(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

This was a really great debate between the two camps of whether or not to add nuclear power to our arsenal of energy sources sans fossil fuels. The big piece wrong is that they are talking about two different sets of numbers. The pro side is talking about overall current energy needs, whereas the anti side was speaking about replacing transportation energy costs. Once you see that, it undercuts the anti side quite a bit.

Still, it is great to hear those points out. It does seem that with our knowledge, wind can and ought to be a strong power source, and solar ought to be on all suburban and rural rooftops. Hell, you can farm underneath wind turbines, so you might as well plug your tractor in and remove even more of the black energy required to generate our food.

Both points, though, miss a big step: transportation of energy. We lose tons of electricity over our power lines. Superconductors aren’t viable for mass production. Battery power keeps getting better so long as we keep wanting Internet access in our pockets. But how do you think all the electricity is going to get from 10,000 wind turbines to a town?

The first speaker was right that we can hold onto our nuclear waste materials while fourth-generation generators (waste burners, essentially) are developed further. And who wouldn’t love the idea of burning our kill-Earth-ten-times stockpile down to a simple kill-Earth-twice stockpile? That right there should be the front retort of any anti-nuclear energy argument.

So the future is nuclear for base load, wind for topping off that base and for sale (windy in one place, calm in another), and solar for the extra daytime use? Sounds reasonable for me. Now if we can either quit burning fossils for creating and moving our foods (oh yeah, and packaging them), we may do better. Plastics aren’t going anywhere, but I wouldn’t mind going back to a world of mostly wood, metal, stone, and glass.

It would help us all out if we made our food more short-range, for certain. And if I could take a train to anywhere in the region. But if we can at least kick the black energy for using our computers and lights and toasters, we’re at least going to be in a better place.

I am in fact still alive and well, my silly California-raised self in the Midwest. Due to magically unforeseen budget shortfalls (wait for it) on behalf of my local school district, we are closing eight (8) schools this summer. One of which is a middle school that is melding with my own. So they hired me and my closed-school counterpart to wipe out and pack up both schools in preparation for next year.

In short, I have been hired on for extra hours through the end of the month. So not only am I working when I previously thought not, I was also fully informed of it a week before I would begin. M and I have been scrambling to figure out where on Earth our children should go. And we, being the impoverished homebody black sheep that we are, have not yet established a strong network for impromptu child support.

At least this week has been very productive, to the point of being over halfway finished with a three-week project in four days. Best to tackle overwhelming projects like a well-trained wolverine, I suppose.

I am not in the process of going into blog-suicide by talking about not writing. I’m just busier lately, and shorter evenings are spent recovering from more intensely laborious work during the day (read: old computers are fucking heavy!) with a cold beer and attempting to remember to breath from the gut instead of the shoulders.

I do want to apologize for the lack of pictures of the local offspring. We’ve been lax for sure, but May into June is simply second only to the Thanksgiving to New Years gauntlet in terms of ‘things going on’. I hope to make it up to you soon.

Through it all, though, I make room to be creative. Here is the email I sent out to my building’s faculty today, warning them of impending doom:

Greetings One and All Summerites!

Starting today and through a fortnight, I shall be declaring war on information by calling forth the demons from the fiery pits of our servers, flinging their evil across the Ether(net) to destroy everything held dear on each and every computer at our institute of learning! MWAHAHA! If you wish to save your precious Data, I will listen to your pleas, whither electronic or vocal, with utter delight and amusement! Rest assured, though, my wrath shall be wrought no matter what you say!

Nutshell:

I’m erasing the computers. Talk to or email me if you need help saving stuff or need use of your computer for a longer time. Don’t call, I won’t be at my room much.

Have a fun summer. Don’t forget to read a book.

A good book. None of that Twilight nonsense.

Best,

Evan

PS, MWAHAHAHA! (Sinister laugh)

Actually, looking back, I’ll probably take some shit about the Twilight thing.

Creativity and smarts ain’t the same thing, is they?

The prime example of what I’m talking about is perhaps the most famous piece ever written: Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. Hector Berlioz called its murmuring, mournful first movement, “one of those poems that human language does not know how to interpret.” At the beginning, Beethoven directs the performer to hold down the sustain pedal through the whole first movement, so the strings are never damped. With the pianos of Beethoven’s time, on which the sustain of the strings was shorter than today, the effect was subtle, one harmony melting into another. On a modern piano, with its longer sustain, the effect of holding the pedal down would be a tonal traffic jam. Today you have to fake the effect, and it never quite works as intended. Here’s Alfred Brendel playing the beginning of the “Moonlight” about as well as anyone on the ubiquitous modern Steinway.

Compare that to Gayle Martin Henry playing a piano from around 1805 by the Viennese maker Caspar Katholnig.

The sound is startlingly different from a modern piano and takes a while to get used to. These instruments were mostly played in small to medium-size rooms. The sound is intimate; you hear wood and felt and leather. The voicing is varied through the registers rather than the homogenous sound of modern pianos. On the Katholnig, the effect of holding the pedal down in the “Moonlight” has a ghostly effect, most obvious in the longer-sustaining bass notes that can sound like a distant gong. All these elements of the pianos Beethoven knew shaped the music in the first place, including the way he picked out high and low notes around the murmuring figure in the middle of the keyboard.

You’ll have to click over to the article to hear the music clips to hear what he’s talking about. It’s very cool, and something I’ve often wondered. It is a bit of a musical history musing as to what Mozart would have come up with if he had access to more modern pianos with far greater dynamic ranges.

(Found via Megan McArdle :: The Atlantic.)

Truth be told, I take full responsibility for The Pointer Sisters on that list (since that was what I was looking for; the toddler kept shouting out the word and hopping up and down). Oh and Sugar Hill Gang. Those are definitely mine. I deny any association with The Jacksons or Taylor Swift.

Hands-on: D&D on the Microsoft Surface

Even the geeky laughter in the background is spot on. How’d they do that!?

(Found via Lifehacker.)

Person: My mother. 62. Queen of the Luddites.
Computer proficiency: Absolutely none.
Will she be getting the iPad? Yep. The 16GB 3G model.
Why? My mom has never owned a computer. She doesn’t have an internet connection. She couldn’t explain to you what Facebook is. And she refers to my iPhone as “that information device.”

Given all this, I was quite surprised when she said she’ll be getting one right away. But then it made perfect sense. My mom hates computers because the icons are so small and the various program UI’s are relatively confusing (remember, she’s a 62 year old woman who still clings to her VHS tapes). My mom never saw the value in getting a computer and subscribing to a $30 monthly internet service when computers were always hard for her to use (she never really understood the mouse moves the cursor on the screen thing) and the only thing she would really use the computer for would be email.

For her the iPad is perfect. It’s not small like the iPhone, so she can see everything on the screen without squinting. Because my mom is a light internet user (think email and Skype), the $15 pay-as-you-go 250MB 3G price plan is perfect for her – especially since she can cancel at any time. She doesn’t have to sign a $30 a month contract and has no modem to worry about dying on her. But, the real appeal about the iPad is there is no mouse for her to fuddle with or cursor to follow. With the iPad, when she wants to check on her email, she simply touches the screen. My mom has poor sight but the iPad is both large enough and features a simple enough UI that she can touch to email with ease.

Best of all, when she isn’t checking her email, the iPad will double as a digital picture frame. My mom loves her photos and has recently gotten a digital camera. But with no computer, she’s had to take the camera card to Walgreen’s to get the pictures printed. Now with the iPad and the camera connection kit she can bypass a computer entirely and view her photos as never before.

I hadn’t thought of the iPad as a device for the non-computer user before, namely since it requires a computer to sync up to. However, it seems more self-contained than even an iPhone, so it could work. And besides, when there’s an update or other things to put on it, usually it’s the computer-savvy relative helping out anyway, why not just plug into their computer and fix everything there? I can see this.

Yet still a big issue is the backlit screen versus e-ink (as pointed out later in the article). E-ink is easier on the eyes, so hopefully there are some good screen settings in there for those of us who would use it as a newspaper most of the time.

The Navy already operates dozens of small nuclear reactors in aircraft carriers and submarines, with an outstanding record of safety and reliability. They have an established training program that churns out nuclear-capable officers.

By analogy to the Army Corps of Engineering, we could create a Navy Corps of Nuclear Engineering. It would build and operate dozens of small nuclear power plants around the country.

To address security concerns, the first plants would be built on military bases, where the garrison can provide security. Licensing costs would be cut because the government would own and operate the plants.

The proposal should not offend small government sensibilities. Nuclear power is rife with market failures (and government failures). Huge research and development costs associated with traditional large scale nuclear power plants may be beyond the ability of private firms to finance. In addition, we know that private firms tend to underproduce the sort of basic R&D necessary to develop new generations of power plants. But the Navy already spends money to develop new naval reactors, which presumably could be scaled up at reasonable costs. Since the Navy need not worry about earning market competitive rates of return on its investment in R&D, moreover, there’s no economic disincentive to conducting that sort of R&D in the Navy.

(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

I thought this was great. Small power plants at military sites means the technology gets used, they don’t use fossil fuels, our defense not only stays off the grid but can now offset some costs by selling leftover power to the grid.

Now all we have to do is upgrade the damn grid.

First I had to think about when I would use such a device. Currently, I work in front of a laptop and a desktop, then I can take the laptop home and use it to look up recipes and email people as well. Plus I’ll have all my favorite tools and programs at my fingertips.

I have no commute. I drive less than 10 miles, sans errands, to get myself and my kids where we need to go. And I can barely listen to the radio in that time because decent music is few and far between and the news would spark too many awful questions from my six year old.

Plus I recently decided to ditch my iPhone for a simpler way of life. I’ve yet to sell the stupid thing, but that’s a digression. So I’m not feeling any loss for not having a digital reading device on me at all times.

So right now, I wouldn’t buy an iPad. Neither would my wife, since it couldn’t play any of her flash-based diversions, nor handle her online classes.

But I would have picked one up by my second year of college for one reason: textbooks. It’s yet to be seen whether Apple has this in the works, but as I see it, if you can make interactive textbooks that are half the price and can be produced without the costs of printing, then you win. Plus, nobody could buy used books since they are a one-shot purchase.

So for the price of $500 and the cost of textbooks cut in half, then you can pretty well see the device paying for itself in a year. I sure would have liked to tote around an iPad rather than huge, awful books. With an iPad to be my dictionary, quick reference, and full textbook, as well as my own handwritten notebook for the sake of building my memories more deeply, it would have worked well.

Another huge piece that would have been a gift to me would be a sheet music reader. That would be a tricky piece of software to come up with, since it would need an auto-scrolling feature. The screen is smaller than a letter-sized piece of paper, which is usually smaller than standard sheet music. But if I kept it all, scanned in images at the very least, with the ability to annotate as I needed, then it’d be quite useful indeed.

I also keep seeing it, if there is a sheet music app, as a pit orchestra with little glowing pieces of music rather than relying on crappy stand lights.

These are all big ifs, but I can see it as very possible. I think a big part missing is a stylus that could really absorb handwriting, even if it couldn’t transcribe the handwriting into plain text. Then you could write notes all over your books and music without affecting the primary source.

The tricks I describe would probably also depend on whether multi-tasking on the device is allowed. We shall have to wait and see.

I am naturally a libertarian (except when it comes to children), and would lean Republican, but have yet to vote for one. I can’t see myself supporting a party overrun by Jesus with an M-16. I’ve never been able to fully support Democrats because I think they want government to do too much for us, plus I don’t much care for Unions or hippies.

So to me, the speech went well. I like to hear the ideas of rolling back the government a bit in order to, you know, pay for things we promise. And I really liked that Obama vocally disagreed with the Supreme Court (Roberts as CJ = we’ll be paying for Bush for a long, long time), and that he admonished both parties in Congress for failing to do work.

Democrats, you have a majority, do something with it. Republicans, just saying ‘no’ to everything isn’t leadership. Seriously, this is why I can’t support any of you right now. (Note: I do support Democrat Tarryl Clark for Congress in my district for so many good reasons I named above.)

It’s been interesting reading the immediate responses to the speech out in the blogosphere. The truly liberal are ragingly pissed about Obama’s concessions to cut spending and still wanting to work with Republicans. The political commentators seem wary that the speech did anything. And, well, I don’t have many conservative writers in my RSS feed because they sound as though they’re foaming at the mouth more than anything else.

Frankly, I thought Obama passing the responsibility on to Congress to get things done, particularly telling Republicans that if they have a better idea, he’d like to hear it. I think that’s a great way to call them out on their empty critiques.

I spent the speech just sitting there watching and reading a couple of other live-blogging events. There were only a couple of points that made me react. Here’s from my Twitter feed:

Did he really just end the Iraq war, or has that date always been set?

YES! Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell! [I actually clapped and shouted 'Yes!' when I heard that.]

These are big deal things to me, and he had better follow through. Now, I know Obama said that combat troops would be out of Iraq, so that means we’d still have support personnel on the ground. Frankly, I see a permanent base there, similar to the leftovers of World War Two.

As for DADT, I’m excited, but the history I’ve read from other blogs is to be wary. Many things have been promised in the past to the gay community and so many went unfulfilled. But I can see DADT ending with Iraq engagement and taking care of two big shifts in the military at once.

To wrap up, I want to note the Republican response to the State of the Union. Interesting to note, Governor McDonnell gave the response before an actual assembly rather than in front of a camera in a room. It’s just different than what has been done before.

However, Governor McDonnell said nothing. The entire time, he sounded like an empty shell. I kept waiting and waiting for a single idea that could be presented as an alternative to any of Obama’s plans. I heard mention of off-shore drilling, but that was all, and Obama even hit on that himself.

So it was a non-speech. Even my wife kept repeating to me, he’s not saying anything. But according to pundits, the bar was so low, all he had to do was not cut an audible fart in front of the camera. Good job, McDonnell. At least your speech was only ten minutes so you didn’t have to worry about saying anything relevant.

So it’s practically a given that I wanted an iPhone. I got an iPhone, I have an iPhone. All else in this world pales in comparison to the iPhone. Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha all would have had iPhones (and by miracles would never be out of service, of course.)

I figured out how to unlock and jailbreak my phones (yes, we’ve run through the gamut of them in my house) so we can make use of our better-cost T-Mobile plans. I also was quite clever to avoid data charges since it was never long I was away from a wifi connection. All the power and none of the extra crazy costs? Totally win.

However, it turned out I barely used my phone. I would text, and twitter, and occasionally play a game. I didn’t have data, nor a 3G, so there was no GPS for me. (Which, by the way, I use a map, the sun, and my feet in dense areas, so I’ve never been at a loss there.)

Tweetie is a great app, and I liked being able to read some of my RSS feeds on the fly, but I have those on my computer. As for games, I would play occasionally but never sat down long to play anything. For that, we also have two Nintendo DSes in our house, as well as a Wii, so games are covered. Though I’m still waiting to try out Dragon Age once I have a computer that could possibly run it.

So I’m done with it for now. More than anything, I realize I’m never far from my personal computer. I’d rather read and write on my laptop. Plus, the main thing I want to do on my phone outside of calling and messaging is tweeting, and I can do that via normal text messaging.

The less in my pockets, the better. I already have to carry around two handkerchiefs to cover myself and whichever kid has a runny nose this week. Plus I keep my keys, pocket knife, and a compact pen in there. Oh yeah, and my great wallet with its built-in note cards.

That last piece really was the killer for me. I don’t like keeping notes on the phone. I found it a little clumsy to take out, unlock, open the notes app, get to the right note, then slowly type away, usually one-handed. If I need a note for something, I keep a small notebook next to my computer, or I jot something in my wallet to look back at later when I’m at my computer. Groceries? I keep a note pad in the kitchen. Shopping? Same note pad. To do lists? Yup.

In my pocket is a very beat-up Motorola phone my wife abandoned four phones ago. The reception is good, battery life is fine (cheap replacements were procured online a while back), and it’s smaller. Done deal.

Now I just need to sell those two 2G iPhones and get some of my money back. Maybe I’ll buy a high-tech toothbrush once I do.

• Fluid
• TweetMyMac
• Photoshop Elements
• Toast 10
• MacTheRipper
• RipIt
• Acquisition
• Xtorrent
• Time Machine

Fluid

Fluid is an odd duck of a program that I started using earlier this year. It is called a Site Specific Browser, or SSB. But that only partially describes what it does. The best way to describe its function is through its practical use.

I love Gmail. I love its conversation-style interface, its labeling, its connection to my other documents and calendars. And it operates this way on any web browser I walk up to. However, I don’t love having to keep my browser on with Gmail up and running at all times, because I do use my email as an active messaging service.

So when I found Fluid, I put it to good use. Essentially, it creates a little program shell, a single, standalone browser window, that holds a specified website. In this instance, Gmail. I have a Gmail icon on my dock that puts up an indicator when I get a new message.

Fluid can create multiple SSB programs, too. I could have separate programs for Yahoo mail, Facebook, Twitter, the BBC, any ol’ website I desire. I stick with just Gmail right now because I don’t have an active need for any other web services (since I have my separate Twitter and RSS Reader clients).

TweetMyMac

This is a funny little program I have toyed with a bit as a kind of security system. Through a separate Twitter account, you can send a tweet that the computer hears and will follow the command. I can shut down, log out, and even snap a picture of the screen or the person at the computer. If nothing else, it’s a little slice of fun.

Photoshop Elements 6

Photoshop Elements was a hand-me-down from my mum, actually. Previously, I had been working with Pixelmator. Pixelmator is a great program, really. But since I like to try to stay in the know, I’ve switched to doing picture editing in Elements. It’s good to know the interface, and generally knowing one Adobe product helps you know most of the others. Unfortunately, my picture editing needs are few and far between so I don’t know all that much about the program yet.

Toast 10

Yeah Toast! I use this program all the time as it is my primary DVD burning software. I loathe Apple’s iDVD. iDVD is a stain upon Apple’s good name and whole iLife suite. iDVD is clunky, clumsy, ugly, and just general crap that never does what I actually need.

Toast. Ah Toast. In this program, you can drop in all the various movie files you want, set up menus (or NONE, if you prefer), and if you’re coming from a ripped DVD, for home copying purposes only of course, it can cleanly compress and remove unwanted menus and extras to fit nicely on the basic DVD-R disks.

MacTheRipper

MacTheRipper, MTR for short, has been my primary DVD ripping software for a couple of years now. I’ve tested out a lot of alternative programs and none have worked so consistently well to break the encoding and allow me to have a safe-to-be-stolen copy of it on my desktop. The program has a lot of options and a somewhat cluttered interface, but I rarely have to change any settings and I get a good 95% of all DVDs to rip properly.

RipIt

I just started using RipIt the other day. I am always looking for an alternative to MTR because it hasn’t been updated all that much, and the developer asks for a goofy “gift” in order to keep up support, rather than a Demo-Then-Purchase setup. RipIt, so far, has handled the half-dozen disks I’ve thrown at it just as readily as MTR, and the one funky disk still came out funky anyway (brutal bit of encoding from Disney, I think). It has a wonderful simple interface with a just a few options. So far, I really like it and may even be willing to spring the twenty bucks for full license that doesn’t limit me to ten rips.

Acquisition

Acquisition is a program that is becoming somewhat outdated. It is a peer-to-peer (P2P) client, which is an old standard for sharing files. Since the advent of BitTorrent file sharing, P2P is falling by the wayside. Why search for single files at a time when you can download a torrent file that downloads entire programs, albums, or movies (basically whole piles of files) far more effectively and efficiently? Still I keep it around for that single piece of music I want at any given time.

Xtorrent

Made by the same developer as Acquisition, Xtorrent is my preferred BitTorrent client. Rather than heading off to a search engine or torrent website, Xtorrent generates a list of downloadable torrents that can be sorted by the quantity and quality of the sharing. Between this and Toast, life is almost too easy. Almost.

Time Machine

Last of all is Time Machine. This is OS X’s built-in backup software. It’s simple and works. I breakout our external hard drive, hook it up, and let it run for an hour. Once everything is backed up, I put the backup drive back in the fire safe for another month. I normally wouldn’t worry about backing up my system, since I store most of my daily life in the cloud (on the Internet; ‘in the cloud’ is a newer term for that sort of storage), but there are pictures of kids in my life now, as well as a decade’s worth of acquired music, that should never be risked to perish.

My only annoyance with Time Machine is that, at work, every computer prompts for every hard drive it touches to be a backup drive. As simple as it is, there needs to be a checkbox in the preference allowing it to ignore any portable drives connecting to it.

There you mostly have it. All the stuff I use on my good ol’ Macs. I wish I had more to say about Windows computers, honestly. Especially with Windows 7 coming out, I would love to have a separate laptop to try it out with and not remain completely ignorant to some of the cool stuff it can do as well. I may still pick Win7 up while it’s cheap and make a Boot Camp partition and see how that goes with it.

Regardless, though, the world can have my MacBook when it pries it from my cold, dead hands.

While Fighting 99 Ninjas

Sure, your phone is a great weapon in fights like this. And texting your friends while killing 99 ninjas, one by one, is a great way to show off for the camera. But what about all the blood you’ll get on the phone? And what if the ninjas start texting you just to mess with your concentration? And ultimately, what happens when Ninja 99, the leader, spins a Chinese star into your keypad? Well, now you’ve got to go back to the cell phone dealer, and you know from previous experience they don’t honor warranties just because your phone has a Chinese star in it. This is going to cost you. Keep your phone in your pocket while fighting 99 ninjas!

• Smultron
• The Unarchiver
• Perian
• CoconutBattery
• VLC
• Handbrake
• Disk Utility
• Terminal
• Apple Remote Desktop
• Snow Leopard Networking
• LogMeIn

Smultron

This first program is rather counter to my previous paragraph. Smultron is my replacement for TextEdit on my personal computers. It’s a hefty, yet simple, text editor most commonly used for coding. I like setting up a tabbed interface in it and being able to flip among various text documents (such as lists of programs I use). The really sad thing is the program is no longer being updated. The developer was kind enough to just update it for Snow Leopard, but otherwise it is a dead program.

And as I’ve mentioned before, I use plain text editors as places to draft anything and everything. I’m half tempted to try NaNoWriMo next month, though I’ve never written anything beyond a few thousand words for school, and definitely not fiction. But if I get anything started on a digital platform, it will definitely be in that program.

My only, ONLY beef with this problem is this: its icon. It’s a strawberry looked at from the top. I am sure that it has some significance for the developer, but I’m not a big fan of my text documents all icon-ized with strawberries. I hate strawberries.

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a background utility recommended to me and now recommended to you. It opens up everything similar to a .zip file, but far more than the default OS X archiving program can. Plus you can tell it what and where to place files and folders it de-archives (I have the original file remain and the newly minted folder appear on my desktop, other computers I default to mint the folder in the same place and put the archive in the trash.)

Perian

Here is what makes QuickTime useful at all: Perian. You install this system preference, and it keeps your computer up to date with all the codecs (video decoding tidbits) to have 95% of all video run through QuickTime. Only thing it really misses is .wmv files, which I claim are trash to begin with anyway. So there. Nyah.

CoconutBattery

This is a utility I put into all my laptops, and all it does is ready the battery health status. We have ever-increasing numbers of dying batteries at work, so this is a clean interface to see what percentage of the original capacity a battery is at. Just dump it in your Utilities folder and Spotlight it when you need it.

VLC

VLC is a media player, an alternate to QuickTime. And boy howdy, it really does everything, no add-ons necessary. It’s not as sharp-looking, and the extent of preferences is daunting, but it. does. everything. There is even a way to use it to rip DVDs directly, but I’ve yet to totally solve that puzzle. I do plan to start using it as my DVD player, because I read somewhere that it bypasses all the preview nonsense and puts you right at the DVD title menu.

HandBrake

HandBrake is a companion to VLC, in that it uses VLC’s goodies to rip DVDs and change pretty much any source file into any other filetype. I don’t use it as my main DVD ripper, but there are plenty of times at home and at work where a file is in some format that isn’t readily burnable to a DVD or able to be brought into a project.

Disk Utility

Disk Utility is built into OS X, and has been for some time. It is ridiculously powerful, and I use it regularly. First, it can wipe out any and all hard drives. Second, it can completely copy and burn any disk. Third, it can completely copy any hard drive and image (copy to) any other hard disk, making a clone of that drive.

You can imagine what that does for my job. I have hundreds of computers all identical to one another, save for their names (so I can find which is which). So really, all I have to troubleshoot is about 4 different computers. If something gets really screwed up, I just re-image the computer, resetting everything. Booyah.

Terminal

This is another program built into OS X. Terminal is its command line interface (CLI) for the operating system. Here is a bit of technical jargon you may have seen: GUI. That GUI (pronounced ‘gooey’) stands for Graphical User Interface. Like many computer acronyms, they actually explain themselves a bit, like RSS. The GUI is all the shiny, colorful icons and programs and whatnot that you see. The CLI lets you change files, folders and their contents, even their hidden settings, by just typing in a bit of code.

Here’s a bit of an example. Say you are looking at an image and you want to change its width. The quick, GUI method would be to move your mouse to the edge, click and drag the handle, and make the image skinnier. The CLI version is to type in some command such as

setwidth image.jpg 400

[not actual code; keeping it relatively in English]

Instead of dragging it thinner, I just sent the command to set its width directly. Now, the crazy thing to think about is that when you dragged that handle, you actually sent that command. Didn’t know you could code, did’ja? Hence why we like our shiny gooeys: no need to think of that stuff.

Apple Remote Desktop

ARD is the workhorse of my job. Alongside Disk Utility, these programs rule the day. Disk Utility creates the identical base found across all the computers. ARD allows me to run commands, install programs, replace/update files, as well as see and take control of the computer when needed.

This is also where skills in Unix come in handy. Other than copying entire preference files over (usually easy), I can rewrite portions of such files as well as tell the computers to all follow a set of commands as if I’m typing at each one. All of this is done through Unix commands, identical to what you would type in Terminal.

There is, of course, the power to restart and shut down all the computers in a single lab with two clicks. There is very much a godliness feeling to it, which definitely explains the social lunacy many computer nerds succumb to.

Snow Leopard Networking

The networking features of OS X deserve mention in the utility world as well. At home, I don’t usually bother with ARD (unless I’m feeling sinister). The built-in networking features of Snow Leopard have all the function one needs at home. It should be noted, though, that all the features are also in Leopard.

When you open a Finder window, in the left column, there is a shared section. Under that you can find all the computers attached to the local network. (Totally cool piece of trivia: the icon for any Windows computers on the network is a monitor showing the Blue Screen of Death™.) From there, if you have the shared computer’s username and password, you get the good stuff.

First, you can see all the files and folders on the computer. This is nice because I can just drag a file I’ve worked on my laptop over to the Desktop folder of the user on the iMac. Simple as can be, really. Second, you can share screens just by clicking on that button. This is handy for turning on iTunes or iPhoto to get them sharing their libraries, or even for spying on cousins sitting at the computer a little too long.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn is a web-based remote desktop software. I use their free account setup to connect to my home computer while at work. To do this same thing through ARD would be a royal pain and not really worth it. This way, you’re just in your web browser and can do it anywhere.

Using LogMeIn with Dropbox allows for me to download files via the home computer that I can’t access at work, put them in the Dropbox, and shortly have them on my work computer. There is also the fact that it allows for remote troubleshooting of family’s computers, both Windows- and Mac-based. Now if I could only get remote access to my dad’s brain to fix my idiotic sprinkler system.

The only thing about LogMeIn is that when you write it in all lower-case, it looks like a Chinese dish. logmein. lo mein. I’m not crazy. Shutup.

The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun’s angle to the ring plane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Also at equinox, the shadows of the planet’s expansive rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic.

I have been following an RSS feed for NASA’s Image Of The Day (link to feed in right column) for a while now. I don’t have as much interest in the stuff dealing with the shuttle or general equipment. But frequently, there are stunning pictures from our probes and telescopes of the objects in our heavens.

The picture above is my desktop picture. I like the humbling reminders of my insignificance in the universe, as well as the reminder that there is a greater universe beyond my own life. Perspective is a healthy thing to regularly inject in one’s existence.

• Firefox (w/ add-ons)
• NetNewsWire
• Google Reader
• MarsEdit
• WordPress
• Dreamhost
• Tweetie
• Adium

Full descriptions after the break.

Firefox

Even as a proud Mac user, I stick with Firefox for the sake of its extensions. Safari is surely faster, and even some of my extensions work on there. But still, I stick with Firefox. Though large and a little sluggish, I very very rarely have an issue with website compatibility. Plus, I am really used to doing a [command + number] keystroke in order to pick through tabs.

Here are the add-ons I use:

• Xmarks – This is my bookmark synchronizer. Very handy again over multiple computers. Plus its mobile website is clean to get through when on a phone.
• Adblock Plus – This is really the reason I stick with FireFox. Adblock leaves blank all those obnoxious ads on the sides of website and even cuts through commercials on Comedy Central’s website (though not Hulu.)
• 1password – This is one that gets installed with 1password that I explained before.
• Firefox PDF plugin – This plugin is handy because I hate having to download every single bloody pdf file that is online. Having them come up in clean, fast-loading Firefox tabs is good stuff.

Frankly, reading through my list, I may switch back to Safari for a spell and see how well it works for me. I don’t toy with as many add-ons as I used to, plus Safari has a built-in pdf reading function.

NetNewsWire

This is one of my favorite and most-used programs. Since discovering it, my use of the standard web browser has dramatically dropped off. Frankly, if a website I want to follow doesn’t have an RSS feed, or it doesn’t display full articles via RSS, I won’t bother keeping up with it.

A brief introduction to RSS feeds: Standing for ‘Real Simple Syndication’, they are direct lines to the updated content of a website. So every time a blog post pops up, it shoots out just the text, none of the actual website decoration around it. Really, it turns the web into a very customizable newspaper that gets updated by the hour.

Google Reader

Google Reader is the workhorse behind NetNewsWire, and definitely deserves a mention. It does the full aggregation online which NNW syncs up to. Also, it has a pretty good interface, particularly for mobile. I just prefer a standalone reader program that can hook directly up to my blogging software.

MarsEdit

One of the few pieces of software I have actually been willing to purchase outright, MarsEdit holds a lot of power. It automatically picks up on my blog and I can just get typing away. It can also be as complex or simple as you like; the customizations are pretty endless.

MarsEdit’s one issue is that its text input isn’t WYSIWYG (‘What You See Is What You Get’). You actually write in code. But really, other than a few little pieces here and there, the code is light. Pasting in a link is actually easier [shift + command + a] and the URL you copied is automatically wrapped around your selected material.

WordPress

Another behind the scenes workhorse for me is WordPress. Not too long ago, my friend opened up some of his webspace to me so I could host my own blog instead of through another company. So now instead of Blogger or WordPress.com holding all my information, I hold all my own, with far more customization and future profitability potential in there. But in there is the WordPress software.

WordPress has been pretty good to work with. I haven’t had many issues with my plugins (gotta love extensibility). Also, I love being able to tweak certain things in my themes. More little tidbits of code for me to experiment on.

My only issue, and this goes for MarsEdit too, is that there’s no clean way to upload and insert multiple images. One of the few things I try to keep up with here is posting pictures of my growing children, and it’d be nice to have eight pictures upload and insert in a single shot, rather than go through individually. But so far, I’m surviving.

Another thing I would love to get into would be having a self-hosted video option, where I could upload a video file and have it convert into a simple flash player, a la YouTube. That way I don’t run into YouTube’s rubbish copyright policies. I’m still toying with moving all my videos over to Vimeo; I like their player better anyway.

DreamHost

DreamHost is the web server and domain host I use (server space through my very generous friend Josh). I have to say, they have a great service. I was able to install and import my previous blogs all through their well-constructed website. They have a whole bunch of one-click installs, including that for MediaWiki software (you’d recognize it as Wikipedia) that I used for a project for school.

Tweetie

Tweetie is my go-to Twitter client, both for iPhone and my laptop. I went ahead and paid for the iPhone app, but stick with the free, ad-supported version of their Mac client. Three bucks is easier to swallow than twenty.

I love Twitter. I get to follow friends, writers, comedians, and companies that I’m interested in. But they don’t get in my way, communication is fast and simple, and there’s nothing else to it. Tweetie does a mighty fine job of putting it in a clean interface and can notify me when I get messages of various kinds. And I still say it beats Facebook with both twittering thumbs tied behind its back.

Adium

My instant messaging client is Adium. Adium connects to nearly every single possible chat client, including ones like Google Talk and Facebook that are usually built into their respective websites. Usually I’m still chatting over AOL Instant Messenger accounts, though.

Adium has lots of room for visual customization, so my chat window isn’t giant and obvious. Plus it keeps good logs of my chats so I can find a link someone sent me without any trouble. The only downside is there is no video chat available in it. But really, that feature wouldn’t get used very often anyway.

What I did this time, though, was keep track of all the little things I use on the computer. As a tech admin, I use some tools that most people wouldn’t touch, but then again, I also use lots of tools freely available to accomplish my work.

To start out, I wanted to go through the basic system software for my day to day computing. For hardware, I run 90% of my life through a three year old MacBook from work. It has a 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo, 1gb RAM, and 120gb HD. At home I have an even older iMac that I need to upgrade to Snow Leopard at some point.

The programs in this post:

• Snow Leopard
• iLife
• Preview
• Quicktime
• iTunes
• Dropbox
• 1password

Snow Leopard

The operating system for my computer. Following a clean wipe is nice because you can see all the sporty new features as well as the gaps left in the new system. So far, it’s been quite a bit faster than Leopard, particularly in the startup/shutdown department, so I actually do those things more often.

The revised Dock interface is clean, and I like the dark color for the secondary-click window. Also, I love that minimize can go into the application icon. I hated minimizing things because they take up space on my already full Dock. Still, though, my favorite command is hide [command + h], as well as holding [command + option] and clicking on the desktop to hide everything but the Finder.

iLife ’09

Primarily, we live off of iPhoto. Have to keep all the cute kid pictures somewhere, right? Since ’09 added in face-recognition, it has been really good at removing red eye exposure. And though it was added before ’09, being able to upload pictures and have them automatically sorted by events makes life infinitely easier.

Another I’ve used more of recently is iMovie. With it, I threw together that beautiful slideshow of my daughter. The interface to put in pictures and change their durations has been greatly improved, finally to the point of being faster than the old iMovie HD (even for us veterans of the old program).

GarageBand I only occasionally play with. Since I’m further removed from the music tech scene than I’d like, I tend to toy with other stuff in the world. Still, for any multi-track recording, it is my go-to program.

Preview

Preview has to be one of the most underrated programs I work with. First of all, it reads pdf files flawlessly and far far faster than anything I have ever seen come out of Adobe.

Speaking of pdf files, one thing that is really great about Macs is the built-in ability to ‘print’ a document as a pdf file. I use the feature nearly daily.

Second, this program can convert, crop, rotate, and do most of the quick, very basic level editing that one preparing files for the web need to do. You can also merge pdf files and add and remove pages as needed with just some drag/drop work.

Quicktime

The completely revamped Quicktime X is smooth. Smooth in operation and appearance. I remember having to find a bogus Pro key just to use the full screen mode for old Quicktime versions. Now we’re given the ability to record anything and everything (including screen casts)? It’s just amazing.

My big caveat is that there are no longer preferences to change. I would like more control over formats (particularly audio). For some work we do, students record some audio, usually a story they wrote, then drop the file into GarageBand to add sound effects and music. But recording directly into GarageBand turns into a huge file and a lot of computing power required that we don’t necessarily have. It’d be nice to have the simple audio made separately apart from the editing.

iTunes

Of course, I use iTunes for all our music, which is extensive. I’ve never had an issue, except when it comes to video. I would love to have it import video as easily as audio, but such is not the case. I never know if something is going to be dumped into a movies category, a video category, or a TV shows category.

More than anything else these days, iTunes is the docking center for our iPhones. The coolest feature in iTunes 9 is the ability to arrange apps in iTunes. I really dig that interface, and it’s about time it arrived.

And as for the genius feature, I have never used it and am not particularly interested in it. Unless it gives me more music on my computer to listen to that I wouldn’t necessarily have or think of (a la Pandora), no thanks. If I want Shostakovich, I’ll listen to Shostakovich.

Dropbox

Dropbox is by far the coolest and most useful tool in my arsenal. It is basically an automatically backing-up documents folder. You create an account and that gets you two gigabytes of space. This space is a copy of a Dropbox folder on your computer. If you change a file in your Dropbox folder on your computer, it automatically updates the file online.

Pretty cool in itself, right? Well, you can install Dropbox on multiple computers, too. The Dropbox folder on my laptop here is the same Dropbox folder on my iMac at home. So I can open up any file here, save it, then open up that same file at home, update it again, and it’ll automatically get changed on my laptop again. Totally slick.

AND it’s cross-platform, so your Windows desktop and Mac laptop can share the same pile of files. AND you can access everything in it through a web browser if you don’t have it installed. AND you can make some files public so you can point a third party to a single file as a URL. AND it’s totally brainless; you don’t have to do squat beyond make an account.

Seriously, it’s an amazing tool. I don’t use my local documents folder on my computer for anything. It’s like keeping a web-based flash drive that securely backs up everything and can’t go through your laundry if you forget about it.

1password

1password is a slick tool that just saves passwords. It also plugs into web browsers to do some automatic logging in with a quick [command + \] keystroke. I do the keystoke, type in the master password, and it fires in the information and logs me in.

Also, through Dropbox, 1password can save its keychain and sync across my computers. If I add a site or change one of the passwords, then it’s added everywhere. Can’t beat that.

I would like to proffer a technique to teach young students to type up papers. My method is an alternative to the standard in which students open up a massive word processor. From there, they have all the bells and whistles to clang and blow that are built into the program with which to screw up their document before they even type their name.

Basically, unless there is some dedicated, direct instruction with constant scrutiny, the space for error is great. And even with all the that monitoring that is so easy to pull off in a room of 30 kids, all the ever-present and easy to access features are going to get accidentally clicked on anyway.

So the method I propose is a way of operating similar to that of web development: content and formatting are separate.

To begin typing a formal document, I would open up a basic text editor. Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac would be fine. Be sure the settings are for plain text, not rich text (not sure about Windows, but on Macs, you do have to go in and change the default preferences). We have no interest in fonts, alignments, spacing, or anything else. The point is to get the information clearly written.

Student could go ahead and put in a little header on the first couple of lines:

First A. Lastname

Class

Teacher

Date

Title

Lorem ipsum…

Note, everything is just sitting on the left margin. Not a big deal. Information is key.

So the extent of the paper is done. The student has their document.txt file sitting in their folder, nicely saved and ready for the next step. This next step also teaches some basic computer operations that are absolutely essential to know: switching between programs and copy/paste functions.

This also becomes a chance to teach clicking and dragging and highlighting goodness. If they are advanced enough, I would toss in keyboard shortcuts. In this case, we start off easy: highlight all your text, then go to the Edit menu and select Copy.

Now the students, with their plain text files staring at them, will go down and start up the full-featured word processor. Once a blank document is ready, paste in the text. Save your newly minted document to be the same name as previous, our new document.docx (if that’s your format).

Students can see the original text file and the full document file right next to each other in the folder, very good for organizational purposes, plus it is a built-in backup. Also, if your students blow up their formatting, there’s original plain text to try again with.

From in this new document, students can work on highlighting specific sections to change justification, font size, type, spacing, etc, as well as checking grammar and usage. The point is that all these things happen last in the process so the actual document gets written in the first place.

It’s just a wonderful bonus that file management, computer usage, and basic editing techniques are also included in such a lesson. I’m going to propose this to some of the English teachers I work with and get their opinions.

Any pros/cons out there that could raise or ruin this idea?

PS, I would also just mention here that I firmly believe that a first draft should be written by hand. Then typing it up becomes a clear editing stage when typing it up. But if not doing that, clean plain text is the way to go after that.

Here’s the boy’s hair for his last day of school.

And the Raging Princess’ neuroses are starting to show.

Anyway, here is a response to some articles by Marc Prensky that were required for class.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I came away with reservations about these articles (parts I and II). At first shake, Prensky’s arguments make sense. After some time sitting and putting some thought into it, I would be inclined to disagree with him.

Let me say that I seem like a Digital Native, but it mostly due to growing up with an interest in technology, not having been born into that world. The articles were written in 2001, when I graduated from high school. I still have recollections of VCRs and phones cords. Computers were monochrome beasts with no hard drives. I stride the bridge between the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.

Real Digital Natives are not ones who just grow up playing video games; I grew up playing video games. Digital Natives would be those who have no recollection of a world without instant and constant information in their pockets: the Wireless Generation. These students we will teach have had personal cell phones since elementary school.

So there’s my first issue with Prensky. It’s not a gaming generation that makes a difference. It is ubiquitous information. Still, why do kids get into video games? They entertain. It’s a new genre of entertainment alongside the popular novel, movies, and television. While trying to turn an entertainment source into an educational source is a noble endeavor, it is ultimately a futile one.

Why do kids (and adults) spend so much time trying to master skills for a video game? Games link the worlds of entertainment and hobbies. Fixing cars, learning chess, fishing, all are skills that people acquire not to get smarter, but for fun. Those skills still sit outside the educational world, and I’m glad for it.

Attention spans seem shot? Of course they are. Kids are used to fast-paced imagery passing before them. Objectively watching TV, especially advertisements, reveals a bombardment on the senses. One doesn’t need to have deep thinking and processing to play or watch most things. That’s fine; it’s what entertainment is for. Still, that doesn’t forgive schools for being dry and presenting content coldly.

The bigger issue is not attention span, it is concentration. On the surface, they look similar. Deeper, they are different. One is sensorial focus, the other is a duration of cognition. Sure kids could play games or watch TV for hours on end, but they aren’t concentrating on them. To shallowly understand an image, people need to see it for a mere 3 seconds. TV and video games are geared toward that.

The other issue is a myth kids are especially good at perpetuating: humans are capable of multitasking. Supposedly they can watch TV, check websites, instant message or text people, all while writing a paper. It is false. I regularly read articles by heavy internet and computer users on how the best way to work on a task is by disconnecting themselves from the digital world.

I will also vouch for this as well. For the first half of my undergrad years, I had a TV in my room next to my computer. For some reason, I struggled to finish papers on time and get practicing done (I was a music major). As soon as I got rid of my television and isolated my practice and reading time, I found I could actually read more than a paragraph at a time and I got good marks in my private music instruction. I was amazed and wound up raising my class rankings by being able to concentrate again.

Prensky also brings up how students will attack problems non-linearly. They’ll analyze multiple points and try lots of little things without thinking heavily. Sure they get to the answer, but without a secure process to get there. Supposedly, that’s just the way young people think now. No, these are children of instant gratification. If there’s not an instant solution, try something else. Again, here’s the concentration factor.

My son does this regularly. He’s very bright for his age so most things come very easily. When something is a challenge or produces a failure the first couple of tries, he gives up, claiming not to like it, and moves on. This isn’t a healthy way to approach the world. You can’t expect to be entertained or be instantly gratified at every encounter.

I still fight this old habit as well. My inclination is to entertain myself before doing work. I have to force myself to get work done before rewarding myself. Often, that means I end my day without having a reward at all. But such is life, and that is not a bad thing to educate kids about.

People struggle with why Twitter is special. It’s special because it counters, better than any other technology, the timeless social obstacle of “out of site, out of mind”. Regardless of how much time you’d spend with a given person if they lived nearby, relationships atrophy when distance comes between you.

The longer someone you care about is gone, the more an invisible barrier grows between you–one that makes it awkward to reinitiate contact. It’s as if loved ones over time somehow change from tangible people into abstract ideas that require effort to interact with. This sinister effect of distance turns best friends into strangers, and technologies such as mobile phones and video conferencing don’t help. They don’t help precisely because the barrier is the initiation of contact, not the ability to communicate once connected.

Twitter solves this problem in a way that no other technology has. Through a stream of common, real-world updates about one’s life, Twitter reminds our fickle, here-focused brains that those we care about are real, and prevents them from disappearing into the world of the abstract. In short, Twitter’s magic is that it’s able to keep close people close regardless of how far they are from each other, which is a feat that no other technology has been able to accomplish.

I agree it has that easy aspect of contact without direct initiation. It’s definitely helped me keep up with a couple of people I wouldn’t normally talk to anymore. And I really do wish a few of my other friends were on it as well.

There are better ways to do evaluate how schools are run. We all know them. They just cost more and are tougher to standardize. Why? Because we well know now that there are a multitude of ways in even more varied degrees that people are capable of learning.

So we’re left with trying to bridge the gap with technology. More and more testing is done via computer. Fine. There’s some good stuff out there, tests that actually adapt to what the student is able to answer and adjusts questions accordingly.

My end of the preparation for such testing can be a tiresome nuisance, certainly. And there’s something of an anti-productive feeling to it. I’m not building up a better computer system to aid in educating; it’s just loading up software to test on and not taking on large projects for the sake of being able to jump in at a moment’s notice to fix something.

That should show something of a red flag right there. A testing system should not be high-maintenance. Why implement something unstable when you are trying to gauge an accurate reading?

But there’s something bigger. If we’re testing academic prowess and intelligence, why do we treat these students as though they are idiots?

The new testing system we have here, thanks to the new computers we got for it all last year, is pretty good I will admit. Glitches are few and far between, and frankly the worst we’ve had to deal with is kids kicking out power cords underneath the computer table. (Yes I could fasten cabling to the underside of the tables, but we move things around enough to make that impractical.)

However the program itself, some committee has determined, is far too difficult to walk in and just take. Oh no no no. These kids who never knew a world without Google and Wikipedia and a cell phone in every pocket that had universal access to both couldn’t possibly take a basic Flash-based test on an 18-month-old computer.

So we have the program go through its own self-explanation. When you start the test, you put on headphones and listen to the program show and tell you how to manipulate a couple of its tools. Nifty. A couple of quick sample questions to make sure you’ve got it down? Alright, on with the test. See you in a couple of hours.

No, now wait a minute. That’s nowhere near enough. Before you even see the test, let’s get you primed with a PowerPoint presentation created by the testing committee’s PowerPoint sub-committee. You will have scratch paper. This is where your mouse moves. Don’t worry, if you miss something, it’ll be explained to you again as soon as you begin.

There. Done. Covered. Let’s get back to teachin’ and learnin’ so they can be well-rounded indivi– woah there! I just realized, we can’t blind-side these kids with a test they’ve never seen before except annually during their previous five years of public schooling. We know full well they don’t remember anything from year to year.

So let’s take them out of class before the testing to show them how the testing software works. That’s the ticket! It’ll be a couple of days worth, for sure. We have some short sample tests that explain how the test works, what objects can be used, etc. Great, now they for sure know what to expect.

Now we’ve done all the preparation we can. There’s no way these kids will do poorly on these tests due to anything we’ve forgotten. What? You see topics on the test that we’ve never covered in class before? Just do what you can. I’m sure we’ll cover it later. Or next year.