I’ve been wrestling with a bunch of large-scale demons for the last few years, trying to figure out why things are just so generally shitty in the world today. It feels like things are spiraling out of control into some giant, unseen cesspool. Why is that happening? Why are we letting/causing it? Why aren’t we stopping it?
I went through a stage where I blamed unchecked capitalism - the mad rush to acquire the almighty dollar. This is why our important mass media sources are pandering to the lowest common denominator - because their primary duty isn’t to gather and disseminate “news” - it’s to sell advertising space. This is why we have to question all media sources, because at a very basic level, they have to tune their “stories” to attract and retain advertisers. This is why people actually aspire to owning a pimped out Hummer H2 full of the latest bling. This is why kids need “need” the latest toy/clothes/craze. This is why citizens are called “consumers” - we are described by our most valued traits.
I worked with our Faculty of Education to build a community blogging website for use by after-degree student teachers as part of their personal/professional development, reflection, and collaboration process, as well as to collect materials for use in ePortfolios. They had a set of pretty simple constraints. Because the student teachers would be writing about activities in the K-12 classroom, and likely would be posting media (photos, videos, etc…) they needed to restrict access to the site - there could be no public access to this content. Additionally, they needed to control with a fairly fine granularity which individuals within the community would be able to see specific pieces of content. Because of these constraints, we couldn’t just load up WPMU and set them free, nor could we just point them to WordPress.com or Blogger.com. What to do…
I did it. I managed to ride my bike 3000km (so far) in 2007. Last year, I rode about 1500km. I estimated I might ride 2000-2500km this year. But this morning, after dropping Evan off at school, I pulled the bike out and rode along the Bow River Pathway. I’ve now ridden over 3000km this year, and hope to do even more in 2008.
The year’s riding started while on Maui, when I rode about 60 miles down Haleakala - starting at over 10,000’ and descending to near sea level. As I rode through the year, it’s like a switch got thrown - I wasn’t making myself ride my bike to work, it was just how I got around. I didn’t have to give it much thought. And, because I was riding on my commute, I was making far more time for exercise than I could have otherwise (with a family at home that needs attention as well) - but because I have to spend time getting to and from work, it was really simple to just convert that into some great exercise. I wound up losing almost 20 pounds of flab without really trying, and without paying any attention to what I was eating.
I just went to the Dell website to look something up, and was rewarded by this incredible bit of sleuthery on the part of Dell’s crack team of internet designers:
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
The web designers didn’t indicate if my being in Canada somehow altered the behaviour of the website, or if the selections were somehow tuned to my location. Just to brag that they were clever enough to detect where I’m located. It might have been more useful to have the message read something like “You are currently viewing the Canadian Dell Store.” It’s a little less braggish, as opposed to “Dude! We TOTALLY located your IP address! We are teh kool! You’re in CANADA. Dude…”
When I switched from Drupal to WordPress as the software that runs my blog, one of the things I missed was tag autocompletion while writing posts. Drupal has a great freetext tag field, including an AJAX utility that automatically checks with the server for tags that match what you’ve started to type in the tags field.
And now, WordPress has that too! With the Simple Tags plugin. It has some other features, too (but I haven’t tried them yet) but the tag autocompletion is killer. Why isn’t that included in a stock WP install?
I’ve been trying to figure out how to build an effective directory of blogs hosted by a WPMU service. There’s the list-all mu-plugin widget, and it has a handy dandy list_all_wpmu_blogs() method. I’ve created a page template for my theme, and added this code to dump the list of public blogs:
","","updated"); ?>
Create a new Page, call it something creative like “Directory” and select the template that contains the above code. That works, technically, but doesn’t produce the most effective directory once the service grows to more than a dozen or so blogs.
I take that as a compliment, and it’s probably pretty easily explained by the algorithm. I tend to write short, active-tense sentences with not many long words. The readability test doesn’t take the actual content into account, just the lengths of words, sentences and paragraphs. And, if there are any elementary school kids reading this blog, I apologize for the potty mouth in the last post. Actually, the blog is probably filtered in your school, so no worries…
I just set up a copy of WordPress Multiuser, running at calgaryblogs.net. It’s an open and free blogging service. I won’t be running ads, or charging for individuals to use it. My only goal is to get more people publishing content online, and if yet another blogging service will help, then so be it.
It’s configured to serve subdomains, meaning you can easily set up a blog at “mygreatblog.calgaryblogs.net” and treat it like it’s your own server.
I’ve been an on-again, off-again bicycle commuter for almost 2 decades. For the last couple of years, I’ve been riding my bike almost exclusively (as long as weather allows) from my house to work at the University. It’s not a long ride - between 12-14 km, depending on my route - and much of it can be done off of streets, or on quiet residential streets. At the beginning of the riding season, I estimated that i might ride 2000km, or if I got lucky, maybe 2500km, before the end of the season. I’m about to cross the 2900km mark, and might be able to hit 3000km if the weather holds out. The bike ride is probably the calmest, most meditative time I get in a day. On days when I can’t ride, I miss it, both physically and mentally.
Northern Voice 2008 is now on the calendar - February 22-23, 2008 in Vancouver, at the UBC Main Campus at the palatial Forestry Sciences Building. This is the 4th annual event, and I’ve had the extreme pleasure to have attended each of the previous 3 years. It is my one must attend event for the year - if the only conference travel I get approved is for NV08, I’ll consider the year a success. I just filled in the official “Travel Approval Request” form, and should know if the U of C will sponsor my way in the next couple of weeks. If they pass, I’ll find another way. I’m going.
