I’ve been doodling this diagram for a few days. It’s a visualization of what’s happening with the Internet consulting industry, of which I happen to be a part. My aim was to try to understand the nature of the shift in our once-flush space, and maybe try and see a little further ahead at a possible resolution.

Okay, I know it looks like a big funnel or a diagram of a ventilation system of some sort, and it’s also incredibly unscientific. You’ll need the Flash plug-in to view it.

The Web design community — typified by the hotshots featured at Kaliber 10000 — inspires ambivalence in me. On the one hand, it’s a loose collective that’s capable of incredibly diverse expression and experimentation. I’m regularly amazed by what these design jockeys are capable of accomplishing without even a hint of monetary compensation. The community’s existence would almost be enough to refute the idea that lone geniuses are a thing of the past, if it weren’t for the fact that it can also seem mired in a kind of premature (and often immature) dogma — a male-centric sense of bravado and one-upmanship. Both sides are at play in the Reboot effort, being hosted by THREE.OH — an impressive and frankly ingenious organized intiative that aims to relaunch a host of redesigned personal Web sites on 01 May 01.

I’ve just spent a few hours trying to book a ticket for a trip in March. After entering my travel dates at least two dozen times on various travel sites, I can say that the American Airlines site is the probable best of a pretty sorry lot — anyway, that’s where I ended up spending my money.

Microsoft’s Expedia isn’t bad when taken strictly for its design and usability, but better fares can be found if you hunt directly on each airline’s own site, which kind of obviates its whole existence. The one bright spot I came across, MaxMiles.com, won’t help you book a flight, but it will allow you to manage all of your frequent flyer accounts from a single place — which is a delight to anyone who travels as much as I do.

Over the Presidents Day Weekend, I went with a friend to see Roger Guenveur Smith’s remarkable one-man play, “A Huey P. Newton Story” at The LA Theatre Centre in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a thrilling, tightly wound charge through the life of the Black Panthers co-founder. Amazing.

A friend of mine observed that I seem to be constantly shifting my belongings from one remote locale to another, constantly boarding airplanes and making detours and side trips, lamenting the places where I am and quickly evacuating places I profess to be residing in permanently. She asked, “;Are you running from something?”

As an adult, I guess I no longer have the luxury of staying basically oblivious to the state of our economy. All the same, I feel a little odd about the close attention I pay to the shards of good news that might salvage us from a recession. According to The Conference Board, the Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 0.8 percent in January. That’s cause for some optimism, right? It’s weird not being a kid anymore.

I’ve just posted a new entry to my journal called “On the Lam, So to Speak.” This one gives a cursory detailing of what brought me to Los Angeles.

And yes, I’ve been admittedly slacking in updating this log — still. It’s taken me longer than I anticipated to find balance here in Los Angeles, but I hope to begin posting regularly again presently.

There’s a lot of driving to be done in Los Angeles, and it drives me bats. One of the major reasons that I love New York so much is the fact that the whole city is accessible to pedestrians — most of it anyway. All this time spent in cars in this city is mind-numbing to me.

Anyway, I hope to have a Journal entry detailing my relocation to this city posted sometime soon. It’s been really hectic for me, so thanks for your patience.

The long anticipated release of Apple’s Mac OS X is coming up in just over two months. Things are heating up.

Over at OS Opinion Jef Raskin, one of the Macintosh’s original fathers, defends his publicly stated laments that Mac OS X, in spite of its advances, doesn’t really represent a bona fide step forward in operating system paradigms — a viewpoint with which I happen to agree. And at his own site, Ask Tog, ex-Apple human interface guru Bruce Tognazzini (now a member of the HCI Legion of Doom) sounds off in a disturbingly shrill manner on the shortcomings of Mac OS X’s Dock feature.

I’m leaving Singapore. All my things have been packed up and shipped, except for two suitcases that I will take with me on the plane. My comings and goings here are comical, I know. I’ll explain in a forthcoming journal entry why I’m leaving for Los Angeles. Seeya soon.

I’ve fallen down on the job of posting to my blog lately because I’m exhausted. This week will be the third week in a row of travel for me. First, I went to Saigon for the lunar new year. Just this Sunday, I came back to Singapore from a weekend in Bangkok, which was hot and full of weirdness in my personal life. And now, on Thursday, I’ll be flying off to Los Angeles, where I’m spending the next four to six months on assignment. It’s a long story, but it looks like the Singapore chapter of my travels is over, at least for now. More on this later.

Forget the iMac, this is the cutest — and funniest — computer that I have ever seen.

I spotted it in Bangkok while I was there over the weekend, at Pantip Plaza, which is a six-story shopping mall brimming with computer hardware and software of all sorts. This “Doggie” CPU enclosure is for sale to build-your-own-PC gearheads with a soft spot for cartoony animals. There was a “Kittie” too, but I’m kind of a dog person, myself.

Last week I went back to Saigon to spend Têt with my grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins. Têt is the lunar new year, commonly referred to both here and in the West as Chinese New Year, and it’s pretty much the holiday in Vietnam — as it is in Singapore. My office here was closed for the week starting on Tue afternoon, so it was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the incredibly convenient proximity of this city to Vietnam. The flight took less than two hours — two hours!

It’s a day early (well, in Singapore it’s only about forty minutes early) but I’ve just posted a new entry to my Journal for Fri 02 Feb. This one is about my trip to Viet Nam last week, and how I learned to drive a Honda scooter in the Saigon traffic. And for those put off by the verbose length of my last entry, don’t worry &#151 this one’s shorter, and it has a pictures to boot!