Thursday, 10 November 2011
In the Motherlode Blog on the New York Times, KJ DellAntonia writes about the spectacle of Penn State University students rioting in the streets:
Wednesday night I was watching ESPN’s coverage of the firing of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno (an event whose magnitude one announcer just compared indirectly to the Kennedy assassination), and wondering how I’d feel if my child was standing on Paterno’s lawn, or on the streets of State College, supporting a man who could hear a graphic description of a sexual assault on a young boy and then choose to walk away. I’d like to hear one of those students support the argument that the coach deserves “one more game.” And then I’d like them to tell me how they’d explain it to a 10-year-old.
I believe that the students of Penn State need to take a moment, forget about football and championships, and step back to ask themselves what they would do had they been in Paterno’s shoes when the incident involving Sandusky was reported to him.
There is a time for recognizing achievements, and there is a time to acknowledge that horrible things have happened, that children have been hurt, and that there are some mistakes that no amount of success can absolve. This is the latter, and that’s a lesson Penn State needs to convey.
Read the entire article, and give it some thought. Spanier and Paterno are not the only ones who will be leaving the Penn State University organization in the coming weeks.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
In order to save others the mind-boggling level of frustration that can be achieved when attempting to troubleshoot Home Sharing between iTunes and your AppleTV, I want to highlight an item from Step 4 of the Apple support troubleshooting page:
Your devices are not using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), or that they are all on the same VPN. A VPN may isolate the device and cause connectivity disruptions.
That sentence does not tell the whole story. Not only should your computers that have iTunes on them not be running a VPN connection, but there should not be any device on your network that is connected to a VPN, even if that device has no iTunes installation.
I figured this out the other day when I hastily read the support article and overlooked this step as the computer with iTunes Home Sharing was not running a VPN. However, my work computer was on the network and actively connected to our company VPN.
After giving up on Home Sharing, I went into the office, did some work, and shut down my VPN connection. ‘Lo and behold! Home Sharing is suddenly working again. I hope this helps at least one other person because it took me a couple weeks — and the mistaken assumption that a recent AppleTV update broke the Home Sharing — to figure out what was really happening.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
The DeLorean DMC-12, one of the world’s most iconic cars, is making waves again, re-emerging as an all-electric vehicle.
The DeLorean Motor Company, now based in Texas, rolled out the proof-of-concept version of the eDeLorean to customers at its biannual DMC headquarters gathering in Houston over the weekend.
I want one.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Adam Gopnik wrote a piece in The New Yorker about The Phantom Tollbooth after 50 years.
We’re quickly introduced to the almost anonymous, and not very actively parented, Milo, a large-eyed boy in a dark shirt—a boy too bored to look up from the pavement as he walks home from school. Within paragraphs, a strange package has arrived in his room. It turns out to be a cardboard tollbooth, waiting to be assembled. Milo obediently sets it up, pays his fare (he has an enviable electric car already parked by his bed), and is rushed away to the Lands Beyond, a fantastical world of pure ideas. The book breaks the first rule of “good” children’s literature: we’re in the plot before we know the people.
Broken rules or not, my copy is on a bookshelf next to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Le Petit Prince, and others just waiting to be read by my child someday.
Me, I choose to use Apple products. Some of the time. When I’m not using other products, some of which might be more to Stallman and Raymond’s liking. I’m familiar with the pros and cons of my various options. I understand my needs. I think I’m as good a position as anyone to know what products will serve me well, or at least a better one than Stallman and Raymond.
I’m with Harry McCracken on this one. I choose to use Apple products when they meet my needs and requirements. I’ve never been more productive or creative than when I’ve used Apple products. In a distant second, my Microsoft Windows-based personal computers are my next most productive platform.
Open solutions and platforms? While I use them effectively in the enterprise, I have found that I spend more time searching for open solutions than finding and using them.
If my choices are “freedom” to spend time looking for solutions, or “jail” where I have everything I need to be creative and productive, then assign me a number and show me to my cell.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Bravo, Pittsburgh on securing a spot as the number 3 most mustache-friendly city. However, I believe that coming in third place was skewed by the methodology that the American Mustache Institute used for the research. After all, the white paper states,
Previous AMI research actually demonstrates that Pittsburgh has the highest number of Mustached Americans per capita outside of only Graz, Styria in Austria and Tijuana, Mexico.
Methinks I need to start growing a mustache…
Thursday, 11 August 2011
A fascinating look at cultures around the world via photographs by James Mollison.
[via kottke.org]
Monday, 8 August 2011
[via kottke.org]
The drama is noticeable for its obsessive attention to detail. Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and the production team had a long debate about whether aristocrats of the period – the second series takes us from 1916 to 1918 and the Christmas special takes place on New Year’s Eve 1919 –would eat asparagus with their hands or a fork. In the end producers cut the asparagus up and pretended they were green beans, which they knew were eaten with a fork, so keen were they not to put a foot wrong. Five days of the 23-week shoot was done in replica Western Front trenches. “Because the show is so popular, we’ve a special role in teaching, particularly young people, about the war,” said Neame. “ITV wanted more of the same [as the first series]. But because this is wartime, we had a duty to show the social impact of war.”
According to Kottke, the second series will not air in the United States until January 2012. On the upside, the third series is already being written.
A kind fellow, Joshua Goodwin, has informed me that my link-post items did not include a permalink back to my site when viewed in an RSS reader. The titles of the link-post items will continue to link to the external sites referenced; however, I have added a permalink to the end of link-post items in the RSS feed so you can now click the infinity glyph (∞), and it will link you back to the post on Indigo Spot.
Thank you for the suggestion, Joshua.
Be well.
Tim Brownson on the “I don’t have time” excuse:
We all adopt the ‘lack of time’ approach on a regular basis, because the easiest out in the world is to blame the clock when we want to avoid doing something.
But it’s nearly always untrue and it’s seldom helpful.
…
I challenge you to join me and go a week without telling people you don’t have time to do something.
I started the process last week by telling somebody that I probably wont read the book they sent me.
Not because I didn’t have any time, but what spare time I have at the moment I’d rather use for chilling with the wife and the hounds.
I’ve always disliked the word “busy” and try not to use it to describe my life. Others will be more respectful of your time if you are honest with them about how you wish to use it.
