasionally come out for coffee or other things not on my land. On the land, I’ll make art, read, cook, garden, and live. I will possibly use solar power to support some electricity, but that is optional. I may have cellular service to offer some connectivity for emergencies, but that is optional. I will not have plumbing, wiring, electric lights, or other typical amenities.I desperately do not want to drive. I will trade goods for services and services for goods. I will work at farmers markets and schools. I will help people in real, true, obvious ways. I think we all can.
I am scared, for us.
I am thoroughly progressive, politically. I think that the idea that Trump can be elected into an office where he can use nuclear weapons is the scariest idea that has ever been. I thought it was a joke when he first announced he was running, and I think it is a bad joke now. I am retreating from a society that supports anyone like Trump. I am leaving. Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged was something I struggled to get through as a twenty something, and I had no idea that it was so conservative at the time because I was not nearly so aware of the imaginary lines we place on things yet. Her ideas there of creators and makers and thinkers simply walking away is a valid solution for me, and I am doing that.
I am actively filtering out that which does not make me better, or worse yet, what burdens me. I love all of you, and I’m not disappearing, though you will likely see a lot less of me after May, 2016. We will see.
34 of 365 - entry point design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
34 of 365 – entry point design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
The entry point design principle is about making your entry point a place for your user to get past, then enter the deeper space of your place, product, or site. There are a few things to keep in mind in designing a good entry point: Low barriers to entry, incentives to drive users past the entry point, and strong clues about intended navigation or navigation options. A prime example of a great physical entry point is a store that does not interrupt your entry with any sensory interruption, like high traffic between users and the space, or lemonade-stand style interruptions as you enter. Navigation cues should be especially easy to figure out in a store or web site, and should not compete with advertisements or other distractions. There should be incentives for the user to go deeper, such as reminders of popular products or services, and invitations to use them.
In my illustration, I decided to show how entry point theory is applied at lemasney.com.
33 of 365 - Desired line design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
33 of 365 – Desired line design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Desire lines are a development tool that a designer can use from the way that people actually interact with an interface, space, or object before finalizing features, paths, or navigation. It is often used in designing walking paths in a new space to help determine the best place to put a paved path. It is also used in interface design for software and industrial design for tools and other objects, but can be applied in lots of situations.
In this illustration, I made thin lines indicating paths (desire lines) that people used to get from one place to another in a space, and wider pathways reacting to the desired lines that most people chose that might be paved and formalized.
29 of 365 - Defensible space design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
29 of 365 – Defensible space design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Defensible space is a theory about the way that spaces (often collective residences) are arranged considering the environmental variables like Territoriality, Surveillance, and Symbolic Barriers. It is generally applied to environments for reducing crimes. Territoriality is marking a space as an owned and maintained space, such as sign on a door or a gate marker. Surveillance is adding elements that increase awareness or foot traffic, such as seating areas and lighting. Symbolic Barriers are elements that show care and ownership for the space, such as flowers or organization.
I decided to illustrate a basic infographic to show some of these elements.
“As defined in Newman’s book Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space, defensible space is “a residential environment whose physical characteristics—building layout and site plan—function to allow inhabitants themselves to become key agents in ensuring their security.” He goes on to explain that a housing development is only defensible if residents intend to adopt this role, which is defined by good design: “Defensible space therefore is a sociophysical phenomenon,” says Newman. Both society and physical elements are parts of a successful defensible space.” ~ Defensible space theory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – http://goo.gl/yvahq
