It’s great to hear from an Internet pioneer, but this time a little embarrassing too. Doug Engelbart writes to tell us first that he loves ibiblio (thanks so much) and second that a very nice resource on ibiblio has his name misspelled throughout. Yikes!. It is a great site. Internet Pioneers even has an audio interview with Vint Cerf looking forward from 2000. But almost everywhere Doug’s name was wrong. The site was created in 2000 as part of a masters project to which I gave some technical and other assistance. I wasn’t the copyeditor ;->
The good news is that I have a corrected version of the site ready to install tomorrow. There are two image files with Englebart instead of Engelbart which will take a bit to match, but all others should be right.
Category: Alumni and other friends (Page 20 of 38)
I never heard the flyover on Saturday. I think I must have been in the University Mall at the second of the Saturday Flyover. Tucker and Sally heard it, but they said it was nothing like the experience that we each had in different parts of town on Thursday.
That day there were six or more passes at the Stadium from different approaches. Over Tucker’s school, over Carrboro, down Morgan Creek, and at least three times over campus in different directions.
Saturday – maybe one pass?
The flyovers generated a lot of attention on OP and on our neighborhood mailing list on Thursday. No one mentioned the Saturday flyover at all either place.
Was just at a house concert/jam where the players were Will McFarlane and Armand Lenchek. This was serious stringbending live music with a good blues. In the course of the evening, Will was talking about the difference of playing in the studio and playing live. Basically with the earphones on, you play subtlely and with more details and more cleanly than you would play live. In fact, if you are playing to a big house (say touring with Bonnie Raitt, Will’s example), you are playing LOUD and with no understated sounds at all. And you have to be more reactive and even a bit well sloppy (although I don’t think Will would call it that) and ready to vary wildly from the original song if needed.
This reminded me of the time a few years back that Sally, Tucker and I were living in Paris for a week or so. We were there during the Bastille Day celebration. The little fountain at Place de la Contrescarpe where we were staying was converted into a bandstand. We went down to hear the music expecting to hear something French. But the band turned out to be a very hot but very tight coverband doing American Rhythmn and Blues. One particular introduction and song stick in my mind: Chancion de James Brown – J’me un Sex Ma Chien (pardon my poor French). The band launched into a perfectly executed version with mixed French and English lyrics of Sex Machine, but it seemed so wrong. The band was too exact and too tight to ever be the JBs (especially the version that cut SM in 1970 with Bootsy Collins and his brother Catfish and the wonderful Fred Wesley). I was used to the live swinging funk of the JBs recording. The French band was exacting — so exacting that it sounded wrong to me — not just the Sex Ma Chien instead of Sex Machine, but the whole of the sound. The excitement of the JBs was replaced by precision that missed the point of it all.
Will was explaining how the limits of tape to record certain sounds required that session players learn to play within the limits or that devices called limiters would be in place to pull down a shouted vocal that would have gone off the tape. The French band was clearly playing within the limits. No one would ever accuse the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, the Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite of staying within the limits.
Closer to being Carrborators than CHellians, John and Elizabeth Edwards were receiving a warm — even heated — reintroduction to the area (both went to Law School here and John is at the Law School now) from Orange Politics. Elizabeth Edwards has replied and is part of the OP community already.
Ruby,
Why doesn’t OP have TrackBacks?
Long time friend, Myles Friedman has an OpEd in today’s News and Observer about Harriet Meirs’ nomination to the US Supreme Court, “Why Miers worries me so much”.
This morning there were several low low low flyovers of campus but some striking aircraft in tight formation.
Why?
The mystery was revealed by UNC News spokesperson on OrangePolitics.org
They are F-15E Strike Eagles practicing for the fly over of the football game on Saturday.
Comment at 11:49am 10/20/2005 by Linda Convissor
And astute Carrboro mayoral candidate Mark Chilton reminds us that we were all in a tizzy last year at about this time over the same thing.
As UNC alum Andy Griffith reminded us even earlier: “What it was was football” or at least a stunt for football fans.
They are now for sell at the Student Stores and other fine stamp outlets.
You get 11 37 cent stamps for $4.07.
Fozzie Bear | Kermit the Frog |
Miss Piggy | Sam the Eagle |
Swedish Chef | Statler and Waldorf |
Dr Benson Honeydew and Beaker | Animal |
Gonzo and Camille | Rowlf |
and the eleventh is Jim Henson himself.
www.podcastercon.org for more details.
WHERE: University of North Carolina, 116 Murphey Hall, Chapel Hill, NC
WHEN: Saturday, January 7, 2006, 11am – 4pm
How Much: FREE
Website: www.podcastercon.org
Blog: www.podcastercon.org/blog
Contact: Brian Russell, Event Organizer, info (at) podcastercon (dot) org
Sponsors: Ibiblio.org, Cache Networks, and many individuals
Call for Volunteers
We need volunteers before and during the event. We need help setting up signs to the event, helping participants find their way to Murphey Hall, help putting up flyers in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area, basic tech support, help blogging and recording the event, etc.
Jamie Boyle writes to announce the Adephi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property, an international group based at the Royal Society of Arts in London which is concerned with innovation in the arts, sciences and industry.
Articles in the Guardian and in the Economist (covering both Brit Pol Wings this) explain the Charter further. The Charter itself is available for download and reading (in PDF) from the Charter site.
The Charter steering committee writes:
The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property responds to one of the most profound challenges of the 21st century:
How to ensure that everyone has access to ideas and knowledge, and that intellectual property laws do not become too restrictive.The Charter sets out new principles for copyrights and patents, and calls on governments to apply a new public interest test.
It promotes a new, fair, user-friendly and efficient way of handing out intellectual property rights in the 21st century.
The Charter has been written by an international group of artists, scientists, lawyers, politicians, economists, academics and business experts.
Steve and I were AIMing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He (Steve not the FSM) said he thought the FSM was like Cthulhu. I said I thought that the various Lovecraft monsters were frog-like and that HPL used a word beginning with BA to describe that froglikeness, but I couldn’t remember the word.
Steve later reminded me – batrachian!. I always think of HP Lovecraft when I hear or see that word.
Or are ethics tightly tied to ethos?
I tweeked Brian Russell a bit when he said that he didn’t subscribe to journalistic ethics. I’m not sure that Brian knows exactly what journalistic ethics is/are, but my accusing him of being without ethics (that is aethical not unethical) put him in a reflective mood. He’s now blogged a bit about the experience — and seems to still be in a quantry.
A new pit preacher dressed in official FSM pirate garb was in the UNC Pit recently. Alex Mellnick, FSM Preacher, had his moments captured in pictures and in movies and in text as he spread the Pastafarian message.
Touched by his noodlely appendage indeed!
Along the way I learned that local Pit Preacher Gary Birdsong has an entry in Wikipedia and a picture gallery on ibiblio!
In the beginning, everyone was named Jones. Everyone in the world. A Jones discovered fire. A Jones taught other Joneses to swim and to read and write. All was utopic.
But as time progressed people were not so nice. A killing happened. The killer was no longer called Jones. he was now Caine. At each crime, at each dispicable act, a person was deJonesed and forced to take other
names.
Although there are still many Joneses there are also many who have fallen from their original Jonesian state.
Perhaps in time we will all reJones and all sentient beings will be saved. The first vow of a Jones states: “Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them.”
Larry Lessig has a brief bit in Foreign Policy called The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It’s Larry’s standard pitch for balance and for the protection of the public domain. Clearly written and concise and well-argued. What makes it interesting is the placement. In Foreign Policy.
It begins:
Within every culture, there is a public domain—a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.
This public domain has always lived alongside a private domain—the part of culture that is owned and regulated, that part whose use requires the permission of someone else. Through the market incentives it creates, the private domain has also produced extraordinary cultural wealth throughout the world. It is essential to how cultures develop.
Jay Rosen posts here and on the NandO Editor’s Blog in the continuing conversation with Melanie Sill (and others).
It’s all about Jay’s “filter from god” comment which Melanie heard second hand. What I think is being danced around is Don Shaw‘s concept of agenda setting in the newsroom.
Note to NandO blog software folks: You still aren’t handling trackbacks correctly.
WUNC’s The State of Things has discovered that David McConville and the folks at Black Mountain College know a bit about Bucky (Buckminster Fuller). So they had them on the air today at noon (and in their archives soonnow).
Note: the WUNC archives and their podcasts are hosted by ibiblio.org.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Buckminster Fuller: In 1948, Buckminster Fuller, then a visiting teacher at Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina, built his first geodesic dome. It collapsed. The next summer he returned to Black Mountain and succeeded. Fuller later became famous for his domes and inventions, including the Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map, and World Game. A current exhibit at the Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center in Asheville looks back at those inventions and Fuller’s time in North Carolina. Host Frank Stasio talks with John Wright, board chairman at Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center in Asheville; Lloyd Steven Sieden, author of “Buckminster Fuller’s Universe: His Life and Work†(Perseus/2000); Jay Baldwin, author of “Bucky Works: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today†(Wiley/1997); and David McConville, co-founder of Elumenati, a company in Asheville that designs immersive projection environments. Listener Call-in. (59:00)
Yes Yahoo is there with a nice interface and search at podcasts.yahoo.com. I had trouble with the Listen feature but haven’t had time to inspect it closely. I did find my favorite podcasts there: audioactivism, Folk Den, Le Show, Cory’s books.
Very useable compared to iTunes which for podcasts is a bit of a pain because of their Apple RSS changes/extensions.
Yesterday, I was up early to ride over to Greensboro (formerly known as Greenesborough) for the ConvergeSouth conference with MisterSugar, Corey and Marcella. Luckily Weaver Street Market (in Southern Village) opens at 7 and has the coffee brewed and ready at opening.
The conference took place on the NC A&T campus in a couple of very nice newish buildings. Everyone there was helpful and I was having a pretty mellow time. Lots of good folks from G’boro including especially Ed Cone, Sue P, making it all happen in a very community spirited way and more coffee.
The first session, for me, was with Duncan Black aka Atrios. He was lost for a while but a guy named Shaka (as in Shaka Zulu) found him and brought him to us. The crowd had many more women and people of color than most tech or blogging conferences that I’ve attended (one in Cape Town was a notable exception) and the conversation was highly inclusive and smart. That said many of the questions at blogger conventions have a kind of sameness to them over time.
Following Atrios, I went over to Jimbo Wales’ talk on collaboration. Predictably, this drew on a lot of the same material that I had hear/seen during his talk in Chapel Hill on Wednesday. This time I wasn’t in charge of the room or the arrangements, etc so I actually got to pay more attention.
One thing that both Jimbo and Brewster Kahle reminded me is that Wikipedia and Archive.org both have three times the number of sysadmins as ibiblio does, but that almost all of their sysadmins are volunteers while both of ours are full time. Wikipedia has only two paid employes; Jimbo’s assistant and a lead software developer.
Jimbo ended at a place where discussion should begin: What parts of the wiki experience of broad collaboration should bloggers adopt?
Lunches appeared in bags. So I sat down and chatted with Kirk Ross about the Independent’s new political blog, Dent, there Kirk tries to post at least a brief note every morning as well as articles of more import.
WillR was pitching a Common Memory wiki or history of Chapel Hill wiki so that folks could understand how long various issues have been out there trying to be resolved by various councils and the context in which various decisions have been made, wisely or unwisely, over the years. Talked a little about how to build a successful community.
Ruby and Brian were there on out to a wedding after Ruby’s session. Ruby was much in demand having been a session leasder both days. OrangePolitics was getting serious and proper respect at the conference.
Also ran into and chatted a bit with Dave Winer whose session was just after lunch. Winer is in rare form these days, taking the first question about his recently announced sale of weblogs.com to VeriSign and making a little joke. Q: What will you do with your $2 million from VeriSign? Winer: That’s 2.3 Million and I’m going to put it in my savings account. Classic Winer ensued in a session that I think mostly pleased the crowd and pleased Dave. Lots of discussion by many voices — perhaps the most of any session that I attended.
Next I went to the Podcasting session by Herb Everett. The room was really really cold. Despite Herb’s enthusiasm, I was not so excited about podcasting basics and about good microphones as I probably should be so I slipped out to Sandy Carmany‘s political blogging session.
Sandy is an elected official, a City Council member in Greensboro, who blogs about her daily interactions as a council member. Sally does something like this with her listserv, but Sandy has even broken news (most recently the appointment of a new City Manager) on her blog. Many people involved in G’boro politics in the session as well as WillR from Chapel Hill.
Much made of being in touch with the voters and opening up government (it was not widely noted or was noted before I joined the session, that the appointment of the Manager was in a closed session).
WillR outed me as Mr. Sally Greene. Many people there know of and read Sally’s blog and website. I talked a little about how a site or blog can be used to provide deep background on an issue that might not seem clear at first and how a well researched and presented paper or essay can help frame the issue’s further discussion.
After a long break for coffee (and beer for some), about 10 of us convened for dinner with Dave Winer at the Undercurrent, a place too nice for most of us. So nice that some pretty spiffily dressed folks were there celebrating homecoming (at the local high school?). I spent a lot of time hearing about RadRails: a Ruby on Rails IDE from the creators Kyle Shank and Matt Kent– both of RIT and both interning at IBM in Raleigh.
Back in the dark rain with MisterSugar, Corey and Bora. Hearing the story of Bora’s coming to the USA as the Serbian horse-whisperer. Quite a wild tale and he got out just in time.
Bora also reported that Fred’s FaceBook study (and Bora’s follow on) came up several times during the conference.
The GSO BlogCon Blog is gathering various impressions of ConvergeSouth.
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