We at Brainrub are aware we have been slow at getting new content up here. I think this is a symptom of many sites that are predominantly blogs: people get busy.

The biggest problem we face is separateness. When Brainrub began, that was something to celebrate. Now that we’re all so slammed with our $dayjobs, it’s become a hindrance. We plan to change that.

In the coming weeks we’ll be adding new content, and writing generally about technology and modern life in all its odd contemporary facets.

I’d like to thank those of you who kept pestering me to add new content. You can always check out the Friday Links in the meantime. Those update every week.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Adam D.

Starting around the second week of December, I started experimenting with interesting ways to give gifts or other random things to friends of mine who live quite far away from me. It’s been interesting to say the least, and has brought to light many of the security risks inherent to long-distance gift giving while using the web as the intermediary.

Keep in mind: I’m in Toronto, Canada.

Here are three examples:

1) Pizza delivery, San Diego, CA.

I have a female friend who lives in San Diego who I talk to very regularly. She was at home one afternoon while I was working and was starving, but didn’t have available cash on hand. On a total whim I decided: I’m gonna buy my friend some lunch. This turned out to be more problematic than it seemed. I first tried using online pizza ordering services like Dominoes, Pizza Hut, etc. All of these require that whoever’s credit card is in use should be present at the address to sign for the order. They both flatly disallowed any third-party purchase without the card owner being present. I suggested to both that they should have a “buy a friend a pizza” option, but both were dismissive of the idea.

I can understand why this would be the case. Any maliciously-minded person could just abuse any credit card and send random pizzas with no checks or balances in place. I get that. But there are several sites out there that offer “this is a gift” options, with reasonable means of verification. (Amazon and ThinkGeek immediately spring to mind.) But, no go.

So I asked her: if you were to order a pizza, where would you order it from. She suggested a place right in her neighborhood: Pizza Gourmet Express [link] They have a website, but no online ordering. It’s a fairly small but popular local operation. So I decided instead that I would call. As luck would have it, I got the actual owner of the establishment on the phone. He turned out to be very receptive. He even knew who I was talking about when I said who I was buying for. He made it clear this was an unusual request, but I made sure he knew he could call me back to confirm who I was, or even call my work to verify my identity further. He said that sounded fine. So I said I’d like to place an order for a pizza and some dessert. Fifteen minutes later my friend sauntered over and picked up her pizza.

Total time to find one pizza place that would accept my remote order: 25 minutes.

Total order time: 5 – 10 minutes.

Time from initial discussion to friend receiving and eating pizza: ~45 minutes.

Success!

I do believe this functionality will likely show up in the future. I just think about parents with their kids away at University wanting to surprise them with a nice dinner or some other little extra. Campusfood.com should offer this option but does not. I think it would be a huge success, and again: the technology to cover all the bases for this process does exist already. Hopefully this is a good “next step” that these restaurants can take.

2) Order a surprise book gift for my friend, Kim, in Seattle, WA

Kim, as you may know, co-authors this blog (though lately neither of us has had much available free time to do so.)

She and I had a lengthy online discussion about all manner of things and at the end of it I was inspired and wanted to send her a book I knew she would enjoy. I had never used any gift feature of any site, and I wanted to remain in my quick and spontaneous moment. I found the book, ordered it, chose to ship it to her address, and Amazon smartly recognized I had never shipped to a third-party address before. It asked me to confirm my credit card. I did so. A few clicks later and off it went. The entire experience lasted maybe 3 minutes, tops. I received a confirmation email 30 minutes later. The package had been shipped. She received it two days later.

This is easily one of the most convenient features of Amazon.com, or indeed any shopping site I’ve ever used.

3) Third party purchase of a DVD for me, via a friend in Austin, TX

I have a friend in Austin, Texas who I converse with regularly about film and music. We’ve known each other for nearly ten years now. He’s a quirky guy and he’s adamant about recommending films for me. I had heard that one of my favorite French films, Betty Blue (or: “37°2 le matin” [wiki]) directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix had had a re-release on dvd adding some 70 minutes to its original length. I had never been able to find a copy anywhere locally so I asked him if he knew where I could find one. He said he’d just go buy it for me but I said I wanted to compensate him for it, since this was a reasonably rare find. (Speaking of which: if anyone has a line on the director’s cut of Michael Mann’s 1985 film Manhunter, I’m all ears.)

He said (via MSN) “well you could do a wire transfer.” I thought that might be too much work. Instead I said “how about a straight online banking transfer?” He felt that would be too complicated. I went to my bank’s online banking section. They actually offer a “transfer to another account” option. Previously this was for accounts which my own bank handled, but I guess they now offer it for any account. I asked him for the details of his account based on the numbers on a typical cheque. He provided this. Approximately 30 minutes later: he had the money transfer.

He went out later that night to buy it, and shipped it the next morning. I received it five days later. (This guy is a pathologically efficient man.)

That may not be the most obvious way to do things but I was surprised to discover this expanded functionality from my online banking. As one would expect, there was a lot of prerequisite “are you sure?” moments in setting up the actual funds transfer, and I did overshoot the actual dollar amount due to the exchange rate. (Call it a gratuity for my film friend’s access to the rare dvd.)

I’m intrigued to see if this kind of transaction becomes more common in the future. When the Internet started to first get popular, I remember seeing pizza delivery sites based solely in Manhattan, which had really comprehensive ordering menus. That was in 1996. Maybe in the coming decade I can buy my friend in San Diego a pizza shipped from Manhattan. That’s obviously a bit of a long shot, but it’s the kind of wacky undertaking I’d love to explore.

Thanks for reading.

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There is a part of me that is competitive, which really might do better with a label like “anal” or “Type A” or possibly “alpha.” But it’s a terribly small part of the larger whole, so it doesn’t surface very often, and thus it seems fairly unimportant. But then someone turned me onto BookMooch, and the idea of mostly free books kicks the larger part of the whole into gear. So I’ve been reading like mad, just so I can finish books and list them and mail them and get new ones for free. It’s a vicious cycle, terribly vicious. And oh so obsessively compulsively good.

BookMooch: Take your old books, list them, mail them, get points, use those points to get other books for free. Life could not be more obsessively good!

Bembos Zoo: An interactive, brilliant way to tell a story about animals using typography, color and sound.

Rosa Loves: You buy a t-shirt based on a story about someone in need, and the money spent goes toward helping those people meet a goal. Wicked cool!

The Sweet Old Etcetera: an interactive web project created by Alison Clifford that sets the poetry of E.E.Cummings against an imaginary landscape.

“You could start,” my friends tell me, “by answering your phone.” This, unfortunately for them, is met with my usual tepid silence. It is not that I am taking time to ponder a meaningful answer. It is more that I don’t have anything to say.

My friends, you see, are not very fond of my cell phone. The problem, they tell me, the real crux of their angst, is that I am not using my cell phone—like the rest of the world does—to communicate with them on a regular basis.

I am not, as it turns out, doing what they do in Japan, which is write entire novels using their thumbs. Nor am I downloading ring tones that get me into embarrassing situations when the phone rings. I am, essentially, a cell phone neophyte.

So I come to find out what they mean by “regular basis.” They mean daily. But judging by their attempts to communicate with me, I would have to argue that “regular basis” really means hourly. Either way, I apparently do not communicate with them on a regular basis, and this is causing them angst.

Communication, they said, could start out slow and work its way up to a regular basis. I could start by simply answering my phone when they call. This, much to their chagrin, makes me laugh because I tell them I would need to start with something more simple than that. I would need, I say slowly and clearly, to start by turning the volume on.

This, unfortunately, is not what they were expecting. What they were expecting, I gather, was more like: “Got it! No problem! I’ll answer every time you call. I really do want to be cellularly hip.” Thus I was not surprised when my comment was followed by an awkward silence, a tilting of the head, and the scrunching of eyebrows.

My cell phone, I explain, is not a constant portal into my world. And I will not answer my phone if I’m engaged in any of the following: sleeping, going to the bathroom, showering, having sex, exercising, relaxing or eating. The list is longer, actually, but those are the big ones, and I’m hoping it’s enough for them to get the point.

Unfortunately, they do not get the point. So I try to be more crystal clear and explain that I don’t use my cell phone for any of the following: taking pictures, listening to music, twittering, surfing, watching videos, managing my life, organizing my social calendar, or downloading ring tones. Again, the list is longer, but at this point I don’t think a longer list will help clarify the point.

You see, I tell them, my cell phone is a tool, and I use it to make phone calls. It’s my one-way portal into the other world. The world that requires I use a phone to call in sick for work, order pizza, reserve quarter barrels of my delicious Pilsner, and refill prescriptions for happy pills. This list, you might have realized, is slightly longer, but hopefully you get my point.

But there is something I don’t tell my friends. I don’t tell them that I am actually trying to communicate on a regular basis. I read their text messages, I look at their photos. Sometimes I even chuckle because something they said is funny. I just don’t typically have a response.

All of this, I know, is terribly analog of me. It also tends to enforce the notion that I’m socially inept. There are other things to add to this list, but I’ll stop here.

Lesbian Gamers: Women gamers are finally coming out of the closet! Get the latest news and reviews related to lesbian gamers.

outside.in: Zoom in on the latest news, views and conversations happening in your city and your neighborhood.

lowbrow: Before Post Your Secrets there was lowbrow—and it was wicked good. It’s moved into an audio format now, and still as good as ever.

I am not fond of being “online” when I’m on vacation. This is, perhaps, because I prefer to take vacations where technology doesn’t work. It is also one of few times where I will engage in social behavior and actually speak to others in full sentences—with eye contact, even. But this only works if your travel mates are on the same page. Otherwise you find yourself talking to yourself in a potentially psychotic sort of way.

TasteSpotting: Browse through delicious photographs of food, then click on the image to get the recipe so you can actually savor the goodness.

Bent Objects: This guy takes a little bit of wire, some random household objects and bends them into creativity.

Wall House: A living structure that combines a cave, a tent and a house—oh and it’s “green,” too.

ùtilware: a blog, structured like a book, filled with useful nuggets of information and commentary—and it doesn’t look like a WordPress template.

Polling Place Photo Project: Join this experiment in citizen journalism with the New York Times and photograph your experience in this year’s political process.

BookMooch: List your used books, search for used books, mail your old books, receive old books—it’s a book exchange through the mail, and it’s free.