Catching up on blog reading

I did have relatively good Internet access while I was in Europe. It came at a price of between 2-4 Euros an hour, which isn’t too cheap, but it was everywhere. I didn’t take a computer with me, something I will reconsider on my next trip overseas– it would have been nice to do some writing and to watch some DVDs, though there was no WiFi access as far as I could tell. So I went to Internet cafes and I got online about four or five times, mostly to check my email for anything super important, to post to my unofficial blog about our travels, and to check the news.

It’s funny to think about; the last (and only other) time I was in Europe was on my/our honeymoon in 1994, quite a while before Internet cafes and news web sites and such. It was tough back then to even get newspapers and magazines in English, at least where we were. As a result, we found out about OJ and his infamous white Bronco ride a week after it happened while looking at a magazine on the way back home in the plane. This time, we had the ‘net, we had CNN Europe, we had access to USA Today. And as a result, I can tell you I think this John Karr guy is probably just a nut; I’d be very surprised if he did indeed kill JonBenet.

Anyway, even with this connectivity, I didn’t get a chance to read much in the way of blogs while I was away. So, in no real particular order, here are a few things I came across this morning via my RSS reader that might be helpfu to me later on and/or that I just thought were kinda interesting:

• From A List Apart: Your About Page is a Robot. Just an amusing and thoughtful article about writing good “About” pages.
• TVTube for the Mac. Software that allows you to download and/or manipulate YouTube files. Might be worth the $15 shareware price.
• Shockingly, people like their Macs. And they like them more than they like their Dells, too.
• Via boing-boing, a rather disturbing story about a blogger who is in jail for refusing to turn over video he shot at a G8 protest.
• Weird Al’s song “Don’t Download this Song,” (MP3) also via boing-boing, to the tune of “We are the World” (well, sort of). Very amusing.
• Jill Walker’s post titled “the prehistory of blogs,” which includes a bunch of different and potentially interesting links, especially if I ever decide that I actually do want to write a book about blogging (but it’s still interesting for teaching and stuff even if I don’t).
• Lots of links to articles about Wikipedia, which certainly can come in handy for teaching.
• Via KairosNews, this link in Henry Jenkin’s blog about what DOPA means for Education. BTW, it turns out that Jenkins has a book coming out next month which once again makes me think that writing about blogging may be one of those things that has “left the building,” so to speak.
• Also via KairosNews, a comparison between MySpace and the teenage practice of “crusing.” Makes sense to me, and reminds me of my youth.
• Kairos is ten, which makes sense to me because I was on the editorial board for Kairos about ten or so years ago….
• And I like Dan’s Haiku. I’ll probably be playing with some of my own images and short video from our trip abroad yet today….

Okay, I know I missed a lot, but there you have it.