Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage
Oct 18
Posted: under Design, Google Android, Mobile Web Design, monetizing mobile content, Web Tech.
Tags: apps, cross-platform compatibility, digital publishing, jetpack. mobile web, JPUR, purdue, textbooks
…but without the annoying biology grad student who is using himself as a human guinea pig to see if it’s possible to survive for 3 months on a diet of only beer, vitamin pills and broccoli florets. I’d love to say that this is it, we’ve found the perfect replacement for textbooks, but from what [...] [...more]
The switchover to all-digital textbooks is happening faster than predicted. I'm not too sure about reading an entire text on a smartphone screen, but for in-between class cramming, or getting instant updates to course material, it's not a bad choice.
I’d love to say that this is it, we’ve found the perfect replacement for textbooks, but from what I can see here, this is still a very limited solution. They are also trying to accomplish something that is unbelievably complex. I know, because we’ve been trying to do the same thing: come up with a way to create once-publish many.
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Oct 13
Posted: under Digital Migration.
A dark line descended over my Mac and all the programs froze. Then the message came up on the screen, telling me that I should push the “Power” button on the front of the Mac, hold it down until the whole machine turned off, and basically do a hard reboot. Not. Good. When I managed [...] [...more]
A dark line descended over my Mac and all the programs froze.
Then the message came up on the screen, telling me that I should push the “Power” button on the front of the Mac, hold it down until the whole machine turned off, and basically do a hard reboot.
Not. Good.
When I managed to restart Doc Octocore, I immediately launched all the diagnostic programs I had.
Seriously, this is something you never wanna see on your computer…
Now I begin to understand why my Mac has felt like it's trudging through slush the last couple of months. Apparently, ever since I toyed with Carbonite as a backup solution, then quickly rejected it because it was bringing the web connection to an absolute crawl - well, deleting Carbonite apparently never means that you're actually done with it. It's like Newt Gingrich ... the damn thing just won't go away. Just keeps hanging around, causing problems and contributing nothing useful.
To get rid of Carbonite, you have to start doing major surgery on the Library items on your Mac. It looks kinda like this:
Oct 05
Posted: under Digital Migration.
Stephen King posters, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. All your favorites are there … the “It” clown, little Drew Barry more starting the fire, The Gunslinger, the creepy little monkey with his cymbals. I’m not sure if the pix here were meant to be some sort of ironic counterpoint to the message that I’m trying to [...] [...more]
I’m not sure if the pix here were meant to be some sort of ironic counterpoint to the message that I’m trying to spread here in Bulgaria — that despite the travails of the Traditional Media in the developed world, All Is Not Lost, and working journalists are not trapped in an unending horror show from which there is no exit.
Which is pretty much the prevailing mind-set amongst my friends who still work at newspapers and in the publishing game.
This is quite a nice little space, as you can see – a sort of American cultural outreach center, where they are touting the works of Stephen King. I’ve always felt that King, when he bends his back to the work, can capture something truly essential about the American character that few other authors working in the late 20th century were capable of. When I read The Dead Zone in my mid-teens, I discovered a voice that was writing about the kinds of blue collar, but not clueless hickabillies, that I had grown up with. Some deeply flawed and dangerous … others sad and lost … others (too few, really) quietly courageous and steadfast in their core human decency. His deep distrust of authority and ability to see through the post-Watergate b.s. was like a bucket of cold water to the face. I’ll always love him for that, even if in subsequent years, his discovery of the coca alkaloids tinged his writing with a lazy streak, and he rarely approached the kinds of insight and characterization that marked his work in the 70s.
Oct 04
Posted: under Digital Migration, New Media Strategery, Travel.
Tags: Bulgaria, new media. illuminated manuscripts, Rila Monastery
I’m in Sofia, Bulgaria, training journalists & others on how to use the various tools of New Media. As part of the trip, we went into the mountains, to an ancient monastery. Yeah, I know — a trip up winding paths to a crumbling castle … bring your garlic, stakes and holy water, right? Actually, [...] [...more]
I’m in Sofia, Bulgaria, training journalists & others on how to use the various tools of New Media.
As part of the trip, we went into the mountains, to an ancient monastery. Yeah, I know — a trip up winding paths to a crumbling castle … bring your garlic, stakes and holy water, right?
Actually, the Rila Monastery (as I said in an earlier post) is one of the truly amazing places on Earth. Man, they really loved to decorate this place up.
So here’s a shot of me on the portico of the cathedral here — a quote I heard is that “this place is like the Jerusalem to these people. It’s their Holy Land.” To me, the symmetry of this place lies in the fact that the monks here, for centuries, preserved knowledge by laboriously hand-scribing illuminated manuscripts. Until they were supplanted by herr Gutenberg’s movable type technology.
I am here to teach people about the modern equivalent of that disruptive technology.
