helldriver | Footenotes

Round-Up! 4/6- 4/13

Hello Commons!

First off – here’s a picture of ducklings:

Why?

Because Chris Stein hates ducks… Good shot with camera though.

I’m afraid that if I say anything I’ll totally jinx it, but with that risk considered and I’m going to go ahead and call us out for being a great community on the blogs this week. Not that we aren’t or haven’t been for a long time of course, but I think this was the first week in a while where I combed through all of the blogs and just seen tons of wonderful conversations happening everywhere.

It probably doesn’t hurt that it’s finally spring and we’re not smothered in grey death clouds all of the time now.

Seriously though, take a look!

For starters it’s April which means it’s Poetry Month again. For those of you who weren’t around the Commons last year we had a bunch of our resident poets step up and make some contributions. As always Carl James Grindley @Grindley is cranking out an unbelievable amount of material. Carl usually holds down the poetry fort here on the Commons all year but it’s great to have a month long marathon of work. For Poetry Month this year we have new-comer Erica Kaufman@Ericakaufman from the Graduate Center. She has two poems up so far and we’ve still have a couple of weeks to go. Also – great choice in blog theme Erica!

Maura Smale @MSmale over at The Living Laboratory blog started a conversation about possible applications for the new Openlab Project they’re working on. What I love about this post is watching potential users help drive the features in development. As you know we tend to do version updates here on the Commons quite frequently and we bundle new features with them that are largely driven my feedback from you. I can’t stress it enough, if there’s something you want to see on the Commons shoot one of the Community Facilitators an email or use the ‘feedback’ tab. We always try to make sure our development features are community driven and its great to see that at work in Openlab as well.

Speaking of development, our own Chris Stein @Cstein (aforementioned duck-photographer) had a great post up making some early predictions on what the web might look like in the future. Not only is this a good post for understanding where we are now, but it’s rich with links that I think make excellent resources for all of us on the open-source side of the internet. Amanda Licastro @Alicastro followed up with another post dealing more explicitly with changes and growth with the semantic web that’s started a conversation in the comments.

And finally, perhaps in the spirit of Poetry Month, Helldriver @helldriver went full meta. Regarding another feather in your cap – I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of you when I saw the ad for Rush at Madison Square Garden. So…how was the show?

That said, I blew my whole concert fund for all of 2011 on three nights at Radio City to see what’s left of the Grateful Dead. First loves.

Till next week folks!

4 Comments

November 3, 2010

The Morning After Round-Up 10/25-10/31

I didn’t even bother trying to write this yesterday. What was the use? For every four words written I would have tabbed over to the Times or Huffington Post to bite my nails and or shake my fist about what a smug jerk Boehner is. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming though. If you have any recall of the 1990’s this whole song and dance will feel eerily familiar.

Hey – at least McMahon lost. And Rand Paul! Oh wait…just kidding, he actually won. Hey remember when that guy wanted to throw out the Civil Rights Act? Good times.

But I’m going to leave the political pontificating to the pros here on the Commons. The hornets’ nest over at the Obama Presidency was relatively quiet this week with three great post. There was some talk about the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity,’ some insightful work about Christine O’Donnell who thankfully did not ascend to power last night, and finally a blogger who wants to send all New Yorkers to Oklahoma. As a successful Texan refugee I have no interest in setting foot back in Dixie thank you. (Yeah yeah I know, Texas is only kind of the South, it’s kind of the Midwest too…yada yada)

Quote of the week on the blogs:

“…one cannot help but come to the conclusion that death is the least of our problems.”

And that wasn’t even on one of the politics blogs.

Moving right along –

Madlibrarian freaked everyone out by pointing us towards an article that pretty much proves you can’t hide. It was bad enough when Facebook couldn’t figure out their own privacy policy, but hiring firms to sniff out people’s Social Security Number and home address is the pits. Wont somebody save us from ourselves? Boehner!

Helldriver popped up again. This week was about Leviathans big and bigger. My now long standing policy on Helldriver blogs is to not be cute and just let the blog speak for itself. So here I am with sparklers in my hands trying to wave you folks over there. Go!

We’ve been talking about Omeka for a long time now here on the Commons and Wiki Wrangler Scott Voth @Scottvoth posted this week that Omeka.net is now in beta! If you don’t know what Omeka is you should so go take a look and play with it. All the cool kids are doing it.

And speaking of elections, I’m sure you’ve all seen the news that our own Boone B. Gorges was made a BuddyPress Core Committer. It’s actually kind of a drag because it means he gets to wear a special hat and we have to clean his apartment. All the same we’re super proud of him and his contributions to both BuddyPress and the Commons. If you’ve ever written in and needed something fixed on the site it was probably Boone that did the fixin’. Congratulations!

Alright well now that everyone is up to speed on the blogs you might have missed last week I’m going to go back to drowning my sorrows. Somewhere out there in the Arizona desert Jan Brewer is kicking over cacti in a powersuit and pumps demanding papers from anyone not practically tumescent.

But since I can’t leave you on such a gloomy note – here’s a crow that is best friends with a kitten:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj57rI1_JX8[/youtube]

We can raise the level of academic discourse tomorrow. Tonight it’s just kittens all the way down.

September 6, 2010

The Contrite Round Up – 8/24ish to 9/5

I knew it would happen.

I made a sad-sack Round Up wondering where all my peeps went and then I vanished last week when the blogs blew up. It’s not that I abandoned you, I was super busy putting the final touches on some outreach documents we’ve been working on. I know, I know – it’s not an excuse. All the same it’s been great to come back to the blog roll and see a bunch of new faces. I’ve gotten kind of lazy about hoping up on the soap box before I get into the blogs and I miss abusing my power here so let me thumb through the news and see what I can rant about…

Well there was my favorite Arizonan, Jan Brewer, having a fantastic meltdown. I’ve pretty much said all I can say about her and stay employed. It’s not like Footenotes is FootenotesonJanBrewersterrifyingrisetopowerinwayssarahpalincouldonlydreamof.com so I’ll leave it at that. But seriously, her poll numbers actually climbed afterward.

On a slightly less catty note, folks are starting to take notice of the impending disaster students loans are going to be for us. This handy chart does a little explaining of the shape we’re in and makes for a quick read. At this point I don’t even look at my student loan statements, I just put them in a shoebox and quietly wait for the apocalypse. I’m sure after my dissertation gets published and I start getting royalty checks from the movie they’re going to make about me while I was writing it everything will be fine.

Ok, enough – let’s talk about blogs before we all get bummed out!

First off – Tim Wilson’s @twilson long slow project to teach us French has started to pay off. Another francophone blog popped up! I’m excited to see so many languages turn up around the Commons, it even looks like an Italian language blog is in the works out there. Speaking of Italian, I noticed a new blog crop up – Beniamina Cassetta’s @beniamina A Cosa Stai Pensando / What’s on your mind? With posts alternating between two languages it’s great see the French set with some competition now. Beniamina had some pretty nice things to say about the Commons too and we’re glad to have you!

Maura Smale @msmale returned to the blogs to share some changes that have come to your library. The big three article archives messed around with their interfaces and Maura walks us through them. There’s a little note at the end about librarians lighting torches and storming JSTOR, check it out.

Resident Elluminate expert Adam Wandt @Awandt has been interviewed by the Elluminate folks. As you will recall he walked us through his experience with the software right here on the Commons.

Of course you can’t mention Elluminate now without thinking of BlackBoard. The folks over at BlackBoard took out the checkbook and snatched up a good thing when they saw it. Everyone has their own opinion of the education behemoth – Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano gave us hers. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Helldriver @helldriver had been on hiatus, but returned this week with a prolific post about Demolition Hammer. I don’t know who this guy is but I imagine he must have the most fantastic record collection in New York. Usually I try and say a little something about a Helldriver post and then realize that I’m totally inarticulate when talking about music and feel like a putz so I’m going to leave this one alone. All the same it’s good to have you back.

Finally Michael Smith also returned with a great post about the art of watching the police. Seems as though there have been a crop of stories in the news lately about people getting arrested for doing this very thing. Naturally a quick Google search fails me for the recent things I was thinking of but I assure you it’s happening. Not that that’s assuring…

Anyways, it’s great to have everyone back and welcome new faces! Here’s hoping this semester is our best yet on the Commons. See ya next week.

2 Comments

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!

2 Comments

July 19, 2010

The Round-Up Where I Realized Summer is Almost Over – 6/12-6/18

Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline. Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer. Seriously.

Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate. If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester. While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it. My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself. I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together. And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe. I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there. As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80’s. To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.

After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns. It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers. Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:

But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.

I couldn’t have said it better. To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.

That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’. This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons. It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.

And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out. Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs. Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.

There’s the week that was on the blogs. I mean it people, go out and play. It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.

3 Comments

May 1, 2010

Finally – April’s Over!

Good Lord what a long month.

The blogs were in bloom this week on the Commons. Maybe it was the never-ending rain that forced everyone to sit home and write poetry, or maybe we all just felt like chumps for letting Carl James Grindley do all of the heavy lifting this month over at Poems in Progress. Whatever the motivation there was poetry in spades here. Timothy Wilson was feeling prolific towards the end and broke out some Spanish on us. Good thing we’re not in Arizona or…you know…he’d probably accused of being a Mex’can terrorist commie illegal or something. Ok, alright, Footenotes isn’t exactly a bully pulpit, but come on Arizona. COME ON!

Shhhh…just relax, it’s ok, they’re far away from here and it’s not like I’m in dire need of turquoise or anything.

Anyways, poetry. All of our favorites threw in. Michael Oman-Reagan posted perennial favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti via Religion Scholars and Linda Wadas at For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings offered some photography as poetry. I was holding out for Scott Voth to write a little ode to wikis but, alas, it was not to be.

But it wasn’t all sonnets and stanzas around here. Tamar Zilkha made a return to the Commons this week thoroughly annoyed with the Census Bureau. It was an interesting post about what constitutes race to the government and good ole Uncle Sam might be a little out of his league when trying to define race. Honestly at this point I wish I hadn’t turned in my Census form yet because I’d love to make a few changes to my own answers. Especially in light of this stupid friggin law that Arizona passed.

It’s basically like a bunch of people in Arizona realized that they’re referred to as the “South-West” and decided it was time to invest a little more in the “Southern” part of South-West. Like, maybe Arizona just got lonely because the only other states that would hang out with it were Utah and New Mexico. I’d be pretty lonely too, but making eyes at Alabama just because you’re tired of the dry heat…I don’t even know what I’m saying. As a southern refugee I always looked towards the desert peoples as wise sages of the brush. Now you don’t need a license to carry a concealed gun and it’s ok to stop anyone (Latino) and demand papers. Because the wild west was so much fun you know, just like at Six Flags.

No seriously, it’s ok, I’m done.

Tony Picciano pulled up Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the Times this week about the Goldman Sachs hearing over on Tony’s Thoughts. As much as I’d love for something to come out of the criminal charges headed towards Goldman I just don’t see it amounting to much. What I suspect is that Lloyd Blankfein is just going to erect a giant wall of gold bricks around Goldman Sachs downtown and throw big diamonds at SEC investigators till they give up from all of the bruises.

While Scott Voth did not deliver on a wiki poem, he made a post over at Wiki Wrangler giving us a sneak peak at his masters thesis work. The post cards are lovely and it’s a great project suited to the scope of Omeka. Takes some time to visit the Omeka site and learn about what they’re doing.

Speaking of technology and academia, Adam Wandt had a really touching post on the increasing use of technology by the elderly. He set up his grandmother with a computer and got her to explore the internet and technology with some really great benefits on the side. The links towards the end are a nice touch if you’re looking for some further reading on the mental benefits of technology. Congrats Adam!

Finally, Helldriver made it in just under the wire for this week’s round up. It’s a post about spring and music. That, of course, is an understatement, but were I to try and explain what a great post it is I’d just ruin it. To be frank, I think the best thing I can say about Helldriver’s post today is that it’s enough to make me wrap up this week’s round up and get the hell out of my apartment.

See ya next week folks!

1 Comment

April 24, 2010

Things I Learned About Myself on the Commons…Round Up!

Well, first I learned that I can’t remember if ‘About’ would be capitalized in a title for a blog. I’d go grab my copy of Strunk & White but…you know.

More importantly I learned:

Mary Carroll is my new hero.

Apparently I’m buying an Android.

I am a Twitter moron.

And…

I don’t go to enough Black Metal shows.

Let me explain.

So I started to read all of the blogs for this week’s round-up and things got off to a great start with Mark Carroll’s Always a Bridesmaid. I was basically stopped cold in my tracks when I got just one meager sentence into the post and read:

“I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.”

Never in my life have I seen Nora Ephron turned into a verb. Genius. So genius I didn’t get it at first. Was Mary Carroll going to reveal the identity of Deep Throat or was she trying to land a gig at Huffington Post? Nobody cares about Mark Felt anymore (Nixon who?) but the writing was great. Tender when it needed to be, acerbic for the rest. I have to say though, couldn’t you just Modge-Podge some of your old acting posters all over your husband’s sculptures?

The rest of the post brings up a good point about online and blended courses, and what we lose as educators when the classroom turns to pixels. In our rush to meld the internet and its endless features into a measured instrument for education we often let our enthusiasm overrun an appreciation for face time. Not to get all Martin Buber, but those breakthrough moments are hard to see on a Facebook update.

Speaking of Facebook updates, I mean Twitter, I finally caved and signed up. I was reading Sarah Morgano’s post at Commons Connections and started to feel a little left behind. I’m following four people and they’re all co-workers. Epic. I’ll be sure to blog about my life with Twitter as I get the hang of it. Fortunately there are a lot of great resources around the Commons for getting up to speed. So what is this number sign # thing supposed to do?

Foolishly I thought I was inciting violence last week when I ragged on Apple products to Michael Oman-Reagan, resident Mac guru at the Grad Center. Turns out he’s just as unhappy as I am. He made a post this week about Steve Jobs’ touchy feelings on porn. Apparently King Steve doesn’t want smut on his products. No surprise there, that’s long been the standard at Apple, but it does raise some interesting questions about who gets to shape morality in this age of open source. Is market ubiquity the same thing as censorship? Are Apple products so good looking and seductive that we’re not even tempted by anything else? That being said…we all remember what happened to Betamax.

Anthony Picciano from Tony’s Thoughts is away at a blended learning conference so no links this week. Hopefully on his way back we’ll get a post about what was going on there. Maybe they addressed some of the issues brought up at Always a Bridesmaid.

Helldriver was back this week blogging about the Immortal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. First off, any black metal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple sounds rad. That place must be charged with like 150 years worth of super secret Masonic ritual stuff. We’re lucky the Earth didn’t split open and unleash a thousand winged Dan Browns all over Brooklyn. More importantly, this:

“They absolutely exploded when the lights went down, and the shadow of the drummer appeared behind the kit, and then the other two members of the trio sprang from the wings in a miasma of noise and smoke. They banged their heads and made devil-horns. They knew all the words, and “sang” them, too, as surely as if the lead singer had said, “Now, boys and girls, aspirate along with me …”

Seriously, whatever you were doing that night wasn’t half as fun.

Finally – Carl James Grindley is just about done with Poetry Month. I’m not exactly sure why this makes me happy, but it works on the same level as when I watch the marathon run right through my neighborhood each year. For no real reason other than the thrill of it I just stand there waving my stupid inflatable TMobile balloon as the athletes slug through. You’re almost there!

4 Comments

April 3, 2010

Weekly Round-Up! 3/28-4/3

Earlier in the week there was this moment where ‘Footenotes’ was lingering on the sidebar, floating along as the most ‘Recent Blog Post’ and as I sipped my coffee and chewed my granola I carelessly muttered, “Lord, somebody has got to post something…”

and behold:

\m/ HELLDRIVER’S PIT STOP \m/

I had no idea that my careless prayer would be received by Baphomet and bring the CUNY Commons its first music blog. In fact at first I literally didn’t believe. Had someone sneaked in under the wire? The vague profile, the sordid drug tales, everything reeked of mystery and betrayal. As I made my way to the end of this inaugural post I realized that no, this was not some malevolent prank, but the threat of a music blog right here on the Commons! Helldriver makes no promises, but I do hope to see more from the space in the weeks to come.

Faith now restored, I saw that we also got a post from our very own Scott Voth, the CUNY Commons Wiki-Wrangler. In a move that might be so meta Web2.0y it’ll blow you mind- we got blog post about a new wiki page about the Commons Wiki! Scott was pointing the way to this awesome introduction to wiki’s he wrote and if you didn’t catch it on the first go round now’s your chance. If you haven’t made a wiki or contributed to the existing ones you’re missing out on a great feature of the CUNY Academic Commons so get over there.

See, things were looking up. We had music, we had wikis, it was looking like smooth sailing until Heather Heim over at ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘…

Ok, I have to stop for a second and stand up to clap. ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty’ might be the best name for a blog ever. You see it and you think;

“Do I really want to read a blog about jury duty? Naw, but who would so it can’t be about jury duty. That’s got to be funny or ironic right? I’m gonna click it.”

Then you click it and it is a blog about jury duty, but by this point you’ve already clicked the damn thing so you start to read it and you’re sucked in…

“I mean the guy was 80, do you really think sticking a tube in his small intestine killed him? No, being 80 killed him, but I mean, if the doctor was aiming for the stomach and missed he couldn’t have been much of a doctor. And what’s up with all the rules for a civil malpractice suit jury, between the questions and the voting process you’d think they were picking a pope or something…”

Anyways, I’ve digressed, but I feel you on jury duty Heather, it’s been years since the last time I was on a jury and still don’t know if we made the right decision about the defendant.

What I was going to say…eventually…after that detour…was that ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘ had an excellent link to this article in the Times about new technology that allows companies to keep a close eye on what their employees are doing on facebook/twitter/the usual suspects. While I find it a little loathsome that this service is on the rise, if you don’t know by now how to keep dirt off your face(book) you probably are a liability to your company…by being an idiot.

Finally, Carl James Grindley over at ‘Poems in Progress‘ has two new works up and would like to remind everybody that April is Poetry Month. In the spirit of April I’ll give it my best:

A Haiku:

The CUNY Commons;

I had things to do today,

but read blogs instead.