Category Archives: GeekWorld

A Calmer Week Ahead

July 30, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer New Honey Extraction Moon

Kate and I bought a new vehicle yesterday, a Toyota Rav-4. Well, we picked out the things we wanted, left a deposit and now wait for the finding. This may not be big news in most families, but the last time we bought a new vehicle was 1999 and before that it was 1994. Until Wednesday we still had both of them. The Tundra, the 1999 purchase, fell thanks to an oil-pressure hose providing cooling to the transmission. It blew, taking with it other essential fluids, the engine and the transmission. Bad luck. The Celica motors on, at its next oil change it will hit 275,000 miles. Toyota’s last and that’s what I want, have always wanted, in a car.

Our life has coasted back to a familiar routine from the intense clay week followed by the intense family week. Both were good, positive experiences, but there are reasons these events last short periods of time and the calmer times last longer.

Got a note from Mary, safely back in Singapore, who observed that international travel was easier than intra-US. She had a variety of air-related mishaps in her two weeks plus of traveling the US by plane.

Kate and I need to spend time in our gardens, two weeks away from them at this time of year leaves weeds as happy as the plants we want 400_honey-extraction_0244 there. Also, the tomatoes have begun to ripen, peas have played out for now, though I’ll probably plant a fall crop, the beets have begun to fatten up (second planting), carrots, too. Chard and spinach look good and they, too, need replanting for fall harvest.

August will find us once again with the honey extractor set up, frames to uncap and jars to fill. Mark Odegard has begun work on the 2011 version of the Artemis Honey label. His first efforts looked good to me, but he’s a skilled professional and keeps adjusting, trying new things. We’ll try this year to uninvite the bees to the extracting party. They become a big bother, not appreciating the heist of their summer’s work. Who can blame them? Though, I should add, they put up a surplus well beyond what their winter survival requires. That’s why bee-keeping works in the first place.

GeekWorld

Ancientrails Redesign

July 26, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waning Honey Flow Moon

Mary came into town later last night after a rotten airline experience. Gee, is this something new? Today, we’ll have everyone here for at least a few hours. Diane’s plane leaves around 6:00 pm.

Redesigning Ancientrails

Below is an e-mail I sent to Nick Zdon, instructor for the History of Graphic Design Class and his response. Redesigning Ancientrails is my class project. I want a fresh look and a more cohesive idea for it. Again, any reader ideas are welcome. What do you like and what would you like to see more? What don’t you like, would you like to see less?

Nick,

I have a website, ancientrails, that I’d like to re-design. Perhaps not so much at the html level, but at the look, feel, purpose level. The html work can come later.

Not real sure how to go about this, but I imagine asking questions like: what is it? Why do I do it? Who is it for? What look best expresses answers to these and other questions?

Charles,

I think your initial questions are a great start. I hope you’ve been thinking about them. One of the most important questions to ask is what you want the website to do. Not necessarily what it says, or who you want to visit it, but rather what do you want people to do after visiting? Should they visit more than once? If so how often? How would someone find your website?

Answering these questions is the beginning of content strategy. Apart from how the site works, and actually functions, it’s important to have a cohesive idea of what it is your putting on the site and how it should be organized. Should the area of discussion be very broad, or very narrow? or broad in some topics and narrow in others? And how does that related to the people you want to communicate with and the effect you want to have on them?

GeekWorld, Travel, Weather +Climate, Writing

Ancientrails

July 16, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Full Honey Flow Moon

Talking with Mark today it occurred to me, for the first time, that part of what was going on with him, maybe a lot of it, involved repatriation. So, I looked it up on google. Turns out repatriate adjustment has many facets, most of them difficult to integrate, often leading to feelings of isolation, alienation and just plain old bewilderment. Especially when you return suddenly, as Mark did, from twenty + years abroad, the country of his birth has changed. A lot. In subtle and not so subtle ways. I’m just beginning to understand this phenomenon, but as a brother and as a student of anthropology, it fascinates me and gives me considerable pause.

Last night, during a violent thunder storm, our power went out and, presumably, our generator kicked in. But, as life goes, at 4:45 am, our alarm decided it had to begin chirping. And chirping. Not the wailing kind of all hell’s broken loose kinda noise, but a persistent annoying chirp. After muffling it and going back to sleep, Kate got up and called the company. We had to replace the back up battery in the unit’s central box. This is a twelve-volt battery with sulfuric acid like your car battery. Who knew? Anyhow the new one now rests where the faded one was and all is well with the alarm system.

My History of Graphic Design course project, redesigning Ancientrails, has got me thinking about why I do this. Do I do this for you, the reader, or for me? I have kept diaries and journals since the early 70’s. They vary in systematics and consistency although over the last 20 years I’ve kept regular journals on matters from spirituality to art history, reading the classics to daily experiences, thoughts. Ancientrails extends and continues those, which were private, so in that sense this is a public journal, but a continuation of a private one.

It is not, however, like the private one, unread. Readership varies from peaks of around 200 a day to a more average 50. There were some 1100 visits this month. A small number for most websites, infinitesimal really, but considerably more than the one who read my private journals. Having readers changes the content. I’ve made four of five gaffes that have gotten me into hot water with family, lost me a job and caused certain allies to wonder about my discretion. Each one of those events creates a certain amount of self-censorship, as does the possibility that anybody might read any of this at any time.

Ancientrails is also a document on the world wide web. That means html, tags, pictures, news, links. These features create a more accessible journal, a deeper journal with ties to other webpages and direct access to information about a topic. Not sure where all this goes quite yet. Still thinking. If you have any input, leave me a comment. Thanks.

GeekWorld

Not Too Plugged In

June 13, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Waxing Garlic Moon

A new printer, a laserjet. Cheaper to operate than the color printers, necessary for producing manuscripts. I bought one. I spent a good while setting it up with no luck on the final leg, my print command to the printer. Frustrated, I let it set for a month or so. Today I decided to go at it again.

I tried to print something. Nothing happened. I expected that. Went to the HP website and had a bad moment when I wondered if I’d bought a printer that simply couldn’t connect to a Windows 7 operating system. After a bit of stumbling around, I found that no, I had not done that and that this printer could be made to work with Windows 7. Which left me back at the original problem.

Instead of calling HP right away, I decided to give the troubleshooting guides one more try. I put in my printers product number and sure enough, there was a fix for the very problem I’d encountered. I followed the instructions to change the point and print setting (whatever that is) to disable and tried again. No joy.

Tired of the process I called HP. Surprisingly, I got through to tech support with little trouble. When the nice man from India had walked me through the process for him taking control of my computer to check the problem, he asked me, “What does the printer say right now?”

“Let me look.” I looked.

That’s odd. Doesn’t say anything. Could it be turned off? No, the on button was pushed in but it had no light. Hmmm.

Ooops. I checked the plug. Not plugged in. I’d unplugged it before I went to Nebraska a week ago today. So, I plugged it in, not saying anything to India yet.

It turned on and, sure enough, chugged to life and spit out the test matter I’d sent through it right after I ran the troubleshooter tips.

“Oh,” I said, “Gee. I didn’t have it turned on and I tried a fix from your website. Look’s like it worked.” Chagrin.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

An Intimate Relationship?

May 22, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Waning Last Frost Moon

I spent the morning convincing my computer that the new laserjet printer I purchased exists, could be a good friend, one with whom we might enter a long term relationship. Boy, was that a hard sell. Something about the printer being made before Windows 7 and the run as command. After beating about a bit, I finally got a software package (downloaded from HP) that my computer would admit into its intimate confines.

Then. I stepped in and attempted to attach the USB cable to a printer not turned on. Didn’t work. I’d stretched the power cord when getting to the USB port. Took me three tries to realize what I had done. Finished just before the thunder made it. I turn all computers off during thunder storms. I have too much invested in my electronics. Not the computers so much as the external drives.

During our nap Kate and I had to get up to go down in the basement. Another tornado headed north of Minneapolis, headed north and east. Which is where we are. After forty-five minutes sitting on a bench I use to do bench presses and triceps curls it became clear that this one, like so many in recent years, would track north of Minneapolis, get up into Coon Rapids, but move east on trajectory well south of us. I’m not sure what’s going on but this seems like a track multiple serious storms have taken over the last few years.

Grocery store. Then dinner, a bit of dithering around about Brazilian Visas, at $160 each. Ouch. That doesn’t include processing fees. Geez.

Now, off to Tai Chi.

Art and Culture, Family, GeekWorld, Humanities

Using Tech Tools

April 26, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Bee Hiving Moon

This morning Kate and I had our weekly business meeting. Those Amazon books add up. We’re well into the first growing season with Kate retired. It makes the whole process seem less urgent, more manageable from my perspective. I like that. Having Mark here right now helps, too.

After that I checked my translation on Diana and Actaeon, the 10 verses I’m preparing for my reading/translation lesson on Friday. The second time through I found several things I missed the first time. I believe my translation is improving, improving quickly right now. Some sort of developmental break through, I suppose.

After that I fiddled with Firefox 4.0. It’s the latest version of the favorite non-windows browser though I understand Chrome (Google) has begun to catch up. It seems to be a bit slower with g-mail and the MIA website, but it makes up for it with its cool new feature, Panorama. Panorama allows you to group frequently used tabs together in transparent collections accessible through a small tab at the top of the browser.

This way, when I move into Latin, for example, I can click once and up comes Perseus with my section of the Metamorphoses already loaded, along with the word find tool. Another example, a weather tab holds my Andover NOAA page, Paul Douglas’ blog, Chanhassen NOAA weather story and a moon phase calendar. All one click away. Pretty neat.

It’s also time to start working on my Spanish tour for next week. I called up Microsoft Notes, a program I wonder how I worked without now. I opened a new notebook, titled it Art History Research and put in a tab, Spanish Tour May 5, 2011. Now I’ll have my tours all in one handy place with talking points beside each piece. Pretty neat.

A guy like me, who switches between diverse interests with regularity throughout a day and a week, finds work accelerated in pleasant ways with these organizational tools.

Aging, Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Memories, Politics, Travel

I Want To Like Nuclear Power

March 26, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Bloodroot Moon

Japan. Nuclear power. Climate change. Not a pretty picture. I don’t know about others, but I want to like nuclear power. Its non-carbon emitting energy production has a potential role in staving off the worst effects of global warming. However. With no place to store the waste permanently, the waste gets stored temporarily near the reactor in which it was used. This seems safe. Look at Prairie Island. After all these years, still no trouble. Then again. How many years do we have to have in a row with no trouble? 25,000 or so, I believe. That’s a long run.

That’s not all. Situations develop, human error, mechanical failure, maintenance scrimping, natural disasters with unforseen confluences, say an F5 tornado and a once in a century flood. Could happen over the span of over 25,000 years. Probably will. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had become objects in the rear view mirror, errors, mistakes, but over with. Until Fukushima.

Now, suddenly, they begin to look links in a chain, a nuclear chain. Remember Godzilla? Them? The 50 Foot Woman? Radiation. Now there’s radioactive iodine in the sea. I want to like nuclear power, but I’m having a hard time. The stakes of mistakes seem too high. At least for now.

Wish somebody would get a good fusion reactor goin’.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Literature

Tech Savvy Milbank

February 28, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Waning Bridgit Moon Blue Cloud Abbey

Since I plan to spend most of my time writing, I brought one of my split keyboards which make typing much easier for me. Only thing. It had an old fashioned pin style plug-in. I have a USB exclusive laptop along. Sigh.

Got on the web and discovered a Radio Shack in Milbank, only 13 miles back toward Minnesota. They were redesigning the store tonight, so, though they would have been closed otherwise, tonight they were there. After supper, I drove to Milbank, had a nice chat with the clerks and the owner, who offered me a beer, bought a new keyboard–they couldn’t find the adapters due to remodeling–and schlepped back to the Abbey.

When I pulled up in the Abbey parking lot, I opened the truck door and the bells started clanging. 7:30, time for Vigils. Scared the B…well you know, out of me.

So here I am, typing on my new keyboard, ready to get up tomorrow and start writing more pages of Missing. The Abbey is a peaceful place, set high atop a prominent hill in an otherwise flat topography. As a result, you can see for miles. At night Milbank twinkles off to the east and farm houses dotted across the prairie are outposts of electricity, television, the modern world.

What would Per think?

The meal was in silence tonight and Brother Bennet read while the rest of us ate. Another Minnesotan is here, a woman, and me. The monks were all in black robes and cowl tonight. I don’t know what signifies, but I’ll ask tomorrow.

The drive out here is a long one, over 4 hours, and I’m tired. Early bedtime tonight.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

More Fun With Computers

February 19, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Full Bridgit Moon

After 52 on Monday and a good deal of melting, with a good deal left to go, too, the red button on my status bar has lit up again with a winter weather advisory, a winter storm warning. If all goes as predicted, we may end up with 8-10 inches of new snow.

Today I spent a good bit of time installing a new printer, a multi-function HP, so-called plug and play. Well, sort of. I finally got it set up to print from all three computers on our home network. Felt good to get it done. Now I may tackle that old laserjet one more time before I buy a new one.

Groceries, then time on the treadmill and time with the grandkids on Skype. Now to bed.

GeekWorld, Humanities

The John Henry Syndrome

February 16, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Full Bridgit Moon

Watson. Won at Jeopardy. Big time. Over the best player of the game ever. Human player. The coverage has interested me because it showcases what we might call the John Henry syndrome. Each time a machine takes on a task thought uniquely human and masters it, then beats a human competitor, we go into human self-examination mode. Are we still necessary? Will machines replace us? The human Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings, wrote on his final Jeopardy answer, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords.” Humor? Or, irony? Both?

Here’s one clear difference. Watson is not sitting at home tonight, feet up on an ottoman, wondering if the next hunk of big iron will replace him. Nope. He’s just sitting. Maybe warming his transistors or his circuit boards, drawing a little extra juice to keep things humming, but self doubt? No.

We wonder. We step back from a situation and observe, ask questions, then process them in a complex, data rich environment foreign to the world of bits and bytes. Bring on the machines. All of’em. I’m not even worried about the Kurzweil singularity. If it happens, we’ll never know, right? Where is that ottoman?