Monday « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

Monday

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24
Aug 15

What’s on your whiteboard?

A couple of our faculty members have these by their doors:

They didn’t give me one. Probably for the best. Who knows what I would write on it. Probably koans:

Shuzan held out his short staff and said, “If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?

I do have access to a giant chalkboard. Maybe I should write about the philosophical mysteries of faith, reality and the universe there.

Today I had a few students come up to the office studio to record a few intro and outro tracks for a podcast project we’re launching tomorrow. They sound impressive, which means we must now make the rest of the project sound equally good.

No pressure or anything.

Things to read: Because we haven’t used this gimmick here in a long while.

Agricultural drones may change the way we farm:

For centuries much of farming has been legwork: walking down rows, through patches, going plant-by-plant to check for weeds, bugs, parched soil, any sign of distress. Modern machinery, soil-testing, computers, and ground-based sensors have made crop monitoring and tending more efficient, but still lots goes unnoticed.

Even with a trained eye, there also are inevitably data that can’t be detected at scale, such as nitrogen deficiency or diminished photosynthesis, the chlorophyll-powered process that is crucial for a healthy plant. And if one ailing plant is found, what is the impact on the sometimes hundreds of thousands of plants that surround it? Farmers were long left to guess.

Not for much longer: Agriculture drones may soon be flying across America’s farmland.

I ask an ag journalist and an ag tech person I know about this story. “What unconventional things related to the use of drones are you seeing?”

They aren’t seeing anything unconventional, because the idea of convention is a bit thin at the moment as it relates to drones in agriculture.

You knew this already, if you’ve been reading me anywhere … Digital Media Consumption Is Booming as Investment Floods In:

Here’s some good news for online publishers: People in the U.S. are consuming more digital media than ever before, and their appetite for it is only growing.

According to data from online measurement firm comScore, the total amount of time spent with digital media in the U.S. increased by a whopping 49% over the past two years, driven largely by the use of non-desktop devices.

Time spent with digital media on smartphones grew 90% between June 2013 and June 2015, comScore said, compared with a 64% increase on tablets.

In case you were wondering: Scientists are crediting the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge for breakthroughs in research.

Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
17
Aug 15

Back to school

Back to campus for the first day of another fall term. It rained a lot and there was no parking. There is a video circulating among the campus set of the president ferrying people to their buildings in a golf cart. Did that happen at your university? The president of the institution was out this morning in a slicker and a baseball cap, driving people to and fro.

It took me 34 minutes to park this morning, and it seemed like most everyone had a similar tale, but at least the good folks in the administration building know what is going on on their campus.

First class today, I’m teaching a social media practices class this fall. I’m excited to see what becomes of it.

After class the rain had moved off and the sun appeared. I saw this on one of the bike racks:

I moved my car closer, because, according to the collection of emails, that’s going to be the game of the first week back in classes. This is the largest student body Samford has ever had, some construction is wrapping up here and there and heavy equipment is using some parking. They’re going to invent a new parking lot from thin air soon.

I think that’s because the folks with the truly impressive titles were out shuttling students and faculty this morning. They know. They know, they understand and they’re eager to make this work.

Great place to be.

Went to the big blue box store tonight. I got excited when I saw this:

And then you tilt it over, pick it up, read the label and look inside. There’s no Play-Doh inside. A terrific con. Buy this bucket and the few bits of plastic inside. Play-Doh not included.

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10
Aug 15

I’m photographing things

Back to work. Back to syllabus writing and lining up assignments and the like. It is a time intensive process, especially so when you’re preparing a new class. I’m taking over an older course and revamping the thing, so it will be a work in progress until the final. (Next year, if I’m asked to teach it again, it will be even better. Until then, it is an almost entire-rebuild.)

So that takes time and daydreaming and emailing and so on and so forth. It isn’t particularly interesting for most people, so there’s no need to get into it here.

Instead, here are a few things I’ve photographed in my homemade light diffuser box. I’m having far too much fun with the thing. I wonder if I’ll run out of interesting things to shoot before the novelty wears out.

Good thing I’ve got a lot of interesting things, I guess.

Here are two of them now. This was my grandfather’s Bible. It is the first one he ever used as a preacher. A friend gave it to him on his 16th birthday. She wrote inside that she hoped he would use it in such a way that she could say “I knew him when.”

He wrote a verse from Isaiah beneath her note.

And while that was my grandfather’s Bible, this was his father-in-law’s pocket watch:

I remember him, one of the five greats- I knew. I can’t find out really anything about this particular watch. It is like a very mass-produced piece, and not even particularly old. But it looks sharp, doesn’t it? That’s not even the diffuser box. It looks sharp in your hand, too. If I wasn’t afraid of losing it I’d buy a chain and start wearing the thing.

And it would be amusing watching the guy teaching a social media class going into his pocket to pulling that out.

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19
Jul 15

Sink signage

I went with my mother a few weeks ago to this place called Genghis Grill. It is a stir fry place, the gimmick being that you pick all of the items that are going in your ridiculously-sized bowl. There are dozens of choices. My mother picked the place, I think, just to make me squirm over all of those decisions.

One of the things I decided on had something called dragon salt in it. The first part of the name should have been the warning. But, alas. Apparently, I have just learned, it is a mix of salt, garlic, cayenne pepper, ginger and Cajun spices. At the time I just thought it sounded cool. It was anything but.

The food was good, and plentiful. I had a lot to eat later that night, when it was even better, and the dragon salt wasn’t as intense by dinner time.

Anyway, in the restroom, was this sign:

Gengis, get it? I stumbled across that pic again in my phone just now. Thought it was worth sharing.

iPhone / Monday / photo — Comments Off
13
Jul 15

Last night’s lightning

We were out for ice cream with friends last night when a storm moved through the area.

I was in a terrible spot for it, but here are a few shots of the storm I took on my phone. Sorry about the foreground, but, hey, lightning shots on my phone. More than 19,000 people have seen these on Twitter. (Seriously.)