Category: Life

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Taskbarn and online collaboration

See Taskbarn, a free project management/collaboration tool.

I don’t know if this would help or not (and I haven’t played with it yet), but one of the challenges my online students in English 328 had this term was collaborating on the movie projects. I knew this might be tricky. I’ll post more about this later, but the short version is that it all “worked out,” but not without some challenges along the way.

In the end, the groups in both of my online sections mostly did face-to-face collaboration, which makes sense since at least 80% of the students in these online classes are currently taking class on campus. In fact, I think there were only two students in total who were really “distance learners,” one in another state a couple time zones away, and another in the military and stationed in the Middle East. Without getting into details now, people coped as best they could and it basically worked out about as well as the collaboration did in the fall term in the “normal” face to face class.

Still, I think that students really could/should be able to do the whole thing online by exchanging text, audio, and video. In theory, they could use emuonline for this, but it has some kind of clunky features in terms of uploading large files and such. So maybe something like this would work better.

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A fifteen minute (or so) procrastination about a new computer desk layout

While taking a little grading/commenting break, I came across 15+ Beautiful and Elegant Mac Setups. This got me thinking about two things.

First, I probably am going to once again migrate my desk to a different part of the house, the study area upstairs where Annette has a desk space in theory, but only in theory since she generally is more comfortable and productive working not at a desk at all. Kind of like Richard Branson, though with considerably less money.

Second, if I just cleaned my desk once in a while, I might actually have something worthy of an “elegant” and maybe even “beautiful” desk set-up. And cleaning would be another form of procrastination from grading. Must… resist….

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Introducing the Krause-Wannamaker square foot garden

Square foot gardening: building the boxWe’re trying a new gardening experiment this year: a long version of a Squarefoot Garden to suit the space we have. We don’t have a lot of sun, and this narrow space between our house and our neighbors (out of the picture, but probably less than ten feet away) is actually the only part of our yard where we’ve had any luck growing tomatoes over the years; thus this modification, which is two feet wide and sixteen feet long.

Of course, we can’t even think about planting much (maybe some seeds? maybe stuff like chard?) until after Mother’s Day because of frost and the like.

Depending on how commenting on essays, meeting with students, and generally wrapping up the term goes next week, I might be able to work up a batch of “Mel’s mix,” which is 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite. This might actually be the most tricky part of the whole process. Home Depot didn’t have vermiculite, and it seemed a little pricey when I asked about it at the Ann Arbor Home and Garden store; of course, that is easily the most expensive and/or over-priced store in town. Stay tuned….

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The NCAA Finals was fun, and either way, I’m a winner

Our seatsI was in two NCAA pools this year, one with my father and about a dozen of his friends and relatives, and one with my friend Bruce, who have been “betting” on the tourney since we lived across the hall from each other in Quadrangle Hall at the University of Iowa in 1984. In both pools, I had MSU, UConn, UNC, and Pitt in the finals, and I had MSU and UNC in the final game. In the pool with my dad, I picked UNC; in the pool with Bruce, I picked MSU. I don’t remember the reason for these different choices, but it turns out I won both pools.

So I got that going for me.

More important though, Will and I got to go see the final game last night. My parents bought tickets for the tourney through the lottery system, they went to the games Saturday night, and gave me and Will the tickets for Monday night. Here’s is a link to my Flickr set of pictures from the game; here are a few highlights:

  • Of course, we got lost getting into town. I always do going to Detroit. But we did navigate to a parking deck right next to Ford Field for the privilege of paying $40 for a parking spot. As I will get to in a moment, that was worth every cent.
  • Will and I walked around a bit and did a little souvenir shopping, but we decided to pass on going over to Cobo center. I think that the cold and the snow kind of dissuaded us. Had we come into town a little earlier, it might have been different. And had Will been 21, it would have been much different: the main activity before the game seemed to be drinking at one of the many bars and tents connected to bars, and that might have been a fun way to pass the afternoon before the game.
  • I would say MSU fans outnumbered UNC fans about 15 to 1. Lots of Sparty-wear on the streets and in the arena. I wore my Eastern Michigan hoodie sweatshirt because while not a direct alliance to MSU, it is green and white. So it represented my “on the fence but leaning” take on the game.
  • Ford Field is a very nice facility, and the next time that EMU plays football there (which has happened about once a year for the last couple years), I’m going. Heck, I might even go see the Lions next year. In one sense, our tickets were terrible: about halfway up the last section in an end zone end of the arena, which meant the court was literally about a quarter of a mile away. But this wasn’t as bad as you might think. I still feel like we got a pretty decent view of the game, and with the big-screen TVs at the top of the stadium, it wasn’t that different from watching it on TV.
  • Everyone I dealt with was extremely polite and well-behaved. That includes the fans, the people taking tickets, the security folks, the hot dog lady, the dude who gave me foolproof directions out of town, everyone. It was almost as if Detroiters and Michiganders had some kind of collective mission to put a warm and happy face on a scruffy and run-down town and state.
  • At half-time, UNC had managed to score the most points in a half in NCAA playoff history and they were ahead of a lackluster MSU team by 20 points. And it was 10:15 pm. Will said “let’s go,” and I didn’t disagree. While plenty of other people left early, my very close (albeit over-priced) parking space meant that we were out of the stadium and on I-75 and then I-94 back to Ypsi in a matter of minutes. In fact, we got home early enough for me to watch the last seven minutes of the game on TV (and Will and I clearly didn’t miss much), and also to see a local news report on the massive traffic jam after the game ended. We would have been there until one in the morning had we stayed.

So an excellent time all in all and a huge thank you to my parents for the tickets!

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On rodent eating

I saw this article on Boing-Boing and on Mark Maynard’s blog: “To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by
Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land” from the Detroit News. A quote:

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.

“Starvation is cheap,” he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

First off, I’m pretty sure that the last thing that Southeast Michigan and Detroit needs in the paper right now is a story about the resourceful use of raccoons as food. “Come to Detroit for the Final Four; stay for the ‘coon.” Ouch. I think I like Mark’s take on this, for the most part.

Second, this reminds me of a time that must be 15 or more years ago now when Sheri Reynolds brought over a muskrat to a party I was having while living at Charlotte’s house in Richmond, Virginia.

I cannot recall the purpose for the party (though I had many parties at that house), nor can I recall the specific purpose for the muskrat. I do remember though that Sheri bought it at some kind of redneck-ish grocery store. It was in in the frozen food section– no kidding. Anyway, she brought this thing over and cooked up a “muskrat bog” in a big pot: lots of rice, onions, stock seasoning, and, of course, muskrat. Stank up the whole house.

I don’t remember what the muskrat tasted like– I imagine a lot like raccoon might taste. But I do recall someone fishing out the muskrat skull from the bog and propping it up on a bunch of beer cans in the kitchen, or perhaps the dining room table.

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Eric Idle on writing and collaboration

I found this on YouTube while looking for something else:

Interestingly enough, I more or less recognize each of these different styles of collaboration, which I suppose is one of the reasons why I tend to write alone. Anyway, could be a handy little vid to share as part of a collaboration discussion I think.

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ReReRe:CCCC-ing, part 1 (Rip: A Remix Manifesto)

The call for proposals for the 2010 CCCCs in Louisville is titled “The Remix: Revisit, Rethink, Revise, Renew.” First off, proposal readers better get ready for a whole bunch of “Re:”s which is likely to be included in just about every single proposal. I didn’t look too closely at the CCCCs program for San Francisco, but I will bet you there were enough waves to make a reader seasick.

Second, I suspect the CCCCs ought to be careful what it asks for. Is this an organization that is really ready to rethink, revise, and renew? I dunno.

Third– and maybe this is just me– but that “The” bothers me, as in “The Remix,” which suggests singularity which obviously not only doesn’t exist but which is defied by remixing in the first place. Plus every time I read the phrase “The Remix,” I misread and/or hear “The Reflex” by Duran Duran.

I’ve got a couple of vague ideas for proposals, but one thing I’m kind of thinking about is something along the lines of Rip: A Remix Manifesto, only in the form of an essay/word-driven project. Here’s a preview:

The Ann Arbor film festival is going to screen this on Saturday night, but not until 9 pm. And given that I am a flying solo this weekend while Annette is off at a conference, I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it or not. But the point of the movie, as I understand it, is it is the first “open source” documentary, where the filmmaker invited folks to remix/mashup the video. So the two things I wonder about:

Could this work in a “conventional” first year writing project, where one of the research writing “essay” projects was replaced with a “mashup” essay?

And is the CCCCs and/or comp/rhet world actually ready for something like that?