Blog posts

I suspect that if I’d spent time tallying the responses to the news I was moving to Michigan, questions about the weather would top the list. The three days of snow I experienced here last winter was the greatest accumulation I had yet experienced, but it didn’t leave me in a position to adequately say how I expected to respond to the infamous Michigan winters. I was rather bemused a few days ago to learn that the first snowfall in England had preceded that in Michigan. But then today came. Six months and a day since I officially moved to Michigan, the snow has begun to fall. Somehow I don’t think I’ll escape with a mere three days this time around. ...

I spent some time yesterday reading Dan Bricklin’s essay How Will The Artists Get Paid? (via Joel on Software). The essay is well written, and a number of this blog’s readers will enjoy the biblical references to the role of art that pepper its introduction. It makes an interesting riposte to the comments by DJ Danger Mouse at Web 2.0 and reported at veen.com that: ...

Last Friday night, Starflyer59 and Pedro The Lion played at Calvin. It was a very good show. I definitely prefer Starflyer on record, where the melodies come through more clearly and the wall of sound carries better, but Pedro were on top form. The most amusing part of the evening was when initially just one, but eventually just over a dozen Starflyer fans began raising cigarette lighters above their heads during a quieter moment. It’d been a while since I’d seen such a phenomenon since these days the mobile phone has usually stolen that spot, but somehow it seemed like those holding these lighters had forgotten what they were supposed to do. ...

The live dates on Julie Lee’s Site are now generated from an RDF data store.

UNCharter.org, a cross-referenced, searchable version of the UN Charter, is now live.

A review of the latest Wovenhand album is now in the writing samples section.

A wrapper for the Technorati API is now in the code samples section.

Our latest site, grwifi.net, is now live. The site is an index of wifi locations in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Such a list was previously maintained on a blog, and then a simple text listing. This new version of the site is searchable, and allows trackbacks for comments.

Hot on the heels of Kava House’s Wifi, Common Ground on East Fulton (note the nice new URLs at grwifi.net) has started to offer free connections. For me, that’s great news as it means there are now two cafes with connectivity within ten minutes’ walk. And the connection seems pretty good too. dslreports.com reports 1167kbps down and 269kbps up and in use it’s felt pretty speedy. There is of course the great selection of music (Mermaid Avenue followed by Patty Griffin thus far) and coffee that is (for me) on a par with Kava. That should keep drawing me in for quite some time. Power outlets are numerous. Quite a few are in use for lamps and the lighting behind a few of the stained glass display pieces, but no-one seemed to mind when I started re-arranging plugs so as to get a socket. ...

With a couple of weeks now between us and the election, it seems everyone involved is on a feedback kick. Moveon have just held their house parties and now the Democratic Party is asking for feedback. I’ve spent the past quarter-hour enjoying the opportunity to hold forth on the numerous mistakes I felt like they made. It’s quite cathartic. My main comments were about language (in a nutshell: “be assertive”) and about my perception of their failure to properly take advantage of local volunteers. I offered to help early on, specifying that I was available during the daytime most days, but the calls were always looking for evening telephone support. I mentioned in the feedback that they should do more to use volunteers outside of the traditional door-knocking/cold-calling/fundraising space. It certainly seems to me like one of the reasons moveon has been so popular is that its members really feel a connection and they’ve utilised skills beyond those. ...