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]]>Yet this is only the beginning. Yesterday, I read on Facebook
Maura Keaney is smiling through happy tears after hearing from Andrew McDonald that he and Charles Gray were married today on the 15th anniversary of the day they met. So proud of my good Senator and dear friend for leading the fight for marriage equality in CT, and so joyful that Andrew and Charles are finally married!! Wishing them many more sets of 15 years together.
Is it any surprise that the same day it was announced that Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska? The whole social conservative movement could collapse if people continue to publicly proclaim long term committed love for one another.
]]>Yet this is only the beginning. Yesterday, I read on Facebook
Maura Keaney is smiling through happy tears after hearing from Andrew McDonald that he and Charles Gray were married today on the 15th anniversary of the day they met. So proud of my good Senator and dear friend for leading the fight for marriage equality in CT, and so joyful that Andrew and Charles are finally married!! Wishing them many more sets of 15 years together.
Is it any surprise that the same day it was announced that Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska? The whole social conservative movement could collapse if people continue to publicly proclaim long term committed love for one another.
]]>
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]]>@jillmz has been visiting Woodbridge and we’ve been talking about getting together for dinner, coffee, or something like that. Jill and I met online when I started blogging about the Doninger case. We found that we had a lot of common interests and ended up meeting on election night at NPR studios in Washington as we blogged the results. She writes a wonderful blog, Writes Like She Talks.
When things started firming up for the Greater Woodbridge, CT Independence Tweetup, I contacted @sheilamc7. @sheilamc7 is the chair of the Woodbridge Board of Education and secretary of the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. We’ve often shared discussions about politics, education and social media and I thought she and @jillmz would enjoy meeting one another.
The next person I contacted was @jcnork. @jcnork is from the neighboring town. His wife is a teacher and I’ve often discussed politics, education and social media with him. He attended the first Greater Woodbridge CT Tweetup and we often share information online.
It was great that everyone managed to take a little bit of time out of busy holiday schedules to gather and talk and I look forward to the next Greater Woodbridge CT Tweetup. If you wonder what a Tweetup is, get the book Twitter For Dummies
@jillmz has been visiting Woodbridge and we’ve been talking about getting together for dinner, coffee, or something like that. Jill and I met online when I started blogging about the Doninger case. We found that we had a lot of common interests and ended up meeting on election night at NPR studios in Washington as we blogged the results. She writes a wonderful blog, Writes Like She Talks.
When things started firming up for the Greater Woodbridge, CT Independence Tweetup, I contacted @sheilamc7. @sheilamc7 is the chair of the Woodbridge Board of Education and secretary of the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. We’ve often shared discussions about politics, education and social media and I thought she and @jillmz would enjoy meeting one another.
The next person I contacted was @jcnork. @jcnork is from the neighboring town. His wife is a teacher and I’ve often discussed politics, education and social media with him. He attended the first Greater Woodbridge CT Tweetup and we often share information online.
It was great that everyone managed to take a little bit of time out of busy holiday schedules to gather and talk and I look forward to the next Greater Woodbridge CT Tweetup. If you wonder what a Tweetup is, get the book Twitter For Dummies
Do you know what #followfriday is? Do you know why I put a pound sign or hashmark in front of #followfriday? Do you know who @pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl are? Do you know why there is an at-sign at the beginning of their usernames? Do you know how I am getting this message to show up on Twitter and Facebook automatically?
Regular readers of my blog will recognize that #followfriday is a ‘hashtag’. It is a tag used on Twitter so that people can easily find it and other people talking about the same topic. On Fridays, people on Twitter often put up a tweet listing people that they follow that they think their followers might also want to follow. I post my message on my blog, and then use TwitterFeed to take the post and send it to Twitter. I use the Twitter Application on Facebook to take that tweet and then add it to my Facebook profile.
@pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl are three people from Twitter that have gotten together and written Twitter For Dummies
In the introduction, they write
We wrote this book for the first-time Twitter users. If you’ve already created an account that has some friends and followers, you can probably skip the chapters that talk about how to sign up and get moving – but you might find it useful to review the sections on how to dress up your profile. If you’re a business and have already gotten rolling on Twitter, you can probably safely ignore many of the starting chapters and check out Parts II and IV. If you’re a Twitter pro and could have probably written this book, feel free not to read anything, use this book as a doorstop and recycle it when you’re done. Okay, we’re kidding – it’ll make a great gift for the Twitter-skeptics in your life!
Well, I consider myself a Twitter Pro, I probably could have written this book myself, but I probably wouldn’t have done as good a job as @pistachio, @gruen, and @geechee_girl have. I get bored explaining to people how to set up user accounts, what CAPTCHA is, or how to customize a profile, which is another reason this book might be good for me. The next time someone looks at me cross-eyed when I try to explain Twitter, or the next time someone asks how to get started with Twitter, I can simply hand them this book.
I unexpectedly received a copy of the book for review the publisher and like Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor, I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t met @pistachio at some social media gathering or another and decided to follow her on Twitter.
Yet this illustrates the importance of The Whuffie Factor, the social capital that people build up on sites like Twitter. Twitter for Dummies is a great book for starting to get involved in Twitter and building your own social capital online.
I must admit, I have not read closely the book. With a cursory glance, it looks like they have all the correct details of how to set up an account and get started. Instead, I spent more time paying attention to the tips, technical stuff and other brief paragraphs scattered through the book on how to make the most out of Twitter. These are useful tips and I wish more people would read and pay attention to these tips.
So, that’s this week’s #followfriday. Follow @pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl. Go out and get their book and either read it yourself if you are new to Twitter, or give it to that friend that you’ve been trying to explain Twitter to. Then, come back next week to find more interesting people to follow on Twitter.
]]>Do you know what #followfriday is? Do you know why I put a pound sign or hashmark in front of #followfriday? Do you know who @pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl are? Do you know why there is an at-sign at the beginning of their usernames? Do you know how I am getting this message to show up on Twitter and Facebook automatically?
Regular readers of my blog will recognize that #followfriday is a ‘hashtag’. It is a tag used on Twitter so that people can easily find it and other people talking about the same topic. On Fridays, people on Twitter often put up a tweet listing people that they follow that they think their followers might also want to follow. I post my message on my blog, and then use TwitterFeed to take the post and send it to Twitter. I use the Twitter Application on Facebook to take that tweet and then add it to my Facebook profile.
@pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl are three people from Twitter that have gotten together and written Twitter For Dummies
In the introduction, they write
We wrote this book for the first-time Twitter users. If you’ve already created an account that has some friends and followers, you can probably skip the chapters that talk about how to sign up and get moving – but you might find it useful to review the sections on how to dress up your profile. If you’re a business and have already gotten rolling on Twitter, you can probably safely ignore many of the starting chapters and check out Parts II and IV. If you’re a Twitter pro and could have probably written this book, feel free not to read anything, use this book as a doorstop and recycle it when you’re done. Okay, we’re kidding – it’ll make a great gift for the Twitter-skeptics in your life!
Well, I consider myself a Twitter Pro, I probably could have written this book myself, but I probably wouldn’t have done as good a job as @pistachio, @gruen, and @geechee_girl have. I get bored explaining to people how to set up user accounts, what CAPTCHA is, or how to customize a profile, which is another reason this book might be good for me. The next time someone looks at me cross-eyed when I try to explain Twitter, or the next time someone asks how to get started with Twitter, I can simply hand them this book.
I unexpectedly received a copy of the book for review the publisher and like Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor, I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t met @pistachio at some social media gathering or another and decided to follow her on Twitter.
Yet this illustrates the importance of The Whuffie Factor, the social capital that people build up on sites like Twitter. Twitter for Dummies is a great book for starting to get involved in Twitter and building your own social capital online.
I must admit, I have not read closely the book. With a cursory glance, it looks like they have all the correct details of how to set up an account and get started. Instead, I spent more time paying attention to the tips, technical stuff and other brief paragraphs scattered through the book on how to make the most out of Twitter. These are useful tips and I wish more people would read and pay attention to these tips.
So, that’s this week’s #followfriday. Follow @pistachio, @gruen, @geechee_girl. Go out and get their book and either read it yourself if you are new to Twitter, or give it to that friend that you’ve been trying to explain Twitter to. Then, come back next week to find more interesting people to follow on Twitter.
]]>
Woodbridge Swearing In Ceremony, originally uploaded by Aldon.
Woodbridge – Wednesday afternoon a person from Beecher Road Elementary school called to let us know that there had been a power outage at the school and to ask if we could pick up our daughter early. Kim drove over to the school and picked up Fiona. On hearing that large parts of town were without electricity she decided it might be prudent to head up to her father’s house in Bethany where she could work online with less fear of losing power. This would also give Fiona a chance to see her grandparents and their dog.
A couple hours later, I headed over to the Woodbridge Town Hall to attend the swearing in ceremony of those elected in the May elections. I wasn’t sure if the power would be back on or if the rain would hold off.
Gerry Weiner officiated and visiting dignitaries were noted. State Rep. Themis Klarides, Dr. Guy Stella, the superintendent at Beecher Road and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano were all in attendance. Attorney General Dick Blumenthal and State Sen. Joe Crisco could not attend because of other business, but Attorney General Blumenthal sent a letter of congratulations.
Anyone who has been to any sort of political event in the past year in Woodbridge would have been acquainted with First Selectman Sheehy’s speech. He spoke of his accomplishments over the past term and his hopes for the coming term. Perhaps most importantly, he spoke about the importance of bringing civility to local politics in Woodbridge.
Afterwards, people from Woodbridge gathered for light refreshments and to congratulate the newly elected and newly appointed officials.
The power was back on in Woodbridge. The rain had held off. Perhaps most importantly civility has prevailed and provided a strong contrast to other political struggles in our state, country and world.
]]>Woodbridge – Wednesday afternoon a person from Beecher Road Elementary school called to let us know that there had been a power outage at the school and to ask if we could pick up our daughter early. Kim drove over to the school and picked up Fiona. On hearing that large parts of town were without electricity she decided it might be prudent to head up to her father’s house in Bethany where she could work online with less fear of losing power. This would also give Fiona a chance to see her grandparents and their dog.
A couple hours later, I headed over to the Woodbridge Town Hall to attend the swearing in ceremony of those elected in the May elections. I wasn’t sure if the power would be back on or if the rain would hold off.
Gerry Weiner officiated and visiting dignitaries were noted. State Rep. Themis Klarides, Dr. Guy Stella, the superintendent at Beecher Road and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano were all in attendance. Attorney General Dick Blumenthal and State Sen. Joe Crisco could not attend because of other business, but Attorney General Blumenthal sent a letter of congratulations.
Anyone who has been to any sort of political event in the past year in Woodbridge would have been acquainted with First Selectman Sheehy’s speech. He spoke of his accomplishments over the past term and his hopes for the coming term. Perhaps most importantly, he spoke about the importance of bringing civility to local politics in Woodbridge.
Afterwards, people from Woodbridge gathered for light refreshments and to congratulate the newly elected and newly appointed officials.
The power was back on in Woodbridge. The rain had held off. Perhaps most importantly civility has prevailed and provided a strong contrast to other political struggles in our state, country and world.
]]>So, this got me looking at the list of performers for this year’s Falcon Ridge. The first name that jumped out at me was Girlyman. If I recall properly, Girlyman was Miranda’s favorite band for a while and we went to see Girlyman perform in Hartford. From there, I looked for one of Kim’s favorite bands, Lowen and Navarro. The performer’s list included Dan Navarro, but not Lowen and Navarro. I quickly went to the LowNav website.
A black and white picture is front and center. There is a crack in the middle of the road leading off to mist covered mountains. Next to that are the words, “El Fin Del Camino”.
It's been just over five years since Eric Lowen's diagnosis with ALS, and after 250 performances logged since that giant day, we now find our shows this weekend in Annapolis Fri June 5 and Alexandria VA Sat June 6 must be our last.
I sit in front of my computer, trying to find words for my reaction. If I had known that that would be their last performance, would I have tried to make it to Alexandria? Would it have been too difficult? I don’t know.
As I prepared to write this blog post, I thought I would check to see who this year’s emerging artists would be. Ron Olesko has the list up. Last year, I listened to most of the emerging artists before going to Falcon Ridge and writing my initial reactions. I figured I would try to do the same this year, if I can work it into my writing schedule.
The first artist on the list is A. J. Roach & His Strange Pilgrims. The site is in Drupal and has links to ten different social networks. I’ve followed him on Twitter, and became his fan on Facebook after listening to a few of his songs on sonicbids.
It is late now. I will find time to listen to more of the emerging artists later, but now I should head off to sleep.
]]>So, this got me looking at the list of performers for this year’s Falcon Ridge. The first name that jumped out at me was Girlyman. If I recall properly, Girlyman was Miranda’s favorite band for a while and we went to see Girlyman perform in Hartford. From there, I looked for one of Kim’s favorite bands, Lowen and Navarro. The performer’s list included Dan Navarro, but not Lowen and Navarro. I quickly went to the LowNav website.
A black and white picture is front and center. There is a crack in the middle of the road leading off to mist covered mountains. Next to that are the words, “El Fin Del Camino”.
It's been just over five years since Eric Lowen's diagnosis with ALS, and after 250 performances logged since that giant day, we now find our shows this weekend in Annapolis Fri June 5 and Alexandria VA Sat June 6 must be our last.
I sit in front of my computer, trying to find words for my reaction. If I had known that that would be their last performance, would I have tried to make it to Alexandria? Would it have been too difficult? I don’t know.
As I prepared to write this blog post, I thought I would check to see who this year’s emerging artists would be. Ron Olesko has the list up. Last year, I listened to most of the emerging artists before going to Falcon Ridge and writing my initial reactions. I figured I would try to do the same this year, if I can work it into my writing schedule.
The first artist on the list is A. J. Roach & His Strange Pilgrims. The site is in Drupal and has links to ten different social networks. I’ve followed him on Twitter, and became his fan on Facebook after listening to a few of his songs on sonicbids.
It is late now. I will find time to listen to more of the emerging artists later, but now I should head off to sleep.
]]>
Rabbit, Rabbit, originally uploaded by Aldon.
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]]>This year, Fiona is attending the Woodbridge Recreation Department’s summer camp. It takes place at the local elementary school. The little island at the beginning of the school’s driveway was festooned with beach balls and a man sitting in a beach chair waving at each incoming camper. Brightly colored traffic cones provided a path for me to follow to another traffic island where Fiona jumped out of the car and was met by a camp counselor. “What group are you in?” she asked.
Fiona promptly replied, “Pumpkins” and the counselor whisked Fiona off to her group as I drove back home. We are now living in a small rented house in Woodbridge. Life has been hard for me. Years ago, I worked full time on Wall Street and that took its toll. Later today, I will go to the doctor to make sure that the current batch of medications is keeping my blood pressure in check. I will get some writing done, a little bit of consulting, and I’ll look out my office window at the trees, the rock outcropping and the wind chimes. I’ll take a break to pick up Fiona from camp, and we’ll both do chores to keep our home life in order.
Perhaps I should be working harder to get back the large Wall Street salaries I had years ago. I could work long hours, be miserable all the time, but my daughters could do more than just go to a municipal summer camp. On the other hand, the specter of Bernie Madoff looms, reminding us all of many great lessons in life. So many people lost so much investing with Madoff. It is a reminder not to store up our treasure on earth where thieves break in and steal. Madoff himself is a reminder. Would he have run his great scheme if he had thought that it would end him up with 150 year prison sentence; forever staining his name? I suspect many people bend the rules as much as they think they can get away with in their lust for worldly goods.
Today, I watched my daughter gleefully go off to join her group at the town summer camp. I don’t have $2.5 million of ill earned wealth left over after a scandal the way Ruth Madoff does. She can keep her $2.5 million as she watches her husband head off to jail. I’ll be much happier skipping spending $2.50 for a fancy cup of coffee on my way home from seeing my daughter off to camp.
]]>This year, Fiona is attending the Woodbridge Recreation Department’s summer camp. It takes place at the local elementary school. The little island at the beginning of the school’s driveway was festooned with beach balls and a man sitting in a beach chair waving at each incoming camper. Brightly colored traffic cones provided a path for me to follow to another traffic island where Fiona jumped out of the car and was met by a camp counselor. “What group are you in?” she asked.
Fiona promptly replied, “Pumpkins” and the counselor whisked Fiona off to her group as I drove back home. We are now living in a small rented house in Woodbridge. Life has been hard for me. Years ago, I worked full time on Wall Street and that took its toll. Later today, I will go to the doctor to make sure that the current batch of medications is keeping my blood pressure in check. I will get some writing done, a little bit of consulting, and I’ll look out my office window at the trees, the rock outcropping and the wind chimes. I’ll take a break to pick up Fiona from camp, and we’ll both do chores to keep our home life in order.
Perhaps I should be working harder to get back the large Wall Street salaries I had years ago. I could work long hours, be miserable all the time, but my daughters could do more than just go to a municipal summer camp. On the other hand, the specter of Bernie Madoff looms, reminding us all of many great lessons in life. So many people lost so much investing with Madoff. It is a reminder not to store up our treasure on earth where thieves break in and steal. Madoff himself is a reminder. Would he have run his great scheme if he had thought that it would end him up with 150 year prison sentence; forever staining his name? I suspect many people bend the rules as much as they think they can get away with in their lust for worldly goods.
Today, I watched my daughter gleefully go off to join her group at the town summer camp. I don’t have $2.5 million of ill earned wealth left over after a scandal the way Ruth Madoff does. She can keep her $2.5 million as she watches her husband head off to jail. I’ll be much happier skipping spending $2.50 for a fancy cup of coffee on my way home from seeing my daughter off to camp.
]]>I flag them in my email client. I add them to a wiki that I use for tracking interesting topics. I send emails to various people and wait for replies. Many never make it to a full blog post, but some should be highlighted whether or not they will ultimately end up as a full blog post. With that, I want to provide another glimpse into my blogger’s notebook.
Mar Matthias Darin, whom I first stumbled across via EntreCard has a blog post up about Google being sued for overcharging AdWords customers. Actually, this was a lawsuit from back in 2005 which received class action status and was ruled on earlier this month. I may have also gotten an email about this, but my adwords advertising has been so small it probably isn’t worth the first class postage to join in the settlement.
My brother invited me to join him on ThisMoment.com. It is a site to ‘save and share life’s moments’. I tried to join, but was told that it only works for Firefox 3 or IE 8. I’m running Windows NT with Firefox 2 on my primary computer. It is a very old computer that just isn’t worth upgrading, and every once in a while, I run into issues like this. I signed up on my laptop without a problem, and it sent an email to my main computer for verification. I couldn’t even verify my email address with Firefox 2. It did have a link to continue without upgrading. This link did not work. I fired off a comment, and received a prompt reply. The link appears to be working now and I was told that my email address was properly verified. I’ll explore this a bit more later.
Another interesting site that I received an email about was MaYoMo, Map Your Movements. It is aimed at citizen journalists and there should be news coming soon about it. I’ve sent an email asking for follow up about it, but haven’t received comments yet. Initially, it seemed very slow and kludgy for me, but they look interesting.
An old friend of mine in Britain sent me an email about his blog post about Mornflake’s Video Competition Mornflake is using a site called uVizz. That’s another site worth checking out, although I probably won’t make a Mornflake video unless someone sends me a box of their cereal from the U.K.
Jarvis Coffin, CEO of BurstMedia. Mr. Coffin wrote a blog post about how Advertising must feel the human condition. It was in response to my blog post, Numerati, Creatives, and the Human Condition. He did a good job of taking the ball I was running with, and carrying it a little further down the field. I’ve been meaning to pick up that thread and talk more about his comments, but just haven’t gotten a chance to yet.
Today, I received a brief email from Lauren Bishop of 5W Public Relations highlighting Ronn Torossian’s comments about Ruth Madoff’s Statement. Lars Toomre, with whom I’ve done a lot of financial services work, wrote a blog post about Ruth Madoff back in March. It seems to fit nicely with what Ms. Bishop has written about Mr. Torossian’s comments, and perhaps I’ll find some time to follow up on this a little later.
The other day, I received a fascinating email from Peter Howie who writes the Moreno Collegium Blog. It explored the nature of how groups behave and related it to discussions in Twitter. I really want to find a chance to explore this a bit further. I’ve also started to explore the streaming API for Twitter, especially as it relates to efforts to connect Twitter to various Complex Event Processing systems like Streambase.
Personally, I found the discussions about CEP and Twitter one of the more interesting topics at this year’s SIFMA conference. I have a lot to say about the SIFMA show on several topics. This remains on my blogger’s notebook, and it isn’t likely to be very friendly to the organizers at SIFMA. The folks listed above understand how the world is changing and it seems like the folks at SIFMA don’t.
There are plenty of other stories that I’m following, but this highlights a few of them. So, tell me, what do you find interesting? Is there something I should have on my radar that I don’t yet?
]]>I flag them in my email client. I add them to a wiki that I use for tracking interesting topics. I send emails to various people and wait for replies. Many never make it to a full blog post, but some should be highlighted whether or not they will ultimately end up as a full blog post. With that, I want to provide another glimpse into my blogger’s notebook.
Mar Matthias Darin, whom I first stumbled across via EntreCard has a blog post up about Google being sued for overcharging AdWords customers. Actually, this was a lawsuit from back in 2005 which received class action status and was ruled on earlier this month. I may have also gotten an email about this, but my adwords advertising has been so small it probably isn’t worth the first class postage to join in the settlement.
My brother invited me to join him on ThisMoment.com. It is a site to ‘save and share life’s moments’. I tried to join, but was told that it only works for Firefox 3 or IE 8. I’m running Windows NT with Firefox 2 on my primary computer. It is a very old computer that just isn’t worth upgrading, and every once in a while, I run into issues like this. I signed up on my laptop without a problem, and it sent an email to my main computer for verification. I couldn’t even verify my email address with Firefox 2. It did have a link to continue without upgrading. This link did not work. I fired off a comment, and received a prompt reply. The link appears to be working now and I was told that my email address was properly verified. I’ll explore this a bit more later.
Another interesting site that I received an email about was MaYoMo, Map Your Movements. It is aimed at citizen journalists and there should be news coming soon about it. I’ve sent an email asking for follow up about it, but haven’t received comments yet. Initially, it seemed very slow and kludgy for me, but they look interesting.
An old friend of mine in Britain sent me an email about his blog post about Mornflake’s Video Competition Mornflake is using a site called uVizz. That’s another site worth checking out, although I probably won’t make a Mornflake video unless someone sends me a box of their cereal from the U.K.
Jarvis Coffin, CEO of BurstMedia. Mr. Coffin wrote a blog post about how Advertising must feel the human condition. It was in response to my blog post, Numerati, Creatives, and the Human Condition. He did a good job of taking the ball I was running with, and carrying it a little further down the field. I’ve been meaning to pick up that thread and talk more about his comments, but just haven’t gotten a chance to yet.
Today, I received a brief email from Lauren Bishop of 5W Public Relations highlighting Ronn Torossian’s comments about Ruth Madoff’s Statement. Lars Toomre, with whom I’ve done a lot of financial services work, wrote a blog post about Ruth Madoff back in March. It seems to fit nicely with what Ms. Bishop has written about Mr. Torossian’s comments, and perhaps I’ll find some time to follow up on this a little later.
The other day, I received a fascinating email from Peter Howie who writes the Moreno Collegium Blog. It explored the nature of how groups behave and related it to discussions in Twitter. I really want to find a chance to explore this a bit further. I’ve also started to explore the streaming API for Twitter, especially as it relates to efforts to connect Twitter to various Complex Event Processing systems like Streambase.
Personally, I found the discussions about CEP and Twitter one of the more interesting topics at this year’s SIFMA conference. I have a lot to say about the SIFMA show on several topics. This remains on my blogger’s notebook, and it isn’t likely to be very friendly to the organizers at SIFMA. The folks listed above understand how the world is changing and it seems like the folks at SIFMA don’t.
There are plenty of other stories that I’m following, but this highlights a few of them. So, tell me, what do you find interesting? Is there something I should have on my radar that I don’t yet?
]]>The violence against the people in Iran is a stark reminder of how difficult it is to wrest power from incumbents. It can also serve as a warning to those supporting new leaders fighting to come into power. It reminds me of the line from the SDS in the sixties, “We will become like you” and it makes me think about the great quote from Animal Farm, “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Perhaps this is the message of the current leadership in Iran. “All Islamic Laws are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Yet the protests in Iran are not just some drama that we are watching online. They can tell us a little bit about what is going on in our own country. On June 24th, Common Cause issued a report, Legislating Under the Influence. It notes that Major health care interests have spent $1.4 million per day this year lobbying Congress. Where is that money coming from? It is coming from the premiums that you and I pay. While this is much less graphic than the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, it brings to mind the lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s song Pretty Boy Floyd,
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
It isn’t just in the national dialog that we see incumbents fighting to hold on to their power. Rep. Corky Mazurek, D-Wolcott introduced an amendment to the budget bill on Friday that would have eliminated the Citizens Election Fund claiming that the money could be spent in much better ways.
Others were quick to observe that Rep. Mazurek narrowly won re-election after fighting off a challenge from a candidate that would not have been able to run if it weren’t for the Citizens Election Fund. Personally, I would much rather have our campaigns sponsored by the citizens of your state than by the major health care interests, and others with a vested interest in holding on to power which is perhaps not all that different from the interest of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
]]>The violence against the people in Iran is a stark reminder of how difficult it is to wrest power from incumbents. It can also serve as a warning to those supporting new leaders fighting to come into power. It reminds me of the line from the SDS in the sixties, “We will become like you” and it makes me think about the great quote from Animal Farm, “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Perhaps this is the message of the current leadership in Iran. “All Islamic Laws are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Yet the protests in Iran are not just some drama that we are watching online. They can tell us a little bit about what is going on in our own country. On June 24th, Common Cause issued a report, Legislating Under the Influence. It notes that Major health care interests have spent $1.4 million per day this year lobbying Congress. Where is that money coming from? It is coming from the premiums that you and I pay. While this is much less graphic than the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, it brings to mind the lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s song Pretty Boy Floyd,
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
It isn’t just in the national dialog that we see incumbents fighting to hold on to their power. Rep. Corky Mazurek, D-Wolcott introduced an amendment to the budget bill on Friday that would have eliminated the Citizens Election Fund claiming that the money could be spent in much better ways.
Others were quick to observe that Rep. Mazurek narrowly won re-election after fighting off a challenge from a candidate that would not have been able to run if it weren’t for the Citizens Election Fund. Personally, I would much rather have our campaigns sponsored by the citizens of your state than by the major health care interests, and others with a vested interest in holding on to power which is perhaps not all that different from the interest of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
]]>Perhaps a bigger thing for me is that I grew up loving the writing of Hermann Hesse. I’m told that Hesse once said you should never read anything he wrote before he was fifty and you should only read it after you turn fifty. I’ve always thought of turning fifty as a special point in literary production and I’ve wondered what turns my writing will take after July.
I was brought up in a very frugal family, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. Our financial difficulties over the past few years have further caused me to hold back on dreams of gadgets I would like and so birthday magic often seemed to elude me.
]]>Perhaps a bigger thing for me is that I grew up loving the writing of Hermann Hesse. I’m told that Hesse once said you should never read anything he wrote before he was fifty and you should only read it after you turn fifty. I’ve always thought of turning fifty as a special point in literary production and I’ve wondered what turns my writing will take after July.
I was brought up in a very frugal family, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. Our financial difficulties over the past few years have further caused me to hold back on dreams of gadgets I would like and so birthday magic often seemed to elude me.
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Yet this year, perhaps there was room for a little something special. Was there anything that I would like? My cellphone is three years old and my wife asked if what I thought of different smartphones. I talked about the iPhone, the Blackberry, the Palm Pre, the Nokia phones that support QIK. I was thinking that the new iPhone might be nice, providing it isn’t too hobbled. Friends have complained about how AT&T has hobbled Skype and Sling Player. That hasn’t been a big concern for me. I’ve never used Sling and I’ve rarely used Skype.
I’ve been more concerned about the photography aspects. Ideally, I would like to have a phone I can stream video with, like the Nokia phones. Well, today, Apple announced the new iPhone 3GS. It has a better camera which supports 3 megapixels. That’s much better than the 1.3 megapixels that my phone currently supports, but isn’t as good as other cameraphones. Yet the reports are that AT&T will not support MMS for the iPhone, at least not initially. I find this very odd. I have a three year old phone on the AT&T network, and AT&T supports MMS on that phone.
From my current phone, I take a picture and then email it via MMS to several services like Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Just about every service I use is contacted via email, so if I can email my pictures and videos from an iPhone, that would probably work. However, the iPhone GS does not support video streaming either, and I’ve long wanted to use that. I’ve been interested in QIK for a long time. It seems like the phones that QIK users like best are the Nokia N series. I also see that the Google Andriods support QIK, and either Nokia or androids might actually be a better phone. The top of the line Nokia phone, however, is very pricy and I’ve read mixed reviews of all of these devices.
So, for the time being, it may be better just to stay with my three year old phone and wait until the cellphone companies and mobile carriers get their act together a little better before upgrading.
Besides the lack of MMS support, and another thing that is coming to the iPhone is tethering, or the ability to use an iPhone as a wireless modem for a laptop, which AT&T is also not initially supporting caused a lot of consternation amongst people following the Apple announcement, myself included.
The New York Times Blog reported “Mark Siegel, media relations executive director of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said the carrier would roll out both soon. ‘It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,’ he said.”
There is still some question about whether MMS support and/or tethering support would cost even more. So, until these issues are resolved, the iPhone is probably off my birthday list. It had been at the top of my list as the gadget I would probably use most often.
However, there are other gadgets that I’ve been interested in. They are things that I would use less often, and are less important to me, but would be interesting to play with.
I go to a lot of conferences and usually they have professional audio systems which support XLR connectors. I’ve been interested a few different possible XLR connections. One is essentially a sound card on a cord. It has a USB connection on one end and an XLR connection on the other. In theory I ought to be able to use such a chord to connect my laptop to the professional sound system. I could then stream professional quality sound from conferences that I’m at.
If I got a good XLR microphone, I could also use it for making better audio files. I imagine my daughter might enjoy that more than I would since she probably would record more audio than I, but it would be a fun toy. There are other options that get more interesting, like a mixing board that takes several XLR sources, mixes them and feeds them into the PC via a USB connection. The Blue Microphones Icicle XLR Cable to USB Conversion Adapter sounds like a very nice device as does the MXL USB Mic Mate. The LightSnake STUSBXLR10 LightSnake USB Microphone cable also seems good. However, with any of these I would need to get a good XLR microphone and cables. I don’t do enough recording to make this especially interesting.
The other device that I saw when I was down in Washington for XLR connections was a telephone audio interface. The folks from BlogTalkRadio used it to hook into a professional audio system and then dial into BlogTalkRadio to stream the show from the professional audio system, over the phone network. I believe the device was something like the JK Audio RemoteMix C+. This is an expensive device and not one that I would be likely to use very often.
A related device that might work even more nicely is a Camcorder XLR Adapter/Preamp. This allows you to take XLR signals, mix them and send them out on a 3.5 mm jack. The idea is to send this to a camcorder that could support 3.5 mm inputs. Unfortunately, my camcorder doesn’t support external mics. I suspect I could connect this to the microphone input on my laptop, and it might even be that with a little creative wiring this could be used as an adapter/preamp for an iPhone. That would perhaps be really interesting, if it were time to get an iPhone.
Changing gears a little bit, I’ve often thought that I should get some sort of Monopod, Tripod, or camera stabilizer. All of the pictures and videos I take right now are hand held. You can see the jiggle in plenty of the videos I shoot. The problem is that there is a wide range of systems. I’m not really into getting a fullsized tripod. They just seem to cumbersome to carry. A monopod might be nice, but I don’t know which monopods are good. However, I did see a review of the Manfrotto 585 ModoSteady 3-in-1 Camera/Camcorder Stabilizer and Support System. I’ve heard good stories about this and it looks like it might be a very nice device. On the other hand, I also recently read about a camera stabilizer that seems much closer to my style. It is a zip lock bag full of sand. It probably doesn’t work all that well for many of the times I’m looking for a camera stabilizer, but the price is right and it seems highly usable.
Another interesting technology, that seems even further from my normal area of interest is OBD-II readers. OBD stands for something like Onboard Diagnostics. It is the computer interface for checking the status of your car. Different cars have different protocols that they talk over this connector and you can use it to find out what the Check Engine light is trying to tell you and a host of other bits of information. I’ve read a little bit about different OBD-II readers and scanners and was surprised to find that there are relatively small and inexpensive devices. What I am most interested in is seeing what I could read from the OBD-II port on my 2001 Toyota Prius. Different readers have different ways of handling the data. Some just show data on a handheld device. Others support USB or Bluetooth to send the data to a PC. From what I’ve heard, the ElmScan 5 Bluetooth, seems to be the most recommended, but there are all kinds of different options out there. ODBCOM looks like a nice, cheaper version that is only USB, and Sterntech has an open source reader, but that looks like too much work.
Like other gadgets, this would probably be fun to play with for a little while, but I don’t see me using it all that often.
So, I’ve looked at the various gadgets out there. Many of them are somewhat interesting, but none of them really seem all that much worth it. Are there gadgets out there that I should be considering and have overlooked? Are any of the things I’ve described above better than I’m giving them credit for? Let me know your thoughts. However, perhaps all that I really want is a new belt and a happy and healthy family.
]]>Since March, I’ve been posting #FollowFriday posts on my blog, highlighting people that I find interesting. Often, these posts focus on specific groups of people; friends from Connecticut, Connecticut news outlets, political activists, people doing interesting stuff in online marketing, and so on. This week, I’m highlighting a few people doing saying interesting things about financial markets.
As is my standard, I write it as a blog post, so people can get additional information on why I am following these people, and TwitterFeed sends the key part to Twitter.
@ltoomre – I have known Lars since the 1980s when we worked together at Lehman brothers. We have worked together on and off ever since then. I first started using Twitter back in October, 2006 and in March, 2007, I wrote a blog post for the Toomre Capital Markets website entitled Web 3.1: Real Time Enterprise Internet Presence. I wrote about Twitter and how “More and more, the data is becoming real-time”. I ended my post by suggesting “System which provide real time processing of events, like Streambase, Coral8, and Apama may become key components of a Web 3.1 architecture, but they may have some difficult enhancements to develop to get there and some very smart thinking to figure out how to take advantage of it.” Well, Wednesday, Streambase has announced that they have connected their stream processing engine to Twitter.
At the SIFMA show, I asked people from Streambase for details of how they are connecting and what people are doing with these connections. The details were sketchy, but I did hear that some algorithmic trading firms are using signals from Twitter to stop automated trading of specific stocks if there is a spike in buzz about the stock on Twitter. This makes a lot of sense and I’m glad to hear that Streambase is now talking about their Twitter Connector
With that, the second person that I list for FollowFriday is @mrkwpalmer. Mark is CEO of StreamBase. In the Streambase press release, they also referenced Larry Tabb of the TABB Group. He tweets as @ltabb and is probably worth following as well.
@johnjcoulter of Vhayu, a competitor of Streambase, also posts on Twitter and tweeted about the SIFMA show and complex event processing. I’m not sure that he really understands what is going on with CEP and Twitter, which seems a bit surprising. In one message, he wrote “Factoring Tweets into trading algos is so dangerous its nonsense.” It seems like ignoring non-technical market signals, such as the buzz around a stock, whether it is buzz on the floor, or buzz on Twitter is dangerous nonsense for algorithmic traders.
One final person to add to this week’s FollowFriday is @kw2dio. Lars and I have worked with Dio in the past on financial services related projects. He seems to be spending more of his time on photography these days, but he is another person that should be followed.
So, that’s it for this week’s FollowFriday.
(Cross posted at the Toomre Capital Markets website.)
]]>Since March, I’ve been posting #FollowFriday posts on my blog, highlighting people that I find interesting. Often, these posts focus on specific groups of people; friends from Connecticut, Connecticut news outlets, political activists, people doing interesting stuff in online marketing, and so on. This week, I’m highlighting a few people doing saying interesting things about financial markets.
As is my standard, I write it as a blog post, so people can get additional information on why I am following these people, and TwitterFeed sends the key part to Twitter.
@ltoomre – I have known Lars since the 1980s when we worked together at Lehman brothers. We have worked together on and off ever since then. I first started using Twitter back in October, 2006 and in March, 2007, I wrote a blog post for the Toomre Capital Markets website entitled Web 3.1: Real Time Enterprise Internet Presence. I wrote about Twitter and how “More and more, the data is becoming real-time”. I ended my post by suggesting “System which provide real time processing of events, like Streambase, Coral8, and Apama may become key components of a Web 3.1 architecture, but they may have some difficult enhancements to develop to get there and some very smart thinking to figure out how to take advantage of it.” Well, Wednesday, Streambase has announced that they have connected their stream processing engine to Twitter.
At the SIFMA show, I asked people from Streambase for details of how they are connecting and what people are doing with these connections. The details were sketchy, but I did hear that some algorithmic trading firms are using signals from Twitter to stop automated trading of specific stocks if there is a spike in buzz about the stock on Twitter. This makes a lot of sense and I’m glad to hear that Streambase is now talking about their Twitter Connector
With that, the second person that I list for FollowFriday is @mrkwpalmer. Mark is CEO of StreamBase. In the Streambase press release, they also referenced Larry Tabb of the TABB Group. He tweets as @ltabb and is probably worth following as well.
@johnjcoulter of Vhayu, a competitor of Streambase, also posts on Twitter and tweeted about the SIFMA show and complex event processing. I’m not sure that he really understands what is going on with CEP and Twitter, which seems a bit surprising. In one message, he wrote “Factoring Tweets into trading algos is so dangerous its nonsense.” It seems like ignoring non-technical market signals, such as the buzz around a stock, whether it is buzz on the floor, or buzz on Twitter is dangerous nonsense for algorithmic traders.
One final person to add to this week’s FollowFriday is @kw2dio. Lars and I have worked with Dio in the past on financial services related projects. He seems to be spending more of his time on photography these days, but he is another person that should be followed.
So, that’s it for this week’s FollowFriday.
(Cross posted at the Toomre Capital Markets website.)
]]>Their berry patch is not far from a wonderful orchard where we buy our cider in the fall and Fiona wanted to stop there to pick up some fresh cider. However, they were closed and it led to a good discussion about which crops are in season when and how it is always best to try and eat local food in season whenever possible.
We’ve normally gone to Jones’ Farm on the busiest of picking days and it was quite a contrast to enter a nearly empty parking lot. We walked out to the fields and started picking on our assigned row. The berries were bountiful and in less than an hour, we had picked more than eighteen pounds. My extroverted daughter struck up a conversation with just about everyone within hearing distance and there were several other families picking berries and planning to make jam.
At home, I ran out to pick up sugar, lemons and canning jars and we proceeded to use about half the berries. The recipe that we used called for four cups of smashed strawberries, four cups of sugar and a half cup of lemon juice. I hulled the strawberries and handed them to Fiona who put them in a four quart measuring cup and smashed them with a potato masher. We sanitized the canning jars in the dishwasher and cooked up the jam on the stove top. After all the work of the project, we ended up with the equivalent of about eighteen eight ounce jars of jam.
Doing some back of the envelop calculations, the materials for the jam costs about half as much as a typical jar of jam in a local grocery store. However, that is a misleading calculation in many ways. When you include the cost of labor, the jam probably costs twice as much. If you factor in the costs of the jam that we’ve given away to family and friends it becomes even more prohibitive.
On the other side of the equation, I don’t mean to brag, but I think the jam is orders of magnitude better than typical store bought jam. More importantly, the money we spent in Shelton stays in the local economy. The farm gets some of the money. Some of that goes to the folks working at the farm which will hopefully also stay in the local economy. While there was some fuel burnt in driving to the farm, there wasn’t the fuel burnt in having the jam shipped from Ohio. Perhaps most importantly, Fiona and I had a wonderful day together. She learned more about the joy of picking fresh berries and making jam; experiences and lessons that will serve her well in the years to come.
]]>Their berry patch is not far from a wonderful orchard where we buy our cider in the fall and Fiona wanted to stop there to pick up some fresh cider. However, they were closed and it led to a good discussion about which crops are in season when and how it is always best to try and eat local food in season whenever possible.
We’ve normally gone to Jones’ Farm on the busiest of picking days and it was quite a contrast to enter a nearly empty parking lot. We walked out to the fields and started picking on our assigned row. The berries were bountiful and in less than an hour, we had picked more than eighteen pounds. My extroverted daughter struck up a conversation with just about everyone within hearing distance and there were several other families picking berries and planning to make jam.
At home, I ran out to pick up sugar, lemons and canning jars and we proceeded to use about half the berries. The recipe that we used called for four cups of smashed strawberries, four cups of sugar and a half cup of lemon juice. I hulled the strawberries and handed them to Fiona who put them in a four quart measuring cup and smashed them with a potato masher. We sanitized the canning jars in the dishwasher and cooked up the jam on the stove top. After all the work of the project, we ended up with the equivalent of about eighteen eight ounce jars of jam.
Doing some back of the envelop calculations, the materials for the jam costs about half as much as a typical jar of jam in a local grocery store. However, that is a misleading calculation in many ways. When you include the cost of labor, the jam probably costs twice as much. If you factor in the costs of the jam that we’ve given away to family and friends it becomes even more prohibitive.
On the other side of the equation, I don’t mean to brag, but I think the jam is orders of magnitude better than typical store bought jam. More importantly, the money we spent in Shelton stays in the local economy. The farm gets some of the money. Some of that goes to the folks working at the farm which will hopefully also stay in the local economy. While there was some fuel burnt in driving to the farm, there wasn’t the fuel burnt in having the jam shipped from Ohio. Perhaps most importantly, Fiona and I had a wonderful day together. She learned more about the joy of picking fresh berries and making jam; experiences and lessons that will serve her well in the years to come.
]]>Most importantly for me, Slicehost has said that they believe my current configuration should be sufficient and that they are notifying the complainants of my compliance and resolving the issue. I’m glad about this. All in all, I’ve been very pleased about Slicehost and I hope that I can work with them to make it more straight forward to get TOR up and running on a Slicehost slice. My slice is running Ubuntu, and I wrote about the initial set up in #iranelection and #TOR on #ubuntu.
In my discussion about the legal issues I ran into in More #TOR and #iranelection, J from Tequilafish wrote that he ran into a similar problem with Slicehost and has added the same Exit Policies. He also noted that he is running Fedora and has a blog post Slicehost: Setting up a Tor relay on Fedora to help keep Iran connected #IranElection. It is good to be communicating with him and I hope that many of us can work together to help establish best practices for installing TOR on Slicehost and Rackspace servers.
On Twitter, @fanclerks, who describes himself as a “Network Security Admin for Rackspace Hosting”wrote “I don't believe our AUP says anything about not allowing #Tor? I know a few Rackers run #Tor on their personal servers.” I believe that it all ends up being in how you read the AUP. As I read it, TOR should be okay. However, since you can’t control what people using TOR use your exit polices for, they could do things that are prohibited by the AUP which could put you in violation of the AUP. As a lawyer from EFF, who is also on the TOR Board of Directors said, the Terms of Service probably give Slicehost the right to terminate your account at any time for any reason. He offered to help me explain to Slicehost and why they have no legal responsibility for what comes out of a TOR node. As it stands right now, I don’t believe that is necessary, but it is great to have made contact with him.
Another friend on Twitter expressed reservations about running TOR since it can be misused. As I noted, all technology can be misused, so that argument doesn’t sway me much. He acknowledged this and talked about the benefits of use versus the costs of misuse. To me the benefit of making the Internet a little more open for people in Iran and other countries is great. To the extent that I can mitigate the costs of misuse to something like spending time trying to get people to understand a little better how TOR works and why it does not add a legal liability to a hosting service, then that is an acceptable cost. However, if the cost rises to the point of having to move to a different hosting service, then I would have to re-evaluate the cost.
One final note: I use hashmarks in my titles. This is because my titles end up getting sent to Twitter via Twitterfeed. I believe quite a few people have found my writings about this because of my use of hashmarks. However, my titles also show up on the webpage of a local newspaper. Some at the newspaper have been confused by the hashmarks. I’ve responded to them about the use of hashmarks as part of hashtags and encouraged them to learn more about twitter and hashtags. This is yet another cost benefit calculation. Right now, the benefit of using hashtags and the traffic I get from Twitter and related sites appears to significantly outweigh removing the hashtags for the benefit of the local paper. However, that too is a calculation constantly needing to be re-evaluated.
As a final comment, to those of you who are not particularly geeky or political, I apologize for the amount of technological and political posts I’ve put up recently. I do have other posts that will be coming up soon on some of the other topics I like to follow. However, I do believe this is very important and to the extent that I can communicate on this blog and elsewhere to make it easier to set up TOR Relays on Slicehost accounts, then I think I have done something very important.
]]>Most importantly for me, Slicehost has said that they believe my current configuration should be sufficient and that they are notifying the complainants of my compliance and resolving the issue. I’m glad about this. All in all, I’ve been very pleased about Slicehost and I hope that I can work with them to make it more straight forward to get TOR up and running on a Slicehost slice. My slice is running Ubuntu, and I wrote about the initial set up in #iranelection and #TOR on #ubuntu.
In my discussion about the legal issues I ran into in More #TOR and #iranelection, J from Tequilafish wrote that he ran into a similar problem with Slicehost and has added the same Exit Policies. He also noted that he is running Fedora and has a blog post Slicehost: Setting up a Tor relay on Fedora to help keep Iran connected #IranElection. It is good to be communicating with him and I hope that many of us can work together to help establish best practices for installing TOR on Slicehost and Rackspace servers.
On Twitter, @fanclerks, who describes himself as a “Network Security Admin for Rackspace Hosting”wrote “I don't believe our AUP says anything about not allowing #Tor? I know a few Rackers run #Tor on their personal servers.” I believe that it all ends up being in how you read the AUP. As I read it, TOR should be okay. However, since you can’t control what people using TOR use your exit polices for, they could do things that are prohibited by the AUP which could put you in violation of the AUP. As a lawyer from EFF, who is also on the TOR Board of Directors said, the Terms of Service probably give Slicehost the right to terminate your account at any time for any reason. He offered to help me explain to Slicehost and why they have no legal responsibility for what comes out of a TOR node. As it stands right now, I don’t believe that is necessary, but it is great to have made contact with him.
Another friend on Twitter expressed reservations about running TOR since it can be misused. As I noted, all technology can be misused, so that argument doesn’t sway me much. He acknowledged this and talked about the benefits of use versus the costs of misuse. To me the benefit of making the Internet a little more open for people in Iran and other countries is great. To the extent that I can mitigate the costs of misuse to something like spending time trying to get people to understand a little better how TOR works and why it does not add a legal liability to a hosting service, then that is an acceptable cost. However, if the cost rises to the point of having to move to a different hosting service, then I would have to re-evaluate the cost.
One final note: I use hashmarks in my titles. This is because my titles end up getting sent to Twitter via Twitterfeed. I believe quite a few people have found my writings about this because of my use of hashmarks. However, my titles also show up on the webpage of a local newspaper. Some at the newspaper have been confused by the hashmarks. I’ve responded to them about the use of hashmarks as part of hashtags and encouraged them to learn more about twitter and hashtags. This is yet another cost benefit calculation. Right now, the benefit of using hashtags and the traffic I get from Twitter and related sites appears to significantly outweigh removing the hashtags for the benefit of the local paper. However, that too is a calculation constantly needing to be re-evaluated.
As a final comment, to those of you who are not particularly geeky or political, I apologize for the amount of technological and political posts I’ve put up recently. I do have other posts that will be coming up soon on some of the other topics I like to follow. However, I do believe this is very important and to the extent that I can communicate on this blog and elsewhere to make it easier to set up TOR Relays on Slicehost accounts, then I think I have done something very important.
]]>