Territorial Bloggings

Well, today there’s been a new salvo in the ongoing Issues, Etc. cancellation controversy. Namely a more fully-worded explanation from the Executive Director of the Board for Communication Services, David Strand (aka, the guy who pulled the trigger…)

An Updated Statement on “Issues, Etc.”

A more fully fleshed out response, written by someone with some knowledge of the inner workings of things within the Purple Politburo [props to Rev. Cwirla for that term...] can be found at the Save the LCMS! blog: Obfuscation!

My own take, at least initially, is that the folks who are calling what happened “understandable,” based on the data listed in Mr. Strand’s press release, are correct, but only to a point, and even then somewhat tenuously.

Primarily, the problem with this latest statement is that it takes into account none of the ‘viral’ marketing appeal (and success) of Issues, Etc.. Issues, Etc. didn’t gain its world-wide audience by folks listening to it in real time (either on the radio or on the web). No, Issues, Etc. made its mark via podcasting-enabled time-shifting. Folks around the world would listen to the archived shows. They would download them & listen to them on their computers, Ipods/MP3 players & burn them to CD for distribution to friends & family. I know I did.

Even in light of the ‘hard data’ of ratings books, the decision was based on 3+ year old data and a hunch that nothing significant had
changed in terms of real-time listenership. Funny, but there always seemed to be enough folks listening to call in & help fill the 3 hours
every day…

Anyway, this shows why the communication arm of the Synod is having trouble – they don’t seem to “get” what the new-media landscape is all about.

And this statement is still woefully, and shamefully, inadequate.

Too bad. If they really “got it” then maybe this would’ve been avoided, and Issues, Etc.’s faithful witness would still be ringing forth.

Btw, for what is pretty much the best continuing up-to-date coverage, commentary, & comments on this whole kerfuffle, be sure to subscribe to the Weedon’s Blog feed.

-ghp

Go read this article. Really. Click the link & go read it.

I’ve read Cringely for a long time, before and after he left Infoworld, where he assumed the mantle of their industry gossip column, and took it to great heights. His book Accidental Empires is a wonderful read about the growth & emergence of the pre-dotcom Silicon Valley culture & power brokers (Gates, Jobs, McNealy, etc…).

Anyway, he’s written a gem of an interesting column this week. I work in higher-ed, and I have two elementary-ed aged kids. My parents were public school teachers. I’ve grown up immersed in the ethos that learning, both in the vocational and liberal arts senses, was a good thing. I’ve also spent my entire working life in computer technology (and most of that in higher-ed). This is why I find Cringely’s column this week to be so interesting.

I don’t know if he’s exactly right in all of the particulars, but I do think he’s right in the big-picture sense. We’re on the cusp of a huge change in what education means & how it is delivered. It may even change how I go about making a living. It depends on just how fast some of these changes take effect.

As an example, back in my first attempt at grad school (UNC-CH’s School of Information & Library Science) in 1989-90, database construction & searching was very different than searching has become. Full-text was not a viable option & was rarely available. Entire graduate-level courses were dedicated to understanding database design, query design, & how to best go about doing research for folks, because online, searchable database access ran anywhere from $10-$300+ per hour. You had to know how all the different databases were constructed & indexed, so that you could write queries that got all the necessary, relevant, & useful results without spending too much time, and thus, money. IOW, “normal folks” didn’t have access to the data repositories.

I remember thinking & wondering how much better full-text indexing & searching would be, and wondering why it didn’t seem to be more of a priority. Well, I guess it was, because now we’ve got Google & all of these huge data repositories that are full-text, cheap (if not free), and easily accessible by even the “normal folks”. Getting data is no longer the problem/bottleneck – knowing which of that data is actually information is the challenge. Not to mention how to use it.

So, if you’ve gotten down to this point, and you didn’t go and read the article/column yet, here’s a second chance – hopefully you’re intrigued enough to go read it now…

Let me know what you think.

-ghp

It’s alive… alive!

The new “old” 500mb SCSI drive has been successfully installed, replacing the dead 120MB drive (that had replaced the original 20MB disk). System 6.0.8 has been successfully installed, and my little SE is now running just as smoothly as it did on the day I got it in mid-March almost 20 years ago. Better, even, because I didn’t get it upgraded from 1mb to 4mb of RAM until Fall ’89 (at a cool $250/MB from the UNC-CH Tar Heel Bookstore!).

Also nifty to to note is that I was able to resurrect some files from an 18 disk (1.44mb format) full backup of the 20mb hard drive that I made back on 12/25/90! That is pretty darned neat. I remember how very cool & impressive I thought that 20MB hard drive was back when I got it. It was my first computer with a hard disk, and I was in heaven, because I didn’t have to worry about boot disks, system disks, data disks, and all the juggling thereof. I couldn’t imagine ever filling all that space. Even so, I was very careful about keeping everything backed up, just in case. And it only took 18 years to have such vigilance vindicated!

Now I just need to get my next project done — a “bridge” Mac of some sort, so that I can get all of my old word processing files (Mac Word 3.x, natch – I used Mac Word long before WinWord even existed, and even remember my first exposure to PC Word, when I was aghast at what a character-based piece of garbage it was…) migrated over from the SE-era floppies onto the MBP. I’m thinking something running, maybe OS 9.x. It’ll interesting, though, because my experience with MacOS jumped from 7.1 (in 1990) to 10.x (in 2002). I pretty much had no exposure to, or experience with, 7.5, 7.6, 8.x or 9.x, so whatever I decide to go with will be a learning experience.

-ghp

I get nostalgic quite easily. Always have. It’s not all that bad a thing, and probably contributed to my affinity with History & being an History major as an undergrad. That said, I do also tend to get melancholy at times, and that’s not always that good, when combined with nostalgia jags.

Anyway, of late, I’ve been getting increasingly nostalgic about computers. Someday, I’m going to attempt to do a more thorough rundown of the computers I’ve gotten, built, and/or used over the 26 years that I’ve had computers to call my own. The list of what I built & when, however, could be a bit tricky, though, as I’ve started to forget exactly what I built into the various boxes I assembled in the late ’90s.

The first computer that I really felt was mine was the Apple IIc that I got in August 1984, just as I was about to start my senior year of high school. I really, really wanted a Mac, but settled/rationalized that a IIc was OK because I could have a mouse with it, and might even be better because I could do my computer class (BASIC programming & such) homework just like at school (where Apple IIe computers were used). It wasn’t exactly what I wanted (I had bought into the Cult of Mac almost immediately upon hearing about the Mac), but I just wanted a computer with that rainbow fruit on it.

Years later, much to my chagrin, I found out that my father was surprised when my mom & I came home with the IIc instead of the Mac. He expected, and was OK with, my getting the Mac. The thing is, though, I was firmly convinced that he was dead set against the Mac, as it wasn’t as “practical” as the IIc. It wasn’t the first, and certainly not the last, time that I outmaneuvered myself!

That all said, I’m very fascinated by this Flickr photoset of someone unboxing a pristine, never-before-opened, 1988 vintage Apple IIc. Very cool. Very cool, indeed.

Now, I wouldn’t want to have that IIc, as my nostalgia doesn’t extend far enough to want to actually use one these days.

The same, however, cannot be said for the Mac SE that I got in 1988. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to be putting the final touches on refurbishing that SE, so that I can have it up & running again in time for its 20th anniversary. I’m not looking to try and get it online or anything like that (I’m not that much of a masochist, after all…), but I do want to have it working & running just like I did back in the day. I have every intention of keeping y’all updated with all the gory details…

-ghp

Some various junk & stuff…

• Archive pruning – the pruning of the Territorial Archive is done. I winnowed things down from about 950 posts to 515, and from about 600 comments down to 275. The comments were deleted as a function of the posts that I deleted. The posts were more purposeful, as I got rid of some that just didn’t make sense anymore, some that pointed to blogs that are no longer available, and others that I just didn’t think warranted keeping around for “historical” reasons. Plus, it helped make my database quite a bit smaller & more manageable…
• Tagging – all of the remaining posts are now fully tagged. It might not provide all that much actual value, but it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. And it can give a potentially interesting view of just what I’ve been writing about over the past three years.
• Blogging software – despite how much I seem to want to stop using WordPress, I just can’t seem to ever make it happen. I was even to the point where I was willing to write-off all of my old posts & not worry about trying to get them imported into a/the new blogging system. There’s a part of me that’s just tired of WordPress, and wants to try something new. That part, however, is quickly overwhelmed by the part of me that just likes to keep things simple, understandable, and useful. WordPress, for all it’s faults, is an amazing combination of easy & robust. Plus, I know it & how it works, and there’s something to be said for the comfort that comes from the inertia of the installed base. I’ve even gone ahead and installed the latest version of WordPress – 2.3. I can’t say that I won’t feel the wanderlust again anytime soon, ’cause I know that I will. I’ll check out what’s going on out there with all the other blogging/cms apps. And someday there might even be one that gets me to switch.

I was going to write more, but I think that I’ll stop there. For now.

-ghp

Well, it was a good news/bad news kinda deal…

Good news: I figured out both what was wrong with the iMac’s wireless connectivity, and how to deal with it such that I didn’t have to drill holes or take the iMac in for repairs.

Bad news: It wasn’t cost-free.

In short, the Airport (wireless) card in the iMac is dead. I tried pretty much everything I could find to try at Apple’s support site, and I couldn’t get it jolted back into working. Unfortunately, beyond RAM upgrades, the iMac isn’t really something that I want to try and crack open in order to make sure that something just didn’t come unseated. And I really didn’t want to take the time/money/risk of taking it into the Apple Store (in Chicago) in order for them to check it out. I didn’t get the AppleCare with it, and it’s been about 15 months since I got it, so it’s out of warranty.

Since the wired NIC works without a problem (heck, I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to when then Airport card died, as I haven’t even tried to use it for months…), I set out to figure out a way to see if I could leverage my existing wireless network. This, then, is where I met with some success. Apple has made it quite easy to link two (or more) Airport base stations together into an extended-range single wireless network. So, all I had to do was go out & plunk down some coin for a new Airport Extreme.

Eh, after deciding to take the plunge & get the full MacBook Pro monty, what’s another $180 in order to see my grand vision come to fruition, right? In for a penny, in for a pound!

So, I was able to set up the new, better-featured, Airport Extreme as the main base station, and I relegated the older one to be the relay station and, more importantly, the iMac’s link into the wireless network.

Everything is now working as it should — the family is getting adjusted to using the iMac, and I’ve got my MBP setup going, including having the 19″ ViewSonic LCD monitor from the now dismantled virus/malware magnet, er, Windows box running as a second display alongside the MBP. It’s pretty cool to have a 1280×1024 display to complement & expand the workspace provided by the MBP’s 1440×900 display.

All’s well that ends well, I guess…

-ghp

Yes, it’s that time of year already — Summer — time for me to not feel like blogging as much, and for me to have my annual state of angst wrt my blogging platform. It was almost exactly a year ago that I began the last excursion into exploration & evaluation…

For some reason, once again this year, I’m feeling ambivalent towards WordPress. Version 2.2 was released about a month ago, and I still haven’t upgraded. I’m feeling like my current installation (including my template/design) is overly bloated & top-heavy with cruft, in the form of too many plugins & too much stuff/junk installed. Junk that just doesn’t serve any real, functional purpose.

One thing that’s also different this year is that I’m not feeling overly attached to the 850+ posts that I currently have in the archives. Being tied to having those posts available severely restricts my options & flexibility, and I’m very much leaning towards making a clean break & starting over. Or, if I decide to stay with WordPress, at the very least going through & deleting some of the more superfluous entries, so that I’m left with a more solid & useful archive.

Right now, I’ve worked my way into a (all too common) bit of a frenzy, having installed instances of the following so that I can play around with & evaluate them:

• WordPress 2.2 – clean install
• b2evolution
• Nucleus
• Serendipity
• Movable Type 4 (beta)
• Textpattern

There are pluses & minuses to all of them, and I’m still working through in my head exactly what I want out of a blogging engine this go-around. Much of what I wrote last year will still apply (but I’ve got to go and re-read it, so that I can get an idea about what, if anything, has changed…).

[Note to TK: Don't worry, this won't have any real effect on Katie's Beer --- as long as you want to keep it like it currently is, you've got it. You won't need to worry about changing unless/until you decide you want to...]

-ghp

Soon to arrive at Schloß TB:

A brand spanking new 15″ MacBook Pro!

Side benefit #1: It’s coming with a free 4gb iPod Nano (silver, natch…)

Side benefit #2: Schloß TB will now officially be an all-Mac shop, as the orneriness & age of the last Windows box prompted this upgrade.

I’m giddy with excitement…

-ghp

Release the hounds!

Take some more pastors out of the pulpit & make them administrative investigators! (and then don’t forget to talk up the resulting “shortage”…)

Find the culprit!

A list of the Top 10 Church website designs, and nary a reference to Ablaze!?

Inconceivable!

Seriously, though, the designs of the websites might be good, but I bet the theology isn’t. I’m particularly taken aback by the 4th one down, where they profess that church should be “religion free”. What, now?

I wish this was an entry over at Horn+swoggled, rather than something I saw at Digg…

-ghp

The change in hosts is ongoing, with great progress having been made in the past 12 hours. The DNS changes have started to propagate out through the Interwebnets, and things are now live & running off of A Small Orange servers. I’ve started to see the things that still need to be tweaked & changed as a result of the move, and I’ve fixed the Feedburner info along with various other things in the setup of WordPress.

All things considered, it’s going smoother than I had expected.

More later…

-ghp