Making Rounds

Like so many, I’ve been involved in various projects, and have not had time to keep up with what’s been going on in my online network. Last night, I recorded the Mets vs. D’Backs game but fell asleep somewhere in the fifth inning. John Maine cracks me up. He pitches well, but not perfect. But he gets so mad at himself. If he throws a ball, he just starts fuming. He gets so frustrated that even after a strikeout, he’s not happy. I guess he wants to pitch the whole game, but he throws too many pitches, starts running out of gas, and then really gets self critical. So I woke up this morning wanting to watch the rest of the game, since we’re on our way to Connecticut in an hour or so, but I couldn’t since there were so many interesting things I came across this morning. Rather than reading blogs in my reader, I decided to click on my blogroll, wanting a little texture of visiting real pages. My email kept chiming, and I looked at that too. Here’s some of the great stuff I learned this morning, in no particular order.

1. Clay Shirky has a great video on BlipTV that argues against the idea that participating online is a mark of excessive free time. Very convincing stuff. (Richard Smyth on Ulmer’s Invent-L mailing list.)

2. Jill Walker had a baby, Jessica. She’s precious. (Blogroll)

3. Donna Strickland’s dad passed. So sorry, Donna. (Blogroll)

4. Jim Brown’s students worked with Mystory. I checked out the student’s page that Jim recommended. Good stuff. I made a note in reply to one of the exercises that I filed under problems/issues. (Blogroll)

At the end of the exercise Mace says that it’s hard to describe the atmosphere of the song because the song can be plugged into so many other things that change the atmosphere. this tells me that one of the difficulties that I have with the mystory is that at times it does not sufficiently account for the ways objects are changed by their environments. When the exercise asks for the student to describe the atmosphere of the song, that is a highly personal queston, i.e. what do think of, where were you, how does it make you feel, etc. But Mace correctly points out that the atmosphere is augmented, changed, when others use that song for particular rhetorical purposes and gives the example of how a song that has the personal signification of a particular mood carries different connotations when, say, a television show uses that song as music that illustrates a competing or alternative mood. I continue to grapple with the narcissisms embedded within the mystory.

5. I also spent some time setting up a Wiki for my Fall classes.

6. Made some notes in Google notebook about experimenting with my own ideas for integrating technologies with Ulmer’s mystory/popcycle. Thinking about experimenting on family and close friends over the summer.

7. Approved new members on the Arlington School Ning. http://arlingtonschool.ning.com. Scot and Collin joined this morning.

8. Viewed this project by one of Greg’s undergrad students who us using the hueretic CATTt. Nice. (Greg on the Invent-L list). Forwarded this message to my director.

9. Byron added a post on the Arlington School at Ning. Thanks, Byron! (Blogroll)

10. Added Shirky’s video to my two Ning networks (Arlington and Institute)

11. Commented on Derek’s post about how April sapped the life out of him. Depressing though impressive numbers of endurance. Gotta be in good shape to survive a month like that.

Total time on the above was about 2 1/2 hours, the wiki and the notes taking about half of that time, and I only made it through 1/2 of the blogroll, but I learned some interesting details, worked through a few issues, and noticed some problems. Emotionally, I’m left with the remainder of a new baby and passing father. Professionally I’m moderately intrigued. I highly recommend Greg’s student’s project, Jim’s student’s project and the Shirky video. Clicking on a few links in a blogroll does a worldagood.

Now a few innings before I’m outta here.