Thomas needs a tripod for his camera, and American Science and Surplus has them for about $17. We took a route even cheaper than that, and bought the hardware to make one of these tripods. Unfortunately, the batteries on our drill is gone, and rather than spending $30 on new batteries, I think I'll buy a new drill.
If I'm successful with this $1 project, though, I think I'll invest the $15 to make this steady cam designed by CMU's Johnny Lee.
But my ability to tend to my internet pursuits has been greatly set back. Since last Saturday my computer, a G3 iBook, has had major problems. Had to reinstall system software. Consequently playing catch up with everything. Amazing how sense of self-esteem and potency are mixed up with the ability of one's personal computer.
At this point I don't think I should have a personal computer. I hope to treat my laptop more like a terminal and make it a habit to have anything of worth stored on a separate server or a CD. I don't think I lost anything of importance, but half of the twelve-hours I devoted to getting the computer up and running was spent trying to transfer data.
Would that I could do totally without, perhaps have a web-capable pocket pc, a wireless connection, and a roll up keyboard. Or perhaps just interact with some smart dust to accomplish what I want.
The above title is a too subtle reference to the "Bring out Your Dead" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
But I do feel happy, even though I just turned 43 today. Maybe because birthdays lose some of their meaning once you've had so many. Inflation, you know.
In case I need cheering up, I can check this out.
I always thought the term "appropriate technology" seemed patronizing: "No, I don't think it would be appropriate for you to use that technology." But this article in the Post-Gazette by Paula Reed Ward reminded me that people are out there developing appropriate technologies, and we need hundreds more.
Local engineer Graham Hodgetts developed a drill for Ugandans based on the drill used at the Drake Well. Essentially, Hodgetts unearthed a 150-year old technology based on his memories of a visit to the Drake Well Museum. The result is a tool that is cheaper and more easily maintained than modern drills.
There's so much to this story that makes it so heartening that it's hilarious. Inexpensive methods for creating fresh water in developing countries, a way of employing local people, and the preservation of old technologies. I also like the idea that it counters an unstated sentiment that museums are places where ideas go to rest.
Story also reminded me of Potters for Peace Ceramic Water Filter Project, and this project in Nepal.
A mention in boingboing sent me to an article in Wired about the New York Times. Since you have to register to get the Times online and since content lasts for only a few days before it goes to the archive, which is only accessible by paying $3 an article, very few people link to the Times.
The story's author, Adam Penenberg, googles "Iraq prison torture Abu Ghraib" and finds the Times only after scanning past 294 other entries. I knew there would be consequences for not giving me things for free.
Anyhow, a very good layout of arguments for and against the Times' approach. What interested me most about the story is the following pithy description of on-line versus print economics:
The economics of digital media are certainly working against it -- even though Nielsen ranks The New York Times on the Web as the No. 1 newspaper site on the Internet . . . The Times attracts 9 million unique visitors a month, while only about 1 million read the daily paper. But the dot-com makes a scant $11 per user, while the printed paper earns the Times a whopping $900 per reader (in subscription fees and advertising).I realize this is just one datapoint, but I'm pretty sure it's a good indication of how $$$ works on-line.
One more thing, the article has a link to the New York Times Link Generator, which keeps your Times links permanent, bypassing the paid archive.
Just spent two days out on the Allegheny River. Nothing too strenuous. Eight of us, including my son Benjamin, rode canoes from five miles above the Tidioute Bridge (Need to find more excuses to say the town Tidioute's name) down to Tionesta. We spent one overnight on this twenty mile excursion. Four canoes, two coolers full of stuff, two tents, and requisite gear.
The biggest problem was the little black mosquitoes. When we were on the river we were fine, but once we made landfall, the call went out among the mosquitoes that a feast awaited them.
My friend Jim took care of the provisions, someone else did the cooking. I helped out with unloading gear and putting up the tents, but that was the extent of it. I applied some Cutter's to repel the mosquitoes and spent the evening in relative comfort. That is until I needed to go to bed.
I slept all right until the second time I had to get up and go to the bathroom. Judging from the coals in the campfire, it couldn't have been much past 3 a.m. I tried going back to sleep but the ground was hard and the mosquitoes had no problem negotiating their way into the tent (they didn't land on my Cutter's soaked ears, but they sounded like Formula One racers circling the infield). Add to this my own bad judgment in walking around in my barefeet, which exposed me to poison ivy or some sort of allergen that had my feet burning, a few scratches from stepping on a rose bush by the West Hickory Bridge, a small cut from trying to open something, and a few mosquito bites from enterprising mosquitoes, and I was physically miserable.
My mental disposition was sound, though. There I was, experiencing sleeplessness and all sorts of major and minor pains and I still felt better than I usually do. I spent those pre-dawn hours pondering this. Was it the calm of the outdoors: sitting under a grove of silver maples, listening to the sounds of the woodlands — seems to have been a few ducks in the area — and watching the fireflies, who seemed to have a few more seconds of fluorescence than their urban brethren? Was it the pleasure principle at work: knowing that I would be returning to running water, a soft and firm mattress, and a relatively bug free house? Or was it the chance to face the basic problems of nature: tractable problems of finding a space, putting up a tent, making a fire, cooking the food, locating a bar close enough to the riverside that sells ice, and solving them. Or maybe it was just as Mr. Dooley says about golf: you're so miserable about everything else that you can't think about your job, your kids, your mortgage, or whatever else is bothering you? In any case, I made up for the lack of sleep when I got home, continue to dose my skin with Benadryl, and continue to reap the benefits of my time spent outdoors.
I just found out that former Trib reporter and Pittsburgh blogger Dave Copeland plans to canoe the whole length of the Allegheny. Best wishes to him.
For those of you who plan to go about on foot, Curt Chandler, at the Post-Gazette is working on a great series of articles on hiking in Western Pennsylvania.
The ever alert Michael Madison has an entry in Pittsblog that points the way to this op-ed by Carnegie Mellon's Jim Morris.
Morris writes that the promise of computer science — as opposed to computer programming — is under-appreciated. Computing will change our lives, not necessarily because of get-rich schemes, but because computing gives us the ability to extend humanities reach.
In fact, the vocational nature of computer science reduces its appeal to many students. Contrast what computer careers seem to offer with the promise of the traditional sciences that offer intellectual grandeur and the opportunity for a rewarding career that helps humanity.While Morris is upbeat about how we might use these scientific advances — better robots in space, predicting the behavior of complex systems, and mental processing of internet data — I wonder whether these things will make us better people. I do agree that computer science should be understood as part of what Morris calls a liberal science education.
What's really going on? The methods of empirical science are a crucial component of an education. The ability to discern a real phenomenon and distinguish it from myth or opinion is vital. The study of human-computer interaction can teach experimental technique.As long as there is no presumption that "real phenomena" somehow trumps things like myth, opinion, habit, place, and community, I'm all for that. Otherwise we get trapped in the kind of heierarchical thinking that has relegated computer science backstage of computer vocationalism.
One more thing: Pittsblog's Michael Madison argues that Pittsburgh still has an advantage in computer science and will for a while. Let's celebrate that and let's celebrate people like Jim Morris who has made it so.
The problem with throwing something away is that that something is still something and the away it goes is still goes somewhere. Sorry for the Gertrude Stein-like syntax, but what I'm trying to express is industrial society's fiction that somehow we're taking care of our trash problem.
Bob Johnson started his River Cubes Project to highlight the problem. Johnson is "a conceptual and sculptural installation artist with a focus on combining philosophy, art, and ecology."
Using an industrial strength crusher, Johnson creates half-ton art objects from the flotsam and jetsam that lines Pittsburgh's riversides. The results, a mix of technique and happenstance, remain in the areas where he gathers his materials, reflecting "a truth about our culture — suggesting we become more conscious, deliberate, and refined in our relations with trash."
The River Cubes Project will be at Hothouse '04 on July 31 along with the Pittsburgh Signs Project.