Tech : Tech
Updated: 10/31/2005; 8:53:38 PM.

 

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Monday, October 31, 2005

Hey the radio thing is over and out. Have moved blog to http://www.moontravellerherald.blogspot.com.

Cant say will be there that long. It has flaws of the technical order too. But it does not have the same flaws that tire me here. Hard to upload and synch. A site where question marks have replaced apostrophes going back three years. I voiced my complaints [on synch arch] to Radio HQ. But interaction is not human. Its mechanical mouse machine missives.

Looking back on Radio Weblog: Some decent stuff. But scattered. Scattered notes in desk drawers was what I hoped to better. This is only slightly more neat. Got complaints from my readers about too much computer stuff. But what the hell else can I write about? So may fork into two sites in future. Good news is RSS and XML are here and the Web is ready to explode again. Short Google! Remember the words of Manny Ramierez: "I dont believe in no curses. You make your own destination."


8:45:48 PM    comment []

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Blistering attack on Open Sores 
"My ambition, with producer Mary McGrath, is to thread the seeming chaos of the Web into a coherent skein of ideas and argument," says Lydon. "We want to launch the smartest, most wide-open, democratic conversation anyone's ever been invited to join, in any format. The Internet transition we're living through is a boundless opportunity. It extends the rim of the roundtable and the range of the give-and-take to the whole planet."

Christopher Lydon is something of a Boston institution. He is relaunching his career with a radio show with the high concept of merging blogs and radio, not a bad idea.. but not easy to do. That's him talking above in ital.. and here's more

"Open Source will be the first radio program truly fused to the Internet, and it will have a lively Web presence. We expect to create a community online that can take part in the production process before, during, and after the program, helping us to surface new views and new voices."

The trouble with the Open Source show is that Lydon constantly has to bring in the blog concept. As if explaining the show concept. A story on DeLay, eg, has a blogger among guests, and when Lydon turns to him he says something like "So what's the word for the blogosphere on DeLay?" and the guy has to be cool, or course, and he says something like "I cant speak for the blogosphere." Last night Lydon: "Web, Dresden Dolls, what's it mean." Like McLaughlin seeking context.

 
Friday, Oct 7, 2005

John Tushcen died this summer
  John Tushcen died this summer. When I got to Madison, he was the top poet. For my part, there was great envy. I thought he was like Joe Dallesandro, only articulate. When Jeff invited me to join in a Madison poetry bash {Paul and Jim joined in the music} in 1988, John was also on the bill, which made it great. Lotta Robitusson over the sidewalk curb since then. Now he is with John Berryman.


JS Online: On Madison's longtime poet laureate
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/aug05/347027.asp


John's Under Construction page
http://members.aol.com/jjtuschen/poet.html

The Capital Times chimes in
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=49786&;ntpid=1

Poeticvoices.com July 1999 Feature: John Tuschen
http://www.poeticvoices.com/Features/9907Tuschen.htm

MadPoetry John Tuschen pages
http://www.madpoetry.org/madpoets/tuschenj.html-
Thursday, Sep 29, 2005


Dylan on PBS
  The whole family sat down and watched Dylan the American Master miniseries on PBS last night. As I suspect many of the Whole Sick Crew across America did too.  It was very fulsome, Lowell.

I liked the considerable access to Dylan..and the characters he grew up with. Tony Glover, Paul Nelson, Al Ginsberg [mighta liked to have heard from Bobby Vee], Maria Muldar [the Jug Band footage was priceless], Liam Clancy and Dave Van Ronk... all of interest. Footage of influencers Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie eerie.

Fun:Van Ronk desribes how Dylan took his version of House of the Rising Sun and kind of hurt his feelings..and how he couldnt play it anymore..and how gladly he chorttled when Eric Burton and the Amimals took it .. so that Dylan couldnt play it anymore..

The bits on the cold snowy Midwest resonated...and him listening to radio signals in the night. The influence of cabaret show biz on his style [by way of people he shared bills with] became more apparent as it did in Chronicles.

It seems this is apt topic for Gangomine blog .. so how do you make that community thread stuff happen? PBS is giving helpful questions for wouldbe coffee klatchs --

Dylan began dissociating himself from fame at an early age. Do you think it helped or hurt him? How? What is your favorite Dylan song? Why do you find it appealing? If Dylan had come onto the music scene 10 years later, do you think he would have had the same impact? Why or why not?

But that dont make it. I think maybe I will ask..do y0u remember a time when you saw Dylan perform?

Actualy the PBS people are setting up a Flash map to absorb such stories.

Maybe I will ask if and how Bob Dylan music/poetry changed your life. I remeber vividly Jim Cusuamno saying "I would have been a lawyer if I hadn't heard Dylan."
Tuesday, Sep 27, 2005

When we were seven and a half up on Baltimore .. still we worried 
So tony c. his comeback fails
And rico’s disabled with migraines

So fred lynn hasnt seen his mother in 12 years
And pole’s face with his vision shattered

 

Pudge fisk is unlucky and         
theyll call the spaceman insane if he ever stops winning

Derron johnson smokes too much
And tiant just throws the baseballs
He dont know the politics

 

Like roger moret 4am in connecticut
Before the biggest game in his life

Like the yaz-razzer
wants to beat his wife

Our red sox are handicapped heroes
Our red sox are no bigger than life

Our faith in them is not undiluted
Can we forget that they fall apart?

O sportswriters
with your documented breakfasts

O fenway junk hawkers
selling those pennants

O kenmore square
ratskellar
 

The trolley driver moans
to think of the ball game crowd.

 

 

Looking for one thing and found another. Oddly while i was watching sox play orioles. A way back poem of red sox.. Many of these players now mostly forgotten. It’s what i saw new to town looking. Great faith. Great doubt. In dance. I submitted this to Belmont-Watertown Sun through a former roommate who was editor...but he kind of punked out at last and ran it as a letter to the editor to my great disappointment. The sox have been in first most of the season but the yankees overtook them this week. The old town cogitates again on fate. On buses. At the office microwave. With car radios in traffic. At the dark brown watering hole.
Saturday, Sep 24, 2005

Entry for September 19, 2005
  LA. Electricity was out. Walked at least five miles that day... just briefly during time was on bus. Up from my W Sunset motel to Echo Park. All the way to Staples Center. Was like old days, when I had no money but had time, was as then thinking about money, a penny for your thoughts. This is after flying cross country to cover Microsoft Professional Developers Conf. In evening on TV there was Perry Mason. Which was perfectly black and white, and confined drama as I would have it construed. But this cheap hotel is weird. Prostitute stares at my window for hours... just like out of the Twilight Zone. Is this where Sal Mineo died? I find out later; no. In San Diego for Tech Ed year before last I thought I’d ended up in the Hotel Lorraine. This life is getting too poor too poor just a little too poor to quote Detroit Junior. It is an insect life fixated on small matters.

--*--

Saw the Dodgers. That was fun. Dodger Stadium was as I expected. Friendly confines. Kept score for a few inning, Herb, just so I had a feel for the context, and was primed for alertness to detail and progress. Saw – I am sure for first time live – a suicide squeeze. Was executed by Dodgers. Saw fielding and running of bases all from stellar vantage. They played the Colorado Rockies, with Korean Kim, formerly RedSox, pitching, ensuring action – but unfortunate for Dodgers, Rockies manager knew to pull him after four.

 Sat very high but directly behind backstop. Shared row of seats with nice folks doing Sculley talk. 

 What is Sculley talk? Well, it is a style of baseball chatter. Very positive, very endearing. Encapsulating essentials. Vin Sculley is one guy who should not retire. He has no partner. And his banter is thus more pure. It’s him talking to you –talking you through the innings of the game.. and he covers the game – and all is fun and clean and good there in the game.

So my bud down the way – and damn but I lost most notes – gave my program box score to a kid [well his mother for him] - bud grew up with this radio or TB chant – and this is him speaking...

“It got away on him.

“It’s a brand new game, 6-6.

“A long noisy out – that’s all that was.

“He ran a country mile for that one.

 

The old fellow sitting in my row gabbing a bit here and there like that with a young fellow – some kind of relative, because the alternate between wht the Indians and Red Sox are doing, the game at hand, and their shared blood relations’ doings ... is just talking Vince talk .. all of one cloth... and having a good time. This is the most fun I’ve had since first few times at Fenway, since old County Stadium, and since the day Jeff and I went to Wrigley.

Anyway leaving .. palms hear the bullpen.. the scoreboard viewed from behind haloed. As I score a cab. The Dodgers lose [per Sculley] a “wild game”, maybe 8-7, their pitching appearing worse than the Rockies.

 

 

“It got away from him”

 Happy kids, many in blue, many Mexicans, alive to the buzz, and attendance at the game.

 --*--

 Strange trip to be taking...on Sept 12.. just slightly less strange than travelling on Sept 11... with the memorials on CNN and headlines in USA .. and a nice verbal brickbat warning from Al Kaline Queda to coincide .. disconcerting

 I recall the days of Wescon .. an electonics convention-exhibition from 20 years ago.. the feeling that there were endless possibilities in semiconductors.. and capacitaors, and thermistors, and heat sinks, and design automation tools... I was new to the business and had the boundless hope of the youngster on the rise... now at the press room at PDC, with tech writer and scifi writer Jerry Pournelle pontifacting loundly [more oudly than in press room at Comdex in 88] and endlessly.. and providing an objective correlative for my inner doo-dad cowboy... I am tired.

 Robert Wise, director of my favorite Sci-film, The Day the earth Stood Still, died...I learned this poolside with LA Times at a Hollywood bar [at the Roosevelt Hotel] on Hollywood  Blvd..where I saw all the stars’ sidewalk images... Julie London, Scatman Crothers, Pola Negri...]

And Gatemouth Brown, one of Slim’s favorites too, passed.

There is stuff afoot in technology as always.. Rich clients from IBM and Microsoft are examples. Also of note: The Next or Semantic Web, as visible right now in blogs and RSS. Unfortunately, RSS is just like the early web was. You build it and hope they will come. Fair to say that, like the web, some will build and many wont come. Like email newsletters, RSS is a push medium. It's inflection point stuff.

--*--

 

A poem courtesy of LA cabbie:

Big town – everybody’s a machine

Nobody has time for anyone.

 

--*--

 http://searchvb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid8_gci1123253,00.html
Links to page with technical stuff I wrote on Microsoft PDC.
Monday, Sep 19, 2005


10:11:59 PM    comment []

Friday, February 04, 2005

Lets go back to GOD!

Ernst Mayr dies, aged 100
Sysematics, his specialty, I only came across yesterday. It was as historian that Mayr got my attention. Mayr got my attention and influenced my thought, that is for sure. I made point as a grad student in science communications get some history of science under my belt...all there was avaialble was one course, on Darwin, but lo and behold, Mayr's The Evolution of Biological Thought was just newly vailable and I shelled out the bucks and bought it, and got a decent grade in a course that was way over my head. Mayr's view was like James Burke' Connections, but significantly deeper. He showed how thoughts or thnkings intermingle and grow, bounce and resonate, pointing the way toward an explanation of the dialectics of science. Today blogs kind of form a dialectic; probably informed by Burke; but also probably informed by people who know people who read Mayr. The cat , he was long time harvard hadn, liived til a hundred and was scheduled to do a lecture in Bedford Jan 25 [it snowed big time that day]!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4486887
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=66948

As Orwell Foresaw
Of interest: 'No Place to Hide' - By Robert O'Harrow Jr. - NYT's MICHIKO KAKUTANI writes: Brain waves with ''noninvasive neuro-electric sensors are just part of futuristic surveillance statethat is post-9/11 America, as described in Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s unnerving new book, ''No Place to Hide'' -- an America where citizens' The digital revolution of the 1990's exponentially amplified trends enabling retailers, marketers and financial institutions to gather and store vast amounts of information about current and potential customers. And as Mr. O'Harrow notes, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ''reignited and reshaped a smoldering debate over the proper use of government power to peer into the lives of ordinary people.'' Orwell was right about this, Big Brother just arrived some two decades later than Orwell predicted. - NYT, Jan 25, 2005

UNRELATED
HP crossbar threatens transistor hegemony -Reuter, Feb 1, 2005
Morse code of cells -BBSRC.ac, Jan 10, 2005
Eisner departs -NYT, Jan 2, 2005
Space probe enters Titan's atmosphere CBC News, Dec 22, 2004



Kansas Town Is Launch Pad for Bid at Flight Record

9:58:02 PM    comment []

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Robot ships on other moons big news last year
Will we have such trips to view again? Maybe not in life time. Doors open and close as Apollo taught. Many years later the moon remains a mystery. Particularlly how it causes humans to misbehave. It is very hard to map.

 

Thrilling explorations of other worlds -USA Today, Dec 27, 2004
US share of the Human Genome Project complete - The Register, Dec 23, 2004
Burn start for Cassini-Huygens - SpaceRef.com
Meet Bose - PopSci, Dec. 2004
Water on Mars: THE Story - TechNewsWorld
Graham Glass weblog
Ray Ozzie looks back, looks ahead – December 6, 2004
The rise of the green building -The Economist Special
Sony to Disclose Details on Computer Chip - Forbes, Nov 29, 2004
Moon remains a mystery - Daily Times of Pakistan, Nov. 28, 2004


Web community flow machine history at IBM



10:01:32 PM    comment []

Sunday, November 14, 2004

 

Air-Breathing Test Plane
A small, air-breathing test plane will attempt to blaze into history on Monday by flying at nearly 10 times the speed of sound. The hypersonic craft is one of three built by NASA for its $230-million Hyper-X project, established in 1996. At 3.7 metres long, the new type of plane reaches rocket-like speeds but is more efficient because it does not need to carry oxygen to ignite its fuel supply - it takes oxygen from the atmosphere. And unlike jet plane engines, which use fans to compress air to light fuel for propulsion, the vehicles' engines use no moving parts - the shape of their bellies sucks in and compresses air at supersonic speeds.
NewSci, Nov 12, 2004

Northrop, Boeing plan joint bid for shuttle replacement - USA Today, Nov 10, 2004
Solar sail update - USA Today, Nov 9, 2004
The Persuaders - PBS, Nov 8, 2004
Ion-drive module arrives at the Moon -Nature, Nov 8, 2004
Dali In hollywood - Pete Times, Oct 10,2004


9:38:54 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Jack Vaughan.



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