One Trick Pony


June 28, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • Sugar on a stick. Now you can run the OLPC software on a USB drive on a Mac or PC. Could be fun. http://tr.im/pxZy #
  • Watching Al Jazeera in English on Livestation. Holy cow! This is why I listened to short wave radio as a kid. http://tr.im/pDOU via @cburell #
  • RT @googleearth:’Places’, virtual postcard-maker using Google Earth - http://bit.ly/wS0dr Amazingly cool! #
  • I wish my MacBookPro could do this, and then return. http://tr.im/pFCL via @negrino #
  • .@markwagner Good choice. I’ll be there late tomorrow night. in reply to markwagner #
  • Waiting to board in San Diego. Wishing the shoe bomber had never been born. #necc09 #
  • Charlotte airport. Everything smells like BBQ sauce. #
  • Wheels down at the airport formerly known as National. #necc09 #
  • Passing the Washington Monument. Reminiscing about aliens knocked it over in Earth vs the Flying Saucers.(1956) #
  • Off to a bad start. Hotel Wayport keeps asking for Boingo password then let’s me in for two seconds then loops me back through again. Crap! #
  • Isn’t it odd that Google Sites won’t let you embed a Google Map (because it uses the dangerous iFrame tag). Or did I miss something? #

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June 21, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-21

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • Just finishing off a home-made Indian birthday dinner for my grad assistant. June even made garam masala from scratch. Now cake and Krrish. #
  • Just demolished 60s era cast iron leafy gate and pillars from front entryway. Feeling Godzillish and triumphant. #
  • Playing w/ Opera Unite. Every computer becomes a server. Chat. Media sharing. This will freak out school IT dept. (Good!) http://tr.im/oG3m #
  • Watching ongoing reports from @alexdodge as he eats his way through the Del Mar Fair. Each blob of fat on a stick lovingly photographed. #
  • Since I’m half-Irish, this seems an appropriate way to wish the Iran demonstrators luck. #
  • iPhone 3.0 installed. And yet, somehow, I still need to lose weight. #
  • Love the Robert Frost treatment given to a bluetooth headset. Those w00t guys must be English majors. http://www.woot.com/ #
  • Musing over the speed at which the green avatar meme spread. Wondering when we’ll all go back to normal. Who gives the all clear signal? #
  • At SDCUE advisory board meeting. Amazing to think I’ve been at it for 27 years! http://sdcue.org. #
  • Opened up BBQ-oriented father’s day gifts. Grilled fish coming up some night this week! #

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June 14, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-14

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • Going out to see Okuribito tonight. http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1801257753/ Anyone seen it? #
  • Still jetlagged. It’s not even 8pm and I’m going to bed with the chickens. Don’t tell my wife. #
  • ;New (temporary) avatar is inspired by this, which I watched twice (8 hours worth) in the air. I’ll get over it soon. http://tr.im/nYXw #
  • Slept until 2pm yesterday. Went to sleep at 5:30 am, got up 2 hours later. Productivity today unlikely. #
  • Xrapdamn! I updated Nambu to version 1.2 and all I get is a spinning beachball. Time to go swimming. #
  • Just discovered that I’m probably a Yoist. Who knew? http://twurl.nl/q0yhm3 #
  • Have reinstalled Nambu, deleted preferences, and still I get stuck in spinning beachball mode. I don’t like having to regress to TweetDeck. #
  • Just learned that Flowgram is shutting down. Too bad! It was lots better than Slideshare. http://twurl.nl/lz3p07 #
  • Got Nambu running now. Just set up a group for the Canadians. #
  • Huzzah! Having lost 15 pounds since March, I am officially no longer obese. Just overweight. Hoping to be officially normal by September. #
  • Grabbed http://facebook.com/berniedodge. Much ado about almost nothing. #
  • Cool! Google will be adding a way to search for Creative Commons images. http://tr.im/oop5 #
  • .@ransomtech Re: repeated tweets. You have to turn off message threading in the preferences and restart (until they fiz it) #nambu in reply to ransomtech #
  • Heading out to an Indian grocery to stock up for dinner tomorrow. Throwing a birthday party for my GA. #
  • Now following @change_for_Iran. You probably should, too. It’s like watching Tiananmen Square 20 years ago. #Iranelection #

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June 7, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-07

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • It’s Monday morning and I’m back to work. Speaking at two Taipei universities today. #
  • Checking out of hotel. Staying with Taiwanese friends for a few more days. Shilin night market was extreme sensory overload. Mango ice FTW! #
  • new math problem: Project Natal + Second Life = ? A) Finally a usable interface or B) quantum dorkiness? #
  • Explanation for the new avatar. @shareski said the Burning Dodge image depressed him. I’m here to cheer him up. Aren’t we all? #
  • Mercy Buddha in Keelung with kiddie rides. Like having a skate park in St. Peter’s square. No boundaries here. http://pic.im/4v6 #
  • Ghost students as spies in online classes. Why didn’t I think of this? (HT Jim Marshall) http://tr.im/nlZF #
  • Taiwan has such incredible museums. Tuesday we went to the Ju Ming. http://bit.ly/ggMCL #
  • Yesterday, the Ceramics Museum. http://bit.ly/8ayzX #
  • Both world-class. Today it’s raining buckets. Good day to stay inside the National Palace Museum. http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/home.htm #
  • Back from our last dinner in Taipei, saying goodbye to old friends. Sad, but grateful to have such friends. I <3 Taiwan. #
  • Going to sleep now in Asakusa, Tokyo, in the smallest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. I could lie down and touch the other two walls. #
  • Heading out to see the Sensoji Temple. And eat. #
  • At Narita. Flight delayed for aircraft maintenance (I’m pro-maintenance!).Downed two sakes in the hope that I can sleep through it all. #
  • If I believed in past lives, I’d believe that I was Asian in most of them. I feel kinship here, even in a crowded damn airport line. #
  • They found that the braking system on our plane was kaput. We can leave now & land in a ball of flame at LAX, or wait. I vote for waiting. #
  • I’m home! Slept a few hours. Now dinner and finally Star Trek. Hoping not to be wide awake at 3am a la Lost in Translation. #

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May 31, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-31

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • Prepping keynote for the third annual WebQuest competition here in Taipei. Teachers from Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan here. #
  • Leaving right after breakfast to see the world’s largest dragon boat race. http://tr.im/mC0j #
  • 5am in Taipei, reading about Wave. Rethinking the way we do collaborative learning. This is big! http://tr.im/mIG3 #
  • Back from a long day exploring Keelung and the northeast coast of Taiwan. Caves, temples and the incredible Juming Museum. http://tr.im/mNSs #
  • Spent the day taking a zillion photos around the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Saw a medical student protest. http://tr.im/mWP9 #

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May 24, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-24

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • CNN lists growing job opportunities in education. Technology? No. Cafeteria cooks, janitors, and administrators. http://tr.im/lGjq #
  • Hmmm… this page says the author is in “El Cajon, CA”. I suspect IP-based geotagging . What does it say when YOU read it? http://tr.im/lHbt #
  • Thanks, tweeps, The verdict’s in. Julia Mitchell lives near you, no matter where you live. I recommend buying your colon cleanser elsewhere. #
  • Played with Prezi awhile. Wanted to love it. Didn’t. Clearly there’s something wrong with me. http://prezi.com #
  • RT @jpatten:Controversy over San Diego Unified’s stimulus fund plans. Some balking over longer day/year. Plans rushed. ..http://tr.im/lJ5w #
  • Interesting. . @garystager twittered about the 4.1 quake 3 minutes before @caquake reported it. Seems like the delay is usually smaller. #
  • Has your ship come in? Just blogged about a site that shows over 10000 ships in real time. Lesson ideas? http://tr.im/lQ2p #
  • Watching (by map) a Coast Guard ship trawl the water off Tijuana after last night’s helicopter crash. http://tr.im/lTEm #
  • New Google Maps Data API should make it easier to develop location-based mashups. Looking forward to creative new apps. http://tr.im/lWfg #
  • http://twitpic.com/5ld0u - Two bodies still not recovered from the crash. Watching how the Coast Guard searches via http://tinyurl.com/q#
  • Exploring Alix Peshette’s Google Search engine for sound loops. Makes me ready to dust off GarageBand. http://tr.im/lXyl #
  • Flip Mino Ultra is elegantly designed. Took me awhile to put the battery in. I felt like an ape trying to break into a UFO. #
  • Nice use of word clouds comparing Obama and Cheney today. It really does distill the difference between them. http://tr.im/m3y3 #
  • Been grading all day. Time for a glass of something red. #
  • Geocache scare shuts down UC Santa Cruz. http://tr.im/maZP I’ll have to add this as a cautionary tale to my geotools class. #
  • At the airport, leaving for 2 weeks in Taipei. Wish they could just gas us and wake us up at the other end. #
  • Have arrived at Narita. The flight attendants wore face masks for the whole trip across. So did maybe 10% of the passengers. SARS scars. #

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May 20, 2009

Mapping a Tragedy

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 8:25 am

Last night a Navy helicopter crashed near Mexico’s Coronados Islands south of San Diego. All five on board were lost. From the safe vantage point of my laptop, I can see the Coast Guard ship combing the waters for debris, thanks to the site I wrote about yesterday.

Coast Guard ship near Los Coronados, Mexico.

Watching this makes me appreciate all the people out there saving lives and taking care of things.

May 19, 2009

Shipping News

Category: cool, geotools, teaching – Bernie Dodge – 6:52 pm

The net is all abuzz today about the fab new game built on top of Google Earth, Ships, by Planet In Action. It’s a fantastic accomplishment, involving steering a huge tanker into and out of harbors around the globe. You see the actual terrain in the Google Earth viewport from four different vantage points. Not sure yet how it plays as a game, but as a simulation and an example of bleeding edge programming, it’s quite an accomplishment.

Coincidentally, I happened on another combination of shipping and Google Earth over the weekend. Marine Traffic is a site that keeps track of over 10,000 ships at sea. If you live near the ocean as I (sort of) do, you can see what’s arriving and departing and identify whatever it is going by on the horizon. The site is run by a consortium of universities in Greece and depends on the contributions of volunteers around the world. Since 2003, ships past a certain size are required to maintain a transponder on board that periodically sends out the ship’s location, heading and speed through a system called AIS. The signal is carried on VHF radio frequencies so it only travels a hundred miles or so. Volunteers on the coasts have set up receiving stations that relay the ship’s information back to the web site in Greece. The end result is that you can check in and see in real time, what’s happening in the ocean near you, or anywhere else where there are volunteers.

The West Coast is covered from Baja California up through Vancouver. Here’s a shot of what’s in the water right now around San Diego harbor.

Marine traffic around San Diego

Out in the ocean, there’s a Liberian Tanker heading for Salina Cruz, a cargo ship going to Japan, and a cruise ship going from Long Beach to Catalina. You click on the ship and a name and sometimes a (volunteer-provided) picture appears along with links to the ship’s previous history over the last 30 days. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a geek who’s always craved omniscience, but I think this is really very cool.

I think creative teachers could find lots to do with this site. The speeds of the ships are listed, so there are opportunities to see the distance = rate x time equation alive and well in the real world. There are all kinds of geographical comparisons that one could make, too, by looking at the numbers and types of ships at work in different parts of the world. Here, for example is a look at the Aegean between Greece and Crete.

Ships near Greece

The blue ships carry passengers, the red are tankers and the green are cargo vessels. It would take a bit of clicking and googling to get a handle on it all, but one could learn where they’re all going, where they came from, and even what they’re carrying. Kids could adopt a ship and keep track of where it goes over the course of a few weeks, looking up more info and pictures of every port it stops in. What a great way for kids to get a sense of how the world works! It’s even a good way to get a sense of how the world isn’t working well lately. A blog by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine uses a similar site to show cargo ships idling off of Singapore. With trade depressed by the present economy, they’re all dressed up with nowhere to go.

I like the Marine Traffic site for another reason: it invites participation. Many of the ships they track have no photograph on file. It’s up to volunteers to provide them. So last Sunday when I saw that a new tanker named Pelican State had no photo, I dashed down to the harbor with Nikon D60 in hand hoping to catch it coming in. My timing was off and the ship was too faraway for the photo to be useful, but I’m going to use this an excuse in the future to step away from the keyboard and try again. If you’re a teacher near a seaport, you might consider making this a class project.

If anybody out there builds a lesson around this, I’d love to hear from you.

May 17, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-17

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 11:59 pm
  • Just packed up 1000 slides to be scanned in India. High school prom, frat parties, Peace Corps, grad school. Flashbacks! http://tr.im/kZSQ #
  • Listening to Patrick Watson thanks to @acarvin. Great vocal range! It’s like having Jeff Buckley back. http://tr.im/l4Ff #
  • Wheeling mother-in-law through the medical maze. Foot broken or just bruised? X-rays next. #
  • Reading “Your Brain is an Index” and half agreeing. For the other half, I want selective depth. Wisdom requires both. http://tr.im/lfIC #
  • The #first users @berniedodge followed: @woot @dwarlick @markwagner @wfryer @willrich45 @wilw http://bit.ly/2y0sbP #
  • Funny… I hadn’t remembered that @woot was before @dwarlick. It was @dwarlick who pushed me over the edge into actually using twitter. #
  • Just got a misdirected email that made my jaw drop. http://tr.im/lgTm #
  • Just finished watching presentations of database exploration lessons by my EDTEC 570 teachers. Some very nice work there. http://tr.im/liV9 #
  • Back from department meeting. Normally we rotate minute-taking duties. This time we all used etherpad. http://etherpad.com. Recommended! #
  • I’ve been running Moodle for ~150 students on the same server as Questgarden and WebQuest.org. Anyone know how big a CPU drain Moodle is? #
  • Off to the airport to retrieve my Italy-filled wife. #
  • Trying to watch live WolframAlpha rollout. Seems like the site’s overtaxed, not surprisingly. http://tr.im/luen #
  • Now live at http://www.justin.tv/wolframalpha #
  • Do you remember your 1st Google query? Time to ask your first question of WolframAlpha. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/ #
  • I asked how many t-shirts a 21 year old male should own. No answer. But it did know how many US teachers there are and what they make. #
  • http://bit.ly/18XLZs #
  • I don’t remember what my first Google search was but I remember being not impressed. “This isn’t as good as AltaVista”, I said. #
  • As of tonight, WolframAlpha is less useful than AltaVista. That might change. #
  • http://tr.im/luJ4 came up dry. I guess Wolfram doesn’t read Arthur Clarke. At least the stars won’t go out 1 by 1 tonight. http://tr.im/luIT #
  • hmph… last google link didn’t work. It leads to this: http://bit.ly/CWzJW #
  • House and yard cleaning done. Having friends over for dinner. June will replicate a meal she had in Italy. Pasta putanesca, etc. Lotsa vino. #

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May 14, 2009

A Tale from Ancient Times: 1983

Category: Uncategorized – Bernie Dodge – 6:12 pm

Craig Nansen, a longstanding ed tech leader in Minot, North Dakota, is organizing a dinner gathering at NECC of other longstanding (and too often sitting) ed tech people. He just posted a Google Spreadsheet asking some questions of anyone who was using computers in teaching in the pre-Macintosh/Windows era. One item in the form asked for a favorite story from that era. Here’s mine:

I started Ed Tech PMS, a BBS for teachers in 1982 using People’s Message System by Bill Blue. We made it easy for anyone to set up an account and in short order we had dozens, then hundreds, of users. One user, though, was a junior high school kid would would log in every afternoon and leave countless amazingly profane messages on the system. Every evening I would have to call in (one user at a time… others got a busy signal) and delete what he wrote.

There was an obscenity filter built into PMS that every message would be checked against before publishing it. It came with a small starter set of dirty words familiar to anyone who has ever slammed a door on their fingers. The kid soon figured that out and learned to write alternate spellings of every four letter word he knew to get past the filter. Every evening I would dutifully add each new variant to the filter.

After several weeks of this obscenity arms race, one evening I was happy to log in and see no new messages from the kid. Same thing next day. And the next.

But then I noticed that no one else had posted any new messages, either. It turns out that I had fixed things so that no one could post a message that contained the letter “F”.