WordCamp Boston 2010
October 6, 2009
James of Boston WordPress Meetup is organizing a WordCamp, to be held in Boston early next year. WordPress is the software behind this and millions of other blogs; a WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress.
Next year is the first year for decades that I won’t be based in Massachusetts, so I’ll probably miss WordCamp Boston. In past times, I might have muttered that I’d have to miss it because of my bad luck. But it’s just as true to say that I’ll miss WordCamp Boston because I didn’t organize one earlier, despite knowing that Boston is an excellent city for a WordCamp.
Perhaps I should try to get to Boston BLOGtoberfest, the 2009 edition of which is but a few weeks away.
Those interested in WordCamp Boston might want to take the poll on when it should happen. I was hoping for Sunday February 7, the day after Unity Games XVI, but: I note that something else is happening that day; and only Saturdays are on the poll.
Thanks to Patrick Havens for the photo of WordPress schwag. Patrick took the photo at WordCamp San Francisco 2008. He made it available under Creative Commons, which seems like a WordPressian thing to do. By the way: San Francisco is the most WordCamp’d city, with a score of 4; Chicago hosted a WordCamp earlier this year, without the support of Barack Obama; Brazil also hosted one earlier this year.
Middle East: Two Perspectives
October 5, 2009
I just finished Dreamers of the Day, Mary Doria Russell’s story of a schoolteacher who visits Egypt in 1921. Agnes meets T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and others trying to define the states and borders of the Middle East after the Great War.
This isn’t a review, but it is a recommendation. Maria Doria Russell‘s prose is, as always, a pleasure to read. My main reservation about Dreamers is that I was enjoying her writing, rather than Agnes’, and the book is written in the first person.
So one perspective on the Middle East is that of Agnes/Maria. It might be more accurately called a collection of perspectives, since Lawrence and others offer Agnes their differing perspectives.
The second perspective is an Imperial History of the Middle East, in the form of a map. The map (which I found via reddit) changes over a minute and a half to reflect five thousand years of empires.
You don’t need to tell me that there are more than two perspectives on the Middle East, but most other comments would be welcome.
I like it when they scream before the cello bridge
October 2, 2009
If you knew as soon as you saw the title that this post is about the Avett Brothers, give yourself points in some music-spotting game. It’s a quote from a comment about a YouTube music video of the best kind: where the horrible sound quality doesn’t matter because of the awesome music quality.
It’s a performance of the first and title track from the new album I And Love And You. The song tells (warns?) of changes: the brothers from North Carolina plead “Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in” and announce “we are headed north… never to return.”
The album version includes an more serious unspoken warning, in that it’s piano-heavy, with no trace of banjo (as far as I could tell). I missed Scott Avett’s trademark banjo, was pleased to hear it on the album’s second track, and was disappointed not to hear much of it on the rest of the album.
Instrumentation is not the only change that comes with the new album. It’s the Avetts’ major label debut. It’s produced by Rick Rubin. Here’s PopMatters’ evaluation of the change.
Superb. I and Love and You is the Avetts’ best record yet, as Rubin has gotten hold of the Brothers at the right time, when they are peaking as songwriters and morphing into a different band, one that is realizing the limitations of their previous stage arrangement. For years, the Avett Brothers were a ramshackle trio, with Scott on banjo and kickdrum and Seth on guitar and hi-hat. The band made an impressive racket in this formation, performing blast-furnace versions of their mountain-punk rave-ups, but often the boys’ ardent vocals threatened to overwhelm the relatively thin instrumentation, and it became clear that the band needed to spread out sonically.
The band’s evolution on I and Love and You is invested heavily in the piano, around which nearly every song on the new record is based. Scott and Seth take turns on the keys, but it’s the almost-complete absence of Scott’s banjo that is most noticeable here and that long-time fans find most lamentable.
I can’t claim to be a long-time fan, having been aware of the Avett Brothers for less than a year now, I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m lamenting, but I am a little disappointed in the new album. That said, it’s very good, I’ll keep listening to it, and I hope to see the band live again.
Smarter Navigation and Closed Streets
October 1, 2009
Consider this: social media tools are making it easier for people to get around the places they live. Mashable Josh followed that assertion with “a list of ten great social media tools to help you better navigate your city.” I marked Josh’s post, thinking that I might have cause and time to go back and actually read it.
Then a real live navigation-related problem sent me back to the post and to some of the tools it lists. This Sunday should see the second open house (the first one went well, thankyouverymuch) for our condo. Said condo is about a hundred yards from the route of the 2009 Roslindale Parade. The two events are as close in terms of time as they are in terms of space, in that both are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
This presents several real-life problems. To make them concrete, let’s imagine that one of the people who would attend the open house is called Robin (a name that could indicate either a female or a male, and one with connotations of nesting).
Problem (0) is the basic navigation problem: how to get to the condo. That’s too easy to qualify as smart navigation, but I list it as the baseline navigation problem. It’s the nail for which the standard hammer used to be MapQuest. Google Maps has, I think, taken over that position; anyway, it is the first tool on Josh’s list of ten.
Problem (1) gets us into smart navigation territory. Robin, on the way to the condo for the open house, finds that some of the roads on the suggested route are closed. A smart navigation tool would tell Robin about a route available at the time – in real time, if you will. Google Maps addresses problem (1), as does Waze, the second tool on the list.
Problem (2) involves smarter navigation. Robin knows ahead of time that certain roads will be closed due to the parade, and would like to be able to print the map ahead of time. Perhaps Robin suspects that real real-time navigation is a bad idea, since it distracts attention from driving.
Perhaps Robin wants a map of the parade route. All right, perhaps I do. The parade’s web site doesn’t provide one. It provides a text description of the route. “Washington St. at Adams Park in Roslindale Village, to South St., to Belgrade Avenue, to West Roxbury Parkway, to Gottwald Rotary, to Centre St., to South St., and ending at Fallon Field.”
Is there a tool that takes text directions as input and gives a route map and directions as output? I’m not aware of one. I tried to use Google Maps to draw the route along a street map, but it kept on taking shortcuts, or going 20 miles north to a different Gottwald Rotary, or…
Then I went to the third tool on Josh’s list. He describes Wayfaring as “a great Google Maps mashup that helps users to easily create their own information maps.” I have to describe it as a service that gave me a “404 – page not found” error during signup, and then could not find a location called “boston massachusetts.”
At that point I gave up on this particular attempt to use these “smarter navigation tools.” My frustration didn’t just come from the web tools. It also came from my overlapping attempts to find out from the police the times at which the parade roads would be closed and reopened. I was transferred from the local station, to media relations, to field services, to special events (I think I have those names right) before I had the sense to give up.
I do have a couple of positive notes on which to end. First, I did get an answer to my street closing times question. I used the contact form on the Roslindale Parade website. I got a prompt response from Tom Donahue, chair of the parade committee, by good old-fashioned email. Tom expects Belgrade Avenue to be closed from about noon to about 3:30pm, by the way. The other good news is that the open house is going ahead (starting at 11:30 instead of noon).
October Poetry
October 1, 2009
Universal Adam linked to Breathing Hannah’s poetic post about October. Between them, they reminded me of Ted Hughes’ poem “October Dawn.”
A glass half full of wine left out
To the dark heaven all night, by dawn
Has dreamed a premonition
Of ice across its eye as if
The ice-age had begun to heave.
“October Dawn” may well be my favorite poem (with due respect to Hannah, Sylvia, WB, and many other poets). When I looked for it online, Google sent me to Yahoo, and to an answer to a question about the poem’s meaning. It’s a pretty good answer, I’d say, although not the answer; and the Yahoo answers page has the virtue of quoting the poem complete, albeit with line breaks messed up.
Music Blogging, Playing, etc.
October 1, 2009
I occasionally post MP3s here and elsewhere. I’m not really a music blogger. But, thanks to Box.net and to its anonymous accomplice, I felt like one recently. I received what I think is my first takedown notice.
Hence Crowded House’s lovely acoustic version of “Fall at Your Feet” can no longer be heard at my WordPlay blog. The post affected is about the Yahoo Media Player (see also this post here at Changing Way).
I don’t know who objected: Box.net didn’t specify in the email they sent. I’m sure it wasn’t Neil Finn or any other member of Crowded House, living or dead.
