Posts from — June 2003

on-line lectures. On-line recordings of lectures delivered at Columbia University's architecture school. Speakers included Alvaro Siza, Bernard Tschumi, Marshall Berman, and a number of other important architects and urbanists. [A bit more inside.] [MetaFilter]

i've always liked reading about architecture, so here this is.

RSS Kerfluffle. Dave Winer says that MoveableType's RSS support is “funky”. Aaron Swartz offers an extensive and sensible survey of the question. [Mark Bernstein]
mark asks later, 'can we please just talk about the tech' and the answer is 'no' because if it was about the tech, it would have been solved, now you are in the realm of egos and politics, best of luck.

Mac on an iPAQ.

This almost looks like an elaborate hoax, but apparently someone has figured out to get the Mac operating system to run on an iPAQ Pocket PC. Not that there's a whole lot you would actually accomplish by doing so, except to prove it could be done.
Read [Via PocketPCThoughts]

[Gizmodo]

i think this is a fake, a fake, a fake, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

Dylan Thomas – 50th Anniversary of the Poet's Death. And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Fifty years ago, Dylan Thomas – one of the greatest poets of our time – drank himself to death in New York's Hotel Chelsea at the age of 39. Swansea, his Welsh hometown, will be commemorating his life all year, culminating in a festival in the fall. [more] [MetaFilter]

Dylan Thomas is one of those quintessential poets that will be long celebrated.

On Search: The Users. Herewith Chapter Two of the search travelogue. Between late 1994 and early 1996 I was occupied full-time and then some building and running one of the first Web search engines, the long-departed Open Text Index. There weren‰??t many million-hits-a-day sites back then. When you‰??re running that kind of thing, you spend a lot of time watching your logs to figure out what your users are doing and what makes them happy. There are two lessons that loom larger than all the others put together…. [ongoing]

this is somewhat insightful, i wonder if anyone has similar insights on blogs. I know that when i analyze my logs from my blog it tends to show that most people view only the current page, unless the other pages show up on a search, and then they view a specific page.

Review of QuickTopic and Quick Doc.

Great post by Alan at cogdogblog about two useful applications (one for single-topic discussions, the other for gathering comments on documents) with very low barriers to use. I love applications like this (which the folks at the TLT Group call 'Low Threshold Applications') which have a quick pay-off for instructors and students and little or no cost to uptake. – SWL

Afterword: Looks like Alan has previously submitted an LTA to the TLT group – cf. http://tc.unl.edu/cansorge/lta/lta25.html. Any suggestions on how to get them to produce their list as an RSS feed?

[EdTechPost]

yup, yup, these are handly little tools, but they also are not the easiest to manage becuase in part, they are 'out of the package' that students used to webct or blackboard, etc. are used to using…

Joel on Software: “Here's the thing: the very best candidates have come to realize that they have a choice of where to work, and when they apply for a job, they are applying because there's something intriguing about that particular job, not because they'll take any work that comes along. And you can see it in their cover letters. For example, if I were to see something like “I'm happy where I am, but I've always wanted to move to New York and if Fog Creek is anything like you describe it on your website, it sounds like a great place” you would sound a lot more desirable than someone who writes, “You will find that I am a very hard worker.”

[Poorbuthappy Guide to Ease]

yes, well, i must admit that I've had the best luck using a slightly personalized version of a standard letter. I think that the more that you write, the less chance you actually have of attaining the position because there is more information by which to rule you out of competition.

MSNBC's Blogspotter. Here's something interesting.  MSNBC's website has a column called “Blogspotting” that talks about blogs The latest article is about the importance of Google ranking, and it mentions Denise Howell (referred to as “a conference blogging star”).  It also mentions this blog because of the nice article that Jerry Lawson wrote. 

Too bad the column doesn't have an RSS feed.

[Ernie the Attorney]

this again, is a recreation of normal reward systems found in media, it will aid in the construction and replication of hegemony throughout the blogosphere. nothing new there though.

Digital librarian position. Public-service announcement: A very nice gent at Colonial Williamsburg contacted me by email to ask if I’d be interested in this position (hope the link works! if not, surf here and hunt for the Digital Librarian listing). I can’t take it, obviously, as my time is spoken for, the next… [Caveat Lector]

this is an interesting job, i was just talking about digital history and digital humanities the other day

Hear Comes Everybloom. Did you miss Paddy Dignam's wake? Ah well, there's still time to celebrate Bloomsday — if you're in Dublin, you can (among many other delights) take a stroll across the newly-opened James Joyce Bridge. Or, if you have a spare $60,000, you could even buy your very own Ulysses first edition. As for me, I'll be hoisting a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. (And as for Paddy? — Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are. — Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow.) [MetaFilter]

damn it all, i missed bloomsday, this is the first time in 3 years. with no guiness or irish whiskey at home, it is pointless to do anything other than waive in its general direction and hope someone else drinks my share.