Author: Alan

I saw this at Doc’s page and boy was I ticked. Cloudy in the atmosphere here two nights ago while the layers higher up were doing a neon dance. Worse than the time I heard the triple play on TV from the kitchen. Others luckier in PEI the next night.

This is a good discussion of the phenomena of weblogs/PWPs, care of Rob1 (via right).

[I’ll have to think about this given the stats and relative adoption rates compared to ham radio.]

Later: I congratulate Rob1.

This is the best statement of where weblogs are today that I have read. It does not backaway from either the overriding hobby aspect as well as its placement on a continuum that reaches at least into the early 90’s as opposed to a new phenomena created by current players.

I am interested in the co-mingling of weblogs and open source and how idea sharing – especially outside of the realms of technology and science – can facilitate the expansion of the uncommoditized world. I remain unsure of the point of aggregation other than that we now can as I see them as a buffer to meaning and community rather than a tool for these. The noise is too great, the opportunity to receive too limited to go beyond superficiality.

I am suspicious of anything calling itself a “tipping point” as I have gone though too many “paradigm shifts” which were little more than a consultant creating a new word. Also, it is not structurally democratic external to itself, given the digital divide(s), however much participants believe themselves a new democractic thing – too much great man theory for that.

I am looking for the unified tool of RSS – not my interests but all interests indexed, an eBay of ideas where I can find any interest discussed in increatingly detailed sub-groups of further detail – a usenet without active participation drawing on content from feeds from open source platform blogs made available to everyone. Is that there yet? It is too much to ask for?

Later Later: The author, Andrew2, is now linked right.

 

There are 12 cicadas buzzing non-stop in my ears this morning. It was so loud, the air in the room shimmered and my pant legs flapped with the bass notes. It was great.

I bought tickets yesterday morning for me and Nate but when I got home this was on the email:

Hey dude;

Sorry… just got your message. No… I’m in halifax. But you are on the guest list plus one. Mike Nelson is the tour manager…find him if there is any problem. Tickets are in your name so pick them up anyway as they are likely better seats. also, backstage passes if you are in the mood to introduce yourself to the boys. The tour manager knows you might stop by. have fun!

Despite my hopefully short term loss of a broad range of frequencies, it was great being the kings of rows G, H and I – before the show kids (I mean kids) were hanging over chairs asking how we got the backstage passes. Rather than explain a long time ago I knew a Guy from a Library in Halifax and he and I both became lawyers, he representing Sloan, I a little web company called silverorange and one day I figured there might be something in an introduction…I said “we do Sloan’s web page”. Our coolness spread into portions of row J and was so intensely felt by one guy that he jumped into the row behind us and told us that he had seen Sloan four times so far this year, that he was in Kingston from U. of A. in Calgary for a conference and then told us a bunch of stuff using words I really didn’t recognize but they were generally variants of cool. He was a fan.

We went backstage before and after, got a rock hug from Chris, talked about ear plugs with the grey Dads of the band and resisted the temptation to grab a beer and sandwich. Chatted about how I watched some of them in earlier incarnations Kearney Lake Road and Blackpool and felt like a dweeb later for being the needy guy but then not so bad as the Chris Murphy chickenburger vintage hoodie sparked a discussion of good stuff that included my 60’s St. Pats High sweatshirt. The show was loud, loud, loud in line with the volume of the new records, Action Pact. Lots of high kicks, roadie exchanges of guitars each of I wanted to lick (the guitars not the roadies) and a ten foot-high flashing strobing arc of tube lighting behind them the width of the stage that confirmed I am not epileptic. “Losing California” was very good. They switched instruments around for “Sensory Deprivation” with Chris on drums, Jay on bass which got very loose. They started to play with us making us shout “hey” on the back of a bo-diddly beat between songs and later all crouch down quiet in our seats until a certain point in the song when we all had to jump up at the perfect rock moment. It was a big loud sing-song.

I have pictures from Nate but I guess he doesn’t know the internet so well as he sent them all as 1,000 kb files which I have to figure out how to reduce. I guess he figured I wanted my signed forearm printed out as a poster – which I might yet do, now that I tihnk about it. Photos, then, later.

Once or twice before – over the six months of this blog – I have checked my referral logs and found some bot was looking at every link on my front page. Tonight the bot was this one.   I wonder what’s in their sphere of autonomy. I wonder anyone reads this after the scan and is it:

person: ming mao
nic-hdl: MM134-AP
e-mail: jinjin@cendata.net
address: Floor #3, Building A, ZhongGuanCun Sci-Tech
address: Development Mansion, South ZhongGuanCun Street
address: HaiDian district, Beijing 100081,China

Probably just the ISP guy.  Gam bey, Ming Mao.

Do you care if it is ever put behind him?  Funny thing for the CBC to worry enough about to include in the story. Will the girls be able to?

Ian’s meds must be in perfect harmony at the moment because his reaction to
Northern Maine and New Brunswick
mid-week, mid-autumn are entirely appropriate. Hope he bucks up as the big
event of the Canadian fall is comin’ this weekend – changing the clocks.

Home sick, blowing nose, changing diaper, I’ve been looking a lot at one screen or another and listening to speakers. Watched West Wing last night. Read this about Rumsfeld and a memo with questions about the war on terror today. [Today is important because CNN said this afternoon that it is actually the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the war on terror – I think it being the anniversary of the bombing in Lebanon.] So, unaware of the duration myself, it is about time that some questioning like this is taking place:

“Are we winning or losing the global war on terror?” That’s the key question that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asks in an uncharacteristically gloomy memo he recently sent to his closest Pentagon advisers. And the answer, it seems, is far from clear. In the memo, which appeared in yesterday’s (22 October) issue of “USA Today,” Rumsfeld asks top aides like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz –- who is seen as a chief architect of the Iraq policy — to think of new ways to fight the war on terror. He says Washington will eventually win its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that it will be a “long, hard slog.” But Rumsfeld also appears to suggest — for the first time – that the United States may be fighting its war on terrorism in the wrong way, by focusing too much on military operations and not enough on diplomatic efforts and other forms of pressure. He also wonders if the Pentagon can be reshaped fast enough to meet the terrorist threat. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Rumsfeld appears to have had an “epiphany,” adding that while Rumsfeld may not yet have shifted policy, the memo is “the first bit of introspection that I’ve even whiffed coming out of the Defense Department.”

You would want to think that these are questions being asked before during and after any big decisions made by government. Usually they are, usually most decsions are made in good faith with best information…but why is so difficult seeing it to be done that way in public? Is that why West Wing is so popular in that it provides a comforting template for layering on the news of the day? Sort of the other end of the humanization of the decision process as that Tim Horton’s commercial as the Canadian navy in the Gulf getting its double-double. We want to know humans are involved.

Another intersting thing is the source of my quotation, Radio Free Europe, one of the few real US state / state-ish news agencies, set up to fight the commies with a form of the truth via shortwave transmissions, now hanging on being just a moderate reliable news source so Swiss and Finns who speak English will know.

Surely just someone with the same name.

I came across this and a bunch of other IDs through time a while ago. I find them oddly compelling as a little pictoral history of my head and its hair.

My pal and fellow Kingsman, crow and sometimes home brewer is the host of CBC North’s Whitehorse’s morning radio show. I am listening to it, three or four time zones east, on realaudio.

Odd to hear his voice not shouting “pass the ball, you goal-sucking goof”…or “where’s the opener”…

I think of my friend Steven every time I look at The New York Times Weather Report – the paper version that is. That is because he is a big fan of the graphical representation of information [his love for this is pure]; and the Weather Report, found today on D8, the back of the sports section, contains more information on 3/4s of a newspaper page than any other I can think of.

There are 10 graphs, 7 tables, much text and 3 maps setting out, among other things, the state of the fall foliage peak throughout the Northeast US; the estimated normal NYC reservior level; the temperature tomorrow in Lima Peru; the highs and lows of humidity in Cental Park; the national departure of temperature from the norm; the high tides at Shinnecock Inlet; the setting and rise of Venus; the heating degree days so far this month; the range of low temperature forecast next Friday; the hour-by-hour temperature for the 24 hours preceding 4 pm the day before; the average daily departure from normal temperature this month and year; air pressure, high and low; phases of the moon; actual precipitation for the last 30 days in inches; trends of temperature and precipitation for the last 10, 30, 90 and 365 days; where the heat in Tuscon will be moving in from; the wind in knots from Montauk Point to Sandy Hook; and a daily Highlight which today is a map with graph and text explaining the exceptional national US trends in temperature [northern Maine was 2 to 3 degrees F warmer than normal last week]. Distinct from the Highlight is the Focus which today states under the title “Western Warmth”:

Daily high-temperature records were set last weekend at many spots from Rockies to the Plains. On Sunday, Bismarck, N.D., reached 89 degrees, the warmest day recorded there so late in the autumn. Strong, nearly stationary high pressure extending to 30,000 feet over the interior West has been diverting storms and promoting the unusual warmth. But the end of autumn warm spell is coming. During the next week, a series of potent disturbances will gradually erode the high pressure zone. By the end of the month, cold weather and mountain snow will envelop the West.

Simple lovely physical writing.

The corresponding webpage has none of the Times standard cool taupe, sage, sand and aqua tones or careful selection of fonts, tightly packed but each distinct – all separated using only two thin lines. Beautiful meteorology prepared by Pennsylvania State University and presented by a Times staff of unknown numbers every day of the year. Sadly, the lower right 1/8 of D8, the Information and Services Directory, does not, among its 27 telephone numbers and 26 email addresses, have one to contact and thank the people who give us the Weather Report.

[More about graphs you will want to hold close and tight here.]