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One of the many MANY things I need to think about dealing with on my lengthy “to do” list is to start getting my presentation for this conference I’m going to in mid-April. It’s a little early to start planning, but my intention is to put together an elaborate PowerPoint presentation with lots of cute and clever slides so that it can move at a fast pace, etc. I’ve done this sort of thing before; I’m not as good as Lessig is at it, but it’s fun to do nonetheless.

Anyway, this crossed my mind again today because I came across this (via boing boing), “How Cognitive Science Can Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations,” via a blog called i09. It is a summary of some of the work of cognitive psychologist Stephen M. Kosslyn and his book Clear and to the Point, which is about psychological principles and PowerPoint. Go read the blog post, but basically, the four rules discussed here are The Goldilocks Rule (the “just right” amount of information on a slide), The Rudolph Rule (make important things on a slide stand out), The Rule of Four (no more than four pieces of information on a slide), and the Birds of a Feather Rule (if you want things to be identified as being together, group them in terms of colors and proximity and the like).

Now, this is all fine and good, and I realize that I am only looking at a very brief summary of some principles that, for all I know, might be a lot more complicated than this. But I have to wonder: is this psychology or is this rhetoric? I’ve wondered this before about things like “usability design” for web sites. As far as I can tell, a lot of the usability folks out in industry see this as something that is (in terms of an academic pursuit) about psychology, but from my point of view, this stuff is clearly about texts, literacies, and rhetorics. So what’s the scoop?

Maybe in my next academic life/pursuit, I’ll try to study up on psychology and have a better answer to these questions.

I’m watching the ET “True Hollywood Story” episode about Rachel Ray, a former (still kind of current?) Food TV cool person about whom I have extremely mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve never watched her daily talk show, I think her Food TV show is kind of annoying (turn the sound off, listen to your favorite tunes, and watch her cook with gestures– it’s a lot better that way) and I have much sympathy with the Rachel Ray Sux Community. On the other hand, she comes across in this story as (dare I say it?) kind of likable and scrappy and cheery and such, and I have one of her cookbooks and have used it successfully.

Oh, what to do, what to do?

… you turn on the radio and it says it is 3 degrees. I think I miss Alabama (or even Bowling Green, KY) already.

A few random thoughts from Bowling Green, KY, where Will and I are staying at the halfway point on our return from Orange Beach, AL, to Ypsi:

• Will and I actually started with a detour to the beach because, as we were leaving, I was struck by the fact that we had spent so little time near the Gulf. So we went to a park that was way out of our way and went down the long beach and touched the water, which was warmer than I thought it would be.
• There’s a disturbing number of newish sushi and/or Japanese steak places in rural Alabama. And when I think of rural Alabama, I think….
• When driving in the midwest/northeast, I scan the lower end of the FM dial in search of a public radio station. In Alabama, this section of the radio spectrum is dominated by Christian radio. I dunno, that’s a weird contrast to me.
• Alabama is one long-assed state, like 400 miles from bottom to top. That’s a lot of, um, sweet home.
• I only ate BBQ once on this trip, and it was just okay.
• The Jack Daniels distillery was a very tempting stop, but it was 25-30 miles off the Interstate, and that’s a lot of miles/time to spend on a beverage I don’t regularly drink. Now if it was a scotch….
• Bowling Green, KY, is kind of similar in some interesting ways to Bowling Green, OH. It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, it has a blue collar tang to it (they make corvettes here) has a university, and it does not appear to have a decent restaurant (and thus room service pizza, which isn’t bad). Will and I drove around and did see a lot of pretty old houses.
• The pool and hot tub at this hotel has a saline solution instead of chlorine for some reason. I got into the hot tub, so I started and end the day in salt water.

Anyway, tomorrow drive-drive-drive and then home.

We started out Saturday morning with benigets, a little driving around, and then out to the Fort Morgan State Park, which is out at the end of one of the barrier islands under Mobile. This was Will’s idea. While driving around and looking at beaches and stuff, the grandparents were chatting about things we could do. They mentioned Fort Morgan, Prince William said “this is a good idea,” and off we were go, 30 or so minutes later.

Actually, it was a good idea. It’s a very old Fort, dating back from the war of 1812, and involved in some Civil War stuff. It had been “updated” over the years as a defensive post during WWI and WWII (I think) with some concrete bunkers and batteries for big cannons and stuff. It looked like the kind of place that would be a cool set to make a student movie. Some great views, but I was surprised to see dozens of off-shore oil rigs out there. If you look carefully over Will’s left shoulder, you can see one.

Went to lunch, and then we went on a dolphin cruise on this boat. I was a little dubious of the whole thing, especially since I do not enjoy boating in any shape and/or form. But it was a very pleasant day and a pleasant ride. We saw a surprising number of dolphins, and a bunch of them even ended up chasing after the boat and jumping out of the water.

Here’s some video; it doesn’t really do the experience justice though:

That night, we went to an extremely popular faux redneck place called Lulu’s where the entertainment included a band made up of guitar, harmonica, bongo-like drumkit, and tuba. One of their songs was “I Hope There’s a Trailerpark in Heaven,” or something like that, which fit well with a song I heard earlier in the day that had the line “It’s snowbird season, why we can’t shoot ‘em?” (BTW, here’s a link to a bizarre video where this song is set to a clip from the cartoon series Teen Titans). It kind of sums up the whole area down here, really. It’s a land where Jeff “you might be a redneck if…” Foxworthy is surly worshiped like a God.

The big highlight of today was a trip to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. We took a tour of the main floor of the museum, and Will was just enamored with the retired pilot tour guide, hanging on every single little word. A lot of our fellow tour patrons felt the same way, basically because many were either ex-military folks or just airplane/Navy geeks. One guy was mumbling to himself about the connections between the various planes and Star Wars and Star Trek. Another guy kept nodding in agreement with everything the tour guide said. Or maybe it was a nervous tick, I don’t know.

There was also a bus tour through a parking lot full of planes they couldn’t get into the building. The tour guide was just horrible, but despite that, this was one of the highlights of the trip for me. For this part of the tour featured this plane:

Don’t recognize it? Well, you remember when Bush landed that plane on the carrier and declared “mission accomplished” with the Iraq war, right? Of course you do, but here’s some footage from Fahrenheit 911 as a refresher. Well, guess what happened to the plane?

Yep, there it is. I dunno, but it seems a pretty preposterous place for the plane used in one of the most dubious stunts in recent American history, if you ask me. “Mission Accomplished” sent to the back lot of a museum.

Anyway, here’s a link to a flickr set of the trip so far. There will probably be some more, but I need to get caught up with some school work over the next day or so first. Well, that, and play some golf.

“The Waiter” at waiterrant.net has a book coming out. waiterrant.net is a very well-written blog that is just that, a waiter ranting (and in other ways discussing) the life of waiting tables at a nice restaurant in NYC. What I’d really like is if this guy would agree to be a case study subject for my BAWS project, but so far, the folks who have signed on for either the survey or the case study haven’t had the level of success of this guy with their blogs. I certainly haven’t been able to talk with anyone yet whose blog writing translated into a book deal.

Anyway, congrats to him, and check out waiterrant if you haven’t done so before.

Via this entry on Alex’s blog, I came across a list of the “Top 25 ‘Strangest’ College Courses” (many of which don’t sound that strange to me, frankly), and clocking in at #25, was a course at Pitzer College called “Learning from YouTube.” I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but there is a YouTube site for it here. I’m going to have a unit on things like YouTube in my current Computers and Writing, Theory and Practice class, and this is going to be one of the first sites I browse when I start figuring out what I’m going to include. Looks cool to me.

… not a bad summary of blogging in general: “Blogs,” by Sarah Boxer in the New York Review of Books. I don’t agree with all of it for all kinds of different reasons, and I think it is an example of the classic mistake that the popular press always seems to make when talking about blogs– that is, they try to define them in some kind of relationship with journalism, and it is usually defined in negative terms. But it would probably be a good introductory reading to assign to get the “what are these blog things, anyway?” conversation going.

As I type this, I just got done looking through some materials for my online class while at the condo my parents have rented in Orange Beach, Alabama– aka, the Redneck Riviera, or, if you believe that it is only the panhandle of Florida, near it. A few thoughts/highlights so far:

• We didn’t get as far as we would have preferred on Thursday because a) it was Valentine’s and Will was not about to leave school and miss out on the candy, b) Survivor was on at 8 pm (must-see watching for Will), c) Lost was on at 9 pm (must-see watching for me– and I thought it was excellent), and d) traffic in Ohio really sucked.
• I was rather surprised at the number of accidents and other emergency vehicle personnel I saw on the road. Of course, considering that I drove just shy of 1,000 miles in two days, maybe it isn’t surprising.
• Possible stop on the way home: Jack Daniels. Just for the tour, people.
• The only real photo op so far was at a rest stop near Huntsville, Alabama, where they made these rockets:

  

  I also like Will next to this proclamation:

  

  Apparently, it’s the state motto. But shouldn’t that be “We dare to defend our rights?” Am I missing something here?

• Biggest food screw-up of the trip: passing on the local BBQ place in Birmingham in favor of what I thought would be easier and faster to eat while driving food at Burger King.
• You know, I see plenty of older cars like mine with lots and lots of bumper stickers on the streets of Ypsi-Arbor. You don’t see as many on the Interstate. And you don’t see any other Darwin stickers down here, either.

Anyway, a combo of some fun and some work for the next few days. I’m sure there will be more updates.