Fartin' Around With Flickr

I dumped a bunch of pictures from my Nokia 3660 and then uploaded some of them to Flickr. Then I created a "set" of them. Just some random images of stuff I happen to see.

Cool

Ethan Johnson of The Vision Thing wants to "unbecome." Check it out.

Flashing on Pink Floyd and "comfortably numb..."

...I got nothin'.

John O'Connor is Dead

John O'Connor, also known as Vincent Schiavelli, died on December 26th in Sicily of lung cancer. He is survived by John Smallberries, John Yaya, Jon Gomez, John Bigboote ("Big Boo Tay! Tay!"), and Lord John Whorfin.

Perhaps he's merely made the transit across the eighth dimension!

Wings for Wheels

I also watched the DVD, Wings for Wheels included with the 30th anniversary Born to Run album. It's a fascinating look at Bruce Springsteen as an artist, and I think it speaks volumes about the issue of "authenticity" in recorded works.

I still listen to Springsteen a lot. I mean a lot. The meaning in his music has increased for me over the years, and continues to do so today, as I grow older.

One issue I'm struggling with now is my son's transition to adulthood, and my role as his father. I find myself identifying with Springsteen's father in his songs like Independence Day, something I never used to do before, and it's interesting and a little disquieting. Wings for Wheels also reminded me of what my son might be experiencing now, as it reminded me of what I was experiencing during my own life 30 years ago.

Bruce Springsteen's music has been a source of inspiration, solace and joy through all of my adult life, and I don't care to imagine what my life might have been like without it.

Kong

I saw King Kong with my son yesterday. (Got a free ticket with the purchase of the Serenity DVD!) Great movie. I'm going to resist the temptation to discuss how the movie depicts that commercialization destroys the things it exploits. It's just a fun movie. Probably one peril too many on Skull Island, and I was looking forward to seeing how Jackson solved getting the ape on the ship, but nothing's perfect. One period device I would have appreciated was an intermission.

I'm Just Askin'

Google seems to be the new Microsoft. I don't know how true that is, Microsoft still seems to be pretty Microsoft to me.

Anyway, Dave Winer points to this Steve Rubel piece about being able to Read Most of O'Reilly's Hacks Books for Free Using Google. In the piece, Mr. Rubel points out that, "I have wasted spent several afternoons in the bookstore soaking up these hacks. I am too cheap to buy the books (even online) because I know they'll be outdated tomorrow."

Google has a controversial program underway where it is scanning the text of books into a database, making them searchable online, much the same way Amazon has been doing for years. I think the difference between the two is that Amazon has gone to some lengths to obtain permission from the publishers to scan the books they offer for search online.

Mr. Rubel points out that something like a "hack" is a rather small nugget of information that is readily obtained from the limited amount of material Google allows someone to read online. You're not allowed to read the whole book, as a measure of respect for the author's copyright. But Mr. Rubel thinks that this is a "significant hole" that puts millions of books "at risk." At risk for what? Well, being read "for free."

In his comments, (And let's note the "irony" here immediately, I do not offer comments at Groundhog Day, nor do I care to.) I asked Mr. Rubel how Google's "hole" that puts millions of books "at risk" differs from his wasting several afternoons in the bookstore "soaking up" (presumably this involves "reading") the books he's "too cheap to buy." As of this writing, Mr. Rubel has responded to four of eight commenters, one of which was not yours truly. Since I think it's a relevant question, I've asked it again and we'll see if I get a response.

You see, I don't think this is a serious problem. We've been able to do something very similar at Amazon for quite some time now, more than a year anyway, and if there were some horrendous negative effect, I think we'd have heard more squawking by now. I also think it's kind of cool that if you enter "O'Reilly hack" in Amazon's search field, the second hit is Bill O'Reilly's books, which you can "search inside." If there was someone who I could rely on to bitch about being unfairly treated, it's probably Bill O'Reilly.

This isn't a serious problem, but it's a way of riding the current "Google is evil" meme for a little attention juice. It's how the game is played. There doesn't have to be an actual problem. The "analog hole" that Steve Rubel's been "soaking up" O'Reilly hacks through for years places "millions" of books "at risk" each and every day to people "too cheap" to buy them. Yet you don't see Mr. Rubel demanding that all book retailers place their books behind plexiglas windows to be taken out by a retail clerk only when you've decided to buy them. Nor do you see Mr. Rubel pointing out how offering coffee and chairs makes bookstores into reading rooms, further placing "millions" of books "at risk" of being read for free by people too cheap to buy them.

No, this isn't about making the world safe for books. This is about getting attention, creating a new villain in the ongoing online narrative. Today it's Google, who's turned to the "dark side." Likely waiting just offstage for its malevolent entrance is Apple and the iTunes Music Store (Cue Darth Vader theme.). Because the people who profit from attention require drama to capture it, they must create drama where none exists. Maybe a little controversy, but no drama.

More than forty thousand people die each year in automobile accidents, so presumably millions of people are "at risk" of dying by driving to their bookstores to read the books they are too cheap to buy. So perhaps the whole Google thing could save lives? You certainly don't see Steve Rubel publicly wringing his hands about highway safety. But that's not what his "audience" pays attention to, and I'm not suggesting that Google's book search service saves lives, though I think the argument has more merit than Mr. Rubel's purported "hole."

Watch carefully ladies and gentlemen, as their hands never leave their sleeves. You will note in Mr. Rubel's bio that he is a Senior Marketing Strategist (Cue Darth Vader theme.), and one of the "top 100 bloggers in the world," so sayeth Technorati. You will also note that he features that "this blog is worth" thing in his right sidebar, which shows his blog is worth $1,255,536.96. You may recall that this blog is worth exactly nothing, according to Technorati. I'll leave it to you to decide which blog is more "credible." Hey, if I'm so smart, why ain't I rich?

Competing Messages: Another Voice

Frank Paynter points to the excellent "It's not such a bad little tree," at The River.

Prognostication

For some reason, the end of one year and the beginning of the next seems to bring out the seer in everyone, with predictions for what the coming year will hold. Sounds like fun, I'll play along.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict this: More of the same.

There will be more hyperbole about how the web is the answer to all things. There will be a lot of references to "flat" and "horizontal" and "bottom-up." It's funny how you always see these references coming from the people at the top of a not very flat hierarchy.

There will be more faith expressed in technology than in ourselves. This, I think, is a problem. But I seem to be a minority in that view. "Yes, there are still inequities, disease, poverty, hate, and war. But I believe that the emergence of the web, and its proliferation, is the greatest hope for the planet, and our collective future." See? Our fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in our technology. Or something.

There will be occasional references to how the web makes clear there is no "us versus them," there is only "us." Usually in the context of a "them" that doesn't "get it." ("It," being usually "the web.")

There will be much posturing by so-called "terrorism hawks," who will rationalize surrendering our civil liberties as a form of national sacrifice in the global war on terror, a metaphor guaranteed to ensure there will never be any civil rights because there will never be any peace. The irony here is that these courageous "hawks" surrender their liberty for the illusion of security based on fear. No, the terrorists haven't already "won," but we Americans have lost something. Perhaps it's our "authenticity," if I may be so reckless as to use that term. "Give me liberty, or give me death," was uttered by an authentic American. Not too many of those around these days, it seems. Many of these self-same terrorism hawks who are only too happy to have the government read their mail, will of course courageously stand upon the mighty soapbox of their weblog and defend the First Amendment by calling the members of the FCC bad names.

I predict the rich will get richer and the poor will grow more numerous.

I predict marketers will continue to encroach on whatever remaining purely social interactions exist in order to send a marketing message. This message was brought to you by my corporate sponsor.

I predict that marketers will continue to blur the lines between the social and the commercial, in favor of the commercial. "Markets are conversations," was an expression designed to make the web safe for marketers.

I predict churches will become more commercial because they have to be more competitive and the only way of keeping score is by counting wealth. So expect more books, more programs, more purpose-driven selling. Nothing succeeds like excess, er, success.

I predict there will be more conferences where the same people get together and confer with one another about how wonderful it is to get together and confer with one another, and then blog about how great it was to see everyone.

Repeat the previous paragraph, substituting the term "un-conferences" for "conferences."

Same as above, except substitute the word "camp."

I predict thirty seven new buzz-phrases will be created. "Horizontal knowledge," being perhaps the last of 2005. "Social hygiene" will likely not make the cut, while "viral"-anything will still enjoy great currency, especially with fear of the bird flu still rising.

I predict a "wiki" will be created for every problem, including the problem that wikis don't seem to solve problems. The participants will become nauseous from the dizzying self-referentiality and collapse at their keyboards, leading to a new round of fear-mongering in the media about the negative health effects of excessive internet consumption.

I predict Technorati will come up with at least six new gimmicks to draw attention to itself.

I predict Jonathon Delacour will post something.

I predict I will continue to rant into the void, to no discernible effect.

Welcome to Groundhog Day.

East Village Opera Company

I happened to catch part of a performance by these guys on A&E this morning, it was pretty sweet. I had no idea who they were, so I went to the A&E web page and found the Breakfast with the Arts page, and then by process of elimination figured out the group had to be The East Village Opera Company. A quick trip to the iTunes Music Store and I found the song I had heard was Flower Duet Redux (Lakmé). Great song! Bought the whole album. Great stuff! You should check them out.

Merry Christmas II

This post includes three scans of an article from the Syracuse Herald-Journal Sunday supplement Stars, from December 11, 1988, where Dad made the cover as Santa Claus. (Note to self: Nice crop job, Dave. Next time leave out the Preview toolbar.)

For most of her life, my daughter Caitlin believed Grampa was Santa.

Merry Christmas

What follows is an article from the Syracuse Post Standard, published on December 25, 1999, six years ago today, about my father who was hanging up his red suit for the last time. There's an error regarding the nature of the illness that affected his leg, it was a bacteria, not a virus. And Dad's military service extended from WW II, where he served in the Pacific, through the Vietnam era; he didn't serve in Korea or Vietnam, though Dad's quote might leave you with that impression. Other than that, I think Mr. Lipkowitz got it all right.

The article exists now only in the archives of the paper, where you have to pay to get a copy, which is how I obtained this one. I'm sure at some point, someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and assert something about copyright, but for today and until then, I think it's appropriate to post it here.

Post-Standard, The (Syracuse, NY)

December 25, 1999

SANTA SUIT PROVED GOOD FIT IN 1983 AT 73, JACK ROGERS DECIDES IT'S TIME TO RETIRE FROM A ROLE THAT HE HAS ENJOYED.

Author: Paul Lipkowitz Staff writer

Edition: Madison

Section: Local

Page: C1

Say it ain't so!

Santa, retiring?

What about his jolly laughs? And all the hugs?

Who will bring the children all their toys?

Santa wasn't saying earlier this week after an appearance at Canastota's Peterboro Street Elementary School.

What he did say was that he was tired and getting old. And being Santa ain't easy all the time.

"You tell these kids all the same stories. Sometimes you have to lift them up on your lap," he said. "It gets repetitious. It's not that it's hard work, but at the end of the day I'm beat."

Santa sat in the school office and broke the news as he picked broken candy canes out of a red felt bag. The night before, he'd sat 180 kids on his lap, chatting with them and handing out toys.

The next morning, he visited with an additional 600 kids at the school, singing and telling stories to them.

Santa, who goes by the name Jack Rogers when he takes off his trademark red suit, is 73 years old. His big white beard is as full and long as ever. His bright blue eyes are undimmed.

But a rare flesh-eating disease cost him part of his left leg back in 1995. "The leg is just getting weaker and weaker," Rogers said. "Sometimes I walk like a drunken sailor."

After 16 years, Rogers says, he can't keep up anymore with Santa's busy schedule, which included 28 visits this year in and around Madison County. After Christmas, he's going to hang up his red suit for the last time and shave his white beard.

Rogers began playing Santa in 1983. His predecessor, Mel Yardley, had taken a job with the sheriff's department and had to give up his Santa stint.

So some of Rogers' friends in the Canastota Lions Club told him to give it a try.

Rogers had the Santa Claus physique, standing a little under 6 feet tall and weighing in at 220 pounds. And he had the personality.

"I've always been a happy-go-lucky sort, a funster," said Rogers, who is! also a father of seven.

But it wasn't until he donned his first Santa suit - he picked one up at Switz's in North Syracuse - that Rogers knew he was ready.

A warm feeling came into his heart when he looked in the mirror, Rogers remembered.

"The moment I put it on, I said, 'Hey, this is for me."'

Rogers has worn his long white beard ever since.

But in March 1995, it was doubtful whether Rogers would live to don his Santa suit another time.

Rogers said he was undressing after doing some work in the garage when he noticed a scratch on the top of his thigh. He wiped the blood away and didn't give it another thought.

But the next day he felt bad, really bad. He told his wife, Fran, that he had to see a doctor. His son, Mark, came to take him. On his way to the car, Rogers fell to the ground.

Rogers' doctor in Oneida sent him to the emergency room at Oneida Healthcare Center.

When doctors there saw the silver-dollar-size welt growing on his leg, he said, they put him in an ambulance and rushed him to Crouse Hospital.

There, for the next two weeks, Rogers lay in the intensive-care unit, drifting in and out of consciousness.

"For two weeks, I didn't know a soul," he said.

What had struck Rogers was a rare form of the virus streptococcus that causes strep throat. Rogers, who has diabetes, said he had been feeling run-down at the time, and when the virus worked its way into the cut in his leg, his body couldn't stop it.

Rogers says today that his left leg is living proof of how the flesh-eating virus gets its name. He has scars up and down his leg from where doctors had to cut the virus out. Some are round. Others are long and deep, stretching a foot up the back of his leg and deep into muscle.

At one point, Rogers said, doctors considered amputating his leg. Several doctors later told him they believed he would die.

But after about two weeks, antibiotics began to bring Rogers around. He spent a month and a half more in the hospital before returning to his home in the hills outside Peterboro where, incidentally, he tells kids his reindeer stay when he comes down from the North Pole on his visits.

Rogers, who is a retired career Navy man, says exercise and a good diet keep him healthy today and he's cured of the disease. But age and the wounds in his left leg make walking and driving difficult, and that forced him to make up his mind to retire.

When he enters a roomful of children, Rogers gets their attention. Children see him and squeal in delight. They surround him in little mobs. They hug him.

He pats them on the head and laughs aloud.

"Ho, ho, ho!"

Rogers doesn't charge for his Santa visits. He asks for contributions, and uses the money to buy winter coats and boots and toys for needy kids he meets in his travels.

He says playing Santa is one way of showing his faith.

"Faith is the foundation of everything," Rogers said. "It's sustained me through World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.

"All people, no matter how hard their life, light up when they see Santa. ... Everybody when they see Santa just feels a little better."

Meteor Impact Observed on the Moon

This is not that unusual as a natural phenomenon, but it is pretty unusual to actually observe it as it happens. (Via Steve's No Direction Home weblog.) (Also noted by Hal Rager.)

This One's for Dave Winer

He's struggling a bit with iTunes. I, of course, having a brain the size of the universe, have no problem using iTunes. My 13-year-old daughter seems to have it down too. Must be hereditary.

So I'm taking a bit of Dave's advice and and sending him a link, reminding him to write his next missive about iTunes to Turkey in the Straw, (Available in several different renditions for $.99 at the iTunes Music Store. I'd "Gift this music" to him, but I'm afraid he'd stress out over the interface, and there's already enough stress around the holidays.) Have a piece of cheesecake!

Happy holidays!

Also Getting Old(er)

Being the shallow, superficial, ego-centric guy that I am from time to time, I would be remiss were I to fail to acknowledge the sixth year blogiversaries of Al Hawkins, Hal Rager (who may be experiencing technical difficulties at the time of this writing), Susan Kitchens, James Vornov and probably a bunch of others in that initial cohort of editthispage.com early-adopters.

Getting Old(er)

Took the day off today, thinking I could get some things done that would be a little stressful to do tomorrow. Turns out that was not to be the case. Seems like just about everyone else had the same idea.

I went by the optical shop that had made some new glasses for me. I tried a pair of progressives, but they made me ill every time I moved my head. The middle-distance "corridor" was a tiny spot in the lens, and when I moved my head to look from one screen to the other, the image would "swim," which was distracting and disconcerting. Plus, the nature of the way they grind progressives reduces your effective peripheral vision, meaning you wind up moving your head a little more. Not a great deal, but enough to be noticeable and annoying. So I had them replaced with an ordinary pair of bifocals that I picked up this morning.

I'm not happy with these either. Supposedly, my prescription hasn't changed in three years, but these "feel" different. I suppose I may just have to get used to them, but it's bugging the hell out of me.

I think I'm going to go back and see if they just can't make a duplicate set of lenses from my old glasses to mount in the old frame. If nothing else, I'll have a spare pair that aren't all scratched up.

Saw my first Bentley this morning. When you live near the ocean, it seems you often live near a lot of money, so I'm accustomed to seeing Jaguars and Lexuses (Lexii?) and Mercedes and Porsches and BMWs and Land Rovers, even the occasional Ferrari or Lotus, but I'd never seen a Bentley before. I got out of my Mitsubishi and asked the guy climbing out of his Ford if he knew what the hell a "B"-car was? He sure did. He told me, "It's a Bentley! That car probably cost over $100K." I don't know if that's true, but he seemed pretty sure and I can't seem to make the Bentley web site work in Safari and I don't care enough to try another browser. One of those cars that if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.

Picked up some groceries and was amazed at the crowd in the grocery store. I got some stuff to entertain the kids and Melissa and Pat on Christmas morning. They're going to come by here first, and then later in the day their mother will join them at Pat and Melissa's.

Speaking of Melissa, she got a hell of a Christmas present this month when her company laid her off because they've decided to drop one of the condo conversion projects they had planned. I wonder if that means the "bubble" is about to burst? Mel just got her realtor's license, so she was planning on making a change anyway; but she wasn't planning to do it quite this soon, quite this way. Fortunately, Pat's got a good job as a firefighter, so hopefully the transition will be relatively painless.

Chatted with Mom and Dad this morning. They're headed over to my sister's in Albany, my brother-in-law is picking them up and driving them there. It's a 2-hour drive down the Thruway, so they're probably there by now. Dad was trying to arrange some kind of county services assistance for a veteran who has diabetes and MS and is confined to a wheelchair. His wife normally handles his insulin for him, and she's hospitalized now and he had no other immediate family nearby to look after him. I hope he was able to make something happen for the guy.

Well, I've got a buttload of laundry that I need to do, presents to wrap, carpets to vacuum, toilets to clean, well, one toilet, no need to exaggerate, and all the usual domestic chores to attend to. I know you're just fascinated by all this. ;^)

BSG

If you enjoy Battlestar Galactica, there's a free video download at the iTunes Music Store of a show about the show that's supposed to air ahead of the new season, which begins on January 6th.

Disintermediation

I suppose it's just possible to make too much of this, but if technology makes it easier to do good things, it makes it just as easy to do things that are not so good.

So maybe we ought not celebrate the technology quite so much.

Go Navy!

Mids win inaugural Poinsettia Bowl, 51-30 over Colorado State.

I guess San Diego has two bowl games? I don't follow sports much. But the midshipman won the inaugural Holiday Bowl over BYU in 1978, back when I was still a mid. I was at home in Canastota watching that game on TV at the American Legion with my dad.

Phil McConkey, the offensive MVP of that game (number 80 in the picture on that page), later became a helo pilot, then played professionally for the NY Giants. I think he achieved one of his lifetime goals to play in a Super Bowl and, as I recall, he caught a TD pass in that game. He may have played in more than one, but again, I don't follow sports that much. Pretty rare for a guy to go pro out of Annapolis, and to do it a few years after graduation. Phil lived next door to me in Virginia Beach, and I'd often come home to find him in our place playing Stellar Invaders on my Apple ][+. Bob Tata, the kicker, along with another classmate, Shan Saunders, owned the place I was staying in, just off 9th street in Va. Beach, two blocks from the ocean. We were all assigned aboard the same frigate in Norfolk.

Six Years

Ranting into the void to no discernible effect.

Go me.

Six years.

I've lived at four different addresses (Which is below my (adult) lifetime average for residency at a given address. Should be about eight if I was keeping pace, but you start to slow down when you get older.)

Survived a divorce. Made just about every mistake you can make. Some of them twice.

Gave away my stepdaughter at her marriage.

Did the single parent thing for a little more than a year.

Was an assistant Den Leader, then a Den Leader, then an Assistant Scout Master for a few years.

Did a couple of sessions as a volunteer instructor at A Presidential Classroom for Young Americans. Hope to do that again soon.

Helped build a theater for my daughter's theater group.

Bought my son a Dell. "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell!" Had my own "Dell hell" experience and wrote about it. Bought him the pieces to build his own machine. Networked the house on a Linksys router. Decided there was a special place reserved in hell for MS and the people responsible for the Windows 98 networking setup. XP isn't much better. Took him to numerous LAN parties. Yelled at him to go to bed when he was up too late playing Counter Strike.

Did a million other things every parent does.

My son grew up. Don't blink, Hal.

I started wearing bifocals.

My first gray hairs have appeared on the top of my head in the last few months. Only a few though. Maybe if I ignore them, they'll go away. You think?

Retired from the navy in '01.

Got my first civilian job since I was 16 in April '02.

Bought my first new car in 20 years.

Don't own a house for the first time in over 20 years.

My net worth is negative for the first time in about 20 years. But it's just barely negative. Still, not much to show for 20 years. C'est la vie.

Found an old friend.

Made some new friends.

Pissed most of them off.

Some of them pissed me off.

I could probably do about twenty two pushups, or whatever the navy minimum was for guys over 40 back when I started this. I can probably do about fifty today. But, I weigh about 25 pounds more too, and it ain't all muscle.

Started taking taekwondo in February '02. Couldn't walk up the stairs to my apartment the day after my first lesson. Earned my 2nd degree decided black belt in June of this year. Still hate doing lunges. My daughter joined me in the summer of '03, she'll be testing for 2nd degree decided in June.

Bought the iMac DV 400 in November '99, a little before I started Time's Shadow. Bought a PowerMac G4/400 Gigabit ethernet in '00 for my wife and kids to replace a Performa 6500. Bought the first iteration white "iceBook" in July '01. Bought the PowerMac G4 MDD/867DP in Jan 2003. Bought an iBook G4 in August '04. Bought a refurb'ed 40GB iPod 3G in '04 and a Shuffle in '05. Went through two Handspring Visors and two Sony Cliés, still using the second one. Bought a barely used Newton MP130. Finally got a cell phone in '04. Got rid of my land line the same year. Bought my parents an eMac and an iSight in '02 so we could use iChat AV to communicate with one another. The G4MDD is now stuffed with 4 hard drives, two optical drives, 1.75GB of RAM, a USB 2.0 PCI card, and a Radeon 9800 with 128MB of RAM, driving two LCD displays. Switched to OS X in October '01. Bought four different digital cameras, 3 Kodaks and a Canon.

If I had all that money today, my car would probably be paid for, and I'd probably have a net worth greater than zero. Go figure.

Started seeing a counselor in the summer of '99. Still see her from time to time. Best education I've ever received.

My interests changed a bit from science and engineering to philosophy and Buddhism, though I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist, except in the sense that everyone is a Buddhist. Don't worry about it.

Went to my first Springsteen concert in more than 20 years. Which is good, but kind of bad too. Where was I for 20 years? If you ask me, I think the Boss has gotten better over the last 20 years. I think I have too, but I'm probably biased.

Went to a Cher concert because, you know, it's Cher. I think it was a show from her "I really, really mean it this time Farewell Tour." Don't read too much into that.

Went home to upstate New York and saw some of my high school classmates at our reunion and found out they matter a lot more to me than I remembered.

Learned how to sit. Still learning how to sit.

Learned how to be still. Still learning how to be still.

Learned how to let go. Still learning how to let go.

Figured out that I'm not here to change the world, the world is here that I might learn to change myself. Still learning how to do that.

Wrote about nearly all of that. Didn't write about some other things, and haven't mentioned them here either.

Still writing about nearly all of that. And some other stuff too.

Though I couldn't tell you exactly why.

If I figure it out, you'll probably read about it here.

A little Springsteen to close:

Now I don't know how I feel, I don't know how I feel tonight
If I've fallen 'neath the wheel, if I've lost or I've gained sight
I don't even know why, I don't know why I made this call
Or if any of this matters anymore after all

Last Minute Gifts

Give blood.

Competing Messages: 10 Is Never Enough

I just did the “keep up with Pirillo” shtick with him. “The screen is really nice,” he said, after being forced to hold it. Heheh. Another one sold!

"Heheh."

Competing Messages: Compare and Contrast

And I wonder about the future of the medium, because the nature of promotion is that "10" is never enough. You always need to be at "11". And when the competition hits 11, that becomes the new 10.

Everything is connected.

Current Events

Scott Reynen has an interesting take on current events.

Western Music Banned in Iran

Country okay.

For now.

(The title of this post is a headline on CNN's website, and it's the first thing I thought of and I wanted to share it. I know, I should let these impulses pass.)

Competing Messages

With the usual disclaimer that I'm an authority on nothing and I make all this up as I go along, here's a little bit of what has been occupying my mind lately.

If you had to label the dominant organizing principles that govern the United States and most western nations today, what would you call it? Back in the Cold War era, we used to talk about capitalism versus communism, or democracy versus totalitarianism. One is kind of an economic characterization, while the other is political. In that era, I'd say the political characterization would have been more significant than the economic one, in terms of directing the course of the competing nations and blocs. To be sure, the strengths and weaknesses of the respective economies were the ultimate arbiters of "victory," but politics I think led, while the economies followed.

Today, I think the dynamic is reversed. I think economics leads, and politics follows. But the economics today isn't "capitalism" except in some broad features. Some people seem to think it's kind of a neo-fascism, and some go further, but that's still mainly a political theory. I think that's off the mark, because of the leading role of the economic power over political power. So maybe we need a new "-ism" of some kind. I don't know, but I've kind of taken over one anyway.

I'm going to bend the term "commercialism" to describe what I think is happening. The New Oxford American Dictionary gives the primary definition of "commercialism" as an emphasis on the maximizing of profit. I think that's a significant component of what I'm thinking about, but I think that one must think of that definition in larger terms than strictly economic, because it extends into political thought as well.

It seems to me there are two dominant themes or organizing principles in my idea of commercialism. The first is a belief in competition that is greater than the belief in cooperation. Put simply, I think it means that most often, a course of action will be chosen that maximizes the potential for gaining an advantage at the expense of a competitor; and cooperation will only be explored when a achieving a particular goal or outcome would be too costly to achieve competitively. Although there has been a natural tension between cooperation and competition in human interactions for our entire history, I believe that the balance is now tipped, if only slightly, in favor of competition. We are becoming more competitive, and less cooperative; although there are still many, many examples of cooperation, and cooperation remains a natural human behavior in many circumstances. I don't want to overstate my case, but little things mean a lot.

The second theme, or organizing principle is a belief in consumerism. By that I mean the preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods. It seems to me, based on what I am able to observe around me, that we have the belief that the main purpose of life, its meaning, if you will, is to be found in the production and consumption of things. This is more than simply materialism, because it is not just the mere possession of things, that is meaningful, it is the desire, pursuit and acquisition. Put simply, the distinguishing difference between consumerism and materialism is that in consumerism we value what we don't already have more than what we already do. This is at the expense of more abstract, some would say spiritual values, which might otherwise define or shape our views on the purpose of life and its meaning. And it is often to our material disadvantage as well.

In subsequent posts, I'll try to give examples of how competition, and messages about the value or importance of competition, have overtaken cooperation in all facets of life. And I'll try to show examples of how consumerism is overtaking other values in our society. And I'll try to talk about who the people are who are making that happen, and how they make it happen, and it may make them feel uncomfortable.

As always, I'm an authority on nothing. If I make anyone feel too uncomfortable, they're at liberty to ignore me. I don't offer comments, but if anyone wishes to reply to me, my email address is dave underscore rogers at mac dot com. I could be wrong.

And I rather hope I am.

Old Camera

My dad still had the camera that he used to those pictures I scanned for him a few weeks ago. I asked my parents if I could have it, because it's something kind of cool and I'm a little interested in photography. My brother Mark is much more of photographer than I am, I just take pictures. Maybe it's the kind of thing he'd appreciate more in the long term than I would.

I was surprised that he still had it. When they showed it to me on the video chat, I recognized it from when I was a kid. We used to play with it a bit. I think I even took it to school once for show and tell, but I'm not sure about that. What I didn't know was that it was originally my grandfather's camera. My grandfather died when my father was ten, and I never knew either of my paternal grandparents. So it's some kind of a connection to them.

Anyway, they sent it along to me, packed in a quilt my mom made for Caitlin from some quilt squares she sewed when we were visiting with them back in March. It's a Kodak Nr. 2a Folding Autographic Brownie, made between 1915 and 1926. It doesn't seem to be a particularly rare item, but it is very cool. The shutter works fine, and I bet if I could find film, it would still work.

Commercialism

Just a couple of links that each reflect, in a small way, a part of the larger illness that is afflicting nearly all of us:

The temperatures in Redmond and Bellevue are below freezing. These are dedicated buyers.

More On Authority

I followed a link from Euan Semple's weblog to this piece on authority by Peter Morville, who cites the Wikipedia entry on authority, and wherein I learn about German sociologist Maximillian Weber's ideas about authority. Linky enough for you?

There's enough there for days of posts and I only have a few minutes this morning, so a few thoughts:

The Wikipedia entry on authority omits any mention of the concepts of responsibility and accountability, (Really. I searched the text on the page, and the words "responsibility" and "accountability" don't appear even once, as of 0936 EST December 18, 2005.) which are attendant to most legitimate forms of authority. Yes, theoretically, I could fix this, but then I'd have to learn how that whole wiki thing works, and potentially get into some kind of debate with someone who might not agree that those ideas need to be discussed in an article on authority. Maybe when I have the time and I feel like I want to figure out how yet another online editing facility works, I'll take a stab at it. In the meantime, I think it's a serious omission, but one that doesn't particularly surprise me. It also offers a misapprehension of police authority as an example of a difference between "power" and "authority." I may critique this article at greater length soon.

But the Wikipedia entry makes reference to Maximillian Weber, who was new to me. Weber identified three types of authority, traditional, rational-legal and charismatic. I didn't start thinking about authority in a serious way until 2002, and at the end of February 2002, I wrote a piece called Another Look at Power (no longer available online, except in Google's cache, though I don't know how long that will be there either.) where I identified what I thought were three types of authority, authentic, inauthentic, and natural. I would probably not choose to use the words "authentic" and "inauthentic" today, but they somewhat parallel Weber's ideas.

I described "inauthentic authority" as, "This type of authority is granted by an external agency, but is [sic] has no basis in the authority of those who will submit. An example in this case would be the divine right of kings, or the husband's dominant role in the marriage as set forth in some text." This somewhat parallel's Weber's traditional authority (which has its own Wikipedia entry), which "simply derives from long-established habits and social structures. The right of hereditary monarchs to rule furnishes an obvious example."

My idea about inauthentic authority, is that it did not derive its legitimacy from the authority of those who submit to it. Its legitimacy is supposedly derived from something else, being "revealed wisdom," or simply "because this is the way we've always done it."

My idea of authentic authority, is that it does derive its legitimacy from the authority of those who submit to it, which seems at least partially consistent with Weber's rational-legal authority, which "depends for its legitimacy on formal rules, usually written down, and often very complex. Modern societies depend on legal-rational authority." China's government is probably rational-legal, by Weber's definition, but I would not go so far as to say it is an authentic authority, because it does not derive its authority from the authority of those who submit to it.

Finally, Weber's third type of authority, charismatic authority, deals with authority derived from "the gift of grace." It gets kind of murky here, because I don't really see this in exactly the same way. In some ways, I suppose this could be very similar to my idea of natural authority, though I don't rely on the notion of grace as the basis for this authority.

Tomato Herb

There's a lot to be said for waking up to the smell of bread baking.

There's less to be said for waking up to the sound of the bread machine starting the whole thing at 4:30 in the morning.

We've got some kind of Christmas luncheon thing going on at work today, and for some reason it seems to be oriented around spaghetti. The red of the tomato sauce and the green of the oregano I guess. Anyway, I figured I'd bring a loaf of tomato herb bread.

Of course, I know nothing about baking bread, which is why I have a machine to do it for me. I know quite a bit about machines, if that makes any difference. Unfortunately, my ignorance extends to what should be done to transport a loaf of bread that is hot out of the machine. I know wrapping it in some air-tight wrapping would not allow much of the moisture to escape as it cools, resulting in condensation and soggy crust. I don't have a feeling for how long you can leave it unwrapped and not have it totally dry out, but I'm going to guess it'll be okay for the few hours between when it comes out of the machine about 45 minutes from now, and lunchtime. If not, well, I'll know better next time.

Smells good though.

Telepresence

For as much complaining I do about technology and the shallow notion that it "changes everything," there are aspects of tech that really do make life a little better.

Basically, all technologies affect how we do things, not so much what we do; and while what we do is often a source of our problems, it's just as often a source of our rewards as well.

Case in point: Monday night.

After I started downloading Christmas music, I recalled that my parents had only a few Christmas songs on their computer. One of the newer features of the online music service I use is the option to give music as a gift. Now, this is a thinly veiled marketing gimmick to expand the number of people who have accounts with this online music store, but still, it may be a worthwhile service.

So I bought my parents an album of Johnny Mathis Chistmas songs, and sent it to them as a gift. Shortly after I did that, I got a call from my mom over the video messaging service we use. She wasn't quite sure how to proceed. I thought I could talk her through the process, but when we got to the application that plays and manages her music collection on her computer, she noted that her nephew's name was listed in the Account field. That's when I recalled that my nephew had used their computer to buy a song for his new portable music device, and I wasn't quite sure how to establish an account in my parents' name. I suppose if I had known my nephew's password, we could have just used his account. In any event, the next time he logs into the music service on that computer, he'll find he has some Christmas songs ready to download!

What seems to have happened is that the gift certificate software token seems to have attached itself to the first account that it encountered in the application; at that time, it also happened to be the only account, so I'm not sure how it would be different if there were multiple store accounts associated with that computer.

I ended up taking control of my parents' computer by means of a remote control program. I could have done this by flying to my parents' house in upstate New York as well, but technology expands what we do in space and compresses it in time, so I was able to achieve the same effect without leaving my home and spending all that time (and money) traveling. I created an account in my parents' names and then bought the album again (from my machine, as a gift), along with another one I thought they'd like. Everything seemed to go smoothly at that point, and the songs started downloading as expected. Then my mom mentioned that they'd really like that old Christmas album by Mitch Miller, of Sing Along With Mitch fame. So I took a look, and sure enough, they had it, and so I bought that one for them as well.

So this was pretty cool. I was able to buy my parents a bunch of Christmas music for their computer without having to leave my apartment to go to a brick and mortar store, buy physical CDs and then take them to the post office to physically mail them to upstate New York. I got to hear and see my mother's reaction to receiving the gift. And finally, I was able to overcome a few of the technological hurdles that may have proven to be a barrier to enjoying the music.

What almost gets lost in all this discussion of technology is that I was able to share something with my parents that we both valued, and do it in an immediate way, even though we're separated by more than a thousand miles between us. Something that would not have been possible without expending a lot of time and money, were it not for modern information technology.

So this was a good thing, and I'm happy about it. I was also able to tell this story without mentioning a single product or service by name, though I suppose you can easily figure them out if you wanted to.

Social Hygiene Aids

Scott Reynen offers some commentary on my social hygiene posts, and discusses a way in which technology might assist in maintaining good social hygiene. He developed a quick hack that could scan a given entry and note the number of times a trademarked word appeared, perhaps leading to some type of score or assessment of how many marketing "bacteria" or "viruses" were present in a given piece of prose.

Leaving aside for a moment the utility of this information, Scott makes a disquieting discovery: "nearly every word in the English language has been trademarked."

I would also offer that, apart from the arrogance of laying a proprietary claim to words themselves, marketing goes further and tries to take advantage of the emotional or value-related connotation of a word, while at the same time deprecating its literal denotation, wherein "passion" becomes mere "enthusiasm," which can be bridged to encompass "zealotry." Such that consumers who exhibit zealotry in their embrace of a product or service, making a social nuisance out of themselves, are regarded as a desirable outcome; and to make that desire palatable, their anti-social zealotry is labeled as "passion."

I would offer that "passion" has a positive values-related connotation which, I believe, at least obliquely acknowledges the notion of suffering for some cause or faith, while "zealotry" has a negative one. (This isn't hard and fast for all forms of the individual root word. For instance, "zealot" I think carries a negative connotation, while "zealous" is probably neutral, if not slightly positive.) But if "passion" is mere "enthusiasm," then "compassion" is reduced to simply shared enthusiasm. I don't feel diminished as a human being by not sharing someone's enthusiasm. But I do feel diminished if I can't, at least in a small way, share at least an appreciation for their suffering.

A while ago I ran an audio quotation from Elie Wiesel, "When words lie, what is the truth?" Marketers aren't interested in the truth. They're interested in manipulating emotions, manufacturing perceptions, and I think we're all paying a price for this, and we will go on doing so until we learn a practice of social hygiene that keeps the negative effects of marketing out of our social spaces.

More as I think about this.

Holy crap! er, I mean, "night!"

On a whim, I went to see what Christmas music might be available on the iTunes Music Store. (I'm going to post something later on about mentioning commercial products and services, but it's not ready yet and I'm not sure how I would treat this instance anyway.)

Well, they're all there. All the stuff I grew up listening to as a kid. Is there any other holiday or time of year that has so much music associated with it? I don't think so.

So I just spent over $150.00 downloading music I could probably buy on various CD collections for a lot less; then again, maybe not. Who knows? But this is pretty sweet.

Merry Christmas.

Another Thought On Social Hygiene

I don't think that many people will argue that television is or ever was great art. It was popular art, and some of it was very, very good. I might even go so far as to contradict myself and offer that perhaps some of it is and was great.

And as a vehicle for attracting attention for the purpose of presenting commercial messages, there was always a commercial aspect of the art offered by radio and television. And there was always an effort made to separate the commercial message from the artistic one.

Technology has given us the means to enjoy the art without having to listen to the commercial messages. So marketers, whose role in life is to get their messages in front of as many people as many times as possible, respecting no boundaries of any kind whatsoever, are now demanding that their commercial messages become a part of popular art on television. We've seen this already to some extent in movies and TV shows where product placement has become a common practice. But previously, product placement was largely a passive feature, where a given product was little more than a prop. Some people think Cast Away was a giant commercial for Fedex. If Fedex paid Tom Hanks to feature its service in his movie, I hope they asked for their money back. Fedex was used as an icon or symbol of our obsession with time, and our desire to control it, to master it. It wasn't very flattering, if you ask me. But some people still worship at that church, so maybe it was a commercial for them. I digress.

Now it seems that mere passive, prop-related placement is not enough for marketers. Now they're demanding that the products be incorporated into the characters' dialog. Soon, whole plot lines will hinge on a particular company. "Bird flu pandemic thwarted by use of Wal-Mart distribution system." Remember the movie The President's Analyst? If you're under 40, probably not. Before, a company could be used as a satirical foil. I have a feeling those days are going to be gone, at least in commercial art. Well, unless it's underwritten by a competitor, I suppose.

While art has always required patronage to some extent, and while popular art has always had a close relationship to commercialism, the pressures of competition are driving marketers to eliminate the barriers between art and commercial messages. Just as they're striving to eliminate the barriers between purely social interactions, like conversations, and marketing messages.

The problem with Christmas is not that Christ doesn't get top billing, or that it's a religious holiday in a nation with many religions. The problem with Christmas is that marketing made commercialism the point of Christmas. And perhaps it was intended to be that way from the beginning. Christmas sure has a funny history for a holiday that marks an event that happened a couple of millennia ago.

My objection is that marketers are the people who are, more and more, driving every aspect of our lives. Our culture is becoming more and more commercial, with competition and consumerism being the two dimensions of commercialism. I don't see many people objecting to this, and too many of the "authorities" on the web, high attention-earning webloggers, are little more than marketers, each with a commercial interest in advancing their own commercial message.

If we're going to have any hope of preserving some space for purely social interactions, where someone isn't manipulating us for the purpose of seeking a competitive advantage, we're probably going to have to make one. But I wonder if it isn't already too late?

Continuing Adventures in Tech Support

Today flew by pretty fast. On Friday I e-mailed my dad nearly all the pictures I had scanned. He wanted to print a bunch of them up to mail to his sister and Dee-Dee and so we spent much of today working with iPhoto and his printer, making prints for him to send off in the mail.

I was able to use Apple Remote Desktop to control his computer and get through some of the more interesting problems. I haven't done a lot of printing from iPhoto before, so I'm much more knowledgeable about how it works now than I was before we started.

Back in March when I was home for the first time in a few years, I took along my entire iPhoto library on my iPod and promptly deposited it on my parents' eMac, thinking they'd enjoy seeing all the pictures. I'm sure they did, but it was over 5 thousand images, which is pretty ludicrous and can tax the resources of their 800MHz eMac. So my first thought was to stay out of iPhoto and work out of Preview to print the images. Dad wanted to do some cropping first, and I didn't recall if Preview in Panther supported cropping, and it wasn't immediately obvious to me. Plus, printing to 4x6 sized photo prints was going to require more manual interaction than I cared to do by remote control. I wasn't excited about using iPhoto if it was going to be bogged down, so I figured I'd download and install Kodak's EasyShare software, which pretty much duplicates iPhoto's functionality.

All went well until I launched it for the first time. It has a (new to me) first-time startup assistant that insists on importing every image in your Pictures folder on you computer. That would mean all 5000+ images in iPhoto, which would make EasyShare as taxed as iPhoto. And there was no way to quit the startup assistant and run the program "manually." I even had to force quit the program because there was no way out of the assistant short of starting the import process, and I didn't want to wait to see if there was a bail-out option in that step. After force-quitting, I tried to drag-n-drop the images I wanted to import into EasyShare via the Dock. It launched and immediately started the assistant program again! I hate software that presumes to know what I want to do better than I do.

So I abandoned EasyShare and just figured I'd cope with iPhoto. I created a new album for pictures we'd be working with, and that helped keep things manageable. We used the telephone to talk about what we were doing rather than iChat because I wanted to use all the available upstream bandwidth on their end to send me screen updates. Everything went pretty well, and as I type this, Dad should be printing the last couple of 8x10s.

In between help sessions, I was archiving DV tapes to DVD. The machine locked up one more time following a Finalizing session, requiring me to pull the power cord from the machine, but it did finalize the disk. So I think it's kind of flaky, but it works. I'm going to pick up enough DVD-RW disks tomorrow to finish off the collection. With RW media, if I gack something I can just reformat the disk and start over again.

This probably isn't terribly interesting, but it was a pretty geeky day. All in a good cause though.

Success!

After posting the Tech Trials thing below I tried the whole DV transfer thing again. Everything worked as it did the first time up until I got to the Finalize bit. Confirmed that indeed I wanted to "finalize" twice, and then got the "Finalizing..." screen, and this time the progress bar actually moved! It moved all the way across and the DVR announced it had completed finalizing and that the disk was now read-only. It only took a few minutes, too.

To confirm that, I played it back in the DVR, then moved it over to the PowerMac G4 and it mounted as a DVD and played back in DVD Player. I don't know if it'll play back universally, but I guess this is about as good as it gets in these sorts of efforts.

I attribute my success to breath control. I held my breath while I was confirming the whole Finalize command, and I think I had my tongue on my right canine tooth, if that helps. For the record, the media was TKD DVD-RW, 2x.

Now, let's see if I can do it again...

Tech Trials

For all the advantages modern consumer electronics offer, they are not without their problems.

I've acquired four new gadgets in recent weeks, and two of them worked as advertised and the other two were a pain in the ass.

The two that worked as advertised were the bread machine, and the Nintendo DS, specifically, getting it up on the wireless network. While the latter is something that not everyone will find easy, it was easier than I expected, something I could do very quickly without having to look for help on the web.

The two that have been a pain in the ass were the Epson Perfection (Marketers and their (ab)use of language. Their punishment ought to be life in customer support.) 4490 scanner, and the Panasonic DMR-ES20 DVD recorder.

Installing the Epson software nearly broke my computer. I install a lot of software, and a pretty fair amount of hardware, and I have almost never experienced a problem like this. I wrote about it earlier, and don't wish to go into it again. Eventually, I was able to get the scanner to do what I wanted it to do by not using Epson's application and using VueScan instead. (Though VueScan does require the Epson software to be installed, so you're still vulnerable to a flaky installer.) Once I was able to get the scanner working under VueScan, it's been great.

I bought the DVD recorder to essentially replicate the functionality of a VCR and I wanted to explore the possibility of moving recordings from the DVDs to the computer. The ES20 has a Firewire interface which also would allow me to archive all my DV recordings from my Sony DV camcorder to DVD. I could do that to the Mac and then edit them into DVDs, but that takes time, and this should be a quick and easy way to get the tape content onto a DVD that can be shared with others. Alas, it's not so easy.

The first challenge was overcoming the user guide. This I didn't mind so much. I've long ago abandoned any expectation that a user guide is going to give me any straightforward information on how to do something. Now I regard it more as a game, kind of a puzzle, where the various chapters and diagrams in the user guide are more like clues, and your reward for being clever and winning the game is getting your device to do the thing you bought it to do.

But before we could play the user guide game, we had to play an opening round of scavenger hunt. The Firewire interface on the DVD recorder (we'll say DVR from now on), is the tiny miniature one, like those found on the camcorder and many Wintel laptops. So I needed a Firewire cable with miniature connections at each end. I have one FW cable with a miniature connector at one end, and a full-size connector at the other. This is the one that shipped with my iMac DV six years ago. I also recalled that my iPod (third generation) came with an adapter that converted the full-size connector into a miniature one. So into the drawer where I throw all manner of connectory things in the expectation that I will never need them, but if I do, I'll be unhappy that I threw them away, I go. Sure enough, I found the lovely white adapter, still in its plastic bag. Nowadays Apple doesn't support Firewire on the iPod and you get a USB cable. Naturally, the DVR didn't come with a Firewire cable, although it did come with another set of composite video and audio cables, of which I have so many already I could fashion a crude rope and escape from prison with them. Everybody gives you those cables!

With the scavenger hunt round successfully completed, I got to move on to the next phase of the challenge, getting the camcorder to speak to the DVR. I find the wisest thing to do is to actually follow the directions the first time. It's almost guaranteed it won't work, but it'll usually offer some insight into where to look for the hidden clues. Following the steps carefully, and turning on the devices in the order specified in the user guide, the first clue was that a menu item in the onscreen menu did not appear. Presumably, when connected to the DV interface by means of the appropriately gendered FW cable, a choice appears in the DVR's menu screen to automatically create chapters on your DVD, each time it encounters where you hit the "Stop" button in your recording. This might be a nice thing to have, so I looked for that menu item to enable it, and, of course, it didn't appear.

I must say, navigating the menu system wasn't very challenging itself. That's pretty straightforward in this product. The genius is in use of a dynamic system, where an option appears only when you've got the appropriate equipment connected to the appropriate connectors by means of the appropriate cables and you hold your tongue just the right way.

There was a paragraph that suggested that if this option did not appear, it was perhaps because your camcorder was made by another manufacturer and therefore did not support the automatic chapter creation feature. That was certainly helpful, or comforting, or reassuring, or something.

Noting this as a possible clue, I went ahead and tried to record. Nothing happened.

This is to be expected. With nearly half of all modern consumer electronics the consumer can expect nothing to happen the first time they expect something to happen. Just accept this.

I've also learned to note my interior stress state. When I can see the throbbing vein in my temple in my reflection in the perfectly flat CRT of my JVC 27 inch color television, I know that it's time to take a little break and go buy a bread machine. So I did. I also stopped at the Apple store to see if they had a Firewire cable with miniature connectors at each end. Of course they didn't, but I did like stroking the shiny aluminum Powerbooks anyway. "Oooooh, my precioussss.... yesssssss." Where was I?

Anyway, dealing with holiday traffic in the parking lot of an enormous shopping center was soothing enough to allow me to reflect calmly on the challenge posed by the DVR. By the time I returned home and had a loaf of whole wheat bread going, I had a number of ideas to pursue.

The first was just a hunch, but it paid handsomely. Sony is tricksies and likes to fuck with consumer's heads. I figured it might not be as simple as connecting a Firewire cable and expecting the camcorder to export the signal via that pathway while playing. Perhaps one has to tell it to export the signal via the Firewire bus while the damn thing is in playback mode, because, who knows, you might want to receive DV data while you're playing back a tape or something!

So I delved into Sony's oh-so-clever, but ultimately infuriating little rotating drum menu system on the camcorder and found out, sure enough, you have to tell the damn thing to do DV Out. So I hit "OK" because there was no button for "No shit, Sherlock."

Following this productive train of thought, I figured I might need to tell the DVR where to look for the video signal it was to record, though no such mention of this is made in the actual instructions, at least in that part of the instructions that purports to instruct one on how to record digital video from a DV camcorder. Sure enough, there's a choice of video inputs that one makes by means of the remote control. I don't recall if there was a menu item to make this choice, but my sense is there was not. I'd go back and check for the sake of accuracy, but I don't wish to relive that particular moment again just now.

So, with the camcorder properly instructed to send DV Out, and the DVR instructed to look for DV In, a picture appeared on my TV screen! Huzzah! And what a beautiful picture it was too. So I hit "Record" on the DVR and I hit "Play" on the camcorder and we were off to the races! Though I should go back and note that although I had made the appropriate connections the option to create automatic chapters still did not appear as a menu item, for which I am forced to conclude that my Sony is not one of Panasonic's supported manufacturers, or something.

After watching the video record, I tried to play it back on the DVR and it did. Success! I even figured out how to "name" the disk via the onscreen menu system. The last thing left to do was to "Finalize" the disk, which would make it usable in "some" other DVD players and computers. Unlike VHS tapes, which pretty much play back in all VHS tape players, DVDs recorded in some DVRs will only play back in some DVD players. Which ones is presumably something decided at random by some cosmic lottery system or something, and the user is simply on his or her own in that regard. It's quantum physics, it's all very technical and I don't want to go into it here.

So I select the "Finalize" option from the menu system, and it asks me if I really, really mean it twice more before rewarding me with the announcement that it is now "finalizing" the disk. Whereupon it proceeds to do nothing. This is Part II of the game, where the consumer can expect nothing to happen when it is something the consumer expects to happen.

Not only does nothing happen, but nothing further is allowed to happen. The DVR is really a small computer of some kind, and it is now totally locked up. I feel the top for some vibration to see if the disk is spinning and it's actually doing something, just not giving me any feedback or allowing me to do anything else until it's finished, but it's as still as stone. Warm stone, but you get the idea.

Hitting the power button does nothing. Or maybe it did something. I'm not sure anymore. But nothing else useful was happening until I removed the power cable from the back of the unit and plugged it back in. The thing then rebooted, or whatever it does, and it resumed its normal semi-functioning state. The recording was still there, it would still play back. So I figured, "If at first you don't succeed, gather more data," which, for me, is to "try, try again."

This time, at least the power button was able to restore functionality to the system, I didn't have to sever the power connection. Googling for answers yielded little more than confusion and frustration. Some information suggested that it might take a long time to finalize a disk. I waited twenty minutes the next time, which should have been plenty of time. I noted that when it started to finalize, the disk spun madly for a few seconds, then nothing.

With the image of my throbbing vein in my temple reflected in the perfectly flat glass of the CRT screen, I decided I would simply start all over again. Since I was using a DVD-RW, I erased the DVD and I will try again later today to make a DVD out of some video I recorded on my camcorder without going through my computer to do so. Though I'm beginning to think it'll be a lot easier on my Mac.

Expect this scene, or one very similar to it, perhaps with a different device, like an iPod, to be replicated in millions of homes all over that part of the world that celebrates consumerism this time of year.

Peace on earth, and low-interest credit to men (and women).

Baker

Several years ago, bread machines were kind of the cool kitchen appliance to have. I suspect the Atkins Diet and concern about carbohydrates, obesity and diabetes in general kind of hastened the decline of the bread machine as a favored kitchen appliance. We had one by Oster that turned out great loaves of bread. After the novelty wore off, I guess I used it about once every few months or so, and around the holidays when it was kind of nice to bring a warm loaf of bread when we were visiting neighbors.

Anyway, for some reason I wanted a bread machine of my own again, even though it's just me here. I figure I can bring a loaf to work with me and the chow-hounds there will eat it, no problem. I get to smell bread baking, so it's win-win, I think.

I stopped by the Navy Exchange where I bought the Oster way back when, but they only carry one bread machine these days, and it's the Zojarushi, which is a pretty sweet machine, but you pay for it too. At $169.00, it was $30.00 less than Amazon's price. I consulted Consumer Reports, but bread machines are so un-trendy, they haven't reviewed one in years. They did offer a brief article that basically said that even $50.00 machines can bake a good loaf of bread. So back to Amazon I went.

I found an Oster model that got good reviews from the people who bought it, and I had a favorable impression of the brand from the success I had had with previous one. (Of course, I had to return two of them to the Exchange because the CPUs would die, probably from heat. Three was the charm, and that one is still going strong at my kids' house.) At $59.00, it was a much more attractive deal than $169.00 for the Zojarushi.

Amazon didn't carry the Oster, but offered it from Target. I figured as long as I was paying sales tax, I'd just go ahead and pick it up at a store and save myself the shipping cost. So last Wednesday, I stopped by my local Target only to find they didn't have one in stock. Today I went to the Target Super Store at the St Johns Town Center, local Mecca of consumerism and home of the Jacksonville Apple Store, to try to get one there. No luck there either! I was a bit frustrated. (The Apple Store, by the way, was packed. They even had a special table set up next to the Genius Bar just to handle iPod sales. It was like the express line or something, and there was a line.)

I ended up going back to the Target near my apartment and picking up a Breadman model for $69.00. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, because I had read some people comparing Breadman models unfavorably to the Oster and Zojarushi. But I figured if I didn't like it, I could just return it and in the meantime, I get to smell bread baking.

Well, I got it home this afternoon and baked a loaf of whole wheat with it, and I must say I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I figured I'd be eating most of this loaf myself, so I went with whole wheat to lessen the overall impact to my already poor diet. Plus, it's a tougher loaf to bake, and if the machine can turn out a good loaf of whole wheat, I figure it'll do okay on anything else I'm likely to bake.

I'll run a few more loaves through it this week, trying some of the different settings. I figure most of these things, if they're going to fail, will fail in the first few loaves. I could be wrong about that. Plus, I'll get to enjoy the smell of bread baking.

Dad and Dee-Dee

Here's one of the pictures I scanned from an old negative last weekend. This is my dad, Sailor Jack, in 1946, all of 19 years old.

The next one wasn't a negative, as should be obvious from the dedication to his mother on it, but I thought it was a pretty neat picture. I don't think you see pictures like this much anymore. I think this was right after boot camp. I note that Dad, at 17, has already mastered the salty squashed-dixie-cup look. (He's the one on the bottom left.)

A Christmas Carol

It's that time of the year again when I get to revisit certain holiday classics. Right now I'm experiencing my version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with the usual ghosts making their appearances in my own life. Hopefully it won't be long before I wake up and, with a little luck, it'll still be Christmas. I'm also having my own version of It's a Wonderful Life, except I haven't got to the part where Clarence shows up yet. Soon, maybe.

I did have a great chat with my parents tonight, going over some of the family history. Too late, I realized I could have been recording it all with WireTap or something. We'll do it again sometime when I'm better prepared. Maybe Dad will write it all down for us too. I think it's a pretty fascinating story, but I'm probably a little biased.

I burned all the negatives I scanned to CD, and meant to shoot that off to the folks today but left it on the desk when I went to work. So tonight I went ahead and just fired them all off by e-mail, 5 at a time, which kept the total size of the enclosures under 3MB per e-mail, which seemed to slip under whatever the cutoff may be.

Something very nice that I found is that the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas is available from the iTunes Music Store, and so I downloaded it and I've got it playing in the background. Very nice.

"Good grief!"

You da man, Charlie Brown. You da man.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

GIGO, from the title of this post, is an expression from the early days of computing. It's a reference to the fact that manipulating or using information that isn't good is likely to yield a result that isn't good as well.

Back when the anti-ship version of the Tomahawk cruise missile was being developed, the navy realized it had a real problem using these weapons against valid targets. They had ranges that far exceeded those of our organic sensors, they had lengthy times of flight to the target, and they were autonomous after launch. We had to develop a means of keeping a very accurate picture of the location, courses and speeds of all the shipping within the range of a Tomahawk. We wanted to make sure we were expending those very expensive assets blowing up Soviet Slava-class cruisers, and not Monrovian sheep haulers.

It was, and remains, an enormous problem, though we don't really employ anti-ship Tomahawks anymore. Nowadays we like to keep tabs on everybody for things like counter terrorism, counter narcotics and trafficking in human beings. The ocean is a big place, we have a lot of information sources, and all those information sources have some inherent error or unreliability.

But I do recall when we got the "Jerry O. Tuttle System." (Not really what it was called, but the acronym seemed to fit the name of the Admiral that championed its development. I think it was actually called something like the Joint Operational Tasking System, or something. This was back when "Joint" was a buzzword necessary to make your system fully buzzword compliant and therefore likely to get funding. Nowadays it's evolved into something like the Global Command and Control System - GCCS - pronounced "geeks" which says a lot in a lot of ways. But I digress...) It was a computer workstation, HP I think, ran Unix as I recall, that had a color display of much higher resolution than your average home PC. Probably 1024x768 versus the more common 640x480. At any rate, it was a very pretty, very impressive thing. The product of COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf technology) and rapid prototyping. It was, as they say, "the shit."

There was also this tendency, though I doubt you'll find anyone today who will admit it, to believe everything that was on that beautiful color screen, simply because it was information being presented to us in a way that had never been presented to us before. It was all very high-tech, and did I mention it was in color? Of course, we had computer displays already, had had them for 30 years in fact. But they all came in monochrome, with vector graphics on round CRTs, and maybe a secondary 40 or 80 column text only black and white or green CRT. We were very familiar with those displays and the quality of the information they presented, which wasn't often good, but we knew how to wring the best information possible out of those systems and it was usually "good enough" to do the kinds of things we had to do. That came from decades of hard experience with those systems, and an intimate understanding of their characteristics and limitations of both the systems and their operators. JOTS, on the other hand, seemed like a gift from Prometheus. We were so dazzled that any thought of "garbage in = garbage out," quickly left our minds. How could something so expensive, so geeky, so much in color have anything to do with garbage? Garbage is smelly and ugly and comes in black and white vector graphics on a round CRT and we call it gridlock error. This, this was the shit.

It didn't take too long for the infatuation to wear off. Ships' positions were always off, to some degree, sometimes as much as an ocean. Of course, there were plenty of people who had already drunk the Kool-Aid, and life was difficult for them, and for the people who worked for them; but the rest of us became much less enamored with JOTS, as we developed a much more intimate appreciation for the scope of the problem JOTS was intended to help solve, and the many limitations it had as a solution. We learned, through experience, sometimes painful experience, how the system really worked, as opposed to how it was supposed to work. We learned how to improve it, and we did. But at the end of the day, it was, and its successors remain, a fallible system; and a determination of the "truth value" of the information it presents is something that must be made by a human being exercising judgment borne of knowledge and experience.

Reading about how weblogs, or the web, or Wikipedia are going to "change everything" reminds me of my experience with JOTS. We were infatuated because the system was much higher technology than we were used to getting up to that point. Government procurement not being known for its rapidity, although what it lacks in speed it often makes up in volume, in dollars chiefly. We knew we had a problem, and JOTS sure looked like the solution. And there was no shortage of PhDs and eggheads, and very impressive sounding white papers and briefings and articles in The Proceedings of the Naval Institute and academic papers from the Naval Postgraduate School and the War College, to lend an aura of authenticity and authority to the great and powerful JOTS. "And we've got the charts and graphs to prove it!" was a familiar refrain. You hear it even today, don't you? Power laws, anyone?

But at the end of the day, it was just a machine and all sensors have errors and all humans make errors, and machines and humans sometimes fail to perform up to our expectations, for reasons both mundane and nefarious.

There's always a new batch of Kool-Aid being made by someone looking to solve some problem and advance their place in the hierarchy. A new Promethean bring the light to a benighted humanity. In many ways, I think it's worse today than it was two decades ago. We've built more powerful tools, and our conceit seems to have an inexhaustible capacity to find faith in our creations, and to ignore everything we know about ourselves.

Just remember: Garbage In = Garbage Out, and don't be fooled by all the pretty lights and impressive credentials, and fancy words, even the hip new ones. Especially the hip new ones.

The truth remains a scarce commodity. Knowing it, to the extent it may be known, takes hard work and experience, often painful. Beware of those who think they can sell you an easy way to the truth. Or who purport to offer you a path to the truth with an ease and confidence that belies the lessons of hard experience.

Double Screen

A few weeks ago I indulged myself in a new Nintendo Double Screen handheld video game system. I figured I'd share a few of my impressions.

I guess I'll get right to the conclusion: It's great! It could be better, but it's definitely great.

Physically, it's big. Perhaps by design (as a constraint), when it is closed it is almost exactly the same size as the original GameBoy, seems to weigh about the same too. After hours of playing Advance Wars on the GameBoy SP, holding onto the Double Screen felt like work. But after using it for a few weeks now, I can say you get used to it and you don't even notice it eventually.

The screens are bright and clear, and the audio is remarkably good for such a small unit with tiny stereo speakers. Battery life, as might be expected, is significantly less than for the SP with only one screen. I think I got about five hours out of it playing Advance Wars DS.

I bought two games for it at first, although it will also play all GameBoy Advance games as well. Naturally, I bought Advance Wars DS for myself, and I bought WarioWare Touched! for Caitie to play when she is with me. I've played through the entire campaign on Advance Wars DS, and it's up to the usual high standards in the Advance Wars series. I'm not sure it makes as much use of the two screens as it could, and it seems like the developers were kind of feeling their way along in dealing with the two screens. I expect there will be another Advance Wars title for the DS where they explore the options presented by the two screens further. Also, the audio could be improved significantly. I'm sure people would expect the familiar sounds from the Advance Wars series, but the DS seems to be capable of much more. I always play with the sound turned all the way down because I find it more distracting than entertaining regardless of which platform.

Caitie liked WarioWare Touched! very much. She would always play it when it was the demo game in the store, so I thought she'd enjoy it at home. The screen has held up well, showing no wear from the stylus. I plan to look for some screen protectors I have laying around here somewhere and to try applying one of those to see if it affects game play at all. I rather expect it won't, and it'll protect the screen from inadvertent scratching.

The other day, Mario Kart DS came out and it has a WiFi network play option, so I thought I'd like to see how that works. It turns out it works pretty well. You can store up to three different network settings on the game card (or perhaps in some DS flash memory, I don't really know). It was pretty straightforward setting the DS up to use my home wireless router. I had to enter the DS's MAC address as an authorized address to my router, and I had to enter the network's SSID into the DS through an on-screen keyboard. If you use WEP, you'll have to deal with that as well. Once that was done, the DS saw the network after a brief negotiation, and it gives you the option to play against "Regional" opponents, or "Worldwide" ones. I tried regional first. After what felt like several minutes of watching a wheel spinning, it announced that there might not be enough players to get a game going. So I tried Worldwide. That too took several minutes, but eventually three other players populated the screen and we were "off to the races," so to speak. Caitie's been playing it this weekend, and she gives the game a thumbs-up.

I bought a used copy of Nanostray, a 2.5D shooter. It's basically a vertical-scrolling 2D shooter with some 3D elements added to the obstacles and targets. It's mindlessly entertaining, a good shooter with excellent graphics and sound. I can't say it makes innovative use of the two screens, and I think its use of the touchscreen to select different weapons actually gets in the way of game's "flow." But it's fun to play.

I also bought a used copy of GoldenEye Rogue Agent, a first-person shooter in the 007 series. Not especially well reviewed, but it wasn't expensive and I wanted to see what a first-person shooter would be like on this handheld. Haven't played it yet though.

Of course, the big title in the DS game library is the Nintendogs series. I played with the demo in the store, and it is remarkably well done. So well done, in fact, that I have no desire to own it, even just to admire its technical merits. I have real pets I have to look after, I have no desire to be responsible for virtual ones.

I like the DS because it preserves my investment in GBA (GameBoy Advance) games, breaks some new ground in the handheld game form factor, offers some good games for kids and adults, and is relatively inexpensive at $129.00 (compared to more than $200.00 for the Sony Playstation Portable). I have no real interest in the PSP as a handheld game device, and if I want to watch handheld video, I think I'll go with an iPod eventually. I don't think I'm there yet anyway.

So what's not to like about the DS? Well, it's not going to win any beauty contests, and it's definitely got a kind of cheap plastic vibe going on. That said, it has given me the impression that it's quite durable though. It's very rigid, and the hinge feels firm with about the right amount of resistance as you open it. It kind of snaps into a detent of some kind in the open and closed position, so it doesn't flop open or closed, but stays in the intended configuration. Still, you're not going to want to drop this on a hard surface. There's a wrist strap, so I'd say use it. Battery life could be better, and it is on the large side. You're not going to slip this into your pocket to bring with you into a boring meeting.

So if you have a gamer you're shopping for this Christmas, I'd say the Nintendo DS is probably worth taking a look at.

James Fallows on Mac Note-Taking Apps

Many of the usual suspects, including Tinderbox, get a plug in today's NY Times article on Mac "thinking tools" by James Fallows, who also reports that The Atlantic Monthly has just switched over to the Mac platform.

Through a Scanner, Darkly

VueScan rocks. I gave up on the Epson software when I started trying to scan my dad's old negatives. It kept wanting to "help" me, and ended up chopping off parts of the picture. I was able to get VueScan to see the Epson after killing the Epson software that was launched at login and unplugging the Canon. I also had to update to the latest version of VueScan.

I scanned 31 negatives and about a dozen other prints and papers that belong to him. I'm sure most of the negatives would have turned out better with someone more experienced using the scanner. The film would not exactly lie flat in the holder, so I'm sure the edges are more out of focus than they ought to be. I think he was using a Box Brownie of some kind. The negatives are pretty large, and what's kind of interesting is that they don't always seem to have the same proportions. Of course, none of the scans do because I cropped in VueScan before I did the final scans. Didn't always do that exactly right either. But where before we had about 31 negatives with no clear idea of who was being depicted, we now have 31 pretty decent black & white photos. I'll post a few examples later on.

Catie's been a little sick this weekend with a cold and sore throat. We watched Bruce Almighty last night, which is a pretty pleasant little flick. We were supposed to watch Evolution together yesterday afternoon, but she slept through the whole movie.

Yesterday's little meditation on social hygiene was inspired by Caitie's illness, the commercialization of Christmas and "viral marketing." I really think there's something to the idea, though I don't think it'll gain any traction in this competitive world. Only marketers would think making "viral" into a virtue was cool.

Social Hygiene

It's the cold and flu season, and we're reminded to wash our hands frequently to try to prevent contracting one of the many potential illnesses that seem to proliferate at this time of year. Hand washing is a form of hygiene, a practice that is conducive to maintaining good health and preventing disease.

There are laws that regulate the preparation of food for public consumption that relate to hygiene. Eating is essential to maintaining life. Nearly everyone eats, and we often do it as part of a social activity because it is more enjoyable that way. But we're also often at pains to observe good hygiene so that an enjoyable social activity does not later result in a private, painful one.

The practice of medicine relies on hygiene to try to ensure people get better when they go to the hospital, not worse. The germ theory of disease and the hygiene practices that accompanied it were significant advances in our ability to care for the ill.

All of which leads me to wonder about mental health and corresponding kinds of hygiene that might promote good mental health? If social activity is essential to good mental health, and I don't think there's any debate about that, then what hygiene standards should we observe in our social practices?

Elimination is a normal, essential bodily function. Everyone does it. But we've learned to do it in places removed from where we do other social activities, because elimination isn't exactly a fun social activity after about the age of five; and we observe certain hygiene practices in the process of elimination, if I may be forgiven, in order to preserve our physical health.

Commerce may be a normal, essential social function. Everyone engages in it. And, for the most part, we've learned to practice it in places removed from where we do other social activities, because commerce usually involves competition and seeking advantage, which aren't exactly fun social activities outside of an appropriate context, after about the age of five.

I'm being somewhat unreasonable here, but I think I'm making a point.

At this time of year, we often hear the familiar lament about the commercialization of Christmas. Commercialization being, I think, the extension of commerce by means of marketing.

Viruses and bacteria respect no boundaries. We have to engage in particular practices to prevent their spread, and they can proliferate wildly when many people are gathered together in a social setting of some kind, or even a commercial one. Perhaps I should say "public setting" to encompass both kinds.

Marketing, at least as I have been able to observe it, respects no boundaries. It is the goal of marketing to spread the practice of commerce to every setting where human beings gather in numbers greater than one.

I don't think we'll be able to rely on marketers to police themselves. It's against their nature. I think we'll have to identify a set of hygiene practices that promote mental health by trying to keep the strictly social from being contaminated by the commercial. We recognize this intuitively, to some extent, as reflected in expressions like, "Don't take it personally, it's just business."

To that end, I submit that the notion that "markets are conversations," promotes bad hygiene.

Thirty Nine Degrees

Pretty cold, if you ask me. But it's 23 degrees in Canastota! I may have