And a portrait
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
A Hole in the Ground
Link to article in Palm Beach Post about folding of company that was developing condos on site of the old Rutledge Inn, our family's hotel.
Here is a shot of the old sixties style place:
Now it's a hole!
Here is the link:
Link
And some text:
RIVIERA BEACH — The pink walls of the 1960s-era Rutledge Inn, for years the only hotel on Singer Island, fell to bulldozers last year. Owned by three generations of the Crouse family, the hotel was razed to make room for Mirasol Beach of Singer Island.
Mirasol Beach was to be an 18-story condo resplendent with spa, fitness center, library, theater, lounge and billiards. No more. Last week developer Taylor Woodrow Plc pulled the plug on the project.
"I wish we had never sold it," 77-year-old Doris Crouse said after being told of the developer's decision. "It's just like I lost my best friend."
Among the regulars during the Rutledge Inn's happier hours was Jupe Hash. She was disappointed when the hotel was demolished and is disappointed again that it has been shoveled under for nothing.
"It's just dirt now," she said.
Here is a shot of the old sixties style place:
Now it's a hole!
Here is the link:
Link
And some text:
RIVIERA BEACH — The pink walls of the 1960s-era Rutledge Inn, for years the only hotel on Singer Island, fell to bulldozers last year. Owned by three generations of the Crouse family, the hotel was razed to make room for Mirasol Beach of Singer Island.
Mirasol Beach was to be an 18-story condo resplendent with spa, fitness center, library, theater, lounge and billiards. No more. Last week developer Taylor Woodrow Plc pulled the plug on the project.
"I wish we had never sold it," 77-year-old Doris Crouse said after being told of the developer's decision. "It's just like I lost my best friend."
Among the regulars during the Rutledge Inn's happier hours was Jupe Hash. She was disappointed when the hotel was demolished and is disappointed again that it has been shoveled under for nothing.
"It's just dirt now," she said.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Fox 61 ride
Last weekend we were interviewed by Fox 61 for a feature on collecting.
Jimmy and Wanda are the big bike collectors around Hartford. Here are a few shots of the ride around the capital.
The camera dude mounted a small video camera on Katie's bike and got some cool action footage.
Special will be 3 minutes long and will air sometime on the 10 o'clock news in May, with teaser ad footage during lead-in shows, perhaps American Idol. More details to come.
Cinco de Mayo was great!
We had four bands and a great party at our house.
Here is a shot of Wanda's new band, Hey Steve and The Melon Farmers.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
It'll never work...
Just read an overview of web "beams" by David Galernter, a Yale prof of computer science. The idea is to provide a customized beam of info that is only relevant to you or your group, from cradle to grave (well, at least from somewhere in the past into the future). Your documents and pages would be served up as a parade from past to future. Your PC would only serve to view this info, not store it. You could access it anywhere. The info would be safe from hackers and eavesdroppers. The idea builds on another web 3.0 idea called "Lifestreams."
Nice idea, but it will never work. The idea is to have some structure to the info on the web, and to make it feel as if you control it so you feel empowered. The technology would enable these things, but they would have to be used and directed properly to work. And that is the problem. Right now the web is built from the bottom up, which is messy but effective. To lose that would be to create a directorship (awfully close to dictatership for me). I don't see people buying into this.
When Windows was being developed, there was lots of competition. IBM's OS/2 was just one other alternative. Windows won because it put a messy but effective interface on top of current simple computers and operating systems. The internet and the web both work this way.
After working in the IT industry for a long time, as well as knowing human nature, I think that people will look for the next effective, simple answer or improvement and to hell with this new control scheme.
Nice idea, but it will never work. The idea is to have some structure to the info on the web, and to make it feel as if you control it so you feel empowered. The technology would enable these things, but they would have to be used and directed properly to work. And that is the problem. Right now the web is built from the bottom up, which is messy but effective. To lose that would be to create a directorship (awfully close to dictatership for me). I don't see people buying into this.
When Windows was being developed, there was lots of competition. IBM's OS/2 was just one other alternative. Windows won because it put a messy but effective interface on top of current simple computers and operating systems. The internet and the web both work this way.
After working in the IT industry for a long time, as well as knowing human nature, I think that people will look for the next effective, simple answer or improvement and to hell with this new control scheme.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Submitted to 400words.com
It's been awhile since my last post...sorry 'bout that. Been fighting a bug, and busy otherwise with taxes and estate work.
Submitted a story to 400words.com about breakups. Hope Katherine publishes it.
My next plan is to write something for the Writer's Digest short short story contest. They say they get over 8,000 submissions a year so I may be drowned out in the noise, but it gives me something to aim for.
Will post a link to my story if 400words puts it up.
Submitted a story to 400words.com about breakups. Hope Katherine publishes it.
My next plan is to write something for the Writer's Digest short short story contest. They say they get over 8,000 submissions a year so I may be drowned out in the noise, but it gives me something to aim for.
Will post a link to my story if 400words puts it up.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Cayman photos
Here are two photos from our swim with the stingrays in Cayman.
Here's Katie swimming towards one.
This is me petting one.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Man gone down
This appears to be a great book. Heard an interview with the author on NPR and will have to run and get the book. The book transcends race and talks about life. The descriptions and characterizations are amazing. And this is his first novel!
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Gone-Down-Michael-Thomas/dp/0802170293/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2249135-0637637?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172842512&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Gone-Down-Michael-Thomas/dp/0802170293/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2249135-0637637?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172842512&sr=8-1
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Turning 50...
...and feeling good. Had a big talk today with Wanda about where I stand in life and career and we both agree that flashy, splashy people get all the press and influence too much.
Here is a great link to that thought regarding technology. The linked blog is about a book by David Edgarton, The Shock of the Old.
http://www.hughpearman.com/2007/01.html
Here is some from the link:
There are certain bits of received wisdom that nobody normally challenges. Such as: we live in an era of constant, accelerating change, that innovation is the key to economic survival, and that we all travel everywhere by personal jetpack. OK, I made that a bit obvious. That's the problem with yesterday's futures. They're so yesterday. Yet the same people who were so sure about the jetpack future didn't have the slightest inkling that by 2006 we would be flying to Budapest for lunch on a whim, for pocket money. On planes seemingly little different from the machines the world's elite used to fly in the 1950s.
What's happening? Why do things not change according to the headlines? Why is white-heat-of-technology Concorde a fading memory while the utterly conventional Boeing 737 rules the skies? Why won't vinyl records go away? Why are killer diseases such as malaria not eradicated, as everybody assured us they would be in the 1960s? Why don't we live in titanium pods, served by robots? Because people were thinking jet-pack when they should have been thinking bicycle.
This is the fertile territory explored by Professor David Edgerton of Imperial College in his new book, The Shock of the Old. In it he eviscerates our obsession with novelty. It's time, he argues, to look at the history of science and technology in a new way. It's blindingly obvious, really. Instead of recording the history of when devices and processes were invented or predicted, why not look at the way we really use things?
For Edgerton, the problem is not that technology has been ignored - we can't get away from accounts of it - but that those accounts have been idealistic rather than pragmatic. They incline towards glamour, drama, spectacle. The humble soldier's rifle - Lee-Enfield or AK-47 - was massively more important in 20th century warfare than the V2 missile or the atom bomb, he points out. But a basic killing tool like the rifle doesn't make good television - or good political capital - like the V2 missile or the atom bomb. Weapons of mass destruction, anybody?
"A lot of our understanding of 20th century global history is shaped by a very particular understanding of technology that may not be that useful," he remarks. "I'm not saying that there isn't very, very dramatic change. On the contrary, I want to highlight the fact that there is change. But in terms of the technology that is actually used, it's very different from the stories of invention and innovation that are told. Those stories are very narrow - our creativity is much more general than we think."
In other words, we've got it all wrong. Corrugated-iron sheeting and bicycles feature more prominently in all our lives than the Apollo moon missions and nuclear submarines. "For example, motor car technology continues to change. Steel-making technology continues to change. Textile technology continues to change. And all those are changing our lives today," he says. Glamorous, no. Important, yes.
Here is a great link to that thought regarding technology. The linked blog is about a book by David Edgarton, The Shock of the Old.
http://www.hughpearman.com/2007/01.html
Here is some from the link:
There are certain bits of received wisdom that nobody normally challenges. Such as: we live in an era of constant, accelerating change, that innovation is the key to economic survival, and that we all travel everywhere by personal jetpack. OK, I made that a bit obvious. That's the problem with yesterday's futures. They're so yesterday. Yet the same people who were so sure about the jetpack future didn't have the slightest inkling that by 2006 we would be flying to Budapest for lunch on a whim, for pocket money. On planes seemingly little different from the machines the world's elite used to fly in the 1950s.
What's happening? Why do things not change according to the headlines? Why is white-heat-of-technology Concorde a fading memory while the utterly conventional Boeing 737 rules the skies? Why won't vinyl records go away? Why are killer diseases such as malaria not eradicated, as everybody assured us they would be in the 1960s? Why don't we live in titanium pods, served by robots? Because people were thinking jet-pack when they should have been thinking bicycle.
This is the fertile territory explored by Professor David Edgerton of Imperial College in his new book, The Shock of the Old. In it he eviscerates our obsession with novelty. It's time, he argues, to look at the history of science and technology in a new way. It's blindingly obvious, really. Instead of recording the history of when devices and processes were invented or predicted, why not look at the way we really use things?
For Edgerton, the problem is not that technology has been ignored - we can't get away from accounts of it - but that those accounts have been idealistic rather than pragmatic. They incline towards glamour, drama, spectacle. The humble soldier's rifle - Lee-Enfield or AK-47 - was massively more important in 20th century warfare than the V2 missile or the atom bomb, he points out. But a basic killing tool like the rifle doesn't make good television - or good political capital - like the V2 missile or the atom bomb. Weapons of mass destruction, anybody?
"A lot of our understanding of 20th century global history is shaped by a very particular understanding of technology that may not be that useful," he remarks. "I'm not saying that there isn't very, very dramatic change. On the contrary, I want to highlight the fact that there is change. But in terms of the technology that is actually used, it's very different from the stories of invention and innovation that are told. Those stories are very narrow - our creativity is much more general than we think."
In other words, we've got it all wrong. Corrugated-iron sheeting and bicycles feature more prominently in all our lives than the Apollo moon missions and nuclear submarines. "For example, motor car technology continues to change. Steel-making technology continues to change. Textile technology continues to change. And all those are changing our lives today," he says. Glamorous, no. Important, yes.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Great weekend, bad weather
Cuzzins came to visit for the weekend. Visited the CT shoreline for some photo ops, but the weather was dreary and mizerable all weekend.
Best Clam show in recent memory though!
Best Clam show in recent memory though!
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Relaxing
Not perky after the holidays, and fighting a bug. Quiet weekend off.
Posted a short anecdote to 400words.com. Let's see what happens.
Posted a short anecdote to 400words.com. Let's see what happens.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Not much time for posting, as we hosted Christmas in our new house. Seems like everyone got what they wanted and more. Katie's new camera should produce some great shots, so check them out soon!
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
Interesting language and music tidbit from Discover mag
Variety could even decrease over time. In fact, there may be a bizarre
example of that happening right now in human song. We can easily explore the
changing amount of variety in songs over the last hundred years because of an
amazing data archive: audio recording. Since the beginning of recorded music,
the sound of human song has changed with each new generation of people.
There's no confusing a 1930s song with a 1940s song, or a 1950s song with a
1960s song. The pattern sticks until roughly the end of the 1980s. It's not
easy to tell whether a song came from 1990 or 2000.
This might sound like an extraordinary claim, but you can test it yourself.
Listen to random clips from the many sources of songs available on the
Internet and don't peek at the year they were produced. You'll discover that
it's harder to date songs from the last two decades than songs from previous
decades. Terry and I are now considering this experiment on a more formal
basis.
If you accept that there has been a recent decrease in stylistic variety in
human song, the next question is "Why?" There are plenty of possibilities:
Maybe the Internet makes too much information available, so everyone has the
same influences to absorb—and songs lose flavor and take on a generic
quality. To be more cynical, it could be a sign of cultural decline.
Another explanation, which is the one I suspect, is that the change since the
mid-1980s corresponds with the appearance of digital editing tools for music.
Digital tools are more suggestive about results than previous tools: If you
deviate from the kind of music a digital tool was designed to make, the tool
becomes difficult to use. For instance, it's far more common these days for
music to have a clockwork regular beat. Some of the most widely used music
software becomes awkward and can even produce glitches if you vary the tempo
much while editing. In predigital days, tools also influenced music, but with
not nearly such a sharp edge.
So this is an ironic moment in the history of computer science. We are
beginning to succeed at using computers to analyze data without the
constraints of rigid grammarlike systems. But when we use computers to
create, we are confined to equally rigid 1960s models of how information
should be structured. The hope that language would be like a computer program
has died. Instead, music has changed to become more like a computer program.
Link
example of that happening right now in human song. We can easily explore the
changing amount of variety in songs over the last hundred years because of an
amazing data archive: audio recording. Since the beginning of recorded music,
the sound of human song has changed with each new generation of people.
There's no confusing a 1930s song with a 1940s song, or a 1950s song with a
1960s song. The pattern sticks until roughly the end of the 1980s. It's not
easy to tell whether a song came from 1990 or 2000.
This might sound like an extraordinary claim, but you can test it yourself.
Listen to random clips from the many sources of songs available on the
Internet and don't peek at the year they were produced. You'll discover that
it's harder to date songs from the last two decades than songs from previous
decades. Terry and I are now considering this experiment on a more formal
basis.
If you accept that there has been a recent decrease in stylistic variety in
human song, the next question is "Why?" There are plenty of possibilities:
Maybe the Internet makes too much information available, so everyone has the
same influences to absorb—and songs lose flavor and take on a generic
quality. To be more cynical, it could be a sign of cultural decline.
Another explanation, which is the one I suspect, is that the change since the
mid-1980s corresponds with the appearance of digital editing tools for music.
Digital tools are more suggestive about results than previous tools: If you
deviate from the kind of music a digital tool was designed to make, the tool
becomes difficult to use. For instance, it's far more common these days for
music to have a clockwork regular beat. Some of the most widely used music
software becomes awkward and can even produce glitches if you vary the tempo
much while editing. In predigital days, tools also influenced music, but with
not nearly such a sharp edge.
So this is an ironic moment in the history of computer science. We are
beginning to succeed at using computers to analyze data without the
constraints of rigid grammarlike systems. But when we use computers to
create, we are confined to equally rigid 1960s models of how information
should be structured. The hope that language would be like a computer program
has died. Instead, music has changed to become more like a computer program.
Link
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
We're in!
We just got cable hooked up as well as phone.
Here is a photo of our fireplace with the reflection through our slider:
Here is a photo of our fireplace with the reflection through our slider:
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Storytron
A new idea in interactive story telling, storytron may become a successful way of creating more interesting, more dynamic computer games.
http://www.storytron.com
Here is a clip from their overview:
Storytronics - Lots of Both Story and Interactivity
Even though Storytronics has the strengths of both the previously described methods[branching narrative & narrative games], and the weaknesses of neither, it is not "the best of both worlds" - it is a radically new paradigm that redefines everything. The basic concept in Storytronics is that interactive storytelling is first an interactive experience - that is, it is not an experience where the player's main role is to read text or watch footage, sometimes getting the attractive opportunity to "choose the lesser of two evils". It is an experience where the player has volition, and is at liberty not merely to choose between narrative possibilities, but to behave in whichever way he or she likes, thus freely directing the course of the drama. The computer-controlled characters, likewise, behave according to their unique personalities, reacting dynamically to the player's behavior.
This is made possible using the concept of the Verb. Storytronics uses Verbs to define what may happen in interactive storytelling. Each Verb represents one possible dramatic action, like a kiss, a demand, or an advice. Once a Verb has been defined, it may be used indefinitely. For example, once a single Verb Kiss is defined, any character will be able to kiss any other. Depending on the context and the Adverb used, this kiss could also mean several different things, from a friendly greeting to a statement of reverence to a passionate lovemaking, or even a murderous act (think Judas). When more than a thousand Verbs are used together, the richness of possible behaviors stretches across horizons. When each Verb also defines what kinds of consequences it has and what reactions it may warrant, these possibilities can be organized into complex cause-and-effect relationships that allow the interaction to maintain a coherent and narrative form, no matter how adventurous the player's behavior.
http://www.storytron.com
Here is a clip from their overview:
Storytronics - Lots of Both Story and Interactivity
Even though Storytronics has the strengths of both the previously described methods[branching narrative & narrative games], and the weaknesses of neither, it is not "the best of both worlds" - it is a radically new paradigm that redefines everything. The basic concept in Storytronics is that interactive storytelling is first an interactive experience - that is, it is not an experience where the player's main role is to read text or watch footage, sometimes getting the attractive opportunity to "choose the lesser of two evils". It is an experience where the player has volition, and is at liberty not merely to choose between narrative possibilities, but to behave in whichever way he or she likes, thus freely directing the course of the drama. The computer-controlled characters, likewise, behave according to their unique personalities, reacting dynamically to the player's behavior.
This is made possible using the concept of the Verb. Storytronics uses Verbs to define what may happen in interactive storytelling. Each Verb represents one possible dramatic action, like a kiss, a demand, or an advice. Once a Verb has been defined, it may be used indefinitely. For example, once a single Verb Kiss is defined, any character will be able to kiss any other. Depending on the context and the Adverb used, this kiss could also mean several different things, from a friendly greeting to a statement of reverence to a passionate lovemaking, or even a murderous act (think Judas). When more than a thousand Verbs are used together, the richness of possible behaviors stretches across horizons. When each Verb also defines what kinds of consequences it has and what reactions it may warrant, these possibilities can be organized into complex cause-and-effect relationships that allow the interaction to maintain a coherent and narrative form, no matter how adventurous the player's behavior.
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