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Tuesday

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11
Mar 25

First outdoor ride of the year

Yesterday, at the end of class, I gave my students my other bully pulpit lecture. I tell them at the beginning of the term that being at the front of the room allows me to give one or two brief speeches that have little or nothing to do with the class. And yesterday was the day, because today was the day.

That speech is the one about how to pass other road users safely when you’re driving. There are relatively new state laws. People don’t know them very well. I am updating people one room at a time. I have a whole patter about this, because I’ve been doing it for years. I used to do it much more intently.

The whole thing was about being careful to allow cyclists room to safely operate when you pass them. And I won’t tell you what I wear or what color my helmet or my bike is because I want you to be safe and attentive and considerate when you pass all of them them. Because one of them might be me. “And remember,” I used to say in the driest tone of humor I can muster, which is pretty considerable, “I have your grade, right here, in my hand.”

That’s what I used to do, and one semester a student said to me at the end of the term that I’d psyched her out and tensed her up whenever she saw a cyclist. That’s not the point. Nor is it the point to threatened anyone’s grade, of course. It’s a laugh line. After that, it seemed important to point out, “This is a laugh line. But, also, be careful.”

All of this was made much more relevant after my lovely bride’s pickup truck-caused accident in 2022. And it’s relevant since we’ve been doing research in this area the last few months. And it’s relevant because, today, the weather was beautiful and I took my bike off the trainer and put it on the road. (Twenty-two days earlier than last year!) Oh, happy day.

Also it was a momentous day, of sorts. I’ve been sneaking up on this little achievement for a while, and I certainly didn’t want to capture it indoors. So I have slacked off on the trainer, with that in mind. I didn’t really want to do it on a road I know very well, but that’s the risk you run when you are on your normal training roads. Not that it matters, nothing about this matters, but, somewhere, right in here, I reached a mileage equivalent to the earth’s equatorial circumference.

That’s 24,901 miles to you and me. I celebrated by dropping a gel, turning around, and picking it up.

The bullfrogs were cheering me, and summer, on.

In addition to being the first outdoor ride of the year, and the equatorial ride, it was also new bike computer day. New is a relative term. I bought this, used, at the end of last September and mounted it in the cockpit today. The computer I just retired, a Garmin 705 Edge, I bought used in 2020. It was a 2008 release. My new computer is the Garmin 520, which made its way into the wild in 2013, so I’m happily still behind the curve, but it is a half-decade leap forward for me.

And that’s an important five years because the new computer communications with this new light, the Garmin Varia. I got one for The Yankee for her birthday last year, she loves it, and so she got one for me for Christmas. This is no mere light. There’s a radar system here, and it detects approaching vehicles, and then signals the computer, which beeps, turns red on the edges, and displays dots meant to represent the traffic behind you.

It’s a cool little feature. Sometimes, in the right circumstances, you don’t always hear the oncoming vehicles, so it is a nice help. Though you mustn’t think of it as 100 percent accurate. It’s not too bad on false positives, but there seems to be one time of day, if you’re riding in front of a low-in-the-sun sky, that it isn’t perfect. It didn’t pick up the first two cars that passed me on this initial ride today, but I think it caught the rest of them. One extra layer of safety.

What’s nice is that sometimes the headset will beep, because the Varia picks up a vehicle before I hear it. I have developed a three-look technique that seems to help. I glance over my shoulder when the oncoming motorist is well back, when they’ve closed about half the distance and then just before they get to me. And this seems to help them realize that I’ve seen them too. Since I’ve started doing this late last summer, most of my passes have been much better.

But perhaps the best part of the Varia is this. It has different light settings, and I’ve watched this with great amusement while riding behind The Yankee. She leaves her light on a solid setting, but when a car or truck gets to a certain distance away from them, the light starts blinking. Every time, every time, you see the car decelerate and move over.

So if you wandered to this page thinking about bike radar, we’re still in the early days, but big fans of them so far.

Also, because why not, it was new jersey day.

I got a good sale at NeoPro. Full zip, three pockets, they do the job you ask a bike jersey to do, except make me faster and skinnier. They’re bike jerseys.

Now I need to find good sales on bib shorts.

And to go pack. So, if you’ll excuse me.

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4
Mar 25

I used the word “zip” six times below

I returned to campus this afternoon to visit with a production class. The professor has asked me to be a client. His students have been making cycling safety videos, and an audio spot, to help raise awareness of the state’s safe passing laws. This is my third visit to the class this term, which isn’t much, but it isn’t nothing. The first visit, I gave them the problem. The second time, they gave me their initial pitches. Today, they presented their works in progress. And now we get to pick which ones we want to go forward.

So I walked into the class and said to the professor, “What would you like from me today?” And so we settled on feedback. I’m good at feedback. I was, for many years, a professional feedback giver, after all. I tried to let my colleague give the production feedback, but, I did that for 15 years, and that’s a habit that’s hard to break. Hopefully I didn’t step on his toes.

But let me tell you, these projects are all interesting. There are eight or nine, and they all came from different starting points, which is always fascinating as a demonstration of creativity. They all had the same briefing and Q&A with me, but they’re all trying to tell the story and carry the message in different ways. Some of them have reasonable potential. I think we’ll probably try to continue on with three or four of them, if the students are interested in completing the work.

The last time I visited with that group the class ended early so as to get the commuters on the road before a snow system came through. Today, I walked the long way around the building before, and after, because it was just so perfectly pleasant out today. I’d spent the morning and early afternoon working inside and had no idea how spectacular the day was.

It was windy in the late afternoon. I had to stop by the hardware store to pick up some zip ties. We use some on a fence cover and those little ties won’t do fr the wind we get. But you can purchase a bigger version. The package says it is certified to 150 pounds. I don’t know what the wind’s PSI is here, but other weathering effects will come into play eventually. These ties, too, will fail after some time. But they’ll work for now.

And the good news is, I now have a stockpile. The hardware store only seems them in bags of 50. This evening, while I was outside fixing the problem, I realized I only needed four.

Also, these thick heavy duty zip ties only come in lengths of 24 inches. I only need about an 1/8th of that. That’s a lot of zip tie to snip off at the end. Why doesn’t the zip tie maker offer individual locking heads that can somehow be used on all of those off cuts?

I wonder what people are securing that requires the better part of that full length zip tie. And, also, where they store them. It took me a while to find a cabinet large enough to hold them in. (I’ll never remember they’re under the restroom sink when I need to use another one two years from now.)

If I have time to wonder about that, I should spend that time on work instead. So back to that. The grading is done for the week. I have one more class prep and two committees to prepare for, but, otherwise, it’s just that great big work packet. The plan is to get the bulk of it done tonight, finish it off tomorrow and pass it on on Thursday, in advance of Friday’s deadline. And then to not think about it, much like those zip ties, until this time next year when I must do it again.

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25
Feb 25

The tease of not-spring

Here’s a lovely video I shot from the front porch on a recent evening and forgot to share here. Hey, the colors were nice, OK? I sped it up just a bit, to add some whimsy.

It was a beautiful day today, so much so that I spent a solid hour doing yard work. And by yard work, I mean picking up and breaking branches. I have an impressive little tower growing in the backyard just now. The top half of it is what I did today.

All of this will go in the fire pit, eventually. If you look in the foreground you can see some thicker branches also waiting for that bit of ambience. Not pictures is a bunch of firewood. The first problem is that it has been, paradoxically, too cold to start a fire.

And now, suddenly, and briefly, it is not.

On the other hand, it is much too windy. But, eventually, we’ll get the right set of conditions. On that day, we’ll start by burning all of these leaves and light lawn litter that is in the fire pit.

It’s a rite of spring, or something. Now if spring would just hurry up and arrive. But, friends, it was a lovely and almost warm day today.

After my break in the yard this afternoon it was back inside and grading once again. Students were reading this piece, from my colleague, Dr. Angela Cirucci.

Facebook is forthcoming about what happens with our posts and the related meta-data (e.g., tags, locations, and sharing permissions) that we have intentionally provided (the chopped carrots). These are the data, as Mr. Zuckerberg notes above, that we can download. However, Facebook is much less forthcoming about the data they assume we have unintentionally provided (the fingerprints) and the data that Facebook itself derives from our contributions (the registry).

One of the main strategies that Facebook uses to side-step this topic is to focus only on notions of social privacy, rather than institutional privacy. While your social privacy includes which of your content other internet users are privy to, your institutional privacy has to do with what Facebook themselves can see, and what new content they ultimately derive.

In fact, Mr. Zuckerberg’s definition of privacy is an outdated notion of privacy that only includes social considerations. If, for instance, we set the permission, what Facebook calls the “audience,” of a post to “Only Me,” we expect that coworkers, family, and the public will not be able to view it. However, what about Mr. Zuckerberg himself? Or members of a Facebook research team? Or a new data analysis tool developed by Facebook? How would we ever know? Suddenly “Only Me” seems potentially misleading.

That’s from 2018 and Facebook has only gotten more concerning, I’m sorry to say.

This is a moment in that class, though, where students (most of whom are dismissive of Facebook as something that Boomers use) start to really consider the implications of all of our social media platforms. It’s an eye-opening read, and we would all do well to give careful consideration what we use, and how. And, in this go around, this batch of students seems intent on doing just that, which is gratifying in its own way.

And that’s what I’m reading about today. And probably all of Thursday, too.

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18
Feb 25

Now, finally, a card carrying member of the local library

Last Tuesday, since I’m touching on two weeks in one, the winter weather rolled in. We were on campus, because I rode in with my lovely bride. This was the before.

She had her two classes to teach. I sat in the office for a while and tried to get in some work.

My students were reading and writing about Tarleton Gillespie’s Politics of Platforms. The abstract, if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.

It’s a 2010 piece, and it reads like it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but those 15 years are about 40 in social media years, I think. Despite it feeling far away from the students, in perhaps more ways than one, it remains an excellent foundational piece for what is to come in the class. And I have to read 71 students reactions to the piece. And also comment on what they say. It’s fun. Sometimes it is challenging in the best kind of way. But it is time consuming.

In the afternoon I visited another class that I’m not teaching, but I am working with a bit this semester. Students are making videos and I guess I am acting as a client-consultant. Two weeks ago, I gave them their first briefing. Last Tuesday, they came back with proposals. And they had to get that in quickly, because of that weather that was rolling in during the early evening.

We left campus at 4:45, as campus closed and the snow was starting. There are a lot of commuters on our campus, and so they wanted to get everyone back to where they needed to be, just in case some real weather hit the roads. Sensible. We made it safely. It looked like this.

And the snow, in the end, wasn’t that bad. But I’ll right about last Wednesday tomorrow. Today, I must turn to today.

While last week was so busy, I am returning to my normal pace this week. Just a few days on campus, and much of my work done in the home office. While those students were reading Gillespise then, I am now looking at the work they’ve put into the next reading assignment, Bernie Hogan’s The Presentation of Self. The abstract:

Presentation of self (via Goffman) is becoming increasingly popular as a means for explaining differences in meaning and activity of online participation. This article argues that self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous “situations,” and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous “exhibitions.” Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (including the notions of front and back stage) focuses on situations. Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual “curator” that manages and redistributes this digital content. This article introduces the exhibitional approach and the curator and suggests ways in which this approach can extend present work concerning online presentation of self. It introduces a theory of “lowest common denominator” culture employing the exhibitional approach.

I find this to be a challenging piece, because Hogan brings in several really important concepts and weaves them together. He does a nice job with it, but there’s Goffman, there’s the ancient (to modern students, anyway) German critic and theorist Walter Benjamin, environmental psychology with Roger Barker, some computer science with danah boyd (who not everyone understands), electronic media with the impressive Joshua Meyrowitz and on and on. There’s a lot going on.

Everytime I read this one, I pull apart something new. And I find it is a good litmus to see where students are. One part of this assignment asks them to ask a question about the reading. I answer the questions. Some of them ask about elements that are very practical, or otherwise operational, and that’s great. Some of them ask about the conceptual or theoretical elements of the reading, and that’s terrific. And, for whatever reason, what they ask about here is a self-sorter for the rest of the term. Neither is bad, and both are necessary, but you can get a real sense of most of the people based on how they approach that particular reading. It’s interesting, and I’d like to know more of why that is.

Anyway, last week, and last Tuesday were busy. Today, I’ve just begun reading about this Hogan paper. And then I took the recycling to the inconvenience center across town.

On the way back, I finally stopped at the local library for the first time. I got a card. Paid two bucks for the privilege. Listened to two old volunteers struggle through the new library member process and, then, bicker about world events. One couldn’t believe this was going on, and surely it won’t get worse. The other could not stand to talk about it, saying it made them ill. They were discussing Medicare and Medicaid at the moment, and if that’s the prism through which they see everything, that’ll tell them enough. And it will get worse.

I found this inside one book, which I did not check out.

It’s a small enough library that, even though there’s only one fiction series I read — Craig Johnson’s Longmire is a guilty pleasure. I generally read history and biography, but I have stacks of those, floor to ceiling, here at home already.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get to that library for what seems like ages, and today was that day. I got the three most recent books from that series the library holds, but I’ve already read two of them. I’ll read the third next weekend. After that, I suppose I’ll be taking advantages of the wonderful interlibrary loan system. I too, could benefit from reading a tiny bit less news. Where I’ll cram it in, I don’t know, but I’ll start with weekends, I think.

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4
Feb 25

The goosen and the geesen

On the way to campus today, we saw Canada geese. They were all sitting in one field, rose up for a bit of video and then settled back down again in the next field. I suppose they’ve got good worms over there.

The people that will plant that field in the coming weeks will benefit from their visit, I’m sure. It’s the circle of life, take the worms, leave something behind. But all that honking.

Probably, this is the flock that flies over our house. It’s charming, but only because they are passing through. If they were in your backyard, just honking away for hours or days on end …

I went to campus with my lovely bride today. She was teaching. I sat in the office. And then she came from a class and we sat there doing office stuff — I pecked away at email and some notes and so on — until it was time for her next class. For my part, I visited with a video production class.

The professor asked me to be a client. He brings in people every term and his students do some video work for them. My colleague knew I am working with a cycling safety group. So I spent the afternoon telling them about some of the relevant laws, what this safety group is trying to do, and discussing how these sorts of messages can be successful. Now they’re going to make some PSA-style or docu-style awareness videos for the group.

Next week I’ll find out what they’re thinking. Today, they asked a lot of good questions. They seem thoughtful and careful, trying to grasp this new concept that was put before them. Maybe that’s why the professor invited me to take part. For people who don’t ride bikes there’s a whole new series of things to learn in this sort of project. That’s always different than building messaging about something with which you’re intimately familiar. And the end product, which we’re aiming at motorists, in general, can benefit from their work too.

I’m fairly confident about that part. We’re definitely at the awareness stage of this still-new state law, and they were all interested in carrying this on. So all of the important elements are there. So this is exciting: I am looking forward to continuing to watch them learn and grow through their creative process, it is important, it compliments some volunteerism, I don’t have to grade things. That’s win-win-win-win.

Worth going to campus for. But, now, I must get back to my own class prep and grading, so let me do that.