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Tag: Aaron Kendall

August 23, 2010

Kinda MegaRound-Up 8/9 – 8/22

*Ahem*

I know  – classes are starting, there’s the syllabus to write, projects to wrap up – but what happened to the crew?  ‘For the benefit of all sentient beings‘, ‘Always a Bridesmaid‘, ‘Appalachian Anthropolgy‘?  There’s a few blogs I’m going to let off the hook, but it’s getting a little lonely over here on the blogroll and I want to know what you’ve been up to!

Sorry I missed you last week, we had a few things going on here.  First off you might have noticed a new blog pop up, Ground Control.  We felt like everyone around the Commons might enjoy having a little insight into how we keep things running here and decided to blog as we go.  It’s a good place to check in and take a peek behind the curtain, as well get a feel for what we hope the Commons will grow into.  I’m having a great time writing it and I hope you come and drop by in the comments.   Relax, I’m not going to go full-meta and talk about myself in the Round Up each week.  I have some sense of shame.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t anything going on over in the blogs.  I won’t pretend to know Boone @BooneBGorges incredibly well, but I can say that I’ve rarely seen his feathers ruffled.  Apparently though, when you invoke the name ‘Pizza’ and do not bring it you get something akin to Frank Bruni stuck in the “cafe” of a Target.  I love bad reviews, loooove them, and watching a true pizza aficionado do his work is a pleasure.  Invoking the entire pantheon of pizza-makers, nay – the platonic ideal of pizza itself,  that has come before an establishment to shame it is a move of such dedication and passion that I suspect there are tributes being written as we speak.  The word ‘scathing’ comes to mind…

Aaron Kendall @AKendall at Turf Walls checked back with us and posted the second part of his wrap up from Iceland.  I’m going to miss this blog.  Apparently they had to fill in the big hole they made since it is, you know, someone’s backyard, and not everyone is thrilled about giant holes in the ground.  No, it takes a special kind of person for that.  I’m left with so many questions though; does the owner of the land get to keep the dice and the pipe they found?  Why did they pick that particular slice of land and not one, say…15 yards over?  Was there something specific you were hoping to find?  So many questions???

Anthony Picciano @APicciano re-blogged the much ballyhooed Wired story ‘The Web is Dead’.  That piece has been all over the interwebs since it hit and I love the reaction it’s getting.  I have my own thoughts on the matter but I’m going to let the folks over at Gawker do the heavy lifting for me on this one.  Besides, we all know the internet isn’t dead – we’re still here.

Finally I wanted to call out this group that quietly surfaced a few weeks back. Exhibits in Libraries (and Elsewhere) is a great example of watching the Commons at work.  It’s an interesting idea that a lot of people took to and the conversation that’s growing out of it holds a lot of promise.  It’s a public group so what are you waiting for?

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August 9, 2010

The Round-Up Where It Is Still Ruthlessly Hot Outside… 8/1 – 8/8

Seriously.

Remember a few weeks ago where I wrote wistfully of how you could feel autumn in the air.

That was dumb.

It is crazy hot.  My cat is just laying on the floor epitomizing misery.  Our very existence right now is an onomatopoeia, all sizzling sounds and wavy lines radiating off of both of us.  I’d grab the laptop and head to a cafe with AC but then that’d be abandoning her, and I leave no one behind.  Go on brave blogger.

Anyways, after a touch and go July I’m happy to be back here at the desk, heat be damned.  I know you deserve better than that meager little Round-Up you got last week and I hope I can deliver.  So with that…

On the Arts side of town It Cannot Be Trivial took the week off, but Helldriver @helldriver was here opining on the end of the orchestra.  I had mixed feelings about this one and should probably take it over to the comments but since I’m here…  I understand that, as popular entertainment,  few of us are pulling on the wingtips and having a night on the town, but I wonder if we can say that as a mode or aesthetic the orchestra is near its end.   If anything I think it’s interesting that we’ve come to a place culturally where orchestras are reserved for only the most pronounced forms of aural emoting.  The hero returns to his home, lovers meet, a mother dies – orchestras in popular culture seem to be the privileged mode of music for the archetypal ‘big moment’ in much the same way that any action that takes place in a church is almost exclusively the domain of the Catholic variety; all big arches and marble floors.  We might not be disagreeing at all,  I just wonder if it’s fair to say that orchestras are less like dinosaurs and more like constellations.

I was nervous.  A few weeks ago I had high praises for Jane Cramer @Janec and  GovDocs I Love and I Hope You Will Too and then it went quiet.  I was afraid I ran it off, but this week it’s back with a ton of info and resources available to anyone looking for economics information.  After that blog I also can’t help but picture a dinner party where a grip of librarians (a murder, an unkindness, a pack?) surround a lone economist and shake him down for resources.  Everyone already knows not to mess with librarians.

Speaking of new blogs, Amalia Torrentes @Atorrentes  announced  Accessible New York – a social networking and review site for people who want to stay on top of accessibility in New York City.  I think it’s a grand idea and you should definitely forward it along to friends.  The link is here.  Please keep updating us so we can watch it grow.

What else, what else?

Aaron Kendall @akendall has returned from Iceland and is back to blogging about what went down there.  Turns out that the dig was a success and the undergraduates that showed up had a good time.  I thought it was funny to read how crestfallen they sounded at finding a stone wall from 800 years ago.  I mean I get it, it’s not the epic sword I had rooted for in the beginning, but I still think it’s awesome to dig around and then find something that someone made that long ago, regardless of what it is.  I assume it’s an uncanny feeling, to see a wall doing the same thing that our walls do today.  We still build walls to keep the trash in one place.  I don’t know, maybe you get over it, or maybe I’m just easily impressed but the idea that a couple of guys in Iceland 800 years ago being like, “Hey we need to build a wall to keep that trash in.”   Thanks again for blogging about that whole experience and I’m looking forward to the wrap up.

Finally this week, we welcome back Boone Gorges!  Boone @boonebgorges was out in the sticks working on some secret stuff for the government.  Turns out the secret project is Anthologize, a WordPress plugin that allows bloggers to transfrom online content into an eBook format, and just like Oprah, if you look under your seat you’ll find that you (will soon) have your very own just as soon as we get up to speed with the WordPress update.

And before I take off – fellow Commoner Kristina Huang @KristinaHuang has an awesome interview up with Richard Ledes over at SocialText.   If you’re interested in film or just some curious about the subtext behind Haiti in American cinema go check out the video and her interview.  I’m always eager to hear about what everyone is up to, even if it’s off-site.  Book signing coming up?  Featured work somewhere?  Tell me about it!

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July 12, 2010

The Round Up During the Heat Wave 7/5-7/11

It was basically like swimming in lava last week.  The humidity alone tapped into some dormant embryonic gene set of mine and I sprouted gills.  I know July is supposed to be hot, but it just seemed cruel.  Normally I like to delay the satisfaction of going through some of the week’s blogs with long winded rants about whatever I’ve got going on for the week but I’ll spare you and let a pro handle it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz_ZpoYBzaw&feature=PlayList&p=8F4046994ACE55B6&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1[/youtube]

Look, I know it has nothing to do academia.  I know.  Sometimes you just find a gem and have to share it.

Things started off this week with Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz fussin’ around with his Alkivia theme and discovering that the WordPress upgrade to 3.0 had shut him out.  If you’re having trouble yourself with it, or your own theme, maybe there’s some insight here.  I know we get a lot of folks from WordPress coming over here to check us out too so thanks for the help Joe!

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more from the collection.   This week was about the explicit and subtle lessons learned as a 16 year old life guard in training.  It was kind of a tender post really.  It reminded me a little of those posters you see in delis on how to do the Heimlich maneuver.  It’s always the same stick figures from the ‘walk’ signs saving each others life.  It’s hard not to imagine that those nondescript characters are supposed to represent the part of you that is not supposed to freak out in emergency, as if behind all of the emotion you’re just an animated chalk silhouette that can perform rote tasks.

Tim Wilson @twilson is prolific.  That guy puts in work on the blogs man.  If I don’t call you out on Footenotes enough it’s pretty much because I’m ashamed of my blogger ethic comparatively.   This post over at Franglophone Studies was excellent.  Hats off to you for managing to talk about Deleuze and Donald Rumsfeld in one go.  I somehow missed the Times piece so thanks for highlighting that, after I’ve had a chance to read it I’ll head over to the comments – come with me Footenoters!

***NEWS FROM ICELAND!***

They found stuff!  After last week’s disappointing day at the farm this week gave us some bones, smoking pipes and an awesome bone die (amongst many other things).  And VIDEO!  Sorry to go all caps lock crazy, but Turf Walls has kind of turned into my own private Discovery Channel.  Oh, and while I’m thinking about it – what were these 17th Century Icelanders up to all the time?  All they did was smoke and play dice?

A new blog showed up this week – GovDocs I love and hope you will too.  Jane Cramer @janec posted this week about some tools we can use to watch the oil basically destroy everything in the Gulf.  Sorry, I’m bitter.  Aren’t we all?  I really excited to see what else shows up here and thanks for building this great resource for us!

Emily Channell @echannell over at Appalachian Anthropology has a really interesting post about coming down the mountain and trying to write for a broader audience.  I hear you.  Trying to publish outside the horse blinders of tenure tenure tenure can be taxing.  It’s hard enough to write in a way that speaks to your peers, but to try and translate that knowledge and enthusiasm in a way that speaks to people with much more general interests requires a kind of tight rope agility.  I really wish you the best of luck, please keep us posted when the ice starts to thaw.

And our very own Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano was channeling ‘Rawhide’.  The ‘Commons Connections’ blog got a makeover and some new plugins.  Coming soon we’re going to be doing a lot more to highlight various features of the blogs and ways for you to use them.  If you ever have any questions about doing more with your blog look up and of the Community Facilitators and we’ll be happy to help.

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July 5, 2010

The Round Up I Wrote After Not Seeing Any Fireworks 6/28 – 7/4

Mayor Mike, we need to talk.

I wasn’t happy about the third term thing, I thought it was a little beneath you actually, but I understood.  There was the financial crisis and you always fought for gun control and Christine Quinn seemed really really into it so I thought, “what the hell” and shrugged it off.  I know, I know I’m a lazy citizen, but after 8 years of basically being hysterical all the time and marching at everything I just didn’t have the energy to fight on this one.

And then you messed with the fireworks.

I didn’t move to Greenpoint for the perogis.  I moved to Greenpoint so I could stand on my roof every 4th of July and have the best seat in the house.  I know that you have nothing to do with the fireworks committee.  You don’t sit around your desk in the days leading up to the 4th picking out flag pins for your lapel and making phone calls to make sure those stupid smiley face fireworks are actually going to perform their job and make a smile.  I understand that.  But if you’re going to flagrantly indulge in chop-shop democracy the very least you could do is take some time out of your billionaire schedule and put the fireworks between two actual boroughs of the city of New York and not between us and…it hurts to say it…New Jersey.  The coast of New Jersey is just bunch of NYC ex-pats who wanted cheaper rent anyways – they’re turncoats – that’s why we shame them.  You can’t just steal Brooklyn’s fireworks and give it to a bunch of people who have bigger, cheaper apartments in a whole other state.  Their reward is there on earth, ours is supposed to be in the heavens.

Not that my 4th was terrible, I spent it in a hammock at a bar-b-que in Fort Greene sipping whiskey, but I’m still mad.

Blooooooooooooogggggggsssssss!

I don’t know what happened this week but we managed to summon all of these long dormant blogs out of the ground. Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz at Prestidigitation had a lovely post asking whether or not we’ve yet to understand the capacity of the recorded lecture.  For an excellent example of the potential of the medium Joseph linked to David Harvey’s latest:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0[/youtube]

The animation is certainly more compelling than the TED format, but I have mixed feelings about what it takes to make something like the Harvey lecture possible.  I’m glad that a lecture of all things put some animators to work, but to what extent can we expect professors with a long view of their lecture to also be production crews?  How do you slip something like animators across a department chair’s desks?

Pedagogy was also on Benjamin Miller’s @benmiller314 mind this week.  Majoring in Meta made an appearance on the blog roll with a slightly neurotic look at whether meta-lecturing was instructive or just driving students crazy.  I had to admire the candor of one of Ben’s students who basically told him to make a decision, but lolz aside, I think Ben’s on the mark.   You don’t exactly get a ‘how to teach’ course with every masters and PhD.   More to the point,  on a good day the classroom isn’t just a person who knows something telling others who don’t, it’s a bunch of people in a room learning something new together.  Teaching on the go facilitates that and can bring you to some unexpected places.  That’s the real secret knowledge of the professor.

Adam Wandt @awandt did some investigative live blogging for us and discovered that ‘death grip’ has plagued iPhones well before the newest one.  Not that it matters to the tech-mob I guess, I was at the Apple store on 5th Ave this weekend and the only death grip that counted was the one you could get on an employee.   I have to say though, Adam, I think you have bigger problems than reception…

How can you read everything backwards?

Aaron Kendall @Akendall checked back in this week from Iceland.  Still no sword…yet…but some nice pictures from over yonder.  This week on the island our hero and team went digging around some farm land.  Then John Locke flipped out and turned into smoke.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I still miss it.  Apparently the lake near where they were ate away the midden and dashed any chances for some interesting finds.  I feel like if I was an archeologist I would be constantly stressed out because apparently this sort thing is a persistent problem.  I can barely cope when I can’t find the other sock so digging holes all day and then finding nothing usable would break my heart.  Not to nag but you promised us some video!

Michael Smith  @MSmith said he’d make a post a week and the guy is serious!  This week we got Physical Chemistry, a tract about relationships, or atoms, or science yoga.   I suck at physics.  It’s ok, I know that.  I can talk your ear off about gender construction or mid century shifts in theology but come at me with wave/particle stuff and you can almost see the cartoon birds orbiting my head.  That being said, if someone had just taught me physics through art there’s no telling.  I think you’re an attic’s worth of old art projects away from a syllabus.

To wrap things up Tony Picciano @Apicciano caught Maureen Dowd getting all sentimental on the 4th and encouraging us to let our “freakin’ flag fly”  I’m not real sure what Maureen had in mind, but I’m gonna head to the park and read some more David Harvey.

June 28, 2010

That Round-Up I Wrote Recovering from Pride – 6/21 -6/27

Oh Commonsers,

My poor head aches, my shoulders are red with fury and my feet are exhausted – but what a day for a parade eh?   Hunter and Baruch were out this year.  I was hoping CUNY would have a float but it didn’t happen so I’ll make you a deal, right here on Footenotes; If we can talk CUNY into putting a float in the parade next year I’ll liveblog on top of the thing.  Nothing sexier than a shirtless blogger.

I can’t remember if I saw these last year or not but it looks like the storied rainbow flag has some regional competition:

Personally, I like ’em.  I was going to post photos of the Hunter and Baruch groups and these new flags that were everywhere, but my camera didn’t make it back home with me.  Ah well – I hope it met another nice camera of the same gender and had a good time.

Alright alright, you get it, enough about my weekend.

The Blogs!

Thing were busy this week, I love it. We started off with a post from Michael Smith @msmith at It Cannot Be Trivial about his works on cross aesthetics.  As I’ve mentioned before, the back-story on a work of art is often of  more interest to me than the work itself.  I think part of that comes from the fact that art is so often a subjective experience and yet it can create this plutocracy of ‘taste’ that may or may not just be a reflection of gallery reps and auction house interests.  To hear the story of how a certain piece came to exist can really open up a work and give the viewer a place in it that was somehow closed before.

After I reread that little paragraph it started to look like I was saying I didn’t like this week’s display.  To the contrary Ive been crazy about crosses regardless of their religious dimension since I was little.  I was a spooky kid.

Speaking of crosses and spooky stuff, Michael Oman-Reagan had two posts out this week.  The first was an early bird reminder about the AAR’s meeting in Atlanta this year.  I know we have a couple of religion groups and programs here on the Commons so take note.  The second was about Congress getting all nosy and bothering Steve Jobs.  Turns out the gummerment is concerned about whether Apple might be overstepping it bounds with its Location Services features.  Honestly I didn’t even know that was a feature and after hearing about it I still don’t know how threatened I supposed to feel.  I mean if Jack Bauer can just triangulate a cell-phone call to find anyone on Earth then I’m doomed as it is.

Next up in my queue of blogs to cover…oh…uh…so about what I said up there about print being dead…sometimes I just run my mouth without thinking.  Apparently we’re all missing Book Expo America.  Librarianship in Lower Manhattan blogged about this weird book-lover  Xanadu with free booze and librarian worship.   Awesome.  Also – who knew that Kathleen Collins @kcollins ,  one of our own, had a book signing there?  You have to blog about this kind of thing so we can show up!

Turf Wars @Akendall checked in and gave us an update on the Icelandic excavations.  Turns out there are sheep and clay pipes buried in the earth.  I’m excited to the see the video out of there and whatever else they managed to pull out of the ground.  I’m a dork about that kind of thing.  I do think we ought to start a pool here on what he’s going to find.  My money’s on a sword.   I don’t know why, it’s just a feeling.  Come on folks, step right up and place your bets.

Maura Smale @msmale was up in Connecticut giving a presentation on a game she created called Quality Counts.  Please don’t turn you game loose on Footenotes.  We’re like dinner theater here: bad dinner, bad theater.  That being said, she titled the post ‘Still in the Game’ and something struck me as familiar.  Did you really reference late Steve Winwood?

Linda Wadas @lindawadas from over at ‘For the benefit of all sentient beings’ pointed out a couple of kinds of vetch that popped up in her yard.  You can’t eat ’em but they look pretty.

And finally this week we’ve got a couple of new things from the Community Team.

Scott Voth @scottvoth – resident Wiki overlord – made a great post about integrating wikis into your blogs.  This is a great resource if you’re using your blog for classroom work or online courses.  I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but I’m off to do that after we wrap up here.  You can always message Scott with wiki questions, he’s here to help!

Sarah Morgano is bringing a new feature to the Commons that I’m really excited about: 5 Questions With… This week she talked to Adam Wandt @awandt about the Commons, blogs, and Twitter.  Got something to say – go find her!  Otherwise she’s coming to you…

and between Apple Location Services and her all around Jack Bauer-ness you can’t hide.

See you next week!

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Environment: Reclaim Dev

Branch: 2.5.x

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