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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.

Monday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
3
Mar 25

I have a Post-it note full of details for the week

It is all written in a very small print. And I will be scratching off items until Thursday.

It started with a meeting that was over in 8 minutes. For some reason, it ran for another 23. The second worst part was that it was in my office. You can’t just leave your own desk, right?

We talked journalism in class today. This is the week o’ journalism, which I’ve managed to include in a class that is not about journalism. This is useful because, next week, we’re talking about misinformation and disinformation. So that’s three things very much integral to our time, and all of them certainly useful in a class titled International Media Communication. So today it was mostly American journalism, my justification being that’s where we are. Wednesday we’ll talk about journalism practices in Europe and some parts of the Middle East and Asia.

Also that packet. Tonight, I have taken seven pages down to two. Tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll finish it up, restructuring a few things, moving parts around and doing a necessary edit and killing a bunch of my babies. Many pages will not make the final version, and that’s fine. After all of the other things that have to go along side the narrative it’ll still be 20-some pages long, and this is meant to represent the work I’ve done since last September. So it deserves the time.

I believe I’ve spent three weeks on the thing, so far. Still not sure why it needs two tables of contents, however.

Also tonight, I have some quizzes to grade. Tomorrow I’ll read some student discussions. And then Tuesday and Wednesday with the final touches on the above.

Right now, though, it’s time for the site’s most popular weekly feature, the check-in with the kitties.

Phoebe enjoys the afternoon sun in the dining room, and I found some cushions to make her more comfortable.

I get looks about this from my lovely bride, but I’m not the biggest spoiler of cats in our house.

And, sure, Phoebe has sunny afternoon cushions, but Poseidon has the height of luxury. Poseidon has what all the cool cats and kittens out there want. Poseidon has a new box.

The kitties, as you can see, are doing just fine, and they’re pleased I have fulfilled my contractual obligations by including them here.

I also have the first-of-the-month duties to attend to here on the ol’ computer. Clean up the Downloads subdirectory, update the boilerplate page, build new subdirectories for the site, and update the site’s statistics. For whatever reason, last month was easily the busiest February in the 22-year history of the site. Also, we’ve eclipsed 6.5 million visitors here on the humble hobby. I don’t know why people come here, and come back again, but I’m grateful for all of the time you spend here.

Except for the AI bots. They’re persimmon trees of orangutans that can stay on Mars and huff paint for other upside down content.

(Why shouldn’t we sour the milk for the AI bots?)

OK, back to work.

cycling / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Feb 25

Didn’t even realize this was the last Wednesday of February

On campus today, remembering some great advice I once reserved from a former news director, and some equally good advice I received from a faculty colleague, I talked scheduling. It was one of those things you plan ahead about what things you should highlight and discuss, and then suddenly it all disappears when you sit down to do it. Oh well, main points shared. Camaraderie achieved. No one’s lunch was interrupted. Also, I set up another meeting for next week, because I want to be the appointment guy, not the walk in and interrupt your flow guy. That’s how you develop real camaraderie, I’m sure of it.

Anyway, my fall classes look set. A conversation I had last week was fruitful in making some changes. I am not accustomed to having this sort of say in things. Three interesting classes, including one I am designing, but all of them are new to me. New ones take a little more work. I’m going to be proposing and hopefully designing a lot of new classes in the next few years. That’s the plan. Fortunately, I have a notebook devoted exclusively to just these ideas. I wonder how long it will take me to fill that one up.

In class today, we discussed television. Monday we did the same, mostly formats and history. But today it was Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, India. No one saw that coming before I gave the class a reading list.

Did you know the differences between how television works in all of those places? It starts with culture, is heavily influenced by the local languages, or regional historical politics, and, also, topography. Kyrgyzstan, for example, is incredibly mountainous, which limits what we think of as cable and over-the-air television. Also, their past with, and proximity to, Russia figures into what goes on television there, primarily cities versus rural, and you can probably guess the breakdown from there. For Ghanaian television, it’s a balance of history, cultural mores, and importing other products. India is similar, but not at all the same. There are so many languages, so many places where different parts of the country’s people overlap that television is a curious mix. And when the outsiders came, in the early 1990s, there was a lot of pushback. India knew something about invasions, and imported television was seen as a cultural invasion, and not at all welcome. Apparently that has subsided, but I bet there’s some older folks who remember that feeling well. Culture, it keeps coming back to culture. What you’ve got, what you’ll accept from other places, and what other places (the U.S. and Europe in these case, primarily) are offering.

Happily, a bunch of young people who don’t watch a lot of television themselves are going along for the conversation. And next week we’ll talk journalism. It’s a survey of a variety of media forms around the world, and it’s a lot of fun.

The view on the drive home.

This is how I know the days are getting longer. I don’t arrive in the driveway in darkness. I am pleased with this progression.

I haven’t been on my bike in four days, and it showed. Also, today’s route had two climbs in it, so I took my time, enjoying the two-hour effort, and covering 34 miles.

Just one Strava PR today, and it was a climb. It might have been the one pictured here, but they all look the same to me. I do wonder, though, why the avatars don’t get cold. If you pulled off and stopped pedaling, he’d just stand there waiting for you. But, way up there, he should be shivering. Instead, he is immune to the weather, the higher altitude, all of it. He just keeps pedaling, so long as I do.

I have to stop making excuses to not ride. “Schedules” and “work” and “dinner.” Whatever. I should probably ride uphill more. It’s not like my avatar will mind.

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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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24
Feb 25

Is everyone all caught up?

We took a long walk yesterday, enjoying the sunshine and not-freezing temperatures. We’re in a short stretch of days with temperatures in the 50s. It’s almost like spring, but you can’t be fooled. You can, however, be happy about it, and not tricked by it. There’s still, sadly, plenty of time for more winter. We are at the point of the season where it could go one of two ways, grim acceptance, or with that seconds-old proverb: You enjoy what you get, and you get what you enjoy.

Once again, it seems the web has not recorded that phrase. I coined it. I coined it and you can’t have it.

Though I’ll tell you this, you enjoy what you get, and you get what you enjoy. And, in this case, what you enjoy is another nugget of wisdom from me, your humble correspondent.

Anyway, in the backyard, I found these these old guys just hanging on.

I haven’t even been in that part of the yard for a while, obviously. It’s not as if it’s a huge yard. It’s just, you know, winter time. But it was only coolish Sunday and so we had a nice long sunny walk. Unfortunately, and oddly, we solved none of the world’s problems on that walk.

Usually we bash out one or two of them as a matter of course.

Let us check in on the kitties, because most of you are just hear for that, anyway. Phoebe has been studying her new friends in the backyard. She stayed in this exact position for a long, long while.

Poseidon, meanwhile, was taken a bit of time off from monitoring things from his doorway view. Everybody needs a little tunnel time now and again.

In class today we talked about television. It was a rip-roaring discussing about history, game shows, international licensing rights and streaming. I might have wandered all over the place. Definitely talked to much. On Wednesday, I’ll make the students do the talking. We’re covering television in parts of Africa and Asia.