Morning Stories at a Crossroads

Posted on October 10, 2008
Filed Under podcasting | 1 Comment

For those of you who listen to the Morning Stories podcast from WGBH in Boston, you know that show has come to an end. The budget ran out for the program and it is no longer being produced under the aegis of WGBH. However, my friend Tony Kahn has not yet given up, and he has set up an alternative outpost for the Morning Stories body of work at his Hi Tony! site. I’m fortunate enough to be someone Tony calls for advice now and then (and the reverse as well because I am a lucky man). I gave a few suggestions on the project in general and the site in specific. Some of these have been done, some are still working.

I advised him to make the donate mechanism appear prominently on every single page. There is at this point no XML feed for new programs but that should be coming along shortly. My advice to Tony was to try to think in terms of the Doctorovian “macropayments” idea that I’ve been posting about. If you have 10,000 listeners, it would be great to get $5 or $10 a year from each of them, but it will be simpler with less wear and tear if you can find a way for 750 fans to give you $100/year, aka the Kevin Kelly “1000 true fans” thinking.

I’m glad to have any form of Morning Stories back in any fashion. Please listen and help support Tony and spread the word. He’s been a friend of podcasting since the absolute beginning, was the first public radio podcaster and used his influence at WGBH to help legitimize the intersection of radio and new media. The least we can do is help the brother out.

Popularity: 1% [?]

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An Open Letter to Piggly Wiggly’s IT guys

Posted on October 9, 2008
Filed Under misc | Leave a Comment

While I’m airing my dirty complaint laundry, here’s one that I just sent a guy at Piggly Wiggly about their craptastic wfii. They claim to offer “free wifi”, but what they offer is “pain in the ass unusable wifi.”

—–

Today I made the mistake of going to the Starbucks inside the Piggly Wiggly at Carolina Forest in Myrtle Beach. I needed to do some internet work over lunchtime and I had eaten lunch near there, so I figured I’d do it. Usually I go to the Starbucks at the beach, the one that has the only free and open wifi at any SBUX I know of.


So, I got a drink and sat down to work at Piggly Wiggly. I have an account that I have previously created. Going to your login page, it took about 90 seconds to accept my password and give me internet access. After that point, every 5 minutes, trying to load a web page would send me back to that login page. Finally, after 20 minutes of this, I got the login page, logged in AGAIN. This time it sat for several minutes and finally redirected me to a page that said ‘Oops, looks like you exceeded your maximum download…’ The whole 20 minutes I’d been working with this, I’d loaded a few pages, sent some emails, connected my IM clients but done nothing beyond the ordinary tasks any person with a laptop at any wifi point at lunchtime would do. How can I even have a maximum download? I’m the only one in here using the wifi, probably because I’m the only one dumb enough to not realize how bad it is. What exactly resource are you conserving by denying connectivity to me? You want to prevent the bit tank from draining in case someone wants some extra zeroes later on?

This is the last time I get burned by this. Piggly Wiggly’s free wifi is not free, because it makes me waste my time and that’s a more precious commodity to me than cash. I’ll avoid this like the plague, and when I get tempted to eat lunch or get a drink at Piggly Wiggly and use the internet I’ll remember that it is in fact useless. It’s a shame because this place is really convenient to me. I don’t know how much you pay to PublicIP to provide this service for you but it is too much. You’d do better with the commodity cheapest cable modem and a $40 wifi access point. At least that would work, rather than putting extra roadblocks in my way when I have work to do.

From now I’m taking my spending money elsewhere.

Dave Slusher

PS - I don’t know when this mail will send because I can’t get on your crappy wifi at all now.

Popularity: 2% [?]

New Reality Break Episode featuring Tobias S. Buckell

Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under podcasting, sciencefiction | Leave a Comment

I’ve recently published the most recent episode of the Reality Break Podcast, and this one is an interview I particularly liked, my chat with hard science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell. We sat down in a bar in a noisy hotel lobby at Dragon*Con and it actually sounds pretty decent. I’ve certainly gotten much worse field recordings from science fiction conventions.

I got to work in a few of my perennial favorite topics like J. G. Ballard and the Strauss and Howe book Generations. We also talked a lot about things that were in his book too, like the tech of floating cities, the steampunk in space opera settings and the unspoken colonialist assumptions in American science fiction. As always, check it out and let me know what you think.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Folding a Shirt with a T-Square

Posted on October 7, 2008
Filed Under misc | 1 Comment

It says something fairly predictable about me that when I saw Will Shetterly’s embed of this video about folding a shirt engineering style, my first thought was “Hell yes, I’ll be building that tonight!” For once, I care about doing laundry and once built this will be way quicker and more repeatable than the way I do it now that I learned from the Japanese girl on the previous viral shirt folding video.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Creating Fans the Bassackwards Way

Posted on October 6, 2008
Filed Under comics | Leave a Comment

I’m not sure this is how it is supposed to go, but I started listening to the Webcomics Weekly podcast first. I did not read any of the webcomics by any of the show’s principals. I had previously listened to the Blank Label comics podcast and was curious about this one. After listening for a while, I have subscribed to all four of the comics in question and now I even watch things like their goofy vlogs from Baltimore Comicon. I might be the first person to come to the comics in this fashion. I get the feeling that pretty much everyone that listens to their show is already a fan.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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An Open Letter to TBS

Posted on October 4, 2008
Filed Under tv | 8 Comments

Below is the text of an email I just fired off to TBS. I stand behind it, so here it is on the blog as well.

I’m watching the playoff baseball games and I have hit the point where the Frank TV promos have driven me insane. I started out with a neutral opinion of Frank Caliendo but the repeated airings of the same few promos of him doing his stale corny crap over and over have convinced me he sucks and that I will NEVER watch one second of this show.

I may well start taping the games and watching on a delay so I can skip these mind-numbingly repetitious promos which are not the slightest bit amusing. They make me angry. They make me want to lobby MLB to yank your license to baseball. They make me want to find the executive that green lit Frank TV and light on fire a bag of dog poop on their porch. They make me want to shove Frank Caliendo in the same tube with James Doohan’s ashes and have him fired into orbit.

As a Braves fan I’ve been watching baseball on TBS for over 20 years and I’ve never hated the experience so much as I do now. Stop the insanity. These promos suck, Frank sucks, when TBS is airing this stuff TBS sucks. TBS used to be great. Please just dial down the suck. It’s not so much to ask, is it?

Popularity: 11% [?]

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Bosniaks

Posted on October 3, 2008
Filed Under politics | 1 Comment

The fact that Joe Biden knew that “Bosniaks” is the proper term when I thought he was mispeaking proves that he knows a hell of a lot more about the Balkans than I do. However, Cokie Roberts equally did not know that but she thinks she’s correct. Will Cokie apologize for her counter-gaffe? One doubts. Looks like Cokie has tipped her hand a little too far here.

Via Hodg-man

Popularity: 12% [?]

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Limping Along

Posted on October 2, 2008
Filed Under life | 2 Comments

Thanks to those who have sent along words of encouragement. After two days of convalescing on the couch, I’m back up and well enough to go to work. I spent that time mostly asleep and watching some of the oldest movies on my DVR when I could stay conscious for 90 or 120 minutes at a time. I give big thumbs ups to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Million Dollar Hotel, and a huge thumb down to High Roller - The Stu Ungar Story. Luckily all three movies are weird enough that seeing them doped up on generic Nyquil adds to the experience. I also watched and enjoyed Return of the Secaucus 7 but that’s one that the doping detracted from.

I’m now several days behind on everything, as I spent less than 10 minutes touching the computer the last two days, and half of that was emailing in sick. If you are waiting on something from me, feel free to ask again. Many juggling balls have hit the floor now.

Popularity: 13% [?]

This Blog is On A Sick Day

Posted on October 1, 2008
Filed Under life | Leave a Comment

This is my second day out of work. I’ve got one of those classic weather change colds. Yesterday was spent almost entirely on the couch sleeping with intermittent breaks to watch TV. Today will be more of the same. I have a ginormous amount of things to do for the next few weeks at both the day job and at home. The temptation is always to try to limp along at partial capacity, I’m going to return to under the blankets for another day and hope to get well once and for all. I didn’t even touch the computer yesterday, and after I hit post I’m done for today too. The regular nonsense will return when my vim and vigor do.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Me and The Mormons

Posted on September 28, 2008
Filed Under life | 2 Comments

This evening we had a visit from a couple of “elders” from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints. Any religion that sets loose 19 year old kids on the public and calls them “elders” is one I find a little hard to take seriously from the git go.

These young gentlemen asked me if I believed in Jesus, and I told them no. They then asked if I had any particular beliefs and I said yes. I told them ‘I believe in J. R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius.’ The guy in front remained stoic, but the guy in back cracked a big smile at that. They asked me if I’d like to learn more about Jesus and I said “No thanks, I think Bob has got me covered.” And that was that.

I have before threatened to move my copies of The Book of the SubGenius, Revelation X, and The Subgenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon into the front room just so they are handy when missionaries come calling. That way, I can try to counter-missionary-ize them. I do believe this is the first visit we’ve had from Mormon missionary teenagers. Usually the people we get are elderly black Jehovah’s Witnesses. All of them could benefit from learning the word of “Bob!” It’s easy to remember our credos as there is only one commandment: “Let he who is without humor mount up upon himself.” At least, that’s the King Ivan translation. The modern English version is edgier.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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Why $700 Billion?

Posted on September 25, 2008
Filed Under politics | 5 Comments

I figured this out in a moment of clarity, why it is that the Bush Administration is pushing for $700 billion for bailouts. That’s a very specific number for a situation that is not at all straightforward, so why $700B rather than $500B or $850B or $1 trillion?

There is a concept in poker called the “value bet.” When you get to the final betting round, all the cards have been dealt or drawn and now the probabilities have all collapsed into what hand you actually hold. If you are convinced you have the best one, you make the value bet, which is a bet you want called. You are sure you are going to win this hand no matter what, so you want to get your opponent to commit the maximum into the pot. You don’t want to bet too little because then you aren’t exploiting this fully but you don’t want to bet so much as to make them fold because then you get nothing additional. The ability to feel out this number is a key part of the advanced game that the pros work on.

Why is Bush asking for $700 billion? Because he’s got a few more months to try to transfer as much money from the public coffers into the hands of his peers in the privileged “ownership society” class. This is George W. Bush’s real legacy. It’s a value bet.

Update: I knew it. My intuition is confirmed. Thank you, good night.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Dan Conover on the Media Interregnum

Posted on September 25, 2008
Filed Under business | Leave a Comment

My friend Dan Conover took a buyout at his job at the Charleston Post and Courier last month. His final assignment was to write a piece on the present day values of mass media journalism. Fittingly for the situation, they opted not to print it and gave it back to him to do what he wanted to. He opted to publish it at his group blog Xark. I occasionally shoot off my mouth about journalism (like I did the other day) but I’m an outsider who doesn’t really know what I’m talking about. Dan’s a career journalist, so when you read his assessment of the current state of journalism, bear that in mind.

Update: While I’m linking to Dan, I should also include this piece he posted about our congressman Henry Brown. This is the kind of politics we deal with here in coastal South Carolina.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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BlogHer Greensboro is Cancelled but Show Up Anyway

Posted on September 24, 2008
Filed Under conferences | 1 Comment

This year’s ConvergeSouth in Greensboro NC was to be a hybrid conference, with CS on Thursday and Friday (October 16 & 17,) with the BlogHer Roadshow on Saturday (October 18.) Well, last week BlogHer cancelled all four of the southern stops on that tour, leaving a hole and leaving those who made non-refundable travel arrangements holding the bag. It turns out Kelby Carr and I had a similar idea at the same time - if the space at NC A&T was being held for BlogHer and we could keep it, we could put in grassroots programming and fill that void. Lo and behold, it is now all official.

Sue Polinsky kindly acted as our negotiator with the college to (re)arrange the space, and Kelby and I split the day between us. Kelby is organizing the morning sessions, which are similar to and for a similar constituency as the original BlogHer sessions. I’m putting together hands-on workshops for the afternoon, not unlike what we did for CREATE South (and what we just started putting together for next year.) The goal of the afternoon is to get people together in the same room with some to teach, some to learn and everyone to walk out more knowledgeable and equipped to execute on their visions.

I personally want to learn how to do green screen video compositing, and have made sure we have a kind volunteer to help us with that - Charleston’s Don Lewis. Jared Smith will be presenting on how he does weather broadcasts over the internet. I’m going to show people how to record interviews via Skype. On top of that, there will be plenty of time and volunteers to walk people through specific tasks they need help with? Need basic help in setting up a blog? We can do that. Interested in doing a podcast but not sure where to begin? Check, we’ll make that happen for you.

I’m stealing from myself in using the Uplifter motto - “Bring What You Have; Teach What You Know; Learn What You Need.” If you were planning on coming to BlogHer or even if you weren’t, we’d love to have you come on Saturday. Let us teach you, teach us something, participate and share and socialize. I promise it will be a good time or triple your money back.

Thanks again to Sue, to Kelby for being a co-conspirator, to Ed for helping publicize (and for keynoting CREATE South!), to everyone willing to present and mentor and attend. If you need more information, want to volunteer or request specific programming for the afternoon, please drop me an email. Let’s do it live!

Popularity: 27% [?]

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Around the Podosphere

Posted on September 24, 2008
Filed Under podcasting | 3 Comments

Here’s some random things I’ve been listening to.

My close personal acquaintance Mary Robinette Kowal put up a reading on her site of her short story “Evil Robot Monkey.” I both liked the story and liked her reading of it. I’d love to one day have a chance to spend a little more time with her.

I’ll admit that I’m on the verge of becoming something like an Amory Lovins fanboy. I call him “Amory McLovin” just for fun. This morning I listened to his presentation about how businesses can save energy and turn a profit on doing it. I heard his previous series talking about changing house designs so that they use less energy in ways that are cheaper to build. His story involved guys repeatedly asking him what the payback time was and not hearing him say “Dude, this design is cheaper than the standard!” I’ll listen to any presentation of his that goes online.

Cyberpunk Radio continues to be the consistently weirdest thing in my podcast listening queue. That’s why it stays in there. I have no idea how many people listen to this show, but he’s been plugging at it for years and years. It’s highly creative and in its own way the truest show I listen to. This show sounds like living in 2008 feels. I recommend you check it out.

I love poker - playing poker, listening to shows about poker and watching poker on TV. I listen to Poker Road Radio, which I like but spends a lot of time on the cults of personality and the “poker lifestyle” kind of stuff. I really don’t give a damn about which players have the nicest Rolexes or Bentleys. I care about the game, how to play and how to improve my play. That makes the new show in the Poker Road family - All Strategy - perfect for me. It really is what the title says. Daniel Negreanu and Justin Bonomo discuss the strategy of playing poker without all the nonsense. I’ve heard the first two episodes, another was published today and it has already climbed high up my list of favorite podcasts.

Tonight I listened to the Eyedrum Show podcast, hosted by my friend Chris. At the beginning he mentioned that this episode was the second to last one. He said he’d talk more about that later but unless I missed it he never came back to that story. I don’t know what is precipitating this, but if forced to guess it would be burnout. Chris has been hosting this WREK Sunday Special about Eyedrum every month for the last 4, 5 maybe more years. I enjoy listening to it but I can understand why it would make sense to stop.

Popularity: 28% [?]

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Networks and Podcasts

Posted on September 24, 2008
Filed Under podcasting | 1 Comment

Because I’ve been busy with umpty-zillion projects lately, I haven’t been doing as much data gardening as I should over at AmigoFish. I just ran into a case this morning that is a classic pattern I’ve seen over and over. When existing old media networks of any kind - TV, radio, cable, even newspapers - get involved in podcasting they always make the same mistake. There RSS feeds never point their link back to a page specific to that show, but one for the network. This screws up a basic assumption of RSS, that the link element defined in the channel is where you go to get more information about this feed. I can only presume that for all networks, they assume that they the network are more important than any individual program.

In AmigoFish, I have it set up so that two or more RSS feeds with the same channel link are alternate feeds for the same show. This holds 99+% of the time, but where it breaks is generally with networks, who don’t use this pattern properly. I just ran across it this morning with the Discovery Channel. All of their different shows point back to their central page listing shows. This means that I’ll have to go in by hand and separate out the different programs into their own shows. It’s a big drag, but that’s the sort of thing I bought myself when I started this project.

I’ve been searching for some sort of larger truth I can abstract out of this pattern about networks and their view of themselves. In my less charitable moments (like the first paragraph), I impute this to an institutional moral failing - that they consider themselves as the parent organization more important and definitive than any program they offer. It really makes no sense to me. If you have an RSS feed for Mythbusters and you follow a link for more information do you want to go to the Mythbusters site or to their parent channel? I’d think almost always it would be the Mythbusters site. If anyone has some more insight they can give me into how these organizations think, I’d love to hear it.

Popularity: 27% [?]

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The Coup in America

Posted on September 24, 2008
Filed Under politics | 2 Comments

I am tentatively pleased that the attempted coup in the United States of America, the one that would install Hank Paulson as acting leader of the American Junta, is running into problems. The first laugh I’ve had from the whole situation came from the image attached to this NPR story. I’m very proud of Christopher Dodd for staring down the Bush Administration on this point. He is the hero of this Congress, and I wish he was the majority leader rather than Harry Reid. Every point where the Democrats looked like they’d do their standard act of caving in to threats and then ended up hanging tough and fighting, Christopher Dodd was involved, sometimes the only one standing up.

Here is a copy of Dodd’s proposed bailout legislation via the Sunlight Foundation. Compared to the original floated, which would have made any congressional or judicial oversight illegal, it is a damn sight better. You can annotate and leave your comments over there, which I encourage anyone to do who has the time to do. I just heard Larry Lessig’s talk about the Sunlight Foundation the other day, and it was fantastic. This is the first legislation that I’ve seen it in action, and this my friends is what democracy in the 21st century should look like.

Update: Whoops, didn’t actually include the link to Dodd’s marked up legislation. Thanks to Adam for pointing that out.

Popularity: 27% [?]

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No Free Gift Money For the Rich

Posted on September 21, 2008
Filed Under politics | 1 Comment

I’m calling my representative (Henry Brown) and both of my Senators (Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint) tomorrow. I’ll have a script somewhat prepared so that I can remain coherent through my brain melting anger. What I will be expressing is that I do not want Congress giving a $700 Billion bucket of money for Hank Paulson to toss towards whichever firms he most wants to get a no-strings gift from the taxpayers. For one thing, I’d like this to be tied to repeal of the Bush tax cuts on the rich. The rich are the ones who benefit from this, so their usual canards about how they are immune from having to pay into the common good have never been more obviously false.

It’s time for the Republicans to apply that rhetoric of personal responsibility that they apply to you and me to the corporations that need our help. Companies that get this money need serious strings attached. One of my pet strings is that I’d like to see all executive salaries capped at say, $200K a year during the period they are are on the public dole. When they’ve repaid the money to the US taxpayers, they can lift the cap. Here’s Robert Kuttner’s list of strings he’d like to see. That’s a pretty good list. Rather than linking to individual posts about the unbelievable outrage of this bailout slush fund, I’d suggest reading Avedon Carol’s recent posts. I’d just be cribbing her links anyway.

Time to call your senators (here’s all their phone numbers) and representatives (find your representative’s contact info by your zip code at the top of this page).

Popularity: 28% [?]

What You Do Is More Important Than What You Say

Posted on September 19, 2008
Filed Under digital-lifestlye | Leave a Comment

Mark Glaser at MediaShift published an article a few weeks ago that was an insider perspective from a NYU journalism student. She is taking a class called “Reporting Gen Y (a.k.a. Quarterlifers)” and she wrote a blog piece about the class. The piece itself is surprising, containing observation that she was the only one of the 16 students who actually had a blog before the class amongst others. What’s really interesting is what the follow-on reaction was.

Her professor - the one teaching young budding reporters how to use new media - was not happy at the budding reporter’s use of new media. This class requires all of the students to blog, but when the subject was about the inadequacies of the class itself as reported by Alana, the professor claims that was an invasion of privacy because she did not ask permission to do so. I’m no journalism student or a journalist, but is that how it works? You need permission to write a piece about your experiences from everyone else in the experience?

Even more fascinating to me are the comments on Glaser’s follow-up about the reaction to the original post. It reflects the clear divide to me between the defenders of the status quo and those willing to upset it. I find the latter group more valuable because, to quote Dr. Horrible “the status is not quo!” The impression I got from those defending the actions of NYU and Professor Quigley is that reporters should know their place, only report on things that the subjects want reported on, not upset apple carts. Thinking back a century or so, what important pieces of journalism were comfortable for anyone involved or did the subjects desire to have written? The argument seems to be on the ethics of writing the blog post without telling people she was doing so - in a class required to write blog posts. That whole line of debate is at best disingenuous.

I can tell you that if I paid my money to go to NYU, took a class on blogging, blogged about the class and then had a policy applied to me ex post facto that I was not to blog about what happens in the class on blogging, I would be pissed off at the minimum. What it would give me is a teachable moment, but the teaching is not what the professor wants. It is clearly “Listen to what I say but ignore what I do.” My favorite moment in any Subgenius ritual is when the speaker says “Question Authority!” and the whole audience yells out “Why?” If this journalism professor feels that authority can appropriately quash things from being written that the authority doesn’t want out there, then that explains a lot to me about our modern times.

I don’t create journalism. A few years ago when I was doing interviews at an SF convention and they made me get a press pass, I wasn’t happy because I didn’t like being labeled press. To my mind that’s a value subtraction from what I was trying to do. I have no reverence for the position of Professional Journalist as a career. That’s great kid, now report on something meaningful to me in an illustrative way and we’ll be getting somewhere. More and more these days, I’m not happy with the journalism I do experience. It doesn’t ask the hard questions, doesn’t provide what I need to know and generally fails to question authority in the ways that I feel it is obligated to. Now I’m slowly beginning to understand why that is, and the outlook for that improving in the future is that much bleaker.

Let me close with an appropriate quote from one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries:

Now that you’ve realized the prides arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
from the heart
It’s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin’s strange
People, people we are the same
No we’re not the same
Cause we don’t know the game
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
(Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say…
Fight the Power

Popularity: 32% [?]

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New Reality Break Episode: Mur Lafferty

Posted on September 17, 2008
Filed Under podcasting | Leave a Comment

For those of you who don’t subscribe to my other podcast project, this is just a heads up. My interview with podiobook favorite Mur Lafferty that we recorded at this year’s Dragon*con has been posted at the Reality Break podcast site. If you are one of her many fans, you should check it out. It has a lot of in depth discussion of her novel Playing For Keeps in specific and the philosophy behind superheroics in general. Friends, I wasted most of my teen years doing the background reading for this here interview. It has all built to this point, so you should listen and be a part of it.

Popularity: 32% [?]

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Persepolis

Posted on September 17, 2008
Filed Under comics, movies | Leave a Comment

We watched Marjane Satrapi’s film version of Persepolis last night. Wow, what a fantastic film, one of the best adaptions I’ve ever seen. I’d actually put it above Sin City because it was not only a faithful adaption but the style of adaptation carried a lot of the story. My favorite bit was the flashback into the founding of modern Iran, told as if all the Shah’s father and the other characters were paper dolls. That choice carried so much meaning and said “these guys were all puppets” without actually saying it. I recommend this film as highly as I can, as do I recommend the original graphic novels.

As a reminder, here’s the short video interview Marjane was kind enough to do with me a few years back when she was in town.

Popularity: 32% [?]

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