Friday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday

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7
Feb 25

See you in a week

I went to campus three days this week. And if that sounds like a complaint, it is not. Looking ahead, I’ll be on campus every day next week. That’s not a complaint, either. I’ll still have to find to do a full week’s worth of work away from campus, as well. It’s going to be a busy one.

I think I’ll take the week off from the site, just to get in all of the grading and the writing and the other stuff I’ll be doing just to keep my nose above water.

So, sadly, this post will be the placeholder for the next week.

Look! Here’s a shot from today’s 20-mile ride.

Just another month or two of riding in the basement. I’m over riding in the basement.

At lunchtime today, I heard them. And then the sky darkened. The light literally, actually, dimmed. And when I got outside …

They flew from the fields to the southwest, over the house, across the road, did a giant loop over Joe The Elder’s place, and then came back for more.

They come and they go, and then they don’t come back the rest of the day. The ideal way to enjoy a noisy, noisy air show.

Catch you on the flip side. (If the birds don’t get me.)

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31
Jan 25

Friday the 31st

The weekend is upon us. There is nothing but cold and gray and winter this weekend. All of that and whatever grim things come our way in the news. This is no way to start a Friday, but it is the right way to end January, begin February, and here we are.

I had a nice bike ride this evening, getting in 35 miles before it got too late in the day. I had two Strava PRs over the course of the ride, including the climb at the end of the thing. I messed around with the first mile or so of it, but then got serious and put in 20 seconds on my best time. I’m only four minutes off the fastest time.

The problem is that it was a short climb, just 2.33 miles. You can’t be four minutes behind the fast guy on a climb of that length. You’re almost halfway down the hill!

Hill is the right word. Right now I’d struggle to get over even virtual mountains.

OK, this is the last clip from last week’s concert. This was the finale in the encore, and “Satellite” is just such a cheery song to end a show on. It’s one of those that you can listen to a lot and find it might mean one of several different things. But it’s snappy. And everyone is happy. I have settled on it being a cheery song.

I didn’t notice it at the show, but I see it in the video here, the puppet that represents the Evil Producer is even dancing along in the back of the shot. If you can make an Evil Producer puppet dance, you’re doing something right.

The weekend is upon us. Too bad spring isn’t on the other side of it!

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17
Jan 25

I finally left Meta behind

My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has a friend who is in a two-man band and they played a restaurant nearby this evening. So we braved the chill night air and drove to see them play. Gen X covers. They do a nice job. They can fade into the background or grab the room’s attention. Whatever is required at the moment. Good music! Very average cheeseburger!

Before that, I did this. It felt good.

I also changed up the buttons on the front page and the top of this page. No reason to have links to things I don’t use anymore.

I don’t want to say it was cathartic, or even a big decision. I ignored Threads almost immediately because it was terrible from the start. I never got a lot of traction on Instagram, because I’m not especially popular, I guess. Facebook never appealed to me all that much. So these things were easy for me. They’ll be less easy for some, I realize that. And I know that some people will be fine with the direction Zuckerberg is going.

I could thunder away at that for a few thousand words. The content moderation, dismissing the very notion of fact checking, the filters, the misinformation, the changes to their standards which will have continued negative effect on users. People you know are going to be brought further into risk by Zuckerberg’s decisions to cozy up, or read the moment, or try to be relevant — whatever the true motivation is. And whatever that motivation is, users barely figure into it. That’s not a new thing at 1 Hacker Way. Cambridge Analytica should have been the wooden stake in the heart. What they did to news media, their legendary pivot to video nonsense, how they’ve data mined you and gleefully put their thumb on the scale of distribution, the surveillance, any one of these should have all had them tossed with the bathwater. But here we are. They think they’ve got you, because you allowed for all of that. And now, at this moment, we are at a place where none of what’s going to occur is worth whatever you think you get in return.

That’s a personal decision for everyone, but even before they make it, people have got to know about it. The chronically online are the first to see what’s happening. The rest will figure it out for themselves later. (Maybe. Depending on what media environment they’ve cultivated for themselves.) If it does bubble into their consciousness, people will make their own decisions based on toleration and habits and needs.

Thing is, we don’t really need any of these things for much. We certainly don’t have to tolerate the coarseness and continued enshittification. There are better alternatives when it comes to how one spends their time, keeps in touch, or what have you. Some of them are much better.

So I didn’t have great habits in Meta’s walled garden. I don’t need them. This was an easy choice. Moreover, it’s the right one.

Wish I’d done it much, much, sooner.

I said yesterday’s bike ride was perfectly uninspired. Today’s was even more ho-hum, if that’s possible. Just 20 miles. Nothing of interest to report. Some days you’re just keeping the legs turning, and that was today.

But I did go by the best fake storefront in the fake Zwift world.

I blame the weather. We’re due some snow this weekend and then a week of bitter, bitter cold. That’s no way to begin a new semester, which starts on Tuesday.

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10
Jan 25

Getting things done

I think I spent all day in either a productive and good committee meeting, or working on a syllabus and an outline for my new class. The latter is a bit of a slog. The good news is that, after however long I’ve been working on it, and for the last four months or so that I’ve been thinking about it, I finally got it into a shape I like, this new class.

There’s still work to do. a lot of it, but six weeks of layout are now in the can. I can do the next two with my eyes closed, if I have to. There will be some great guests after that, and then a series of group presentations after that. And, by then, we’ll be in the home stretch for the term.

Tonight I even figured out the midterm paper and two options for the final.

It was a productive day, then. It should all be mapped out on paper this weekend. Hopefully the rest of the details will click into place in a satisfying way.

Then I have to build the Canvas site for it.

And then I have to prepare lectures and presentations and deliver them, of course. But, here, in January, I found the path to May.

If I can sell the students on following along this could be an interesting journey.

That’s pretty exciting for me, even if a day spent pecking away at keyboards and looking for good resources to use in the class isn’t the most exciting thing to talk about.

Perhaps, then, the most exciting thing today was this. I set my cup on the countertop in the kitchen and went into another room to do … whatever it was, I forget now … and I heard the sound of something falling. Because we have two cats, you have to put things in just the right spot, or chaos gets created, and almost right away. You come, too, to know all the sounds. So I knew what it was, from two rooms away.

One of the cats was playing flip cup.

And someone won.

I wonder who it was.

There’s new art on the front page of the site. It’s a nice eight-image presentation, this is the general premise.

So go to the front page and check it out. I’ll wait for you.

It’ll probably stay up until the end of February, unless something really blows me away between now and then. By then we’ll be past due for something that makes us feel warm.

Also, I started making new buttons for the front page. There are plenty of updates coming. But I’m just doing a bit here and there, because there’s a lot of regular work to be done. And, as ever, the Want To Do list, is crammed full of items. Maybe I’ll have some of those done by May, too!

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
3
Jan 25

A furry Friday

New year, still the same features which we will start easing back into in the coming weeks. Of course, we can never overlook the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the kitties.

I caught Phoebe here in a little moment of silly. She has three speeds — affectionate, intense relaxation, silly — and it’s that last one that’s perhaps the most difficult to capture. It’s a little fleeting, and she doesn’t show it off except in just the right circumstance. This, I guess, was one of those moments.

I’ve come to think of it as the cats are petting me back when they do things like this.

And, as Poseidon is demonstrating there, they do that quite often. There’s a lot of affection around here.

I made myself get on the bike this evening. That’s the right verb for it, too. Finally I got talked into a little round of a light spin, and then see how it felt. And, after about 11 miles, it felt pretty good. So I started pedaling a bit harder and faster. I did nine more miles and stayed ahead of everyone who was likewise in the Zwift virtual world.

Nothing of them knew we were racing, but that’s really their fault, isn’t it?

So I’ll probably sit around like a slug this weekend and watch football and do a little work and then get back to spinning the back wheel of my bike and going nowhere fast sometime next week.

Already, I’m behind on my mileage spreadsheet.