Just Differently Intelligent...

Jason De Man

Jeremy IMed me to check out the link on his blog to the following Quizilla, and it was oh, so accurate for both of us:
This is the result it gave me. The wig and dress are optional I hope.

You are a Deconstructionist Weirdo. Although
ostensibly originating with Derrida, the
theories of your particular school have long
since passed beyond intellegibillity; half the
time you don't even understand what you're
saying anymore. That's okay, though. You're a
lot more fun to party with than a bunch of
stodgy new historicists.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sympatico Speed Bump

According to this article: Bell to double download speed for High-Speed Internet - Improve upload performance by five times, we're getting a speed bump in January or so.

Yuka made me... buy it.

A 3/4 size Ovation 2003-vn.

Hacktivista Broadcast

Ron Deibert's new documentary series Hacktivista, co-produced with Mike Downie, will air on TVOntario December 26th, 29th, and 30th at 8 pm. It features CitizenLab and KAT!.

ProjectAchieve on the MOOve...

For those of you that know and use ProjectAchieve collaborative virtual learning environment (or MOOktiMOO or EdenMOO for that matter), the MOO is on the move. The hardware that has hosted these servers since 1998 is kaput. Tape backup dead. Fan for the powersupply dead. Monitor dead. And it is only a Pentium II 350 anyway. Time to die.

I'm moving everything over to my old iMac DV (G3 450). This is the machine that hosts edublog.com, jasonnolan.net and virtuallearninghandbook.net, and some others. Note that http://projectachieve.net will be the correct address. The other two older addresses http://achieve.kmdi.utoronto.ca and http://achieve.utoronto.ca will work again soon enough, but they're not the ones you should be using anyway.

That's all... oh, except for the twiki. It will probably be down for a bit. or up only as an archive.

Schrodinger's Flashmob: Cyberspace is at no place in particular.

From: Steve Mann
To: jason@jasonnolan.net
Subject: Schrodinger's Flashmob: Cyberspace is at no place in particular.
Cc: mann@genesis.eecg.toronto.edu

Worldwide Flash Mob, December 24th, at Midnight

Schrodinger's Flashmob, at no place in particular: Flash from somewhere, anywhere, everywhere!

Worldwide Flash Mob: tonight, 2003 December 24th.

Anywhere and everywhere, you can participate by creating a flash of light. Find a Metz Mecablitz, or just use your on-camera flash, and take a picture at 23:59:58, 59, or, depending on the slowness of your shutter, a fraction of a second just before midnight.

Where ever you are, point a camera flash up into the night sky, and LET THERE BE LIGHT at exactly midnight.

Holiday Edition of the Ugly Building Cam

steve's on his way over to scope out the view from my building... and he asked if the cam was running, so I thought I'd bring you... the return of the OCAD Ugly Building Cam:

Hit refresh to see if the images changes (it probably won't) or go to the cam page.

2 big surveillance issues.

NY Times has two good articles on surveillance: Lost? Hiding? Your cell phone is keeping tabs and Court Leaves the Door Open for Safety System Wiretaps, both of which speak to how your personal information tools are probably watching you as much as you're using them to watch the world. (Registration required, but you must be pretty crazy not to be registered for NYT).

MOO and LJ

Spent the afternoon trying to compile MOO on OS X. Not much luck, but I'm half way there. First had to get a GCC compiler installed on my laptop, then everything went fine, until the 'make' died. Waiting for instructions.

Also Katie and I met about how we're going to get Livejournal.utoronto.ca spruced up this term. May be fun. I wasn't going to do it alone.

Happy Winter Solstice

And a cool Yule.

Not being someone who practices any of the major world religions, even the newest one of crass commercialism, I don't really go for celebrating christmas. I didn't like it much as a kid either. Too many potentials for letdown and despair.December 25 is usually just a wonderfully quiet day for Yuka and me. We usually walk about downtown, find the odd restaurant open, see a movie, just spend time quietly together. Nice, quiet and peaceful. Well, I guess we're celebrating it the way Christians should, which would be great if it were. That said, we both love presents. Giving them more than getting. I'll meet sMom Cheryl my little sisters Cats and Emmers when they're back from christmas in Florida with my dad. And I usually celebrate my mom's birthday in February with her, rather than anything this month.

But today is Winter Solistice... which is the day I chose for me, to celebrate the season. It is the only day that really makes any sense to me. Always has. But it has the added importance now of being my nephew's birthday. Going to go and pester him with presents. Luckily he's too young to read this blog, or he'd know that I got him a wooden sword, among other things. And we'll take up all our holiday gifts to big sister and family, and get her to take some off to mom and sDad Larz.

So, to recount: buying presents is fun. Giving them whenever you have them is great. And today is the only day I celebrate. Best wishes to all.

Surveillance and the Undead

Saw this and had to send it to Steve Mann and Berry Wellman... as we wrote a surveillance paper together.

Hampton Court Palace, which I think was King Henry the 8th's, has been picking up strange events on security cams. A door opening on its own, then a hazy figure in medieval robes reaches out and closes them.

Check it out.
Happy Winter Solistice!!!

As ken says...

Go to google and type: miserable failure
Then click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

As see where it goes.

Thanks Fabio!

Just went down to the UofT computer shop and Fab swapped out my old broken keyboard from my laptop and popped in another one... turn around time for repair? 30seconds. Now that's service.

I love my new keyboard... it is so clean.

Senior Fellow

I was just formally invited to join the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology as a 'Senior McLuhan Fellow'.

It has been in the works for a while, and I've had it noted on my .signature for email. But now, it is real. Nice holiday present. Thanks Derrick, Mark and all the exec.

Powerpoint Makes You Dumb

Both Ken and Alan sent me this New York Times article: Powerpoint Makes You Dumb yesterday. And no, this is not a joke. I hate PPT. The worst paper I saw from students this fall was the only one done in powerpoint. And yes, I'm going to get the Edward Tufte pamphlet.

"In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program."

Not dead yet...

I just wish I'd read something interesting, or important. But with all the marking, it just hasn't happened. Time to make coffee for yuka.

KMD1002 & 2003 Syllabi

I've put up the bare bones of the KMD1002 and 2003 courses at
http://jasonnolan.net/kmd1002/
http://jasonnolan.net/kmd2003/

Just the basics, while I finish marking. There is still room in both courses for any UofT graduate students. But just some. Thanks for sharing it about.

Thanks Wallah!

I just got my 2004 Crayon Shinchan calendar.

I've been collecting Shinchan 'stuff' for over a decade, and Wallah's been one of my best collection supporters.

Wanna see what students can do with Wikis?

Check out the final wiki page for Joanne from my Ryerson Early Childhood Education course. The interesting thing was that I didn't teach how to use wiki, but expected them to flail and play. Of course people pick things up from different places now, and people have developed a sense of design from all the exposure to various online spaces. But few have fun with it.

Fixing things up...

Spent some time tracking down a problem in the CGI scripts we use to submit poems and fiction at The Harrow, and was thinking about doing some work on Livejournal @ UofT when Jeremy informed me that LJ is giving up the use of codes and everyone gets free accounts now. I'll have to think of how that works out for us.

Yuka has been demanding...

That I blog elgoog and hugeurl

I was roused from my stupor of writing job application letters by a myriad of screams that could not have come from anything but an entire gaggle of post-modernist philosophers on 'shrooms. But it was none other than yuka typing in her web site address http://yukazine.com to http://www.hugeurl.com/. Calamity ensued.

Out and about today...

Job applications and CV revisions this morning. I got a great suggestion for a CV model (Nick Burbules') from a friend who will not be mentioned by name. And letter revision suggestions from Julia et al.

Then Ryerson to collect assignments.

I'm going to be visiting Ron Baecker's KMD1001 course today, to try and entice students to take either of my KMD1002 and KMD2003 courses this evening.

One of those days that make you feel like a teacher.

Maple Collon... new therapy for what ails you?

You too can have your own Maple Collon.

Sounds like Maple Colon. Collon Cookies? But it is probably an error for "Maple Collection". We hope. We particularly thought that Alan might like this one. According to the OED, however, collon is a variant of colon.

Sunny Sunday...

Had a great dinner last night. JuliaD, BernieHogan, Hossein and his wife (Hossien how do you spell her name? My apologies.), and Chika-chan joined Yuka and I for 'za and whatnot. It was really nice and relaxing, so I can't remember what we were talking about at all.

Found a great new beer from Unibrew called "Terrible". It was a somewhat dry russian imperial stout type @ about 10.5%. Everyone liked it. Which is strange, when it comes to a strong beer. And then there was Julia's tasty collapsing dessert... what was it though?

Finally yuka was falling asleep and it was just Julia and I jawing...

Today... job applications.

Content and Busy...

Having a strange fit of calm activity... sending out a number of job applications, and putting the finishing touches on my two KMD courses for next term.

Cyborg Barbies

That's Megan with Barbie... Her student Pia had everyone cyborgizing barbie as part of their response to Donna Haraway. Check out the photoshow

Ah... lecturing at OISE. Sweet.

I was a guest in Megan Boler's course "Technology in Education: Philosophical Issues" in Theory and Policy Studies @ OISE. She's a new prof here, and a friend of Jeremy H from Virginia Tech. It was great. Not only did they let me rant and wax philosophic, but I got challenged, and in at least one situation stumped. Then off for a pint and more talking at the Bedford Ballroom. I really miss OISE students.

Donna Haraway... audio

Megan gave me this link:
http://www.women.it/cyberarchive/files/haraway.html
to Donna J. Haraway / Alpha Bitches Online: the Dog Genome for the Next Genderation

Presented at the IV European Feminist Research Conference "Body Gender Subjectivity. Crossing borders of disciplines and institutions" (..go..), that took place in Bologna - Italy from September 28th to October 1st, 2000.

Soviet+Canuckistan

Michel the Fox posted this on ProjectAchieve: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soviet+Canuckistan

iPod

My iPod is working! Got the part mailed from Michigan. Put it in, put the pod back together, and voila! Don't let anyone tell you you can't get your iPod apart and back together. Just don't do it with sharp toys.

Access Grid

Many Ayromlou let me use his Access Grid set up at Ryerson to talk with Ken at the NRC this afternoon. Actually, it was largely Ken and Many getting to know each other, and what their respective locations are doing with the AG. Now we're hoping we can pull together an interesting project using AG. More later.