I mentioned on Twitter that I still suck pretty badly at playing my guitar. Scott suggested that I only need to know 2 chords. 2? hah! I know 4! So, Alan pointed out that all you NEED is 4 chords.
If the 4 chords I know are the right 4 chords, I may be ready to start touring. Except for the rest of the whole I-still-suck-at-playing thing. But at least I’m having fun :-)
Read MoreI’m reading The Whale and the Reactor, from the Beyond McLuhan reading list. Some really interesting stuff (including coincidentally reading the passage describing Stewart Brand’s The Whole Earth Catalog at the exact moment that Brian Lamb was listening to him speak in person).
Part 2 of the book delves into reform and revolution, primarily describing movements in the 1960s and 70s. It got me thinking about parallels to contemporary educational reform movements, specifically about the purpose of the reform movements themselves. Perhaps more on that later, but for now, this gem by Langdon Winner:
Read MoreAfter being mesmerized by the film shot from a streetcar along Market Street in San Francisco before The Big One, here’s some footage shot shortly after the earthquake and fire that devastated the city. Via Jason Kottke, who Viad devour.
Read MoreI’ve been battling sploggers on UCalgaryBlogs continually. I just finished marking about 50 users/blogs as spam - that’s since yesterday afternoon. I could easily stop the problem outright by requiring people to use an @ucalgary.ca email address to create a site, but that goes against the possibility of anonymity, and many (most!) students don’t use their campus email addresses.
I currently run Bad Behavior, as well as ReCaptcha. They stop the automated splog creation scripts, but there seem to be a LOT of people employed around the world to manually enter forms in order to get around captcha and anti-spam/splog techniques.
Read MoreI’m guilty of a few of these ridiculous car trips - driving the 1.5km to the local grocery store when I don’t feel like schlepping there on the bike. I’m going to try cutting that down a bit…
Read MoreFrom Google’s CEO: ‘The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists’ - Derek Thompson - Technology - The Atlantic:
>“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,” he said. Google implants, he added, probably crosses that line.
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>At the same time, Schmidt envisions a future where we embrace a larger role for machines and technology. “With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches,” he said. “We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less now what you’re thinking about.”
via a tweet from Clarence Fisher, this interesting documentary on data visualization and journalism. I’m wondering how the concepts translate into other fields…
Read Morefrom Bruce Schneier:
> Formerly reserved for totalitarian countries, this wholesale surveillance of citizens has moved into the democratic world as well. Governments like Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom are debating or passing laws giving their police new powers of internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell. More are passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain customer data in case they might need to be investigated later.
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I was going to write a long, rambling post about tolerance and freedom of speech, but can’t seem to do it without a strong infusion of bile against the mouthbreathing cretins that removed the candidate’s poster.
Read MoreThe University recently wrapped up some research into the perceptions of teaching and learning on campus. The report includes this gem, aimed squarely at the department I’ve been a part of for nearly a decade:
>There were polarised views about the centralised professional development centre. These ranged from overt appreciation for their work and views that they supplied an essential service to faculty members, to criticism of the lack of specificity of topics, lack of flexibility in timing of courses, and concerns with the overriding emphasis on technology-facilitated learning. Undertaking professional development was reported as not rewarded or recognised in the university.
Read MoreFor the first time since I can remember, I’m not running any analytics packages on either of my blogs. I’d been running either SiteMeter, or Google Analytics, or WordPress.com Stats, or Piwik, since (almost?) day 1. I’d sworn off third party analytics apps recently, because I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be feeding companies with detailed information about everyone that comes through my sites. And I realized today that I don’t need analytics at all any more.
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