reading

You are currently browsing articles tagged reading.

New Year’s Resolutions 2010

January 1, 2010 in Personal / Relationships by Ezra S F | 3 comments

My resolutions for 2009 involved reading good stuff and being more social. More or less they were successful. I read fulfilled the reading goal by October. To fulfill the social goal, I attended most of the BrunchBunch, Athens Flickr Meetups, Athens Strobist Meetups, and even lunches with coworkers. These were by and large successful.

So, in thinking about 2010, my intentions for this year are:

  1. Read 12,000 pages. Unlike last year, I am not going to restrict the type of content except to say it must be in a book. Magazines, blogs, and news do not count. If they did, then I’d make the goal in a couple months.
  2. Learn to cook 20 new dishes. Considering I don’t cook, this is by far the most ambitious resolution. I’ll need to buy a cookbook.
  3. Participate in Project 365. (tips to get started) I considered 365 Days, but I don’t think I am up to daily self portraits. This is a Flickr group where people post daily submissions for every day of the year. I’ve previously failed this one, but I made it to 99 photos. Will be interesting with just an SLR and a bad phone camera.
  4. Have fun now not later. I haven’t visited the local state parks or much in Atlanta or even taken a personal trip. I keep procrastinating expecting it to be better later, making me an exemplar of Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences. (Also Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow in NYT)

There lots of other things in the back of my mind for things I ought to accomplish this year.

  • I only went out on one date for all of 2009, which is actually more than 2007 and 2008 combined. Assuming I don’t chicken out, I may equal that in January 2010?
  • I need to cull the blog list down from 403 subscriptions to around 200.
  • No flying at all for 2009? The furthest I drove was to Panama City, FL? Obviously I should travel more.

    Weblogic Diagnostics

    August 19, 2009 in Blackboard Vista by Ezra S F | 1 comment

    I noticed one the nodes in a development cluster was down. So I started it again. The second start failed, so I ended up looking at logs to figure out why. The error in the WebCTServer.000000000.log said:

    weblogic.diagnostics.lifecycle.DiagnosticComponentLifecycleException: weblogic.store.PersistentStoreException: java.io.IOException: [Store:280036]Missing the file store file “WLS_DIAGNOSTICS000001.DAT” in the directory “$VISTAHOME/./servers/$NODENAME/data/store/diagnostics”

    So I looked to see if the file was there. It wasn’t.

    I tried touching a file at the right location and starting it. Another failed start with a new error:

    There was an error while reading from the log file.

    So I tried copying to WLS_DIAGNOSTICS000002.DAT to WLS_DIAGNOSTICS000001.DAT and starting again. This got me a successful startup. Examination of the WLS files revealed the the 0 and 1 files have updated time stamps while the 2 file hasn’t changed since the first occurance of the error.

    That suggests to me Weblogic is unaware of the 2 file and only aware of the 0 and 1 files. Weird.

    At least I tricked the software into running again.

    Some interesting discussion about these files.

    1. Apparently I could have just renamed the files. CONFIRMED
    2. The files capture JDBC diagnostic data. Maybe I need to look at the JDBC pool settings. DONE (See comment below)
    3. Apparently these files grow and add a new file when it reaches 2GB. Sounds to me like we should purge these files like we do logs. CONFIRMED
    4. There was a bug in a similar version causing these to be on by default.

    Guess that gives me some work for tomorrow.
    :(

    Stalking Students

    July 13, 2009 in Education, Privacy by Ezra S F | 2 comments

    On the BLKBRD-L email list is a discussion about proving students are cheating. Any time the topic comes up, someone says a human in a room is the only way to be sure. Naturally, someone else responds with the latest and greatest technology to detect cheating.

    In this case, Acxiom offers identity verification:

    By matching a student’s directory information (name, address, phone) to our database, we match the student to our database. The student then must answer questions to verify their identity, which may include name, address and date of birth.

    …
    The institution never releases directory information so there are no Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) violations.

    However, to complete the course work the student is forced to hand over the information to Acxiom, an unknown and potentially untrusted party. Why should students trust Acxiom when institutions cannot be trusted?

    Due to the decentralized nature of IT departments, higher education leads all industries in numbers data breach events. Acxiom’s verification capabilities were designed so that student and instructor privacy is a critical feature of our solution. Institutions never receive the data Acxiom uses in this process. They are simply made aware of the pass/fail rates.

    In other words, high education institutions cannot be trusted to handle this information. No reason was provided as to why Acxiom can be better trusted. Guess the people reading this would never check to see whether Acxiom has also had data breaches.

    This Electronic Freedom Foundation response to Acxiom’s claims their method is more secure was interesting:

    True facts about your life are, by definition, pre-compromised. If the bio question is about something already in the consumer file, arguably the best kind of question is about something that is highly unlikely to be in one’s consumer file and even useless commercially–like my pet’s name.

    Answering these kinds of questions feels like more of violation of than a preservation of privacy.

    The Bahá’í Seven

    July 11, 2009 in Religion / Baha'i Faith by Ezra S F | No comments

    In only hours the government of Iran plans to put on trial seven Bahá’í leaders for “spying for Israel, spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic and religious offenses”. Yesterday the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called for the release of these Bahá’ís. Similarly the German parlimentary groups have produced similar condemnations.

    For over 160 years Persia/Iran has not had a good relationship either Badis or Bahá’ís. Thousands have been executed for following the wrong religion.

    I was hopeful for more government pressure on Iran from many countries. Instead, we’ll rely on prayers for the well being of these poor souls.

    Worldwide Photo Walk

    June 20, 2009 in Photography by Ezra S F | 3 comments

    Flickrite Shadows I’m looking forward to this Athens part of the Worldwide Photo Walk in four weeks. I’m even more impressed it filled to the 50 person capacity. We have been having meetups for Athens Flickr users since September. I don’t think any have approached half that number. (There are only 32 members in the Flickr group.) I attribute this success to Steven Skelton’s efforts spreading the word.

    Expression Costs

    May 16, 2009 in Interweb by Ezra S F | No comments

    (This started out as a blog comment for Sania’s post Facebook Killed Your Blog. I’m posting it here first.)

    We share blogs with the whole world. So our blogs get lost in the noise, bolstering the need for a whole industry optimizing getting found in search engines. Its a concerted effort just get noticed. That’s because blog readers have to seek out blogs to follow, subscribe to the feed, and follow. Finding the best blogs to read is sometimes difficult and more from word of mouth than anything search engines provide.

    Blogs also tend to have a lot of information to digest. Social networks have just a line or two with maybe a link to more information. Blog readers typically are designed around the idea of collecting all the posts and letting the user pick which to read. Social networks typically are designed around the idea of just showing recent posts and letting the users choose how far back in time to read.

    As technologies lower the costs to express ideas (aka get easier), blogs will get left behind as they have become upside down in value. The costs of writings, reading, subscribing, and commenting on blogs are more expensive compared to micro-blogging or status updates.

    Why blog when hanging out on social networks are so much easier? Blogs can only survive as long as they have information worthy.

    Why blog when readers are no longer reading? Posting blog entries on social networks does help keep traffic levels somewhat by getting exposure.

    As bloggers providing valuable expression leave blogging, the value of blogs decrease. People will still blog. It just won’t be the popular thing to do.

    No Hiding From Blackboard

    May 6, 2009 in Blackboard Vista by Ezra S F | 2 comments

    Some former WebCT (bought by Blackboard) customers switched to ANGEL rather than move to Blackboard products. PDF Apr 14, 2009 Today, Blackboard announced it is buying ANGEL. You can run, but you cannot hide from Blackboard.

    Some light reading for you…

    1. Learning, Together ANGEL Learning and Blackboard® have decided to join forces.
    2. Blackboard Plans to Buy Another Rival, Angel Learning | Chronicle.com
    3. Why HigherEd is rejecting Blackboard … | Laura Gekeler
    4. Open Thread on Blackboard/ANGEL Merger | mfeldstein.com

    So the options left are…

    1. Blackboard-WebCT-ANGEL
    2. Moodle
    3. Desire2Learn (currently in patent troubles with Bb)
    4. Pearson eCollege
    5. Sakai

    The Twitter Timesink

    May 6, 2009 in Twitter by Ezra S F | No comments

    Glenn asked: “What is it about Twitter that makes it more of a time sink than Facebook?”

    I consider a time sink something where I invest a high value of time for boring and poor value.

    My contacts mostly duplicate in Twitter what they provide in Facebook. The time I spend reading Twitter posts I’ve already read in Facebook is a waste of my time. My Twitter contacts respond about a 1/5th as much as Facebook users (it used to be higher in Twitter). So I get more out of Facebook.

    Twitter Replies suck. The Replies system makes it look like my contacts reply much more to me than others which I find highly unlikely. More likely the Replies implementation stifles conversation by requiring either everyone to be public or to allow all the participants to follow each other for there to be one conversation. Instead its many different (sometimes hidden) duplicate conversations. Facebook comments are attached to the status update so following a conversation is significantly easier.

    Twitter Apps suck. Last Friday, I looked at Facebook Connect for AIR. My complaint about it was my interactions with Facebook would be as limited as Twitter. The promise of Twitter apps is to do more than the Twitter.com web UI provides. Many just provide easier ways to do the same thing: see your Twitter timeline. Others let you see quantification of your usage. Facebook apps by contrast provide access to content not within Facebook, so more of the web because part of my Facebook access so I can actually do more.

    Except Socialthing and Tweetdeck. They are exemplary implementations of Twitter Apps. They extend the functionality of just Twitter by itself and are primary reasons I kept at it for so long. Socialthing unofficially died a while ago and official stoppage of support was announced last week while I wasn’t using it. Tweetdeck probably will stick around for a while.

    Twitter lacks granular privacy. In Twitter, either you are private or public or ban specific users. I’m torn between public and not. So I opted for private with sneezypb where I mostly subscribe to friends. My other account, ezrasf, was where I subscribed to Blackboard community members, educational technologists, etc. Facebook could improve some in privacy as well. Compared to Twitter, Facebook makes a great attempt at granular privacy. Plurk, another microblogging / status update site, represents the privacy  Holy Grail for me. It allows for making specific posts public, private, available to groups, or individuals.

    Resolutions For 2009

    January 2, 2009 in 43things, Books / Novels / Writing, Food, Personal / Relationships by Ezra S F | 3 comments

    1. Read 10,000 pages of science, economics, health, history, or policy books. For 2008, it was read 25 books. This year, I thought to change it page-based as the previous one shied me away from larger books. Two 350 page books vs one 700 page book shouldn’t be a concern. See Reading for last and this years’ progress.
    2. Be more social. A lot of will power is required to force myself to attend social events. Over the years it has only gotten worse. Before it reaches the point of requiring professional help, I probably ought to change my habits.

    Useful resolutions to me are things I realistically can and will accomplish applying moderate effort. Making too hard of a challenge will result in giving up too quickly. Making too easy of a challenge will result in doing something I would do anyway. Last year was the first time in a really long time I even bothered other than using 43things to make some goals I rarely have met more by accident than any real intent.

    Some resolutions I would pick I already do to the extent I realistically would….

    • Take the stairs and walk more. I already do these as far down the exercise more resolution as I realistically will go.
    • Eat better. I already mostly avoid red meat and eat lots of green vegetables.
    • Spend more time with family.

    There are resolutions I would never actually keep without support from family and friends I don’t really have to keep me honest and stick to the narrow path….

    • Less fat, less sugar, no soda, no sweet tea.
    • Exercise more.
    • Finances.
    • Organization.
    • Less time spent in front of the TV or computer.
    • More blogging.
    • I already do not smoke or drink alcohol.
    • Get a Master’s Degree.

    Hmmmmmm… Resolutions are bad for your health?

    I haven’t checked my blog in a long while.

    Frustrations

    October 13, 2008 in Personal / Relationships by Ezra S F | 1 comment

    American politics frustrates me. Little of it is genuine. People are being tricked into believing obvious lies. Positions are veiled in marketing speak to make them sound better than the reality. Maybe there is an honest candidate? I just don’t have faith in the integrity in the American political system. In any case, I have already voted. I recommend that if you can, then get it done ASAP and prior to the actual election day.

    Apparently there are lots of car accidents on Election Day? I’ll hopefully be teleworking that day.

    I turned down an offer to work a web site called Real World Painting. The kid doing the web site let it get suspended (back up now). So the owner wanted my advice. He really needs the most help with search engine optimization. He’s interested in reading up on it. Anyone have suggestions?

    A friend has turned up with lymphoma. So I will probably set up a web site to accept donations to help this family with the expenses.

    Been talking with Mom about the economy. I did a quick calculation. Add $700 billion to the $10.3 trillion national debt to get $11 trillion. The employed U.S. work force is about 145,255,000. That puts the burden of this debt at 75,728.89 per worker. Add in those on employment or not in the labor force to get 234 million people. We share a $46,936.33 burden. Last I did this calculation it was only around $30 thousand.

    That is enough for now.

    « Older entries