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June 30, 2005
Deneen Frazier-Bowen's Funky NECC Keynote
I had to leave at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to catch my train to New York, which meant I didn't get to see Deneen Frazier-Bowen's NECC keynote at its scheduled time. But since she's my long-time edtech homegirl, she was sweet enough to let me sit in on one of her rehearsals this Tuesday.
Deneen's keynote wasn't your usual Powerpoint-Slides-and-a-Longwinded-Speech kinda keynote. Far from it. Instead, she basically pulled an Anna Deveare Smith and performed a series of characters to help paint a portrait of what it's like for today's kids to be growing up as digital natives. The keynote began with a stiff, know-nothing school administrator fumbling her way through a Powerpoint, talking about educating kids the old fashioned way and knowing what's best for today's kids. Eventually, she gets so flummoxed with her Powerpoint that she runs off the stage to argue with tech support.
While Old Miss Frumpmeister is doing her thing back stage, Deneen comes back on stage dressed as a young hip-hop lovin' teen. Her name is Eddy, and she's a smart, tough kid who loves technology but isn't trusted by her teachers. She tells a story about how she brought a palm pilot to class but gets busted for supposedly using it to cheat on a test, which wasn't the case. The school principal makes a capital case out of it and refuses to listen to Eddy's side of the story. So what does Eddy do? She posts it on her blog, which, of course, eventually gets back around to the principal. The principal orders her to remove the criticism of him from the blog, even though it's spot-on accurate, and Eddy refuses. She's then suspended from school, as people all over the world comment on her blog and rally to her cause.
Once Eddy exits the stage, we get to meet Maria. Maria's in late elementary school, and she's a bit hyper, but she's got great ideas about math and science. She likes to find science websites and hopes to use them in class, but not all her teachers seem to care about her opinion. But thanks to one teacher who values her opinion, Maria gets to talk about her idea about participating in Net Day Speak Up Day during a meeting of the school's teachers. She's never spoken in public before, so she uses the voice recorder on her smart phone to practice before giving her big speech, then puts it on her audio blog. Eventually, the school gets involved in the project, and she talks about the results.
Some of Maria's new-found courage comes from her older friend Joanna, an above average 11th grade student who likes to spend her free time playing online multiplayer games. At first her mother worries about the time she spends gaming, but then starts to notice how she takes charge whenever she's interacting with others online. Her mother talks to her about how she's learning leadership skills, a concept pretty much alien to Joanna, but eventually she decides to learn about youth leadership activities to see if she can channel her interests in a positive way. Enter TakingITGlobal: Joanna discovers the network and starts chatting with a girl in Egypt. She gets the idea of setting up a computer recycling program for African kids, approaching the company her mom works for in order to get the computers. Before she knows it, she's an active TIG member, getting lots of media attention in her community as she mobilizes local businesses to help bridge the digital divide.
Eventually, the obnoxious administrator returns to the stage. While trying to sort out her Powerpoint, she apparently overheard the kids' monologues. She's forced to rethink her attitudes towards kids and learning, while recognizing the way technology can be used to inspire and invigorate young people.
Following the performance, Deneen returns to the stage, no longer in character. She describes how she's spent time over the last few years interview countless young people, trying to get a handle on what it's like to be a digital native. The characters she introduced during her performance are not verbatim re-enactments of actual people a la Anna Deveare Smith, but are composites and creations inspired by the students she's interviewed. It was a whole new way to tell the story of education and youth media; I'm really glad I had the chance to see Deneen's performance before leaving the conference.
For those of you who missed it, here are some podcasts of her characters. Not all the performances are complete, but they'll give you a feel for what she did on stage at NECC. Special thanks to Deneen for letting me record them. -andy
Eddy
Maria
Joanna
The Administrator
Posted by acarvin at 7:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
NECC Takes a Soak in the Podcasting Jacuzzi
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David Warlick gets down with another podcast at the Apple Podcast Marathon |
The excitement was palpable; Dave Warlick and I recorded simultaneous podcasts as the crowd waited to go inside, talking with people and learning about their interests in podcasting. Inside the room, Barnaby Wasson led a team of Apple Distinguished Educators giving an overview of podcasting and a demo of the new iTunes. He also introduced participants to mobile podcasting, encouraging them to set up a Blogger account so they could use Audioblogger for recording podcasts from their phone. One thing he neglected to mention was the need for a Feedburner RSS feed, since Blogger's feed isn't podcast-friendly; I made a note of it during ther Q&A session and Barnaby promised to add the info to their presentation slides so participants wouldn't accidentally leave out this important, albeit technical, step in the podcasting process.
Meanwhile, there were probably at least half a dozen podcasting educators wandering the halls of the conference, posting recordings left and right. Now that I'm heading home I'll definitely check out the various feeds, including Dave's and Steve Dembo's, so I can live vicariously through their podcasts. They're both off to a great start, so I can't wait to see what else they'll be doing there.
Last but not least, here's an overly excited podcast I recorded a few moments after the Apple podcast marathon. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Celebrating a Decade of the Web in Education
Against my better judgment, I've decided not to go to bed like a good boy and I've spent the last half hour or so compressing the podcast of my panel session from the NECC conference today so I could get it online for you eager beavers to listen to in the wee hours of the morning. It's about an hour long, and features Web education luminaries Yvonne-Marie Andres, Bonnie Bracey, Dennis Harper, Patsy Wang-Iverson, Ed Gragert and David Warlick, with yours truly moderating. In the immortal words of Spalding Gray in The Killing Fields and Swimming to Cambodia, check it out, Sid. Now, where's that confounded bed? -ac
Posted by acarvin at 12:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
Podcast a Go-Go
Podcasting from the Marriott Hotel.
Posted by acarvin at 8:41 PM | TrackBack
Panel Session Under Way
My NECC session jut started. Better go moderate my rowdy guests....-andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:17 PM | TrackBack
Powerpoints From My NECC Panel
I'll be convening a panel at the NECC conference in a couple of hours; the session will bring together a group of Web pioneering educators to talk about Web-based education's past, present and future. I'll post notes about it later; in the meantime, here are the powerpoints we plan to use.
Posted by acarvin at 12:15 PM | TrackBack
Balkanized Wi-Fi at the NECC Conference
I'm pretty annoyed at the Philadelphia convention center's wireless policy. It seems that free wi-fi is available in public corridors, but not in the session rooms. When you try to go online during a session, you get a message informing vendors that it'll cost them 250 bucks a laptop to have public wifi in all meeting spaces. What a joke. Given all the sessions that NECC is finally having on blogging, podcasting, wi-fi, etc, it's an embarrassment that none of us can do this stuff in real-time in so many of the presentation rooms here, unless you're luck enough to have access to one of the few ethernet cables set up for the presenters themselves. So I'll have to step out of the session to post this message. What a pain....
Posted by acarvin at 9:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Don't Surf the Web, Serve the Web
Right now I'm sitting in on Tom March's NECC session. He's showing off some blogs created in classroom, with students having a more authentic learning experience by interacting with the online public. Quoting Al Rogers, he said, "Don't surf the Web, serve the Web." (Reminds me of Stephen Collins' old battle cry, Give Back to the Net.) Use Web tools to create student excitement alive, embracing authentic activities that can actually make a difference, like running an online news wire about child slavery or the extinction of frog species.
Tom's now showing how easy it was to buy a domain name for his son and setting up a space for him to create his own content. The site is scottyjensen.com - not sure if anything is live yet. Seems like a no, but maybe by the time you read this it'll be different.
It's a nice size crowd here - about 250 people. Not bad for a conference with more than 300 concurrent sessions over the next few days.
Posted by acarvin at 9:24 AM | TrackBack
Post-Weinberger Chaos: The Annual Stampede for Free Food
As soon as David Weinberger finished his presentation, thousands of NECC attendees streamed out the ballroom to make a run for the buffet tables set up in the reception hall. The reception took place in a long, thin corridor, creating an ugly bottleneck of tote-bag-toting educators eager to scarf down free food laid out on some sponsor's dime. Meanwhile, a large group of brass-wielding mummers performed parade music, much of which was drowned out by numbers of people calling out to friends amidst the throng of hungry teachers. Sheer chaos. Welcome to yet another NECC.
Patsy and I looked around for a moment or two and decided to bolt. I've done nine other NECC receptions: the food quality varies, but it's usually greasy, and the last thing my jet-lagged stomach needed was an overdose of fried food. So off to the train station we went to head back out to the suburbs. Hobnobbing with friends and peers could wait.
Posted by acarvin at 9:23 AM | TrackBack
Weinberger Keynote Brain Dump
The 2005 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) kicked off in Philadelphia today with an opening keynote by David Weinberger. I haven't had a chance to write an article about what he said, so he's a brain dump of all the quotes and ideas I managed to capture. -andy
"I will never live philosopher in chief down - let that never leave this room."
His presentation, entitled "The Shape of Knowledge,"
"Darn bloggers, you can't say anything."
Knowledge is "in pretty rocky shape." He talked about Dan Rather's fall from grace; unfortunately the media portrays it as the result of a "blogger hit squad," he said the issue was that today's media doesn't have the authority it once did. "When the authorities don't even know they've lost authority, that's funny - that's comedy!"
Jon Stewart: "He's the only guy on TV capable of blurting out the truth."
Wikipedia: In a couple of hundred years, people will point to wikipedia as an "epochal event." If you want to understand what the Internet can be, you should point to Wikipedia. "By all rights it should be the world's biggest crap magnet.... But in fact, Jimbo Wales has done something remarkable."
The Greek agora: it's where affairs of state were decided. "that's where knowledge got started."
There's only one thing we can really know: I think, therefore I am. Descartes. A single sentence that even God couldn't fool with it.
Four aspects of knowledge. Two of them mirror the nature of reality, while the other measure the nature of political reality.
We assume there's onlyone knowledge we share. On reality, one knowledge.
Knowledge is neatly organized, like the way we organize things like laundry. Putting it in piles of things that make sense to us.
One of the consequences of this, is as with physical things, we assume that in a perfect knowledge structure that everything will have its place.
Because we doing these knowledge structures, we need experts to do it. "We need experts - it's tough to do this."
The experts are going to have a lot of power who help us what's the right knowledge, what's the best knowledge.
Dewey: creating a map of knowledge like a map of the local landscape. This ultra rationalism of his forces some constraints: English is put somewhere else than Latin or German or Portuguese or Ural-Altaic or Dravidian, while southeast Asian languages "don't even get an integer."
Religion: 88 dewey decimals assigned to Christianity, jews get one, Buddhists and muslims one, etc.
The point is, is that this is NOT a solvable problem. There is not one world so there is not one knowledge.
But digitizing changes everything a whole bunch.
First order: organizing physical things themselves, like photo archives with pencil metadata written on back
Second order: physically separating metadata from the physical objects themselves, like a card catalog representing the knowledge of books
Third order: everything is digital, both objects and metadata. So what can you do now?
Photographic equipment: One thing usually goes into one pile; now you can sort digital cameras in as many places on an e-commerce website as you want.
Messiness is a virtue: hyperlinks can be as messy as you want. If you can't even count them or follow them all, then you've succeeded.
Unknown order. Most of Macy's is noise: stuff that doesn't fit you. Imagine getting a wheelbarrow that pulls out everything you can use, you've got your own personal store. The owner of info no longer owns the organization of information.
Go to a website shopping for digital cameras and sort the search based on your parameters, not theirs. That's an enormous release of power, a transfer of power.
Users are contributors. Social labeling: allowing the public to contribute meaning to information, like labeling online photos
Externalized thought. Cites Andy Clark: human beings have always externalized thought, like a physicist requiring a white board in order to think. Now we're doing the same thing with google. How can you get your kids to memorize the state capitals when they can look it up easily?
If our scaffolding now is bits, what does that mean?
Wikipedia: wiki is not paper. It's obvious, but it's a good thing to keep in mind. It's size is infinite; it's not limited.
What's the size of a topic? According to Brittanica, you can only have 32 volumes of knowledge, not 33 - that'd break your back. Artificial constraints to what is considered shared knowledge.
Snip the paper chain, the connection to reality, and build an encyclopedia out of bits, and watch what happens. You get entries like Deep Fried Mars Bar and the Heavy Metal Umlaut. These are somewhat frivolous, perhaps, but we know the size of these topics, and shows what matters to us as a culture, as humans and individuals. This is much closer to the passion of knowledge than what brittanica is.
Linnaeus library: you had to physically have the species to make it official. It's a map of all species. Linnaeus created a stack of 3x5 cards, laid them out, then made physical maps of them. This makes it tempting to lump things in one category to make life easier.
We have a container model of the mind. It's an insane idea. We're doing an internal representation of the world based on what we can store in our heads, or in a book, but they're both finite.
He then shows Doc Searls' blog: one of 11 million known and tracked blogs, though I'd guess there are at least double that. Shows his blogroll - all the links he shows to others. Lots of entries, lots of links. Blogs get represented as people writing publicly; but they're really people in conversations linking to each other. Goes against commercial website philosophy of not linking to outside sources. When you put it all together you get a stinkin' pile of generosity.
The NY Times: lots of news, lots of links. Except all but for point internally, the rest point to ads. And they have the nerve to call the blogosphere an echo chamber.
Why should you believe Doc Searls? You shouldn't necessarily, but you should believe the world he lives in more than the NY Times' world.
Objectivity: the world that is
Subjectivity: the world that matters
Multisubjectivity: it's not just lots of viewpoints; it's that you get viewpoints in conversation with each other.
If you want to learn about open source, you won't find it in Brittanica; instead, go to Doc's site and follow the links. Go to technorati and see what bloggers are saying. An endless set of links of people conversing with each other. And with all of those people, you'll get a better sense of what the truth is than reading a single source.
Multi-dispute-ism: when you get into an argument in public, you get hyper rational and try to tear the other person a new one, getting them to admit they're wrong and you're right. On the Web, it's more typical you get a dialogue. It's a big web - there's lots of room to disagree and move on. The conversation is never going to be resolved.
When you want a beer, you don't look for a perfect beer, just a good one. With information gatekeepers, they want knowledge to be perfect, rather than just good enough. With good enough, we barely need gatekeepers. It's pragmatic: we want the beer. "Pragmatic, local and damn refreshing."
Knowledge in the age of connected abundance. The solution to the over-abundance of information is more information. Connected abundance. Should we shove content into our kids' heads? Should we test them as individuals even though they learn socially? Should we imply ambiguity is a failure? Should we insist on being right?
Knowledge is an unending conversation. I mean this absolutely literally. It's not content that we all decide on. It's the engagement in the conversation. So we need to understand the context of knowledge - it depends on the discipline. We need to learn how to listen, seek ambiguity. If they're being too precise, we need to muddy the waters. And we need to love the difference in things.
Conversation, by its very nature, is a paradox. We base differences on identifying what's common. The simple act of a conversation is miraculous.
Posted by acarvin at 9:21 AM | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
Waiting for Weinberger
Podcast from the NECC conference waiting for David Weinberger to begin his keynote. For some bizarre reason, the free wifi at the conference center works everywhere except here in the main ballroom. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:49 PM | TrackBack
Let's Get a Cheese Steak
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Video of Jim's Cheese Steak shop in South Philadelphia, taken during the June 2005 NECC conference. |
Posted by acarvin at 3:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Jamie Reinsch Learns About Podcasting
Here's a short, incoherent podcast from my mobile phone as I show Jamie Reinsch how to podcast. I'm still jetlagged, so cut me some slack, folks... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:16 PM | TrackBack
In Philly for NECC
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Patsy Wang-Iverson hard at work at Research for Better Schools |
Right now I'm over at Research for Better Schools working out of Patsy Wang-Iverson's office; we'll head over to the conference center in just a few minutes to register and get our badges and tote bags. Later this afternoon, there will be a reception for international visitors and a first-timers orientation (this is my 10th NECC, so I'll pass on that one). David Weinberger is doing the opening keynote, which will be quite refreshing for NECC, and then an opening reception. I'm moderating a panel session tomorrow called Celebrating a Decade of the Web in Education; then on Wednesday I'll get to head home, by way of meetings in New York. Can't wait to sleep in my own bed again.... -ac
Posted by acarvin at 10:25 AM | TrackBack
June 26, 2005
Mission Street Drummers
Podcast of a group of drummers performing at the corner of Mission and 16th in San Francisco. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 4:23 PM | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
Catching a Train in the Seoul Subway
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Video clip of what it's like to transfer between trains on Seoul's subway system. |
Posted by acarvin at 11:52 PM | TrackBack
Royal Gate Ceremony at Gyeongbokgung Palace
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Video clip of the opening of the royal gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace. |
Posted by acarvin at 11:49 PM | TrackBack
Gyeongbokgung Palace
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Video clip of Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, South Korea. |
Posted by acarvin at 11:47 PM | TrackBack
Off to the Royal Palaces
Podcasting from Teheran Road in Seoul on my way to the royal palaces.
Posted by acarvin at 11:36 PM | TrackBack
Karen Banks' Conference Presentation
I've just uploaded a recording of Karen Banks' presentation at the ITU conference in Seoul, during the last session of the event. The recording is about 15 minutes long, and is available in mp3 and ogg formats. The recording is a little rough for the first minute but it smooths out after that. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:34 AM | TrackBack
A Failed Quest for Igloo Fusion Dog Mania
I just returned to my hotel in Seoul after a long, futile quest for Igloo Fusion Dog Mania. What is Igloo Fusion Dog Mania, you may ask? According to my guide book, it's a hip cafe in Seoul's Apgujeong neighborhood famous for its 30+ resident dogs. In a country infamous for serving dog as a meal, here you can have dogs with your meal. Entering the cafe, a pack of dogs greets patrons, hanging out with them as they eat - particularly patrons who bring their own dogs to hang out with them. And along with the food they serve for people, the cafe also serves cute little bistro food for your pup.
Needless to say, Igloo Fusion Dog Mania had "video blog" written all over it, so I spent around 90 minutes weaving up and down the hilly streets of Apgujeong, trying to find the place. I stopped at several other cafes to ask for directions, but people either didn't know English or didn't want to tell me (I suppose it was bad form of me to ask about one of their competitors).
Finally, I found a pair of places that I figured would know: a pet store and a dog snack bar. The pet store, a little boutique place featuring some of the cutest ewok-like puppies I've ever seen, was of no assistance - no one spoke English. They seemed to recognize the name Igloo Fusion Dog Mania, but couldn't communicate where it was. So I went next store to the dog snack bar, which looked like a mom n' pop bakery with rows of doggy snacks lined behind the glass counters. Fortunately, the woman there spoke a small amount of English. But her answer, "Igloo Fusion far gone," caused my heart to sink. She said the cafe had moved far out of the neighborhood, and she didn't know where it was now. I also sensed she was said about the move - it was probably bad for her business as well.
So after an hour and a half of huffing it around Apgujeong, I turned around and gave up. Listen to my disappointment in this podcast I recorded while leaving the neighborhood. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:19 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 23, 2005
Three Billion People, Three Million Villages
Professor Larry Press of Cal State University is giving a presentation right now about international benchmarks for bridging the digital divide. Based on his research, he's concluded that bridging the digital divide internationally will require bringing broadband Internet access to approximately three billion people residing in three million rural villages. Takes your breath away, doesn't it? -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:35 PM | TrackBack
UNITeS: Tech Volunteers for Global Development
Here at the WSIS Thematic Meeting in Seoul, Rita Tsering of the UN Information Technology Service (UNITeS) gave a presentation about the program's volunteer work around the world. I recorded a podcast of her presentation. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:34 PM | TrackBack
Internet Access at Libraries Better Than Ever - But Often Rationed
I'm quoted today in a new AP wire story about the American Library Association's latest survey on Internet access in libraries. Here's a clip. -andy
Virtually every U.S. public library now offers free Internet access but most ration it, inhibiting the ability of lower-income families to benefit from the Information Age. Libraries in Fresno County, Calif., impose a half-hour limit during peak periods, but one branch reported that patrons needed two hours or more of computer time just to fill out online job applications for a new Home Depot store. Typically, two to seven people are waiting for a computer to become free at the main library....In a study released Thursday, the American Library Association said 99.6 percent of libraries are now connected to Internet, with all but a handful offering access to the public. That compares with 20.9 percent in 1994 when the study was first conducted.... For the first time, libraries were asked about their ability to meet demand. Seventy percent of libraries said there aren't enough computer terminals during peak periods, while another 16 percent said there's always a shortage. Shortages are most common in high-poverty and urban areas, the study found....
"While most of America's middle class has Internet access at home, there's still a digital divide among low-income citizens, people with limited education, ethnic minorities and other groups," said Andy Carvin, an expert in improving access to technology and the Internet. Carvin is particularly concerned about lines and time limits, saying it's not always reasonable to simply ask patrons to come back. "For students, they have a limited turnaround time to conduct research or do homework," Carvin said. "For many low-income residents working multiple jobs just to make ends meet, they lack the flexibility to come during low-use hours."
Posted by acarvin at 8:35 PM | TrackBack
Pour Me Some More Coffee....
It's 4:30pm here in Seoul, and we're just wrapping up our afternoon coffee break. I needed to have two stiff cups of java just to avoid an embarassing series of yawns back in the conference room; a 13-hour timezone shift can be really tough on the body, particularly during the first day.
It's been a jam-packed day of keynotes and panels, with more speeches in one day than I hear in some entire conferences. Lunch was served in a grand ballroom a few floors down from the plenary hall; I enjoyed a random assortment of sushis and pickled vegetables while chatting with Robert Sagun from the WSIS Youth Caucus, Cosmas Zavazava of the ITU and Rita Tsering from UN Volunteers.
Right now, Ahmad Farshid Ghyasi of UNDP Afghanistan is talking about ICT initiatives in his country. We'll also hear from speakers from Bulgaria, Burundi, Korea and Nepal in this session. I may try to record a few more sessions, but right now I have a backlog of recordings made during the morning session that I'll have to edit and post later. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 3:29 AM | TrackBack
Opening Remarks from the Seoul ITU Conference
Here's a podcast of Korean ICT Vice Minister Roh and Tim Kelly of the ITU giving their opening remarks at the conference. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:01 AM | TrackBack
Civil Society, Trust & Bridging the Digital Divide
Here's a podcast of my presentation at the Seoul ITU conference, entitled Civil Society, Trust & Bridging the Digital Divide. It's about 15 minutes long. For those who would prefer to see my presentation, here's the powerpoint presentation. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:56 AM | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
Getting Ready to Start the Conference
It's just before 9:30am here in Seoul, and we're about to start the conference. The conference is at the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel; we're sharing space with government ministers from North and South Korea, who are having negotiations two floors directly below us. There is a lot of security here because of the negotations; we must have passed 200 policemen as we drove uphill to the hotel. There's also lots of media present; I saw CNN and BBC crews wandering around downstairs. Maybe they'll accidentally wander into my session and give us some free air time. :-) -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:22 PM | TrackBack
Exhausted in Seoul
It's 8:15pm in Seoul right now; I've been awake for 26 hours straight now and I'm totally exhausted. My flight into Seoul arrived about 45 minutes late; to make matters worse, I spent nearly an hour in line for immigrations and custom, then another two hours caught in traffic trying to get into the city. This is by far the worst long-haul commute I've done. In 12 hours I need to be back down in the lobby to get a ride to the conference, and I'll be one of the first speakers. I better get some rest. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:17 AM | TrackBack
Dune Racers of the Empty Quarter
Since I had more than 14 hours to kill on my flight to Seoul today I managed to put together a video of my sand dune adventure in the United Arab Emirates last month. Click on either the high-speed or low-speed versions below. -andy
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Dune Racers of the Empty Quarter: |
Posted by acarvin at 7:08 AM | TrackBack
Podcasting at 40,000 Feet Over the Canadian Arctic
I recorded this podcast while flying 40,000 feet over the Canadian Arctic during my 14-hour, 7,000 mile flight from Atlanta to Seoul. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:57 AM | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
Off to Korea
A brief podcast from Atlanta International Airport waiting for my 14-hour flight to South Korea to take off. I'll be going to Seoul for an ITU digital divide conference. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:49 PM | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Apparently I'm More Like Liam Neeson Than I Realized
Susanne just sent me a link from one of my favorite blogs, Dienekes' Anthropology Blog, which I must have missed in my recent travels. It's the Star Wars Personality Test, a hilarious spoof on online personality tests. As the Star Wars theme plays in the background, you're asked questions like "If you had to kill a Star Trek fan, what method would you use?" "What is your relationship with your father?" and "How hairy are you?"
As it turns out, both Susanne and I had the same results (a bit puzzling in one aspect, as I am hairy and she is not). Both of us were associated with Qui-Gon Jinn, Liam Neeson's Jedi character. While I thoroughly approved of the description of this personality type, it's admittedly a buzz kill to realize that you're being compared to a character that only appeared in The Phantom Menace. So it goes, I guess... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:25 PM | TrackBack
June 19, 2005
Review: My New Olympus WS-200S Digital Voice Recorder
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The WS-200S fits easily in your hand. |
Much better than the iTalk recorder I use on my iPod, which records at a meagre bit rate of 8000 bits, the WS-200S records at a solid 44,100 bits, perfectly suitable for high-quality voice recording. While it won't let you reproduce CD quality music, it's ideal for almost any other recording scenario using voice or on-the-street ambient sounds. As an example, I recorded this podcast a few minutes ago.
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It's a very small device -- almost too small. |
The device's simple button set-up allows me to play, record, pause, rewind and fast forward easily; you can also tap the play button extra times to slow down or speed up the playback without altering pitch, ideal for transcribing interviews. The only problem with the buttons is that the recorder is so small, it takes some practice hitting the right buttons.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the device is its self-contained USB key. Rather than having to carry around a cable to plug it into your computer, you simply put it apart, exposing the USB key on the inside. Then you just stick it in your computer and upload your recordings.
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The WS-200S plugs right into my laptop with its self-contained USB key. |
So my first impression of the WS-200S is that it's a really handy, easy-to-use recorder with decent audio quality -- well worth the $100 I paid for it.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:03 PM | TrackBack
Fireworks at Jacobs Field
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Video clip of fireworks at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. |
Posted by acarvin at 3:49 PM | TrackBack
The Weirdest Thing I Saw in Cleveland
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Video clip of mascots tussling to Black Sabbath's Iron Man at last night's Cleveland Indians game. |
Posted by acarvin at 3:46 PM | TrackBack
Hey Beer Man
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Video clip of a beer man at last night's Cleveland Indians game. |
Posted by acarvin at 3:41 PM | TrackBack
June 18, 2005
Seventh Inning Stretchcast
Podcasting from the Cleveland Indians game after the CTCNet conference.
Posted by acarvin at 9:01 PM | TrackBack
Podcast Demo from CTCNet
Right now I'm hanging out at the CTCNet conference demonstrating how to make a podcast with a mobile phone. Here's the result.
Posted by acarvin at 5:09 PM | TrackBack
Saturday at CTCNet
Today's been a busy day here at the CTCNet conference; I began the morning by hosting a workshop about the Digital Divide Network website. I did the session in the computer lab, which meant all the attendees got to play around with the website using the laptops available there. It was fun talking about various website features, such as blogs and online communities, as participants would spontaneously post new blog entries or start new communities. They asked lots of good questions, and even managed to catch a few minor bugs in the site.
After the session, I went back to work with my colleagues from IDRC whom we've partnered with to write a book about the telecentre movement. We spent the time finishing a storyboard of the book, complete with fake chapters, fake quotes and fake pictures (well, the pictures were real - they just weren't the ones we'd actually use in the book).
We broke from our meetings for a couple of hours so I could attend the CTCNet lunch banquet. It was a really nice banquet; I sat with a group of activists from the faith-based technology organization TechMission, talking about how faith-based groups might play a role in getting the US government more engaged in the World Summit on the Information Society. During the banquet ceremonies, Nettrice Gaskins played a short video produced by a student in California in which he interviewed his peers about leadership and what it meant to them. The local member of Congress also spoke; unfortunately I didn't catch her name and it wasn't listed in the program, but I will have to track her down, because she was the best political speaker I've seen at CTCNet in the last five years. She talked about how she was one of the first members of Congress to start using a Blackberry; she'd prefer to use email as the primary tool to engage her constituents, but there's such a large digital divide here in Cleveland she still has to spend $80,000 each time she sends a newsletter to her entire district.
Following her speech, there was a touching memorial video about the life of community media pioneer Dirk Koning. Dirk, who died unexpectedly earlier this year, founded the Grand Rapids Community Media Center, one of the most cutting edge public media facilities in the country. His death has been a tragic loss to the movement, so the memorial was a fitting tribute to him.
Unfortunately, I had to leave the banquet at that point for yet another meeting with the IDRC team. Once again, though, it was very productive, so by the time we wrapped up around 4pm we are all in a very good mood.
Now, it's just before 4:30pm, and I'm sitting in the CTCNet annual meeting. In a few minutes we'll have informal "birds of a feather" meetings on a variety of topics; I'll host a meetup for DDN members during the session.... -andy
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Podcast: Youth Media in Washington DC
Last night I recorded a podcast with Steve Berry of the Capitol Hill Computer Corner in Washington DC, where he talked about some of the cool youth media initiatives and he and his colleagues have developed. Check it out. -andy
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June 17, 2005
Cleveland's Digital Vision
The 14th annual CTCNet kicked off with a keynote speech from Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, chief information officer of the city of Cleveland. Mayberry-Stewart noted that Cleveland faces enormous challenges: it ranks #1 in poverty among America's big cities, and its high school graduation rate is only 47 percent - amazingly, twice better what it was two years ago.
However, 70% of high-paying jobs to be created in northeast Ohio are expected to be in information technology. "You will no be able to live or breathe without having to interact with technology," she said.
"It's an economic development engine," Mayberry-Stewart continued. "When we're looking at companies (to relocate to Cleveland), we need to be able to show that our workforce is able to stack up to any other city that we would be competing with."
She noted that Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell has stated her vision is to "develop a growing online community that bridges the digital divide with access for all Cleveland." The city is developing a tiered approach to improving digital literacy in the city, involving both the private sector and civil society. "It's really a partnership of the public and the private coming together," she said. "It also means we have to make significant capital investments."
When she first got to Cleveland, about 317 of 10,000 city workers were using email. "Technology allows you to communicate and connect. So we immediately started a project to train employees on basic computer proficiency skills." Now there are over 3,000 city workers using email.
"When we think of our communities, our employees are our communities. So we need to think about working in-house as well as working outside."
"We want to make sure that we have technology for everyone - outside city hall and inside. The challenge there is that we have a very mobile workforce, such as building inspectors who need to use handheld devices.... So it should be anyone, anywhere for any thing. Fifty buildings are being converted into voice over IP.
But bridging the digital divide in Cleveland is no easy task. "If you're the #1 poverty city, paying for DSL or a cable modem can be an expensive proposition," she noted.
"There are a lot of opportunities to quickly build out technologies so you can get them out to the community. We're laying fiber... We want to make sure this will be a smart building, a smart neighborhood.... So that allows us to get our tentacles out into the community and close the gap that is the digital divide."
Cleveland's CTC strategy is to focus on high-impact initiatives, ensuring collaboration with multi-sector partners. "In order to get anything done, it takes partnerships." They pay particular attention to digital literacy in low-income households, creating a program "that engages the whole community." They hope to get 30,000 low-income households trained over the next five years, using a city-wide digital literacy certification standard, the IC3 standard. The city hopes to have at least one CTC in each of the city's 21 wards.
Mayberry-Stewart ended her presentation by reading a proclamation from Mayor Campbell declaring today as Cleveland Digital Literacy Day.
Posted by acarvin at 9:53 AM | TrackBack
June 16, 2005
Evening CTC Tour
Tonight at the CTCNet conference, I had a chance to tour two local community technology centers. Our first visit was to the Community Training & Technology Center (CTTC), run by the Cleveland Housing Network. The center focuses on improving local residents' financial literacy skills and prepare them for home ownership. Nearly 600 residents have taken a computer skills course there aimed to create a "culture of use" among novice users. They also have the opportunity to go through home ownership counseling and training, during which they learn how to avoid predatory lending practices and other potential hazards of the home buying process. Others come to the center for money management training and free tax preparation. They're also building affordable housing for chronically homeless families who enroll in their training programs.
We continued our tour, passing through numerous neighborhoods in which nearly all the buildings and homes were boarded up. Some showed no signs of development, while others clearly were being restored for the housing market. Eventually, we reached ASC3, the Ashbury Senior Computer Community Center. Wanda Davis, ASC3's executive director, and their resident VISTA volunteer introduced us to the facility. In one room, a group of senior citizens were practicing basic Internet skills, many of them working in pairs and assisting each other. We spent much of the time hanging out in the adjacent lab, enjoying some refreshments and talking about the challenges and opportunities for introducing Internet skills to seniors. The center has graduated around 200 inner city residents, the majority of whom are local elderly.
Here's a video clip of Want Davis talking about working at the CTC. I'll try to post more clips later but I have to go host a happy hour now. :-) -andy
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Cingular to FAA: Tap, Not Talk
Mobile phone provider Cingular has taken an unusual stand on the question of whether airline passengers should be able to use their phones on planes. In what might be considered a counter-intuitive move, Cingular submitted a letter to the FAA in which they opposed the relaxation of rules to allow people to talk on mobile phones while flying.
"Cingular will encourage passengers to 'tap, not talk' — that is, to use discreet services such as text messaging and e-mail as opposed to voice communications in flight," Cingular wrote.
As someone who is flying just over 18,000 miles in the next two weeks, I just wanted to give Cingular a round of applause. While I would absolutely love to have wi-fi Internet access on flights, the thought of dozens of passengers yakking on their phones for hours on end horrifies me to no end. I am a firm believer of the Amtrak "quiet car" model, in which you can seek refuge from all the mobile chatter while still getting your work done. Unfortunately, planes aren't big enough or compartmentalized enough to allow for "quiet cabins," if you will. Then again, maybe we could add another section to the cabin, along with first class, business class and economy class: perhaps we could call it Shut-the-Hell-Up-and-Let-Me-Work/Read/Sleep/Watch-TV-in-Silence Class. I'd pay a few extra bucks or throw away gobs of frequent flier miles to sit in that compartment.
Maybe I should send a letter to the FAA as well.... -andy
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Arrival in Cleveland, Surrounded by Medicos
It's just after 2pm and I've been in Cleveland for a couple of hours. I tried checking into my hotel just after noon but they said rooms wouldn't be ready until 3pm. So I left my bags and walked a few blocks to the main conference hotel. It turns out that this year's CTCNet conference is taking place in the heart of Cleveland's medical establishment; we're surrounded by large industrial buildings spread out over entire city blocks touting a range of medical services, from open heart surgery to oncology. I suppose it's not a bad idea to have a big conference with some doctors nearby; at my last conference in Dubai, one of the attendees rolled out of his chair and dropped dead of a heart attack. It took at least 30 minutes for paramedics to show up; here, at least, if I get a thrombo or at least a really bad splinter they just have to drag me across the street. I feel safer already. :-)
It's pretty quiet here at the moment; I'm in a computer lab with Tony Streit of YouthLearn next to me, checking email and enjoying the solitude. Some attendees are in pre-conference workshops, but most people are still en route to the conference. Hopefully I'll be able to check in within the hour or so, then head back over here to participate in a couple of site visits of local community techonology centers before hosting an informal happy hour for DDN members at the hotel bar.... -andy
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June 15, 2005
Flickr Photo Stream from CTCNet
Yesterday I created a news digest of blogs covering this week's CTCNet conference. Later that same day, Marnie Webb posted a blog entry wondering if I'd do the same for users of the Flickr photo portal. Here's your answer, Marnie. :-)
I've now added a Flickr photo gallery to the digest. As a test I've uploaded two pics from last year's conference, one of Max Gail and the other of Shireen Mitchell. At the time of writing this, Max's picture was displaying just fine, though Shireen's pic hasn't come through yet. Hopefully it'll appear soon.
The photo stream uses the same principle as the blog digest: I'm using RSSDigest to create the digest, but instead of using Technorati to create the necessary RSS feed, I'm using an RSS feed from Flickr showing all photos that have been tagged with the word CTCNet. RSSDigest then takes the feed and converts it into a java script that's viewable on any website.
For those of you who still don't know what RSS is, I beg you to read my essay What's RSS and Why Should I Care About It?. Hopefully that will shed light on why RSS is such a killer, killer app... -andy
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Off to Cleveland - Then Seoul, Then Philly, Then NYC...
Tomorrow morning, I'll be off to the airport to fly to Cleveland for the CTCNet conference. It's perhaps the best annual conference in the US for community technology activists working to bridge the digital divide. I'll be speaking about the Digital Divide Network and the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), taking place this November in Tunis. I also plan to blog, podcast and video blog from the event, time permitting, so stay tuned for lots of posts from the conference.
After the conference, I fly home to Boston for about 36 hours before boarding yet another plane bound for Seoul, South Korea. I'll spend about 72 hours in South Korea at an ITU forum on multi-stakeholder partnerships to bridge the digital divide (ie, what can we do to get the private sector, governments and civil society to work together on digital divide issues). I'll be giving a keynote on the opening day of the conference, then will chair a session on the second day. I should have some free time on Saturday, June 25 before heading to the airport that night; I may try to do a morning tour of the DMZ or visit some of the old royal palaces.
Departing Seoul, I fly back by way of Tokyo, San Francisco and Atlanta, finally reaching Philadelphia on Sunday, June 26. I'll be in Philly for the National Education Computing Conference (NECC). This will be my 10th NECC; I'll be convening a panel called Celebrating a Decade of the Web in Education. The panel includes a group of pioneering educators who have developed cutting edge activities using the Web. Then on Wednesday morning, I catch a train to NYC for a meeting a the Ford Foundation before heading home to Boston that afternoon. Total miles: approximately 18,500. Thank goodness for frequent flier programs.
If you'd like to visualize the distances traveled, be sure to visit Where in the World is Andy?, which plots my travels on a world map. -andy
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June 14, 2005
CTCNet Conference News Digest
For those of you interested in this week's CTCNet conference in Cleveland, I've just set up a news digest of blogs covering the event. CTCNet's conference is perhaps the biggest annual digital divide conference in the US.
The news digest is utilizing an RSS feed generated by the blog search engine Technorati; the RSS feed displays all known blogs with the word CTCNet in it. To display the feed on this page, I'm using a free RSS tool called RSSDigest. It creates a java script that you can put on a Web page; the script then generates the digest for you automatically.
For more information about RSS and how it's used to collect content from various websites, please visit my article What's RSS and Why Should I Care About It?. -andy
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June 13, 2005
Dubai Creek: Day & Night
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Dubai Creek: Day & Night |
The video, Dubai Creek: Day & Night, is four and a half minutes long, about the length of a crossing on a water taxi. The video offers a peek at life along the Creek during a daytime crossing from Bur Dubai to Deira, as well as a nighttime one in the opposite direction. Rather than narrating the video, I added occasional subtitles to supply additional information about the Creek and the abra water taxis. All visuals and audio were captured by me on location. (Look out for a cameo by me and Ivar Tallo of the Estonian E-Governance Academy near the end of the video.)
Please feel free to share this video; I'm releasing it on a Creative Commons Noncommercial, Attribution, Share-Alike license.
Production Notes:
The clips shown in this video were recorded in May 2005 during my second trip to Dubai. All clips were shot on a Konica Minolta A-200 8.0 megapixel digital camera. They were edited on a Mac G4 Powerbook laptop running Final Cut Pro HD, then exported to two Quicktime files, one for broadband viewing and one for low-speed Internet connections. Total editing time, including exporting, took approximately three hours.
Posted by acarvin at 6:47 PM | TrackBack
Nearly 100 Journalists Arrested in Nepal Protest
The Associated Press reported this morning that nearly 100 Nepalese journalists have been arrested in a protest against King Gyanendra. The king seized absolute control of the country in February in response to the ongoing Maoist rebellion, firing the government, curtailing civil liberties and suspending freedom of the press. When local journalists marched in protest today, they were manhandled by police and arrested.
It's such a tragedy that such a beautiful, friendly place as Nepal has sunk so low. And it's even more of a tragedy that more people in the west don't protest what King Gyanendra has done, Emperor Palpatine-style, to his mountain kingdom. What a waste. -andy
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June 11, 2005
Our Cats Are Now Wikipedians
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I'd been browsing around Wikipedia and somehow found my way to the bicolor cat page. They showed a picture of Bill Clinton's former cat, Socks, but I was surprised by the general lack of comparison shots of other tuxedo cats, since tuxedoes are the best known bicolor cats. So I looked around on my laptop and found a good picture of Dizzy and added him to the page.
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Is this parental pride? Perhaps. Okay, sure it is. Nonetheless, it just so happens that our two cats are classics for their particular varieties. So what they heck? Might as well show them off in Wikipedia -- at least until some other proud parent puts their cats' pics in and tries to swap out our boys. That could get really ugly really fast.... -andy
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June 10, 2005
Video: Camel Riding in the Empty Quarter
Now that I've managed to solve the problem I've been having with posting video clips, I'd like to introduce a two-minute video of me riding a camel in the United Arab Emirates, on the edge of the Empty Quarter. Also featured in the video is Canadian e-government consultant Shauneen Furlong, whom I meant during my trip to the UAE. I've posted two versions of the video - one for broadband (12.8 megabyte file) and one for slower connections (1.7 megs). Enjoy! -andy
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Camel Riding in the Empty Quarter: |
Posted by acarvin at 10:38 PM | TrackBack
Steve Garfield's Art Mob Video
Video blogger Steve Garfield has just posted a cool video blog about yesterday's art mob at the ICA. I even get featured in the video offering some armchair art criticism of Andy Warhol's Nine Jackies. -andy
Technorati tag: ArtMobICA
Posted by acarvin at 9:48 PM | TrackBack
June 9, 2005
Art Mobbing the ICA
This evening, I joined a group of Harvard Berkman Bloggers at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art for an "art mob." We would all explore the ICA's current exhibit and blog, vlog and podcast our perspectives.
I arrived at the ICA to the sound of thunderous applause - not for me, but for Afro Cuban artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, who was speaking upstairs. She was standing by a piece made of nine large polaroid photos depicting two Cuban women linked by a string of beads.
Campos-Pons then presented some of her musical works, playing a song called "A Nigger Like You."
"I want to capture the Cuban meaning of nigger," she explained. "It is a word of pride, not of hate."
Wearing what might be described as a tropical prom dress, she kept a crowd of 30 or so listeners entranced by her art and music. Putting a pair of iPod buds in her ears, she began dance slowly and sing over the words of an Afro-Cuban rapper. Half a dozen people joined her for the dance, some voluntarily, some otherwise. I snapped some cameraphone pics until receiving the evil eye from an ICA employee.
Back downstairs, I began to explore the rest of the museum. Not far from the entrance, four enormous paintings of newborns greet you: The First People (I-IV), by Marlene Dumas. Described as "bulbous flailing bodies with oversized misshapen heads," Dumas' portraits beg the question of how early in life one first feels emotion.
Around the corner I spied Warhol's Nine Jackies - actually three pictures of Jackie Kennedy, each repeated three times. the pictures capture Jackie in different emotional states - happy, mournful and stressed. The repetition of the photos add to the emotional impact, the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Steve Garfield videotaped me and interviewed me for his video blog, while Mal Watlington recorded a podcast
Upstairs, Israeli artist Doron Solomons' Father, a 14-minute video, played in a dark room. In the video, we see his young daughter, watching footage of suicide bombers and the destruction they leave in their wake. Then we see the artist standing by a blue curtain as melodramatic music plays. He raises his arm and suddenly his muscles bulge thanks to some poor video effects. The message is that no matter how many Popeye-like strengths he possesses, he still can't protect his daughter from the threat of bombers.
The last installation I visited was Darren Almond's Traction. In another dark room, we see three videos. On the far right, his father talks about injuries sustained as an industrial worker. To the left, we see his mother crying silently. In the middle is a video loop of tractors at work. About a dozen people sat in the room, riveted by the juxtaposition of the father's stories and mother's anguish.
It was a small, but fascinating exhibit, oddly reminiscent to the Sharjah Biennial. I was really glad to have attended - particularly once the group of us retreated to VinnyT's for drinks, dinner and an evening of chatting.... -andy
Technorati tag: ArtMobICA
Posted by acarvin at 10:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
ICA Podcast
A podcast from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. -andy
Technorati tag: ArtMobICA
Posted by acarvin at 7:49 PM | TrackBack
The MyPyramid.gov Saga, Continued
The Wichita Eagle has posted an update on MyPyramid.gov, which I wrote about here a couple of months ago. As you may recall, the USDA launched a new Food Pyramid website without any offline way for the public to get information about the new pyramid, such as by phone, fax or mail. The website also had accessibility problems for people with disabilities, and was English only, even though Latinos have been documented to face certain health problems because of nutrition.
In the latest twist to the story, a group of disability activists contacted the USDA and said the Food Pyramid needed to be made available in Braille. The USDA didn't have plans to do this, so the two groups partnered with each other and are now developing the idea. Meanwhile, though, the article goes on to note that major accessibility challenges remain for the disabled and other groups when it comes to accessing online government information. I even get quoted a bit in the article, which is pretty cool. So check it out when you get a chance.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:03 PM | TrackBack
June 5, 2005
Cats Love Air Conditioning
Today the temperature in Boston reached towards 90 degrees, after weeks of weather in which it rarely climbed higher than 55 degrees. Susanne and I spent part of the afternoon re-installing our air conditioner, which was much appreciated by our cat Winston. Winnie's spent the entire afternoon napping on a table five feet from the AC, getting the best seat in the house for a blast of cold air.
Posted by acarvin at 4:13 PM | TrackBack
The Roomba is Dead; Long Live the Roomba
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Our deceased Roomba, its remains guarded faithfully by Winston |
I started by placing the Roomba in the bathroom, where it went to work picking up bits of kitty litter around our cats' litter box. Then, I directed it to the bedroom, while I proceeded to clean the rest of the bathroom. The Roomba makes a bit of noise, which you soon get used to, so I quickly noticed an unexpected silence from the bedroom. Before crossing the hallway, though, I heard it restart; it must have hit a rough spot and gotten stuck for a moment. But then after a few seconds it stopped again, then started, then stopped.
Entering the bedroom, I watched in horror as the Roomba spiraled pathetically in a backwards arc, going in circles to nowhere before stopping in confusion. A moment or two later it would start again, but then return to its dreadful death spiral. I shut it off and went to the iRobot.com website to diagnose the problem. The very first entry on the troubleshooting page dealt with the issue "Roomba repeatedly starts and stops and/or spins in place" -- precisely our little robot's problem.
I spent the next hour or so going through the troubleshooting list, working out each potential problem: cleaning its sensors, using canned air to clean dust out of its wheels, unscrewing various parts to remove debris (read: prodigious amounts of cat hair). Eventually, the Roomba was quite clean, as clean as it's ever been since the day last September when we first introduced the world to our Roomba.
I then brought the Roomba back into the bedroom, placing in a spot that had been cleaned previously. There were no obstacles to get in its way, nor was there any dust. This would be a clean, smooth test run -- hopefully, at least.
The Roomba played its Simon-like song of simple tones, then began to work as usual, arcing slowly before beginning its reconaissance mission across the room. But within 30 seconds, the painful dance began yet again: the Roomba stopped, went backwards, and arced out of control before shutting down for a few moments before repeating its death spiral. There was nothing left to do except let it die with dignity. I shut it off, dusted off its top one last time, turned it upside down and removed the battery. I had pulled the plug on my one and only robot.
After a few moments of grief, the anger set in: how could a machine less than nine months old be dead? I picked up the phone and called iRobot to ask them. The person I talked to was very supportive, though; she quickly promised to send us a brand-new Roomba within three weeks. I only had to mail in the wire support frame that holds in its spinning parts as a proof of purchase; they'd then send me the wire frame back along with the new Roomba.
So now, the Roomba sits in the corner of our apartment, upside down in the most undignified fashion, lest it disembowel itself by sitting rightside-up, its innards falling out because its wire support frame is gone. If all goes well, before the end of the month we'll have a new Roomba to take its place; for now, though, we mourn and honor its faithful service, both as a cleaning assistant and as never-ending entertainment for our two cats. Oh, and we'll have to use the upright vacuum again.
The Roomba is dead; long live the Roomba. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:35 PM | TrackBack
June 4, 2005
Ethan Zuckerman and I: Long Lost Cousins?
As many of you know, I've been actively involved for the last six years in using DNA research to learn more about my genealogy. I was one of the very first customers of FamilyTreeDNA.com, one of the earliest commercial outfits to offer low-cost testing of a person's Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA to learn more about their paternal and maternal lineages respectively. Back in January 2001, US News and World Report did a cover story on my DNA being matched with a guy in Philadelphia, thanks to a Y chromosome test. There was enough similarity between our DNAs to suggest that we had a common ancestor within the last several hundred years.
Since then, my "extended family" of DNA cousins has grown to a pool of around 45 men, each of whom has had their Y chromosome tested and matched with mine. We even set up an email list to share genealogy info with each other. Most of the men's family origins come from eastern Europe - Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus and Russia in particular - though we have few interesting connections to families in Spain, Greece and the Isle of Rhodes.
Because DNA testing for genealogical purposes has become somewhat popular, the number of people using the same company I used has grown significantly in the last year or two. This means that it's become more common for me to get an automatically generated email from them saying that they've made another Y chromosome match between me and another guy. So far they've all been distant strangers, living in places ranging from Seattle to Denmark - until now, that is.
In one of the latest emails from FamilyTreeDNA.com, I was told that I had yet another Y chromosome match. Then I read the name, which appeared as "Ethan Zucherman." What an odd coincidence, I thought; I know a guy named Ethan Zuckerman, spelled with a CK rather than a CH. How funny would it have been if it had been the same guy?
I then looked at his contact information: his email address used the domain name ethanzuckerman.com -- spelled like my colleague Ethan Zuckerman. I couldn't believe it. Apart from the minor spelling mistake by the DNA testing company, they were one in the same. Ethan Zuckerman had been matched as one of my DNA cousins.
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Ethan Zuckerman: see the family resemblance? |
So in an absurd number of ways, I've always seen Ethan as a kindred spirit and looked up to his work as an inspiration to many of the things I'd like to accomplish myself. Needless to say, this whole DNA connection threw me for a loop, and surprised Ethan as well. Does this mean I'll be subjecting him to family barbeques the next time my relatives assemble here in suburban Boston? I think I'll spare him if he'll extend me the same courtesy. But it's certainly given a whole other subject to talk about, and has proven yet again that the world is a small place indeed. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 3, 2005
Ismail Kadare Wins First-Ever Intl Booker Prize
Albanian author Ismail Kadare has just won the first international Booker Prize for literature. The award is a spin-off of the Booker Prize awarded each year to British and Commonwealth writers.
"I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness -- armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on," he said in an AFP wire story. "My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realise that this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the arts, literature and civilisation."
I first became familiar with Kadare's work after reading his marvelous Chronicle in Stone, a semi-autobiographical account of a sensitive young boy living through the chaos and confusion of World War II. The book takes place in the southern Albanian town of Gjirokastra, one of the most fascinating places I've ever visited. A medieval town sloping down a steep mountainside, all the houses are built with the entrance on the second floor - that way you could retract a ladder and lock up the house in case it's seiged because of a blood feud.
Anyway, congratulations to Mr. Kadare for the well-deserved award.
Posted by acarvin at 10:12 AM | TrackBack
June 1, 2005
Final Night in Dubai
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An abra water taxi crosses the Creek by the dhow wharf |
Leaving the museum just before 6pm, I wandered Bur Dubai's grand souk, marveling at the golden sunlight striking the recently restored wind towers in the Bastakia district. The textile shops, which had closed for afternoon siesta, were now back in full swing, displaying huge bolts of cloth outside each window. Two cats snoozed in the shade; I went over and took a picture of them, but a few moments later one of the cats jumped up and bit the other one in a sudden rage. Apparently this souk wasn't big enough for the both of them.
Recalling that I'd seen a creek-side restaurant while taking an abra water taxi with Ivar Tallo two nights earlier, I began to explore the souk trying to find it. Just before reaching the water taxi terminal, I found the restaurant, the Bayt al Wakeel; it served Thai and Lebanese dishes and had a gorgeous view of the Creek. The hostess said I wouldn't have to reserve a table as long as I got back before 9pm, so I took her card and headed to the water taxi.
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Selling sea salt in the spice souk |
After perusing a few shops, I visited one store that had a nice selection of incense burners and spices. Realizing that I didn't know where my frankincense was back in our apartment, I decided to buy another small box of it, along with some coal chips, an incense burner and a jar of mixed peppercorns. The shop owner asked for 45 dirhams for the lot; I managed to talk him down to 30 dirhams, just under nine dollars.
I wandered through the souk heading northwest towards the far end of the Deira district, where I'd remembered there was a public library offering cheap Internet access. I soon found the library, right on the waterfront. For less than a dollar an hour, tourists could use the Internet, while UAE residents could do it for free. I only needed to use it for around 30 minutes, but at such a cheap rate, I couldn't care less about paying for the full hour.
From the library, I headed east through Deira until reaching Heritage House. This turn-of-the-century house has been restored meticulously to its original condition, giving visitors a chance to see what life in old Dubai was like. I wandered its rooms, seeing displays about where residents would host guests, cook and sleep; there was also a room dedicated to traditional children's games, with a video demonstrating how the games were played. One game featured a group of boys spinning a wooden top by wrapping it onto a leather whip and flinging it to the ground; as the top spun, they'd whip it again and again, hoping to keep the top spinning until it could cross their designated finish line.
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A group of men hang out near the gold souk |
It was now approaching 8pm; I ambled through the souks until reaching the water taxi. The sunset call to prayer was just wrapping up, and the sky was alight with bursts of orange and red, the colors unusually rich from the amount of sand particles in the air. An abra took me back to the Bur Dubai side of the Creek, using my last half dirham coin. I then walked a few blocks through the souk until reaching the restaurant, which still managed to have a few water-side tables available.
I settled in at my table, attaching my camera to my mini-tripod so I could take pictures of water taxis in the Creek. I ordered a plate of hummus and a shish tawuk platter - grilled chicken kabobs - with a bottle of water and Diet Pepsi to wash it all down.
At one point the waiter, a young Arab man, asked where I was from. When I said the US, he laughed and shook his head.
"The US... Your government.... It is such a problem now.... I am Syrian and I want to study there but I cannot go because of relations between our countries. It is very bad; I really want to go and be creative."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said sympathetically. "Hopefully things will get better sooner rather than later."
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A waiter serves guests at the Bayt Al Wakheel restaurant |
Before I could finish my pot of tea or my shisha, the waiter returned and refilled both of them. "What time is your flight?" he asked.
"It's at 1am," I replied.
"Plenty of time to relax," he said, smiling.
"Well, maybe another hour," I said.
Indeed, I managed to squeeze another hour before getting restless about heading to the airport. Meanwhile, a cameraman from the BBC's Asia Business Report was there shooting B-roll for an upcoming episode about business in Dubai. He took a few shots of me puffing my shisha and checking email on my phone; I wonder if I'll ever find out if the footage made it on air.
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By 10pm, it was time to go; I needed to be at the airport by 11am to avoid the crowds, so I paid the bill, polished off my tea and gave the shisha a final puff. Wandering the back streets of the souk in search of a taxi, the late evening call to prayer rang out in all directions. A taxi soon stopped and offered me a ride, but I waved it onward. I could wait a few minutes longer.
