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6
Jun 14

Dinner on the road, while on the road, from the road

We took a drive this evening …

tunnel

And we went through this tunnel …

tunnel

Which isn’t dramatic at all, but I enjoyed the pictures and wanted to share them.

At one point during our trip I counted four Dunkin Donuts within eight miles. I don’t really have a point for that either, other than to point out that Waffle House has some catching up to do. Wikipedia tells me there are about 1,700 Waffle Houses. A story from boston.com says there are 7,200 Dunkins. They have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, the purpose of our trip this evening was to eat dinner with our friends Paige and Kevin. Paige took our engagement photos in the middle of a nor’easter. She laughed about that tonight. She took our wedding pictures on the hottest day of the summer. I laughed about that tonight, too. Everyone laughs! And you can do that when the weather is mild enough to dine on the back deck of a Victorian house that has been turned into a restaurant. That place is formal about casual dining.

Here’s Paige and The Yankee:

Paige

Things to read … because reading always makes for casual dining.

If it is World Cup time it must be time for more stories about oppressed people who work under a multi-multi-billion dollar international entity: Pakistan workers fire ‘Brazuca’ ball to Brazil

Veterans bid farewell to D-Day beaches after emotional tributes

So this gentleman slipped out of his nursing home and traveled to France. Well, the Royal Navy, for whom he sailed, says “Life without limits,” so this makes sense: Hove veteran disappears for Normandy trip.

I’m a bit surprised this is still the case, Web TV soon to beat terrestrial reception in the US:

The percentage of US households with a television that relies exclusively on an antenna for television programming reception (6%) is about to be eclipsed for the first time ever by the percentage of households relying only on the Internet for TV programming (5%).

It seems it won’t be the case for long.

New head honcho on the Bulldogs’ hardwood … Samford Names Padgett Head Basketball Coach


5
Jun 14

A quick Thursday post

I don’t know what you had for dinner tonight, but we went here:

Tuttis

It is one of those look-forward-to-it-all-day places. We always visit here when we’re on the Gold Coast. It wasn’t even especially good tonight and it was better than most things you could enjoy.

Tonight we attended the year-ending party of Special Church, which is a program my mother-in-law runs for special needs community members. The Waffle Man was there, with ice cream. The music therapist played songs on a ukelele. One of the attendees did a great solo, others danced and shook noisemakers. We had party favors and tropi-coladas: coconut and pineapple juice and huge sugar rushes. We got hugs. It was a fine party; it always is when we are there.

Things to read … because when have you not been to a party that had a lot of great reading?

Exactly.

Huge leap in mobile video usage and ad interaction

Mobile is fast becoming a central hub of entertainment decisions, with not only content usage climbing but also a commensurate leap in ad engagement, says research from Vdopia.

Among the key findings revealed by the latest edition of the mobile video advertising provider’s Vdopia Mobile Insights (VMI) report was the fact that the number of people who consumed entertainment content on their smartphones ever in a month jumped 28% in the past year to 109 million. Americans now average 33 minutes each day watching videos on their smartphones.

Moreover, mobile entertainment audiences not only are twice as likely to click on mobile ads but 45% recall seeing ads compared to only 24% for non-mobile entertainment audiences.

Which one of you is watching that much video on your phone? Pretty sure it isn’t me.

There’s an Alabama hook here, and four amazing stories: Four POWs we should all remember.

Veteran, 89, Recreates D-Day Parachute Jump: “They made me feel very relaxed but I wanted to get out that door!”

I’m just going to read every D-Day story, aren’t I?

This one features a different fellow. D-Day paratrooper, 93, to jump again for anniversary: “They are worried about me getting hurt. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. If I get hurt or I get killed, what is the difference? I’ve lived 93 years. I’ve had a good life.'”

And, finally:


4
Jun 14

A river runs through me

Yesterday I learned a bit about your basic fly fishing cast. I grew up fishing for bass and bream and catfish so this is all new to me. My father-in-law is an old pro, though. So I got the motion down in a yard yesterday. This evening we stood in a chilly stretch of river and threw little tiny bits of plastic and hair at hungry fish.

Here I am, showing off how good a pair of borrowed waders can look:

truck

Here’s Bob, showing us where all the good fish are:

truck

The Yankee got one. Her dad got one. I had one on the line early, but I couldn’t get him in. I spent most of the time just making the fish hungry for the guy a little farther down stream, who was catching everything in site. Fish from other rivers where getting in to this water for the pleasure of being on that guy’s hook.

Things to read … because reading is always worth a nibble.

Mastering the Internet of everything:

The IoE is about the intersection of people, processes, data, and things. Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a framework for making sense of data, information, and knowledge flows. Processes, data, and things are relatively easy to control, but people are complex adaptive systems in their own right. How can people be part of the IoE but not be overly controlled by the other three dimensions? What new skills will be needed to master the internet of everything?

Much of PKM is about finding balance. This will be even more important with the IoE. In seeking knowledge sources, we have to balance aggregation, or getting as much information as possible, with filtering, or ensuring that we have more signal than noise. What happens when we add processes and things to all these data sources? Will it make things easier, or perhaps less visible? Our networks of people may help, as long as they are diverse enough, as we will be ever decreasingly able to keep track of [the internet of] everything.

We will have to get skilled at constantly lumping data and things together, then filtering and categorizing the changing landscape. We will have to become adept at breathing information in and out, able to only make sense of a small portion at a time. Our reliance on other people for sense-making will increase.

Will algorithms do that for you? There are only more sophisticated questions coming as we swap paradigms.

How Not to Pay the Price for Free Wi-Fi:

Part of globe-trotting nowadays is flitting from one free Wi-Fi network to the next. From hotel lobby to coffee shop to subway platform to park, each time we join a public network we put our personal information and privacy at risk. Yet few travelers are concerned enough to turn down free Wi-Fi. Rather, many of us hastily give away an email address in exchange for 15 minutes of free airport Internet access.

So how to feed your addiction while also safeguarding your passwords and privacy?

Ever wonder how some historic football team would fare against their modern counterparts? Check out this infographic on player size and you’ll see, they’d be mauled.

Two media prospectuses:

The Pricewaterhouse Cooper Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018

Ericsson predicts tenfold increase in mobile data traffic in five years

Ran three miles today. My mother-in-law, who is a thoughtful and giving lady, picked us up something called the Arctic Chill Towel which … oh, let’s let this enthusiastic corporate spokesman explain it to us:

Felt pretty great around my neck on the track today and it should come in very handy this summer.


3
Jun 14

Not sure of my time zone

What day is it? What planet am I on?

Transnational travel in a day is a surrealistic thing. On the other hand, we traversed almost 7,000 miles in a day.

I ran one mile today, having not put on those shoes in a week, and my body feeling pretty terrible both because of that and the travel and the sleepiness and it all just hurt. So I sprinted, which still felt like a slog on my wife’s high school track.

Saw this truck while we were ordering sandwiches. I feel like they got the tint of the paint job just about perfect:

truck

These were our collective fortunes at dinner tonight. One of them makes no sense and, thus, all of the sense in the world:

fortunes

Things to read: because reading always makes sense.

What passes as sports journalism at home today: Alabama All-Americans on the same bench as AJ McCarron meets Forrest Gump. I’ll leave it to you to decide if I mean the subject matter or just writing things from social media accounts you follow.

Something more important, Exclusive: Sharyl Attkisson on Journalism’s Very Dangerous Trend:

Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning investigative reporter who resigned from CBS News earlier this year, says the news media are heading down a dangerous path with attempts to “censor or block stories” that don’t align with their preferred agenda.

“There’s a tendency in the news media, on the part of some managers, to censor or block stories that don’t fall in line with the message they want sent to the viewers,” Attkisson said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal. “I think that’s really a very dangerous perspective to have.”

This makes sense, and you’ll see a lot more stories like it. Online, mobile consumption soars among sports fans means you should go where your audience is.

Internet Use Over Time is an excellent resource from Pew.

FAA Weighs Letting Film, TV Industry Use Drones reminds me: I still need a drone.

And, possibly, a good night’s sleep.


20
May 14

I do believe I ran my foot off

These dogwoods are in the neighborhood park where my wife grew up playing:

Cranbury

This is also the park where we took engagement pictures during a Nor’easter. It is also the park where I come to torture myself whenever we visit her parents. Today I ran far enough that I couldn’t feel my foot.

Yesterday, at her high school track, I ran 440s, which I haven’t done since high school, and which I did poorly back then. But, I told myself, running 440s will build up speed! I do not know what is happening. These are the first two workouts after the most recent triathlon and a day in the car. A handful of 440 sprints and running my way into a numb extremity. I am counting the days until our next race, which is in July. And that will come with only a few weeks of “training” after about two weeks of downtime. What could go wrong?

Here’s something I ran along today. Pretty nice, huh?

Road

I learned something about myself today, as I told my mother-in-law. We were driving from here to there and it occurred to me. I see people running and think Oh, that’s nice. Good for them. I see people cycling and think I wish I was riding right now. I never think Oh I’d love to be running just like they are!

Funny how that works.

Things to read … because reading always works.

Wonder how this plays out: Without changes, Alabama’s pension funds could run dry within decade, study warns.

This is just about the sweetest, saddest story you’ll read today. ‘Best thing I’ll ever see’: McAdory senior receives diploma in bedside ceremony hours before grandmother’s death

5 in China Army Face U.S. Charges of Cyberattacks

Chinese military officials charged with stealing US data as tensions escalate

Poll Says Anti-Semitism Is Global Matter

Businesses are dying faster than they’re being created, and economists are worried

AT&T Aims for TV’s Future With $48.5B DirecTV Deal

Will we run out of adjectives before we run out of scandal? Nope. Exclusive: VA Scandal Hits New Hospital

VA investigating Florida hospital wait lists

Federal health-care subsidies may be too high or too low for more than 1 million Americans

From Idea to Story: Planning the Data Journalism Story

We live at an interesting point in media history. Internet Ad Spending Beat Broadcast TV for First Time Last Year