Accept no substitutes

Category: General (Page 34 of 135)

Wit or Nit or Twit?

Reading along in Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert‘s great popular book on the psychology of perception and its consequences, when I hit the “Hound of Silence” chapter. This one is about how difficult it is to notice what isn’t there, the absence rather then the presence of something. The chapter begins with a famous selection from Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” in which Sherlock Holmes notices “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” What was curious? The dog didn’t bark when he probably should have. By noticing what wasn’t there, Holmes cracked the case.

The section after the intro is titled “The Sailors Not.” There are no sailors mentioned in the section. What is mentioned is an experiment on how absence works against perception as it did on all the subjects in the experiment. No Holmes among them.

Okay I said, “No sailors” and read on to the next section “Absence in the Present.” Wait! This is all about sailors! And about sailors who were absent in a story that Sir Francis Bacon borrowed from Cicero.

Now, am I a nit-picker who noticed that the copyeditor fell down on the job and let pass that the two section heads had been switched?

Or am I a wit who picked up and some sly psychological tricks being played by Gilbert on less wily readers?

Or am I a twit who spends far too much time trying to tease something significant out of a simple printing and layout error?

Am I more of a twit to say that telling you this makes me happy. Almost as happy as when I solve a Friday New York Times Crossword?

Whilst still in my twit mode, let me note that I am reading the 2006 first edition Knopf hardback.

OM Opening Ceremony

The OM Opening Ceremony has been said to be modeled on the Olympics, but there are only a few similarities. The States and Countries in do send representatives to march into the stadium. Brief bits of the national anthems are played. The ceremony ends with a shout in unison of “Let the Games Begin.” Really the Opening ceremony is more like a stadium concert with laser lights and smoke machines and loud music. Well, maybe a bit of both.

This year’s opening ceremony filled MSU’s Breslin Arena. Over 800 teams are here to compete. Among the countries represented are Germany, China, Kazakhstan, and Mexico.

Hats are a big deal at OM gatherings as are pins which can represent a state, a country, a team, or even a long term problem being worked on. Pins are traded all over sometimes giving the appearance of a large meet up with budding sidewalk “Rollex” salesmen.

When we left our team, they were looking for their international buddies, the team from Fushan Jiujiang Town Middle School in Guangdong, China.

Red Head with a Glue Gun

Arrived in da Mota City and hied directly to Okemos which touches East Lansing which touches Lansing. Then off to check out the venues. Outside of the temple to Basketball is a life-sized statue (?) of Magic Johnson (okay maybe heroic scale at 12 feet tall). Inside the arena is being set up for a faux stadium concert cum opening ceremony for tonight.

We also stopped to check out the venue for the team’s long term “Big and Small of It” skit/presentation. A great old theatre, the Fairchild, with a lot of wood. The backstage setup is a bit tight. One team was in the hall inspecting their set. True to OM, the coaches were a distance away talking among themselves and the kids were worrying over the travel-produced scrapes and bruises that their props and inventions had taken on. One boy looked back to the coaches and his fellow team members; he had found a big crack. What to do? The coaches didn’t say anything. But one of his team members ran over to a powerplug and jacked in her solution. “Clear out! Danger! Red head with a glue gun!” she shouted.

Things were under a kind of control.

In other news, our team has been assigned an international buddy team — the Chinese who won in our division last year.

Heading to Odyssey of the Mind World Finals

Note: Once the Wired folks admit me Now that the Wired folks have set me up as a contributor, this and other postings about kids and tech will be over on Geek Dad.

The hardest part of being a teacher and of being a geekdad is keeping your mouth shut and letting the kids take charge. That’s what Odyssey of the Mind requires. You can show your kid and others on his team how to do something but they have to ask and ask without prompting. The results are amazing and creative and as you might guess, unpredictable.

Think of Odyssey of the Mind as MakerFaire by and for kids with contraints in budget but not on creativity.

My son’s team is on their way this week to their second OM (as it’s called unofficially or OotM more officially) World Final competition. I’ll report on not only their progress but about other creative kids in the competition at Michigan State University the end of this week.

Tucker’s team is made up of four girls and three guys all now 14 years old. But teams can be single sex and can span a few years. Divisions cover from K – 12 with a small college division.

Teams are given long term problems which are quite involved and include technical solutions, skits, costumes and sets — all scored and all presented in 8 minutes or less. And at a materials cost of under $145 (for their problem this year).

The Large And Small Of It requires that the team “create and present an original performance that integrates team-created Small Pages and Large Versions that change appearance. The method used to make the Large Versions change appearance will simulate the methods used to change the Small Pages. One of these methods must be technical. The Large Versions will serve as stage sets for the performance. During the performance a character will also appear to dramatically change in size. This effect will be created using technical means.”

Other problems include building weight bearing structures from balsa wood, building vehicles that perform some task, combining Classics and world geography and psychology.

That’s half the work. For the other half the team must spontaneously solve a problem presented to them. They aren’t allowed to talk about the spontaneous problems so I have to tease that out from other sources with the help of the OM press folks.

Last year, a team from Shanghai, China finished first in the vehicle problem leaving the Chapel Hillians in 6th place. So the competition is truly international and tough.

I can’t tell you just now what this team has dreamed up, but I can say that it involves some creative use of story telling, technology, duct tape, a recycled leaf blower and pvc pipes — and that the Chinese will be back to defend their title.

More news as it happens.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.2 and Cutline Theme

Up to the latest in WP and switching themes. In the midst of both. WP looks like we’re set. Need to customize the Cutline theme tho.

Okay, I like Mandigo which has all kinds of easy modification controls, but I also have now promised myself not to get completely sucked into endless redesign today! We’ll stick with MetalDreams for now and get widget friendly and cleaner later on.

Yikes! Bjork and her Volta have also chosen Mandigo. I want my pix on top so’s I have to get my mod act together. (thanks MisterSugar for the alert on Bjork).

Geekdad – maybe? Twitter jumps the shark, Blooker in Sweden and Julie loves zombies

If things work out right, I’ll be posting about the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals at Geekdad. The timing would be perfect as we’re about to leave for East Lansing and the Maker Faire — a kind of tech without theater adult version of OM — has just been covered by Geekdad reporters.

Twitter was just covered by NPR a couple of hours ago. Consensus amongst a few of us is that even though we love Twitter and tweet often — and wittily and informatively — the story showed that Twitter has likely jumped the shark. And the story wasn’t really told. Twitter is good when the content is good and interesting. Otherwise it’s just “I’m busy.”

Also just did a brief email interview about this year’s Blooker with the Swedish publication GÖTEBORGS-POSTEN. I hope my writing looks better with a lot of umlauts scattered throughout.

Speaking of Blooker interviews, fellow judge Julie Powell turns in a smart interview with an Italian publication titled “I Was Just So Relieved the Zombie Didn’t Keep a Blog”

The Old Ceremony at Southern Village

Caught Django and company playing as the Old Ceremony tonight outside on the green at Southern Village. We were at their last Cat’s Cradle show only a few weeks ago. Tucker and a couple of his friends who are also WCOM Teen Spirit DJs were with us this time out. The audience was both much younger and much older than the Cradle crowd. More like the crowd that Django soloed to last summer at Saxapahaw. The band was sharp, as in on the spot and wellrehearsed, but frankly an outdoor concert calls for a better sound system than was available. It was passable but a band with as much and as diverse instrumentation as TOC calls for great onstage monitors and someone full time on the boards. Everyone had a great time. Many of the folks were diehard TOC fans it seems — I didn’t remember seeing them at the Cradle though. TOC opened with “Morning Glories”

Set list:
Morning Glories
Ole!
Something Going On (not out yet)
Poison Pen
Talk Striaght (jokes and references to the video and concert footage done for Carolina For Kibera)
American Romeo
Believer
Blood and Oil
Until My Voice is Gone (not out yet)
(Can’t play Radio Religion as it requires more that a one handed piano player. TOC’s Pianoman has his right arm in a cast)
Reservations
Bao Qian
Papers in Order (which also has a video. Some of the folks in the audience are in it)
Carry the One
Hearts are Made (To Be Broken) [current download on MySpace]
Pennsylvania
Get to Love
Our One Mistake
Dumb Down
(encore)
The Motions

Intellagirl on Twitter vs Jaiku

Sarah Robbins (and some friends) on Twitter vs Jaiku and others and the future of IM.

Note: Social Presence (SPS) systems aren’t about “Lunch” “Shower” “Cab” that dull narcissistic catalog of an unreflected and unsurprised life but about “giving the URL of a great website, a snippet of a news story, or a link to a new blog post. The conversations aren’t one sided either. Lots of folks start their messages with an “@soandso” to direct their messages in reply to another message. Jaiku has comments on entries so sub-conversations can start as well.” Right on Intellagirl.

I love Locopops

Today is a Locopops day! It’s warm — about 80 F. I’ve been up and cooking exotic eggs — made exotic by what’s left in the fridge. I’m making coffee my way — after being on the road for about a week. I’ve been to the gym — where otherwise harmless weights were waiting for me to disturb them and they in turn disturb my muscles. I finished the NYTimes Xword. Mexican Chocolate, although not a regular, is still on the Locopops menu.

Later this evening, The Old Ceremony is playing outdoors at Southern Village.

I have been pretty feckful this week. Today I feel free to be feckless.

Digital Preservation, Asheville and the long road home

Much less blogging when I’m also speaking. Blogging is sort of like speaking to a mid-size group in a dark room. You can’t quite see them out there, but you can occasionally get everyone talking a little — and you interacting too.

We had a good meeting in which a bunch of folks ended up piping up and I got to learn a lot about the digital preservation challenges in this area. Like many places, who owns what and who manages what is a problem that is so locally specific and often tied to personalities more that organizations or content. That aside, there is much to be done in this history rich area and there are great folks that want to help get the job done.

Asheville is now more Boulder than Boulder. ID and I went to “green drinks.” Folks meeting at a local art gallery and bar that work on various eco-friendly projects. Whist there we met a couple from Boulder who had been in town about 18 months. He was going to do a show at the bar later on maybe. Things were vague. An art show? No music sorta. What does he play? Drums but now a jazz or rock set. You know drums. And some electronic. He’s really figuring it all out sorta. Then a tall slender woman approached us. She was wearing a lot of Egyptian jewelry. She has a sorta Egyptian name although she looked more northern European. She leads spiritual quests to Egypt. All the holy places of the pharaohs. Nevermind that the pharaohs shifted the religion as it suited them politically, I thought seeing Amenhotep listed beside Ramses in her flyer. What the heck is all about energy points she was explaining. The trip is a little expensive she apologized, over $4K. But for only $1600 more you can be initiated at a power spot and the Knowledge will be yours if you are ready. I tried to find out what you would be initiated into, but somehow even when asked directly she wandered in her talk. Where? To the Secret. She knows people in that film and in that book. They are sincere and know the Power. I am looking at ID for help. We escape and go to an upstairs place that ID calls “a punkrock veggie eats place.” It is! Full of folks who are too young to miss the Ramones but would die to be them. And pretty good veggie food too. The place is nicely crowded without being overly so. Rosetta’s Kitchen. ID is on a good tear about sustainability for the planet. To that end, we decide to walk to coffee up at a French Bistro beside what used to be the oldest store in Asheville. Back at the hotel the GI Joe Summer Convention is setting up. Plastic men are being put on display by folks who go to the gym more than I do.

Up now and heading down the mountain. Thinking of rural mountain cultural heritage and digital preservation in midst of the Asheville I just visited.

Blooker Prize gives rise to Colby-mania

Peter Freedman who has been handing the media side of the Blooker Prize writes us, the judges, to say that the Prize and more importantly the overall winner, Colby Buzzell and his blook, My War: Killing Time in Iraq, have been getting a lot of attention. Peter sends this:

The coverage is still coming but the following are the highlights so far:

– The Blooker announcement was the lead story on Google News at least a couple of times on Monday

– There have been maybe 300 or more (?) pieces of coverage in the traditional media and several hundred blog-posts (maybe 700 or 800 so far… and counting), including one in every conceivable language and script

– It was covered by all the major news agencies: Associated Press, Reuters, AFP/Agence France Presse, Bloomberg and, in the UK, the Press Association. Plus a few that I’d never previously heard of.

– The BBC alone have now covered this year’s Blooker over 15 times on different media, including interviews with Colby on both their flagship current affairs show (“Today” on Radio 4) and their global TV channel

– It has been covered by The Times? not just by The (London) Times and Sunday Times (the latter did a big piece after the shortlist) and The New York Times but also the LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Times, New Orleans Times (etc), Ely Times (NV), Howell Times (UT), Centre Daily Times, Pioneer Times-Journal, Albany Times-Union, Florence and North-West Alabama Times, Brisbane Times, Contra Costa Times, Taipei Times and North Korea Times — and probably others that we’ve missed.

– The Guardian in the U.K. gave it the whole of page three + an opinion piece on May 15, having already covered it three times on its website, plus a big piece by Nick in his column for their Sunday paper, The Observer.

– Other U.S. papers, magazines and websites to have covered it include The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle (twice), Houston Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Las Vegas Sun, Miami Herald, Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Forbes, Business Week, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Jose Mercury, abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, MSNBC.com

– Most or all of leading papers in Canada and Australia have covered it, as have:

– The International Herald Tribune

– People’s Daily and China Daily News in China

– There has also been lots coverage in all the major European countries (Germany, France, Spain, Italy), not just through Reuters
but in their leading newspapers (particularly in Italy for some reason where all the biggest newspapers reported both on the
short-list and winner announcements.)

– Media in Iran and much of the Arab world, mainly fed by Agence France Presse

– Colby has been or is going to give TV interviews to CNN, BBC News 24, CBS News TV for the History Channel? Channel 7 News on the West Coast, City TV in Toronto

– Umpteen other TV channels, large and small, at least reported the announcement, including CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News

– The Lulu Blooker Prize site has risen just under two million places in the world website rankings.

DRIADE Conf, Blooker PR, NPR and Internet Radio danger

Spending the day at the “Digital data preservation, sharing, and discovery: Challenges for Small Science Communities in the Digital Era” aka DRIADE conference in Durham. The minutes will be posted later — I’m promised so I’m not liveblogging the conference.

I did take a break to do a little radio on the Blooker Prize for WCHL our local AM voice. Peter Freedman writes to say that the Blooker and our winner, Colby Buzzell, were covered by the BBC alone over 15 times on different media.

In the meantime, Xeni and others alert us that NPR has, finally, decided to make a fuss about the latest challenge to Internet Radio. They do a good explanation of the history of the current problem, of solutions that are underway, and of calling you to take action.

Blooker Prizes Announced

We picked the Blooker Prize winners earlier and they were just announced. The winners are: In Comics, Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies. In Fiction, Doorbells of Florence by Andrew Losowsky. In Non-fiction, My War by Colby Buzzell. The BBC reports the Prize here with quotes from Nick Cohen, Arianna Huffington and myself.

Nick Cohen writes about his Blooker judging experience here at Guardian Unlimited. And he gets a bit snotty. Nick, Bridget Jones is a steal from Tales of the City mixed with Jane Austen fercrissake. Not to say that BreakUpBabe is either. And you passed completely on PostSecret and Doorbells.

Other Brits babble on about being bloggers and Blookers in response to Zoe Margolis’ Guardian piece here.

Colby Buzzell is quoted in the New York Times about his blogging, his blook and his winning the Blooker here.

Over 150 articles on the Blooker and Buzzell’s winning of it found on Google today.

At the OCLC Mothership

I’m just back from two days in Dublin, Ohio in an intense learning experience about some of the many things that happen at OCLC.

I started my time there by giving a talk and answering questions (see article below or as one person summarized the summary “Részvételen alapuló digitális könyvtár – Paul Jones (az ibiblio.org igazgatója) beszédének összefoglalása, hasznos linkek és források”).

Taylor Surface, Director for Digital Content Management, and I spend some time talking about ContentDM. Mostly Taylor explaining to me all that ContentDM can and will do. Amongst the interesting capabilities is ContentDM’s use of JPG2000 — ContentDM is particularly good for image stores and is used for that at UNC for the Billy Barnes Collection.

I’m not sure how a place called Dublin settled mostly by Germans ended up with a driving range and Scottish pub, but Jay Jordan, Chip Nilges and I had a great lunch and talk in the fine May weather there.

Jasmine de Gaia and Bob Schulz and I talked about Worldcat and the inclusion of social networking and social software ideas and experiences in and around Worldcat.org Note: Worldcat includes over 1 billion items in over 10,000 libraries worldwide.


Search for an item in libraries near you:
WorldCat.org >>

Mindy Pozenel told me about the pilot tests underway with Worldcat Local.

That evening we (Jay, Eric Childress who served as my keeper and host, Tom Hickey, Michael Teets and Bill Carney) talked, ate and had good wine at an espresso-less Italian restaurant. Eric made up for the expressolessness by taking me to a Starbuck’s the next morning (thanks Eric).

The OCLC Research folks are very deep into various interesting information problems. I was doing quite a bit of running to catch up with them.

Brian Lavoie, Ralph LeVan and Jeff Young talked to me about their work in search technologies, repositories and datamining (some of what I would call analytics) including catching me up on their use of the SRU Search and Retrieve via URL protocol. Ralph and I talked about the differences and different successes of DSpace and Fedora.

Ed O’Neill and Diane Vizine-Goetz talked to me about faceted terminologies and about FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)
. Along the way I learned of OCLC Research’s fixation on Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. There is obviously something there that I haven’t quite gotten yet, but the name does make me smile.

Over lunch a larger group of us chatted about many things including the rise of Zombies in literature. Something that would be shown to be later by Diane as and after she showed me FictionFinder: a FRBR-based prototype for fiction in WorldCat.

Thom Hickey has been working on Worldcat Identities including this one for a fairly unfamous author.

Bill Carney has a particularly interesting project in trying to identify orphan works and their possible owners and to make some guesses as to the status and various cataloged works.

[add more later]

Coffee coffee coffee

Hotel coffee isn’t coffee. Especially not the stuff left in my room. Downstairs eatery is not coffee either. Last night, we ate at a great and inventive “Italian” Restaurant here in Dublin. Wonderful conversation. Good wine. Very good food. But to my shock, no espresso! According to the wait (not an Italian BTW), “No one every orders the stuff.” I got coffee. No one apparently orders that either. At least no one who likes coffee. Outside in a warm Ohio night, I spy a Starbucks. It’s closed.

My host Eric is a trooper tho. He has promised to take me to good coffee in a few minutes!

Yes I am a whiner.

Ken sends me to the GrindCam; DJ Pez the prize winning barista is setting up chairs in the cool morning. The ugly Grind Trailer is gone. Folks are sitting outside enjoying the Carolina spring. With very good coffee.

Travels of Jones

After our graduation ceremonies tomorrow, I’ll be off to Dublin (Ohio) to visit the Worldcat.org mothership, OCLC for a couple of days.
On my return, I’ll be at the DRIADE Workshop May 2007 “Digital data preservation, sharing, and discovery: Challenges for Small Science Communities in the Digital Era” sponsored by NESCent and the UNC Metadata Research Center on Wednesday.
Then I drive up to the mountains to Asheville for “Living in a City of Bits: digital preservation of our cultural heritage” to be held on Friday.
If you are near any of these places and want to have a cup of coffee, let me know. What to see suggestions always welcomed. I will definitely be visiting this cornfield!

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