Blog Posts

2012 Banff Gran Fondo

What an awesome ride. 1500 riders, with highways through the Rockies reserved for bikes. Epic.

a few more photos and the Strava page for the ride.

Tent - distributed social networking

Via a post by John Gruber, Tent:

Tent is a protocol for open, decentralized social networking. Tent users share content with apps and each other. Anyone can run a Tent server, or write an app or alternative server implementation that uses the Tent protocol. Users can take their content and relationships with them when they change or move servers. Tent supports extensible data types so developers can create new kinds of interaction.

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fun with bike data visualization

I just picked up a license for the fantastic OmniGraphSketcher application. I’m using it to build the visualizations for my thesis, and wanted to see what it would do with my bike tracking data. OK. I was procrastinating, and couldn’t force myself to work on the thesis. But, at least I’m learning how to do more cool stuff with data, right? cough

Anyway. Here’s a visualization of almost 2 and a half years of data stored in Cyclemeter on my iPhone. I exported the activity history in monthly aggregate, and took the .csv file into Excel to select the rows, which were then pasted into OmniGraphSketcher. The visualization shows total distance (divided by 10, so the distance data points fit in the same range as speed data), average speed and maximum speed per month. I also overlaid lines to show which bike was being used. The Kona wound up being my winter bike, and my Cannondale is my fast summer bike. It’s pretty easy to see where the snow and ice crapped up my rides :-)

Big box social engineering in Calgary | Calgary Herald

via Big box social engineering in Calgary | Calgary Herald.

These stores also impede the economic viability of smaller format retail. There is only so much consumer demand to go around and therefore in communities where large format retail is present, the feasibility of a community main street is annihilated by design.

[caption id=“attachment_12193” align=“alignright” width=“476”] Layout of my community. Central Commercial Zone (and big box retailer) in red. The 2 roads into the community in yellow. Future train station in green.[/caption]

on commercial silo-ification of online discourse

I complain about twitter, facebook, and other corporate silos as much as the next person. If only there was some alternative… Something that didn’t mine everything and everyone I know to sell that data to the highest bidder(s).

One response to this has been the development of new private commercial silos, with barriers to entry (subscription fees, or invitation requirements) that are intended to keep out the riff-raff while letting the cool and worthy folks into the conversation.

TT solo

Had a sudden chance to head out for a quick ride to prep for the gran fondo. Good ride! I kind of zoned out for a bit and missed the turn onto Bearspaw Road, but got an extra hill climb in as a result. :-)

on mat honan's "hacked" AppleID

So, Mat Honan had his AppleID account hacked (or “hacked”), and the attacker then nuked his devices using the “remote wipe” feature. Some scary stuff. He says he lost a year’s worth of photos, and a bunch of other stuff.

Turns out, this wasn’t a technical hack, but a social one. The attacker simply called Apple Support, claimed to be Mat, and provided the Super Secure Information That Only The Real Account Owner Could Possibly Have: his address and phone number.

Canadian Learning Commons conference session on DS106

blurb about the conference via @ppival:

On May 7-9, 2012 the University of Calgary hosted the 6th Canadian Learning Commons Conference. The theme of the conference was New Media, New Fluencies and Life Skills Development: Preparing Learners for the 21st Century.

I was asked to do a session, and worked up a presentation describing how the DS106 course experience can be framed as a student-centric learning commons, placing the student in the role of teacher (and vice versa). Wherein, I used the words “cool” and “awesome” entirely too often.

jobs

prompted by Stephen’s post, which was prompted by this post. Looks like I’m a little below the projected average…

• fabric packager - angel merchandising - taking big rolls of fabric, splitting it into smaller spools for distribution to craftsy fabric stores. gagging at the Giant Insects that came bundled in the fabrics…
• housekeeping - heritage park - met a then-teenage Mrs. @dlnorman on the job.
• midway operator - heritage park - gotta balance the ferris wheel, or it won’t spin. stop rocking the chairs!
• science communicator - calgary science centre - also built interactive exhibits for some of the big summer shows (Dinomania, Backyard Monsters, Marine Monster Mania). HyperCard, FTW!
• (undergrad student. BSc and BEd at UofC)
• programmer / webmaster - Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary - built a series of (award winning!) CD-ROMs for teaching nursing students about various psychomotor skills. helped to build some of the first for-credit online courses.
• senior programmer - Discoverware, Inc. - built a good chunk of a rich media LMS, then the dot-com bubble asploded everything…
• consultant - independent - various projects, including building a prototype learning object repository, video markup tool, and a learning objects based corporate LMS
• software developer; eLearning consultant - Teaching & Learning Centre, University of Calgary - started out finishing the LOR prototype, then wound up working on Pachyderm and Mavericks, blogs, wikis, workshops, etc. etc…
• IT partner - University of Calgary

Good times.

Bragg Creek to Millarville

a week in sicamous

We headed to the Sicamous area for a week away. I could totally get used to lake country…

On audience and connections

Long, rambling post ahead, fueled by summer vacation, campfires, and mosquito repellant…

I’ve been struggling with the sense of audience and connectedness through online tools for years now. This is one of the reasons I’ve had a tendency to delete accounts on various social networks, as I occasionally become uncomfortable with the deals involved in using them, and the artificially inflated sense of connection that they foster.

I follow 438 people on twitter right now, and over 1000 people follow me. Or, “follow,” as the online social media connection is fundamentally superficial and tenuous. I’m probably only really connected to a dozen or two of those people in any meaningful way, with relationships that I value. Some of those connections have developed into deep friendships lasting for over a decade now.