Fellow ADE Rae Niles sent me a link to a short, online anti-cyberbullying video entitled “Let’s Fight It Together.” It’s nicely done and worth a look.
Monthly Archives: October 2007
Tim 1, Marathon 0
I did it. My finishing time was 4:45 which I’m pretty happy with considering the brutal heat. I’d hoped to finish closer to 4:15, but it was 80°+ with a dew point near 70° and I knew that I’d have no chance of going that fast. What weird weather. It’s not supposed to be like this in Minneapolis in October.
I had planned to run in a pace group that was going to come in at around 4:15, but I got the starting line late and I started quite far back near the 5:30 group. I passed the 4:30 pace group after about three miles, but I never did see the 4:15 group. I was right on pace at mile 15, but the heat started taking a toll soon after. I had to do some walking over the last 10 miles, but I finished strong. Luckily the last mile is pretty much downhill. Feel free to check out my marathon photo set.
My knees are a bit sore, but otherwise I feel good. Tomorrow morning will be the true test. I’m planning to wear my marathon shirt to work tomorrow. I hope it looks OK with khakis.
Top three signs seen along the marathon route today:
- Caption on large Homer Simpson cutout: “You paid to do this?”
- Donna, don’t die!
- You’re a freakin’ springbok, dude!
MEMO 2007: Podcasting Nuts and Bolts
I did a 45-minute podcasting presentation at MEMO yesterday which focused on some of the practical aspects of podcasting. One of the things we talked a bit about was equipment for video podcasting. (I really don’t like the “vodcasting” or “vlogging” name.) I’m thinking about starting a video podcast, so I picked up the following gear to enable me to use my high-quality microphones with a low-end camera.
- Canon ZR800 ($200) is low-cost camcorder that records onto DV tape. Canon has always provided a low-end camera with an audio input primarily intended for the education market. The audio input is key. Without it, you’re stuck using the relatively sucky built-in mic.
- Studio 1 Productions XLR-BP Pro ($180) XLR microphone adaptor. The Canon ZR800 audio input is a 3.5-mm miniplug which means that it will be almost impossible to find a decent microphone to plug in directly. This adaptor makes it possible to use standard XLR microphones with the ZR800′s audio input. It has two XLR inputs plus a miniplug and a ¼" plug. You can mix and match any two of these input simultaneously. It’s got a clip on the back that makes it easy to hang it from your belt or attach it to a tripod.
- ARTcessories Phantom II ($60) phantom power supply will deliver the phantom power you need to use condenser mics. I got this model because it’s battery powered and thus more friendly to mobile applications. If you’re using dynamic mics then you wouldn’t need this box. Most good lavalier microphones (aka lapel mics) are condenser mics that need the 48V phantom power.
We talked about microphones, and I recommended USB headset microphones like this Logitech model for student use. The beauty of a headset microphone is that once the proper levels are set, the student can move around and not change the distance to the mic. You’ll get much more even sound levels than with a microphone on a stand.
The marathon challenge has arrived
Some of you probably know that I’ve been training for the Twin Cities Marathon. The big event is on Sunday, and I find myself more curious than anything else about how everything will turn out. I’ve put in my miles: 540 miles of training since May. All that’s left now is to line up and run… and run… and run. I’ll post some after-race thoughts and photos sometime next week.
Big list of podcasting resources
The crew at Mashable put together a really useful post entitled Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources last July. I get a lot of questions about the production and publication side of podcasting, and I’ve started sending people to that list because it’s really a comprehensive collection of all the web-based tools and services out there.
I’ll be at the MEMO conference tomorrow participating as a panelist talking about literacy (moderated by the Blue Skunk himself) and later doing an advanced podcasting session where I’ll probably do a lot of Q&A. I’ll do my best to post some summaries here.
Looking for kid-friendly sites
We got our first family computer on Tuesday, and my boys are pretty excited. I’ve got a couple laptops, but they’re for work and I don’t let the kids use them. Now, though, we’re ready to roll. I’ve downloaded Scratch, Google Earth, and Sketchup, and I’m looking forward to working on them with my oldest who’s eight.
We’ll be using Safari for the boys with its parental controls that allow us to restrict their web surfing to certain pre-approved sites. What I don’t have is a good list of kid-friendly sites. I plan to check out Club Penguin, but I’d love to get some other suggestions.
Pogue reviews the XO laptop
David Pogue has a video review this week of the XO laptop (a.k.a. the $100 laptop). I haven’t actually paid much attention to this project, so it was interesting to see the little laptop in action. I love the collaborative way the apps work and the transparency of the technology.
Eben Moglen on online privacy
Eben Moglen is a law professor at Columbia and Director of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is well-known in the free software world for his important work on the next generation of the GPL software license, the GPLv3.
Professor Moglen gave a talk last April at the MySQL Conference, and it’s worth a listen. Although online privacy seems like a quaint anachronism these days, Moglen paints an ornate picture of the inherent conflict between our desire for privacy and the appeal of an interconnected online world. Beyond the ideas he communicates, his 40-minute talk is a rhetorical work of art.
While the focus is on online privacy, Moglen got my attention when he took a short detour to comment on teenagers’ use of social networking sites:
I hear a lot of complaining from grownups, that is gray-haired altercockers like myself, about some supposed absence of concern for privacy among teenagers at MySpace and Facebook. This puzzles me very much. I hear complaints about teenage driving too, but complaints about teenage driving are always accompanied by a recognition that the kids are inexperienced and that as they grow up they should become better drivers. But the fact is that the adults I hear complaining about teenage disregard for privacy on MySpace and Facebook are the very people who are bringing about the primary privacy problem that I’m trying to talk about here. They’re not becoming better drivers. They’re just becoming better ignorers of the problem as time goes by. And as we begin longitudinally to study what young people do at MySpace and Facebook, it turns out they’re not all that unconscious about privacy after all. This may yet turn out to be primarily an old person’s problem.
This matches my experience. When I talk to young people about their online lives, they consistently express pretty sophisticated attitudes about online interactions. It will be interesting to see how the social networking debates change over time.