Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley December 2008 Issue November 3, 2008 The Multiple Computer Household With five computers, I used to think my wife and I were unusual. We were at one time, I’m certain, but now I am finding “normal” households with even more computers. A college professor I know had three systems for herself, one for her two children, and two for her husband. Eventually, she said with some resignation, she’ll have two teenagers and each son will want his own system. How did this happen? It was one thing to have two kids, two cars, and two televisions. Now, we have three, four, or even five computers in a house. A September 2008 report by IDC, a technology consulting firm, suggests we should count computers per individual instead of systems per household. The average “Internet savvy” household has 3.11 computers and 2.25 people, one survey found. We hate to part with computers that still work. Recycling a computer generally means giving it to a relative or frien...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2008 Issue October 8, 2008 Less Internet, for the Sake of Children? You can always tell it is an election year when politicians get tough on crime and take action in the name of children. For the sake of “protecting our children” the Internet is getting slightly less useful. A seemingly minor change could have major repercussions. Long before the World Wide Web, there were newsgroup servers. The most famous network of these text-based message forums was the USENET. To this day many hardcore computer programmers, hackers, and other “uber geeks” prefer the forums known as the Usenet newsgroups to exchange ideas and debate technical concepts. In a July 21, 2008, letter to Internet Service Providers, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accuses the ISPs of trafficking in child pornography by carrying the Usenet newsgroups. The two-page letter reflects a complete misunderstanding of the Usenet and of Internet technologies in general. Unfor...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 2008 Issue September 11, 2008 From the Virtual Highway to Highway 99 Spending hundreds of dollars a month on gasoline meant my wife and I were cutting dinners out, DVD purchases, and our day trips to the national forests. My beloved Jeep was affecting our lifestyle. We made the decision to buy a new, high-mileage car. Like many people, we first looked at the cars in person. I like to look after hours, when the sales staff is not around. Sure, I could look online, but it’s nice to see the car. Once I had seen the cars and looked at sticker prices, I went to the Web site of each manufacturer. The sites are all nicely designed. Most let you see previews of various colors and options. I have to admit, the Mini Cooper site was a lot of fun, but my wife had already ruled out the car as impractical for trips to Home Depot or Costco. I settled for looking at practical cars in their mix of exterior and interior colors. Having studied the option...

My first week of teaching this year was frustrating. The initial classroom was unfinished, lacking electrical outlets and the standard overhead LCD projector. This killed my original lesson plans. How I can teach a technology based course with no ability to demonstrate technology is beyond me. The second room I use was double-booked with first-year composition course. The room itself has a low-resolution projector on a pushcart. It's a lousy setup for the instructor, but the students have nice workstations. I need more time to demonstrate concepts for students, so I cannot wait to have my classrooms finished. The university should have completed all remodeling during the summer. Oh, well.

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2008 Issue August 11, 2008 Checking on California via the Web As an educator, I have always used a lot of maps. If data can be mapped, they have been. We’re all familiar with weather maps, population maps, and the infamous political “red versus blue” county maps. As a birdwatcher, I consult maps to confirm where some species reside. My wife uses maps to determine what plants grow best in a region. It turns out, there are maps some of us don’t expect to find. These are maps that change more frequently than books or magazines are published. A “live” map of earthquakes is definitely something a textbook could not include. There were 1324 earthquakes in North America during the first week of August, 2008. A third of these were in or adjacent to California, half were in Alaska, and the remainder were scattered about the West. These data are from the U.S. Geological Survey, better known as the USGS, which maintains a live map of earthquakes ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 2008 Issue July 7, 2008 You Can Always Go Back, If You’re Prepared Digital pictures and digital music. My life is stored in bits on my laptop hard drive and an iPod. I can’t remember the last time I had film developed and my last music purchase was a hard-to-find jazz track downloaded from Amazon. My life is definitely digital. Memories are convenient… and at risk. I was thinking about this while watching the residents of Big Sur and Santa Barbara try to gather their belonging to flee fires. Like the victims of this summer’s horrible floods in the Midwest, these families sometimes had only minutes to gather important possessions. Losing pictures of my wife, my family (including the pets), and special moments from our lives would be devastating. I realize the Valley is extremely “safe” when compared to many other locations. We don’t have hurricanes, tornado seasons, or horrible fires. It is easy to forget we should protect our digital ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 2008 Issue June 7, 2008 Exercise Your Brain for Success Crosswords, Lingo, Sudoku, and “Brain Age” games are among the most popular cartridges for the Nintendo DS handheld game system. Among students using the popular social Web site Facebook, versions of Scrabble and Boggle are the most popular games. As a teacher, I am thrilled. Word games dominating a popular Web site? I definitely did not see this coming. There are places to share scores, discuss strategies, and exchange user-created puzzles. Because I specialize in learning disabilities and special education, I’m especially excited to discover that students living with dyslexia and similar “decoding” challenges seem to enjoy these games. I’m not sure what started the craze, but anything that gets students wondering what a five-letter synonym for “remove” is can’t be bad. (The answer was “purge.”) When I was growing up, my mother always had a Dell Crossword or Find-a-Word book nearb...