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Today, I’m being interviewed by CBC Radio for a piece on bike riding in Calgary. And, I got a request to use one of my photos on the cover of a book. Yay for traditional media!

The proposed US bailout of greedy financial institutions is crazy enough, but now there’s talk of bailing out the automakers? What in hell happened to the free market? US automakers are in trouble because they build shitty products that people don’t want to buy. And they haven’t retooled fast enough, as others have. Toyota’s not looking for a bailout, they’re just making better products. Honda’s doing OK. etc…

A US automaker bailout is just the government declaring “we know our products are shit, and we think you should keep buying them, so we’re going to subsidize the morons that run the companies.”

Companies that come up with brainstorms like the 3 ton monster truck “Escalade Hybrid” (now getting 18 miles per gallon! amazing!) shouldn’t be allowed to continue existing. They need to go away. It’s sad that people will lose their jobs, but the companies are zombies already. Lots of OTHER people are going to lose their jobs, without the chance of bailouts. Why are automakers special? Because we LOVES our cars. And burning oil. That’s the (North) American way.

Back in the heady early days of podcasting – all the way back in 2005 – one of the first use cases of the technology was to create “walking tours” where a narrator could guide students through a tour of an area. When video podcasting became possible, it would make the guided tours more effective because you could show supplemental or orienteering images to support the narration.

Fast forward to 2008, and the TLC just produced a walking tour of the U of C campus, featuring Julie Walker, a naturalist and hiking guide with the University of Calgary Outdoor Centre.

Grab a copy, drop it on your iPod (or PSP, or cell phone, or laptop, or *cough* Zune) and follow along with Julie as she guides you across campus.

University of Calgary Walking Tour

Scott Leslie just published a fantastic description of how sharing really works – and how institutions/organizations/etc… miss the real value of sharing. You can’t plan to share, you can’t define parameters, you can’t write specifications and requirements and interoperability guidelines.

All you can do is share what you do. Share what you create. Share what you care about. And, possibly, some time, someone else will benefit.

But if you plan/specify/define the parameters of sharing (what is shared? with whom? for how long? in which contexts? etc…) then the value of the thing is lost.

I agree with Scott. I’ve been involved in a few projects that had fantastic intentions, and lofty goals. But they got hung up on words and plans, rather than on just doing stuff and casting it to the wind. CAREO. EduSource. Pachyderm. APOLLO. ALOHA. etc…

I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has found a new use for something I’ve done. Photographs have found their ways into books, games, magazines, TV shows, etc… None of that would have happened if I’d focused on planning who would get to see the photos, and for how long, and at what resolutions, and what they’d be allowed to do with them, and what the cost should be, etc… Or, if I’d worried that nobody would even want the photos in the first place.

Sharing works because you do it. That’s all there is to it.

2 weeks. 14 sleeps. I think I can keep sane for that long. Then I can stock up on natural vitamin D…

I just found a new Coolest iPod Application. Theramin-ator. A multitouch theramin. On my iPod. Fracking awesome. I just spent the last half an hour playing with it, and it’s pretty sweet. Especially once you start getting the hang of the multi-touch controls. You drag a finger (or fingers) around on the “control pad” to simulate moving through the theramin’s fields. Horizontal axis is frequency, vertical is volume. Frequency ranges from a skull-rattling 40Hz to a brain-melting 2000Hz. Volume goes to 11, natch. And you can tweak the properties of the theramin while playing – pitch range, waveform, etc… Very cool.

It’s probably a good thing that it doesn’t record the sounds because I’d have to start an @dnorman Theramin Music Hour Podcast, full of wacky Star Trek theme music and transporter sound effects…

ps. yeah. I get how lame I am for playing with a theramin simulator for half an hour on a friday evening, then blogging about it…

It’s a sad story, but still pretty cool that one of my photos (released under a CC:by license) was used by CBC News. I got a call this afternoon from the reporter asking if they could use the photo. I said of course, and started to explain CC:by, when she commented that she knows about Creative Commons and just likes to notify people when they use photos. So she went above and beyond (she could have just used the Flickr mail feature) and looked up my office phone number to ask me directly.

Just got a call from someone from CBC News. They want to use some of my photos of the Calgary Children’s Hospital, and wanted to let me know about it. I love the Creative Commons license

I had the distinct pleasure of introducing Dr. Leslie Reid this morning, for her presentation “Creating Team Projects that Work in Large Classes: Redesigning a Large Science ‘Service’ Course” – part of the Teaching & Learning Centre’s 10th anniversary series of presentations. She talks about her experience in redesigning a large class (300 students with 13 weeks of lectures) into a format based on group projects (250 students with 6 weeks of lectures and 6 weeks of group work).

The video recording of the presentation is just over an hour long, and includes some questions from some of the faculty members in attendance. I recorded the session with my little Flip Ultra camera, and it did a surprisingly good job.

It sounds like there might be a critical mass of education-minded folk at Northern Voice 2009 (Vancouver, February 2009), and I’d be more than happy to coordinate a WordCamp gathering before or after the conference. So, of the folks that are going to NV, how many would be interested in attending a WordCamp Education shindig?

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