As Paul drafted me to participate in this World Blog Day thing, I assembled a list of blog-types outside my normal blog-pale. However, I restricted my search to blogs of direct personal interest to me based on my life experiences. As an anti-chain-letter type, though, I decline to pass this along.
I have lived in both Mexico and Chile, and my wife is Cuban. Therefore, poking about for some Spanish-language blogs struck me as worthwhile. Now, I'm pretty much illiterate in Spanish, which means I am limited in my ability to follow the content. Be that as it may, I set out to locate a blog each of interest based in Cuba, Mexico, and Chile.
Tojomik appears to blog from Viña del Mar, Chile, where I lived in 1969. I had no luck tracking down a Havana-based blog (Google results for anything related to Havana are hopelessly junked up with political ranting and fingerpointing of both left and right). freak.monkeysensei.net originates in Guadalajara, as does the French-language Blogue du Colegio Franco-Mexicano de Guadalajara.
Speaking of French, I have also lived in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and in this instance, the language stuck. Every now and then I wander through the Francophone side of the blogosphere, generally returning with a chastened sense of my own ignorance of the language. Given recent events, I thought it would be interesting to find an American blog in French published down Louisiana way. I also figured I should be able to dig a few up from Lausanne, the town I lived in while in Switzerland.
From Lousiana, we find Mais oui, la Louisiane! Il apparait que la Louisiane peut-etre inundeé et qu'elle a referé aux Google Actualité "pour lire de ce qui se passe en Louisiane."
According to the geographic locator site above, climbtothestars.org is Lausanne-based, among 19 results. Random sampling revealed three abandoned or abortive blogs among the 19.
Finally, my family has had a long-standing and intimate relationship with an Algerian Berber family who sent one of their sons to the US fro graduate school. We visited them high in the Kabilye, a mountainous province to the south of Algiers, while we lived in Switzerland. Algeria has had a hard row to hoe over the past twenty-odd years, and thus I was uncertain that I would find anything from the country. The Berbers are a Muslim people that are distinct from Arab, and who have struggled within Algeria for the right to pursue education in their own language and script in addition to the predominant official languages of French and Arabic. It's thought that the Berber presence in North Africa long predates the Roman. Interestingly, this language was also found in the Canary Islands, the part of Spain my father-in-law's family emigrated to Cuba from around the turn of the century.
Of course, there are multiple resources to locate Algerian bloggers. To my frustration, though, I struck out on locating an Algerian Berber blogger; I did locate a sporadically updated blog, blognnegh..., identified as in Tamazeight, however.
ITEM: Both Matt and Bart have updates. The Royal Pendletons are playing a gig this evening in Memphis, which seems a perfectly sensible way to deal with the fate of the band's city. Bart and company are safely ensconced in a rainy Bloomington.
ITEM: Having nothing at all to do with the topic du jour, high school co-conspirator and Gulf War One Navy vet Wes Burton called me tonight to let me know that other high school co-conspirator Therron Thomas has gotten word that he's being deployed to Iraq. Therron's a 20-year full-timer in the National Guard, devoting most of his time to work as a training sergeant, so while he might prefer that things were otherwise, I'm certain he'll be as well prepared for his tour as anyone possibly can be. Wes and I will be working together on some care packages for the Sergeant and his men.
ITEM: Returning to the knee-deep topic at hand, I hadn't been able to mention that that Times-Picayune blog has some really quite wonderful writing, if occasionally, um, overboard. I was savoring one particular piece, about a boat tour of a flooded neighborhood, when an interesting recycling of Thomas Pynchon actually caused me to burst out laughing, probably not an intended reaction.
And then a screaming came across the water. To his right, Parks saw a woman gesticulating wildly from a second floor balcony at her home. Parks, a captain of sport fishing boats and offshore supply vessels who works out of Gulfport, Miss., navigated closer.
ITEM: I have a persistent case of half-remembered songs about New Orleans rising in concert with the waters, lapping at the sandbags of my mind. Under it all runs a funereal, no lyrics, brass-band version of St. James Infirmary. Up front, Tom Waits (I Wish I Was in New Orleans) and Randy Newman (Lousiana 1927) are duking it out for time at the piano, elaborately filigreed chords overlapping and changing the dominant lyric at the moment of harmonic convergence, while in the background Arlo Guthrie (The City of New Orleans) warbles about a train ride. Professor Longhair and/or The Dixie Cups (Big Chief, Iko Iko) sort of amusedly fight to keep sliptime with the martial drums from Jimmy Driftwood's The Battle of New Orleans (caution: embedded quicktime) behind the whole toxic soup of sonic residue. I'm sure the stew will grow more dense over the next couple weeks.
ITEM: Will someone please draft a note to the TV people that the omnious martial symphony crap is the wrongest music possible for a Gulf Coast hurricane and flood? See above.
ITEM: Finally for the night, I wanted to mention that I won't be able to follow the course of the flood as closely as I have been due to some time commitments tomorrow that will likely carry through until Sunday, probably far enough in the future that much of the uncertainty surrounding events in the Crescent City will be resolved.
Frankenstein has tagged me to participate in some sort of internationalist conspiratorializing involving the internets. What does he think, that I'm made out of time?
OK, so I'll give it a shot.
The Times-Picayune bloggers are packing up and leaving. The tuesday edition of the paper is available as a PDF here. This is in the wake of overnight news of a breach in the 17th Street Canal levee, which may be allowing Lake Ponchartrain into the streets. Blogger Brendan Loy, with help, has been blogging the hell out of national and local coverage and is likely to be my main resource for a while; he had a bandwidth-exceeded outage yesterday and notes that he has a backup site here.
The New York Times has a map that includes levee locations but possibly insufficient detail for us furriners to really work out what's happening; the map was prepared late yesterday before this breach was reported.
I'm finding the Times-Picayune breaking news weblog to be the most informative and reliably updated web-side news source on the aftermath of the hurricane in New Orleans. Unfortunately, as a local paper, they haven't seen fit to prep and post maps of the city and affected parishes. The dual MetaFilter threads have continued to proffer interesting data and updates, but the server has been crashing all day.
Perusing the predictably long MetaFilter thread on Katrina, the Category 5 hurricane currently bearing down on New Orleans, I thought it might be worthwhile to stripmine it for links. Current projection has the storm, reportedly sporting 175mph winds, making landfall late Sunday night and hitting the city dead center. My thoughts are with the city, a unique American treasure.
I linked to these live webcams in NOLA already, but they are worth another link.
Weather.com's map of Katrina's projected path, and for comparison, this stormtrack map from
stormtrack.org.
To get an idea of the seriousness of this impending event, skim though this academic paper evaluating what might have happened had hurricane Ivan made landfall at New Orleans.
A Times-Picayune roundup of local resources for the storm. The Daily Lush has weighed in from Pat O'Brien's, well written and worth a read.
Featured among the disaster's predicted excreta are floating balls of fire ants.
Nova's look at hurricanes includes a simulation of the tidal surge's effects on the city basin.
The Hurricane Watch Network will be broadcasting on local radio beginning at about 2pm local time Sunday. A kind soul has whipped up a live stream for the Hurricane Watch Network's broadcast.
Mark Kraft is providing some community resources on LJ for those affected by the storm, and a MetaTalk thread has opened for offers of couches and the like to the displaced denizens of New Orleans.
Bart doesn't "like the looks of this."
Meanwhile, Matt has driven through a midnight lightning storm while serenaded by dead bluesmen to spin some platters in the Crescent City. Looks like he's just missed the mandatory evacuation. If you'd like to keep an eye on things, here is the bourbocam.
Seattle P-I: "From Seattle's lively blogosphere, a group is born - Chapter that meets monthly may be the biggest in world."
On a map of the blogosphere, Seattle would probably stick out as a blinking hot spot for push-button publishing. Blogs of all kinds emerge from computers all over the city and its environs. Some cover urban culture (Seattlest.com), politics (SoundPolitics.com and Horsesass.org) or techno-babble (chris.pirillo.com), while others reveal blow-by-blow entries of personal struggles.
Biggest in the wold? My god. Too bad Daymented's gone! Congrats, you Thursday fiends! There's a nice pic of Anita and Jack. I only hope I never see coverage of the League's (currently overdue) meetings in the paper of a morning.
Danelope passes on the welcome news that Gmail has added "From:" cloaking to their featureset.
However, I have been unable to access the dialog item in my settings panel, making me suspect that this must be one of those features that Google is deploying to a subset of users in advance of a full-scale rollout.
Years ago Viv's dad excitedly pointed at a bottle of red wine in the wine-cellar of The Spanish Table. He was interested in it becasue it was branded as "Marques de Caceres," and his Spanish ancestors hailed from that locale. We bought the wine, a '94 rioja, not expecting anything and in ignorance of riojas in general.
The wine was magnificent, huge, amazing.
A few months later the same vintage began appearing in Costco, and I bought a bunch. I turned my dad on to it and he bought a case. Since then, we have often picked up vintages of this wine.
Yesterday, I realized that rioja is supposed to be a relatively volatile wine, with a limited and somewhat short shelf life. We have a couple bottles of that '94 still hanging about. I'm happy to say that my palate is sufficiently ignorant to remain happy indeed as I drink it.
Samantha is back, it appears, from her first international trip. From the gleanings, I gather it was satisfactory.
At Daymented's going away party, we talked a bit about the at-that-time-upcoming trip. I sort-of told her about trying to let my parents know about Tienanmen Square back in the eighties - they had flown to China and were in the air when the Army began the crackdown. In the end they did not get any of the messages I left for them. I had started to tell this story, and realized that it was really fairly inappropriate to share with someone who had just told me that this was her first trip outside the country.
My own first trip outside the country must have been in 1968, leaving the US on the way to live in Chile. I was two.
After watching the silent antics of Buster Keaton at the Paramount this evening, we passed a young man who lay sprawled asleep in the gutter around the corner from the Baltic Room. I whipped out my cell phone as Viv and Spencer paused. I framed the shot, got it, and moved on.
Viv and Spence began to chat with one another in surprise - apparently they had assumed I was getting my phone out to call the cops, or something. Embarassed that the very idea had not even remotely occurred to me - the entirety of my reaction to the sight of the man was a mild amusement - I turned around and walked back to the fellow, beginning to dial 911.
As I approached the third digit, the thought occurred to me that perhaps the guy would rather not have to deal with the cops. So I called out "Hey Buddy, are you alright?"
He instantly opened his eyes and in a moment was able to say that he was fine. I asked him if there was anyone we could call or if he needed help getting somewhere, and he averred he was fine in the same strong Australian accent he'd first spoken in.
We continued up the hill.
Grumblebee opens pandora's mbox on AskMe, with informative results. His mbox gets shutdown by WinXP as overly powerhungry when he engages a phantom-powered mike. The solution is NOT to add a powered hub, but rather, to add an inline phantom power source.
I mean, obviously. Even if I didn't think of it.
PF blogs his ex-boss Ethan Zuckerman's musings on CMS software. He essentially comes down as agin feature creep. I think there might be a social software developer out there who might be interested in reading the post. At the very least, it counts as a volunteer instance of use-case presentation. Are you lissnin mobstahs?
Be Warned: Mr. Bubble's Worried Again, NYT:
He predicts that prices could fall 40 percent in inflation-adjusted terms over the next generation and that the end of the bubble will probably cause a recession at some point.
Oh, happy day!
The article's accompanying chart graphic provides a look at the subject's custom-built long-term, inflation adjusted American housing price index, which sports a disturbing curve representing the current climb.
As a child, when overwhelming waves of sourceless sadness and pain would erode my interest in the world, once I had learned to read, I could project my consciousness into books. I subsequently did so for really the majority of my time here on Earth. Of late, however, I have noted that the web appears to have diminished this capacity.
Reluctantly, we're passing on the house we were bidding on. Inspection revealed a slew of first-year expenses which we have concluded that we cannot develop informed estimates upon by the time we need to close the deal, which would force us into a buying-in-ignorance situation. We're passing.
Dammit.
According to MonkeyFilter user mk1gti and (coincidentally?) Wikipedia,
"Author Ian Flemingonce said that he envisioned British secret agent James Bond as looking like Carmichael."
Well, naturally! That whole dapper look originated in Bloomington, in the Book Nook, as I recall. Here, have a dab of my brillantine!
Epic AskMe about bedbug infestation: I'm terrified I'll be plagued with bedbugs for the rest of my life ...:
A work of art, a plea for help, a Lovecraft short. Read it! You'll have the creepycrawlies for days!
(My, um, nose, itches.)
Offer accepted! Holy cow, we're gonna own a house, I think!
The unknown: the seller has insisted on an accelerated purchase calendar that compresses a 30-day process into a 10-day process. Yikes!
Over the past few years, the manufacturers of blood glucose meters have sensibly begun to add data collection and download facilities to the meters. Reflecting the usage statistics, these companies generally only made software for the PC to work with the data. Viv and I have discussed initiating data collection and analysis on her computer but always halted after examining the options and finding them overly limited on the Mac.
This morning some idle googling led to some new information, which I blog here for reference.
HealthEngage appears to make an attractively designed program which supports Viv's meter; the pricing is well under a C-note, which is pretty reasonable by health-care software standards. SweetSheet is a freeware tool with similar capabilities. There appear to be other choices as well.
Of course, to use this stuff, you gotta buy the cable. Seems to me last time I looked into this there was no USB cable yet.
Viv has expressed interest in the idea of blogging her diabetes care, incorporating her metering information with general bloggy goodness, which sounds interesting. The stumbling blocks we have hit in thinking about this include:
a) the peculiar issues that arise in the publications of personal disease chronicles on the web
b) a log solution that enables easy blog-style publication of the data
c) questions of anonymity
d) the previously-noted dearth of Mac-oriented diabetes resources
Of these, only b) is potentially resolvable in a technical sense, and in fact, I have spent some time think about the best way to do this. I think the best way for me to resolve this within our current blog setup is to bite the bullet on adding fields to Movable Type, preferably via plugin so that upgrades won't compromise functionality. (It should be noted that there are extant resources for online logging.)
However, should we determine that HealthEngage is a sufficiently useful program, simply cut and pasting might be an effective way to get the data into the blog entries. This has the negative effect of making it entirely discretionary; I am not certain where Viv sits on the idea of rigorously publishing each test result. If she views the data as a side-issue in the blog concept, than this is fine. From my perspective, though, if it has the effect of easing perceived testing expectations, I'm not so much in favor of the approach.
Recently, we realized that for the past five years we have been overlooking a valuable tool. All PDAs (including most cell phones which incorporate any sort of calendaring) can provide repeating multiple daily alarms. The key to good diabetes control is first, frequent testing, and second, regularity in testing. Especially due to the househunting, we were noticing that it was becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that testing was taking place at the same time each day.
Initially, I had set an alarm on my Treo to call Viv when the test was due. A bit of thinking and I realized that the alarm could easily be set up on her phone. We have done so, and I think that Viv's results have shown the benefits. I think I need to add one more element to the procedure, though, which is random reminder calls from me - If I could set my PDA to discard a random subset of the reminders, say, about 70% of them, and then I were to call on the random remaining 30% I think the system would be pretty near invulnerable.
As an aside, I will note that Viv and I have discussed looking for ways to integrate her phone into the care and recordkeeping regime more directly. She's cool to the idea, and so am I, given that there is currently no easy way to even get pictures off the device - Apple dropped iSync support for it recently. There is a Washington State company, mdiabetic, which appears to be targeting mobile devices as the delivery and entry systems for server-stored healthcare and diabetes data, but in looking at their website, I have no clear idea of what they offer. Lose the buzzwords and the jargon, boys, and get back to me when your "pilot programs" phase is over.
Even if mdiabetic's "powerful web service for the diabetes community designed to assist diabetics manage their disease and share personal health records with physicians for remote health monitoring" was transparently described, I doubt we'd use it until online dataservices over the phone are free. However, in hacking through the densely overgrown technocopy, I think I see the outlines of a valuable tool - it looks as if the objective is to link the diabetic's phone or other remote device to the caregiver's datastream in a communications loop.
This would theoretically mean that persons with diabetes could be providing their care team with realtime information updates regarding test results, and at the same time the phone would transparently store and report such events as scheduled visits with the care providers as well as offering access to lab reports, charted reporting, and presumably dietary information and dosage calculation aids. The differentiator here is the potential to tie the mobile device to the care team's data flow, making it directly accessible to the person with the disease.
I'd have to say they could use some user-centered design help in crafting the marketing information at the very least. Hm.....
Alligator Boogaloo presents UKULELE BOOGALOO!. Many, many simple chord-based transcriptions of great and overlooked songs, with ukelele chords fretted out for ya!
Two correspondents forwarded this lovely tee shirt from the hit-and-miss site T-Shirt Humor.com:
"A suspect who led police on a high-speed chase through several towns told investigators he was afraid to go back to jail and he had become convinced by his skill at video games that he could outrun the law, according to police." [src: P-I's Buzzworthy]
New-minted Siffblogger E. Steven Fried shines a light into the dark recesses of Kaspar's Kouch Film Festival. Now that is my kinda festival, lemme tell you.
As sunset illuminated the city with pinks and reds, Viv and I drove home from West Seattle. We have just placed our fourth offer on a home. This one looks very much as though we will get it. We are both excited about it, too.
I invented a drink to celebrate for Viv, the Homebuyer's Sunset, which I realized I should video just after I made it. I shot a couple minutes on the Treo. Editor B, it's yourn if'n you want it, although perhaps I should have been shooting the whole process, beginning several months ago. Geez, I really should have. Dang.
After tearassing around North Seattle before confirming that house #4 is one we want to bid on, Viv and I, starving, skidded to a stop in front of the oft-passed, always curiously eyed Kona Kitchen at 85th. I'd read good things about the place, and as we walked in, I was a bit surprised to hear the somewhat loud, live slack-key music played by a motley assortment and fronted by a striking, fiftyish soprano. The place was filled with obvious family groups, and a clear majority of the men were, in fact, wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Viv and I were a bit overwhelmed by the volume at first (which really wasn't that loud, we were just tired and hungry) but I ordered fish and chips and a Kalua pig and cabbage. Watching the musicians, it was clear that we'd walked into a gathering of people who all seemed to know one another and the songs being performed. We had a beer and settled in to watch and listen.
As it happened, the night's performance was led by one Stephen Inglis, and he was assisted by a semi-rotating cast of musicians, three of whom appeared to be guesting. One of these folks wandered over to our table and asked Viv if she was from Hawaii, and we chatted with him for a bit. He, the woman who had been singing when we walked in, and a bassist all appeared to have played together for many years, and although I enjoyed Inglis' performance, I was intrigued by the relaxed interplay of the older players. Unfortunately, I did not catch the name of the guy who wandered over to chat with us before working his way around the room - he clearly knew the majority of people there.
At any rate, the food was delicious, the music was relaxing, and watching the room was a hoot. I had the presence of mind to record five of the performances on the phone - theoretically in stereo - so bend an ear. I haven't proofed or remastered these tracks, so expect warts.
Treonauts: Alarming your Treo points to a couple alarm apps for the Treo.
I got here by beginning a hunt for a timer-based audio on/off program for the phone. I keep forgetting to turn the phone ringer off when I get into the car and then forgetting to turn it on when I get out of the car.
A few more links:
KeyGuardTime+ and ClockPop 5 each drop a clock in that appears when you press a button on the phone to wake the screen up (if I understand correctly).
RingerSwitch Basic 1.2 and RingerSwitch Pro 1.2 appear to be designed to help remind you that you've turned the ringer off manually, not quite what I am after.
UPDATE: A poster at TreoCentral suggests ScheduleCare or ProfileCare.
Utterly off topic, but HOLY COW! Google Maps for the Treo: Kmaps. Requires a Java engine on the handset, which must be installed by the user, so I haven't yet done this (my twiddling and dinking time is even more limited than my blogging time).
Between househunting and work, I'm amazed I've been able to post at all. I have an ongoing convoluted personal discussion with myself about househunting - nearly all of it bitter - which under other circumstances would have ended up here.
I have been engaged, as well, in interesting email exchanges with various friends, which presumably has also sopped up some blogtime.
We put an offer on house number three earlier this week, but lost on a higher offer. I'm completely unconcerned about this; the house was beautiful, but as noted earlier, small and in the wrong location. I suspect our agent is having a hard time understanding my buyer's psychology, because I am pretty unstressed about the whole process, other than the amount of time it takes.
I estimate that to date we have seen about 120 to 125 houses. We are putting in an average 10 to 15 hours a week on the hunt. Housework has suffered.
Driving remains the most loathesome activity ever misconceived by the mind of man, but I at least I don't feel like one ton of auto plus my total inability to perform physical tasks with any competence creates the roadbound equivalent of a safetyless machine gun any more. I mean, it's still literally true that I am a dangerous, incompetent driver and will remain that way. I can't tell my right from my left and physical activity is unpleasant, because I cannot control the motions of my body as easily as most people. It's not as though I have a disease or disability, though. I just fall on the less-abled side of the bell curve with respect to performing multivalent-input-required physical tasks. I understand that most people find physical activity and stimulation pleasant. I find it excruciating, because I cannot manage the sensory input I receive. This makes me feel as though I am always out of control of my own body and its' reactions to the world.
Wait, let me rephrase that: I am always on the verge of losing control of my body. As I become acclimated to a physical activity, I rely less and less on actual external sensory input, and more and more on learned patterns of action and mind. As I become less interactive with the physical world, I exhibit a greater degree of competence in physical tasks.
You can see how I note my increasing sense of control of the car with some unease.
As I was seeing Viv off just now, a glint caught my eye within the sand and debris in the gutter.
It turned out to be the first of five unfired bullets, each stamped "Rem" on the butt.
Paul Frankenstein, with whom I've had an ongoing discussion concerning the real estate bubble, passes on this thoughtful link. Looks like San Diego might be cooling off, although the specific pricing described in the story is not, to my eyes, a bubble popping so much as slower growth replacing inflationary growth, the most desirable outcome (unless you are a speculator, I mean).
Let's hope we just that here, and sooner rather than later. I'm not buying with the expectation of making money; I'm buying a place to live.
Yesterday we looked at our usual twenty or so houses all over the city. out of them, about five fit our needs, and one was quite appealing indeed. Unfortunately, it's located away from the optimal areas we'd prefer. This is no particular obstacle, however.
Of greater cause for deliberation are three factors, all turning on size. The lot size is quite small in comparison to some of the other homes we looked at, and the house itself is only a few square feet larger than our current apartment. There is also, disappointingly, no basement.
Despite these issues, we've decided to bid on the house after discussing another candidate that offerred a better regional location with large outbuildings on a big lot, but also no basement.
This will be our third offer.
I think, now that we have been doing this for a couple of months, we are getting close. Each time we go out we have seen several houses that are really quite amenable.
We considered making an offer on this house, but concluded it was too large to suit our needs.
You know, it's hard get back to work what with the plowing and planting ad weeding and feeding when you've spent a week at the beach and felt the biting sting of sand on the Oregon wind at midsummer.
BoingBoing passes along a link to what will undoubtedly be a short-lived instance of a publicly-posted copy of the legendary Disney remix comic Air Pirates, which spawned all sorts of legal shenanigans back in the heyday of underground comix. I've never read this rare beast, and you bet I'm going to.
Idle Words' overly-idle-of-late Maciej takes on NASA (with amusing pictures!) in A Rocket To Nowhere.
This day Viv and I had the pleasure of dining in the company of Eric and Anne at the Pink Door. This followed an extended sojourn about the streets of the traditional rush-hour downtown traffic. It is to the credit of the visiting parties that they did not leap out of the car in honest expression of the fear they undoubtedly felt with me at the wheel.
languagehat drops a few lines on the subject of ethnogenesis which I found worthwhile. Take it one more extrapolative point further, and ask yourself, what is it to be a citizen of the New World? Our word for shark is said to be from the Nahuatl "xoc," after all.
