emlarson.com

Home

Blog

Work

Tech

Life

Lord

Play

Blog: The absolute latest random thoughts

Kari Byron news highlighted links: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE? Everything short is new again Air Force One spotting Hot air balloon fun! A great security idea... A Posterous quirk? IKEA Ramp Glee! Documenting Emotional Eating? PLNs Pondering "Salons" follow emlarson at http://twitter.com earlier posts: 09.2002   10.2002   11.2002   12.2002   01.2003   02.2003   03.2003   04.2003   05.2003   06.2003   07.2003   08.2003   09.2003   10.2003   11.2003   12.2003   01.2004   02.2004   03.2004   04.2004   05.2004   06.2004   07.2004   08.2004   09.2004   10.2004   11.2004   12.2004   01.2005   02.2005   03.2005   04.2005   05.2005   06.2005   07.2005   08.2005   09.2005   10.2005   11.2005   12.2005   01.2006   02.2006   03.2006   04.2006   05.2006   06.2006   07.2006   08.2006   09.2006   10.2006   11.2006   12.2006   04.2007   05.2007   06.2007   07.2007   08.2007   12.2007   01.2008   02.2008   05.2008   06.2008   07.2008   08.2008   12.2008   01.2009   02.2009   03.2009   04.2009   05.2009   06.2009   07.2009   09.2009   10.2009   11.2009   12.2009   01.2010   02.2010   03.2010   04.2010   05.2010   06.2010   07.2010   08.2010   09.2010   10.2010   11.2010   12.2010   01.2011   02.2011   03.2011   04.2011   05.2011   06.2011   07.2011   09.2011   10.2011   11.2011   12.2011   01.2012   02.2012   04.2012   07.2012   10.2012   11.2012   01.2013   02.2013   03.2013

7.26.2011 "Put Your Arms Around Me" lyrics I heard a hauntingly pretty song by some nameless young woman on the Muzack in the coffee shop and wanted to look it up. But what was that lyric? "You put your arms around me and hold"? "You put your arms around me and fall"? I couldn't make it out, and there sure are a lot of songs out there about arms doing hugging-like things... but I got lucky: It's Christina Perry singing "Arms" and the lyric is: "You put your arms around me and I'm home." Which is beautifully poetic... but since she turns "and I'm home" into one melodic syllable it's really hard to figure out what she's singing. Now you can Google "Christina Perry Arms" and see what you can come up with. You're welcome. :) posted by emlarson @ 2:03 PM   0 comments - click here now and add your own! 7.19.2011 Making you the center of a personal network of technology resources? Citing the mission/vision/founding statement of the IT @ Illinois organization (http://itatillinois.illinois.edu/ ): "IT@Illinois is dedicated to advancing research, education, and public service by making every potential contributor the center of an unbounded personal network of social and technical resources." Sally Jackson spoke at EDUCAUSE about this "new" idea of support. (Details at http://www.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/PodcastSallyJacksononSociotech/226120 ) I love, love, love this. I've got to ponder it more and see how it fits into a notion of a health technology support paradigm. And I thought I documented it somewhere before but can't find it for the life of me, so apologies to my readers if this is redundant... Labels: posterous posted by emlarson @ 1:03 PM   0 comments - click here now and add your own! 7.14.2011 Another thing in the "to read" pile... ...and that fact alone might tell me something. "10 Things That Hold You Back from Outrageous Success - Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life" http://dumblittleman.mobstac.com/2011/07/10-things-that-hold-you-back-from.html/ Labels: posterous posted by emlarson @ 8:52 AM   0 comments - click here now and add your own! When comments go bad I'm so angry at the StarTribune.com comment process, I could spit. That's what I get for bothering to engage on their site. It was Paul Walsh's story about the Farmers Airship arriving in the Twin Cities (lifted from the AirshipVentures.com press release) that got me interested in watching the landing with my daughters. In the article, Walsh wrote that "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship is scheduled to pass over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington." If you don't know where that is, Google the phrase and you'll find: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?&cid=14673487912694924028 That office is easy to find; it's at the corner of 494 and 100 which, to my non-local readers, is a major intersection north of the Flying Cloud airport where the airship was heading. We watched the tracking site from our home in Eagan and I left with my girls at what seemed like a reasonable time, and saw the ship in the distant sky to our south-west. That meant that we should head up 77 to west-bound 494 and meet up with it at Hwy. 100. Perfect. Except, it didn't go there. It stayed south and went straight to the Flying Cloud airport. Paul Walsh then updated his Star Tribune story to the present-tense without changing the planned fly-over or noting that it didn't happen, saying, "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship passed over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington." But it didn't. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't. And I don't mean "I expected it to fly so close that they could drop a beanbag out the window and onto the roof." I mean that it was nowhere near Bloomington, as far as I can tell. So I wrote that in a comment on the StarTribune.com site that night: emlarson Jul. 12, 11 8:55 PM I don't usually complain about news articles, but as far as I know the Farmers Airship didn't go anywhere near the "Bloomington headquarters." I can understand that this morning's article was just pulled from the press release and they might have intended to fly there... but to just switch that poetically phrased plan into the past tense and write "In a nod to its sponsor, the airship passed over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington" (which has to be the district office at 494 and 100) is just downright wrong and means we have a news story misrepresenting the facts of an event. Not cool. (I know it wasn't there, because I swung north and cut across 494 with my kids as we ran late and drove west, hoping that we could catch a glimpse of it before it landed. No luck because, as far as I can tell, it actually came straight across Burnsville and Savage up to Flying Cloud.) The next morning, there were promotional spots on the morning news shows and the zeppelin started flying back-and-forth between Flying Cloud airport and downtown Minneapolis. That's what prompted this comment from "bigj111": bigj111 Jul. 13, 11 11:50 AM emlarson: "I know it wasn't there, because I swung north and cut across 494 with my kids as we ran late and drove west, hoping that we could catch a glimpse of it before it landed. No luck because, as far as I can tell, it actually came straight across Burnsville and Savage up to Flying Cloud"-----In fact, you ARE wrong. I watched it out my office window near Hwy 100 this morning. Get yourself a new map. See the problem here? Airship Ventures sends a press release saying they're coming to the Twin Cities and plan to fly over sponsor's headquarters as they arrive. Newspaper reporter quotes that verbatim. Zeppelin arrives late and avoids sponsor's headquarters by several miles. Newspaper reporter simply updates now-inaccurate schedule to the present-tense without verifying that it happened. Commenter points out this error that evening. The next morning, Airship Ventures does fly over the headquarters. The scheduled event did happen, but not on the schedule that Paul Walsh said it did. BigJ111 then lifts my comment from the night before, quotes me by name, mocks me with the insult of "Get yourself a new map," and puts my words in the context of that morning's zeppelin trips (which were completely different things on completely different days). So, I wrote a comment on the StarTribune.com story pointing out that my concern was about the reported events of July 12th and the bigj111 sighting was the morning of July 13th, which are totally different days. The Star Tribune chose to not publish that correction. They published another comment made a couple hours after my comment, so it's not that they're not publishing anything on articles that are a day old. But, for some reason, they left mine unpublished. We'll see if they publish my second attempt (which I re-wrote from scratch in case they didn't like some particular phrase or punctuation, not that I can imagine what might have been wrong with it). A few minutes ago they just updated the story with a video, so I know that there are at least night-owl interns working on it. But I doubt I'll be given the chance to clear my name. So, what's my point? We're talking about the basic facts of reporting a story. That's something near and dear to my heart. When someone attempts to correct the record, and is unjustly attacked for it... and is blocked from defending himself... what kind of platform is a business building for itself? Will I ever comment on the Star Tribune site again? Probably not under my own name. Not because I don't trust my own words, and not because I don't believe I can defend the facts, but because I don't trust the Star Tribune to allow its readers to defend themselves and I know nobody from the Strib is coming to my defense in my place. Is this what "journalism" has come to? posted by emlarson @ 12:12 AM   3 comments - click here now and add your own! 7.01.2011 Mashup waiting to happen ???Good Life??? by OneRepublic plus "Am I Wrong" by Love Spit Love would work well. Labels: posterous posted by emlarson @ 5:54 PM   0 comments - click here now and add your own! Introverts and conferences usually don't mix... But I'm hoping that this article helps me... http://denisefelder.com/2011/06/28/introvert%E2%80%99s-guide-to-professional-... Labels: posterous posted by emlarson @ 5:09 PM   0 comments - click here now and add your own!

Entire site contents Copyright © 2000-2005 Eric M. Larson