Jack Vaughan's Radio Weblog

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:45:48 GMT

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."

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 03:11:59 GMT

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

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 01:35:12 GMT

Greatings Earthlings!
Am definitely taking the summer off from this blog. That means at least Sept 21.

Have another blog working on the Yahoo portal, but havent figured it out quite yet. In terms of it being open to public, walled community, or just me-o. If I figure that out maybe I will post a link-to here. Yahoo has a lot of neat stuff working. And Radio is worn out. Having a duplicate of the site [always doing a Comparison Operatoin] on your PC is a drag if you have a three year old site and a four year old PC.

Going to take a couple days off in July. To breathe. And take another shot at pulling together a chapter or two of the "Secret History of *". And get a cable connect.

To date this has been a ruminator [sometimes with direction] for some technology ramblings, a link list to Tech writing, a focal point for some memories of the old days [and the old gang says 'why you got this technology stuff here?'], a bit of poesy, some music reviews, some essays.

-Frank Nitti.

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 14:00:54 GMT

HELLO WURLD | Recently read.

Kilby was here. Raised in Kansas, Jack Kilby got to gain an interest in electronics when an ice storm knocked out the lines of his father's small power company... and pop and pals used ham radio to communicate. He got his electrical engineering degree at the University of Wisconsin [Milwaukee branch?] Like the invention of the microwave oven, it just hit him .. it was a summer day .. the integrated circuit .. which pulled all the transistors together for one purpose..and none too soon...as the tyranny of wires was aout to overcomethe tube based mainframe computer of the day.

Which parts of your brain calculate Halle Berry? Whether a mere Berry or rendered as Catwoman, Halle sets off the same neuron bunch to tingle, say researchers. The same Cells fire, damn the hairstyle. The way we store memories the U. of Leicester crew says, is abstract concepts. You dont remember the conversation, you remeber what it was about. This is some heavy duty pattern recognition going on..mere teraflops do not equivalent these operations.

Raytheon airport dream. The ABM dream of the 60s will not be denied. Star Wars of Reagan. Now the idea emerges of protecting airplanes in American airports.

Cyber immortality. The ancient bugaboo lingers. BT futurologist says downloading of brains in the future will happen. BlueGene and Playstation 3 show computing potential. It all recalls Marvin Minsky [ and L Ron H ] who also forsaw the disembodied intelligence. When they say computers will get us..well they might play chess, and do a whole lot more today... but tell halle the boomerang gal from the batgal... ?

This and more.
Which parts of your brain calculate Halle Berry?
Farewell Jack Kirby, IC inventor
Protecting jets from missiles
On the road with Bob Dylan
Googling Frank Lloyd Wright
Get ready for brain downloads

Sat, 18 Jun 2005 14:23:23 GMT

CrytoDispatchVector
As part of broad new strategy, the United States began training exercises in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria. Sub-Saharan Islamic Africa replete with smuggling routes for centuries, is now fueling the Iraqi insurgency, ahead-of-the-curve American officials say. Oh, and Syria too. See a three panel pdf:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0115044/images/CrytoDispatchVector.pdf