Changelog

Got back from seeing Herbie Hancock at Duke. Good show, though a tad long considering how tired I was. Must finish presentation for tomorrow, then off to bed…

First you could buy movie tickets via the web and pick them up at the theater. Then you could print the tickets and bring them with you. Now you can buy concert tickets on your phone. Even cooler is that you receive the ticket as an image (or text for older phones) via SMS. The image has a barcode that can be scanned at the gate (or a unique ID for text messages).

If anyone wants to make “m-commerce” work, they need to focus on the kind of thing people buy on short notice. The ability to look up movie times, then buy tickets form my phone actually makes me want to use the stupid browser my phone has. Anything that lets me find a movie on short notice then buy the tickets without waiting in line is something I wholly support.

update: Forgot to mention that I was talking about cell phones…

Catching up on recent events…

Why do we always leave so early?

There is something inherently wrong in getting up at 6:30am to leave on a vacation. Particularly when the first thing you do is go to class. Erica and I had decided to take another trip up the East Coast over UNC’s Fall Break. The goal was to find a few samples for Erica and see some friends (and fall colors) along the way.

In order to get as many days of travel into the break as possible, we were leaving right after my Information Retrieval class on Wednesday. As it happens this class is at 8:00am in the freaking morning. Needless to say we were on the road bright and early following US 501 up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Blue Orange Ridge Parkway

The colors along the parkway were just passed their peak, but that didn’t mean they had lost much of their color. The road was lined with bright reds, yellows, and oranges as we made our way north. After a quick lunch at the James River Visitor Center we made a quick stop at the Lower Otter Creek we followed the parkway up to I-64. We headed north on I-81 with a brief stop for dinner near Shenandoah National Park.

We spent the night at the worst hotel in Pennsylvania just off I-81. All things being equal the strange smell, poor sound proofing and general dereliction of the place should will makes us reconsider always going to the cheapest hotel we can find.

On to Connecticut

Day two took us through rural Pennsylvania as we continued our way north. We found several populations for Erica near a National Guard training facility along with a decent size pile of trash strewn about the roadside. We stopped a few more times before heading up to the Delaware River where we realized that tromping through the brush during hunting season wasn’t such a bright idea. Bright orange vests have been added to the packing list for our next trip.

After the Delaware River we crossed New York into Connecticut and met up with a friend of Erica’s from high school. We spent the night quite enjoyably in downtown New Haven (mostly at Koffee Too?) talking about life and grad school.

I have to say that New Haven didn’t impress me that much in the short time we were there. Yale and downtown were nice, but the rest of the city felt much different. From what we were told, a lot of Yale money goes into keeping those areas around campus looking good, but surrounding areas become much grittier very quickly as you move outwards from downtown.

The icy hand of Medford

We quickly found more samples for Erica even before we had really left New Haven, finding some more plants in Shelton, CT. The rest of the day proved less fruitful as we explored the areas in and around I-84. We hit a lot of traffic as we got into Hartford and again as we got into Boston, making us pretty late to meet friends in Medford, MA. It didn’t help that the driver side window (mine) got stuck when we stopped to pay a toll in Boston and we had to drive the last few miles with a nice icy breeze to keep us company.

I think it goes without saying that we were pretty cranky by the time we actually got to Medford. Fortunately we were staying with a friend from college who is now at MIT and his fiance. We had nice dinner of Brazilian takeout and had a great time playing Clue.

Ver-mountain man

We took off from Medford early on Saturday and finally reached the apex of our trip in Norwich, VT. We met up with a friend of Erica’s from CU who took us up to the Appalachian Trail to look for some more plants.

As we drove into town Erica told me that her friend looked “like a mountain man” and that we were to meet at Dan & Whit’s Grocery Store. Sure enough, I saw him right as we pulled into the parking lot. He was a fantastic guide as we tromped through the forest near town. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the Norwich Inn before we had to get back in the car to head back to Boston.

We spent the last night of our trip at Olin College hanging out with Erica’s sister and her roommate. We finally got to see some more of Wellesley and Needham, MA. This included a very tasty Thai restaurant in downtown Wellesley.

I still feel pangs of jealousy when I go and visit Olin. The classes seem more interesting than the ones I took, the projects look more impressive, and the dorms are definitely bigger. I don’t know if I could have handled a school with 150 people (as of this year) though.

Back home

Imagine driving from Boston to Durham in one day. Not something I recommend. So why have I done it twice now?

If you’ve ever read Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music, did you notice Imp’s name change? He was “Imp y Celyn” which translates as “small shoot of holly.” Then he changes his first name to “Buddy” (as in the bud of a plant). Doesn’t this make him “Buddy y Celyn” aka “Buddy of the holly”?

So how come the SILS library website doesn’t work in anything but IE?

Erica and I spent Fall Break cruising the east coast for tree parasites and visiting friends and family, so the world has come crashing down. I promise a good story and photos Real Soon Now™. Right after I finish updating the site templates…

I am currently taking (and enjoying) a course in Virtual Communities in which we are reading Jennifer Preece’s Online Communities. Preece’s book is enjoyable (if dated in parts), but there a few things that really bug me about the chapter on interpersonal communication. The chapter has a nice introduction to the social science behind interpersonal communications, and mentions prominently the finding that visual communications (aka high-bandwidth) are superior to textual (aka low-bandwidth) communications. Noted are the difficulties in establishing common ground and the effect of reduced social cues on “presence.” I suspect that few would argue with these statements. However, many (myself included) would note that low-bandwidth communications also have distinct advantages.

1. Easier to archive and review
2. It is easier to come and go from an interesting discussion thread than from a conversation
3. Conversation can extend over a much greater length of time
4. Much easier to include secondary material into the discussion

Many of these issues have been covered in the short section “Common Ground and Different Media,” but I would think that in a book on online communities, more time would be given to exploring the benefits and possibilities of the modes of conversation available rather than lamenting the absence of visual communications.

Now, should a discussion of the sort I just described occur later in the book I will immediately delete this post and deny all knowledge of its existence.

I present weblog style #8 for your approval. Let me know if you like it or if I should be banned from ever touching CSS again.

I haven’t finished the template for the individual pages, so those will be coming later. Also, changes will be made as I tweak the layout.

And yes, that is a sidebar over there on the left. I promise not to abuse it… Much.

Update: I tweaked the color a bit but forgot to change the star image to match… Anyways, I think I’ll keep this for now and work on updating the individual pages.

*Yet Another New Design

The Cubs were up 3 to 1. I’m really starting to hate the Marlins.

Sweet Jeebus the iPod has sweet ads! Is there any doubt as to why this company is cool?

Seriously though, what other tech company pays this much attention to customer experience? From the OS (check out the Panther box) to the hardware Apple puts in the extra effort to make things “pleasant.”

Of course, using OSX for any length of time drives me up the wall… But I’ve always hated the global menu bar.

I just have a hard time getting excited about my Acer with XP. Especially when the TV-Out won’t work.

Looks like Mitch is enjoying himself in Mexico…

Justin notes that he was the only 2nd year SILS person at the sayonara to summer/aloha autumn party Marisa, Larissa, et al sponsored. I personally think mingling amongst the masses takes time… I know I wouldn’t know as many 2nd year SILS people as I do if I hadn’t taken Virtual Communities this semester or attended the Tarheel Bloggers meeting last month. Happy Hour is a good star towards encouraging intermingling, but I think more effort has to be made at such events to avoid having the attendees split into groups by year. Personally, I would love it if we made everyone introduce themselves at each Happy Hour since I’ve usually forgotten everyone’s name since the last one.

In the spririt of having everything in the right place, links have been allocated their own page thanks to the exclude plugin. Should I ever figure out why the config plugin for Blosxom doesn’t work, the link page will get a tiny little redesign.

Joi Ito and Jason Kottke on Steven Johnson’s Mob Spots.

This is what happens when Smart Mobs get into politics.

Note to self: Proofread your emails before sending them out on class mailing lists.

I used to have a link blog. When I stopped updating my old blog I stopped updating the link blog. Instead I bookmarked those links. Now I have about 10,000 bookmarks. Damn.

I want to bring back the link blog. But when I created this layout, I promised myself I would never add any more columns, boxes, etc. than were absolutely necessary. That’s what made working with my old site so annoying. So where do I put the links? At the top of the page, before my regular entries? Or on a separate page? Or do I cave and add a sidebar?

• Once Upon a Time in Mexico
• Roast Pork with Ecru Sauce, Root Vegetable Puree
• Images of Isabel
• Cory Doctorow
• Quicksilver!

So UNC made the great decision to close school today at 2:00pm. That’s right — 2:00pm. After everyone got to school and it started raining.

The bus I take back to Duke was an hour late since a fallen tree was blocking Franklin Street. So I spent an hour waiting in the rain and wind (since the buildings nearby were all closed).

Too bad they closed the SILS library, or I could have stayed, done work and been dry.

I feel a need to bend to the meme-of-the-day and mention the imminent arrival of Hurricane Irene Isabel. Now, it appears that Irene Isabel will have spent much of her energy in the Atlantic by the time she makes landfall (I think she’s at category 2 at the moment). This is doesn’t do much to ease my anticipation.

In Colorado big storms just happen. Well, they don’t “just” happen. A big storm is hard to miss. But a Colorado snow storm might drop 4 inches, 4 feet, or nothing at all. I lost track of the number of storms that never materialized, and never got over walking outside to discover that small flurries had turned into tall drifts.

But hurricanes are a lot bigger than snow storms. They’re a lot easier to track and measure. This means that forecasts have been predicting the impact of Irene down to the hour. In Colorado I thought it was impressive when a storm arrived the day it was forecast to. Needless to say, its a different experience to be told that a hurricane should pass your way sometime around 2:00pm on Thursday.

See also: National Hurricane Center.

More Irene Isabel commentary: Trish, Jean, Jason, Justin, Sam.

What I love most about Blosxom is that nearly every complaint I’ve ever had has been addressed either in the code itself, or with a plugin. I now have static rendering, breadcrumbs, comments, etc.

And now wiki-like editing! The plugin is a bit buggy at the moment, but hopefully things will get cleaned up soon…