Learning from mistakes

I realized after the fact that I could have done a better job with some of the action photos I took at Astrocamp. I knew that I wasn't getting what I wanted at the time I was taking the images, but I wasn't really sure how to correct the problem. My night photo instructor had some good tips which would have been even better if I had them on the spot. Next time I'll be ready but for now I did at least get a few good shots. I plan to have my DVD done by this weekend and will hand some out next week.

Vegetarians not visible for school events

One thing I've noticed over and over is that local school events which involve food almost always assume that everyone eats meat. I know that vegetarians make up a small percentage of the population, but since I'm in that percentage I notice it more when there's nothing on the menu I can eat. My wife and sons are going to a spaghetti dinner tonight at the school and the two options are meat sauce or butter. I'm not sure what kind of restaurant is providing the food, but is butter really the way most people eat spaghetti? What happened to olive oil or marinara sauce? Maybe they can bring their own or just eat it plain like we did at Astrocamp...

Subsitute teacher convicted for school tech screw up

The story of Julie Amero and her conviction for exposing 7th graders to porn on a classroom computer is like something written by Kafka. The school's spyware license hadn't been updated because the renewal was sent to an incorrect email address. She allowed students to use the computer and they inadvertently clicked on a link that generated a bunch of pornographic pop-ups. She didn't know how to deal with it although she tried to keep the students from seeing what was there -- she had been told not to turn off the computer for any reason. So she ends up being convicted for exposing students to pornography. The whole thing is absurd and the prosecutor didn't do his job. The computer wasn't checked for spyware and adware by the prosecutor and an expert for the defense who did check it wasn't allowed to testify about it. There is a potential 40 year prison sentence in this case, but the whole thing is ridiculous.

Talk of the Nation - life logging

NPR's Talk of the Nation had a program today called life logging and the generation gap over privacy. I only caught a couple of portions of the show, but it seemed to be about how younger people who use MySpace, Facebook and blogs to document what they are doing are often exposing things about themselves that their parents might not think should be put online. Of course, this includes blog entries about personal things as well as photos of activities that might best be kept private. One of the points made by one of the guests was that standards in this area may change and what's considered bad taste today might not be in ten years. I think that is probably true, but I still think there are some things which don't need to be shared with anybody who can get online.

Talk of the Nation does not seem to have a podcast, so you have to listen to the show using RealPlayer online.

Chargers need a coach

After firing Marty Schottenheimer, the Chargers have to scramble to hire a coach. SFGate says they are looking at a couple of 49ers coaches, Mike Singletary and Norv Turner. Turner has been a head coach before and was a finalist for the Cowboys job a few weeks ago. Sounds like he's the frontrunner unless they can persuade Pete Carroll or Jimmy Johnson to give it a shot. If the problem with Marty was that he wanted too much control, then that's probably going to continue to be a problem with these guys.

The Missing Link

Something went wrong with this one.

End of Marty Ball in San Diego

It did seem odd that the Chargers would lose both their offensive and defensive coordinators at the same time. Both got head coaching jobs. Two other assistants also left, and despite their 12-4 season, the Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer today. The timing seems bad since most of the other coaching vacancies have been filled at this point, so you either will get a guy who hasn't been a head coach before or a retread who didn't get any of the other jobs. Maybe Bill Parcells will change his mind and give it one more shot with a team that has a great chance to win next year. I don't think it's the right move to fire your coach because he can't get along with the general manager, but maybe the owner felt the general manager was more important.

AstroCamp and behavioral issues

One of the things that was very clear after spending 2 days with about 50 5th graders is that when even a very small number of the kids have behavioral issues, it can really have a huge impact on the entire group. I don't think I could deal with the stuff I saw during the two days on a day to day basis, and it did seem like the teachers involved had become immune to some of the stuff and just dealt with the more serious transgressions. Lots of kids in the group need medication just to get through the day -- or, more accurately, they have been giving medication to get through the day. I wondered how much of the bad behavior had a biological basis to it and how much was psychological or of some other origin. Some kids were just disruptive all the time, constantly seeking attention in one way or another. It drove me crazy. And in almost every case, the behavior could be related back to the parents or absence of parents. It's easy to get upset with the repeated bad actions of the child, but it's probably the absent parent who bears much of the responsibility.

ArtText or TypeStyler

One thing I have not figured out is why it has taken so many years for the OS X version of TypeStyler to be released. It's still not out yet and I'm sure they have long since lost many customers because of this. It's been "coming soon" for years now. I really liked the program years ago when I used Mac OS 9, but that was about 7 years back. Today on MacZot, you can get a new competitor to TypeStyler, ArtText, for 33% off -- $19.95. I will give it a try and if it can do most of what TypeStyler did, I'll buy it. Too bad for TypeStyler, but how long can you wait?

AstroCamp photos

I took 1250 photos in 48 hours at AstroCamp. There have to be a few good ones in there! Actually, I've got them all imported in to iPhoto and tagged and I've rated about half of them. I'm hoping to have enough variety to make a nice poster using about 80 of them. I will also upload the good ones so other people can have a look. This is going to take a couple of days, but I think it will be worth the effort. The challenge was in getting pictures of each of the 4 student groups since I was spending all of my time with one group. I think I managed to do it, but maybe next year the school will allow me to go up and just take pictures on Saturday without being a chaperone. We'll see.

Return from Astrocamp

Our AstroCamp weekend in Idylwild wrapped up today. We made the bus trip back down the mountain in the rain. In fact, it rained all day today and was cold which made the last day a little rough. Overall, it was a good experience for most everyone involved, although there were more than a few meltdowns by a small number of students. Oddly enough, most of them were by students in my group of 12.

AstroCamp

Day one of AstroCamp is coming to a close. We had a nice bus ride up here and enjoyed some fun activities. Getting hoisted up about 40 feet in the air and then dropping and flying along a line was a good one although it hurt a bit when the harness dug into my thighs. I got some great pictures of the students doing this one as well as a couple of others. I need to clear my memory cards tonight and recharge my battery so I can take more pictures tomorrow, which should be a long day.

Shouldn't that be "enigmatic"

Another one of those "rush to be first" stories with a strange error. From the home page of SFGate.com, under a picture of Anna Nicole Smith:

Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as a tabloid tale, died today at age 39 after collapsing at a hotel. Famous for being famous, she went from being a dancer and centerfold to billionaire's widow and reality TV star. Talk about it in NWZCHIK.

According to dictionary.com, and my own common sense, pneumatic isn't normally used in reference to someone's personality.

Top 5 definitions of pneumatic from dictionary.com:

1. of or pertaining to air, gases, or wind.

2.	of or pertaining to pneumatics.

3.	operated by air or by the pressure or exhaustion of air: a pneumatic drill.

4.	filled with or containing compressed air, as a tire.

5.	equipped with pneumatic tires.

Steve Jobs and DRM

I read Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and iTunes yesterday. Innocuously titled "Thoughts on Music,"it was interesting and certainly not what you would expect from a CEO of two huge media companies, but then I don't think Steve Jobs is the typical CEO. He's the only one I know who laid me off, but that's beside the point. I didn't interpret his essay as a call to end DRM. I don't think that is going to happen. With the pressure from a couple of countries in Europe to remove the iTunes DRM to make the music available to other players, this essay was just a way to deflect that criticism and put it where it should be -- on the backs of the music publishers.

Podcast plus PDF

I knew that iTunes supported PDFs, but I hadn't really used the feature or thought about how it might be useful. Until today, that is. I set up my first podcast on my work blog and went to iTunes to subscribe to it, just to check that it was working. When I did, I also got the PDFs I had attached to previous posts on my blog. Since I am creating materials and making them available in PDF to various people, this is a nice way to distribute them. I only need to figure out how to be sure that people subscribe, but I don't think that is too difficult. At least in theory.

BeeDocs Timeline

BeeDocs Timeline is an interesting program (Mac only). It makes the creation of timelines very simple, so it's a big timesaver. You can use it for free for up to 10 items. We have used it several times for school reports and it works well. You don't really get much more with the paid version other than a much longer timeline. At almost $40, it's a little out of my price range, but today you can get it for $24 at MacZot. I think the developer is working on a new application which will extend the features of Timeline quite a bit, so I'm going to wait for that and continue to use the free version.

PE.com commuting blog

One of the local newspapers recently started up some blogs written by a few of their reporters. One is the Commuting Blog, written by Phil Pitchford. Phil only has a two mile commute, but he does cover transportation, so he knows the freeways even though he is smarter than many of us who still have to use them to get to work.

Phil's not getting the traffic that Steve Lopez gets on the Bottleneck Blog at the LA Times, but commenting on the Bottleneck Blog has slowed down quite a bit since that first entry which got hundreds of comments.

Really hot weather

They should have held the Super Bowl around here instead of in Miami. No rain and it was over 80 degrees yesterday. Today may break a record with the forecast for 87 degrees. Tomorrow it will start cooling down and by the time we leave on our school field trip on Friday, it will probably be cold again in the mountains.

Prince at Super Bowl

For a guy who is getting close to 50 years old, Prince looks good and moves incredibly well. His music was also good and he had a number of guitars including one with that weird symbol he used to use for his name. I thought the halftime show was good, considering it was in the rain and you can't really get good audio from something like that. Is Prince a football fan? I guess he might be a Vikings fan, but he doesn't look like a guy who would have played much football, although of course that has nothing to do with being a fan.

Super Bowl - Colts win

At least this Super Bowl was competitive for a little while. The Colts dominated but the score was close until late in the third quarter. The commercials were typical for a Super Bowl -- beer, cards, GoDaddy.com, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember. Nothing really jumped out at me. No Apple/iTunes ad. I'll have to go back and watch them again. There were some funny ones like the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions. That might have been my favorite