blog (September, 2003)
Friend of a Friend
A brave, almost presumptuous world stood before me. I kicked it square and sent it flying, face-first in the dust.
This weekend was a blast. Friday night in Buffalo with my cousin, Mark, and Saturday the Alexander Street Fest back here in Rochester. Old friends were by my sideways and new encounters set me spinning. Good to climb out of some of the stagnant water I've been wading in for the last few weeks. Opposite of way-nonplussed.
Before the eatdrinkdance festivities began, I sent my computer ninjas to work Thursday night on catching me up in social software trendiness. I've avoided the whole Friendster bit, (and am determined to continue so,) but the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project interests me and merits mention. From their page:
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.
My ninjas speak RDF, so they suited up and hacked out my FOAF file. A helpful resource was Getting Started With FOAF, along with the current FOAF spec. And if your ninjas aren't so skill'd, FOAF-a-Matic will sort of automate the process.
FOAF Explorer turns the RDF into a nice viewable format, (example: mine.) And foafnaut starts heaping FOAF's meat and potatoes onto the plate, graphically mapping relationships between people.
My ninjas haven't yet begun listing folks I know in my FOAF file. I gave them the weekend off so they could have a beer and meet some people.
grassroots and beetroots
Since returning home to an environment where I'm at least sharing responsibility for the provision and production of my meals, I've been making an effort to buy locally-grown produce.
Working on small-time organic farms (through WWOOF) in Spain earlier this year, I had a great introduction into the world of family farms and a more natural and sustainable means of agriculture. I'm doing my best to hang onto the habits and ideals I inherited.
An interesting parallel is drawn in the O'Reilly-hosted interview, Supporting Family Farms with Open Source Software, by Guillermo Payet, of LocalHarvest(.org):
Both open source proponents and "buy local" people are advocates of diversity and the absence of centralized control. There is the idea in both realms of the underdog fighting the status quo to build a better world that empowers individuals and offers wider choice. It's been great for me to use tools built by a virtual community of hackers to build a system that strengthens real geographical communities, and that in some ways embodies such a similar system of ethics.
-- Guillermo Payet
LocalHarvest "makes it easy to find family farms, farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area."
I'm inspired when I see the internet adopted in this way. Individual empowerment, health, and ecological sustainability brought about by technology, (sometimes a seemingly lifeless and unnatural enterprise.)
notes from Leon, France, May 2003
- man getting beaten outside kebabshop
- we call cops, and walk on
- guy on steps of historical building
- playing "music" with balloon
- stretches mouth-section to make squeaking noises
- says james brown taught him
- didn't have no trumpet
- cat-sounding screeching lady walks by
- unknown language
- lying on ground
- balloon man says his wife is pablo escobar
- another guy is fixing his shoe and talking to himself, or the shoe
- dog straining on leash for the balloon player
- balloon pops
so scared in case i fall off my chair
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
-- Henry David Thoreau
simulation software
Simulating leadership, from Seb's Open Research blog notes an interview with Clark Aldrich: Simulations and the Learning Revolution.
The future education-oriented uses of simulation software that Aldrich mentions are quite interesting, but what sparked me the most was his description of virtual products, or "web-deployed mock-ups of actual products." The Flash Simulation page contains some relatively simple but telling examples.
Say I'm looking to buy a new digital watch. I browse an online catalog with typical descriptions and pricing, but now with links to manufacturers' sites pages that have a virtual (Flash) version of the watch, so I can actually test the features and, though I can't actually hold the product, evaluate its interface.
Or better yet, say the watch I've purchased has, embedded, a tiny RFID transmitter chip. I bring it close to my computer, which receives RFID signals, and hop onto the manufacturer's site where this virtual product also has an interactive tutorial to walk me through its features. No more reading tiny-printed, pedantic instruction sheets...
Afterthought: are there simulations for heavy machinery? Gaining proficiency on those machines must cost a fortune in fuel.
hunting metiers
Word of the Day for Tuesday September 9, 2003
metier, also métier \met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:
1. An occupation; a profession.
2. An area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.
My daily dose of vocabulary, care of Dictionary.com's WOTD XML feed, too often seems to jibe with what's happening in my day, and this one no exception. Networking, résumé-editing and wading through job postings, with only an eye out the window enjoying one of the last few beautiful days of summer.
If I'm driving east,
my thumb points north down the steering wheel.
There's only to weave streets and hope
for chance happenstance.
I used to have others to run with or romance.
Her window was always within a stone's flight,
If she wasn't there, he'd be game for a late night,
to bait life,
hook and cook fate on the flame.
Always the same, you just don't remember those lows;
I've driven this way twice -- no, more -- before, though.
Silent roads, the houses just listen.
Street lights shine off closed blinds inside mute windows.
I can't open mine or the music falls out when the wind blows.
new syndication options
Attempting to resolve my syndications deliberations from a few days ago, I've revamped the RSS provisions for my blog. On the new syndication page, I'm offering a number of different feed formats.
If you are using a newsreader, feel free to choose a format that suits you, and even if you aren't particular about these things, please change the feed address: I've changed the location of the default rss file. Apologies to anyone subscribed who has suffered the constant format changes of the feed.
Hopefully, I can get back to some regular programming, (let's go bowling,) now.
out there in the cold...
I returned home from my summer camp job a week ago. Road tripped Rochester -> Cleveland -> Pittsburgh -> Cleveland -> Rochester for the Labor Day weekend: an alumni XC race at Case, and good times catch-up with the kidz.
I've hooked back up with a few of my old people around town, but it seems that every time I come home another friend has left and I am that much more out of the local loop.
Inspired about community-building after watching Scott Heiferman's talk from the reboot 2003 videos, I joined some Rochester-area Meetup groups: Marathon Runners, Webloggers, Web Designers, and Musicians. Don't know yet if I'll really attend any of the events, but they're on the calendar, and I'll be keeping tabs.
Running-Blog.com
I've been wondering for some time now how Branton's Running-Log site fits in with the blog world. I journal here, and I journal there, but for different reasons and with different formats and usages. Yet, I'd still like to be able to automatically incorporate a daily mileage entry in my running log as a short one-liner in my blog, linking to the workout entry for further info.
Most people will still do plain old blogging, lucky if they use a title or main link.
Many will occasionally use a structure. Especially as Blog This buttons proliferate. So you can post an SAP invoice to your intranet blog, for example.
Others will find a few formats that tie in closely with a deep interest or passion, or their jobs. A runner's diary. A movie review. A project status report.
-- Phil Wolff
Phil Wolff's entry on semantic blogging holds some insights on how specialized journals, reviews, recipes, invoices, etc. can exist as different forms of the same foundation. Qlogger is doing this, and even has a working Running Log template.
Part of what makes Running-Log.com great, to me, are the team and coaching features. But maybe those can be duplicated in a similar manner with specialization in aggregation.
Another team just signed up for the meet, B -- time to buy a new set of racing spikes ;-)