Accept no substitutes

Category: Alumni and other friends (Page 36 of 38)

News and Record visit

[to be filled in later]
Visit with Dan Gillmor to the News and Record. Escorted by Ed Cone, we meet with a good number of the N-R staff lead by John Robinson and a fair number of G’boro bloggers including a reconnection with Dave Wharton who is now a Classics Prof at UNC-G and a blogger.
More on the very interesting Town Square idea that N-R is working to develope, etc later.
[to sleep perchance to dream]

Conis = Jones

For dinner last night, some of us from the the Triangle Bloggers Conference went to a great Turkish restaraunt in town called Tallula’s. I had made reservations in advance (you have to and still you are likely to wait a while). The person taking my reservation asked me to spell my name. I did.
When we got there, we had no reservation! But someone did named “Conis” and that person had my same phone number.
I reminded myself that Turkish is a phonic language. The C in Turkish is closest to our J. Made sense to me, but the hostess was confused. “I am “Conis” and you can call the number and I will answer.”
We had a great window seat.

Triangle Bloggers Afters.

It all came off rather well despite having grown to over 5 times the size of attendance that we had originally anticipated. Good discussions. Good behavior. Good people meeting good people. Props to Anton for getting this going and making it happen. Props to Fred for being on top of the wireless access and much more. Props to Jen O’Bryan who made it possible for us to know each other’s names and sites. Props to TJ and John for taping the event. Special thanks to Ed Cone and to Dan Gillmor for leading discussions. Thanks to the folks at lulu.com for providing the drinks and donuts.
What was it like? There is a nice collection of live-blog postings on the conference wiki. If you have notes, pictures and/or live blog entries, please add yourself.
I’m learning what went on from the wiki myself. When you are in the middle of things, you don’t get to pay the attention that you’d like to –especially if you are me and the laptop that you brought ends up being the one projected for folks to see the blogs in question and then it starts dropping the wireless at random intervals –grrr. my ancient T-book needs to be traded in.
Sally Greene took some pictures.

Dr. John set list n pix 2/20/05 Carrboro

Dr John and friend on the Piano
His piano is done up like a casket and he has his mojo working.

9 skinners
Keep it simple
Don’t Mean a Thing (If it ain’t got that swing)
Black Widow
Cotton Fields/Good Night Irene
Makin’ Whoopee
Dis, Dat or D’udda
Holdin’ Pattern
Tell Me You’ll Wait
The Monkey Speaks
–break–
One 2 am 2 Many
Witchy Red
Shadows (the Shadow Knows)
Barber Blues
Right Place, Wrong Time
When the Saints Go Marchin’ In
Glory, Glory Hallelujah (When I lay my burden down)
Ain’t My Fault
So Long
–encore–
Such a Night (If I don’t do it, Somebody else will)

Some Rights of Personality Reserved

Larry Lessig writes that he will be portrayed by actor Christopher Lloyd tonight on West Wing.
The West Wing site describes the show like this:

THE WAKE UP CALL
9pm 2005-02-09 ALL NEW!

IRAN SHOOTS DOWN PASSENGER JET AND IGNITES CRIES FOR RETALIATION; ROGER REES, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD GUEST-STAR —

On Valentine’s Day, an Iranian fighter jet accidentally shoots down a British passenger plane — killing 100 people — but C.J. (Allison Janney) is reluctant to awaken the President (Martin Sheen) even as the hawkish British prime minister considers bombing Iran’s nuclear reactors in retaliation. After learning that the passenger jet was mistaken for a U.S. spy plane, Bartlet calls in British ambassador Lord John Marbury (guest star Roger Rees, “Cheers”), as they debate whether a strike is the perfect excuse to wipe out the atomic sites or if it will set back reform movements in the rogue nation. Elsewhere: Abby (Stockard Channing) and C.J. war over the President’s schedule for rest; Toby (Richard Schiff) and a legal professor (guest star Christopher Lloyd, “Taxi”) try to pound out a new democratic constitution with representatives of Belarus — and everyone keeps dodging the traditional White House appointment with Miss Universe. TV-PG

Reviving the lapsed RA files

A friend writes that he is tired of old recordings he made and digitized sounding like crap. The problem is that they were digitized using early versions of RealAudio when doing any sound at all that you could receive over dial-up was a welcome accomplishment. Now we expect more. Much more. At least MP3.
But so many of us, including collections on ibiblio, went straight to .ra files that much of that information will be lost soon as technology improves and our demands for quality increase.
Saving sounds and pictures in proprietary formats like .ra wasn’t brilliant but it seemed the only way at the time.
In the Internet Poetry Archive, we have rare readings by Czeslaw Milosz and Margaret Walker for example. You will hear them in .ra, but I have tapes hidden here in a safe place. But not safe enough. They need to be in an atmospherically controlled archive. A few more years and the tapes will be sticky.

While I’m at it: Does anyone know a a way to migrate from .ra to any other format? I know the quality will be terrible, but to have the sound at all would be great.
One idea is to take the audio out from a computer playing the .ra and route it into the audio in of another computer capturing the audio.

Gladin to see you (twice)

Susan Gladin showed up in two different newspapers with two different pieces of writing today. Susan and her husband Peter Kramer let me use their chicken house as a place to work on poetry — well, the house is a small room writer’s cottage that Peter built in the middle of the chicken pen. Note to self: Get your schedule set so you can get out there at least once a week.

In the News and Observer’s Sunday Journal, Susan has a short piece of fiction, “Lips like Wine.”

In the Chapel Hill Herald where Susan is regular Sunday columnist, she writes of giving up sugar in sympathy with her sister’s giving up smoking. (for whatever reason, the Herald doesn’t put their correspondants’ articles on-line).

At first, I was sure this would be a Lenten article. Afterall Susan is a Methodist minister and this Wednesday coming will be Ash Wednesday. But it seems that Susan has instead chosen a substitute for sugar, stevia, with no season or penitential excuse offered.

Susan notes that the history of stevia and the FDA has not been an easy one as does Henriette’s Herbal Medicine site.

I’m now trying to reconcile the two writings. One chastizing sweetly a Baptist preacher about his unnuanced attitude toward wine. One drunk with information about a herb that caused more than a little reaction from the FDA. Is there a mapping between the preacher and the FDA, between wine and sugar or stevia, between the first person narrator of the story and the personal journalist of the column? Have I been reading too much Paul Auster?

Looking for Senior Citizen Discounts

I just received a box of socks from my parents. At least in their minds, I may celebrate birthdays, but I remain stuck in my teens and in need of assistance in maintaining my stock of acceptable personal apparel.
In the mind of the White House, I am among the last to be entitled for Social Security benefits.
In the mind of AARP, I should have joined 5 years ago.
In the mind of the intelligent treadmill at the gym, my heart rate should not exceed 165.
In the mind of my son, I am already in my dotage and have been since he had his 10th birthday.
In the mind of the North Carolina Employee Retirement System, I have to keep working if I want full benefits.
What I want to know is: where do I go to collect those famous senior citizen discounts?

Triangle Bloggers Update – Feb 12

Please come to any or all events and please repost as appropriate. Also if you or folks you know would like to help out, please contact me, Paul Jones (jones at unc.edu) and/or Anton Zuiker (anton at zuiker.com)

The Triangle Bloggers Conference has grown to nearly 100 registered participants including representatives from local and regional presses.

Three Blogger Events are coming your way in the next week. Triangle Bloggers Conference in Murphey Hall (Saturday 2/12), Dan Gillmor talk in Carroll Hall (Monday 2/14) and in Greensboro Dave Winer at the News and Record (Wednesday 2/9). Details and links below.

Triangle Bloggers Conference
Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – noon:30 (and beyond) Murphey Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Learn more

Dan Gillmor public talk
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People
Monday February 14, 3:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall, UNC
Learn more

Dave Winer, community journalism discussion
Wednesday February 9, 7 p.m.
200 East Market St., Greensboro
Learn more

Jumpin in the Garden of Eden

One of the joys of working with the Folkstreams Project, in which we are digitizing nearly 40 documentaries shot mostly in the mid to late 20th century, is that I get to watch and listen to a lot of wonderful music and stories that I have managed to mostly miss out on or only pay scant attention to.
Right now, as I’ve cleaning up some smaller tasks and getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, I’m listening and watching “Jumpin’ in the Garden of Eden” about the rebirth of klezmer music in the USA. Shot in 1987, the film focuses on two bands major to the klezmer revival, Kapelye and Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Chris Abani at NCSU March 27th

South African friend, Andie Miller, writes to say that one of her favorite poets, Nigerian Chris Abani author of “Graceland” (a new novel which has just been shortlisted for the Africa region Best Book Award of The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize) and others, will be the keynote speaker at NCSU’s Human Rights Week on March 27th. Nothing yet on the NCSU website, but it’s listed at Abani’s site.
You can hear Abani on the March 22, 2004 show at the Cat Radio Cafe, which has a number of other really interesting shows with great writers.

Emerging Tech; Filled Hotel!

I’m all reved up to head out to San Diego in a little over a month to go to O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference. I lined up all my various discounts and got Tim to swear to his staff that I’m a faculty member so’s I don’t have to go through the hassle of faxing a bunch of verifications. (Thanks Tim I wasn’t really asking for that but I appreciate it). I got lined up to visit with Cory and with Tim and was chatting with Doc on AIM as I was trying to register at the Westin Hotel where the block of rooms for the conference was supposedly being held til February 18. The big word in the previous sentence is “supposedly.” I got back a message saying the block of rooms was entirely taken! Must be a broken reservation program, says I. I tell Doc who opens another AIM with Sara W of O’Reilly. Who tells us sure enough the conference is filling up fast and the hotel filled even faster!
There is no room for me or for Doc or for anyone registering after today. The good O’Reilly folks were surprised too and promise to have a list of alternative hotels on the website tomorrow.
The question is less whether I’ll be booked in a dive, but whether where ever I stay will have wireless, broadband, or any net.connections. Anyone familiar with the Horton Plaza area in San Diego? Or the Gas Light area?

Cliff Lynch and Scholarly Publishing

Among the meetings in yesterday’s meeting-rich day was a send off for Larry Alford who is on his way to Philly. It was wonderful and touching — as is Larry — and made sad only by the feelings of hope and pride combined with a feeling of loss.

The evening began a discussion of Scholarly Publishing at UNC which was in turn kicked off by a talk from CNI‘s Cliff Lynch. We (John, Fred, and Megan) taped the talk and will have it available on ibiblio for streaming in the Speakers section soon.

[more here after a full day of scholarly publishing discussion today]

Brewster at the Library of Congress (and on CSPAN)

Old friend, Brewster Kahle, did a recent talk at the Library of Congress which is now online. Brewster is exuberant and ready to digitize the entire Library of Congress using perhaps his 300 page per minute digitizing scanner which is already in use in Toronto. He’s also talking about the Internet Archive’s Bookmoblie which is a print on demand van. Cost per book from the van is about $1. Harvard says it costs $2 per book to loan it. So why not print from the van?
Brewster discusses the problem of books that are out of print but still covered by copyright. These constitute what he calls “orphan” books since you cannot access them in any way.
Brewster is exuberant about the tape-trading groups like eTree.org having offered his “unlimited disk space online forever” to them and to about 700 bands for concert tapes.
A bit about the Archive’s video/music collections and the bandwidth they require. Especially Rick Prellinger’s archive. Rick saw a 40% increase in sales and eventually sold his collection to the Library of Congress after giving away movies on the Archive. Brewster is excited about Lego movies too. Lectures etc.
This is Brewster at his very best. A lot to tell and he tells it well. Each visionary musing is tied to a real ongoing and possibly do-able project at a fairly large and international scale.
The series, which has a link to the talk, is called “Digital Future” will also feature Ed Ayers, Larry Lessig, Brian Cantwell-Smith and others.

Here’s a direct RTSP link to Brewster’s talk.

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