Clara Raubertas // Web Design, Web Development, and Web Consulting // Cambridge and Boston clara raubertas development. design. consulting.

This blog — and my main site — have a new look! I’ve been working on this design for what seems like forever (actually it’s a few months, but that’s still quite some time) and I’m very excited to finally launch it — let me know what you think!

A few sites I’ve launched recently:

• MyIGEA is a restaurant review site aimed at food-allergy sufferers; when you sign up, you list the allergies that you (or a friend/family member) have, and the site generates a list of restaurants that other users with the same allergy rated highly. I did all the back-end coding for this (it’s another Tensegrity project and I worked with one of their designers).
  Once I started working on this site I became more attuned to food allergies, and I realized how many people there are that could benefit from a resource like this — so I’m pretty psyched about launching this. It’s still in “alpha”, which means that the features aren’t finalized and there will be some more development, but it’s open to the public and available for you to sign up and start reviewing!
• Pianofarm.net is the new site that I designed for my mom’s piano studio; this is the first static site that I built since discovering the CushyCMS system of updating content, and I’m really impressed with how it was wicked easy both for me to set up and for my mom to use. (Anyone who doesn’t already have a CMS might want to check this out — I can set it up in less than an hour, and you can then easily update your own content, which should save you some time/money.)
• I posted about the initial launch of espressy a few months ago, but in December we launched the second version of the site, with a revised design and category system.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about whether my activities were “pointful”. As a teenager, I’d obsessively analyze all the work I was doing and judge it by whether it had any measurable, real-world effect — “this shift at the bookstore was pointless because there were two of us and business was slow enough for one of us to handle”, or “my role as a stagehand is pointful because no one else in the show is available to turn on this light at this time”. I’d abandon “pointless” activities in favor of tasks where my presence made a quantifiable difference to some observable outcome.

As you might expect, this could get pretty depressing at times! Now that I’ve reached the ripe age of 23 (and, of course, now understand everything), I have a different perspective. I went canvassing to get out the vote in New Hampshire on Election Day — was this “pointful” by my old standards? Absolutely not! Every voter I talked to had already voted by the time I got to them — and even if I had been able to remind someone to go to the polls, it would hardly have made a difference, from my teenage perspective, to Obama’s tens-of-thousands-of-votes lead. Similarly, I gladly and proudly voted myself — but everything I voted for in Massachusetts was much closer to a 60/30 margin than a 50/50 one. My teenage self might have asked, why would I think it was so cool to participate in these things if it was so obviously pointless?

I used to focus on myself as an individual actor, but my appreciation has deepened for my role in emergent systems. My individual actions in getting out the vote and voting didn’t “make a difference”, but I was one of many cells making up larger systems (the campaign’s organization of volunteers, the electorate) that clearly did affect the outcome of the election — just like individual neurons in my brain die all the time without affecting my thoughts, but neurons certainly aren’t “pointless”, since all of them together collectively make up the larger system of my brain!

I was thinking about this because I’m reading I Am A Strange Loop, which explores some of these issues of emergent properties; it’s by the author of the extremely excellent (but long!) Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is also interested in these questions. For a breezier introduction, check out Steven Johnson’s take.

Also, I’m excited to be reading something new after taking almost six months to read Gravity’s Rainbow. Talk about intense! GR is also, in some sense, about the relationship between actors and larger systems. But it’s not about systems that emerge naturally from the combination of less complex elements — it’s a massive paranoid fantasy, full of ambiguity about what levels of the systems have agency, whether they’re constructed top-down or bottom-up, or whether they even exist!

Regular old emergent systems are much simpler.

This blog is now powered by Wordpress! I switched over from Blogger in part because Wordpress offers more features and extensibility — like that tasty tag cloud over there — and also in part because I keep the free-as-in-beer-and-speech Wordpress code on my own server, where I can read and modify it, or not, to my heart’s content. Ah, delicious freedom!

Plus, Wordpress was not only super-easy to install and set up, but importing all my old Blogger posts and implementing redirects from the Blogger page addresses and feeds to the new versions took just a few minutes. It’s not surprising that Wordpress is considered the best blogging platform out there!

It’s sporting the default Wordpress theme for now, but expect an exciting redesign of both this blog and my portfolio site in the coming weeks!

Yesterday’s debate — unlike much of what we’ve seen so far in this campaign — included reasoned, substantial discussion of issues and underscored some of the legitimate policy differences between the two candidates. One major policy difference, of course, is their tax plans — illustrated with the “Joe the Plumber” example. Obama, in the tradition of the Democratic party, favors a progressive tax plan that taxes lower-income people at lower rates; McCain, in the tradition of the Republican party, favors a plan that taxes people at more equal rates, so that lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than under Obama and higher-income people pay a lower percentage.

Culture wars may come and go, but this difference in fundamental economic philosophy has been a mainstay of the clash between the Republican and Democratic parties for decades. Obama explained in the debate that he thinks the plumber of a few years ago, who was doing less well financially, deserved the tax break more than the plumber of next year, who will be doing better — he thinks that the financially better-off should “share the wealth”. McCain counters that a requirement to “share the wealth” will discourage growth.

Saying that McCain’s plan is better for economic growth has generally been the conservative reaction — one commentator says, “If that distinction were to permeate the consciousness of the US electorate with real force and clarity, McCain would win the election.” Well, that’s where I vehemently disagree; this difference in economic philosophy is a place where reasonable people can and do have different opinions (as evidenced by the fact that both parties continue to have a quorum of supporters!).

Obama’s plan isn’t “anti-growth” — in fact, it’s “pro-growth”, just in a different part of the economy. Obama and the Democratic Party want to encourage growth in the lower-income tax brackets. Most individuals and most small businesses make well under the $250,000 threshold that determines whose tax plan would make you pay more — and those businesses can benefit from a tax break that allows them to expand and hire people NOW, not later when they have more money. If your business is taking in that much, great! Mine isn’t — and neither are most other small businesses. McCain’s plan will help larger business owners who can already afford to hire new workers and grow their business. Obama’s tax plan will help small business owners like me to pay less in taxes and thus have more resources to grow our businesses, create jobs, and stimulate the economy at the level where ordinary Americans live.

This week a site I’ve been working on for a while went live — espressy.com! I’m pretty excited about this one, in part because it’s probably the largest web project I’ve done so far — I did all the back-end coding and a lot of the front-end coding as well.

Espressy has user profiles, blogs, photo albums, and stuff like that, but the most fun part is posting links to other sites with commentary and discussion — in fact, you can check out my broadcast there to see what pages I’ve been interested in sharing!

I know Obama’s not likely to win West Virginia this year, and I know his campaign’s choice to spend most of their resources in more closely contested states (and states with more electoral votes!) is rational, but it still bugs me when my friends refer to my home state as hopelessly conservative. “Oh, West Virginia? They’re never going to vote for Obama!” Oh really?

West Virginia is a traditionally Democratic state! It’s voted Democratic six times in the last ten presidental elections, while Indiana — which has been considered a “swing state” this election for a while — voted Republican in all ten. Not to mention WV’s long tradition of organized labor, its Democratic governor recently elected with almost twice the votes of his Republican opponent, and its two-out-of-three Democratic representatives.

Plus, who could forget WV’s two long-serving Democratic senators (who do so much for the state!)*? Byrd has never lost an election, Rockefeller is expected to be re-elected by a wide margin this year).

Fortunately, as polls swing ever further toward Obama, I’m getting somewhat vindicated on this issue; Real Clear Politics just pulled WV into the toss-up column, and poll analyst and fellow U of C alum Nate Silver has a post up this week about the state’s chances in the general election.

* as an almost-native of West “by Robert C. Byrd” Virginia, I have to say that I am down with pork. I don’t claim to be a fiscal conservative! I’ve seen how some of Byrd’s projects have brought much-needed jobs and infrastructure to a state that generally has too little of both.

After a meeting a couple weekends ago I found myself too tired to do much EXCEPT ride the T, so I hopped on the Orange Line and rode all the way out to the end. Sitting on the mostly-empty train, watching the city shade into suburbs and nursing the remains of a small hangover, was remarkably relaxing — an almost meditation-like escape from work and daily life.

I got off at Oak Grove and walked around, but the most exciting thing I could find within a few blocks of the T was a laundromat (I should have done some preparatory research!). I also wanted to find a bathroom, so I decided to search at the next T stop — Malden — where, much to my delight, there was a bathroom INSIDE THE STATION!! More and more T stops have this feature now — this is an awesome public service. Keep it up, MBTA!

Walking around Malden was a little more exciting than walking around Oak Grove, but by that point I wanted to transition back into getting some work done, so I didn’t spend much time there. I also declined to take the opportunity to visit Wellington, which is now the only stop on the northern branch of the Orange Line I haven’t been to yet — I’ll probably regret not going on this trip, since from the train it looks like Wellington is even more nothing-more-than-a-parking-lot than Oak Grove. Maybe some preliminary research will help me discover the secret exciting parts of the northern Orange Line?

The next day, I went with a couple folks to the historic Adams houses, adjacent to the Quincy Center T stop. For most of my childhood — well, actually, probably until as recently as a year or two ago — a guided tour of a historical person’s home seemed like the Most Boring Thing Possible. But when a friend proposed this trip, I looked forward to it all week. Maybe it’s my somewhat newfound interest in politics, or just a broadening of my interests as I get older? In any case, I enjoyed learning about the Adams family and seeing their homes — plus checking out historic Quincy!

Help! I’ve become totally addicted to pointless, trivial political coverage!

I thought it was bad during the primaries, but now that it’s convention season things have definitely gotten out of hand. It’s not even like I’m taking in new, useful information or perspectives — I’m just spending all day rereading different versions of the same irrelevant talking points. But it’s all so fascinating! There’s choice-based rhetoric from avowedly anti-choice candidates; there’s a well-delivered acceptance speech peppered with grade-school-esque put-downs and not exactly true statements; there’s flip-flopping and hypocrisy!

Palin’s speech last night seemed to indicate a focus on energizing the base rather than on drawing in independents (which either ticket needs to do to win), so as a Democrat I’m a little bit relieved. It seems to be the VP nominee’s role to give more partisan speeches, though, while the presidential candidate claims to have plans that transcend party lines — it will be interesting to see McCain’s response to Obama’s effective combination of inspiring rhetoric and specific policy proposals.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my mind on something other than the election for at least five minutes between now and November, but for the moment, I’m gearing up for tonight — drink when you hear “maverick”!

Before the Facebook platform was introduced, I knew plenty of people (in fact, I’m probably one of them) who had accounts, but rarely logged on — most people weren’t sufficiently compelled by the minute changes in their friends’ music taste to check it daily.

But once the platform was introduced, all my friends suddenly started finding reasons they NEEDED to check Facebook constantly (for most of these people, those reasons were Scrabulous). This is why the platform is such a brilliant business model. No matter what your obsession, Facebook can now target it. Not into “poking”? Fine, here’s some zombies. Not into zombies? How about political propaganda?

I never got into Scrabulous, but just as Long Tail advocates would predict, I’ve found an app that targets my obsessive streak. So far I’ve mostly percieved the platform as an opportunity to crankily delete dozens of invitations from people I’ve forgotten I ever knew to install apps I would never care about. But the allure of seeing my friends neatly categorized by type and temperament compels me to switch to the other side.

So if we’re Facebook friends, you should expect an invitation to add the “personality type” application. And you NEED to accept it.