July 31, 2002
I’m generally not the earliest adopter of anything. I’ve wasted time and money on so many techietoys and bleeding edge software tools that never pan out that I’ve learned now to wait a bit. I bought OSX as soon as it came out, but I didn’t declare it as my personal savior until OSX10.1 came out. Still, that made me the first person I know to take the plunge. Similarly, I didn’t buy a PDA until the Palm IIIs came out, and I was among the first people I know to enter the Post-Palm era by no longer using it.
So with my credentials established as a not-too-early adopter, I hereby announce that our new Tivo is happily chugging away right now, downloading the chewy goodness of our 70 channels and organizing it. In a few hours, I’ll join 400,000 other earlier-than-me adopters who no longer watch anything in realtime. Will I end up watching more TV? Gawd I hope not. Instead I hope to spend less time while watching better TV. We shall see.
With astounding synchronicity, The Onion has published its own vision of what’s on tonight.
Nothing makes a hotel seem more like home to me than seeing that little Ethernet cable hanging in the closet and a box to plug it into at the desk. Apparently there’s been a shakeout in the industry and the number of hotel rooms with broadband access has actually declined in the last year. Fewer than 10% of the guests actually use broadband, since most only do e-mail and dial-up is good enough for that.
What’s wrong with these people??!!! They don’t edit web pages, upload pictures, or even surf much, I guess. What tiny, parochial, limited lives they lead! I suppose they actually look around outside the hotel at times instead.
According to Joe Brancatelli’s Tactical Traveler column, there’s no global listing of hotels with fast net access, though the GeekTels list comes close. There are several partial listings, though, and I’ve just bookmarked four for future use:
I also found the The Cybercafe Search Engine which might help in those cases where there were no with-it hotels at all.
With this information at hand, I just booked myself a week of highspeed bliss in Connecticut.
July 30, 2002
Though the Julian Charter School that June works for is mostly virtual, it does have a bricks-and-mortar home. That home is in danger of burning down if the Pines Wildfire remains out of control. J’s been getting e-mail updates from Jennifer since yesterday. They’ve evacuated the main office and took as many of the school records with them as they could. It’s unconfirmed, but it appears that one of the five homes already burned belonged to one of the office people. If the wind shifts, the town center could go. Another reason to hold firemen up as heroes.
Just finished a chat organized by my friend Jarbas Barato at the School of the Future at the University of Sao Paulo. They have created their own Brazilian WebQuest site which is quite impressive. The chat took place in English and Portuguese and so was a little chaotic. Lots of enthusiasm there and even in text mode the wonderful Brazilian character came through. I wish I could return there more often without enduring the 14 hour plane ride.
July 29, 2002
In a week and a half, I’m keynoting a conference in Colorado with a new presentation called The Joy of Sense-Making. I’ve been researching the relationship between uncertainty and motivation and especially the Aha! phenomenon, I’ve found some interesting links on the topic already:
Programmers sharing notes on the moment in which object-oriented programming became clear to them.
‘Aha’ Experiences in Object-Oriented Education:: Searching for a Theoretical Foundation - Joan Mann and Robert Schneider
Motivation: Arousal and Achievement in Problem Solving which says…
There are four kinds of ‘payoff’ pleasures:
- AHA! This is when we have an insight, when we see what the answer is; when you have an idea; when the penny drops. It is the pleasure of successful intellectual endeavour.
- HA! This is when a goal is reached; when you have finished; when you win; when you bring things to a conclusion.
- HAHA! This is when you see the joke. It’s like AHA above, but is concerned specifically with seeing the joke. Jokes do not offer the resolution of problems - they illuminate them. They reveal the unreasonableness of our expectations that we can and will solve our problems - we discover we are the joke.
- AH! This is when you see the truth; it is an aesthetic experience - not a rational one. This may be a sudden rush of feeling that you know and understand - upon seeing a painting, a piece of music or a natural scene like the Grand Canyon. Or may take longer, requiring intellectual effort over a period of time.
I like that last AHA, HA, HAHA, AH thang.
So, to gather some more insights into this, I put up a survey about AHAness and sent out the URL to the WebQuest list. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes in.
The headline in Saturday’s Washington Post said F-16s Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region. Funnily enough, the craft streaked across the skies just a few minutes after my plane landed at Reagan from Tulsa. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The puzzling thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any followup to this story. It’s not that often that there’s an eyewitness, a radar trace, and an admitted scramble of military jets. Either this was bunk from the start or we’ll be hearing more about it.
July 27, 2002
I hooked up with Donn and Marcie for dinner in Chinatown. A lovely time was had by all. This is the longest stretch I’ve had to talk with either of them all summer, even though our offices are within 30 feet of each other. Orange Beef, Hunan Chicken in Black Bean Sauce, Hunan Shrimp… yum! I’m still avoiding carbs and focusing on veggies and protein.
Afterward, Donn and I spent an hour at the bar with Willis Copeland from UCSB sharing our collective wisdom on parenting. Maybe it was more than an hour. I’d forgotten how much I like Black Russians.
Somebody, I won’t name any names, had had the foresight to skip out of attending the sessions at the conference today and went to the National Archives looking up his or her family history. Another person, not to be named, also skipped out to visit the new Spy Museum. Sounds like it’s very much worth a visit.
I arrived for Day 3 of the conference here in DC, having missed Day 1 and 2. I asked around to catch up on what I’d missed. Universally, people told me that this was a hotbed of the absolutely worst presentations ever inflicted under one roof. With only two exceptions, the keynotes were jaw-droppingly bad. Peter Desberg (who coaches people on making speeches) sat next to me at lunch and it was fun to listen to his color commentary on today’s speaker. It was almost too painful to watch, so I looked around at how others were reacting. After two days of similar pain, those at the other tables had learned to project their souls into other times and places, to astrally send themselves to somewhere more interesting. Since Apple has thoughtfully provided WiFi connectivity to this gathering and actually loaned out iBooks to those who didn’t have them, there were lots of people going online to escape the situation.
Isn’t it ironic that a Federally funded event centered on improving teacher education with technology could do so badly at designing an educational environment?
If anything, the rerun of my workshop went better with the second group. It’s really gratifying to have a room full of people who are at just the right moment to make use of what you have to offer. It’s almost too easy a job.
After the workshop, Pam took me for a whirlwind museum visit before dropping me off at the airport. First choice was the Gilcrease museum, but it closed just before we got there. The Philmont let us in as Senior Citizens for half price because they were going to close in 30 minutes. What a place! It’s another oil-baron mansion turned into a museum with a wide range of holdings stretching across centuries. The architecture reminded me in parts of Hearst Castle.
When I got to the airport, I learned that my flight had been cancelled because of mechanical problems. I got bumped from Continental to American with much more legroom. Arrived in DC around 1AM.