Fantastic news on the work front. We just got a ~$100k grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to extend work on the zen gardens site that I’ve put so much time into over the last several years. It has a new look since the last time I’ve mentioned this site, which is largely due to my friend Kevin and a recent redesign that site went through, (which is a large contributor to our succesful grant application – major kudos to kevin on that one) but my fingerprints are also all over that site. I’m extremely proud.
To give you a sense of how prestigious this is, the NEA very very rarely works with institutions like ours, generally they are focused on big famous institutions like the Metropolitan Museum in NY. The fact that they agreed to fund us is just absolutely fantastic. And the 100k they granted us means with matching funds and the NEA name we should be able to push the total grants for continued work up north of $250k. It also means new staff, at least three positions, for at least 12-18 months. And of course it means very interesting new features for the Zen Gardens site. Next focus is on interactivity – allowing the user to come in and build their own gardens and then have them assessed on some level. Thing legos for zen gardens, but ‘organic’ legos that morph over time – bushes that grow, ground cover plants that slowly creep across the landscape, that sort of thing. Stay tuned 😉
Dave's Place/Metamusing 
Wow! Congrats to you, man. Is this the same site you started working on like 2 or even 3 years ago?
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^^^…that was me, btw.
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Yep. The original site was one of the first projects I worked on when I was first hired by Bowdoin 3 years ago, and it’s gone through a couple of behind the scenes revisions in the ensuing years, this spring it got a major facelift headed up by Kevin. The backend hasn’t changed much in the last 12 months or so though. I am hoping as a part of the grant that we get to blow up the architecture and start again 😉 (not the DESIGN, the technical implementation I mean).
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yeah, luckily dave had the foresight to push for a very flexible design so it can handle blowing up the architecture on the back end. The next phase should be really cool to build. guess I have to go back and organize all those files now! doh! 🙂
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I will only see this as a positive event if it gets me a job up in Maine. dammit !
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