"Conference of the Birds" show on WNUR-FM
Joe Germuska hosts "Conference of the Birds", a weekly radio show on WNUR-FM. He publishes show playlists so that you can see what you are getting into.
Here's the link to the June 29, 2010 program in its entirety, with a playlist plus a recording of the show. The download is 146 megabytes. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
discardia for midsummer 2010: paperback swap
The challenge is to get rid of some set of books that have accumulated, while simultaneously fulfilling the need to always have some kind of new reading in the house. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
Pipeline crossing, Homer Road between Stuart Lake and B Dr [Flickr]
Edward Vielmetti posted a photo: Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
Enbridge Line 6B crossing 12 Mile Road between D Dr S and E Dr S in Ceresco, MI [Flickr]
Edward Vielmetti posted a photo: Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
"6" marks the pipeline [Flickr]
Edward Vielmetti posted a photo: Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
"Booms help to contain oil where Talmadge Creek joins the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, 7-27-2010", State of Michigan [Flickr]
Edward Vielmetti posted a photo: Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
Buckeye Pipeline Company Terminal, Marshall, MI [Flickr]
Edward Vielmetti posted a photo: Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
Practicing questions with Aardvark
Aardvark is vark.com - as of February 2010 they are owned by the Google. It's part of a genre of question asking sites where the answer comes back partly from "your network" and partly from the random parts of the net that you don't know very much about. If you think you have an interesting question, you can ask it on Aardvark and see what you get. My practice efforts have been pretty dismal, but I might be asking for things outside of what it's capable of doing. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:18pm
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. Piet Hein. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:19am
Personal Kanban from Jim Benson and Modus Cooperandi
I'm reading PersonalKanban.com. There are at the simplest only two rules:
1. Visualize your work
2. Limit your work-in-progress
to which is added a third, "prioritize". The rest is commentary.
Jim is good at commentary, so the blog and the rest of the effort is well worth reading. Here's Personal Kanban 101 to start.
Personal Kanban 101 Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Yesterday, 7:19am
spectral overseers as guides to good online behavior
James Poulos in a comment on Ricochet on the role of editors:
Writers now have competing pressures -- to be witty, quick, ironic, noticeable, flip, to dispatch every clay pigeon tossed up by a culture pandemic with pigeons; but also to self-edit, to self-moderate, to be reticent at the right time, to pussyfoot expertly, to pick battles, to avoid perils, to besmirch rarely, to duck blame, to satisfy spectral overseers. This is a serious pickle, is it not? And yet it now appears to be the cost of doing business. Possibly, this is the internet imitating life.
I loved the "satisfy spectral overseers" bit. Where did that come from? Who gets that description?
Knute Rockne, in a H.W. Wilson Company 1942 biography:
No one will ever tackle the job of football coach at the University of Notre... Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Sep 1, 7:18pm
Nathan Schneider defends the memory theater
An essay published in Open Letters Monthly.
What concerns me about the literary apocalypse that everybody now expects—the at least partial elimination of paper books in favor of digital alternatives—is not chiefly the books themselves, but the bookshelf. My fear is for the eclectic, personal collections that we bookish people assemble over the course of our lives, as well as for their grander, public step-siblings. I fear for our memory theaters.
Any essay of lamentation about the end of books and the glory of human memory has to include some touchstones. Frances Yates is that touchstone here:
One of the books that I used to habitually pick up from my college library, and which, recently, I finally bought used, is Frances Yates’s classic The Art of Memory. First published in 1966, it... Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Sep 1, 7:18pm
Wild Badgers to be Culled in England
There will be a wild badger cull in England. Read more...
DARnet, Sep 1, 7:19am
assisted synesthesia as augmented reality
A comment I wrote on Ethan Hein's account of color-coding sequencer tracks:
When you say “color coding improved your ears”, the first thing that comes to mind is that you are doing some kind of machine-assisted synesthesia. very cool, that.
another enticing pice from oblong industries
It's true that one of the elements is a blue ball that bounces in time to the music and touches down on the notes that are playing just then. Also true: a ball like that can never be entirely serious, but it can be entirely effective. What works is assisted synaesthesia, making sound seem like sight and looking seem like hearing. The time in which music happens is turned into the space of the animated score.
And then pretty... Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Sep 1, 7:19am
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm, Wallace Stevens
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Aug 31, 7:19am
If Not Diane Abbott, Who?
Diane Abbot entered the Labour Party leadership contest live on radio 4 this morning. Taking the Today programme interviewer completely by surprise she said “I’m going to run”. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 30, 7:18pm
Weather Photography Competition
I've just heard about the British weather photographer of the year competition and decided to enter myself. This provided me with a nice opportunity to look back through my photographs of the summer on Flickr to see if I could find something appropriate. I browsed through Read more...
DARnet, Aug 29, 7:17pm
New Routemaster Bus for London
The design for a new bus for London, heavily inspired by the Londoners’ favourite routemaster bus has been unveiled amongst controversy. The cost to Boris Johnson’s mayor office is over £7 million just for the design and first five buses, while design experts have criticised the snazzy curvy appearance of the new bus for ‘trying too hard’. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 29, 7:19am
Where will the freeway go?
Hiding in municipal archives across the county are maps of where the freeways will go. Some of them got built, some of them didn't. Those documents will date from after the Second World War, and lots of them will be 1950s and 1960s artifacts.
Some of the history will show up in land records; this account from Genoa Township looks typical
The land was farmed from 1950 until 1962 when the Michigan State Highway came through and condemned eight different parcels in the township to construct Interstate 96. The State Highway Department gave the homesteaders 30 days to get out of their way. The Herbst family received $17,500 for their condemned 43.9 acres, which was then cut in half on a 45° angle.
Before the land was suddenly condemned, there must have been maps, drawing, photos, studies. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Aug 29, 7:19am
Podcast Live
Following on from the Podcast idea a few weeks back I promised to post again telling you how to subscribe in iTunes or get the podcast automatically delivered to the podcast player of your choice. We’ve had four podcast prototypes broadcast and published already and the show is ready to go live on Tuesday July 6th, at 7.00pm UK time so this is quite short notice for anybody who didn’t manage to keep up over at ustream Read more...
DARnet, Aug 26, 7:20am
St George’s Day
St Georges’s Day falls on April 23rd each year and has been quietly celebrated, or perhaps largely ignored in England since the 18th century. Before that it was a major feast day and national holiday dating back to 15thC. It is however, England’s national day since St George holds the position of the patron saint of England. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 25, 7:18pm
Podcast
Podcast
Podcast Idea
OK, I woke up on Wednesday morning with an idea in my head that just seemed to be a natural way forward for the music side of things. A podcast.
It’s not a big stretch really, but for some reason hadn’t occurred to me before. I’ve been doing a weekly live music broadcast on Ustream.tv since July 2009, nearly a year ago, and sometimes a few people login and say hello, others just lurk, and it’s very much a live, ephemeral event. Some of the songs I perform I also record using the ustream system, and... Read more...
DARnet, Aug 23, 7:19am
Ash Grounds Planes, Rest Of World Cut Off
The rest of the world remains isolated today as the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull eruption continues to ground nearly all flights in or out of UK airports for a third day. People are only just starting to understand the implications of this drastic shut down for the airline industries and for the wider economy, and to think twice about how reliant so many human activities have become on air freight and passenger services. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 22, 7:17pm
All Hands Active, downtown Ann Arbor hacker space
All Hands Active is a downtown Ann Arbor hacker space. Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Aug 22, 7:17am
Free UK Domain with Free Hosting
A free .co.uk domain name with free web hosting and website building tools
Does that sound too good to be true?
The site is called “Getting British Business Online” and is run by a collaboration between Enterprise UK, Google, BT and e-skills UK, with the support of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
So it’s like the British Government giving away free websites to local businesses, but paid for by BT and Google. All you need is an address in the UK and a mobile phone and they register a .co.uk domain name for you and hook it up with Google sites. Then it’s yours for free for two years to promote your business, and after that you can renew the domain through BT or possibly transfer it... Read more...
DARnet, Aug 21, 7:17am
How to pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull
Airports all over the UK have been closed by a volcanic ash cloud spreading from Iceland where a volcano has erupted. The fragments in the ash cloud are said to represent a serious threat to airline engines, so the closures however inconvenient, are on safety grounds, starting with Scotland and now affecting London’s Heathrow Airport as well. But how do you pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull? ( also spelt Eyjafjallajökull and Eyjafjallajokull)
Thanks to Louise Joly for providing the link to a sound file which answers the pronunciation question:
Eyjafjallajökull.ogg
Click here to view the embedded video.
( original sound recording by Read more...
DARnet, Aug 20, 7:17pm
I Declare Google Reader Bankruptcy
I’ve just gone and done it, I’ve declared Google Reader bankruptcy. That means not only that I’ve marked hundreds of unread items as read (I do that regularly anyway) but that I’ve unsubscribed from everything and deleted all tags and folders as well. Here’s the screenshot to prove it: Read more...
DARnet, Aug 20, 7:18am
Ten More Things to do in London on Bank Holidays
Things to do in London August Bank Holiday Weekend
Things to do in London
With another Bank Holiday coming up and the weather looking typical for August, I thought I’d compile another inspiring ten things to do in London. Some are obvious but worthwhile, while others are more unusual things to do in London that you might not know about and some are relatively topic so check the dates before you make detailed plans. Here’s... Read more...
DARnet, Aug 19, 7:19pm
Portugal Positivo
The biggest problem Portugal has - she said grandly - is that people don't know how to tell a good story about themselves. Not unless it's about football, food or male virility. Then when I was looking for Drupal sites, or evidence of a Drupal community in Portugal, I discovered "Portugal Positivo". Great idea!This site is doing just that - looking and telling the positive stories about Portugal. Sign me up, Scottie!Tags: Portugal, DrupalPortugal Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 19, 7:19pm
No Weekend Engineering Works
Such is the routine nature of weekend engineering works ruining any prospect of going out around London on the public transport system that when they have a rare weekend without any engineering works on this particular line, National Express to Liverpool Street Station, they need to make a poster about it in order to remind people that there might just be some transport available. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 18, 7:18pm
Adrian Nation Plays Romford
The good news today is that Adrian Nation has been confirmed to play Romford, The Golden Lion, with myself, Andy Roberts as support. So I’m really excited by this, having seen Adrian play a few blinding songs a short while back when he visited Havering Folk Club briefly. It will be great to have the chance to watch him play a complete set to see the full range of what he can do with that amazing acoustic guitar technique. And I have the great privilege of getting to play an opening set of my own on the night, so I can start worrying about my setlist already! Read more...
DARnet, Aug 17, 7:17pm
How do you organise your stories?
I didn't realise it at the time but when we started this blog back in 2004 we were creating a type of story bank where we could go back and retrieve great stories to tell. Recently we have made this more accessible with Story Finder. We have an even more sophisticated system we use internally that allows us to manage the many stories we collect with our clients. Read more...
Anecdote, Aug 16, 11:35pm
Putting stories to work is more than storytelling
Telling, telling, telling ... So many in the field of story work focus on storytelling. Sure, telling a good story at the right time has impact. But storytelling represents a mere fraction of what can be done with business stories. Read more...
Anecdote, Aug 16, 3:33am
Gordon Brown Never a Frown
Gordon Brown
Never a Frown
Click here to view the embedded video.
It being the day before a general election, there are only a few hours left to sing this one I suppose.
Or is there?
Some people believe the last few hours day and night can make all the difference
Hence lunch is for wimps, and sleep is for losers.
Crazies.
Recorded 4th May 2010 in London as part of Andy Roberts music broadcast every Tuesday evening at 7.00pm on Ustream.tv
After The Stranglers Golden Brown Read more...
DARnet, Aug 15, 7:18am
Giant Vampire Cricket Bites Man
Sitting up late chatting with an old friend last week I saw a gigantic locust-like insect climbing up the kitchen wall. It was bright shiny green, about 10cm long and heading for the breakfast cereals. We decided it belonged outdoors so I put one hand over it and cupped it with the other and walked towards the door with the giant green cricket safely trapped. Then it bit me, so I dropped it with the shock. I wasn’t expecting a harmless cricket to bite, although this was like no cricket I’d ever seen before. Gigantic, enormous and brightly coloured it looked like a tropical specimen or else some new form of hybrid mutant vampire cricket. We escorted it to the outdoor world eventually but it did try to get back in again once or twice. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 14, 7:17pm
Harriet Harman Next UK Leader
OK, here’s my prediction for the outcome of the general election in the United Kingdom, just for fun. Read more...
DARnet, Aug 14, 7:17am
London Overground Dalston to New Cross
A new section of the London Overground has opened in a limited way, weeks ahead of schedule says TFL Read more...
DARnet, Aug 14, 7:17am
The think ahead buffer
How far in the future do you need to be thinking to make sense of the world? Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Aug 14, 7:17am
Nattering nabobs of negativism
Spiro Agnew's term of rebuke for the Democratic party in the 1970 elections.
The obits from September 1996 have the most recent coverage.
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Remembering Agnew
SPIRO AGNEW: In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
Time Magazine, 1996: Naysayer to the Nattering Nabobs
In a 1969 speech against war protesters, he said, "A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." "In the United States today," Agnew told a 1970 audience in San Diego, "we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism." He... Read more...
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, Aug 14, 7:17am
Healing as part of learning
Last week I participated in a workshop organised by the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton: "Knowledge, Learning and Change in International Development".It was one of those events where I really felt like I learned a lot. Learning as in engaging with people and language in ways that will change my practice.A number of my conversations were around the practicalities and politics of running workshops where community, process and trust are the drivers for learning, rather than expertise and transmission of knowledge. These workshops have messy methods where the overlaps between disciplines, researchers, practioners, consultants and organisational workers are a ubiquitous part of the whole event. Cycles of process and product, Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 13, 7:17pm
Still thinking of feed mixers
Still on the conversation of feed mixers I got a suggestion from Monica of B2B who points me to feedblender.com Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 13, 7:17pm
Time out
I organised everything so that I wouldn't log on to the computer this weekend. These two/ three days were going to be the first time in years that I spent more than 24 hours away from my keyboard.I didn't manage it, but ... the time was very important. The psychological business of being disconnected was important. Preparing to be disconnected was also important. Disconnected, that is, with all my tasks and feelings of accountability to online work partners, friends and truly special people.First, I mostly slept. I slept at least 24 in 48 hours. Then, I spent time just doing the things I like to do on the computer. A bit like basic gardening. Weeding, getting rid of the bicho (bugs), enjoying the sun on your back as you do it, planting some seeds, watering .... and doing absolutely nothing ... even if it was doing nothing on the computer!I managed, somehow, to let go of all the things that still need to be done. It was helped... Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 13, 7:17pm
Does this count as spam?
Last year I went to the demonstration of an e-learning system being developed by Universidade Piaget. To get into the system a temporary account was set up with my name and email address. Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 13, 7:17pm
Looking for the right RSS mixer
This is a bit of a geeky post. And I realise that there are not many people in my universe who know what the hell I'm going on about. But I guess that's the advantage of saying it on a blog ... there is someone out there! Read more...
Em duas línguas, Aug 13, 7:17pm