I picked up some Fitzgerald at Pattee, and as I was leaving, passed through the Diversity Reading Room. There's an exhibit of antique surveying and engineering instruments that's fascinating, but the information on the wall just had me standing with my mouth hanging open.
What's on the wall is information gathered by Randy Ploog about Manierre Dawson, an engineer who painted Kandinskys before Kandinsky. Wonderful stuff, really. If you're in Pattee at some point, check out the information. And I really do love all of that. But.
What really gives me a bigger kick is doing a quick web search and finding a December '94 Research Penn State article in which Ploog, who read Dawson's journals, mentions the good fortune of finding a long forgotten book by Denman Ross called A Theory of Pure Design that connects to Dawson's artistic journey. Then I had the good fortune to discover the book on Google Books.
Damn, life is good. Except I was so slack-jawed from the exhibit, I tried to leave without checking out the Fitzgerald. But other than that…
When I find someone to add to the hall monitor aggregation of twitter posts, I try to send a note that explains who "etsHallMonitor" is, that participation is optional, and that following back isn't necessary because the monitor doesn't make posts. Now, I'm thinking that might be short sighted.
• Say we create a persona on twitter called "etsInternal" and protect their tweets. For an email address, we use "ets@psu.edu" (or we could think larger and make it "tltInternal with the tlt list email address on the account).
• That persona follows everyone in the unit, and hopefully they request to follow back. The email address recipients would monitor followers to make sure everyone is "internal".
• If we want to post something to the larger group on twitter, we can send a post to "@etsInternal". That post wont go into the global stream but will just be seen by internal tweet folks.
Just thinking out loud, really; but it seems like an easy way to tweet what may be sensitive or potentially embarrassing info to all colleagues.
The new animation title on lynda.com is very good. George Maestri takes a few characters into both Flash and After Effects. He shows how they're put together with layers and nested symbols, then rigged for easy animation. Nice stuff. It fills in a lot of details that I'd been guessing at when I tried lip-syncing.
The new player on LYNDA is a bonus. The videos open in a window with additional controls- a button to play an entire chapter at a time without needing to launch each segment individually; and a speed control that lets you watch and listen at faster speeds. Both very convenient.
I had two complete fails today when it came to "attending" online events. The first was the streaming feed to Web 2.0 Expo NYC. I filled out all of the information to create a login and get access to the streaming sessions; but my usual fake phone number wouldn't work. They insisted on a real one. There is no content worth giving someone the power to create an ugly noise in your cubicle at their will. Why could they possibly need my phone number? Fail 1
Next, I wanted to hear the "Clouds on the Horizon" keynote on Adobe Connect. I got in just fine, didn't hear anything, then saw the phone number and code to call in to get sound. My phone is across the office, not by my computer. Cavemen use them, and mine is under a pile of rubble. Usually when I try, seeing the numbers on screen while I punch in numbers in the semi-darkness leads to lost connections. I tried Gizmo, so I could get sound online (why the hell can't they use gizmo?), but it didn't seem to recognize the entry code, or maybe the final pound sign. Someone eventually answered, but of course, I had my headset on and no mic. Fail 2
I absolutely hate phones. There's no way I can say that strongly enough. I do not own a land line, and I have a cell only because I have a daughter. Adobe Connect with dial-a-speech is not any better. Yes, there are a million work-arounds, and ducktape solutions. I just think this crap should be simple, and work.
When I heard that the bell was being removed from Old Main and would never return to the bell tower I was pretty bummed. I don't know anyone who has heard it ring, but seeing it in its tower is an awe inspiring ritual. I know that putting it on display makes it more accessible to visitors, but out of the tower…it might just be an old bell. I'll really have to wait and see.
I never took the tour that lets you go up the medieval staircase to the bell's chamber. I had a private viewing. An illustration was needed for the Penn Stater magazine and to get me in sketching position, they made a call to OPP. OPP sent a jeep to pick me up and take me to Old Main.
From the fourth floor stairwell, we opened an old oak door that might conceal buckets and brooms. There was another locked wire gate and two very narrow flights of stairs up to the chamber. It was unbelievable. I was able to hoist myself up next to the bell to make some quick notes of the mechanism. When I saw that the clock face is a great big window, I turned without thinking and my keys slapped against the bell. I bet that tone was heard on College Avenue. I was in too awkward of a position to sketch—I used a croquill nib and carried a bottle of ink—and I dropped back to the floor and did this quick sketch.
It was mystical. I can imagine Graham Spanier taking special guests up to see it, though I don't know if that ever happened. Seeing the bell out of the tower may accommodate folks who can't get up the stairs, but what are they seeing? What's the experience? Not sure. I watched the removal several weeks ago and hanging from that crane, it just looked naked and vulnerable.
Earlier today I posted to twitter a link to the new USA Today e-Edition for Penn State. It's pretty cool. It uses a technology called Active Paper that's been used for a few years now by the Digital Collegian (and Penn State Libraries) for their historical archive. Someone commented that "ActivePaper is excellent for archiving print issues in a digital format, but [he didn't] understand its benefits for current news."
My quick response was that perhaps it was just giving us a new thing disguised as something familiar to encourage use, but the real answer—the bigger, more meaningful answer—is this: A digital newspaper has a useful news life of less than a day. Then, very soon after distribution, it becomes a digital historical archive. So perhaps Active Paper is the logical choice?
Coloring book rough for a personal project.
Very late in his life, my dad tried to get "veteran status." He'd served in the Atlantic theater during World War II as a merchant seaman, running oil and supplies to troops in North Africa. He died in 1985 without getting it. It didn't strike me as especially important at the time. He actually seemed okay with it. And on every holiday he had our flag out at sun up and in at sundown.
I didn't hear very many stories; a few were about ships that were blown out from under him. One story involved the tanker he was on being torpedoed after leaving refineries in Texas. The ship went down in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Years later, with a Web search I found a picture taken from a reconnaissance plane of his vessel sinking under billowing clouds of black smoke. He would've loved it.
After he passed, my mother tried, too, to get him status. It would have helped with funeral expenses. As I learned, she wasn't treated very well. My brother, a Vietnam vet, tried, but he went at it burdened by so much of his own baggage the VA didn't treat him very well either.
I finally went to speak with a VA rep in Centre County. In a word, the man was wonderful. Over the course of several months I was able to gather documentation: ship names and destinations, dates at sea, dad's old passport. I had discharge papers from the service and discharge papers from many of the vessels. He had been chief steward. I left the documents in Bellefonte with the gentleman at the VA.
As it turned out, there was also a bill in congress at the time to gain Veteran status for Merchant seamen who served in certain theaters at specific times. So it might have been my efforts, it might have been the work of the local VA, but most likely it was the act of Congress that got veteran status for my dad. He already had the Atlantic War Zone Bar and the Mediterranian Middle East War Zone Bar. This, so long after the fact, doesn't seem like much; but Happy Armistice Day dad. They gave mom a flag.
There was a quick exchange on twitter earlier this week. It brought to my mind the changes that need to take place in the way we define professional, corporate, or even "appropriate". The next morning I had an email from a friend in Asheville. She asked if I had any advice for her son: a recent design school grad having trouble finding a job.
I absolutely hate the process. I refuse to self promote and am more willing to enter any job at the bottom of the food chain and fight my way up. I don't have a drawer full of resumes, nor a recyclable cover letter. I bring that same attitude to the table when I'm on the hiring side too. Of what worth is a well crafted resume and letter, if self-marketing was the long term focus of each? They tell nothing more than how well the applicant can create a resume and cover letter. If 300 people have already done the same thing, and read the same "10 Best things to include in a cover letter" article, what could you possibly do better?
Folks had better change their game plans. After a letter read, an interview, a resume check- do you ever relate to that new hire in that way, with that tone, again? If not, what have you achieved?
So I'm not a professional job seeker. I wouldn't look to hire one either. Is my advice worth while? Not sure- I don't define myself by how I earn a living. Can I still play?
As a near perfect coincidence, the next morning a past employer posted an image to facebook:
This is what I sent to the Victorian Manor when I applied for my job there. Times were different, of course. But I got a job.
There was a flap in too few blogs earlier this week over an announcement that Amazon had acquired a patent on a "Method and apparatus for programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content". In an attempt to mark e-books to track where illegal copies come from, Amazon will randomly substitute synonyms for the original words in eBooks. Each eBook sold could have slightly different substitutions so that the specific substituted words in illegal copies would point directly to who bought the version the copies were made from. The flap was from a few writers claiming any altering of text was wrong: texts were crafted artifacts with nuance of the art turning on exact phraseology. Why is it that anyone would need to explain this? Maybe they'll be able to subtly alter harmonics as a way of branding music downloads, too? Most people don't read on the level that the author wrote and few listen on the level that musicians play, so who would notice, right?
I'll freely admit that nuance sometimes doesn't make a difference. Store brands often work just fine. But we aren't talking about toilet paper here. We're talking about the vestiges of deeply felt and deeply expressed human sensibilities that have evolved right along with our erect stance and large brain pan. Nuance is important. Maybe everyone won't notice, but they have a right, more, an obligation, to try.
Perhaps someone will realize that this sort of system might be used to change high volumes of potentially sellable student papers enough to pass through Turnitin? Perhaps that will rally some indignation? Well. Something should.
