Competing Messages: The New World

I received this link by way of e-mail and I thought I would share it here. The article in the Harvard Business Review that is the subject of the post requires a subscription, so I wasn't able to read it. But the Abstract was illuminating:

These online personae, called avatars, range from simple but personalized cartoonlike characters used as pictorial signatures in instant messaging to fully developed characters in virtual worlds. And they represent a huge population of "shadow" customers who can be analyzed, segmented, and targeted.

"Analyzed, segmented, and targeted."

Once again, we are not consumers.

We are the consumed.

Marketers will flatter us and tell us that we're really not. We're "valued customers," or something.

And this is okay, as long as we're not embracing some illusion that bars us from fully embracing life.

The most disturbing thing about the picture of the guy in the recliner yesterday isn't how it reveals the contempt of marketers who are dependent on consumers, dependency breeding resentment. No, the most disturbing thing is that the picture of the guy on the recliner is a little too close to reality.

It's a picture of a guy whose experience of life is what he's purchased, packaged for him, by companies and corporations. A sedentary, passive existence, efficiently delivered by the marketplace to his living room, from which he stirs mostly to engage in the economic activity that allows him to continue to purchase his experience of his life. Only now we can add a laptop and his "avatar" to the picture.

The brief report I linked to about neoteny contained this:

Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, “immature” people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift.

On a recent Sunday, the thought occurred to me: "Many people believe they can 'change the world.' Most never realize that, from the moment of birth, 'the world' is changing them."

This isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it's in a similar vein.

Back to the neoteny report:

The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.

"Short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness..." Apart from being a remarkable description of Robert Scoble, is there a better description of a consumer? I don't think so.

(As an aside, I considered omitting the gratuitous swipe at Scoble. But I think the description is accurate, and it's not as though there aren't already hundreds of people who've offered fawning praise for the man and his achievements, such as they may be. I think it's worth pointing out that there may be another point of view. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just a grumpy, cantankerous curmudgeon. Real heroes of the New Church probably wouldn't be so mean-spirited. Or, at least, they rely on the divine power of the internet to peer into a man's soul and ascertain his true colours. Me, I'm just offering my opinion, and you know what those are like.)

And the "cognitive flexibility" that might seem kind of appealing at first, is really an adaptive change that improves the fitness of competing groups, and rewards the individual in the context of his or her service to the larger social organism.

The person who sent me the e-mail asked, "Where is this heading?"

I answered, "To a dark place, hopefully."

More about the darkness another time.

Competing Messages: Marketing is Teaching

Marketing is teaching us something.

I'm just not sure it's anything we need to know.

New Berlin Superintendent James Benfield's list of school facility names for sale is pretty much a list of everything the district is building. The name of the new basketball field house at West High could be worth $1 million, while Benfield hopes to get in the mid-six figures for the school's auditorium.

...

"The counterargument to that is so simple," he said. "We're living under the revenue caps. It's not like we're forcing the kids to drink Coke every day. It's pretty innocuous."

"Innocuous."

Here's a better metaphor: "Marketing is arson." Wherein marketers openly embrace the willfully destructive and uncontrolled nature of their activity.

It's pretty innocuous.

Kind of like this slide:

The thing to remember about that image is not the words. The man in the picture is the "no one" to the "you" in the audience of a presentation offered by a marketer. Usually to people who need to market better by telling a "story" to guys like the one in the recliner. The guy in the recliner? That's how marketers really regard us, when they're otherwise not flattering us to separate us from our paychecks.

Innocuous.

Me? Maybe I'm just fighting fire with fire.

I'm pretty innocuous.

"I'll never grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid..."

Explains a lot, if you ask me.

Pardon the "Insta-snark."

Moments to Live, Not a Moment to Lose

I received news yesterday that one of the officers who used to work for me at my last duty station, who retired and was subsequently hired on by us as a civil service worker, died at his desk on Monday of a heart attack.

I tried to reach all of the people for whom I still had contact information, and they had already learned of his death; with a couple of possible exceptions of people I couldn't reach but for whom I left messages. So I guess we'll have a reunion of sorts at the funeral.

I find myself in agreement with something AKMA wrote on the recent occasion of another person's death, "There’s something problematically passive-aggressive about using someone’s death to extort sentiment or action from people. Our friends don’t die to teach us, or to make us better."

But I think we're also in some kind of denial if these personal losses and intimate reminders of our mortality are not at least some cause for reflection. I'm reminded that dying is easy and living is hard. Living with death is hard. Living with pain and suffering is hard. Everybody gets to die. Not everybody gets to live.

I'm reminded of the superficial question posing as some kind of deep spiritual inquiry, "What would you be willing to die for?" The real question, the question we must answer right up until the moment of death, is, "Is this all I'm willing to live for?"

The only power anyone has is the power to choose. We surrender that power every day, in large ways and small. And most of the time, we try to ignore that still small voice that's asking that question, each and every day.

I'm reminded of that, even as I recall what a great guy we lost Monday.

20" iMac Core Duo

My refurbished 20" iMac Core Duo arrived today.

Wow!

So far, I can't find a thing wrong with this machine. That's not to say that nothing will go wrong, just that functionally and cosmetically, it's indistinguishable from a factory-new machine. I was a little worried that the display might have a few bad pixels, but I can't find any.

Of course, once I decided to buy the iMac, I read Apple's support discussion forums, so now I have a whole list of other potential problems to worry about. But for now, it seems like just a lovely machine.

After setting it up yesterday, I let Software Update do its thing, twice, and we're up to 10.4.7 and all seems well. I'm going to start bringing over software tonight. I didn't use the Migration Assistant because I want to take the opportunity to get rid of crap that I've accreted over the last few years on this machine. I have over 200 apps in my applications folder, and it's unlikely I use more than 10% of that number on any sort of frequent basis. So I'm going to try and pare that number down to something more reasonable. For instance, I have both Circus Ponies Notebook, and AquaMinds NoteTaker 2003, and I don't use either of them very much, if at all. I did archive nearly all of the original Time's Shadow site into NoteTaker 2003, so that will probably make the transition, at least until I do something with that old data. But Notebook is likely to not make the cut.

Ordered another gig of RAM yesterday too. I wasn't in a big hurry to have RAM on hand to install. I wanted to run the machine for a while at its factory load to establish its stability. That way, if I start having problems after I install the new memory, I can be pretty sure that's the source of the problem.

It's kind of disconcerting, the amount of work associated with bringing a new box online. I suppose Migration Assistant would relieve me of most of that, but again, I want to kind of clean out the cruft and start fresh. But there's also the different form factor to consider as well. I'm going to need a bigger work surface to support the iMac and the Sony as a second monitor, so I need to buy a different table; and once you start moving furniture, well, it doesn't seem to stop until nearly everything in the place has been affected in some way.

Anyway, this will be fun for a while. I thought about it the other night, and since '96, I've bought a new desktop Mac (for myself) about every 3.5 years give or take a month or two. I have all four of those still in my possession, the PowerMac 6500, the iMac 400/DV, the PowerMac G4 MDD/867DP and now the iMac Core Duo. The 6500 sits in a closet, I suppose I ought to recycle it or something. We'll see.

Social Hygiene: Isolation Grows

Thanks to Karl Martino for pointing out this piece in the Washington Post.

I guess the people they surveyed didn't know that "markets are conversations," and that they have "relationships" with commercial entities.

I'm sure everything will be fine once they all get a clue.

It's interesting that the study noted this: "He said people's overall ties are actually growing, compared with previous decades, thanks in part to the Internet. Wellman has calculated that the average person today has about 250 ties with friends and relatives."

I'd call it the Scobleization Effect. A network a mile wide and nanometer deep. Quantity over quality. No time for depth. Attention being demanded by too many other competing entities.

Is this what these guys mean when they talk about their technological levers "changing the world?"

EasyShare One Comments

I still haven't played with the wireless stuff yet, though I have re-activated my Kodak Gallery (formerly Ofoto) online account. I'm a little distracted, photographically-speaking, because Buy.com offered me a bunch of prints from Shutterfly for "free." Well, the prints are free, but you need to create an account with Shutterfly, and then they charge shipping and handling. But I did get a 20"x30" print for about $7.00. We'll see how it turns out. I'm not expecting much.

On top of that, I'm taking enormous numbers of pictures, so I have to kind of stay on top of weeding out the worst stinkers, and then I have to go back and probably get rid of two thirds of those that remain. I'm slowly learning how to use the P850 though.

I also noticed that most of my handheld shots lean decidedly to the left. This probably comes as no surprise to some people, but I'm not so sure. I've been "staightening" many of them in iPhoto, but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Okay, onto the EasyShare One.

First, it's a very substantial little camera. Not really that "little" though. It's about the size of a bar of Ivory hand soap. Maybe a little thinner, and a little wider and taller, but it's close. It definitely won't float though.

So, it "feels good" in terms of size and heft.

Now for some negatives...

First, it's almost a featureless brick. There are no tactile cues how to hold this damn thing. Every side feels like every other side, so you're going to have to pay attention to how you handle it as you're bringing it into play. At some point, I rather expect the wrist strap will be a sufficient cue to orient my hands for everything else, but right now it's a mystery every time I take it out of its case.

Second, related to the first, good luck finding the damn shutter release button. It's a thin little silver sliver of a button that might be aesthetically pleasing, but again, you have to hunt for the damn thing with your finger. It's slightly raised with a little kind of hip-roof on top of the thing, but it ain't much to go on.

Third, there are no cues where to put your damn fingers when you're holding the thing; and it's a slick slab of silver, so if your hands are moist, or you've been scarfing down greasy picnic food, not only will you leave enormous fingerprints all over those shiny, brushed-metal surfaces, you might just drop the damn thing because there's not much there to hold onto.

Fourth, the screen is articulated, which is good, but it only rotates one way, which is just dumb. Actually, it's a design compromise, but this thing was originally listed at $599.00 MSRP, and at that price it ought to have rotary contacts fercrhissakes! I'm guessing they're using a fixed cable solution, so you can't allow the thing to twist and twist and twist. Otherwise, why not just allow free rotation? At $159.00 it can be understood as a cost control measure, but this is the same brick that was supposed to sell for six bills. So no points for cutting corners!

The 3" LCD is pretty nice, but it's not that great. I still need to do a side by side comparison with the Palm TX. For a camera though, it's a pretty generous screen.

It's been criticized for its startup time, or boot-up time, but I don't really mind. You're not going to whip this thing out and fire off a few quick snaps when you see Tricia Helfer walk by anyway. You first have to figure out which way is up, and then make sure you're flipping and rotating the screen the proper way so you don't break the damn thing, then you have to find the shutter release!

It's a fully automatic camera, with very few use-selectable controls. There are a number of scene modes, but these have to be accessed via the touch-screen, as near as I can tell, and that's a bit of a pain in the ass because you're going to want to use the tiny stylus they give you rather than get your greasy fingerprints all over the screen. The stylus is about an inch and a quarter long. You don't hold it like a stylo, or a pen or a pencil, you hold it like you would a push-pin. Then you stab it at your screen to make your selections. Blech.

Okay, the absolutely most brain-dead feature omission on what was supposed to be a $600.00 camera is any sort of indication that the flash is charged and ready to fire! Now, I may eat these words, because there's a firmware update and I haven't installed it yet. I imagine they could have implemented a flash status indication in the LCD in the firmware update. But that is just monumentally stupid. I mean, it won't even refuse to take the picture and complain to you that the flash isn't ready. It'll just shoot and you'll get a really dark frame. I can't possibly imagine what the hell they were thinking. I love Kodak, I really do, but almost every interior shot requires a flash, and you have no idea if the camera is ready to go or not.

"Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?"

As a camera, it seems to struggle for focus in any but the best-lighted interior scenes. When you take a picture, you get a little "Busy" animated icon, as if the thing is doing something that precludes you from taking another picture. That goes on for about five seconds or so. Turns out you can ignore that and just go ahead and shoot your next shot. Don't ask me, I have no idea what the hell is going on.

When you get good focus, and the flash manages to fire, you get some pretty decent pictures. The more technical reviewing publications uniformly complain about Kodak's digital camera images, but I like them, so I'm not complaining.

It's got 256MB of built-in flash memory, and about 185MB, I think, is available for storage, which is pretty nice. And very fortunate for me, since I gave my 512MB SD card to Caitie to use in her camera while she was at camp.

You also get some good deals from Kodak I have yet to explore in any detail, including an extended 2-year warranty, and $.10 prints for some time. More about those and the wireless features when I get around to playing with them

As a geek toy, I'd say it's probably a decent deal at $159.00. As a camera though, there are better choices. Not everyone is going to find its ergonomics as objectionable as I do either. I don't regret my purchase, but the camera is more compromised than I expected it to be, so I'm a little disappointed. It is a battery sump, with that big screen, but they give you a spare rechargeable, which is nice. It also comes with a leather slipcase, which is also nice because it's just a little too big for the small camera cases, and the ones it will fit in won't take the spare battery. The next size up is a little larger than I'd like to carry for a small camera. It will fit in a pocket in a pinch. I'd throw it into my fanny pack, but Caitie has informed me that it's not cool to wear fanny packs. I must have missed the memo, though I did get the message when I saw the attention that was paid to Napoleon Dynamite's fanny pack.

"Gosh!"

Non Sequitur Sunday 6/25

I believe life is Nature's way of getting a man's attention.

Technology, of course, is the story of Man against Nature.

Marketers will tell you the importance of a great story.

I should have called the Great Hammers post "Department of Great Levers," but then I'd have to say, "When you have a great lever, everything looks like a fulcrum," and I don't think it has the same "ring" to it.

Speaking of hardware, Ethan Johnson offers an interesting and worthwhile take on the whole faith in technology thing, called Faith and Works. Reminds me that at some point I need to revisit the idea of faith again. It's not simply "belief in," though I used it in that context. More, another day.

When I listened to the Bloggercon 4 conference sessions, I was reminded of the story of the guy who lost his keys on the street one night, and kept looking for them beneath the street lamp. "Because that's where the light is."

Why are we afraid of the dark?

Loren Webster's weblog is called, "In a Dark Time... the Eye Begins to See." I think that's true. Has been for me anyway. And he takes better bird pictures than me, too. (The Ospreys are fine, by the way.)

One good thing about the dark, is when the light comes.

Went to the beach this morning and watched the light come. It looked a little like this.

BSG: Interesting Perspective

I have yet to sit down and actually write anything, but I'm still writing a number of things in my head about BSG. In the mean time, here's something I read that I thought was an interesting point of view.

Bug Bites and Road Kill

I'm wondering if the gnats have a new saliva blend this year, because these bites I have on my hands itch more, and longer, than any in recent memory. Yeesh.

And I wonder how the population growth of a particular species can be inferred from the frequency of encountered roadkill? Specifically, I think the armadillos are at a cyclic high this year, as there seems to be a much higher number of them trying to cross the road after dark, and failing.

This seems to happen every few years. You'll go a year or two or maybe three where you'll hardly ever see any dead 'dillos. Then, seemingly all of a sudden, you see one every day, sometimes more than one.

As roadkill, there are few things nastier than a dead armadillo. That external shell structure is just too rigid, and if the whole thing isn't squashed flat in the first hit... Well, ugh!

In other news, Apple has informed me that the new iMac is on its way. Yee-hah!

The Kodak EasyShare One arrived yesterday and I've played with it a bit. A few more thoughts after I've had some time to do some of the wireless stuff.

Went to my daughter Melissa's last night for dinner in belated celebration of our shared birthdays and Father's Day. I gave her a gift card to Lowes, which is an easy choice for young homeowners. She gave me a copy of iWork and a gift card to Barnes and Noble.

She's been working in Gainesville as an on-site agent at a condo conversion project. That whole enterprise hasn't exactly worked out the way it was represented to her, and she's taking a hit financially, maintaining two residences. She has her first closings coming up next month and things will improve, but she's already made plans to leave the project in August and return to Jacksonville.

That's all for for now. Stay tuned for further reports as developments warrant. (Practicing my "citizen journalist" schtick.)

Department of Great Hammers

One of my favorite clichés is, "When you have a great hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Among many variations on that theme is: "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

Many people love technology. I do. I love tools. I love the things they allow me to do, and I admire the skill and inventiveness that went into creating great ones. I probably spend too damn much money on them for what little I do with them.

Back when I was unhappily married, I used to tell myself, "It'll get better when..." (Insert some future event that will change everything.) What I learned, after many years of being unhappy and a few years of talking to someone far wiser than me (I? I never know these things.), is that "it" never gets better. Well, maybe in some cases, "it" does; but I have no power over "it," and it's always possible for "it" to get worse. Please understand that "it" stands for pretty much anything you want it to stand for, usually something you're unhappy about or think is deficient in some way.

So what I learned was that while "it" probably wasn't going to get better, "I" could. Now this is a powerful concept, so pay attention here.

Because I was unhappy in my marriage, my experience of my life was also largely unhappy. By learning how I could become better, my happiness in my marriage didn't really change, but my experience of my life got better. I rather suspect that in many cases, perhaps most, a similar thing would happen in terms of the happiness within many couples' marriages. So there's a tip, if you're feeling a little unhappy in your marriage. Get help early.

Okay, so that's a little story meant to show that we often cling to wishful thinking about the future to resolve some discomfort or dissatisfaction with the present. This is appealing because the future is always changing. Or it appears to anyway. There's less there than meets the eye, but we're enamored with the future because we can't confront the present. It's too much work. If you don't like the way things are, just sit still for a moment, or, better yet, spin your wheels for a while "creating change," and sure enough, the "world" will change. And then you'll get to decide how much longer it'll take before things really get better.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Or as some people call it, samsara, though I hope I can be forgiven for taking some liberties with that word.

Anyway, what most religious leaders of the new Church of Web 2.0 seem to believe is that all of our problems are fundamentally technological ones. The only thing holding us back from experiencing the joy and happiness of our true creative potential is a lack of proper tools. Well, the tools are here now, they believe, and now the only thing holding us back are the people who don't believe in the tools. People who fear change. When they're most charitable, they simply explain that they're people who haven't adapted yet to the new tools.

Love is faith in action. It is the first derivative of faith. Our love of technology is rooted in our faith in the power of tools to shape the world. But tools don't shape the world that needs to change, and all the technology needed to effect that lies between your ears.

We have lots of problems, but none of them is fundamentally a technological problem, or a tool problem. Yet there is seemingly no end of people who will stand up on a podium and tell an audience of eager believers that the day of their salvation is at hand, because now we have the technology to solve all our problems. We just have to let the people who really know how to use it, (the folks who "get it") have control over it, and wrest it away from those greedy, hierarchical old people who don't get it, and are holding us back!

And in a decade or two, there will be another set of faces on podiums telling us that the day of our deliverance is at hand! Because we'll have some new hammer that will change everything!

And the cycle continues.

You have to start by learning to pay attention. And that begins by paying attention to what you're paying attention to. Not as easy as it sounds, because our attention "muscles" are flabby and weak. We haven't had to exercise them.

Think of it in this, admittedly odd, way: If someone came along and picked you up and carried you to some place, then gave you a little treat at the destination, and then someone else came along and picked you up and carried you someplace else you didn't mind going to, and gave you a little treat as well, and this happened over and over and over, you would find you wouldn't need to use your legs very often. Well, that's what has happened with attention.

Others compete for your attention. Reward you in some fashion when you give it, so you're conditioned to constantly seek rewards and there is no end of people trying to offer them. You never really have to exercise your attention. Just keep hitting that clicker! 57 channels and nothin' on? Surf the web! Check your e-mail! SMS your pals! Play some music! Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine! I want my damn cookie!

And there will always be someone there to give you your cookie. And this is what many of them think of you:

Until you understand that that has become your life. You know there are things you don't like about your life. You still suffer. Suffering being the difference between the way things are and the way we'd like them to be. Someone will be there seizing your attention and telling you things will be better soon, and giving you a little cookie for paying attention to them. You'll embrace the belief "It'll get better when..." and you'll look for your next cookie.

Of course, it's much more complicated than this, and cookies come in all sorts of forms. Drugs and alcohol, compulsive competition, blogging, blogging, blogging, all kinds of things. And there are other problems, other types of conditioning at work as well. So it's easy to understand why we want to believe that "It'll get better when..."

But "it" won't get better.

Until you do.

Still Interested

Al Hawkins laments that his mom found his blog more interesting when he was working in the health care field. I don't happen to share that view, I always enjoy reading Al's code: theWebSocket;, and I can relate more to the cheese sandwich posts than much of the health care writing.

Health care is a huge topic, and when it was most interesting was when Al wrote about the events where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. But the observations on policies and looming crises were less interesting to me. Lots of people write about those things, and Al even does it better than most of them; but that stuff is never going to be more interesting than Al.

So I say to Al, "More cheese please!" And as much health care as you care to write about. But I can relate to a guy looking after a wife, two daughters, two dogs, a house, a yard, and a Mac too!

Congratulations, Mike!

Welcome, Virginia!

GBSM: Yielding to Temptation

On the third of this month, I mentioned that Amazon listed the Kodak EasyShare One for $175.00, and that I was kind of tempted to buy it.

Well, last week Buy.com listed it for $159.99.

So I bought it. Mostly for all its geeky qualities, plus it's more pocketable than the P850, so I'll be inclined to carry it with me in places I likely wouldn't have the P850.

Hasn't shipped yet.

I'll also note that Apple is offering some additional pricing incentives on some refurbished items to government employees. A 17" iMac Core Duo is at $999.00 till the end of the month. Also discounts on iPod Nanos and iPods (with video). Now, if they only offered the 20" iMac Core Duo...

Oh, wait... Today they do. And now I do too! They listed the refurbished 20" iMac Core Duo for $1399.00, with a $200.00 instant rebate, for a net price of $1199.00. I bought a mini-DVI to DVI adapter to connect the Sony 17" LCD and with tax the whole thing is $1289.49.

Honestly, I didn't know they were offering the 20" iMac when I started this post. I was poking around there yesterday and ordered the Miglia TVmicro, and noticed the rebates but the only iMac they were offering was the 17".

It's a refurb, so I won't get the whole Steverino "out of box experience." It'll ship in a plain brown carton with "REFURBISHED" all over it, so folks can't buy refurbs and sell them as new. But then I won't have to light the incense or bow towards Cupertino when I open it either. It's also a big savings, so I'll get over it. I've had good luck with Apple refurbs, though my parents' eMac has a video geometry issue that bugs me, but nobody else seems to notice. It comes with the standard Apple warranty, and there's an Apple Store not far from here, so if there is a problem, I expect I'll be able to have it corrected in fairly short order.

If you're not familiar with the government employee store, go to the bottom of the page at the Apple Store, and click on the drop-down menu and look for U.S. Government, it's the third choice. You have to agree that you're a government employee (or federal contractor, like moi), and then you'll see an identical Apple Store, only with a modest discount on all the prices, and now some significant rebates as well.

Objects in the Rearview Mirror

Osprey Update

Change Someone's World

Although it's not as hip or as trendy as social software, and though they don't have conferences or "un-conferences" where celebrity bloggers write flattering things about one another, there are still a lot of people in the world who make big differences in small ways.

My dad asked me to link to this post in his weblog because he knows I get more traffic than he does. He's written a story about a couple in our home town who are having probably more than their fair share of problems. Dad's appealing for some help, and my guess is he'll get some, because there are a lot of generous people out there. But there's more to this story than just making an appeal.

This is a more compelling story, to me, than all the stories about markets, and "content," and "demand supplying itself," and DRM, and all that other nonsense that people seem to think is so important. It's a story about someone needing help, asking for it, and getting it. Real help. The kind that makes their experience of the world a better one. Not just because of a wheelchair ramp, or an accessible shower, which are incredibly important to a person confined to a wheelchair; but also because there are people in that community who are connected to one another in ways that are more than economic or commercial "relationships."

And that help is coming from people involved in old fashioned organizations, with, horrors!, hierarchies. People in positions of responsibility with some authority, actually carrying out those responsibilities.

Dad doesn't mention it in this post, but the church is helping. Churches help every day. I have a lot of heartburn with churches, but a lot less than I have with the whole New Church of Web 2.0 and ClueTrain™ Marketing, Inc. crowd. You know, if people wrote about their experiences going to church the way that people write about their experiences going to these blogger-dinners, and conferences and "un-conferences," I think we'd regard them as a little weird. Don't you? Maybe not.

The American Legion is helping. A bunch of people who served in very hierarchical organizations, still working together in a hierarchy, and not just in their own self-interest, unlike all these conference-goers.

Even the federal government helped out. Which it does, a lot. The government gets a lot of things wrong, no question about it. But it gets some things right too, and not just by accident.

And thousands of stories like this happen every day here and elsewhere all over the world. None of them will ever get much attention, because there's little competitive advantage to paying attention to them. I guess if they were to receive any attention, it'd probably be criticism of some kind. I suspect there'd be a lot more stories like this one if people weren't busy paying attention to all the other things that are competing for their attention. But I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure there are a lot people who aren't getting some help, who don't have the benefit of a supportive community as well.

Dad's 79. He's lived a long life, and much of it has involved service to other people, in a lot of organizations that aren't "hip" or "cool" but they still touched some people's lives in meaningful ways. I don't think anyone would hold it against him if he just stayed home and enjoyed baseball, but that's not the kind of guy he is. He's not trying to change the world either. He's just trying to be the kind of guy he thinks he ought to be. The kind of guy who helps his neighbor. That doesn't make him a saint, either. And I think he'd be the first to admit that.

My guess is if we had more guys like that, and fewer guys competing with one another to "change the world," the world really would change. But again, I don't think anybody's paying attention.

And let's not forget Mom here, either, (though today is Father's Day). Mom and Dad have been a team since day one. Dad's definitely more extroverted than Mom, but everything he's been able to do, he did with Mom's help. And she's been active on her own too, with her quilt group making lap quilts for hospitals, and serving in the Legion Auxiliary as Post Commander.

So here's the deal, and pay attention: The world exists, not so that we may change it. The world exists so that we, in the one lifetime we have, might learn to change ourselves. If you help someone else in need, you can change their experience of the world a bit. Hopefully for the better, because sometimes "help" can be a tricky thing. But being truly generous helps you change yourself. Change yourself => change the world. Not that hard really. Well, it's actually very hard. But the idea is simple.

As for me, I'm an authority on nothing, and I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking. I'm a bad example, but I'm not offering myself as an example. I'm a cantankerous curmudgeon who gets grumpy at the world when I don't affirm and validate all the conceited views of the "beautiful people." So feel free to ignore or dismiss me. Not a problem, and I really don't care. I'm not trying to change the world. This is just an itch I have to scratch. Don't confuse an itch with "caring."

Cheese Sandwich: Black Belt Testing

Yesterday was black belt testing in Master Clark's ATA organization, Karate America. They happen every June and December. Caitie was testing for her Second Degree (Decided) belt, I was taking another mid-term toward my Third Degree.

Caitlin passed, though she was upset that one of the ring judges said that one of her board breaks was sloppy. She broke all her boards on her first attempt, so that was good. All of her assigned techniques were kicks. I wasn't able to see her break, as I was in my own ring. She said it was a reverse side-kick, so I'm guessing it was her chamber, where she loads for the kick. You could be sloppy on the rechamber too, but mostly nobody sees those as all attention is focused on the board.

I only had two board breaks, a hand technique and a kick. Two of my first instructors were in my ring, and I was happy to see them. They really gave me my foundation in taekwondo, and they're both great guys and outstanding martial artists, so I was kind of hoping to impress them.

Which may be why I didn't break on my first attempt with my hand technique. You get three attempts, but depending on how you scored in forms and sparring, you may have to break on the first attempt to earn enough points to be awarded your belt, or pass your mid-term in my case. I thought I had done pretty well on the form, and sparring was okay, so when I didn't break on the first attempt, I was more embarrassed than worried.

The technique was an upset hammer-fist, which is a pretty straightforward break. It's not an "up and down" type of break, it's across your body. Start with your fist behind your ear, your arm in the plane of your body, upper arm parallel to the floor. Bring your fist out and around in front of you until you're looking at your fingers and thumb. Put your shoulders and hips into the strike. You'll feel it in your shoulder if you don't break the board. I almost never have a problem with this break, and when I do, it's almost always because I'm not focused, which is another way of saying I'm not paying attention.

In my experience, there are really only two things that have to happen to break the board. The first is you must see the board. I think at some point, you're supposed to be able to do this blindfolded, which will be interesting. But if you can see the board, see the center, and don't take your eyes off of it, then that's where your strike will land. If your strike doesn't land on the center, you won't break the board. (That's not strictly true, but it's a lot harder on the person breaking the board and the board holders otherwise. For most people, myself included, if you're not on center, you won't break. Some people are powerful enough to be off-center a bit and still break the board, but a lot of energy gets absorbed by the board holders and the striking limb. It'll break, but it'll be ugly.) The second thing that has to happen is do not stop when you hit the board. They teach you to think of striking the board holder behind the board. Too many people, when they make contact with the board, want to immediately rechamber. You have to go through the board.

I'd like to get one of my failures on tape sometime to see if what I think is happening is what's really happening. I think I blink just before I hit the board. I have a sore right shoulder. At some point, I'm probably going to have to get it looked at, but I'm lazy and I hate doctors and insurance companies and all that, so I live with it. If I break the board with the upset hammer-fist, it doesn't really cause a problem for my shoulder. If I don't, well, it hurts.

I think I blinked. When I don't break the board, I have this sensation, because it happens too fast to be like an explicit, experiential memory, of losing sight of the target just before I hit it. I rocked the two board holders back on their heels, and the board nearly separated, but it didn't break. And I didn't really notice my shoulder at that point either, because I was dealing with some emotional crap for not breaking the board in front of my old instructors. Which was a little hard, because you're supposed to be exercising self-control and not putting on any sort of big display, so there's a lot of stuff going on upstairs. Not sure I did very well on the whole self-control thing either, but I don't know.

Anyway, nothing to do but ask for permission to make a second attempt. Second attempts are often more difficult than the first, because now you're dealing with some additional nonsense in your head. I was fortunate, or I'm getting better at this, but once I set, all that crap went away and I just broke the board.

So I wasn't exactly thrilled with my performance, but other people had an equally difficult time or worse.

I've been going to these black belt tests for a few years now, and I still get nervous at them. There's a lot of ceremonial stuff at the beginning, and a demo, which are always fun to watch, but by the time they get around to actually testing, my mouth is pretty much dry, my knees feel weak, and I'm pretty sure I can't remember the first move of my form! And every year, that seems to be everyone else's experience in my ring, so I know I'm not alone.

While Caitie was upset at the ring judge's comment, she was thrilled when she was presented with her new belt. She's worked hard for it, and I'm very proud of her. Here's a picture of Caitie and I with one of our earlier instructors and the one we've probably been with the longest, Mr. Box, another outstanding young man and a terrific martial artist. (Note to self: Suck in gut during photo-ops.) Caitie's wearing her new 2nd degree belt, though I noticed she tied it on backwards, and I can see where I need to have some more dental work. Sigh. Vanity...

Non Sequitur Sunday

Many people believe they can "change the world." Most never realize that, from the moment of birth, "the world" is changing them.

The world was here before we arrived, it will be here long after we've gone. Does this not suggest what is to be "changed" during one lifetime?

How can one truly believe they have the power to "change the world," when they exhibit no similar capacity to change themselves?

Why is it we feel some compelling need to compete with one another to "change the world," yet have almost no interest in trying to compete with no one to change ourselves?

Competition is, I think, the organizing principle of natural selection, or evolution. It is what determines "fitness." Having evolved consciousness, does competition have to remain the organizing principle of conscious beings?

How much of "life" should be devoted to economic activity?

Is the experience of one's life to be reckoned by one's economic impact on one's fellows?

Is the value of one's life measured in economic terms?

Isn't it just possible that people who travel long distances to hear other people say things they already believe are true, otherwise accomplishing nothing, aren't really deep, insightful or generous? Perhaps just the opposite?

Everyone who agrees with me is deep, insightful and generous. Funny and creative too. The rest of you are all "clueless," and don't "get it."

It's funny how people can get all sensitive about being mocked, yet otherwise have no difficulty treating others with scorn and contempt. This suggests to me that they have no sense of humor. Literally.

Here's a clue: You're not paying attention.

And here's another, more "economic," aphorism if that helps: "You get what you pay for."

Hope you have a nice day.

Really.

Web 2.0: God in the Machine

I can't help but get the feeling that technology in general, and the web in particular, perhaps combined with a healthy dose of idealized libertarian politics and economics, has become a kind of new religion for many people.

The huge data centers being constructed are like the new cathedrals. The ceaselessly nomadic lives of all the conference-goers are akin to endless pilgrimages to some virtual Holy Land. Or maybe they're like old fashioned, high-tech tent revivals.

The net can create a world in, well, maybe little more than seven days. But with Second Life and World of Warcraft, and their inevitably more sophisticated and attractive successors, if you don't like this world, just go live in a better one. No need to wander in the desert for 40 years, just log on!

There are prophets and martyrs and saints, and woe be unto him who blasphemes against the new Church of Web 2.0. There are even holy scriptures. But it's important to understand that one of the foundational beliefs of the religion of Web 2.0 is that while there are holy scriptures, the Word of Web 2.0 (God) is really a conversation. (A feature upgrade from God 1.0.)

For much of this century, the "market" was God 1.5. The "invisible hand" of the marketplace would reward the faithful and punish the sinners. And indeed, it has rewarded the faithful, as the rich have gotten richer and the poor, more numerous. When markets became conversations, we discovered we could talk to God, and we found out that God isn't really the market, it's the Web. Well, Web 2.0 anyway. Web 1.0 was like a beta of God. With Web 2.0, we can add "the wisdom of the crowds," and "smart mobs" to "the invisible hand," thus truly revealing the majesty of God in the Machine.

There are missionaries who will deliver the word of Web 2.0 to the benighted masses of humanity through $100.00 laptops and WiMax wireless networks. Their thoughts seemingly innocent of any doubts, for they are doing God's work.

And yea, though they walk through the valley of Madison Avenue, they will fear no evil. For Web 2.0 is a righteous God, who will lift up all who embrace it ("It's gender-neutral!"), and smite down all who oppose it. (Or don't "get it.")

The salvation of the world lies in embracing the new God: Web 2.0. Where all our sins will be washed away, and we can all become the people we know we were truly meant to be. Connected and empowered, demand supplying itself in a holy self-referential, miscellaneous, mash-up.

"For thine is the application layer, the transport layer, the network layer, the link layer, and the top level domain, now and forever. Amen."

BSG: Ron Moore Podcast Interview

Ron Moore, lead writer and co-producer of Battlestar Galactica is interviewed by Rob Walsch (Direct link to the MP3) of podCast 411. Some stuff about podcasting, and about the show.

via: SFFAudio

Mac: More External HD Space

I mentioned before that I'd picked up an Hitachi 80GB external USB 2.0 HD for the iBook last month. Well, I found a Western Digital 80GB USB 2.0 external HD at the Navy Exchange for $119.00 today, less than I paid for the Hitachi, and I bought it. Buy.com lists it at $139.00, though it's not in stock at the moment. So $119.00 seems like a reasonable price.

I'm going to use the Hitachi to essentially replicate my Documents folder, iTunes and iPhoto libraries on the PowerMac, and use the WD as a media drive, for entertainment I want to take with me.

The price decreases in these small, light, fast external hard drives are hard to resist. The Hitachi Store-It Drive is smaller and lighter (and more attractive), so it'll be the "daily driver" to lug my digital life around with me. The WD will likely end up having all my BSG DVDs stored on it. For the moment, if I had to leave town for any length of time, that would provide me with adequate distraction in a motel room or a hurricane shelter.

Update: I'm not exactly sure it's significant, but the Western Digital drive produces much more vibration than the Hitachi. Both drives are very quiet, but you can feel the WD when it's doing its thing. The Hitachi, you have to look at the activity light to know if anything's going on.

Cheese Sandwich: This and That

Alberto gave us some needed rain, which was nice. Not much else in this neck of the woods.

Amazon came through and credited back the purchase price of the P850, minus the price adjustment, which was correct. So that episode is concluded. The weather's kind of kept me indoors, so no new pictures; though I saw one this morning I thought I wanted to get of the setting moon above the pines. Apparently, I didn't want it enough though, because the moon set and I got no picture! But I do have a memory, and maybe not everything should be reduced to bits and then disseminated.

My brother sent me some nice pictures from Taughannock Falls State Park in New York. Here's one:

You don't see things like that very often here in Florida.

Update: My mom informed me that Taughannock Falls are one of the highest falls in the northeast. A little Google-search, and, at 215 feet high, they are one of the highest water falls east of the Rockies.

I'm going to have to make it a point to visit up there sometime.

Cheese Sandwich: "iLife is what happens...

...when we're busy making other plans."

I had planned on writing something about a certain favorite television show this weekend, but I had Caitie with me instead. Her mom had a commitment out of town, so she spent the weekend with me.

I played around with the slide show feature of iPhoto, and sending that to iDVD. It was a feature I had never used before, other than very briefly, and so I learned a great deal. It's pretty neat.

One thing I learned is that while you can use purchased music from the iTunes Music Store in your slideshows, you get a warning when you send it to iDVD that it will only play on authorized machines. I'm not really sure what would happen if you burned a DVD and tried to play it on a DVD player to a television, maybe I'll try that sometime and see. But I didn't worry about it, I just played the song I wanted to use and recorded it using WireTap Pro and voila, I had a copy I could use.

One thing I didn't really understand was how to control the Ken Burns effect, which gives the appearance of motion to still images. I spoke to my brother Mark later on Sunday evening and he's much more acquainted with the slide show function and gave me the information I needed to look for how to control the effect. As it was, sometimes it worked just fine randomly. Other times, it would move the subject of the picture off-screen, which wasn't very appealing.

My dad was looking for a picture taken by either my brother or my sister at the war memorial dedication. I had seen the picture in his iPhoto library, so I knew he had it, but he said he couldn't find it. So after we talked yesterday evening, I used Remote Desktop to find the picture. At first, I thought I'd just be clever and create a smart album to collect all the pictures taken on May 20th into one album. Oddly enough, that didn't find the picture either. So I found it the old-fashioned way, by looking for it, and glanced at the date in the Info pane and noted it said the 19th.

Well, I figured it would still be nice to have all the pictures from that weekend in one album, so I just edited the Smart Album search criteria to make it the range from 19-20 May, and that still didn't collect the picture. So that was kind of puzzling. I went back and looked at the picture again, and looked more closely at the window, and the date said June 19, 2006. It wasn't just a day off, it was a month off!

Well, I just grabbed most of those pictures and manually dragged them into an older album I had set up for the dedication. I probably should have tagged all those pictures while I was up there that weekend, but it didn't occur to me until now.

Played with iWeb and iPhoto some more and put up a few more pictures from the P850. I'm really not a big fan of the whole Lorem ipsum thing. It's annoying more than it is useful as a placeholder or a reminder. Anyway, the pictures are here. No great works of art. I take pictures, I'm not a photographer.

So while I didn't do what I planned to do, I did play around a bit with iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, iTunes, and iChat, which I guess makes yesterday sort of a day in the iLife.

Ha.

Osprey Afternoon

It's getting pretty cloudy out, so I figured I'd try to take a couple of shots (only 85!) with this light. A lot of them turned out well. Here's the family portrait:

While I was hanging around on the back landing, I happened to see one flying by with dinner in its talons. Not sure if it was one of the ones I've been watching, but it was still pretty cool. Not a great shot, but I'm just glad I got anything at all! I read somewhere that they carry the fish head-first, to reduce drag.

Osprey Family

Went out and played with the camera some more this morning. I forgot to bring along the Palm or even just something to write on. Most of the info I need seems to appear in the Get Info window in iPhoto, but I can't tell which were done with manual focus, automatic and landscape. I switched back and forth a number of times. The good news is, all the pictures appear to be in good focus. I also tried some with stabilization off and I don't know which those were. So next time, I'll have to remember to write things down.

Looking over the shots, I was pretty sure there are two juveniles in the nest, then I I thought I saw a third. I'm pretty sure there's three now, which, I gather, is a pretty big family for a pair of Ospreys. Dad was perched on a different branch this morning.

These are all significant crops. I'll probably post a full-sized image using iWeb to play around with that a little later today.

Cheese Sandwich: June, Moon, etc.

Tried to learn some more about this camera by trying to take some pictures of the moon using the teleconverter. This is the only one that turned out halfway decent. Oddly enough, manual focus didn't seem to work, but auto-focus, center-only, seemed to do better.

Anyway, I give you, the moon:

Took a walk under it a little later. I'm a better walker than photographer, thankfully.

Department of Futile Gestures: Dixie Chicks

I can't claim to be a fan of the Dixie Chicks. I might be, I just don't know. I don't think I've ever listened to them before.

But I read this bit in CNN about them having trouble selling concert tickets in "Red" states ("Better red than dead?" What's up with that?), and I thought a futile gesture might be in order. So I bought their latest album from the iTunes Music Store.

Cheese Sandwich: Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

No Ospreys lately, I'm afraid. They're fine, but the weather has been kind of uncooperative. Maybe this weekend I can get something worth posting.

Stopped by the Navy Exchange/commissary on my way home from work last night to pick up some things for the kitchen. Naturally, I ran through the electronics section at NEX. I noticed they had a Nintendo DS Lite on display. Technically, I don't think they're supposed to go on sale until June 11th, but there it was. So I get to feel special or something for a couple of days, since I bought one. It is a much nicer looking device than the first version. I'll keep both of them on hand to play with the networking features.

Dad posted to his new weblog again last night. I went into iWeb through Remote Desktop this morning to correct a couple of typos for him and then observed something he reported to me, but I thought he must have been doing something incorrectly.

While editing his text, a contextual menu began appearing wherever I tried clicking the mouse, as though I had right-clicked, or Control-clicked. He mentioned this to me before, and I chalked it up to his being unfamiliar with the new two-button mouse I connected when I was up there. But I know how to click a two-button mouse, and I wasn't right-clicking! So I'm wondering what might be at work here. Perhaps a keyboard defect, with a spurious control-key-down signal? I don't know. I had control of his machine, but I know that the eMac retains local control as well, so it's possible, I think, to get keyboard input from his machine while I'm controlling the mouse remotely.

I may get them a new keyboard and see if that resolves the problem. The one they have is under warranty, but keyboards are cheap enough that the quick fix is just to buy a new one. If it resolves the problem, perhaps we'll work through the warranty issue to secure a spare.

And it just occurred to me that perhaps having them just blow out the keyboard with a can of "air" might help resolve the problem.

Caitie called me while I was up north, complaining that their computer kept having a "u" appear over and over and over.

"uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..."

That's a dirty keyboard. Something had become lodged between the key and the dome switch. It's relatively easy, I think, for a piece of debris to push down the rubber dome, giving a key-down signal. I told Caitlin to just disconnect the keyboard, turn it upside down and shake it, then connect it back up.

Pause. Sound of keyboard being shaken and smacked, and hit against the desk. Oh dear...

"Thank you, Daddy."

A wise man once told me, "You gotta take the ducks."

Don't worry about it. Just seemed appropriate.

BSG: Peabody Awards

There's video available at the SciFi.com web site of the Peabody awards ceremony. Trey Parker, (Actually, it was Matt Stone. At least I didn't say it was Matt Parker or Trey Stone.) co-creator of South Park, also receiving a Peabody Award, mentioned Battlestar Galactica about four times in his portion of the acceptance speech. Pretty funny.

Jon Stewart made some semi-smarmy facial expressions when introducing the award for BSG. His remarks didn't exactly dovetail with the clip that followed them, I thought. Still, it was a decent clip. Not one I would have picked, but it definitely didn't make anyone feel uncomfortable. Ron Moore's remarks were fairly trenchant, though perhaps approaching a little overwrought. David Eick's remarks were gracious.

Moore and Eick were joined on stage by Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Grace Park, Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackoff.

I also read that the release date for the Season 2.5 DVD is slated for September 19.

Delivery or Takeout?

I still know nothing about photography, I just take pictures. But pictures like this make me want to learn about photography. I think it's overexposed or something? Pretty cool though. Caught it by accident almost. On the tripod with the 1.4x teleconverter. Of course, it's just a portion of the frame.

There's still a lot of purple fringing between the very dark and light areas. I guess that's just a limitation of this lens arrangement. The sun was still pretty low, the shot was taken at about 6:57 a.m., which is probably correct to within a minute or so. The camera was set on Program, which supposedly yields slightly better results than Automatic. I think I bumped up the exposure compensation +1 because of the lens, though I don't think it's clear that's necessary.

Here's a picture of at least one adult, and probably one of the juveniles. If it was the other adult, I would have expected it to be in the branches up top, but I don't know.

I did some shots in burst mode, when I saw some movement in the nest; and also I set the camera on time lapse, with a shot every 10 seconds. I think burst mode might still involve too much camera movement, since I have to have my finger on the shutter release button. I screwed up the second the second try using time lapse. I walked away thinking it was taking pictures, but I hadn't actually activated time lapse in the menu. When I returned and noticed it wasn't taking pictures is when I happened to see the adult flying back with a fish in its talons. So I got pretty lucky on that one. Why be smart if you can be lucky?

I did another set of time lapse, correctly this time. One thing I noticed reviewing the pictures, is that the focus seems to change a little, shot to shot. I think I want to learn how to focus manually, and then see if that remains fixed in a time lapse sequence. Basically, I think at this range, focus should pretty much be at infinity, but maybe not?

I've been telling my neighbors about the Ospreys. It doesn't seem to really "grab" anyone but me. One of my neighbors seemed interested, and her unit faces west, so she can observe them out her window.

I saw this weird-looking turtle in the retention pond the other day. Turns out it's a Florida soft-shell turtle.

Big Eye

The Kodak 1.4x Schneider-Kreuznach teleconverter arrived today. The thing is massive. It weighs more than the camera itself! I attached it to the lens adapter stacked against the UV filter, but then I noticed some serious purple-fringing against the tree limbs of the Osprey's nest. It wasn't an ideal shot, the sun was already in the west, so it was a high-contrast, backlit scene. I pulled the UV filter and the fringing was much reduced. I'm not sure what, if any, difference that actually made, but it seemed to improve the situation.

I hope to get the camera up on the tripod tomorrow morning with the teleconverter, and hopefully get some decent shots before I have to head to work. Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll see.

Took some moon shots tonight and they looked pretty good, but not worth posting yet. I need to do learn how to get the best out of this camera.

BSG: Clash of Civilizations

Brief article at the Toronto Globe and Mail (registration may be required) about the topicality of (Peabody Award-winning) Battlestar Galactica.

Spoilers, Jonathon. Spoilers.

I hope to dig into some serious BSG writing this weekend. We shall see. I also have some compelling distractions lately.

Meanwhile, I just wonder why everyone hasn't seen this series; and, even more unfathomable, why anyone thinks Kiefer Sutherland and 24 are Emmy material?

Fish Hawk

I should get the teleconverter today, but in any case, tomorrow morning I'm going to set up the tripod. With the zoom all the way in, even with image stabilization, there's a lot of blur. I shoot with the first burst mode set, thinking that at least one picture will be relatively still, and there usually is.

I stood outside this morning and watched for about half an hour. The one remained in its perch the whole time. I could see the young ones moving about in the nest when the sunlight finally reached it.

Fortunately, there are no houses with visible windows in the direction of this tree, so hopefully none of my neighbors will think I'm some kind of voyeur, though I suppose I am, in a way.

I went to the front of the building (The breezeway has stairs at the front and the back. Sunrises are observed at the front, sunsets at the back.) to see what the sunrise was shaping up to be. It wasn't bad, but for the next few weeks, this tree that has had a growth spurt this year is going to be between me and the sun, so not much there. I was chatting with a neighbor when I thought I saw a large bird fly by with something in its talons. I went back to watch the nest to see if someone was bringing home breakfast, but it must have been something else I saw, because nobody showed.

Speaking of talons, Caitie and I watched Napoleon Dynamite this weekend. We saw it together when it was in the theaters, but it's still a strange, charming movie. (If you haven't seen the movie, you won't get the "talon" reference. Don't worry about it.)

Chuq Von Rospach sent me a link to his Osprey pictures on Flickr! So if you want to see some good pictures of Ospreys, there's where you want to go. But these are mine.

Here's one of one of the parents, I tend to believe it's the male, but I have no idea, and one of the young ones. There are two of them, I believe. At least two.

BSG: MTR Webcast

The webcast of the June 2 roundtable about Battlestar Galactica at the Museum of Television and Radio is up at www.mtr.org.

I'm watching it now.

...

That was fun!

If you're a fan of the show, and haven't seen the second half of Season 2 yet, it does contain a spoiler or two. The season finale has a significant departure from ordinary plot development, it's not a "dream" a la Dallas, and that plot development is a topic of discussion; but I'd say it's still worth watching this program. (Update: Okay, listening to this again, there's another spoiler that's probably a little more signficant. When you get to the audience question about Pegasus Gina/Nr. Six, you may want to plug your ears till the next question. Or something. It's a pretty big spoiler.)

One thing I thought was especially remarkable, though I have no way of independently verifying this, was that Edward James Olmos stated that Battlestar Galactica has, and I'm paraphrasing this, the largest worldwide audience of any television series currently in production. He commented that this was somewhat more remarkable because it hasn't enjoyed that same level of success, in terms of total viewership, in America, as it has everywhere else in the world.

If you're an American, and you still have not seen Battlestar Galactica, and you enjoy television dramas in any way, shape or form, you're missing a bet if you don't make an effort to see Battlestar Galactica. Again, I would say the best way to start is to see the mini-series. Probably the most cost-effective way to do that today is to buy Season 1 on DVD. Alternatively, you can download the mini-series at the iTunes Music Store, but watching it on your iPod or your computer is probably not the best introduction to the series.

If you're uncertain if it's worth your time, despite a Peabody Award, despite being called the best drama on television by Rolling Stone and Time magazine, and even despite my sterling,"authority on nothing, I make all this shit up" recommendation, you could probably give up an hour or so of your time and watch this webcast and get a sense of what this series is about.

The webcast is in Windows Media format, but it was very clear, excellent quality for a small format. Mary McDonnell is so charming and funny. It's not the greatest set of questions, but there are some very worthwhile questions and some unexpected answers, so it's well worth your time if you're a fan. You might be a little lost if you've never seen the series, but you should get a sense of how to regard this program.

Osprey View

This is so cool. I went ahead and ordered the Kodak 1.4x teleconverter lens and paid for next-day shipping ($3.99). I want to try and shoot them in the morning when the sun is at my back.

Competing Messages: "Marketplace: Strip Mall or Social Space?"

Doc Searls, unsurprisingly, demurs at my characterization of his vision of the internet as, ultimately, a vast electronic strip mall. Albeit one with very low rents.

Doc points to some slides from Reboot, where all the "deep, insightful, generous people" were last weekend. Meanwhile, us rubes out here in the "hinternet" (Is Ben Hammersley still raising the alarm about all us peasants?), shallow, benighted and selfish though we may be, have to make due with a few slides from Doc's presentation to try and grasp his alternative vision of the internet as a "marketplace."

Oddly enough, Doc also points to this post, which I think makes my point more than it does his. (Parenthetically, (from the Department of Redundancy Department) I would have said ironically, but apparently ignorant people use that word incorrectly all the time, and it annoys The Guardian and its readers. And while I may be shallow, benighted and selfish, I don't wish to appear ignorant. Oh, wait, "benighted" means "ignorant." Now I'm confused...) Anyway, Doc points to this little post about the "generous web," which has as one of its concluding paragraphs, this:

It's rather obvious that I resent the attempt to hijack the Generous Web meme. It is not mine to control or direct (as it wasn't mine to begin with*) but I am ticked that some seem to want to use it as a way to seperate (sic) from - rather than embrace the Open Source sharing of much wisdom, knowledge and even humour across the entire blogosphere.

It's not that resentments don't occur in social spaces and interactions, they do. But they're almost inevitable in an environment that relies on competition as its organizing principle, and its chief activity is the creation and transfer of wealth.

I would also point to the brouhaha surrounding the "Web 2.0 Conference" service mark as an example of the kind of thing that's a product of regarding the internet as a "marketplace" rather than a medium for social interaction.

From my point of view, Doc thinks a lot like Walmart. There are social aspects of shopping at Walmart, and Walmart encourages those, to some extent, because it helps drive traffic to Walmart. But at the end of the day, you're a shopper on Walmart's property, so you have to follow Walmart's rules. In Doc's vast, idealized, nonexistent marketplace, you can open your own Walmart if you want to. But then you have to kind of regard yourself as a competitor, and at least give some attention to even not thinking about that. Which is what we have now in the blogosphere, where you have to decide whether or not you care about how many hits you get, where you rank in Technorati's search engine, who's getting credit for your ideas, and every other pernicious aspect of marketplace activity, which gets in the way of social interactivity where we relate to one another for the social and personal rewards attendant to enjoying one another's company.

But hey, Doc's a marketer. He says he's an editor, and perhaps that's his "secret identity," kind of like Clark Kent, to make a topical, pop-culture reference. But in reality, he's "Supermarketer!" Able "to sell the Net as a public marketplace, and not a private one: a marketplace that supports everybody and everything — including all the small and medium-sized businesses that can't happen as long as the carriers can't imagine they're doing anything more than freight forwarding that needs to get more specialized and billable."

He's enlisting the "marketplace" metaphor because that's where the money is, and money is the most liquid form of authority. So if you want to "sell" your idea to the people who have the most potential for making it a reality, you have to "sell" it to the people with the most "authority." This whole debate is taking place in what is essentially a "marketplace," where government regulation is bought and sold. And it's competitive and largely zero-sum, and we spend most of our economic lives playing that game, so why should we complain if a few well-meaning visionaries and leading lights of the internet want to extend that metaphor and activity to this new medium? Obviously, we're shallow, ignorant and selfish people, because if we weren't we'd have been at Reboot!

This is my electronic back fence. This is where I come to stand and kvetch with my neighbors. Kind of like King of the Hill. I'm not here to compete with Doc for links, or demand that people cease and desist from using my "meme" or my service mark. I want to talk about the Ospreys, and that damn Walmart that Doc Searls wants to build on my street corner.

Which will probably happen, because money talks and kvetching, well, doesn't stop Walmart. And Doc Searls is a marketer in the service of the marketplace, and the sooner he understood that about himself, the better off we would all be, if only just a little.

More Osprey Stuff

I was intrigued to learn more about Ospreys, so I did a little googling around and found this site which has an audio recording of the sounds an Osprey makes. Now I'm wondering if the birds I heard back in April were those two Ospreys I photographed in the tree?

Wildlife

I'm still learning how to use the P850, and part of that process involves learning something about photography. All I know how to do is take pictures.

Anyway, this is a screen-grab of a portion of a picture I got this evening. The large nest I referred to in the pictures at the iWeb weblog is indeed a large nest. It seems to belong to a pair of Ospreys and their young. I can just barely reach them at the long end of the zoom. The P850 is 12x, stabilized, while the 6490 was 10x.

It's interesting to me that what I saw in the viewfinder at 12x pretty much resembled what I was able to make out with the naked eye. Viewing the pictures on the computer, I can make out much more detail. So while I could tell a large bird seemed to be doing something in the nest, I couldn't make out the small ones, nor did I notice the mate in the branches above.

So it's not a great picture, by any means, but it was pretty cool to be able to see this at all.

Mac: More iWeb

I was playing around with my new camera and iPhoto and decided to add iWeb into the mix. So I created a new album in iPhoto with some of the more interesting pictures from the new camera.

I had read at Apple's .Mac pseudo-blog about how you can drag an album to a page and iWeb will automatically create a new photo-page/slideshow, and leave a placeholder-link image on the page you dropped the album. I'd used that feature in my dad's weblog. So this time I wanted to see if I could drag and drop an album onto the image placeholder in the default blog entry page. (I still object to the image placeholder being there by default. Not every blog entry is going to have an image.) Anyway, it worked just as advertised. Here's the link to the album page.

Pretty cool.

Mac: More Memory

I plunked another 1GB of RAM into the iBook today, bringing it to 1.5GB of RAM.

Before I left on my little sojourn I picked up an 80GB Hitachi Store-It™ external USB drive. It comes with a nice dual-USB cable just in case your laptop doesn't provide sufficient power from one USB port. I was happy to learn that I didn't need it on the iBook.

It's a tiny thing. I ripped the Season 1 BSG collection to it, to take with me on the trip. I watched a couple of episodes while waiting for the red-eye in San Diego, and my parents and I watched the mini-series while I was at home with them. I played the video through the S-video adapter into their 32" TV. It looked pretty good. I don't think I made them fans, but they seemed to enjoy the movie.

Anyway, this drive is small enough and light enough to easily carry along with the iBook. So this weekend I'm going to copy my iTunes and iPhoto libraries over to it. At some point, I'm going to have to figure out an easy way to keep everything in sync in the libraries, but for now it'll do to have a snapshot of the current configuration available to me on the iBook.

Hurricane Season Reminders

It's that time of the year again, when half a tank of gas means the tank is empty, and less than three beers in the fridge means you're out of beer!

Tailor those values to your particular needs. I'm pretty much a lightweight these days. "Back in the day," less than a 12-pack would mean I was out of beer. Not so much anymore.

I don't know that I need to remind anyone who lives in a hurricane-prone area about what preparations they might need to make, but we have a lot of new residents moving in all the time, so maybe this is worthwhile.

There are a number of things to consider in terms of preparing for hurricane season (which, if you haven't yet, you're behind the power curve). The most obvious one everyone thinks about is the direct hit, and that usually leads to considering things like evacuation or staying put and riding it out.

If you're going to evacuate, know where you're going to go, leave as early as feasible to avoid and help reduce traffic congestion, and you might want to consider keeping all of your important papers in a single, easily transported file box of some kind. Those would be your insurance papers, yours and your kids' birth certificates, medical records or vaccination records, report cards, last year's tax return, DD-214 for veterans, divorce papers, and similar documents. Obviously, transporting these documents poses risks of its own, so exercise proper diligence to safeguard them.

I think that you might also consider having the absolutely essential papers, birth certificates, shot records, DD-214, segregated so that if you have to abandon a vehicle, or if you're not allowed to take a file box of some size onto a public conveyance, you can at least carry the most essential documents with you on your person in an envelope. A waterproof envelope. They make these giant-size zip-lock baggies these days.

Have a plan for what to do with your pets. Most shelters won't take them.

If you're on prescription medication, I think it would be prudent to always have a couple weeks' supply on hand if it doesn't require refrigeration, and it doesn't violate some regulation or law. Failing that, make sure you have the proper documentation to get the prescriptions refilled if you evacuate.

Shelter life isn't fun, but it can be less unpleasant if you plan ahead. I did it for a couple of days a few years ago for Floyd and made a lot of notes about how I would do it again if I ever had to. That resulted in a large box I keep in the closet that I'll bring with me should I ever have to evacuate to a shelter again. I'll go over the contents of that box in another post, but you might want to be thinking about what things you might need and that are likely to be in short supply in a shelter. This might surprise you, but toilet paper is probably something you might want to think about.

Even if you're in an area that isn't evacuated, you may get a near miss, and so you might expect to be without electricity for anywhere from a few hours to several days. You probably want to have on hand things that will make life more bearable in a warm climate with no electricity. Recall that once the power goes out, ordinary commerce pretty much shuts down. If your car is on empty, you won't be able to drive to the nearest gas station and fill it up. You'll have to drive to the nearest gas station that has electricity and fill up. If you're a dialysis patient, or someone who relies on medical devices powered by 110 v a.c., you might want to have a plan for what to do in the event of an extended power outage.

If you're thinking "generator," don't think you can just run over to Home Depot when you're 72 hours from getting hit. You need to buy it now, and you need to get someone qualified, like an electrician, to tell you how to set it up and use it. If you wait until the lights go out, I'm pretty sure Murphy's Law will be there to make sure the whole generator experience will be a learning one. I live in an apartment, a generator isn't an option for me. For now, I have a small power inverter that I can run from my car's accessory 12v d.c. outlet to at least recharge some batteries, like my cell phone. A project I'm considering undertaking is buying a deep-cycle lead-acid battery. All I'm looking for is something to run a small fan, a light and keep some portable devices charged or running. I can recharge the lead-acid battery from the car when I need to.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts about hurricane season. As always, please bear in mind, I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking. I'm not responsible for your thinking. You are. I do think it would be a good idea if you thought about these things if you live someplace likely to be affected by a hurricane.

GBSM: Resisting Temptation

The Kodak EasyShare One is available at Amazon for $174.95. When it was originally introduced, not that long ago, it listed for more than $600.00.

I wouldn't mind having a pocketable digital camera. As compact cameras go, what's unique about the EasyShare One is its built-in WiFi capability, 256MB of onboard storage, and a 3" articulated, touch-screen LCD.

While I'm sorely tempted, I'm not going to buy this camera. Which is pretty anticlimactic as a blog post. But that's not really why I mentioned it.

The EasyShare One made me think of how I could use my Palm TX along with the P850. Free wireless hotspots aren't nearly ubiquitous in this part of Florida, so the wireless application, while nice, isn't likely to be something I'd use a great deal. But, if the opportunity presented itself, I could pop the SD card out of the P850 and into the TX, and be able to e-mail a picture someplace. It also occurred to me that the 480x320 LCD on the TX affords a better way to review shots than on the camera. (Though less so than I first thought. The P850 LCD offers 115K pixels. The TX display only offers 153K pixels. The latter figure is the same resolution of the Kodak DX6490's LCD display. Which explains why the 6490's display seemed so sharp. It was physically smaller than the TX's display (and the P850's), while having the same resolution as the TX. Finally, the P850's electronic viewfinder has a higher resolution than the LCD display of the TX!) Of course, the iBook screen, or back home on the 17" LCD would be even better, but I think it's still a worthwhile capability when you're away from either of those devices. And naturally I could make a note of something regarding a shot or a location or anything else noteworthy.

So while I didn't end up buying the EasyShare One, it did make me think that it's probably a good idea to stuff the TX in the camera bag when I'm going out to take some pictures!

Noted in Passing

Jaron Lanier: "Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true."

But that's probably not going to discourage all the cybernetic utopians who want to build the perfect network, which they can then worship as God 2.0, (Because God 1.0, part of the Religion 1.0 Office Suite, has been deprecated. Seems it doesn't output valid code anymore, DaVinci or otherwise.) because it will deliver us from evil, and wash away all our sins.

Still it's refreshing to see a countervailing view to all the uncritical cheer-leading and boosterism of the digerati. And you know who you are.

Doc Searls: "We need to sell the Net as a public marketplace, and not a private one: a marketplace that supports everybody and everything — including all the small and medium-sized businesses that can't happen as long as the carriers can't imagine they're doing anything more than freight forwarding that needs to get more specialized and billable." (Italics mine.)

Doc continues to advance his vision of the internet as one vast electronic strip-mall. In such an environment, social spaces become products and services one can sell because they will have become scarce.

At least he doesn't regard the network as God.

Scott Reynen: "But the whole web today gave notice to Technorati, with money, and ignored an individual who did the same thing, without money."

Seems the authority that acknowledges no responsibility is offering a new service and made certain claims regarding its originality which were, um, inaccurate. And Scott's observation is somewhat resonant with Jaron Lanier's comment that, "the hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?" (The answer to that question is because it's wrapped in a pretty pink technology bow, and we're all infatuated with our own cleverness.)

Well, that's probably enough about that. Just didn't want anyone to think I'd gone all wobbly on you or anything.

Picture Perfect

I ran the calibration routine installed by the firmware update to the new P850 yesterday, and the hot pixel is no longer in evidence in any frame.

Now, here's the odd thing. I registered the first P850 with Kodak before I discovered the hot pixels. When I registered, I would have thought Kodak would have noted that I'd purchased a P850 and then notified me by e-mail of the firmware update and what the issues were it was intended to address. Had I made a more exhaustive reading of the Kodak forums at DP Review, I would have learned of it myself earlier. But most of those postings consist of pointers to pictures and a variety of other questions dealing with all of Kodak's digital cameras, so you kind of have to keep reading, and I don't have that much time.

But even if Kodak didn't want to undertake the programming necessary to automatically e-mail newly-registered P850 owners about the firmware update, they could certainly make its existence a more prominent feature at the support site. (See anything there that suggests this might be an important or valuable update?) This is the actual download page for the firmware update, and do you see anything about hot pixels or sensor recalibration in the description of the issues the update addresses? No.

I don't know if the firmware update would have resolved the three hot pixels on the original camera. I expect it would have, though I'm not sure how I'd feel about that at this point. After yesterday's post, I turned on both cameras next to each other, and the differences in the sounds of the lens motor between the two of them are much less significant than my first impression of the new P850. In fact, now I'd say they pretty much sound alike.

The point of all this meandering is that I'm returning to Amazon a camera that is, in its present state, defective. Doing this has been a hassle for me, will be a hassle for Amazon, and is ultimately a hassle and loss of revenue for Kodak, who aren't exactly awash in cash these days. Had Kodak made a better effort to support me as a customer, I suspect I wouldn't have had to go through the hassle of first dealing with Kodak's support page and trying to get a repair authorization, then dealing with Amazon for a return, and finally ordering another camera from Buy.com. As it is, at $299.00, the P850 is significantly discounted from its introductory price of $499.00. I don't know how much of a profit margin there is in its current street price of $270.00, but I can't imagine it's a great deal, and dealing with my return is likely to erode whatever there may be significantly.

Had Kodak been proactive with me as a new customer with a potential support issue, it's possible, even likely, that I would have installed the firmware update and run the sensor recalibration routine before I ever left New York, and likely would never have seen a hot pixel. Instead, they're getting that camera back as a return.

Kodak has an employee named Mike who participates in the Kodak forum at DP Review, and he does a tremendous service for his company supporting their customers. All the information I needed was available from Mike at DPReview, but it was not available from Kodak.com, where I first turned for information and assistance. I did a Google search confined to the Kodak.com domain for any information about hot pixels and sensor or CCD recalibration and found nothing. There's a disconnect here.

All that being said, I still like the P850. I still like Kodak as a company or a brand, and they're an important part of a state I'm very fond of as well, New York. My first digital camera was a Kodak, as was my second, and I still have that DC290, it's a nice camera. The P850 is my fourth Kodak digital, and I gave my DX6490 to my brother. I'm a little puzzled by the number of different models they put out as quickly as they do. I'm reminded of Sony and its Cliés before they got out of the PDA business. I think they probably need to rein that product development and introduction cycle in a little bit and concentrate on fewer new models done well, and definitely on better support. So I'm still a pretty loyal Kodak customer, but I'm disappointed by their support in this instance.

Amazon, by the way, has been great.

The Daily Grind

Well, it's no mystery to me why my teeth hurt. I woke myself up doing it last night. Wow! I'm going to have to sort this out pretty quickly. Whatever's bugging me doesn't seem to be making itself clearly felt in my waking hours. I can usually tell when something's bugging me by my reactions behind the wheel, and I'm pretty mellow lately.

So, something else to figure out.

Sigh.