Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley February 2010 Issue December 29, 2009 Words on a Screen: E-Books are the Future Amazon’s Kindle is now the best-selling product the Web retailer has ever stocked. No single book, CD, or DVD comes close. Barnes & Noble ran out of the Nook before Christmas. Sony cannot ship the Sony Reader (despite the lack of an original name), fast enough for stores like Target and Best Buy. The e-book has arrived, with e-readers selling faster than even their greatest supporters imagined. Considering how mediocre the technology is, the demand proves that as e-readers improve the demand will grow exponentially. The list of current deficits should be hurting the e-reader market, but it isn’t. • The screens are limited to black and white because the “digital ink” display technology doesn’t support color (yet). • Amazon, like Apple, attempts to limit purchased downloads to their hardware platform. • Popular digital books cost as much as printed books, de...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 2010 Issue November 26, 2009 Peering into My Crystal Ball My crystal ball was recently upgraded to organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. This gives me a much brighter, clearer and more energy-efficient view of the future. In fact, I see OLED displays become standard as their prices continue to fall. That, and California is mandating more energy efficient video technologies. What else does the future hold for residents of the Virtual Valley? Gazing through the virtual Tule Fog, which can be quite dense when trying to see the technology trends of tomorrow, I see the “connect living room” is finally arriving after years of hiding. The promised media center computers are not bringing us this networked entertainment hub. No, the Microsoft Windows Media Center and even Apple TV failed to match the marketing hype behind them. Yet, it is Microsoft delivering this future to many households. The Xbox Live video rental model is going to ...

While working on the research for my dissertation, I have read page after page on writing pedagogy asserting that the goal of a university writing course should be to teach students that knowledge is socially constructed and that "truth" is relative to culture and community. The problem with this assertion is that students with autism and similar conditions (my scrambled brain, apparently), are not relativists. Various researchers (Wellcome 2008, Frith 2001) have found that individuals with these conditions are more logical, unaffected by emotional inputs or rhetorical framing. I've found quite a bit of research on this aspect of brain trauma and autism and am including these findings in my dissertation. If a group of people are "wired" to think there is a "truth" -- that knowledge is not created but discovered and then applied creatively -- who are educational theorists to consider such people "immature" or "simple-minded" in s...

In the last few days my wife and I have fought Blogger and SurveyMonkey. For two applications that are used by a lot of people, especially writers and academics, the applications are horrible. When an engineer and computer programmer can't figure out the choices to accomplish basic tasks, something is wrong. I have used Blogger for several years. This is a great platform, but some of the tools need improvement. The help to accomplish tasks leaves much to be desired. We wanted to create a multi-author blog. While we were able to get the setup to allow anyone to post, the author name was always the same. It took several passes through the settings to realize you needed to create special "inbox" addresses for each author. Sure, it was a logical fix once we realized the issue, but it wasn't obvious on the surface. That's not good. Also, the editor has some problems with formatted e-mail. I wish the editor were more like Google's Doc application. ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley December 2009 Issue October 22, 2009 Software to Help the Writer Within Winter tends to drive me inside. I don’t mind the occasional cold winter day, but weeks of dense morning fog and damp drizzle are best enjoyed from a window. I find I write more during the winter months, sitting at my desk with mug (after mug) of hot tea with honey. Apparently, I am not the only writer motivated by the shift in seasons. Each November is National Novel Writing Month , which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Known as “ NaNoWriMo ” (say it aloud, with a long “Oh” sound) by participants, what started as a challenge among friends in the Bay Area has become an international happening. The official Web site (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) includes the history and rules for this great start to the writing season. The Web is why NaNoWriMo has exploded in popularity. This is a non-profit, no entry-fee, event that allows everyone to potentially “win” — if you can...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2009 Issue September 27, 2009 Beyond the Valley: Are We There Yet? The Virtual Valley was supposed to bring us all together. Our physical location was supposed to matter less than with whom we connected online. Yet, there seem to be limits to our online social networks. Researchers have studied online communities for almost three decades, often assuming virtual communities were going to liberate us from traditional barriers. This year we saw evidence that barriers persist online. Eszter Hargittai, a sociologist at Northwestern University, calls this the “Whose Space?” phenomenon. Users, however, being less politically correct than academics, have rechristened MySpace as “MyGhetto,”  “GangstaSpace” and “MyHood.” According to Hargittai’s data, Hispanics are twice as likely to use MySpace as Facebook. There is also a high correlation between educational level and which social sites someone uses. Of those using a social site, 86 perce...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 2009 Issue August 26, 2009 Facebook Fling and Twitter Toss: The Risks of Social Computing to Your Computer There was a time the greatest risk to a laptop at a coffee shop was the menu. Everyone knows that coffee and keyboards do not mix. Only a few short years ago, you took a computer to a coffee shop, bookstore, or all-night diner to work. The laptop was for business or school and your greatest worry was locating a free power outlet. Other than the iced mochas I love, tripping on the power cord was the only serious risk to my laptop. Along came wireless networks and the “Social Web” of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Now, the greatest risk to laptops seems to be rage. According to an August report on CNet, a technology news Web site, computer technicians suddenly find they have to explain to laptop users that warranties don’t cover damage caused by computing while angry. Techs have started to refer to the incidents by a series of hum...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2009 Issue July 27, 2009 Facebook, YouTube and… You, Unemployed For the past few years, I have told my students to consider carefully what they post online. Like many educators and parents, I want my students to think about their online reputations. But, the rules are changing and we’re losing some control over our online selves. What others reveal about you is as important as anything you might post online. “Most of what I worry about, the job applicant didn’t actually post.” As a human resource specialist for a large, national service company, the woman I was talking to hires young men and women who enter the businesses and private homes of customers. These employees represent their employer and its tech-savvy image. Because I teach a professional development course for university juniors and seniors, I thought my warnings not to put too much personal information online was sufficient. I had overlooked that friends, those fun peopl...

I am currently dealing with three major projects: Completing my dissertation. Applying for 2010 positions Finishing home renovations. The middle task, quite literally sandwiched between the other two in my daily life, is one of the most difficult for any person. I tell my students that career changes -- including starting a career -- are always difficult. The likelihood of rejection, at least a few times, is quite high. It is emotionally draining to hunt for work. To be in the job market along with my students will be interesting. It should remind me of the challenges they face. Portfolios are common for my students. Many have studied fashion design, architecture, or landscape horticulture. They need to present evidence of their projects to prospective employers. I also have to present evidence of my work as a graduate student, teacher, and writer. The portfolio will be something of a shared experience, this year. I'm not yet sure if a digital portfolio will be ...

I attended Computers and Writing 2009, earlier this month and returned with mixed emotions. First, the negatives -- so I can end on the positives of the actual presentations and keynotes. As you can guess, the job market for writing teachers at all levels is weak. The reality is that a handful of instructors are losing their jobs; new jobs are definitely not on the horizon. Community colleges, four-year colleges, and full universities are all suffering from a lack of funds. Writing seems to be an easy target for cuts. In some cases, courses will migrate to online settings and in other instances graduate students will assume more teaching responsibilities. Technology, especially online courses and hybrids, are letting universities outsource general education. This is definitely a rough trend to confront. While it is good for the online companies, which offer packaged online courses overseen by part-time, freelancing instructors with graduate degrees, the end result is ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 2009 Issue June 30, 2009 Keeping Track of Everything in Your Life Books, DVDs, recipes, birds we’ve seen, and our family trees. My wife and I maintain all sorts of lists and databases to organize our lives. For some lists, a simple spreadsheet or “flat file” database suffices. In other cases, you need a complex “relational” database that can perform all kinds of magic. Choosing the right tool for the task is based on your needs. Using Spreadsheets for Lists A spreadsheet is similar to a columnar book, featuring a giant table into which you can enter text or numeric data. Modern spreadsheets are very good at managing lists and basic tables of data. However, there are limits. For example, the version of Microsoft Excel I use can only store 65,535 rows of data and each row is limited to 256 columns. More importantly, Excel seems to dislike more than 100,000 “populated” cells of data. Though originally developed to analyze numeric data,...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 2009 Issue May 30, 2009 Font Fanatic: Putting the Best Face Forward How words look on a page or screen can be as important as what they state. Consider corporate logos and signs you see around town. The lettering conveys everything from how “serious” the message is to associations with specific eras. Personally, I love the clean precision of Art Deco lettering, which brings to mind elegance, the Roaring 20s, and a young Hollywood. However, no matter how much I might like Art Deco, I would not prepare a business letter using the typefaces Broadway, Plaza, or Desdemona. These might look great on Agatha Christie or F. Scott Fitzgerald novel covers, but they are inappropriate for a letter to my university department chair. Having a few hundred fonts installed on your computer does not mean you should try to use them all, especially within the same document. I’ve seen the results of font addiction and they aren’t attractive. I admit to being...

I have been on the Internet since the 1980s. I have located messages I posted in college via the USENET, now more than 25 years after I composed them. The various incarnations of my Web sites have also survived in various forms, for reasons I cannot explain. From my main site, though, I have removed things over the years and hope they are generally "gone" from the massive electronic memory that is the Web. I eschewed blogs for many years. I posted only a few badly written essays and ramblings on my Web site. My poetry was online, but I removed the works after someone told me there were things no one needed to read. I removed a few short stories, as well, realizing that I couldn't recall what was fictional and what was close to the realities of people I once knew. When you write a lot, thousands of words some days and literally tens of thousands some weeks, you end up capturing bits of the people around you. But what if they don't want to be exposed, ...

This is a portion of my summer (re)reading list, at least on one particular subject matter. I am reading various books on type and design. So far, I have completed Dodd and Lupton. The Bringhurst and Parker texts are re-reads, which I will tackle later in the summer. The current book on my stand is the Stanley Morison Tally of Types . I'm putting the bibliography up top, to stress the books a bit more than my own ramblings. Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style . 3rd ed ed. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, Publishers, 2004. Consuegra, David. American Type: Design & Designers . New York: Allworth Press, 2004. Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to Open Type: An Illustrated History of Type From the Earliest Letterforms to the Latest Digital Fonts . Vancouver, WA: Hartley & Marks Publishers, 2006. Lupton, Ellen. Thinking With Type : A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students . Vol. Design briefs. 1st ed ed. New York: Prince...

I am in the process of upgrading my MacBook Pro to a 500GB hard drive. (Let's not get too technical, since I know it's not "really" 500GB.) The one thing digital media do well is consume hard drive space. This is the third or fourth time I have updated a PowerBook or MacBook hard drive. As with all new laptops, you wonder, "How will I ever use so much space?" The excitement of having twice or three times whatever you last had soon fades as iTunes, GarageBand, and iMovie eat the bytes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. InDesign, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash are there to help, too. A colleague said, "Why not just store it all on the campus servers or on Google Docs?" Okay, this entire cloud thing is nice -- for sharing some files and for backups -- but I am not about to put my projects out in the cloud. I'd never upload confidential files, and I certainly don't want some company to have my student projects. No way. Plus, I'm no...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2009 Issue May 3, 2009 Twittering or Tweeting, It’s Not for Everyone I don’t tweet. Apparently, I’m not as cool as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, or the dozens of media personalities begging us the follow them via Twitter. Twitter (http://twitter.com/ without the “www”) is a “microblogging” service that allows anyone to post short messages via the Internet or cell phone. The concept is deceptively simple: instead of sending a text message to one person from your phone or computer, why not send the same message instantly to a large group? When you post a message to Twitter, you “tweet.” Some people are tweeting constantly, letting their followers know their every move and thought. Other people and organizations use Twitter for major events and announcements. The recipients of messages are known as “followers” on Twitter. If I wanted people to receive my tweets, I would ask them to follow my twitter feed. There is definitely a unique Twitte...

This year has been a study in contrasts. I chose to teach a traditional technical writing course in the fall and a hybrid course during the spring semester. The differences in student projects, the quality of their analyses, and general attitudes is remarkable. I know research found no easily quantified differences in learning outcomes. However, I think anyone could compare the group projects between these courses and see a difference in the products. While the lessons learned and the facts students retain might be similar, the results do demonstrate something. Some elements of are "intangible" because they are social and philosophical. For example, groups struggled online, even with guidance and gentle remainders to establish schedules and routines. In the traditional course, groups developed stronger bonds and worked together frequently. It should be noted that the face-to-face (F2F) students exchanged more e-mail and chatted more often than the students on the officia...

I am completing an online portfolio, which is always a good process for self-evaluation as an instructor. See: http://www.tameri.com/csw Because I ask my students to create online personas and to work on various digital projects, this is a good way to keep myself grounded. It reminds me that the process is never easy, no matter how experienced one might be with the genres involved. My teaching philosophy took me two weeks to edit, and I'm still not pleased with the results. The sidebar and overall site design isn't what I had hoped to create, either. Something about it doesn't seem to convey who I am. At least I can sympathize with my students. Some of the university job listings ask applicants to describe the classes they might want to teach. I could list two or three dozen, easily. I am a proud generalist, with too many interests and a complete inability to focus on a specialty. That's not a bad thing, since I can be a "utility player" withi...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2009 Issue March 30, 2009 Virtual Romances, Real Complications “He was in my guild. Probably the best thief I’ve ever met.” When I began approaching acquaintances for a column about finding romance online, I expected to hear stories like you see in the television commercials. You know the commercials: the matchmaking service finds the perfect match based on math and science. “We chatted online while plotting strategies. He was clever, funny, and I just knew I had to get to know him outside the game.” As it turns out, my friends are either skeptical of the hype or they are too cheap to pay for online matchmaking. Instead, the people I know have found online romance when they haven’t been searching for love, proving the old truism about love finding you. Apparently, love can find you between heists in virtual worlds. Since I am not an online gamer — I play Scrabble, Word Jong, and Chessmaster on a Nintendo DS — I had no idea people were me...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley April 2009 Issue March 2, 2009 My Addiction to PDAs: From Visor to iPod Touch My life is digitized. Calendars, contacts, and various lists I need have been “in my pocket” for nearly a decade. I’d be lost without my personal digital assistant, better known as a PDA. Before I had my first PDA, I carried around a Day Runner. I like Day Runner products, but they don’t fit into a pocket. I ended up leaving my planner behind more than once. If it can be lost, I will lose it. Also, the Day Runner requires that you develop good habits that I never did master. I’d forget to check ahead for appointments, for example. My to-do list was never current. I ended up with a collection of business cards shoved between pages. The planner simply reminded me how unorganized I am. My first PDA was a Handspring Visor. The Visor, created by former Palm employees, included an expansion slot for everything from memory to a GPS adapter. The black and white, unlit screen...