Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 35 of 146)

Jamie on Science Publications; Josef on Health Travel

James Boyle opines on a web without science in the Financial Times. He’s right about the problems but he needs to come to the 2nd North Carolina Science Bloggers Conference in January (registration now open) and check out some of the solutions.

Josef Woodman, author of Patients Beyond Borders: Everybody’s Guide to Affordable, World-Class Medical Tourism, gets a bunch of good quotes and a sidebar from the AARP Bulletin in “Traveling for Treatment: Soaring U.S. health costs are driving more Americans abroad for medical treatment.”

Town of Chapel Hill Wifi Pilot

Chapel Hill Town Wifi mapLink to PDF of the map.

Announced at the end of last week by the Town of Chapel Hill:

08/30/2007 – The Town of Chapel Hill this Friday will activate six Wi-Fi hotspots in the downtown area, giving the public free access to the internet along much of Franklin Street.

The provision of wireless internet service to citizens has ranked as a top priority goal for the Town Council. The launching of wireless hotspots in downtown is considered a pilot project and step forward toward this goal. The hotspots, which show up on wireless devices as “TOWNofCH-WiFi,” are located at the following:

1. U.S. Post Office, 179 E. Franklin St.

2. Old Town Hall (IFC Shelter), 100 W. Rosemary St.

3. Town Parking Lot 5, 108 Church St.

4. Hargraves Center, 216 N. Roberson St.

5. Chapel Hill-Orange County Visitors Bureau, 501 W. Franklin St.

6. 411 West Restaurant, 411 W. Franklin St.

Bob Avery, information technology director, said users within 300 feet of a hotspot should be able to connect, although the ability to connect will depend on the capability of the user’s device and the amount of obstructions between the user and the antenna. For a street level user, trees, buses, trucks and buildings will all reduce the quality of the connection signal.

The Town will soon provide information to the public by website, media and signage to help promote the hotspots and explain how they may be used. More information will be provided at the homepage of www.townofchapelhill.org.

The hotspots have been installed using Clearwire modems. These are attached to standard Wi-Fi access points with high gain antenna to provide the signal for public use.

The Town will not provide direct user support but does hope to be able to respond to and resolve outages or other service problems as they occur. To report comments and problems, please contact the Town at wifi@townofchapelhill.org.

Carrboro Co-Working survey

Brian Russell of Carrboro Co-working asks for your help. It’s simple. Fill out his survey to help design a coworking space in Carrboro.

“Carrboro Creative Coworking is a professional shared working space with a cafe-like atmosphere. It is designed to be a welcoming environment for freelance professionals, home-office workers, entrepreneurs, startup business owners, tech workers, graduate students, writers, and others. Subscribers of the Carrboro Creative Coworking space will receive access to a reliable office space inside a unique modern community.”

I am not involved in the business of Carrboro Coworking, but I do think it’s a good idea.

Geek Dad: Getting into the Canon Rock meme

Just posted this bit over at Geek Dad:

Jerry C‘s recent fame on YouTube sprang from his fiery performance of Pachelbel’s Canon which has inspired a throng of video responses including the well-watched one by Funtwo and one from some local teens.

Part of what makes the teens’ first entry into YouTube-dom interesting is the way they used simple technology for very good effect.

The Pachelbel piece itself, the only audio, was recorded directly into the computer from the guitar amp as Seon played over the backing tracks supplied by JerryC.

The producers, Henry and Tucker, took the new guitar lead and the background into Garageband and mixed them down to provide the track for the music video.

Then a music video story was laid out to match the music and its changes.

When the video portion was shot, they didn’t actually use a video camera but instead the video recording of an small digital camera — an Olympus Stylus Verve which can record about 5 minutes of video before downloading is required.

Several shoots were collected and downloaded into an iBook.

Next for their video editing, they used only iMovie.

The result is a part homage/part ironic take on classic rock videos. See it here.

The Work of Love

My Labor Day sonnet, “The Work of Love,” is published in today’s News and Observer on the Book Page. That’s great and I’m grateful. But they still can’t get the formating right for the online version — yuck.

Should look like this:

The Work of Love

The work of love is not the love of work.
Work will not make you free. Take it from me.
I could drone on for years; did for thirty.
Love should not hide but labor should be shirked.
Does a leashed dog appreciate the jerk
At the other end? Call it family,
A team, and the tyrant boss “our Daddy”
As if his abuse was a petty perk?

But when our own desire controls our hearts
And says: “Work must be done again.” “Begin.”,
We put on worn jeans, caps, and sweat-stiff gloves —
Preparations, ways to delay our start –.
So much before us seems immense — just then
The love of work becomes the work of love.

UPDATE: News and Observer folks fixed the poem layout here.

Fair and Tender Ladies – McGuinn and Clark (1977)

Roger McGuinn writes of his latest addition to the Folk Den:

This version of “Fair and Tender Ladies” was recorded at New York’s Bottom Line in 1977. Gene Clark and I were on an acoustic tour of the United States. Gene was playing his beautiful Martin D-45 and I was finger picking my Rickenbacker 370 12-string – dripping with compression. Our songs spanned the music of The Byrds, our solo careers and included some traditional material – including this arrangement, which could easily have been on a 1965 Byrds record.

The state of your car reflects the state of your soul

I think it was Art Kleps who had this insight and who wrote it down for us in the Boo Hoo Bible.

The story, my personal story, is that my car refused to start. It was in the Office Max parking lot within the sad sight of a Wal-Mart during the lunar eclipse last night — alone in the dark. The computer readout was not promising (see article below).

This morning I called the local Chrysler dealer. They said that could see the car on Friday! Today is, ahem, Tuesday. I was dispirited to say the least.

Still I called AAA and asked for a tow to the dealer. In pretty quick time, the AAA tow arrived. The guy got out of the truck and he was covered with every variety of tattoo that might offend a 50+ year old father. He was direct. “Your battery is dead.” He hadn’t even heard the car try to start. I put him in the driver’s seat. All the power equipment worked fine. “Yup, it’s the battery.” But all of the stuff works great. “I’ll jump it now.”

He jumped it and it worked immediately.

Now the car is getting its 7+ year old battery replaced.

It is a new day.

One of my horoscopes says:

You are a peacemaker now, for harmony in your environment seems more important than ever. Loving relationships, giving and receiving affection, and attracting people into your life who are good for you are very likely at this time. Enjoy your day.

PT Saga: stall and odd codes

This has been one of our cooler days. Only 90 as I drove around doing errands. A short trip to Staples — 5 miles. Then to Lowes about 3 miles. Then to Office Max about 2 miles more. Perfect performance. In fact, no PT problems for almost a year. And a recent but not too recent maintenance went well.

But on coming out of Office Max, I tried to start the car. Nothing happened. We had noises but mostly that of the fan and belts. Not even a starter grind. A lot of hopping around on the dials, but the engine didn’t show hot and no lights looked odd.

I did the error display mojo and after the countdown from 11111111 to 99999999 in the odometer. I saw:
566050
Ab5 or AbS
AIrbAG

Next up a call to AAA and Chrysler in the morning.

News and Record’s Skube vs Bloggers Summary

Lanita Withers of the News and Record does a good summary of and gets good comments on the Skube vs Bloggers story. Included in the story are quotes from blogging J-School colleague Chris Roush, Ed Cone and Jay Rosen.

Ed Cone on Skube: “He sort of compared apples and oranges. And he didn’t do his homework.”

Chris Roush on blogs and journalism: “To me, the best blogs out there are just journalism being presented in another format. And just because it’s not being printed, does that mean it’s not respectable journalism? I’d debate that.”

Michael Skube: “I said what I want to say.” But then he goes on, changing his story as Ed Cone notes in his post.

LATimes:Let us make this perfectly clear — NOT

The Michael Skube LATimes oped saga continues just when it seemed to be somewhat resolved.

Jay Rosen’s Blowback piece just out answers Skube’s charges against bloggers handily and Jay used crowdsourcing in the blogosphere to produce and factcheck the article. It’s solid work.

But as they say in the news biz, questions remain.

Skube has admitted that he had at best a passing knowledge of the existence of TalkingPointsMemo. He said that references to TMP were added to his article by editors at the LATimes.

Based on this note at the LATimes site (not linked from the Rosen article BTW) that may be the case.

Or is it? We know, now forced into the odd task of parsing the note, that Skube agreed with an editor at the LATimes that “it would be helpful to include the names of the bloggers in [his] piece as active participants in political debate.” No telling who did the choosing and the adding from this though.

Did the LATimes editor add TPM or did Skube? Or does it matter? To the last, responsibility does matter in responsible journalism. “Mistakes were made” will not do.

Note: This blog was sourced in Jay Rosen’s article.

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