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Category: General (Page 31 of 135)

Blue Ridge Mountains – Atop, Below and Inside

This just up at GeekDad.com from our trip up in the Valle Crucis area:

Aboveitall
Within a short distance in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, you can be atop the highest mountain in the range, cross a mile-high swinging bridge, go to the deepest gorge in the Eastern US and then go inside the mountain itself.

Beginning atop Grandfather Mountain (elevation 5,964 ft), a privately owned nature preserve with extensive hiking trails from young child and old dad friendly to challenging for experienced hikers, a small environmentally and animal friendly zoo with some very popular bears, a nature and history museum and extensive picnic opportunities — and in season Scottish Highland Games.

Milehigh_2One of the big adventures on Grandfather is taking a stroll across the Mile High Swinging Bridge onto a craggy outlook with a great view. The bridge is an interesting structure in and of itself and the excitement of crossing it almost matches the view.

You could easily spend a day on Grandfather without being there for a special event.

But having seen the mountains from above, it’s only a short trip to see the deepest gorge on the East Coast and the Falls at the start of the Gorge there at Linville. Again there is plenty of camping of all varieties in the area including some challenging hikes into the Wilderness of the Gorge.

One of the best ways to experience the Gorge is to visit the Falls. The recreation area associated with the Gorge and Falls in right off the Blue Ridge Parkway and is easily accessible and federally maintained. (at milepost 316.5).

Linvillefalls

The walk to the upper falls and the views of the gorge aren’t challenging, but you can up the ante with a steeper descent to the lower falls and the plunge basin — even in the current drought these are the more impressive.

But while being below the mountain is impressive, you could combine the trip and trek with an easy visit into the mountain’s interior.

Linvillecaverns

Linville Caverns is one of the oldest tourist sites in the North Carolina mountains so in some ways there is a period feel to the visit and giftshop to experience before you enter the timeless walk into Humpback Mountain.

The walk is a short one and friendly to the entire family with few challenges — other than being left in absolute darkness for a very few minutes.

In our case, a very amusing guide kept us informed with fact and non-fact and pun as we walked under the limestone.

You should if the spirit moves you and your family know that there are many opportunities to take your kids fishing in the area as well.

iPhone reboot

My iPhone started losing its mind.

First it ignored the “slide to unlock” slide. No motion would make it go. I found a workaround: make the slide motion anywho and then press the on button.

But eventually, Safari began to crash at odd times. The other apps would crash. Things were getting worse. Even sliding between photos would cause the app to abort and I’d be thrown back to the home screen.

A reset seems to have fixed it all. Just hold down the on/off button at the top right of the iPhone at the same time you hold down the home button at the bottom center for about three seconds. Eventually you see the Apple logo and then shortly after you are rebooted and reset. For me the problems were all cleared up.

Pownce, Skitch, Dopplr, etc

In the past little bit, I’ve become severely socially networked. Not only has most of the planet discovered FaceBook, but I’m also in Orkut, Classmates, Friendster, Multiply, LinkedIn (tons of action there), Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, Del.icio.us, RapLeaf, and several others including Second Life where I am a pioneer but an infrequent visitor.

In the meantime, I’ve become a Dopplr (share your travel plans with friends), Skitch (share your sketched images and annotated photographs with friends and others — like Flickr but with a local mini-Photoshop app and interface), and Pownce (Kevin Rose’s twitter/IM meets file sharing/link sharing/ etc) user. All as smalljones if you are looking for me.

I hope to post evaluations after I finish some year end reports and get tuned completely to the iPhone. Feel free to post advice and reactions here in the meantime.

iHeart iPhone and Fake Steve Jobs

Fake Steve Jobs is interviewed by CNet. Not as funny as Fake Steve, but pretty funny is a redo of the Last Supper with various tech/telcom execs surrounding Steve.

First possible tech glitch in my iPhone. The “Slide to Unlock” no longer slides nor unlocks. I have to make the slide motion then press the “home” button to get in. Yikes! It also seems that I could be blowing Safari out of the water occasionally but I can’t be sure on that one yet.

News: OffTheBus gets Zack, Jay gets at MoJo, Joel Chandler Harris gets inspected, Long Leaf Opera gets props, Wikipedia gets NYTimes love at last

Huffington Post announces their citizen journalism project, OffTheBus.net, which will include Zack Exley in the leadership. “Our disparate mix of citizen reporters won’t be part of the mainstream pack covering the campaigns — and will come at it from a wide range of different angles and perspectives, adding a new dimension to campaign journalism” says Lulu Blooker judge Arianna Huffington.

OffTheBus will partner with Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.net. Jay in the meantime is having it out with Progressive printbound presspeople of Mother Jones over their Politics 2.0 package. The discussion crosses several fora, but the place to start is Jay’s PressThink blog post “Mother Jones invites you to question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype.” where the MoJoes confess somewhat to attempting to debunk the net as a political force in the comments.

Speaking of debunking and reconsidering and rehabilitating, Uncle Remus creator and story collector Joel Chandler Harris’ house/museum gets a re-inspection and his writing and agenda get attention in the NYTimes as “Rehabilitating Uncle Remus (and His House in Atlanta)” a tale of times and complexity. Will Uncle Remus’ wisdom and African culture carrying be taught and considered in the context of Harris and the South’s complicated and difficult (and decidedly wrong noted) song? The Wren’s Nest, Chandler’s home and historic site, aims to try. (Harris’ Uncle Remus stories are available as text and as audio on the ibiblio-hosted Project Gutenberg).

The Long Leaf Opera‘s season started with a curative to the questions ignored by Harris (music by Chandler Carter) as they staged “Strange Fruit.” Roy Dicks of the News and Observer reviews the Long Leaf’s season favorably as “Festival shows Long Leaf Opera’s growth.”

Speaking of props, Wikipedia gets love from the NY Times Magazine for their/our neutral point of view and news coverage in “All the News That’s Fit to Print Out” (How did the world’s biggest online encyclopedia turn into a leading source of daily journalism?).

When is YouTube NOT YouTube?

When it’s on iPhone.

Testing out the YouTube app on the new iPhone and I was super-impressed by the quality and speed of the download on the WIFI network.

But this morning I tried to search for some of the videos that amused me most. Less Okay-Go and more 60s concerts. Searching for “Byrds” didn’t give me any Byrds concerts when searching on the iPhone’s YouTube utility. It gave me Paris Hilton getting out of jail and someone named Byrd shouting at her. Names of Bryds members gave me no videos found!

But back on the web at YouTube.com, I got lots and lots of Byrds. No problem.

Testing with “Chumbawamba” gets one vid on the iPhone with “Tubthumping” in the background as dominoes fall down in a spiral.

Back on YouTube.com, lots of great Chumbawamba videos are found.

YIKES! Is the iPhoneTube only licensed material? Is the great old stuff and the new crazy homebrew stuff cut out?

Others experiences?

Just Boingboinged. (Thx Xeni).

iPhone is in the house (but all is not happy)

I love the iPhone and Apple. I love not ATT. But my horoscope says:

Aquarius: When someone gets your order wrong, take it in stride. If you get all worked up, you’ll ruin both your day and that of the person who messed up, too.

I am striding and enjoying the iPhone and will sort out the ATT stuff on Monday

OCLC NextSpace virtual roundtable – Q5

Fifth part of a virtual roundtable for OCLC NextSpace:

Do you see [online] social networking as a serious, long-term cultural and business phenomenon?

My brother, who was working in a prison ministry,told me: “The guys when they get out they have no networks that’s why it’s hard for them to find jobs or a place to stay or even a place to just have fun.”

Of course, this is part of what prison is about breaking down the social network that got the guys in trouble in the first place. What’s missing, as my brother noticed, is a replacement network. Without a network and associated social support we become steppenwolves, single that will not survive.

We are in a time not on no tribes but of multiple tribes, not of a single family but of multiple families, not in a time of a single social network but of multiple networks — each of the highly and loosely connected social structures more easy to manage in terms of time shifting, commitment, and in selection.

How to make the support of these networks sustainable and flexible is the challenge be it in the form of a business, a government or a group of volunteers.

OCLC NextSpace virtual roundtable – Q4

Fourth part of a virtual roundtable for OCLC NextSpace:

How can libaries (etc.) best work to shape the next wave? Should they?
First “Yes” to part two of the question, then:

Let’s start with online social network systems instead of starting with libraries.

SNSes are not so much about building networks as about managing existing social relationships as numerous studies point out. Not a life on the internet or a life in Second Life so much as, as Wellman puts it, Internet in Everyday Life.

SNSes and other technologies are good for libraries, if libraries can use them to increase and strengthen social ties between the institution and to those using and supporting the institution, to provide services seamlessly or at least more conveniently. In short to become more of a part of our Everyday Lives.

SNSes are very good at this or so much better than what we’ve had before that their use and potentials are immediately visible.

A tale from today:

I subscribe (via RSS) to a blog at a regional newspaper.

The author there covers state government issues. He is off on an amusing tangent on “Catfish Ammendments.” Where did the phrase come from and what does it mean?

He asks his readers and several old state government hands reply and/or put him into contact with other old hands.

He does a Google Book Search and finds a snippet reference to a 1904 Congressional Appropriations Committee hearing.

But he asks how to get to read more. I alert him to WorldCat.org (you don’t have to pay me for saying this OCLC).

At the same time, I realize that the University Library Reference Desk is my IM friend!

I IM my friend the Reference Desk. Sure enough we have the 1904 document on microfilm. And the Desk, who I now know as a person I pass in the parking lot, can and will do further research.

I put the blogger/journalist in touch with the Desk and we all chat then move to email.

Frankly I and the Libraries and OCLC would have liked it if we were higher on the list of interactions. But realistically, folks ask their friends first — every study shows that.

Libraries need to be part of the Everyday Lives and of the friend relationships managed by SNSes. The nature of those SNSes may be 3D virtual, text, image, IM, Facebook, MySpace or something still in the garage or coffee shop just down the road.

Libraries need to use technology to help shape the information seeking, interpreting and usages of the future. These technologies can help libraries be our better friends — and dare I say it, our better angels.

A sort addendum to my post.

This just came in from my Reference Desk friend which shows the value of the Library online vividly:

Look at the image of the document cover on the Google book search page you sent me: the second line from top reads “appropriations for 1964” not 1904.

We have the 1964 hearing; p. 616, 2nd paragraph from the bottom reads: “Messrs Bouldin, Vogtle, and Pulley remind one of the fisherman who held a small wriggling fish in his hand, preparatory to cleaning it for eating, and said: “Hold still, little fish. I’m not going to hurt you–I only want to gut you.”

This is part of the statement of Basil Thompson, General Manager, Alabama Electric Cooperative, Inc. pp. 609-618.

OCLC NextSpace virtual roundtable – Q3

Third part of a virtual roundtable for OCLC NextSpace:

Specifically, how do you see it [online social networks] affecting libraries/museums? Right now, and in the future?

The question might be rephrased as how will the online affect the offline and vice versa.

We’ve seen vividly how the frictionless movement of information and goods is affecting the world economies. How the music industry while trying to mount a resistance is in meltdown. How publishing and reading has been changed in what seems for the near term to be irreversible ways. Ask the encyclopedia folks. Ask a small textile town in the Southern US.

If libraries and museum act on their heritage as places for intellectual improvement and social interaction and cultural cohesion, there is a great future for them.

If they act as warehouses for cultural treasures as interpreted by the dominant culture, their days are numbered.

Academic libraries lead public libraries in the transition since more and more academic knowledge is shared digitally more quickly than popular knowledge. But this is only for the moment.

In the past few months, I have been in meeting with several different groups planning small town museums and cultural destinations. All of them talk more about services and events and involvement of the public than about amassing treasures in the traditional sense.

Online, whether social or no, distributes access to the treasures widely and without much friction. The online social networks can, if wisely participated in, increase the value of the institution and to the access of the original.

Oddly, digital access creates a fetish for the original, a desire to see the object up close, a need to meet the person who wrote those words or is represented by that avatar.

Cultural institutions are challenged to find creative and effective ways to exploit this need to meet, to see the original, to follow discussions with physical actions, to enhance the social.

OCLC NextSpace virtual roundtable – Q2

Second part of a virtual roundtable for OCLC NextSpace:

What are the impacts, overall, do you think [of online social networks] on industry, education and cultural institutions?

As with the advent of writing, telegraph, TV and radio, we are seeing reconfigurations of power and of structures for social capital exchange. That is the Bourdieu-ian closure are being restuctured if not smashed.

There is no deterministic answer to this question, but we can make some guesses. Although I remind myself how much we cannot see whilst in the midst of the process (see Forecasting the Telephone by Pool for a cold awaking as to how wrong and how right we can be), — am I hedging enough? I notice that others have perhaps wisely avoided this question — I will say that we are surely seeing a restructuring in knowledge access and in cultural production and in preservation that allows for widely distributed holdings of materials and centrally facilitated access. Additionally there will be strong reactions, including moral panic, to this change. As the tensions resolve, we may have a new period of enlightenment or a new dark ages.

We can count on change, reorder, and reconfigurations of institutions and of the powers that they represent.

OCLC NextSpace virtual roundtable – Q1

I’m one of four participants in a virtual roundtable for OCLC NextSpace. The others are Fred Stutzman, Lori Bell, and Ed Castronova. I’ll not post their writings here — for that go to the next issue of OCLC NextSpace — but I will post mine here for your comments.

How do you define online social networking? Examples of how it’s working well and not so well…

Relying first on social networked groups to get at a definition, we find that Wikipedia defines social networks as:

a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

[…]

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

A friend from Europe twittered me that an online social network is an Interactive e-PLAYground community.

This last elides the other work of social networks as seen in LinkedIn and Match and Classmates to name three.

Bourdieu writing in the 80s saw that social networks were defined largely by who was left out, by their exclusiveness and by how they allocated social and knowledge capital to their members to provide them with an advantage over outsiders.

Lin, Burt and Granovetter all notice that closed social networks have certain advantages but the interactions between such networks — not closure or density — are more important to social capital growth and exchange.

Online social networks draw their strength by not just hosting one social network bound by a Dunbar number (150), but a highly porous set of interactions between “natural” social networks. Not just kids at a certain school or from a certain class but a broader mesh of such smaller networks with casual interactions building and supporting stronger interactions. Messages culminating in a meetup say.

Some sites allow social interactions but are not really supporting social networks explicitly (say newspaper site discussion boards), some are swamped by social networks that change the nature of the networks on that site (say Brazilians on Orkut or Burning Man attendees on Friendster).

Whatever the technology, it is the social that actually provides the networks and the interactions.

Music shifts

Robert “great hairstyling” Kaye announces that MusicBrainz will be driving the new BBC Music site allowing users to create song level metadata.

Rolling Stone explains (again) how the Music industry blew it over and over and how they plan to reconfigure yet again in a two part series (part one out today). Hillary Rosen, once RIAA flackcatcher, says of the Napster period: “The record companies needed to jump off a cliff, and they couldn’t bring themselves to jump.”

And yes we bought the Paul McCartney CD at Starbuck’s, but once we listened Tucker and I could only stand a few songs. Would we have bought only portions of the collecton on iTunes? Yes.

Fred and Chelcy’s wedding and Game Theory

Just back from a great ceremony and party for Fred and Chelcy’s wedding. Besides the obvious main and wonderful attraction — the wedding — the chat and fellowship after during the reception brought us to some new friends and to some old.

I learned that Maverick Farm is the place we’ve been driving by at the bottom of the valley all week. Sara Safransky is one of the folks running it even though she’s also a grad student at Chapel Hill.

Hap Kindem whose wonderful documentary about the Speaker Ban Law Sally and I both enjoyed told us about filming the Paralympics in Norway.

Cece Conway talked about the new Smithsonian/Folksways release of African-Amercian Banjo players that she has upcoming as a follow up to her Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia.

Butch Lazorchak tried to get Tucker and me to explain the Prisoner’s Dilemma too late in the course of the party for us to make much sense.

Much more but I’m getting very sleepy.

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