On Winter in the Midwest

'This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.' It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.

                  ~ Willa Cather. My Antonia

I feel like this every winter...

The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death—heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.

                  ~ Willa Cather. My Antonia

Really enjoying this. It's not a page-turner, but Cather can really paint a portrait of a scene.

Embedding Twitter Posts

This has probably been around for a while, but I just saw it today. Twitter now makes it easy to embed Twitter posts into a blog.

Simply:

  • Click on a twitter post so that it expands to show the time of the posting and a hyperlink labeled "details".

  • Click on the details link.

  • Click on the 'embed this tweet' link.
  • Copy the html tab and choose an alignment.

The great thing about this implementation is that the reader can interact with the tweet, e.g. replying or retweeting the post.

Jawbone Jambox

This year for Christmas my company, Gomoll Research + Design got everyone the Jawbone Jambox for Christmas. I'd seen the device on the web, including the youtube video for it. It was neat, looked like a lego brick but I wasn't sure about it. Now that I've had it for a couple weeks, I can tell you I love it.

Jawbone Wireless Speakers & Speakerphones | JAMBOX

Like so many of these things, I ended up appreciating a feature that I didn't even think was important. I have several iPod/iPhone speakers at home, but they are now firmly ensconced in their respective plugged-in places. The Jambox comes with me everywhere.

The portability and ease-of-connectivity are what makes this device great. The sound is good. I don't confess to be an audiophile, and I can get my other speakers to play louder than the Jambox, but most of the time that I am listening to music, "turning it up to 11" is not what I need. I want to be able to grab the speaker in one hand, my iPhone in the other, and listen to music in the shower. I want to be able to grab and go and listen to this in my car.

(I have a tape converter in my car, i.e. I put the tape in the cassette deck and plug the attached wire into the earphone port of the device. The problem is that the tape converter is so loud it sounds like someone is rolling a cart of ball bearings right next to me. I've tried at least five different types of converters, and over a small amount of time, they all get ridiculously loud.)

And I want any of my devices to easily connect. With the bluetooth capability it is as easy as turning the Jambox on, then going to the bluetooth settings on the iPhone/iPad/computer etc.

It's not cheap, but if you want a portable speaker that you can grab and go, with one hand, that sounds good, connects easily, and has great battery life, I recommend the Jambox.

Information Retrieving

The humanist and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford, for example, restated it in 1970: “Unfortunately, ‘information retrieving,’ however swift, is no substitute for discovering by direct personal inspection knowledge whose very existence one had possibly never been aware of, and following it at one’s own pace through the further ramification of relevant literature.”

                  ~ James Gleick. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood