Semi-random notes. Not fully baked...

If we all want something better than what we have/had for our children, this is akin to unrestricted growth. At some point, we need to plateau (or descend again, as population continues to increase...) - 1% higher ed enrolment in the US in the 1800s, up to nearly everyone attending some form of higher ed now...

"Professionalization" of occupations - formation of boards and bureaucracies to determine who is "qualified" to practice an occupation - may be a nice segue from straight institution-granted accreditation. Guilds? Apprenticeships? How do these concepts adapt from the trades to more "white collar" academic subjects?

Quick notes on the introduction to Anya Kamenetz's DIY-U. I'll post more as I work through it.

I met Anya at Open Education 2009, while she was researching the book, and I'm curious to see where she took the stuff she was asking attendees about.

I'm reading the book through Kindle for iPhone, so I have no idea what page these notes apply to. YMMV. Also, the Kindle for Mac app is a steaming pile of donkey turd. I'll be holding off buying any more ebooks until I see what the iBooks thing looks like. I'm guessing it will suck much, much less than what I've seen of Kindle so far...

A discussion broke out on the twittertubes and spilled over onto a couple of blogs, about the nature of branding etc... Rather than trying to pull that all together (read Luke's take on it), I just wanted to dump my thoughts on the subject in >140chars.

I was on a panel at the Making Sense of Social Media conference last month, where I shared my recent experience with being googled by a journalist and shoe-horned into the "raving opinionated blogger" slot in a story he was putting together. Someone else on the panel mentioned that I had built up a robust brand, through my blogging and photos, and that personal branding was what made these things possible.

I took the long route home, heading down to the river, then climbing my way back up. It adds a little more to the elevation change over the ride, but packs a bunch of it into the last few KM, making for much steeper climbing than my normal route. Great workout, and it's on the ride home. Here's a quick video shot during the ride (won't work in RSS, of course...)

Barbara Ganley just asked on Twitter what sites I follow on photography. I fired up FeverËš and exported an OPML file of my photography feeds.

I subscribe to a whole bunch of feeds. Some on the technical side of photography, some on the editorial side, some on the artistic. If you know of a great feed that's not here, please let me know!

Here's a Grazr widget of the feeds: (probably won't work in RSS, but should work on the blog...)

I've had epilepsy since I was a child. I think I was around 3 when it started. Not very often, but about once every year or so. Not often enough to be a real problem, but often enough to loom over me and get in the way. I didn't get a driver's license until I was 32, just prior to my son's birth.

I hadn't had a seizure (confirmed as a genuine seizure, anyway) since my first year as an undergrad - back in 1987. It's been a long, long time.

I saw this article linked from a comment on Bryan Alexander's blog. This part jumped out at me:

e360: I understand that the Dome C record shows very clearly that we've got more CO2 in our atmosphere now than at any time in 800,000 years.

Mosley-Thompson: Oh yeah. Very clearly. If you look back over the eight glacial/interglacial cycles, you essentially see that CO2 never rises above 300 parts per million and we're at about 389 now. Methane never rises above about 800 parts per billion, and I think we're at about 1,700 parts per billion. So we're clearly outside the range of natural variability. I personally think that graph simply showing the natural fluctuations in those two important greenhouse gases, over almost a million years of Earth history — and then you see the two dots [today] that are so much higher than anything that we see in that near-million history — tells us very clearly that we have a serious problem.

Lots of insanely smart, funny, interesting people at Northern Voice. The conference was just gravy. Also, I got to think through some of my plans with these insanely smart, funny and interesting people, and think I've got a much better handle on both my MSc research proposal, and what I need to do on campus as part of my Day Jobâ„¢.

Thursday: Online Community Enthusiasts - put on by BCCampus/SCOPE - an all-day workshop on facilitating/fostering/participating in online communities

Dave Cormier created a masterpiece work of art to document one of the lesser known sides of Northern Voice - that a small percentage of attendees seem to have the tendency to check in with The Internet from handheld devices. I was glad to provide the anthropological fodder for this deeply compelling piece. Thank Xenu, it's only 6 seconds long...

Fun workshop so far. Lots of stuff to think about. Nancy White led a great discussion on communities, and communities of practice. And the day is only half over...

This also works for Google, as well as any mainstream media outlet.

We are not their customers. We are the product they sell to others.

Not purely by temperature - I've ridden in -30ËšC weather and not been cold. This was +2ËšC, and I was definitely the coldest I've ever been in my entire life.

A friend and I went for a ride out to Big Hill Springs and back. He's training for an Iron Man, and I'm training for the Ride to Conquer Cancer. We figured it'd be a good chance to put some km on the legs for an actual ride. The forecasts were saying likely snow overnight, so we thought we'd go for an afternoon ride. We made our way out from Calgary to Big Hill Springs - a good ride, with lots of hills. The headwinds were steady and strong - around 10-20km/h, so it was a good workout. And, we figured, the tailwind on the way back home would be a blast. Note the conditions in the photo. Doesn't look bad, does it? Downright springish, even.