There’s still a few minutes left in the Calgary-Vancouver game, but man it feels like the Flames are starting to hit their stride from the 2003 Stanley Cup run. Very physical game. Fast. Kobasew just hauled ass over half the length of the rink to prevent an icing call - a great race for the puck. They also killed a 5-on-3 powerplay! That was incredible.
And Kipper? Dayum! He’s on FIRE! Can’t believe some of his saves so far!
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few months. I just wanted to write some of this down to help me form some slightly more concrete ideas. What follows is likely not the most coherent thing ever written - it’s meant to serve as a starting point for me to come back to later…
With the price of oil spiking, and the known reservoirs being depleted, we obviously need to move away from a total dependence on a non-renewable resource. That’s a total no brainer. But, there doesn’t seem to be a solid or effective movement towards that end. There are a few areas where progress is being made - the Prius, the solar/wind power initiatives, for example. But, there isn’t any large-scale movement away from petroleum. If anything, people are looking for subsidies to maintain their dependence on an increasingly scarce (and therefore increasingly expensive) resource. Gasoline prices skyrocket. Natural gas is through the roof. The cost of a barrel of oil is 6 times what it was not too long ago. And the solution? At least in Alberta, the provincial government is just cutting everyone cheques to help defray the cost of petroleum, since the government is literally rolling in cash as a result of petroleum taxes. And, other countries manufacture wars, and entire campaigns, to maintain their ready access to cheap oil. Addicted like a crack baby.
Read MoreAlec Couros started this one…
Apparently, I am Kong. Fear me.
I am Kong.
Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Video Game Character Are You?
Read MoreFlickr Faves: 2005/11/04
Man, it doesn’t take long to cycle through a set of 36 favorite photos… Here’s a snapshot of my Flickr Faves from today. Easy to tell where my head has been lately ;-)
Again, some pretty amazing photos in there.
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On Customer Service and Travel
I had to book a hotel room today for the Big Pachyderm Wrapup Hootenanny at the end of the month. The rooms at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco were already sort of pre-arranged, so it was just a matter of calling, saying that yes I needed a room, and providing payment info.
I call the hotel, and the phone is answered by an extremely nice and pleasant operator, who assures me that it would, indeed, be a pleasure to connect me to the reservations desk.
Read MoreWordPress 1.6 + Flickr Integrated into Media Manager
YARtLWPaF (Yet Another Reason to Love WordPress and Flickr) - WordPress 1.6 will have a built-in media browser (complete with drag-and-drop addition of photos to posts via the web interface), and the media manager is integrated with Flickr! That’s so freaking awesome! I won’t have to go to my Flickr account, find the photo, click “All Sizes”, and select the correct size, then copy/paste the code to embed it in my post. I’ll just click a tab, and drag an image in. Rock. On.
Read MoreNMC 2005 Conference Overview Video
This summer, at the NMC 2005 Summer Conference, they shot a bunch of video with interviews of some of the attendees, and some highlights of the conference. The video was distributed via DVD to the campus NMC rep - which is/was me. Instead of duplicating the DVD, or managing some form of sign in/out process, here’s the video. It was a quick-and-dirty rip of the DVD using Handbrake, so no bonus points for the art of video compression… The video is only 9 minutes long, so it’s not a big time investment.
Read MoreMicrosoft Live - Designed by Fisher Price
Holy. Crap. If there is any reason to avoid software designed by this group of people, it’s likely this slide:
Now, I’m really not trying to slag the fine folks at Fisher Price Toys, but man, this presentation (and WinXP, and other MS stuff) simply has to have been born at the toy company, rather than the largest/most mature software company on the planet.
Read MoreSpam Karma + Akismet Plugin
I switched my antispam tool from Spam Karma 2 to Akismet last week - wanting to play with Matt’s new toy, and see how a distributed spam blocker would work out.
Generally, it was pretty good. But, I had to moderate several comments. I’ve almost never had to do that under SK2 - it just works, totally, and invisibly.
But, I just checked my WordPress dashboard, and saw an interesting item: Owen Winkler: Spam Karma 2 Akismet Plugin BETA. Hmmm… Akismet as a plugin for SK2? Cool!
Read MoreBlogBridge 2.7 is now a Real Live Application
I’ve become a huge fan of BlogBridge - it has been the most efficient and powerful rss aggregator I’ve ever used. But, it kinda sucked because it didn’t behave like a native app. I’ve kind of got a fetish for native apps on MacOSX - apps that behave as expected, look as expected, and do stuff the way they should.
Well, BlogBridge 2.7 is now available as an “actual” application! It runs great and looks the way it should.
Read MoreSecond Life
I just did a very dangerous thing. I downloaded the latest version of Second Life - one of those immersive massively multiplayer doowackies that I never really got into. I just threw an hour away twiddling bits to make my Second Life character kinda sorta look like me, then starting to wander around Tutorial Island. The environment is really quite cool, and I had a lot of “hey, this would be cool for a blended learning thing…” moments.
Read MoreParticipation and Competence
Brian just linked to a great description of how blogging can affect reading and writing in the classroom. The blog he linked to is one I hadn’t come across in my travels, so I’m dutifully subscribing. Some good thinking about this stuff in Konrad’s blog.
What hit me in this post was the simple and clear demonstration of the power of an online community of practice to support the “real” physical face-to-face community. In Konrad’s case, it changed his perception of “reading” his student’s work - it became a participatory experience - more of a conversation or dialog than a fire-and-forget writing exercise. That, through blogging (or more appropriately, through participation in a dynamic community of practice), his evaluation of students shifted to become somewhat more holistic. Less brute-force “marking” of writing, to more of a comprehensive assessment of competence.
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