I have also recently attended a drum building workshop (mental note: blog about the workshop), and built my very first drum.  I should say, finished my very first drum shell – that is where the workshop begins.  It has been several weeks since the workshop, but I have only just been able to dedicate proper time and attention this evening to the tuning of said drum. Since I was trying somewhat to be good to my neighbors, I kept the energy attenuated.

To kick off my eager anticipation of the H2 and Thunderhead, I’ve recorded my first moments using both.  It’s completely raw and unedited.  There are also some distinctions in the three recordings that are really only meaningful to me.  Suffice it to say, I’m still working with the tuning of my drum and the use of a new electronic gadget.

Soft Saidi:[See post to access streaming content!]
Saidi, Short:[See post to access streaming content!]
Masmoudi:[See post to access streaming content!]

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Upgrading to Web 2.5
The Web 2.0 movement brought, among many other ideals, the concept of a truly “communal” Internet. We saw the entrance of communities such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and of course, the blog, emerge. I maintain a regular blog and dabble in these other Internet communities, but ultimately find that they are not my thing.

What MySpace, for instance, did for me was to create a social community of friends and people with related interests. It’s a great concept, if only simple. I encountered two main problems with these solutions – set aside your particular opinion about the communities. The first, and most immediate, problem I had was that the site distracted me and my potential audience from my own blog. The other problem, something that took a little longer to become apparent, was that I was stuck into a much larger community than I was really interested in becoming “buddies” with.

My solution to these problems involves the maturation of Web 2.0 – perhaps to Web 2.5. I have heard of Web 3.0, but I don’t think the industry can make such a leap without some smaller steps in between. Web 2.5 allows the blog proprietor like myself to become part of these communities without stepping out of their home base.

The Case Study
My imagined solution looks simple at first glance. I maintain a blog. My friends maintain blogs and/or social networking profiles. I have other blogs/services out there to which I would like to drive attention. Now think of each of these things as containers to which I can subscribe, sometimes in a granular fashion. I build a collection of “friends,” “family,” and “interesting people” that I would like to have a reference to on my site. Today, you have blog rolls or even RSS feeds doing this. But what if you could access a container having someone’s profile and avatar, their blog articles, twitter feeds, and MySpace posts. From that container I can choose what I want to see, and how often I want to see it. Perhaps I just want digests. What’s more, the originator of that container can actually validate my request to subscribe to this data. They can also choose what they’ll allow me to see using templates (e.g. friends, family, co-workers), or define a custom rule just for me. The data continues to remain available through conventional means – say the RSS feed, a MySpace account, etc, but the personal container has controls.

I can extend it beyond the profile containers. Say you want to interact with your email or IM system through your blog. Think about having a single entry point to your personal web experience. The personal blog transforms into a personal dashboard with both public and private views. On the public side, you present your audience with your blog, some profile data, contact information, and perhaps a friend’s blog. Privately, you see your email, all your friends’ blogs, address book, and a calendar with your upcoming events.

There are ways to achieve most of this through conventional means, but there is no “solution” to it all. It takes a fundamental shift.

Back to WordPress
At the beginning of this post, I referred to my need for more in WordPress. WordPress utilizes a model of communal sharing already that leads me to believe that it is one of the strongest contenders to make my dream a reality. I’m jaded, of course, because I use WordPress a lot. However, I’ve also read about the WordPress.com Multi-User (MU) extension making its way to the public domain, BuddyPress. BuddyPress will make WordPress.com (and any other WP MU implementation) a community blog with integrated social networking a la MySpace. This is exactly what I’m talking about, if only on a very small scale. WordPress may have the framework to get where I want, but I still have to reach further for the over-arching API that allows WordPress to talk to social communities outside of itself. I believe WordPress has made the first move in my imagined Web 2.5.

The Solution
In brief, I imagine the final solution as being a web service that handles a centralized API for the OpenSocial, or something similar should the industry choose a better standard. Blog systems such as WordPress would have to utilize plugins to communicate with the API, but MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others would fit into the picture by being a part of OpenSocial. The custom web service would handle the “mash-up” of these different systems into a personal container. And of course, the user would manage their own container; permissions and contents.

In the end, I’d have my blog, my friends, and my choice. Web 2.0 moves forward and brings together the biggest social community ever on the Internet. Our personal sites become personal dashboards and launch points to our other interests. I think the way to Web 2.5 is clear, and someone out there is surely already working on it. You heard it here, first!

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For lack of better alternatives, I bring to you the current meme on my plate.  Young whipper-snappers may be unfamiliar with this word, but it is essentially an Internet chain-letter.  Spazzmanda passed this on to me from her blog, where she refers to such activities as “tagging.”  I always thought that was a cultural art of defacement by way of graffiti, but what does an old fart like me know.

The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. Your answer, of course, is the answer to the following questions. Here we go!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? One decade ago I was two months from my 2nd wedding anniversary with my lovely wife, Amy.  We had no children, though we had pets.  We were in our first year at our first house together (and current house).  Amy was still in school at North Georgia College and State University (though it may not have been a State University at the time), and I was working for…Whittman-Hart, perhaps.  I was a consultant beginning to cut my teeth on information systems security.  It would be my primary job and objective for the next several years.  I registered gradin.com for the first time – it was a standard 2-year registration and cost me $70.00 (I think my last registration was $8.95 for a year).  I was finally able to access my awesome Mindspring account web space using my rocking X2 US Robotics Sportster (externel) modem via www.gradin.com.  I was working in Allaire’s Cold Fusion, though I couldn’t afford a license for the server to host my own site using their technology.  I used Allaire’s Homesite as my primary editor with Photoshop and Fractal Painter as my graphics packages.  I think I was trying to get onto Bellsouth’s xDSL beta program, but with no luck due to my distance from the carrier.  I was, however, involved with Wachovia’s beta online account access.  It was a glorified BBS – awesome!

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? I’ve got ESX hosts to convert to 3.5i, installable.  SAN storage to attach, and VMs to migrate both through traditional migrations, as well as the new and improved Storage VMotion.  I also have some process proposal documentation to get done for the collected efforts of the Norcross lab engineering team, as well as that of our Hillsboro office.  I hope to get some ping-pong in at lunch, ride my bike 10 miles back to my car, and then facilitate a drum circle for 100 people in northeast Georgia with some friends.

3. Snacks I enjoy: Have you tried my nuts?  They’re salty and dimensionally variant.  I enjoy the texture especially, though others are just happy I am able to share – there’s more than enough for everyone to enjoy!  I also like beef jerky and granola bars.

4. Places I’ve lived: I’ve had a good spread in my life, though as of late my homestead has been very static.  I began in Ocean Springs, MI; moved to Plano, TX, and then jumped to San Diego, CA shortly thereafter.  We moved a couple of times there, but finally moved out the state to Tuscon, AZ.  From there, we departed for Waycross, GA, and then onto Gainesville, GA where I live now.  I’ve moved several times throughout both of these places in Georgia, and I’ve been here the longest amount of time so far.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: This is actually the title of a post I’ve been working on for a while now.  It’s a recurring theme throughout our decade+ of marriage, and one that will most likely continue to develop and mature in time.  The most boring thing I think of from our list is to pay-off debt and acquire some commercial real estate to lease.  There’s money accumulation prospects in that, so we would do well to set ourselves for the inevitable loss of said billions through the frivolous purchases from our list.  There are two more intriguing opportunities: 1) Develop a waterfront district on Lake Lanier – a boardwalk with shops and dining – that aids in the lake’s restoration efforts, as well as providing some awareness about the lake’s ecosystem.  2) Convert an old mill on the outskirts of town into a turn-of-the-century arts and crafts guild.  History tells us that these guilds are mere congregations of passionate people in the arts and crafts and generally have no ability to sustain themselves financially.

5 “Tagged”

1. Sean Williams
2. Jason Darling (Bleh.  MySpace)
3. James Palmer
4. Israel Lawson
   
5. Steve Tucker

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From the outside, looking in, the culture seems muddied with the intermingling of past and present times.  Between incomplete reports from the news agencies, history, and modern documentaries, it is difficult at best to discern the true sociology for a given place and time.  My interpretation of the events that have transpired in the Middle East, especially those concerning the Taliban, were that I was getting a one-sided story and that the culture in general seemed very foreign – even hostile – to my Western upbringing.  I didn’t have a real appreciation for the victims, primarily because I felt as though the victims were only really victims because the U.S. government told them they were.  Because I didn’t have the contacts to speak to in the Middle East and I’ve never been to evaluate the situation for myself, I could only trust what I’m told for so far.

The Radio Lab podcast, Pop Music, went into a segment regarding one man’s experience in Afghanistan with his accordion.  The piece is really quite good and I encourage you to listen to it for my post to have it’s full impact.  At any rate, this novice accordion player discovers that some forms of music cross the boundaries – or preconceived boundaries – of our world’s cultures.  There are ideas that translate to sounds in music that are echoed through every civilization and tell the same story.  Afghanistan had just crawled out of very long period of silence during its war with Russia, then Taliban rule.  Music is one of those mediums that can insight such raw emotions in people and the Afghans were no exception.  After the cultural bans experienced through the previous years, this accordion player steps timidly onto a bar stage where prompted by his new audience and supported by his translator, performs Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire to “the best audience [ever].”  It wasn’t particularly well done, but the crowd goes wild.  At a certain point during the program, I was awashed with a feeling of joy, triumph, grief, and camaraderie.  There’s probably a more succinct way of stating that, but it isn’t anything that’s happened to me often enough to find the proper word for.

It was this last bit that really stuck with me.  I finally understood what it must have been like to live in such a stifled society as to be allowed no cultural displays; no music, no dancing, no art.  It’s an incredible feeling of sadness and hopelessness that I feel when I try to imagine it.

The Taliban were not the first to run a people in this way, and it’s doubtful they’ll be the last.  I just hope that I’m always in a place where I am free to explore my culture, or anybody else’s for that matter.  I really hope that people being oppressed in the world today find liberation and the strength to reunite with their forgotten past.

Further Reading: Afghanistan, Ahmad Zahir, Taliban

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I have noticed over the past several years that home-schooling seems to have risen in popularity. Initially, I was impressed at the number of people involved in the home school method. I later learned that many of these home school students actually get together on some routine frequency to develop socially, as well as to share the responsibility of teaching across multiple parents. I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing this is a bit of a regression. Didn’t school systems start this way? Finally,there seemed to be an ulterior motive to home schooling. There have been a rash of parent vs. government cases over the last decade regarding the use of faith-based programs in school systems. Of late, Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design are the major contention points. Home schooling seems to be the concerned parents’ answer. A parent that disagrees with the educational system – perhaps also disagreeing with private systems, or unable to afford them – can pull their child back into the home where teaching is at the discretion of the family. From a Little House on the Prairie ideal, this seems like a charming social shift in America. However, I see it as a disaster for our future. If children are taught through home school primarily to reinforce religious perspectives on science, then our legacy’s potential for critical thinking is severely limited. The views of the parents will extend through to their children, and while not obviously as detrimental as racism, will inevitably give rise to ostracism.

See: Twin Cities Creation Science Association Sponsors Home School Science Fair

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I maintained a “Help” page on my personal blog for a long while. It was a practice in earnest to fight the good fight. I tested browser compatibility and noted errors with specific browsers. It helped me…never my audience. I think I gave up after reading “Don’t Make Me Think.” Ultimately, that is really the mindset and the answer. If I have to provide a help page, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. Perhaps I’m not making that personal connection with people because I’m ostracizing them through some personal elitism. I remember when DHTML was really cool and working with the DOM in unique, arcane methods was more a resemblance to the occult than anything Web 2.0 represents today. We’ve all grown up on this stuff. Internet adolescence is over and it’s time to get a real job; move out of your parent’s basement (no offense to you 30-somethings living in your parent’s basement). So I don’t have a “Help” page anymore. I try to offer help in more constructive ways – ways that a “Help” page can only make excuses for. Besides – who actually takes the time to read a manual, let alone my blog manual?

In many ways, the Internet is like a beloved child which the world is rearing. Sometimes carefully, sometimes irresponsibly. This child of ours is also, at times, a bit unruly. I could dig that further into boredom, but I think you can continue the similes on your own. At any rate, it’s an apt comparison when speaking of the web development practices used on the Internet over time. I used to be one of those elitist programmers that sought out the most obscure uses of the DOM or unknown HTML tags. Hell, I used to only use VBScript, and throw out angry comparisons of my pure VBScript solution to a JavaScript one. I’ve also visited sites where you are completely stumped as to how to use it. You have to mouse over a bunch of slick graphics in order to find out where they go. So you can understand my conclusion that the Internet’s adolescence has come and gone. We all had fun, now it’s time to get serious about [Internet] life and create things that matter. Things that provide value. Things that don’t make other people feel stupid.

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I originally got into blogging because it was a spreading phenomenon that involved technologies I knew and loved. As secondary incentives; I have always enjoyed writing, it’s a great creative outlet for web development and design, and blogging may very well give my descendants a familial history that will not otherwise be recorded in any books. A personal Wikipedia, if you will.

So here I am, more than three years later, assessing my blogging passions.

Of particular importance is my interest in a legacy. I am passionate about telling my story. Above all else, I trust that my musings will pass along a message that I cannot reach into my own ancestry for. That message will be a referential perspective to those in need of familial comfort. If we are to know the answer to life, the universe, and everything, we are to know our history.

It won’t be elegant nor abundantly enlightening, but the importance of having these recorded scraps of memory will one day prove to be some of the most cherished objects of a future generation. My own son will grow up in a revolutionary time when his every move is captured in startling fidelity – he will undoubtedly take for granted the provisions I aim to establish. But in his times of personal discovery, he will be able to look back on his own thoughts in perfect clarity; as well as those of his father. Perhaps he will see it. Perhaps it will be his children, or his children’s children…the estate of the future is a collection of intellectual capital, and there can be no greater treasure than knowledge.

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See last year’s pictures (and this year’s as they come), here.

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Tangents aside, the 16 tips that John Pozadzides offers are decent enough, if not mostly well known. I did find one real error in John’s ideas. It doesn’t take into consideration those afflicted with Pudding Brain. I hit Thoof on his list of aggregators to read – one I hadn’t seen before – and got really stuck. It’s one of those new-fangled aggregators that automatically load more items as you get closer to the end of the scrolling page. You can waste a lot of time there!

There’s something to be said for focus. Hitting the hot spots on the web for news is well and good, but it’s probably more productive to focus on those places that can offer you something to comment on, rather than simply steal your attention away from what you came there to do. Sites like YouTube, Thoof, and even Digg (though less so for me) are real time sinks. When it comes to blog idea hunting, I have more success trusting my own RSS aggregation. It may have a lot of the same stuff, but it’s interspersed with other sources and is slightly less accessible because RSS is abstracted from the website. I also like the idea of hitting the unpopular sites our there with very specific information to get ideas. It’s more likely to be original and it’s probably something you’re very specifically interested in.

Now, that said; I haven’t been inspired to write about much lately. But it’s not so much about my sources as it is my own intentions. The number one tip for blog idea brainstorming is this:

Take an interest in what you have to say.

If you have no interest, you have no story. You can see right through a post that is paying lip service to its readers by reposting content someone else has written. John mentions in his tips that he goes the extra mile to do some research on topics he is reposting. That’s exactly the right idea in my mind. He’s taken an interest and is providing original commentary on a popular topic.

So in between original content I fill in with interesting things I find elsewhere, or current news events. But I don’t just re-post other people’s content.

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