December 2005 Archives

Why do my New Year's resolutions never change?  Perhaps because I never accomplish them...for even a week?!  Disgusting!  So I've opted out of making any over the past few years.  Well, not this year, by god!  I'm going to turn these into lifestyle changes!

1.  Manage my diabetes well!  (I have been doing much better here by the way, but I still am not consistently reaching normal blood sugars.  I WILL!)
2.  Eat far better and exercise regularly (part of number 1 actually)
3.  others...  <grin>

I saw this bumper sticker, well, more of a sign, on a van tonight:

#1 in the
#2 business!

When I got closer...it was a plumber's van.

I hate having a head/chest cold! The only thing worse is having it during vacation! I shouldn't complain too much though. The last one I had was almost a year ago!

So, when I'm not in bed sleeping it off, I have been redoing the CSS files for the photo albums. It's getting done slow but sure! At this point, the highest levels of navigation work on all albums.

The November, 2005, trip to Paris is now posted in my photo journals--and what a spectacular trip it was. This album contains 79 pictures from all over the city, including: Champs Elysée, Arc de Triomphe, Cathedral Notre Dame, Île St Louis, Eiffel Tower, Cathedral St. Eaustache, Forum de Halles, Sacrè Cœur Basilica, Place du Tertre (or Bohemian Montmartre), Moulin Rogue, River Seine, and the Pére Lachaise Cemetery.

My little Canon Powershot G2, which is now 5 years old, is only a 4 megapixel camera, but it takes such wonderful pictures! And I remain indebted to the professional photographer I met on a 2003 cruise in the Aegean Sea. He was gracious enough to show me how to use Photoshop to enhance my pictures for depth and clarity! He would shoot during the day (amazing, glorious shots) and let me watch him work on the photos that evening on the ship. I enlarged several pictures from Paris and the Rockies and gave them as Christmas gifts this year.

You can go straight to the Paris, 2005 Album by clicking the link or the picture below. You can also access all of my photos from the Photos link at the top of my blog. Keep in mind that, at present many of the links to other albums will not yet work. All you have to do to get them to work is insert "weblog" after "timtyson.us/" so the url always reads http://timtyson.us/weblog/images.....

Jimmy Carter's new book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, is excellent! I highly, highly recommend it! I'm listening to it, read by the former president himself. He is hitting the nail on the head about our current political landscape.

At one time I personally knew some of the key leaders of the extremist, right-wing, fundamentalist, religious movement. These men were radical, egocentric extremists who held firmly, even vehemently, that anyone who disagreed with them was the antichrist and was destined for hell. With my own ears I heard them emphatically declare and exclaim this over and over again. Don't misunderstand me. Many wonderful people are caught up in this movement.

I had a choice, and I made it. I left that movement because I considered it immoral and against the teachings of Christ. Now, the far-reaching influence of these very men, the leaders of the extremist, right-wing, fundamentalist, religious movement, has taken over the Republican party and filled it with the same aggressive, virulent, hate-filled practices. This is why I so greatly fear this newly emerging and terrifying unification of church and state: I can't choose to leave it as I did that fanatical extremist religious movement!

Jimmy Carter brilliantly exposes this in his book. Even if you disagree with what the former president says, as a thinking, informed citizen (especially if you claim to adhere to the teachings of Christ) this is a must-read!

"Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis" (Jimmy Carter)

When I migrated my website from the old server to the new server, I deliberately changed the file structure of the website. The positive: All of the robots that were sending me junk pings, trackbacks, and comments could no longer find my blog! The negative: All of my existing photo journal links were broken--thousands and thousands of them. Repairing them, even while maximizing automation in the process, is no small task!

But the task didn't just stop there. The old photo album software I used to generate these albums had a horrendous quirk: placing all of the CSS tag attributes into each and every html file! Good god! What was the author of that software thinking? The whole point of CSS is to reduce file size not swell it exponentially. So, I have also gone through and reformatted all of the thousands of html files to access just two CSS files instead of each html file containing their contents. Again, no small task!

But it gets better! I am pleased to report that you can now successfully drill all of the way down into the USA Gallery! I started my link repair and CSS reformatting work here because I added 3 new photo albums to the USA Gallery: New York, NY; Red Rock, Colorado; and Estes Park, Colorado. Be sure to check these out. The new software I am using, Apple Computer's Aperture, is very nice! I will have several enhancement suggestions for Apple as a result of this experience. At any rate, I think you will enjoy the customized CSS for the new albums, though I will continue to tweak it.

(Each picture above is a link to New York, Red Rock, and Estes Park respectively)

God, I just utterly love the Rockies! My goal is to have all of the photo journals up and working by week's end. I'll be adding a new Paris, 2005, album soon!

OK, I finally got the CSS files for most of the ancillary pages at timtyson.us updated. Now the About, Cams, Links, etc. tabs at the top of the page yield viewable results.

At breakfast this morning I saw 2 cars with fabulous bumper stickers. One of cars had six bumper stickers, all of which were great, but I can only remember 1 of them right now. The other car had 2 bumper stickers. I can remember both but will only print the one in my blog. The other, while I completely agree with it, was just too rude to print!

"Those who can make you believe absurdities,
Can get you to commit atrocities."

"If you voted for Bush,
Displaying a yellow sticker won't make it better!"

CNN had a wonderful article about Apple today. Here are some highlights:

... Steve Jobs, Apple's rainmaker, was even parodied in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, evidence of how the Cupertino-based outfit is ingrained in pop culture like no other tech company.

In the skit, an actor impersonating the chief executive (sporting black turtleneck and jeans, of course) introduces three iPods within minutes of each other. Each device makes its predecessor obsolete -- from the iPod Micro to the iPod Pequeno, and finally the iPod Invisa, which though invisible can still hold 8 million songs and every picture ever taken. ...

Apple sold 22.5 million iPods in the 2005 fiscal year that ended in September, bringing cumulative iPod sales to more than 28 million.

The Web site ThinkSecret.com, which has correctly revealed some of Apple's previous products before launch -- to the ire of Apple and its lawyers -- reports from unnamed sources that Apple will unveil in January an upgrade of "Front Row," allowing users to stream content purchased from the Internet without storing it on a computer hard disk. ...

Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of applications, wouldn't discuss future products but explained Apple's modus operandi.

"The key thing is we could bring three things to the table all at once -- the hardware, the software and the service," he said. "And we integrate those so it's an easy, compelling experience for consumers." ...

The streak of innovative products in 2005 sent Apple soaring to an all-time high of nearly $14 billion in revenue, more than double what it had two fiscal years ago. Its stock was also on a tear in 2005, and now trades at more than double the 52-week low of $30.80 on December 21, 2004. ...

Sales of computers, still Apple's biggest revenue generator, could get a boost if Apple scales down prices with the help of lower-priced Intel chips.

Citing the possibility Apple might introduce an Intel-based laptop as early as January, Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner recently raised his Apple PC unit shipment estimates from 5.1 million to 5.5 million for the 2006 fiscal year. He was also bullish on expected sales of the video-playing iPod, estimating Apple's revenues would be up 46 percent from fiscal 2005.

Apple has also recently made market share inroads in the United States, according to IDC. After years of hovering between a 2.5 and 3.7 percent share of the U.S. PC market, the company finally cracked 4 percent in the first half of 2005, Daoud said.

Apple's market share of PC shipments was 4.4 percent in the third quarter, an increase of 43 percent from the year ago period, while the overall PC market expanded by only 2 percent, he said.

As many as 1 million of the 4.5 million computers Apple shipped in fiscal 2005 were from Windows users switching platforms -- a sign of a "halo effect" from iPod sales and Apple's growing retail presence, said Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf.

The iPod's continued success notwithstanding, Wolf thinks the strength of Apple's performance in 2006 "will depend on how well they convert Windows users to the Mac."

Source: CNN

I've never had a magazine article written about me, so this is my first! (Hmm, does that mean I am presuming more will be written?) At any rate, below are thumbnails of the full PDFs. Clicking on the thumbnails will download the files. (They are large! since they are suitable for framing. <smile>) I'm really posting them because mom wants to see them.

The printed magazine article is much smaller than the entire interview. To read the whole interview from their online magazine, click here.

Click either icon to download the pdf.

I have had an incredibly busy year for travel: some work-related, some for speaking engagements, some for vacation, and all of them, I'm glad to say, for pleasure. This year's travels have included:

• California
  • San José
• Colorado
  • Denver
  • Red Rock
  • Estes National Park (Rocky Mountains)
  • Bear Lake
  • Nymph Lake
• Florida
  • Orlando
  • Pensacola
• Georgia
  • Jekyll Island
• New York
• Brooklyn
• Long Island
• Manhattan
• Tennessee
  • Nashville
• Washington D.C.
• France
  • Paris
• United Kingdom
  • London
  • Bibury
  • Stonehenge
  • Broadway
  • Stow-on-the-Wold
  • Bourton-on-Water
  • Morton-in-Marsh
  • Harpenden

Next year is starting to fill up nicely as well. Plans have already been made for Boston, Massachusetts; San Diego, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Austin, Texas; Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, Louisiana. Trips to Germany and Japan are also in the making and will hopefully come to pass. And, finally, I have my eye on Alaska, Norway, and Australia as well, but at present, speculation on the later is premature at best as "my people haven't met with their people" yet. :o)

I haven't posted lately. I've felt bad about that fact, but I've just been insanely busy. I need 2 more of me but am confident the world can only handle 1 of me at present--the only reason I haven't cloned myself!

I plan to catch up on lots of things over the vacation time. My list is terribly long and includes my blog.

Uncle Gordon has had a very serious heart attack followed by a quadruple bypass. Mother was planning on coming up to Atlanta for the Christmas season but has canceled those plans to stay with Aunt Floyce. I'm sure they would appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers.

Cam does some geeky thing with bank technology, ATMs, electronic banking transfers and all that kind of thing. (Can you tell I know not of what I speak?!)

He just sent me an article decrying electronic voting machines. Now, my guess, my hunch, my gut is that Cameron knows something about secured electronic transactions, and this bright man, for a number of very alarming reasons, is completely against electronic voting machines!

This gives me pause. Democracy is meant to be public. Electronic vote counting is completely hidden and subject to unseen tampering by either side or even another nation.

Is anyone awake?

I meant to mention this last week. I was sitting in a session at the TETC in which the presenter was discussing the use of gaming theory in the teaching of mathematics. I have always been fascinated by this topic but never had any exposure to it.

The presenter mentioned a must-read book, Digital Game Based Learning by Marc Prensky. I purchased and was reading the book (from Amazon.com) before the session ever ended. How cool is that?!

My sense of time is still out of sync with Atlanta. I keep waking up at 3:00AM, which is late in Paris but really early here. At any rate, when I was making my cup of tea this morning, I realized that I have been held hostage to a meaningless manipulation for quite some time.

Do you tear your sweetener packet open at the little mark the manufacturer printed on the package like I do? I use Splenda. The manufacturer prints a little blue square at the top in the corner which says to me, "Tear me open here.". So I do. But why? Does it matter at all in any way where I tear the packet open as long as the contents are not going to spill out?

Just a bizarre, meaningless observation about a meaningless ritual caused by the makers of packets.

My neighbors are renting their house next door. Yesterday the DirectTV van pulled up to install satellite TV for the new renters. No big deal.

This morning I am tying my shoes, look out through the dining room window and see the satellite dish mounted in the front yard! Good God! What's next?! Defunct cars rusting in the front yard?!

I took this week off and just returned from my brief trip to Nashville, Tennessee. I spoke at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference, TETC. Last month I spoke at the GaETC. Both presentations were well received, and I enjoyed both opportunities to speak about the critical changing role of schools in this age of pervasive computing and connectivity.

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to hear and briefly speak with Alan November. I am a tremendous proponent of what he believes schooling should be in the global community. He speaks so very well, challenging everyone's thinking, shaking up our deeply entrenched paradigms of what school is.

The idea that really came home to me: "Who owns learning at your school?" Students? Parents? Teachers? He gave an example: All of the teachers at an elementary school he visited believed that the 1st graders could probably learn most of the words on the 2nd grade spelling list while they were in 1st grade. They could probably learn some of the words on the 3rd grade list and even a few from the 4th grade list. When he suggested that the teachers put all of the spelling words online and allow the students to master them and test out (online) of the spelling lists, a 2nd grade teacher replied, "But what will I then do on Friday?"

I am deeply moved by these words of wisdom and leadership so brilliantly articulated by the President of the United States, W.

• "The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
• "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
• "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
• "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
• "The future will be better tomorrow."
• "We're going to have the best educated American people in the world."
• "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
• "We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
• "Public speaking is very easy."
• "A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
• "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
• "For NASA, space is still a high priority."
• "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
• "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
• "It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."

I can understand those rare times a person misspeaks. But if words are truly a refection of our thinking (or lack thereof), this man is a buffoon!