Top 10 Albums of 2008 · 18/12/08
It took a lot of thinking, but my top 10 releases of the year are:
- Cloud Cult – Feel Good Ghosts
- The Twilight Sad – Here It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did
- Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
- Common Market – Tobacco Road
- Shearwater – Rook
- Tricky – Knowle West Boy
- Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
- Wild Sweet Orange – We Have Cause to Be Uneasy
- Radiohead – In Rainbows (Bonus Disk)
- Byrne and Eno – Everything that Happens will Happen Today
The first eight are solid but I’m less sure about the last two. They were pretty much tied with a lot of other releases this year, including:
- Head Like a Kite – There is Loud Laughter Everywhere
- Wye Oak – If Children
- Live at KEXP, Vol. 4
- The Saturday Knights – Mingle
- Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst
- Throw Me the Statue – Moonbeams
- Billy Bragg – Mr. Love and Justice
- Death Cab – Narrow Stairs
- R.E.M. – Accelerate
- Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
- David Karsten Daniels – Fear of Flying
And others. Overall a pretty good year for music.
Spenatskärare · 29/11/08
So in cleaning out my grandma’s house up in Lake Stevens, one of the interesting things we found was this:
That’s Swedish on the box and ‘spenatskärare’ literally translates as ‘spinach cutter’. I have no idea what it is for. A Google search isn’t much help as all the pages with ‘spenatskärare’ are in Swedish, which I neither speak nor read. I could probably figure this mystery out given some time, but I haven’t really tried to do so quite yet.
And I'm Off... · 03/07/08
A bit late in the day, but by this evening I should camping somewhere in central Idaho.
Getting it Into Shape · 01/07/08
Okay, so there is still a lot to do on my site here. But I’m taking off on Thursday for my almost-month long trip across the United States (via car) and back (via train). And for purposes of blogging from the road and keeping in touch with people I think it is Good Enough for the moment. There are still a lot of formatting things that bug me, particularly typographically, but they’ll have to wait.
If you do see something amiss or have an idea on how I could spruce things up around here, go ahead and drop me a note.
No, the iPhone Upgrade Policy Does NOT Make Sense · 01/07/08
Earlier today John Gruber said he didn’t get the iPhone upgrade policy for current AT&T customers without iPhones. But M. Jackson Williamson responded by explaining that the iPhone 3G upgrade policy makes sense. And yes, Williamson is correct in stating that current non-iPhone AT&T customers under contract are paying off their previous subsidies and that is why they can’t also get an iPhone subsidy. But then he goes on to say, in the comments
“I can’t think of any realistic scenario where an existing AT&T non-iPhone subscriber could pay $199 for the 3G unless AT&T was giving you a $200 gift. If they did that, I imagine I’d be pissed about it as a stockholder.”
But if I were a stockholder I’d be pissed about the current plan. Because it makes sense both financially and in terms of maintaining customers to go ahead and give that $200 gift. Here’s why:
When the original iPhone came out, I was sans contract over at Verizon. I had heard some horror stories about AT&T and didn’t want to tie myself to them for 2 years without testing the waters. So I took in a perfectly good phone that I bought on eBay and asked if I could activate without getting a contract. They said why sure they could do that, but if I signed up for a contract I could get this brand new RAZR for free and I could test out the service for 30 days and bring it back, no questions asked. They assured me over and over again that I could buy an iPhone at any point and just extend my contract from there.
But here I am 12 months later facing an extra 200 bucks if I want to get an iPhone. And what do I have to show for it? A RAZR that wasn’t even worth 200 bucks 12 months ago.
Maybe I’m just furious that I fell for the salesmanship of the AT&T store employees. But I feel like I’m getting ripped off by AT&T. They didn’t HAVE to get my money for the last 12 months. THEY were the ones insisting on giving me a phone that I didn’t even need and haven’t really used.
And, if they let me upgrade to an iPhone right now, I’d be paying them at least $35 more a month. Over the course of the 12 months I still have remaining on my contract, that’s $420 extra that they could get from me if they let me upgrade now. They’re going to be paying the same subsidy whether it is now or next July, so why not get the extra $420? If indeed they were giving me a $200 gift, as Williamson calls it, they’d be making $220 in profit over the next 12 months.
Now, I’d probably just swallow it and pay the extra if it was only $100, but $200? Not when you look at what my monthly bill would be as well! The salesperson I spoke to last week said they have a lot of leeway when it comes to doing early upgrades. I don’t know if that is going to be true with the iPhone, but perhaps they’ll be able to throw in a bluetooth headset and case and I’ll still bite. But likely what will happen is one of the following:
- I’ll wait until I can upgrade and get the iPhone
- I’ll find a used iPhone (perhaps from a friend who is upgrading) and activate that (if there are still the cheaper EDGE-only plans available)
- I’ll wait until my contract is up and look at all the shiny new Android phones that will be out by then
- I’ll get a jailbroken iPhone and activate it with another carrier
I don’t see how any of these scenarios makes financial sense to AT&T and the last two just flat out hurt them by losing customers. I would think they’d want to get as many people as possible happy in iPhone contracts so that they don’t (and can’t) stray. So explain to me besides “This is the way cell phone subsidies have always worked” why this policy makes sense and I shouldn’t be upset, because I just am not seeing it.
New Flickr Photos · 24/06/08
Finally caught up with last summer and all of the end of year stuff at work. Check out my Flick photostream.
This School Year Has Been Crazy · 02/03/08
I had every intention of being on top of everything this year, but it hasn't happened for a variety of reasons. Sigh. Maybe next year, right?
The Reality of Being a Teacher · 31/08/07
The week before school starts. 3 days of paid time, 5 days in the week. School hasn’t even started yet and I’ve put in 21 hours of unpaid time.
Reason #104 That Google Earth is Amazing · 14/03/07
I’ve argued before that the educational benefit of a program like Google Earth is just starting to be tapped. More evidence of this comes through this little article that tells us that Google Earth will now let you explore the destruction that humans have inflicted on the Eart and will also let you explore World Wildlife Federation sites.
A Modest (Tech) Proposal · 21/02/07
Validity. Every new initiative, technology, idea, and requirement needs to prove that it is valid in order to succeed. Well, I think I’ve come up with an idea that would add validity to a number of Edmonds School District initiatives and requirements, including:
- Fields of Study
- Culminating Project
- The Tech Levy
- Tech education in general
The idea is this: Require every student to demonstrate fluency in one or two software programs/platform that relate to their Field of Study. This fluency could be demonstrated in both course work and Culminating Project (either in the project or portfolio presentation)
Ideally, the software packages would be professional level applications that the student could expect to see ‘in real life’. For example, if a student’s FOS is in art/communication, the student could learn to use
- Photoshop or GIMP (raster graphics)
- Illustrator or Inkscape (vector graphics)
- InDesign or Scribus (publishing/layout)
Or in science/natural resources it could be Mathematica, Educational Global Climate Modeling (EdGCM), R (Statistical Computing Platform), Grass GIS etc.
But what about software costs? The beautiful thing here is that many, many fields have free/open source programs that are solid contenders in their fields or actually ARE the standard. GIMP and Inkscape, for example lag only slightly behind, if at all, their commercial counterparts.
I think that this is an initiative that we could start encouraging as early as next year. Between now and then people could work to compile a list of supported software in each FOS area, and free programs could be made available through the STTs and their Deep Freeze system. The initiate could also be tied to our student tech standards. In fact, since the standards currently end at 8th grade, a box could be added for 9-12 that focused on using software for college and the real world and FOS specific applications. Adding this initiative, in a non-binding fashion, to the Culminating Project Guidebook would also help.
Requirement of this would, of course, wait until the next tech levy when we had the resources to better support it.
So, what do people think? Does this idea carry water? Would it be helpful if I presented a full list of free software programs that covers all of the FOSs?
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