scott voth | Footenotes

March 25, 2012

The Mad Men Round Up

That’s a misnomer. I’m actually going to have to avoid all media this week in a futile effort to not hear spoilers about Mad Men. I’m in Boston and it just felt a little, I don’t know, wrong to watch it here. My Mad Men crew has selflessly agreed not to watch it until I get into New York Thursday so keep it down and don’t ruin anything for me.

Some weeks I feel like I really have to hunt to find some news to mention and other weeks these little gems practically fall right into my hand. In case you missed it Dick Cheney has finally had his entire heart replaced. Yes – the man who shot his friend in the face has managed to kidnap a stranger’s heart and have it put in his chest. I feel bad for the heart. Can you imagine? One minute you’re there pumping blood, hanging out with your friends in the neighborhood and then suddenly you’re in a vast cavern of bats, darkness and ghosts. Eeeesh. Elsewhere around the internet I stumbled across LessWrong and their community-compiled list of the best textbooks on everything. (Special thanks to Metafilter for that one!)

Here on the Commons there was plenty to catch up on. I’m sure many of you saw the PSC/Pathways email that went out. Tony Picciano posted PSC President Barbara Bowen’s email on the Commons outlining why the Union has taken CUNY to court over Pathways. Court! It’s about to get real.

Mari Watanabe-Rose threw down a challenge over at Math Matters: Can you recognize the sidewalks? The Cairo Tessellation post from last month had Mari seeing patterns everywhere. She makes a great point at the end too – Do math folks go crazy seeing math everywhere? I am admittedly math-phobic but I know that when the kerning is off on fonts I tend to go a little mad. That’s close right? I feel like the quotidian answer to Mari’s question is going to let me down a little so would the math-gifted just pretend like everything they see has formulas swirling around it with Phillip Glass playing? Awesome.

Over at ‘Did We Break It’ Scott Voth posted a phenomenal list of tools to take your good blog all the way to amazing. So. Much. Hyperbole. I know, I know, but the list really is superb and there’s so much you could be doing to your blog that you just haven’t found yet. Many thanks to Scott for pulling together so many resources.

Speaking of amazing blogs – check out ‘Collaborative Seeing Studio,’ a new blog on the Commons with an emphasis on visual research.

Finally this week on the Commons Joseph Ugoretz rolls up his sleeves and solves the headache of sorting through digital submissions of all kinds. Be sure to check out the demo version of the reviewing site and then head over to the comments for feedback! Thanks for sharing Joe and building this out!

Till next week!

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.

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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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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!

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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.