January 2010
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Hospitality story
We tested Santa Barbara before moving there, by taking a small apartment near the beach. The apartment was at the uphill (northwest) end of Burton Circle, on Natoma (a paved tangent of Burton’s circle), on the second floor of the keystone-shaped building in the center of this map here. At the time we had no Continue reading
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Passive Assistance
Four more of my aerial photos now illustrate their subjects in Wikipedia: Nebraska National Forest and the nearby town of Thedford, both in the Sand Hills region; and Morgan Hill and Dunaliella Salina (a micro algae that colors salt ponds, such as those on the left), both in the Bay Area. There are now 120 Continue reading
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Los Angeles vs. Nature
John McPhee is the best nonfiction writer alive. My opinion, of course. But I happen to be right. Nobody describes anything better. No writer does a better job of digging into subjects most would find dull (rocks, pine barrens, river levees, minor species of fish) and making them not only interesting but relevant. Sometimes extremely Continue reading
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Wintry mixing
I grew up on our town’s best hill for sledding. After a good snowfall, the town would sometimes block the steet so kids from all over could ride down the hill. The top was steep, but there was a long flat straight-away at the bottom. We used to compete to see who went fastest, and Continue reading
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What’s wrong with this picture?
Why is Steve Jobs taller than Eric Schmidt in this picture? I’ve met both guys, and I’m sure Eric is taller than Steve. But maybe I’m wrong. I’m having trouble (must be my night for that) finding believable height information on either of them. (WikiAnswers says Steve is 6’2″, which seems high to me. Still Continue reading
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Can we have some first sources, please?
One of the things that drives me nuts about stories on the Web is absent links to first sources. Two examples: this piece by Nate anderson in Ars Technica and this one by Greg Sandoval in BX.BusinessWeek Cnet.* Both report on briefs filed by the MPAA and the RIAA with the FCC. Both quote from Continue reading
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How the Internet becomes the Content-o-net
The Cinternet is Donnie Hao Dong’s name for the Chinese Internet. Donnie studies and teaches law in China and is also a fellow here at Harvard’s Berkman Center. As Donnie sees (and draws) it, the Cinternet is an increasingly restricted subset of the real thing: He calls this drawing a “map of encirclement.” That last Continue reading
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On the Continuing End of Business as Usual
How’s this for coincidence: I’m sitting here reading Cory Doctorow‘s book Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, copyright and the Future of the Future when I pause to check Twitter for a message I’m expecting, and see a tweet pointing to Cory’s review in BoingBoing of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Small Continue reading
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Fun with Infrastructure
Last month The Kid and I went to the top of the Empire State Building on the kind of day pilots describe as “severe clear.” I put some of the shots up here, and just added a bunch more here, to share with fellow broadcast engineering and infrastructure obsessives, some of whom might like to Continue reading
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Hanging with Haiti
I posted a lot today, but nothing matters more — or has been more on the front of my mind — than Haiti. What hell that such an already troubled country should be hit by an earthquake so bad, and so close to its most dense population centers. So, as I try to get my head Continue reading
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Open Internet Workshop at MIT this afternoon
Check this out here. It will also be streamed live at OpenInternet.gov. Submit questions via Twitter via #OiBOS. The site is run by the FCC. Next to the title it says, in the Google tradition, Beta. The “Contribute Your Ideas” section is amazing. You can contribute ideas or vote standing ideas up or down. Very Continue reading
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Amazon Purgatory
My problems with Amazon.com aren’t as bad as they were for Jeff Jarvis when he coined Dell Hell. But I’m not happy. And I’d like to help. Hence the headline above. Also this post. I have always liked Amazon. I’m sure they’re still among the best at what they pioneered fifteen years ago. But they Continue reading
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The Past and Future of Radio
It’s so odd to look at the list of radio station ratings for Raleigh-Durham. When I left in ’85 I was out of radio, but still deeply into it, and I could tell you something about every signal you could pick up there. Now I know squat. So many of the stations have changed owners, Continue reading
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Looking up for noncommercial radio
For most of radio’s history, at least in the U.S., ratings “books” ignored noncommercial stations. Commercial radio shares never added up to 100%. Usually the total was around 87%, give or take. In the market where I spent the most years caring about this stuff — Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, back in the late ’70s and early Continue reading
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Markets are Headlocks
Where Markets are Not Conversations is my latest post over at the ProjectVRM blog. It was inspired by the “experience” of taking a fun little personality test at SignalPatterns, followed by SP’s refusal to share the results unless I submitted to a personal data shakedown. Bottom lines: I’d rather track myself than have somebody else Continue reading
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So ya wanna be a rock & roll star?
Heard “Cherry Pie”, by Skip & Flip, this morning on the radio while taking The Kid to school. I remembered that Skip & Flip had another hit, “It was I”, and that one of the two singers also had a later hit as a member of another group. What was it? I wondered. The Kid Continue reading
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Don’t forget
Reuters: Cellphones may protect brain from Alzheimer’s. Specifically, After long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves such as those used in cell phones, mice genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s performed as well on memory and thinking skill tests as healthy mice, the researchers wrote in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Your species may vary. Continue reading