apple juice

This is pretty amazing. Can you imagine what everyone was thinking the first time this thing booted up? According to Wired, this is the oldest working digital computer in existence.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the new Star Wars will be awesome.

We need to use the Internet itself as social media. Then you won’t have to worry about Facebook putting their finger on the scale.: “Last night I was watching football on one of the big networks. It was a boring game so my mind drifted. I noticed that when they show the name of someone speaking on camera they also show their Twitter handle. I wondered if their lawyers had reviewed this decision. Had they read Twitter’s user agreement? Had they advised their client on how one-sided it is? That made me wonder if Twitter does special deals with big media conglomerates? I wonder what they look like? I follow Twitter pretty closely and I have no idea.”

(Via Scripting News.)

This is what I was talking about a few posts ago where I mentioned that having a personal blog is the only way to own your own words on the internet. You can take your data somewhere else. You’re in control.

You’re not in control of the experience you get on twitter or Facebook, and Dave Winer is exactly right in highlighting this. It is a little weird the twitter handle has become the de facto method of connecting with someone you see on TV.

I don’t know if app.net is going to be any better, (probably not — it’s not “free”) or if we simply need some sort of distributed system abstracted from an individuals’ blog or twitter-like feed that one can view from the web.

2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S – Motor Trend

“The 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year is one of the quickest American four-doors ever built. It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive. But it’s also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius. Oh, and it’ll sashay up to the valet at a luxury hotel like a supermodel working a Paris catwalk. By any measure, the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable automobile, perhaps the most accomplished all-new luxury car since the original Lexus LS 400. That’s why it’s our 2013 Car of the Year.”

Someone in our neighborhood has one. I need to figure out who it is so I can take it for a test drive.

I finally had a chance to see Jeff Utecht at the ISACS conference recently. I’ve been a long-time reader of his blog but I still love to hear people present in person.

Really? It’s My Job To Teach Technology?

“We are not teaching technology, we are teaching skills that every student needs to have and technology happens to be a part of that. Create can be met with paper and pencil, with glue and scissors, with a hammer and nail, or with movie maker and it should be the job of every teacher to expose students to different ways of creating content that fits within their discipline.”

(Via The Thinking Stick.)

Absolutely. This has been the biggest shift in how we talk about technology at our school in the past 7 years. It is not “just a tool” and but rather a way of creating, analyzing, evaluating, applying, understanding. A way of thinking. Jeff’s whole post is worth reading, because I think it neatly sums up expectations for using technology.

We’ve chosen to use the NCTE’s 21st century literacies as our goals for our students. Previously, we had a mess of functions to master in specific software. If we are able to educate students to create, communicate, and collaborate using any software or technology (broadly defined) that is at their disposal, I think we’ll be doing well by those goals.

Wow! I started this blog 10 years ago.

Looks like I missed the anniversary date by just a few days. The blog has taken a back seat to some of the more immediate concerns of life, and yet, I’d like to get back here more to reflect on things. I enjoy writing, and still believe in the “blog” as the democratizing force for publishing. You can keep twitter, Facebook and the rest. Owning your work, in a way that you simply can’t with the other sites is important.

I wanted to reflect for a moment on the changes and the sames from my life a bit. A Top 5. This is harder than I thought, actually. There are plenty of material things that are different in my life… plenty of world changes in the past 10 years. But day-to-day life changes are actually relatively small in number. I’m thankful that this list is small, and that the changes are all positive and stable. It could so easily be different from positive and stable changes.

Same:
1. Married to my wonderful and beautiful wife, and our eleven year anniversary is coming up very soon.
2. Yeti our dog. Still the same old Yeti. She was actually the original inspiration for this blog.
3. Same general geographical location.
4. Same favorite band (Radiohead).
5. Same political leanings. My two most important issues: environment, wars.

Changes:
1. and 2. Kids! Two of them. Total chaos.
3. New job.
4. New house.
5. New city.

I wonder what the next ten years will hold? Go back to school? (I am actually the only one of my siblings and their spouses without a Masters’ degree or higher) New job? Car-free lifestyle?

A technical note, I’ve managed to keep this blog running for 10 years without any major hiccups. It started out with MovableType and moved to WordPress in 2004.

Thanks to everyone who continues to check in on my little slice of the internet…

I have a new favorite blog…

The failure of Drill Baby, Drill

“U.S. oil production is on track to hit its highest level since 1993. What has that done to gas prices for consumers? Virtually nothing. Yet again, analysts are pointing out the obvious: even with massive increases in domestic oil drilling, the impact on gasoline prices is minimal. That’s because oil is a global market and U.S. supplies — even with historic increases — still don’t make a major dent.”

I blogged about this earlier in the year in a short note encouraging an increase in the gas tax. I still think it is a good idea.