Colin Ellard - You Are Here

A quick win!

Taylor Ohlsson has won himself a nice, fresh copy of my book.  You may still want to take a look at the code to see if you can figure out what he did to walk away with this glorious piece of shiny swag.  This one went fast.  I'll have to make the next one diabolical.  Semi-diabolical.  Is that abolical?

The official contest launch

Book release is now so close I can smell it.  In fact, my most illustrious editor, Jim Gifford, sent me a nice fresh copy of the book for perusal last week and I did smell it.  Ever since I was a kid, I've had this thing for the aroma of fresh text (well, except for those super glossy books that smell like....you know) and I have to tell you that smelling my own writing inside that beautiful blue jacket was an experience at a whole 'nother level.  Now fingers crossed that nobody will think to write a review with too many olfactory connotations -- at least not unpleasant ones.

As well as trying to keep my wits about me and to say sensible things at this site that pertain to space, the universe and our placelessness in it (not to mention hang on by my fingernails to the day job), I've discussed from time to time the possibility of giving away free stuff.  To wit: we have 10 (ten!) signed copies of this sweet-smelling book that I've written that we are prepared to give away, one at a time, to readers who crack place puzzles of one kind or another.  I'll roll them out entirely at my whim and pleasure.  Some of them may well involve the use of QR codes and other kinds of e-trickery.  All of them will be designed to make you think about where you are, were, or want to be.  And they'll all be fun.  Somewhere near the end of this grand quest to find ourselves, and thanks to the generosity of my fine publisher, I'll be giving away a grand prize consisting of $100 worth of HarperCollins Canada publications.  I'm not sure yet what it will take to win the grand prize.  Maybe you'll have to figure out the watermark code on snippet #78.  Maybe you'll just have to show yourself to be very, very needy and deserving of some great books.  We'll see.

The first installment of the contest is already at play.  Apart from one very cheeky young architect who has earned himself a fine Cuban cigar from my private collection because I disqualified him from the regular competition (it's in the back corner of my kitchen cabinet -- a friend gave it to me in 2005 -- I'm sure it's still fine Justin), nobody has ventured an answer yet.  What? You don't like books?  Take a look here for the code that starts things off.

I'll update this post as I roll out new installments, but if you want to be sure not to miss a trick, you can follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my feed (look for the button on the sidebar).

Have fun.  Try not to get lost.

Legal fineprint:  You must be a Canadian resident to enter the contest.  Sorry.  But there's got to be an upside to having to cope with this climate.  Free books does it for me.

UPDATE:  Ladies and gentlemen -- have cell phones at the ready.  A new QR quiz will appear at 930 AM, Thursday April 9.  As promised, somewhat more of a challenge.  If nobody solves in 24 hours, I'll add a small clue.  Free book is at stake.  Only shivering Canadians need apply (though the forecast tells me tomorrow's weather will be slightly warmer than the inside of your fridge.)

UPDATE:  New quiz launched Monday April 13.  Details here.

UPDATE: New quiz launched Thursday April 23.  You'll have to act quickly.

QR and the environment

Don't worry, no cheezy greenwashing effort to link my use of QR to any kind of environmental message. Two separate messages.  The first:  those of you who have contacted me to express bafflement about the quiz, might have missed this.  It's a new page at my site, complete with an awful YouTube video of a haggard author in a rather rain-leaky office (when you hear that universities need some of this infrastructure money, believe it).  Anyway, the instructions there will help you get started, but you'll still need to do a little more digging to get to the answer and to win a free book.

Second, as much fun as it is to try to think of puzzles and contests, I've missed the chance to just talk about stuff that interests me, and there's still quite a lot bubbling away in the background.  I've spent all weekend looking for a chance to say a little more about my visit to the Extended Learning Opportunities group in the village of Erin last week.  I did my own feeble version of a live Tweet (which is difficult to do during a talk - people don't want to see you thumbing on a phone while actually speaking) which mostly consisted of saying something deep such as "Holy frig there's a lot more people here than I had expected and they look hungry for some content."  Was that 140 characters?  I'm tired of counting.  

But the most unexpected part of the talk was not so much the size of the crowd nor the quality of the questions (60 minute talk, and a planned 45 minute question period that not only went through the break but went overtime as well -- about 75 minutes altogether) but the nature of the questions.  I've given my "Where Am I?" talk a few times now to a number of different types of crowds, but this was my first appearance before an older group of people who are very active and thoughtful about the world.  I think that what surprised me the most (other than the questions about dowsing -- ok, I've been accused of covering a lot of territory in my book but even I didn't think about dowsing) was the attunement of this audience to the environmental issues. In my book I make the argument that being lost disconnects us from nature, and is one of the root causes or our neglect of our duty to act as stewards of the planet.  These people did not need to hear this from me (though I believe they very much enjoyed hearing me say the words).  It occurred to me that one difference between this audience and my more typical one would have been that many of these people would have grown up in rural settings.  In fact, one delightful fellow, in an eloquent paean to fields, forests and critters, likened his early experiences of the simple joys of connection with nature on the farm where he grew up to my descriptions of Aboriginal Songlines and pleasure-seeking raft voyages in the Pacific ocean by the Puluwatese.  I most commonly think of our modern urban disconnect as a gradual shift in outlook that began a very long time ago, and when I think of people who are truly connected to the planet, my examples tend towards the exotic.  It was a nice wake-up call for me to remember that we in our superdeveloped, overheated high-density lifestyles actually live among people who get this because they've lived it.  When I think about possible futures and try to imagine optimistic ones, I most often imagine that the up and coming generation, now beginning to show a profound aptitude for organizing the changes that we need, are the only ones who are up to the job.  It was an unexpectedly buoyant experience to remember that there are other generations among us who could contribute much wisdom and understanding to the processes of change if we listen to them.  

More about this later.  And also Le Corbusier, who is still churning away back there, mixing it up right now with Plato, Vitruvius, and the freemasons.  It's getting a little messy in the back of my cranium.

New quiz

We have a winner

It didn't take long for a very savvy young codebuster to figure out the QR code in the last post and to catch on to our diabolical scheme -- the first QR code to appear in a book. But he had an inside track as we collaborated earlier this year on a very funky QR idea that I hope can still come to fruition someday. So Justin gets a book (or maybe he'd prefer a signed ARC) and the freebie is still up for grabs. The QR-in-a-book idea has been kicking around for a while but it looks as though we got there first.  And I like the idea of tucking a QR code into a book that lets the reader get info about the sequel, or even takes them right to a site where they can order the book.  Too late this time but maybe in the softcover.  Are you listening HarperCollins whiz kids?  Also, can we figure out some way to transport readers into their nearest indie bookstore at the press of a key on their phone?  There are some pretty great ones around.

Now back to the drawing board to think of another puzzle for you. Perhaps this next one with a bit of geo-wizardry.  Stay tuned.

Twitter on the sidebar

It's a tiny thing, but I thought I'd just mention that there's a Twitter sidebar on the blog now.  I've been exploring tools that I can use to track my location (twerl, schlapmapscherl, fwherl, sschweretheheck) etc. that may figure in future posts, including those that might help you claim some book swag.

Talk of using mobile applications to track our locations seems to be at fever pitch these days.  Funny, that.  Knowing where we are, and where those we care about are, is primal.  We may be living in an age where technology brings us all closer together, but that doesn't mean we don't understand the importance of knowing where our actual bodies are.

For some reason, I'm thinking of my brother.  He was an early adopter of the car phone.  Remember car phones?  They were almost the size of cinder blocks, like those giant walkie talkies you see Sparky using in old time war movies.  He'd hoist his big device up to his head (amazing he's got two ears still and that they weren't burned off by gamma rays) to tell me the most important thing of all:  "I'm calling from my car."

Lost in St. Mary's

I could have entered my own contest today.  We set off from home to take our daughter to a ringette game in St. Mary's Ontario -- a drive of roughly an hour from our house.  We had a nice page of Mapquest directions in hand, but I'd forgotten to throw my gps tracker into my pocket.  Looked simple enough.  Somehow we missed one turn in the route.  Boring so far.

Here's where it gets slightly more interesting.  As we reached within about 2 km of our destination, our directions told us we should turn left even though we had just passed about fifty signs telling us that St. Mary's was on the right.  So we turned left, drove about 19 km away from our destination, tracking our progress in the rear view mirror ("gee, now we're 13 km from St. Mary's!").  We're not usually stupid people (really!) but found ourselves entertaining a plethora of entertaining hypotheses rather than admit that we were lost.  It's amazing how quickly we abandon both reason and a basic understanding of geometry when we're lost.  Maybe there are TWO St. Mary's!  Maybe the St. Mary's arena is not actually IN St. Mary's.  It reminded me of our miraculous discovery of a pair of perfect mirror image lakes, each with matching osprey nests, on our hike in Algonquin park.  I talk about this in my book.  But at least this time, rather than being chased by bears, my kid was just chased by Bears (the Kitchener Bears).  Eventually we saw sense, turned the car around, drove at about Mach 1.1 to get to the ice on time.  And now my kiddo is wearing a gold medal around her neck.

Getting closer to book release

The official release date of my book is now palpably close.  I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about this.  It's a different process to academic writing where you submit a paper to a journal, wait the 2 or 3 months for some kind of puff of smoke, and then bear down for the comments of the anonymous reviewers.  Nastiness isn't unusual, but at least if you are completely hammered you have the option of slipping the reviews into the bottom drawer of your desk, where nobody ever has to know about them other than you, an editor, and the reviewers.  In the case of a trade book, everything is different.  First, there's no obligation that your book be reviewed at all.  It could be ignored, completely, which would be unhappy.  Second, if you are lucky enough to get a few reviews, they could be bad ones, and if they are, anybody -- your best friend, worst enemy, Uncle Henry and cousin Betsy can all read them.  There's no hiding them in the bottom drawer.  You're out there.  

On the other hand, with academic publishing, you don't really get to do fun things like this.  I might be too nervous to eat much brunch, but it's a very cool event and I'm glad to be going.

In other book news, I'm hard at work designing a new page for my website which explains how QR codes work (I've spoken about these before and will again soon).  There are a couple of good reasons for doing this.  For one, there's a QR code on the jacket of my book.  You can use it to check for updates, find out where I am or if I'm lost.  You can even use it to let me know if you're lost.  We're pretty excited to have the first book published in at least North America (possibly the world) with such a feature.  Also, QR codes will play a role in some of the fun activities I'm hoping to mount over the spring and summer.  If you play you can win some nice prizes, including signed copies of my book and a few other things as well.  If you want to get started early, you can get involved by sending me short stories of your own wayfinding fiascos.  Where have you been lost?  Where are the Bermuda triangles of your own life?  Is there a place where you always seem to lose your bearings?  What the worst thing that ever happened to you because you lost your way?  All entries will be eligible to be entered in a weekly draw for a free signed book.  Particularly clever or creative entries may be selected for larger book prizes.  You can enter the contest in all kinds of ways.  Send me a tweet at the official Twitter site for the book.  Post a comment on this site.  Send me an email. Extra points awarded for photos, maps, or other cool geo-info.

I heart my webkinz

Ok, I'm coming out.  I've got a Webkinz.  His name is Koko.  He's a cuddly silverback gorilla.  But it's an academic interest.  No, really.  My fall into deep gorilla love began about two weeks ago, when a sharp young architect I know scolded me for failing to connect with the interests of my NetGen children.  I've watched my kids play in Webkinz world on our computer for a long time now, mostly just looking on from afar, being mildly annoyed at the sounds coming out of the arcade, but (the shame) not really paying much attention to the thing other than glancing over the rules of engagement to convince myself that it is safe for them.

Backing up-- Webkinz are fuzzy little stuffies with a twist -- with each critter comes a year's worth of access to a virtual world with real estate, an economy, social networks (albeit limited ones).  Kids (and, as it turns out, Very Big Kids) can log in, visit, chat with buddies, play games, do jobs to earn money, furnish their rooms, buy real estate, and much more.  

After my meeting with my architecture friend, I came home filled with new questions for my children, four of whom showed me their Webkinz worlds and explained things to me. The younger ones even handed over their passwords so that I could go in late at night and earn some Kinz dollars for them on the surprisingly engaging games.

Last week I celebrated my birthday and one of my children, with a smile big enough to swallow the whole room, handed me a bag full of gorilla.  And I have to tell you that Mr. Theoretician has been having a ball with him.  It's now gone slightly beyond just enjoying the games to feeling a slight bit of filial concern for my stuffie gorilla.  I don't like when I don't know where he is.  And when I hold him in my hand and my son holds one of his growing collection in his hand, we play together, surrendering ourselves to a goofy imaginary world that the virtual world connection makes more compelling in a way that I don't understand yet.  

It's a vastly different context to the kinds of cyber-real connections I've been writing about for the past few days, but it is definitely related.  Our ability to use technology to build virtual places and to make orderly connections between them and our real places is opening new possibilities for play as well as for more serious pursuits.  I'd love to tell you more, but Koko needs another banana.

How to feed a mind

The children are now back in school, probably a bit bleary-eyed from an unaccustomed early rising after the happy lack of routine of the holidays.  Many of us sat in strangely silent homes this morning, wondering where the time went and trying to reconstruct the whirlwind of happy winter activities and social events of the past couple of weeks.  In spite of a new dose of austerity produced by the uncertain economy, many of us likely still spent more than we meant to so that our children could have some of the games and toys on their wish lists. Was it worth it?  What do our children need to keep growing and learning?  What should we be providing for children who are trying to find a path to adulthood in a world that is nothing like the one that we knew just a few short years ago?

    When I was a young university student, one of the first hands-on research projects I ever put together took place at a new type of interactive playground in a Toronto amusement park.  The idea was to try to move beyond the traditional swings-and-slide concept by giving children a range of materials that they could use to build their own structures.  It seemed a marvelous idea to me and I turned up one sweltering summer day with a clipboard and a stopwatch to document the fun, convert the children’s activities into a nice presentation full of tables and graphs, and nail myself an ‘A’ in the course.  Although some children did spend some time with the pieces of wood, the tools, and the paint that was provided for them to build their own kid villages, the big surprise for me was that the most popular toy of all was nothing more than a large nautical bell.  Not only would children line up longer for a chance to strike the bell than for any other toy, but they showed a marked reluctance to give it up once they had acquired it.  What seemed to fascinate the kids about the bell was the fact that they could use it to announce their existence.  As they hammered away at it, they looked around at the surrounding crowds of adults to see whose attention they grasped.  It was as if the toll of the bell was their way of saying “I am here!”, defending some deep need for feedback, proof of their own existence as a causal agent in the world.

    In our world, children of all ages beyond toddler-hood spend a significant amount of their time immersed in virtual worlds of one kind or another.  Club Penguin, Runescape, Facebook all encourage children of different ages to engage with one another in a cybernetic landscape.  What are they looking for there?  Is it the same kind of feedback that I saw my bellringers trying to obtain?  One morning last week, I was gobsmacked by a question my 5 year old daughter ask her 4 year old brother on a tour of his Club Penguin site.  “How come you have so many friends here?” she asked.  “Because I do interesting things,” he replied.  But when our kids get that kind of positive feedback from worlds that aren’t really anywhere, are they just continuing to slip out of place?  How bad is it that the gathering place for some of my little son’s friends is defined by a URL rather than by the gnarly old apple tree in my grandmother’s back yard that I remember as the social hub of my own early childhood?