Dave's Taurus ID

Writing Coach

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:35:00 +0000

I subscribe to a weekly newsletter by publication coach, Daphne Gray-Grant. This week she provides a link to Dr. Wicked. I can't find a way to pass on what she recommends without copying and pasting from the newsletter. I'm sure she would rather you subscribe to it. If you are too busy to keep up with your blogs, I recommend a subscription to both the Publication Coach and Dr. Wicked.

When I posted a link to Dr. Wicked on Facebook, my daughter, who is a writer, asked whether I was planning to write a novel. No, I write blogs. I want to write faster, and more often. One of the rules I try to follow is to compose first, quickly, without regard to grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Come back later and edit. That fits the scheme of the Dr. Wicked tool.

http://writeordie.drwicked.com/

http://www.publicationcoach.com/

Here's what she says about Dr. Wicked.
1) Dr. Wicked doesn't give your "internal editor" any time to engage. You're too busy typing to start sliding down the slippery slope of self-editing. As I've said many times before, write in haste and edit at leisure. Your best writing is often the fastest. And even if it isn't top-notch, you'll have a first draft to edit. That's better than a blank page, isn't it?

2) The implicit threat of Dr. Wicked (screen changing colour, obnoxious noises) keeps you plugging away at writing even when you'd rather be doing something else. I don't know about you, but I'm easily bored. I flit from idea to idea and task to task like a hummingbird zipping through a field of wildflowers. Finding the discipline to write for more than 15 minutes is always a challenge for me. But when I sit down with Dr. Wicked I know that my time is always running out.

3) Dr. Wicked forces you to focus on what you're doing -- writing. This ensures you ignore all the other more attractive distractions.

Spiritual Memoir Practice: Journeys Part 2

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:58:00 +0000

To restate the Spiritual Memoir Practice from my Oct 13 post,

Recall a small journey. As I write the story, be aware of how the external journey mirrored my soul's journey.

This short journey had a preliminary stage that began in the Azores in 1972, where I began oil painting. In July 1992, I participated in the Visual Journals Workshop, led by Hazel Belvo at Grand Portage, MN. I had taken only a few formal art classes prior to that. The Visual Journals Workshop was a life-changing experience.

The small journey begins in Minneapolis. There was an art fair in the park across the street from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, along 3rd Av south of Downtown. The Grand Marais Art Colony had an exhibit, where I picked up literature about their programs.

My wife, Denise, encouraged me to sign up for the workshop, because she had just started her job as Head of Reference at the Minnesota Historical Society. She did not get a vacation that year, so I took a week off on my own.

We were still living in the Battle Creek Neighborhood of St. Paul, so it was more than a six hour drive to the Naniboujou Lodge, where I stayed, about half way between Grand Marais and Grand Portage. The Naniboujou Lodge has been a favorite place to bring visitors for lunch ever since.

The first morning of the workshop, I struggled to find the place. I went to the Grand Portage Casino Hotel, and was directed to the Trail Center several miles away up Old Highway 61. I drove to within a quarter mile of the Trail Center and made a wrong turn. I didn't find it, so I drove back to the hotel, where I learned that the first session was already in progress in a suite in the hotel. I had been misinformed at the hotel registration desk. I was breathless and stressed out, but Hazel welcomed me.

As it turned out, I was the only man among eight women, some of whom were celebrities in the art world. Hazel gave not a hint that the workshop was intended for women only.

Turning short and missing by a quarter mile seems to be a recurring pattern for me. I can't think of another example, but overcoming struggle, the high stress and anxiety is a problem. It's a barrier to that part of the mind that prays and meditates, does art, and is aware of the reality of God.

I teach the principle of spiritual consciousness to the 5th graders at William Kelley Elementary School in Silver Bay, in my annual five weekly sessions for the Masterpiece Arts Program. I don't spend a lot of time on spiritual principles, and whether it's allowable in a public school or not, I make it real and practical. The principle is to balance the mind, usually described as left brain analytical and right brain creative. I think it is more dynamic, a whole brain multifunction. I promote the principle as a means to success in all kinds of academic excellence. I think it is critical to spiritual awakening and development for elementary school children and older youth.

The Visual Journals Workshop provided rewards for four days. The method and practices started each morning at the Trail Center, a log frame building in the wilderness, heated by a wood stove, which we needed even in July. We took daily field trips to sketch scenes by direct observation. The following morning we would finish the sketch, color it, or do a related sketch in some other medium. Then, tell a story about it, often quite personal.

One day the field trip was to the Witch Tree, one of the most sacred spots on Earth. Hazel's ex-husband George Morrison was there with his own art group, offering tobacco to the tree. Our class sat at scattered spots on a gateway of granite blocks in front of the tree, or at the waters edge below.

I learned much later what high level celebrities were present that day. What an effort it had taken to acquire that spot, protect, and preserve it. It was an honor for any of us to be there.

The experience was akin to being among the giants of the Baha'i world. On several occasions, I felt a spiritual reality in which I was honored by being in the presence of such giants, yet equal to them. Why was I there? I did not feel worthy. It was the same ethereal, almost out-of-body experience in which the eternal spirit functions beyond the physical, but a moment of total consciousness.

Another field trip was to Partridge Falls on the Pigeon River. It too is a sacred place, and a historical place at the end of the eight mile grand portage, the trail the voyageurs walked from the fort and trading post on the Lake Superior shore.

Melvin Sherer was our guide. He was in training to become an Elder of the Grand Portage Ojibway Band. He is a leader now. I have not seen him since that four day workshop. He was with us every day.

That day we sketched at scattered spots above and below the falls. I noticed a severe thunderstorm approaching from upstream. It was moving rapidly, and I could tell from the cloud formation that there would be violent winds. I warned Hazel and Melvin. Thank goodness they believed I knew what I was talking about.

Some of the women were too old to rush up the river bank, and hurry along the trail back to the van. The trail was rugged with exposed roots. The tall pines swayed wildly overhead, cracking loudly as they knocked into each other. We got back to the van just as large hail began to fall. Melvin drove us as fast as possible, while avoiding deep potholes that would soon fill with flooding rain up to the wheel wells.

How many realms of spirit and nature can you experience in one place, with one heavenly group of people? I have no doubt that I was in a Native American world of Spirit and Nature of a legendary kind. I have no doubt about the Divine Oneness of that reality.

Spiritual Memoir Practice: Journeys Part I

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:00:00 +0000

I posted to this blog on September 10, 2009 what I intended to be a weekly series on "Writing the Sacred Journey", by Elizabeth J. Andrew. I have handwritten many of her practice exercises to my personal journal, several times a week, often in the middle of the night. I can thank a Baha'i friend of Sufi background for the inspiration to write in the middle of the night. He might prefer prayer and meditation, but journal writing is like that for me.

I can also thank an eight year old girl who visited Split Rock Lighthouse this past weekend with her father, who proudly told me that she has been practicing cursive writing. I hope I encouraged her by praising her potential as an artist.

Art has been in the forefront of my community activities since October 5. Sandi Pillsbury Gredzens, who chairs the Grand Marais Art Colony board, led workshops in the School Forest in Silver Bay for students at William Kelley Elementary School. I assisted with the sixth grade. The weather turned cold and rainy the second day, so the final session was held in the Science Room. The subject was sketching landscapes, and within that, understanding how to view and use the horizon line.

I had taught the same students last winter in five weekly sessions as part of the Masterpiece Arts Program. They remembered the horizon line from an exercise in which they copied the Mona Lisa. (Remember what Dan Brown said about the Mona Lisa in "The DaVinci Code"?) I also reminded them about a local artist, the late George Morrison, who always sketched, or carved in his woodblock masterworks a horizon line a quarter of the way down from the top of the page or the block. It helps to remember such a useful rule, and then make up your own rules later.

What about the journey?
Here I am sixteen years after a short journey I made in 1992, the subject of last night's spiritual memoir exercise. The instructions: Recall a small journey. As I write the story, be aware of how the external journey mirrored my soul's journey.

That journey was in the realm of spiritual awakening, akin to my experiences of spiritual rebirth in 1957 and 1973. Born again and again. How many times are we allowed such a vision of our eternal spirit at work in physical consciousness? The object of my short journey was a four-day Visual Journals Workshop, led by Hazel Belvo at Grand Portage, MN.

Hazel is a key personality in the history of the Grand Marais Art Colony. She is Sandi Gredzens' current mentor. I count Sandi as my mentor, but it's not a formal relationship. If anything, the relationship will lead me into a serious commitment to the Grand Marais Art Colony. Setting my priorities to make that happen has been a problem for sixteen years.

Here is a link to the Grand Marais Art Colony website. Read about Hazel Belvo and George Morrison. Notice the list of board members, including Sandi and my Little Marais neighbor, Joyce Yamamoto.

http://www.grandmaraisartcolony.org/about.cfm

As with any creative effect, whether an experience of the living Word of God or a creative act of my own, there is mystical unity, an impulse that influences a vast community for years afterward.

Part II of this subject will be the exercise I wrote last night.

Writing the Sacred Journey

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:39:00 +0000

"Writing the Sacred Journey: the Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir", by Elizabeth J. Andrew, was an anniversary gift from our daughter, Kari.

"Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Bab", by Nader Saiedi, I bought at the 50th Green Lake Baha'i Conference the week before our anniversary.

Both are appropriate for the moment. I haven't posted much on Blogger about my religious beliefs. Dave's Travel Blog is in fact memoir writing. I've done more on the Baha'i Faith, and more memoir writing, in my WordPress blog. See the sidebar to this blog for links.

"Writing the Sacred Journey" brings me back to some of the basics of journal writing I learned more than twenty years ago. Write as if no one would ever read it. Don't think about the bias of the audience or critics. Don't worry about grammar; go back and edit later if you feel like it. One thing I haven't practiced is the self-discipline of daily writing. Blogs help in that regard, but now I have five blogs, and it can be months between updates. I'd rather write about the weather.

Those of you who do follow this blog will notice that I changed to a simpler template today. That's to get your attention, as well as to comfort your eyes. I noticed right away that this template does not offer an underscore to highlight the title of a book.

"Gate of the Heart" is tough reading. I'll buy anything Nader Saiedi writes on the Baha'i Faith. I hope to do several posts as I make my way through the book. "Logos and Civilization" is another of his works, on the mystical writings of Baha'u'llah.

The Writings of the Bab, and the Writings of Baha'u'llah, are the Word of God. Not only is that my statement of belief, but certainty comes from reading the Writings. In fact, that's all you've got to go on to prove the existence of God, or that the written Word is divine revelation. It is fundamentally important that you prepare to read the Writings by placing your trust in God, as you do with any prayer.

In brief, the "Bab" is a title that means "the Gate". He describes His Eternal Being with many such titles. Perhaps the most important concept to grasp from Saiedi's book is the title "Primal Point". Literally, the primal point is the first mark of a quill pen as it meets the paper. In the Primal Point all Creation begins with a mere indication of the Will of God. All of Creation, all created beings, and everything that we can know about God is in that Primal Point. Proceeding from the Primal Point is the Creative Word of God, the Logos. Read the first chapter of the Gospel According to John.

One of the most audacious things the Bab did was to stop midway between Mecca and Medina, and issue a Revelation that in that spot He is the Gate between the House of Divinity and the Shrine of the Prophet (or servitude). His mission on that pilgrimage was to announce to the secular and religious leaders of Islam that He is the Promised One.

Such statements have everything to do with the ongoing persecution of Baha'is in Iran. The Bab was shot by a firing squad for these challenges to fundamentalist leaders of Islam.

Split Rock Lighthouse Weblog update

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Lee Radzak writes about bikers in his latest update to the Split Rock Lighthouse weblog. I was on the job as a historic site interpreter/tour guide at Split Rock much of the time during this peak visitation season. Lee is my manager. Lee's view of bikers is positive, but different than mine. He encourages bikers to see the lighthouse. I follow the procedures for ensuring that visitors have a good experience.

Bikers coming to Split Rock are as numerous as German tourists. Split Rock is a "must see in America" in German travel literature. Bikers at Split Rock were the subject of a Travel Channel program a couple of years ago.

During the Hell's Angels rally week in the Carleton/Duluth area, Lee had the interpreter staff double up in the Lighthouse and the Head Keeper's Dwelling. It's not a bad idea on peak visitation days anyway. Problems arise in the lighthouse if more than 20 people try to get into the lens room on their own, without a tour guide to move them along. Claustrophobia from squeezing that many bodies into a space designed for three workers, and panic on the spiral staircase blocking movement up or down, happens sometimes.

Visitors who pay $8 admission just to be there, get upset when we block the door to the lighthouse when the tower is full. According to a summary posted from 1999, the lens room fills with people every seven minutes for eight hours during a peak season day, with or without a tour guide.

Visitors get to see more at Split Rock than at some historic lighthouses. Many of the sites I've visited limit the number of people to six or twelve in the lens room. Some lighthouses have the lens room blocked off, and one at a time, visitors peer up through a manhole through a plexiglass barrier. Some lens rooms have a modern acrylic aircraft beacon, rather than the original Fresnel equipment, which may be on display somewhere else. The original equipment has been in place at Split Rock for 99 years. Some lighthouses allow visitors to go on the deck outside the lantern room, only a few at a time. At Split Rock we don't, because the outer railing is only up to your knees, no safety barrier. I wouldn't do the keeper's daily cleanup on that deck without a safety belt attached to the window handholds.

Having an interpreter stationed in the lens room or in the Keeper's Dwelling for more than 1 1/2 hours at a time on a peak day is not good. If an interpreter is present, crowds in the lens room expect a presentation, even though they chose to tour on their own. One day I had regularly scheduled tour groups of 32 and 36 visitors in the lens room. Normally I don't experience claustrophobia in the tower, but with those two groups my heartbeat raced, and it took several minutes after they left to regain normal breathing.

The goal for a scheduled tour group, either in the Lighthouse or the Keeper's Dwelling, is to have the group in the door and out the door in seven minutes. There is not much time for an interpretive presentation after moving 25 or more people up and down the spiral staircase in the tower, or somehow positioning the group between the dining room and parlor in the keeper's house.

If you know the principles of operations research, you probably have ideas about how to move crowds through a building. I've seen examples at the Edison Ford Winter Estates in Fort Meyers, FL., and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home in Oak Park, IL, where time-stamped tickets queue the groups at intervals throughout the day. If we could do that every fifteen minutes at Split Rock, less than half the current number of visitors would get up the tower on a peak day.

Those time-stamped visits we've made occupied a good part of a day, and we had to find something else to do for hours before our assigned time. Visitors to the North Shore have many more things to see, and we encourage them to go beyond Split Rock, as far as Grand Portage if they have time; that's a two hour drive from Split Rock. Many visitors are not willing to come back later. You could spend a half day walking the trails in the adjacent Split Rock State Park, but not everyone is a hiker.

More bikers were present last week than during the Hell's Angels rally. As Lee mentions in the weblog, many were following the Circle Route, about 1700 miles around Lake Superior. I answered many questions about how long a drive it is from Split Rock to Bayfield, WI. (About 3 hours). South Shore residents may not be pleased that I recommended the Wisconsin Highway 13 route that hugs the shoreline east of Superior, rather than the faster, high volume traffic route, U.S. Highway 2 to Ashland, and then north on Highway 13.

Here's the link to the weblog.

http://discussions.mnhs.org/splitrock/2009/08/16/lighthouses-and-motorcycles/

Seeking Alpha - investment tools

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:16:00 +0000

I have been trading stocks for about 15 years on Ameritrade. I have larger amounts invested in Scwhab under a 3M retirement program. I make my own decisions about when to trade and what strategies to follow. I'm not an expert. My wife and I suffered 40 percent loss in about two weeks at the end of September 2008, a common experience for many investors.

My wife will never again invest in stocks or stock-based funds. The alternatives are very slow growth.

I restarted investing in April 2009. I did not take the risk to get back in the market when the bottom was reached on March 9. My investments have grown about 15 percent since April. Very good, I think.

I have used Yahoo Finance for years to monitor my active portfolios and track a wide range of categories. This morning, one of the headlines by Seeking Alpha was about the fact that Yahoo attracts by far the most viewers of news content, far above network tv, or MSNBC, ABC online, or Google.

I followed the link to the Seeking Alpha website. It's one of the best designed, easiest to use investment resources I've seen. I registered this morning, and now have a profile as useful as any I have put out on my blogs. Here's the link.

http://seekingalpha.com/?source=headtabs

What other tools do I use? The Street.com, The Shark (ETF Weekly Newsletter), CNBC online, Morningstar.
Also useful are the tools within Schwab and Ameritrade. Fallen into disuse, Motley Fool, CBS Market Watch.

More Things- Nbr 46 Web Junction

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:45:00 +0000

It's still true that I have finished the More Things program.
Thanks to Ann at Metronet, I have functional access to Web Junction. I will explore and post.

Below is a link to Digital Generation: Educators. a blog dedicated to education and the electronic classroom. Vicki Davis is featured in the video at the top of the page. She's Cool Cat Teacher on her own electronic classroom blog. I follow her on Twitter, and I follow her blog posts via Google Reader. She's at the top of my list of favorites discovered via the More Things program.

The first item under Sage Advice gives the essence of what I think Web Junction does.

"My students have taught me a lot about technology, but one of the most important is that over use of one-on-one educational software can be drowning, isolating, and frustrating for them. They challenged me to continually seek for the perfect formula that takes advantage of the power of multimedia software but at the same time stimulates hands-on and collaborative learning, and develops their group and social skills."

Collaborative learning is the direction I would emphasize by taking Web Junction, and the More things on a Stick learning program, to the wider community. Keep the Web Junction itself for the professional library community, as Digital Generation has done for educators.

Collaboration between like-minded interests - libraries, historical societies, museums, artists, environmental educators, loggers, miners, meteorologists, supply chain management specialists. You name it, and there is a resource in the community that wants to participate.

http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-educators

More Things- Nbr 44 Economy

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Say It Visually is a useful reminder to make your blog attractive, as well as easy to read.

I saved Frugal Dad, FuelEconomy.gov, and Gas Temperature Map for future reference.

Feed the Pig was entertaining, though not useful to me. I tried every tool. It's a good example to go with Say it Visually.

The .gov sites offer good online reference materials. How quickly things have change! To ignore/scoff at the compound interest lesson is short-sighted. A savings account or cd yields nothing at the moment, other than more security than your shoebox, but the principle is valid.

Banking 2.0 may be useful to some. I reviewed each of the sites in the Learn section. Our experience reinforces the need for self-discipline.

We do online banking with Wells Fargo. We do not pay bills electronically. We balance the check register off-line. We enter income, savings, daily cash, check, and credit card expenditures to a hand-written 14-column journal. My wife keeps her business journal on an Excel Spreadsheet.

I use Yahoo Finance portfolios and related research tools to consolidate information from several brokerage accounts and my 3M retirement 401k. TDAmeritrade, Schwab, Wells Fargo, and 3M all provide useful tools. At times I've paid for premium services from Morningstar, Zacks, Investors Business Daily, and the Street.com.

I tried Quicken a couple of times, as it came bundled with other pc software. We don't use it. I know several people involved with non-profit organizations who use Quick Books, and still struggle to get the balance sheet and summary reports in a form that board members can understand. It helps to have an accountant set it up, and make sure the IRS and State Attorney General get all the paper forms and attachments they need.

One thing I might I add to this Thing is a list of useful blogs and rss feeds. I consolidate mine in Google Reader. My favorites are

The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/

The Economist's View http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/

CNBC's Bob Pisani http://www.cnbc.com/id/20398120

More Things- Nbr 43 Internet TV and Video

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:21:00 +0000

For Thing 43, I reviewed my use of Hulu, ABC.com, and YouTube.

Free on-demand has not had much impact on my wife and me. The same limitations on access to true broadband service regarding music online apply to TV and video. Creatures of habit, we often resort to video tape when we record programs to watch later. For some reason, our DirecTV installer advised us not get the additional line required for DVR/Tivo.

Our neighbors two miles west in Little Marais recently upgraded Dish to include DVR, and after the initial promotional package expires, they have decided to cut back on some options.

Our daughter and son-in-law in Woodbury have a complete Comcast package that provides for DVR, On-Demand movies, on-demand Netflix, XBox360 or Nintendo Wii, and high speed wireless internet service. I wouldn't move to the big city for it, but if it's available I'll buy it. My wife would not buy the complete package.

I have been using Hulu since I saw the commercial for it during the Super Bowl. The first shows I watched were episodes of Legend of the Seeker, and Life on Mars, going all the way back to the pilot episodes. It's a well designed internet application.

Right away on Hulu I discovered that ABC TV current series were available only from ABC.com. It too is a well designed application. You can view episodes as soon as they have aired on TV. ABC.com recently launched a music service.

On-demand Netflix via Internet or DirecTV has the same limitations I mentioned in my previous post on high speed internet service. Verizon National access is fast enough for viewing, but the 5 gigabyte per month file download limit quickly is consumed by a few movies.

DirecTV, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Netflix on-demand services all cost something. None of this is free. Some media critics and stock analysts see all of these advances as threats. Analysts usually point to lost ad revenue. Hulu, YouTube, and ABC.com all show commercials before you can watch a program, besides the ads in the sidebars.

In general, as a result of the More Things on a Stick program, I recognize web 2.0 features on TV and in movies that started long ago. All media are improving therefrom.

More Things- Nbr 42 Music 2.0

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:59:00 +0000

As I began the Learn list for Thing 42, I had Creative Media Source playing the latest Prince three-cd album Lotusflow3r. Creative Media Player was the default when I loaded the cd's, and I used it to copy the three discs to the pc. Do I plan to share on the internet? No.

I have digitized several hundred albums, and copied to our pc's from our private collections. I have vinyl albums I gave to my mother in the 50's, reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, and cd's. I have over 200 cylinder records for our 1915 Edison Amberola, with no other way to digitize than to play them and record with a mic.

More often than not I will use iTunes to listen to anything on the pc. I'm impressed with the internet radio features. I do not plan to get an iPod or an iPhone, and do not need one for internet radio.

I also like Windows Media Player. Today I worked my way through Reciva Radio Portal. It's a multi-step process to find and sort a genre, click on a selection, choose a player (even though iTunes is my default), and hope there is something to hear. Several attempts failed. One thing Windows Media Player does is show you an icon while it attempts to play whatever you select. iTunes and Firefox together give you a small Reciva window that does nothing if there is nothing to hear. iTunes works great as a standalone internet radio application.

iTunes Radio button gives you a complete list of genres with dropdown menus, including most of the stations I found on Reciva. iTunes shows the kilobytes per second speed for each station. Some of the stations offer a range of streaming rates. I found 128 kps works sometimes and other times has too many pauses to fill the buffer. 256 kps HD stations require true broadband speed (see comments further down). Slower speeds work fine for talk radio; 64 kps is adequate for music. I quickly built a radio playlist I called Radio. Click and drag any station I like to the playlist, while I'm listening to it, and all the stations I want are ready to go next time. All of the station choices presented by iTunes worked.

I mentioned CATVids in another blog post as the most complete library cataloguing software for media of all kinds.

Internet radio we have not used much on our pc's, because true broadband service is not available in Little Marais. We're lucky to get a strong signal from Verizon National Access broadband. Signal strength varies from about 250 to 800 kilobytes per second. 800 is great, but not fast enough for some YouTube or Hulu TV on the internet. True broadband by definition should be greater than 1.2 megabytes per second. The speed via Verizon varies from minute to minute and from station to station.

Bring my pc to my neighbor's house 600 feet to the east and you can't get Verizon. AT&T installed a cellphone tower two miles west, but won't offer wireless broadband without political coercion from the Lake County Board. Your iPhone or iPod works fine here. QWEST has fiber optics underground along Hwy 61, but wants at least $4000 to bring broadband service to your house. Legislation and funding for wireless infrastructure isn't as simple as laying more cable and building more towers. Arguments for supporting small, rural populations, the potential for job growth, educational and business development, and 50,000 tourists driving through on a summer weekend are dismissed.

In the past couple of years, most of my music purchases have been online via iTunes. If I want the physical album, I still go back to Amazon.com. How green things have gotten! The Judy Collins album my wife bought for me last week had minimal packaging, published eight years ago. It still had a sleeve we threw out to get at the jewel case. The Prince album had a slim three-slot fold-over cover. Much of what we buy online, we download. No packaging unless we burn a cd to keep in the car.

More Things- Nbr 41 Mashup Your Life

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:45:00 +0000

I registered for Lifestream.fm, Superglu, and TabUp. Productivity boosters? I don't see it.

Lifestream I did not like and will not keep. It's one of several applications I have, like the job search social network LinkedIn, that offer to send invitations to your entire email contact list. Our Yahoo contact list is too big and out of date, but my wife and I share it for many reasons. Like any direct mail scheme, if I invite 200 people, 2% willing participants would be a good response. I know too many people who won't appreciate such an invitation. A glance at the general listings of status messages on Lifestream, it's a flood of useless comments, worse than unfiltered Twitter. Once into Facebook or LinkedIn, there are better ways to keep up with like-minded "friends" you've never met.

Superglu warns you that only three guys are there to manage the program and it's slow. What's
slow is the time to set up the feeds from your websites. Get Blogger, and the main blog associated with your username comes in fast. Follow up with WordPress, and "waiting for" runs in the status bar forever. Same thing trying to work the settings menu. I'll keep at this one, however, to make Blogger, WordPress, and Overbooked Ning available from one login on Superglu. Frankly, there is not much advantage in that. Having several tabs open in Firefox is not a bother.

TabUp says it's much like iGoogle, and it is. I don't see a reason to use both.

More Things- Nbr 40 Mashup the Web

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:41:00 +0000

Not sure what to do in this Thing that hasn't been done in other Things.

I recognize mashups when I see them on TV, having become familiar with the concept through More Things.

Executive Editor ZDNET on YouTube - excellent! That should be on a public or academic library list as an electronic classroom resource.

I used Google search as a starting point for Lunchbox, Wheel of Lunch, and Walkable. Find the street address for a place you know, copy and paste into the search window for the mashup application.

Tried PandoraFM more than a month ago, and again today it stalled while trying to add a few stations based on Artist. Splice wouldn't come up. I like BlipFM. Also got a solicitation to Hearts of Space, with a free-on-Sunday come-on, and more expensive subscriptions. Of course, all of these comments fit Thing 42 as well.

What's mashup about Lunchbox? A Google map application. It was too specific on some categories and very broad scope on others. I zeroed in on Woodbury, MN, east of St. Paul, because I'm familiar with most restaurants there. "Steak" got results Twin Cities wide. "Barbeque" pinpointed the Famous Dave's I expected. My old home Zip Code 55106 on the East Side found Yarusso's Italian restaurant on Payne Avenue without me specifying any category. Nearby Serlin's Cafe was not on the map, and not found via the breakfast category. An opportunity to add your favorites and review them would be useful.

I suppose the colorful spinning wheel is the mashup for Wheel of Lunch. The "Seafood" search for 55802 Duluth gave me a full wheel including Culver's, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, plus the restaurants you would expect. One search is all you get. You have to close the Wheel of Lunch tab and start over to do another search.

Walkable gave Downtown St. Paul a score of 86 of 100 when I entered the address for the Science Museum of Minnesota. Main Street in Downtown Stillwater is "Walker's Paradise". Good Google maps application.

Interestingness was interesting only because it reminds me of Cool Iris, which I prefer and have been using for a long time. Cool Iris qualifies as a great photo mashup, with all kinds of features. It works with your own photos, every imaginable commercial photo source (like Interestingness does), with thumbnails, blowups, and slide shows. Visual Headlines was not interesting. I've praised Picasa's virtues over Flickr elsewhere.

Here's a Warholizer from Big Huge Labs. Thumbnail size is what I get.

Table of sunrise sunset times for any location in the world was an interesting Big Huge Labs/ Google Maps application. I got it right the first time, pretty close to Little Marais. The scale of the map was too gross.

We interrupt this program

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:33:00 +0000

How's this for a memoir scrapbook photo from the 60's? My sister on the left. Grandma Carlson with her 80-something birthday cake, and my cousin Beatrice on the right.

"63 That's easy to remember" is my Facebook status message for today. My birthday. If you were in the Twin Cities area in the 1950's and 60's you know this tagline from the KDWB AM Radio promos. "Channel 63, That's easy to remember.

KDWB and WDGY were the two rock stations. Neither has changed format in the direction that I have since that time.

More Things- Nbr 39 Digital Storytelling

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:41:00 +0000

First attempt with Smile box. Easy to use.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

How about another photo collage from Picasa? Link from Pacasa on my pc and Picasa Web Albums was not as friendly today. PC did not recognize my password. What is the story in this?

I have been doing this kind of blog post right along in Dave's Travel Journal. My WordPress blogs are the general purpose type that derive from over 25 years of personal journals, now enhanced by tasks learned in More Things on a Stick. See the sidebar for links if you haven't been following my other blogs.

The best academic application I have been following via Google Reader and Twitter is CoolCatTeacher. She wins awards and gets interviews for her work with electronic classroom. Every gadget and link to commercial services imaginable is in her blog sidebars.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

More Things- Nbr 38 Screencast - Final

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Here's my screencast of a portion of the Split Rock Lighthouse Historic Site tour.
I used Screencast-O-Matic to produce it. I also tried Picasa, but it did not provide voice-over audio as an option, only a musical background. I looked briefly at ScreenToaster, but quickly gave up, as it failed to explain how to frame and capture an image; at least I could not make it work intuitively.

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cQhf2oeEd

This morning I found Adobe Premier Elements already installed on my laptop pc. I had forgotten about it. It has an excellent tutorial. I recommend a closer look if you already use Adobe products. I don't need the suite of products, so I have Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, and have misplaced somewhere Adobe Air for video conferencing.

To use screencasting in a library setting, I think the MNLink tutorials were a good example. A menu of short clips created with Screen-O-Matic might be good enough. Else, you need a dedicated person on staff or contract with someone who has the skills and time. Well-written content is important. Does everyone remember how bad the DBase II User Guide was? That set the standard for me for Bad.

Who owns the content? I did not use any of Lee Radzak's slides. My content is my own, but I have an issue in my own mind to represent the MN Historical Society well. What music background is free in the public domain? I might like "I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper" in the background, but can I share my mp3 in a blog? Probably not.

My Split Rock Tour took several tries over two days. Part of the time was consumed by selecting and adding photos from various Split Rock folders that span 7 years. Using Screen-O-Matic meant starting over each time I thought of a change in sequence. My first attempt resulted in more than 10 minutes, and a 22mb file, too big for YouTube. My final cut was still too long, about 10mb, and impossible to view on a blog post with Verizon National Access relatively high speed internet service. The first three minutes play without interuption, but the rest of it filled the buffer with less than 30 seconds to view at a time.

I did not write a storyboard or a script. I told the story as I do it on tour. You don't do it with notecards. My audio voice-over took several tries, as that was the most time consumming element in the movie. I used some creative writing techniques to shorten the talk. Give credit again to Publication Coach Daphne Gray-Grant, whose newsletter I get by email each week. Here's a link to her website.

http://www.publicationcoach.com/index.php

More Things- Nbr 37 update

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Here's a link to another commercial website for Bodo, Norway, that features a slide show behind the title frame. A friend of ours is moving to Bodo from a town further north in Finmark. Bodo is a beautiful, growing city, and their website displays several of the Things we have been doing.

http://www.visitbodo.com/?sp=GB

More Things- Nbr 38 Screencast

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:44:00 +0000

I really like the MNLink tutorial Search by Library

Having watched my daughter spend an hour at her professional editing suite to get the sound of a hoe scraping a garden patch, for a newsreel bit that lasted only seconds, it's a dizzying chore. She also lines up the professional voices for narration and voice overs. It takes skill as well as a familiar voice. Matching background music to the mood of the piece makes a big difference.

At 3M, I wrote drafts of content for an online Service Measurement System; a user guide, quick reference card, and online help screens in context of what users would try to do. A screencast would have helped. We had the budget to hire professionals to bring my knowledge to a finished product. It took a year.

For my next post, I will attempt a portion of the Split Rock Tour slide show from Thing Nbr 37. Give the talk, and provide the guidance a new interpreter would need.

More Things- Nbr 37 Photo Tales complete

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:59:00 +0000

A few more comments and a slide show from Picasa; I consider this Thing complete.
I couldn't be happier with the results from the combination of Picasa desktop and web.

As for telling a story with photos, I will do more with Dave's Travel Blog. See the sidebar link. It's easy enough to choose how to display a photo within text.

I mentioned in another blog post my use of CoolIris (Firefox add-in) to do a wall display or a slide show of my own photos, or a host of other commercial providers. I use it all the time with photos displayed by friends on Facebook. CoolIris provides a small icon on the first photo within anyone's album. Click the icon and it brings up the album in a wall display.

I've struggled for years to get Microsoft Office Powerpoint to do what I want. A couple of presentations I've made are great. Adobe Photoshop Elements is my favorite for scanning historic photos and slides, and uploading new photos from a camera for editing. Microsoft Picture Manager often is my choice for photo prints.

Use it in "my" library? Actually, my wife and I did a slide presentation at the Grand Rapids, MN Public Library last Fall, at the invitation of one of our friends who is on the library board. We presented a history of Split Rock Lighthouse, using my own Powerpoint presentation, and presentations prepared by Lee Radzak, our employer and MHS Historic Site manager.

Here's my Split Rock Tour slide show without words or captions.

More Things- Nbr 37 a photo mosaic

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Here's a first attempt at embedding a photo mosaic. I created a collage from my own photos using Picasa on my desktop pc. I chose one of the several collage format options. Uploaded the finished mosaic to a new web album on Picasa. Created a link, which provided html code to embed.

Looks great to me.

From Lutsen trail

More Things- Nbr 36 Comic Relief

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:03:00 +0000

Firefox has a very good background generator, "Personas"

http://www.getpersonas.com/store/recent.html

The most useful background site in the Learn list of links was the Image Chef "how to" instructions for Twitter: Settings, Design, change background image. My preference is to use my own photos. Here's my latest if you aren't a follower.

http://twitter.com/quirkydave

I tried each of the password generators. I prefer a scheme of my own. I still have a terrible time keeping track of usernames and passwords. The best way I have found is within Firefox - Tools, options, security, saved passwords, show passwords, and then do a screen print.

I placed a Read Poster in the sidebar of this blog. It may look like a partisan statement. It's an attention getter. Have you observed in checkout line tabloids how popular President Obama's image is. Children of all ages, just old enough to speak, through age 90+, are mesmerized.

Back to Image Chef, I placed a Taurus symbol in the sidebar, but I was stumped by the possibility of an icon. Any advice on how to choose a memorable, marketable icon?

I like Timetoast. Did a short one and will come back to it.

Make Beliefs comix looks easy, and similar to the Dilbert mashable feature I get in my gmail every day. I'm not that kind of creative to come up with an original comic, but very quick to fill in an alternate Dilbert dialog.

See my Dewey block in the footer.

More Things- Nbr 35 Books

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:13:00 +0000

This will be my third and final post on Thing Nbr 35. Certainly it will not be my last visit to items found in the Learn reading list.

Library Thing looks promising for creating a book catalog. The rest of the content, as well as other social catalog services of the kind, are variations on apps I started using on Facebook. weRead was my first. Overbooked Ning is my favorite, and may be the best way to organize a small online book club.

This weekend I registered on Bookarmy. I used the search function to load 39 titles from my own shelves. I published reviews of three of my books. I began socializing by oversubscribing to several like-minded forums, and providing feedback to the developers of the site.

I skipped books on your phone. Can't imagine it.

Reading Trails is like the way I choose books to read. The Browse Tags is useful.

The Book Calendar daily feed looks interesting. It would go along with a link to the New York Times best sellers. I read USA Today best sellers lists every week.

Living Social, as I use it on Facebook, has an unfortunate tie to IQ Quizes, which can easily cost you $19.95 a month for an unintended cell phone subscription. Only the fine print tells you the cost and how to avoid it.

Podcasts are the way to go for audio books, although tapes and cd's are still popular. I don't do that.

Book Swap would be useful if you can localize it to your own community.

I think one of the most supportive things a small town library or a branch library can do is host a book club. There are two in Silver Bay. One keeps the library open after hours one Monday night a month. The other meets off site. Six to ten members is sustainable. Some members walk to a meeting, others drive an hour to get there. The same people who show up for book club often volunteer for everything in the community. The active community is wide and influential, and becomes a justification for library support by the city and county. We need the Arrowhead Library System to get ten copies of the same popular title at once.

I have a peeve about the search schemes provided by online book clubs. The book cover graphics and publishers are not the same as the ones on my shelf. If you were a commercial seller hoping for a hit on the edition you are selling, I skew the statistics by selecting the first cover that appears. Seriously, some of my favorite editions are long out of print. Dog-eared or not, they are classics. The volume of Tennyson poems I borrowed from the Duluth Central Library probably should have been secured in a rare books room. The illustrations were that good.

Netflix is great not only for ordering and rating movies, but sharing with family and friends, and for adding content to My Yahoo or iGoogle.

CatVids is a costly software package that catalogs any kind of media, including archived hardware. It's rich in features you would recognize in web 2.0; links to capture an online album cover or a film trailer; stores whatever data element you want in a standard database field or a freeform field of your own creation. Search with boolean logic, or sort and browse pages of records. Anyone can use it without fear of breaking something. It's great for a nonprofit wide area network, but how would you port thousands of records to something better on the web?

Over ten years ago, my wife and I were part of a team that used CatVids to catalog the entire Baha'i Media Services collection at the House of Worship in Wilmette, IL. Several thousand items were relabeled with a numbering scheme that pinpointed their location, whether they were in use on someone's desk or in the rafters of the archives. The staff was there to help; an archivist, an IT professional to set up file sharing, producers, editors, supervisors, and volunteer library professionals from around the country. I customized the application to meet staff requirements. None of that crowd can be described in plural today, because of severe budget cuts. The system outlived the missing, and is maintained by two or three people. We'll return as volunteers to clean it up.

More Things- Nbr 34 Competition

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:13:00 +0000

What is the primary function of a reference librarian, or a reference library? Public or private library? Fee-based services? All kinds of questions to consider when you define your specific role as a library professional. You answer reference questions. You point to resources, including those on line. You might have a forklift deliver boxes of historic artifacts, and assign someone to stand at hand to make sure nothing gets damaged.

Two of the links in the Nbr 34 reading list are keepers. The others are worth reading once.

An incredible list is provided by the first link in Thing Nbr 34, "online reference sites".
The feature article "Evolution to Revolution to Chaos" provides a complete agenda to support funding and human resource development, whether it be a state library advisory board, or setting direction for a small library.

From the list of online resources, Information Please caught my eye. I bought my first Information Please Almanac from the St. Paul Pioneer Press when I was in grade school in the 1950's. I never questioned its completeness or accuracy. Now it's on line. Wikipedia has been criticized on the points of accuracy and user contributed information. For some people wiki is the first reference choice. I prefer Google search.

If you are the sole library professional managing a small town public library, like Silver Bay, your main competition for funding may be the municipal liquor store and tavern. The liquor store is a profit center for the city. The library is a cost center.

My wife volunteers frequently at the Silver Bay Library on Mondays. The librarian is alone that day. She sets direction for the hours my wife spends. Often it's processing inter-library loans, and shelving items left in the book drop over the weekend. My wife chairs the library board, knows the political process from local to global, and couldn't be more supportive. She does not answer the phone, check out books, or provide help at the public computer terminals without direction from the librarian in charge.

The public computer terminals at the Silver Bay Library are busy. Many of the users can't afford a computer, or can't get high speed internet service at home.

The Lexington Branch of the St. Paul Public was the first successful neighborhood computer center I saw, years ago. University Avenue at Lexington was not a safe place for children and youth, but they occupied every available terminal. It was a community center.

The Duluth Central Library also is a busy public computer center. What is the likelihood that St. Paul or Duluth can afford to upgrade those terminals every three to five years as they should? Budget cuts don't even allow for hours of operation when most users might be there, evenings and Saturdays.

I think special libraries, whether academic or dedicated to a narrow field, demand reference librarians. The qualified human resources might come from diverse professional backgrounds. Even a high school dropout who developed a niche website might qualify. Whether a librarian or a geek, the avatar that looks like a hero from Legends of the Seeker might suggest as much as a profile photo about the personality behind the mask.

My wife was a librarian at James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul for 17 years. She was Head of Reference for 9 years at the Minnesota Historical Society. All of those years she was an active member of the Special Libraries Association, and the Minnesota Library Association. I attended several workshops at SLA national conventions, and was not surprised to find presenters I recognized from professional conferences I attended at 3M's expense.

Generalist is not a good attribute according to a 3M Personnel assessment I had. Intuitive is not a popular attribute with some. My wife's Myers-Briggs doesn't fit the profile of a librarian. She's an extrovert. I'm an introvert, but I talk to strangers in elevators, and on Twitter.

Qualified volunteers are not substitute librarians. It can be a trap suggestive of slave labor when a city council suggests unpaid staff to offset budget cuts.

More Things - Nbr 45 Cloud Computing

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:23:00 +0000

I can jump ahead and sign off on Cloud Computing, although there is more to read. I already commented on other posts for this Thing.

First an update you probably read in the news. Sun Microsystems was not acquired by IBM. Oracle has made a winning offer. Java is what they wanted, but all kinds of new cloud applications are possible, with new Oracle applications to fit.

I spent hours working with g.ho.st Virtual Computer. Very interesting, but painfully slow.

http://g.ho.st/

The email application looks promising. It is easy to set up POP connections to other email services, but you must click the Refresh icon to update each service.

The g.ho.st Service Bulk Upload was very slow, even with a super-high speed internet service at my daughter's house in Woodbury. You probably don't have time to backup your most important file folders this way. I put some old photo albums out there I want to share between three pc's. The screen refresh rate is ok for viewing individual photos. There are better ways to do a slideshow presentation.

The Welcome screen is a good one for taking a tour of the services; also the Getting Started Wizard.

I took a quick look at each of the Microsoft Office services: Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheets, and Zoho Presentation. Again, too slow for creating and updating. You could use them to read archived files stored on your g.ho.st Drive.

In brief, there is more Cloud Computing coming. Familiarity with the concept and the tools is useful.

More Things - Nbr 32 Maps again

carlsondw@gmail.com (Dave Carlson) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:06:00 +0000

Got a test tornado warning this morning on my desktop Weather Underground gadget. I clicked on the warning button and found a wealth of weather information, some of which I had completed for my own use long ago. Here's a link to Wundermap, which will look very familiar. Browse around and set up favorite locations that you would view frequently.

http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=38.54817&lon=-95.80078&zoom=4

The wealth of Weather Underground includes your local climate data. Be careful with it, because some locations are not what they seem. For example, one of the oldest recording stations in Minnesota was Beaver Bay, since 1857. The current records for nearby Silver Bay are the airport, which is neither reliable nor representative of what's happening on the North Shore. The airport is in a mountain-like valley about three miles from the lake. That's a big difference. Likewise, Brimson, north of Two Harbors has current records and is one of the oldest recording sites. Isabella has very old records, but there has been nobody there to provide data for at least two years.