Analog Revolution

Have you ever wondered?

Have you ever wondered what your teacher does while you're sweating away on a test? Well,if you were in my Criminology class, you would have an idea.

I'm actually doing this to see if the keyboard still works. I haven't had the opportunity to use it that often since I got it back from you, but since it's with me I can toss it into my gymbag and write up lecturees, emails and such when I have a few minutes.

Not all of us have the cool, new IPhone so we have to make due with technology that is ... Eight years old?

God, I'm starving. My sinus gick finally decided to drain away about an hour before class tonight so now I need to put something on my stomach and quickly.

I wonder if that student realizes that wearing a low-cut shirt doesn't affect me like other professors? Ok, the question-mark is a bit harder to use since the keyboard is not as sensitive as my usual one.

You would think guys could bother to put on real pants when they come to class - it's not that hard. I mean, really - pajamas are cool...when you're in bed, in the dorms or stumbling towards an eight o'clock class.Not bothering to change for an evening class is just lack of effort.

Dude... Stop jiggling. Once is an itch. Three times and it's pocket-pool.

Ew.
Have I started rambling yet?

Yeah, I think that at least one of my students is not with it right now. He is just staring off into space and occasionally mussing up his hair as though the stimulation will create a static charge and it will somehow make the neurons fire ONCE more.

Feh.

Bottles of Mountain Dew: 14
Amp: 2
Ambiguous Coffee Cups: 3
Cans of Pepsi: 2
Guys who don't appear to have showered today: 4
Guys who don't appear to have showered for two days: 2
Women with a rooster-tail of hair tied back into a mess with something akin to a scrunchy: 4
Vacant stares by students up and to the right - 15
Concentrated stares down and to the left- 4
Number of strange looks by students as I type this out: 3

Well, I'm still waiting for a few of the students to finish. There are only four left in the room - one of them is a student who never shows up for class unless there is something to turn in or a test. He has a D and that's probably only because of the chapter reviews that post for the students to reference when they study.

I'm such a nice guy.

Don't sit there and snicker - I am.

Really.

I always try and help my students whenever possible. Professors who seem to have a chip on their shoulder and dare their students to knock it off have miss-placed priorities in my opinion. Yes, you should challenge your students but it should be challenging them to succeede, not to failt.

Hey, the skinny kid with the army buzz is done.

One more student left.

She's one hell of a writer though; her essays are always well-phrased and thought-out.

I think she's basically done so I'm goingto finishthis up and headout.

(yes, must focus on actually hitting the space bar to get it to work)

Later.

-T

Bucky Paper

If the pen is mightier than the sword - what about the paper?

Since the Ancient Egyptians wove sections of papyrus together, we have enjoyed the ability to record our thoughts upon a medium lighter than stone or wood. While browsing through Cnn.Com today, I saw something that caught my attention.

Revolutionary paper, in general, is something that I'm always interested in. I have been looking for paper that is made from more renewable sources (hemp, etc.), but there's not much research going on in the field as of late. When I saw the link to this story I had to check it out.
I doubt that anyone will be using this new type of "paper" to scribble on any time soon. The new paper, called "Buckypaper" was developed through research into composite materials at Florida University A&M.

From CNN.COM

Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.

From Wikipedia:
Buckypaper is a thin sheet made from an aggregate of carbon nanotubes.^[1] The nanotubes are approximately 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.^[1] Originally, it was fabricated as a way to handle carbon nanotubes, but in 2008 is being studied and developed into applications by several research groups, showing promise as a building material for aerospace vehicles, body armor and next-generation electronics and displays.

I don't understand all of the physics, chemistry or mad alchemy behind such a material, but I hope that this might lead us to a continued appreciation for where such innovation originated.

Though researchers now are more likely to use laptops more so than small notebooks, it's good to hear that "paper" and pen have yet to be completely forgotten.

Personally, I find the notebooks of early researchers (Leonardo Da Vinci), to be treasured works on par with illuminated bibles.

Zombie Computers

Well, oddly enough the desktop has come back from the dead.

Last night, after I had already pronounced the desktop as dead, I reached over and punched the power button once more out of sheer habit. I needed to look something up and the laptop was in the other room and as soon as I hit the power button I realized "Duh, it's dead."

Well, this time - rather than it turning on for a few moments to start it's power-up process and then die when it 'accessed' either of the two CD/dvd roms - it actually fired up.

I'm not sure whether or not a faulty cd / dvd rom would cause it to fail to boot, though I did try disconnecting both to see if that would remove whatever the problem was before I declared it dead on Sunday.

So as of right now, it's up and working. However, I'm not going to try and jinx it by restarting the system until I have more info.

In somewhat related news, Bryian the technomancer and part-time chinese herbalist, sent me a link to a mini-laptop that Walmart is putting out. I am a huge fan of the mini-laptop concept. The very title of my blog is a "Digital Notebook". It's something that I've been toying with for ... more than a decade. My notebook is almost a symbolic representation of myself. Wherever you see me, there is my notebook - in one form or another. The problem that I have had is that the notebook eventually runs out. I would rather have a notebook that I could keep typing on and the like.

With the new Dell Mini-9 and the Everex 7" Cloudbook, I'm getting closer and closer to achieving a "digital notebook".

-Tom

New Gear

Not that I have it yet, but I'm seriously considering it.

Not since my friend Bryian gave me (yes, gave me) an NEC 780 mini-laptop a few years ago have I come across anything that seems like it could replace or augment my notebook.

This mini notebook is only 9 inches by 7 which is smaller than some of my analog notebooks that I've used over the years.

It's the Dell Inspirion Mini 9.

At only 350-450, this would be the perfect "WORKING" laptop that's an actual laptop and not a portable computer. It's designed for people who need to word process and hit the net but stay mobile.

This might have to happen.

-Tom

Cellphone Problems

Just FYI:

For the past few days my cellphone has enjoyed dropping calls, not ringing, sending calls directly to voice mail and the like.

I have no idea what's wrong with it and I am in the process of getting a replacement from AT&T. It seems to work best when it's plugged in (usually at night).

I will try and call people back (it hasn't stopped doing that part yet) if it tells me that I had a call.

Otherwise, find me on yahoo or email.

Patience.

-Tom

Gamers, be warned...

...when the World Governments AGREE to build a Doomsday Seed Vault.

From Cnn:

A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world opened Tuesday in a mountain on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean.

Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.

Norwegian musicians performed Tuesday as part of an elaborate opening ceremony marking the opening of the vault, located 130 meters (427 feet) inside a frozen mountain. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries.

Anyone else a bit... unnerved by this announcement?

-Me

Letterpress

Links:

Short Letterpress Documentary (Wonderful)

Fall of Autumn Filmstrip: Letterpress Printing

Letterpress printing: Thompson Laureate

Letter Writing

For a while now, I have been writing my friends by hand. To me this is a bit more personal than just sending an email. When I started to think about why I felt it was a more personal touch than something digital, I got into a bigger topic than I had originally intended.

When you write someone a letter, there is a personal connection between the author and the reader. When you write a journal, there may be a personal connection between the author and some future reader. Similarly, when you make a scrapbook of photos and the like, the author is attempting to make a connection with the past. The consistent element of these three forms of writing is that of a connection.

When you write you're making a connection with someone.

Though information may be exchanged within the letter; letting someone know of a birthday or an anniversary, the main purpose is to make the connection with the other person. The digital age has attempted to assist with this process by creating dozens of chat programs and email system, but that is only for the information. With chat programs like yahoo and MSN you can communicate via voice-chat so that you can hear the other person's voice. Additionally you can use a web camera to see the person you're chatting with. By these additional bits of technology, the digital systems are attempting to add that personal connection.

However, I would argue that the digital 'connection' is not as strong as that of the analog. With our society embroiled within a war in Iraq, soldiers have been separated from their families once again and those connections need to be reinforced even more than before. Though several soldiers can communicate with their families through occasional phone calls and emails, it is a brief moment in time and lacks permanence.

A soldier in Iraq can't see your ribbon,
Or the flag at your front door.
But a letter they hold in their hands,
To them means so much more.
Supporter Liam Sweeny

To those who need the connection, letters from home are worth their weight in gold. The letters are kept with them and re-read frequently to make sure the connection(s) remain as strong as possible while they are apart.

Even strangers have offered to make that connection to the Troops suggesting that it is more important to have them than the information within them. Pen Pals are nothing new and now we have people offering to make such a connection with people who may need them more than ever.

Pen Pals for Soldiers

Websites such as Myspace and Yahoo offer to help people make these connections (usually for a small fee) and if technology has made it possible for us to reach out and touch the world - why are so many people looking to be a little less disconnected? The massive amounts of technology available to our society has let us access INFORMATION at a remarkable rate. Just try and google something and it will give you pages and pages on whatever you want to look up. However, as we have become more dependent upon "The Information Age", I think that we have lost "The Connection Age".

I will get into this topic a bit more in another post but wanted to toss out the start with these thoughts about writing.

More to come.

-Tom

A Road Trip

It all began with an idea: a road trip down to Berea, KY with my friend June so that she wouldn't have to make the return trip (about three hours) by herself. She was going down to Berea to drop off her son, Adam, to the University there. Since I hadn't really seen the University, though I had been down to a corner of it almost six years ago for a SCA event, I thought it would be cool to head down.
The trip started off at 10:00 a.m. early Wednesday morning at Ashland's central park. I drove up and parked the Saturnator so that I could ride down with June and Adam.

June is starting school herself here in a few days and wanted to borrow my NEC. As I now have an office on campus and can use it to work on my lectures, I didn't need the NEC in my bag all the time. So, since I had it and the charger in my bag for the road trip, I let her take it home. I'm sure that she'll put it through its paces.

After a quick breakfast / brunch in Grayson, we were heading down the road again and the conversation branched and split and retraced its steps a few dozen times. If someone tried to map the topics in the conversation, I would guess that they would swear it was made by a drunken pilgrim.

When we got down to Berea, I was surprised that the University had a student body of around 2k students but had a lot more buildings - a larger 'footprint' than I would have expected. One of the more impressive structures was a replica of Independence Hall from Philadelphia.

I'm not sure what purpose the building has but the design is very... academic. It looks like it belongs on a college campus. One of the things that I have thought about Shawnee's campus is that the buildings don't look like they belong together. Each building has a different style than the one next to it so there's a somewhat disjointed feel to campus; nothing ties it together.

A friend and I have spoken about this and he wants to put a fountain or a statue or both in the middle of campus to sort of establish a 'center' of the footprint. I think this would be an awesome idea; somewhere for the students to sit down around the fountain and such.

The trip down to Berea was not incredibly complicated but June said that it's a solid 3-hour drive. I didn't even recognize the passage of time because it was a good trip. Plenty of conversation to chew up the miles.

Even the longest of trips can be taken in stride,
as long as you are gifted with a friend beside.

-Tom

An Analog Revolution, Part 1

Letter writers use pen, paper to say it best
By KELLY W. BROWN

Most agree it is more satisfying reaching into a mailbox and finding a hand-written letter rather than just bills and junk mail. However, the age-old art of letter writing is dying.

In a 2006 survey, the U.S. Postal Service reports the average American household received one piece of personal correspondence a week. The trend has been in a steady decline since 1987, when the average home got two or three letters a week, the survey said.

But in Hattiesburg, letter-writing is alive and well.

"I think e-mail is fine ... but I just think that when you 'handwrite' a letter, it's so much more personal," said Anne Love, 67, of Hattiesburg. She said she began writing letters when she could barely write - her mother would write thank-you notes, and Love would copy them. Today, she said, she still writes at least one letter per day.

"I feel like I can say things more personally in a letter than I would on e-mail," she said. And, she pointed out, when you take the time to write and send a letter, people know how much you care for them.

"Acknowledging people is almost a lost art," she said, and when she writes to them, "It's almost like I have a mini-visit with them. I'm thinking of them when I address each card."

When one of her best friends was in the hospital with cancer, Love said she wrote her a note every day. She still has the scrapbook with the correspondence to her late friend. She also keeps in touch with childhood friends in the Delta, women from her church and anyone, she said, who needs encouragement.

"If you think someone's having a really hard time, or if something is going on where you would maybe feel uncomfortable saying something, it's never the wrong thing to write a note," she said.

Marcia Gatewood, 73, is a recipient of Love's letters and an avid letter writer. She started as a Memphis State University student in the early 1950s. She writes around three per week, sending notes of encouragement.

"I think you can just put your thoughts on a piece of paper, what's really on your mind and what you're really thinking about," she said. "I enjoy getting notes, so I figure people enjoy getting them, too."

What e-mail has in speed, she said, it lacks in style.

"I hope that note writing and letter writing are not dying arts. It is easy to sit down on the computer and write something quick, but to me it is not as personal," she said. "When you're writing a note, you're sharing your personality, and you don't do a lot of that with a computer."

Letter writing has a place in the American conscious, particularly for couples who were apart during wars and other separations. But even younger generations have relied on letters to bridge the gap.

Diane Eaves, etiquette consultant, said she exchanged letters with her husband, Thomas Eaves, while he was stationed in Taiwan during Vietnam War. She still is a "letter-writer."

"I love to write letters, I do, and I love to get letters," she said. "I really do think that it's just like a gift when you send a letter to somebody, because most of the time what do we get in the mail? Bills. It's fun to get a letter that you can read and re-read."