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My Debate Command Station

My Debate Command Station

Some might be asking “What’s up with this post….” My PhD work is in the area of Journalism and live blogging debates is something that amateurs and pros alike have been doing this US Presidential Cycle. So, livin’ the anthropologist’s life, I thought I’d give it a try.

It’s not as easy as it looks. In fact, Twittering is much easier that trying to write anything substantive. This, believe it or not, was better than my first, unpublished attempt during the VP debate. Balancing watching, thinking, typing, and keeping watching is a lot harder than it seems. So without further adieu, my rather weak ramblings on the proceedings:

  • 10.34 pm — Gotta love what happens when the candidates block the teleprompter. And we go to hand shaking…
  • 10.24 pm — So much for yes or no. McCain’s “maybe” was the perfect response on that one. And we heard the audience on that one.
  • 10.17 pm — For an interesting view on the debate, check out Intrade’s tracking page for the debate.
  • 10.13 pm — Whelp, it’s official Brokaw should just get up and leave at this point.
  • 10.11 pm — Twitter looks to be down from the traffic
  • 10.03 pm — I want a doctrine! The Bernius Doctrine…
  • 10.00 pm — Ok, Brokaw is absolutely toothless.
  • 9.54 pm — I wonder if the audience is miked? McCain, whose cracked more jokes so far… But if there isn’t the sound of chuckles from the audience, it just sounds like the jokes are dying on the floor.
  • 9.49 pm — Brokaw really needs to start cutting these guys off…
  • 9.37 pm — Ballston Spa NY — Central NY Represents!
  • 9.29 pm — Interesting production note — is it me or are both candidates wearing lapel mics? If so then why the hand helds? Are they even on? Or is it just for the look?
  • 9.27 pm — The Hack the Vote live twittering is lagging way too far behind the debate. It’s interesting, especially since there’s a healthy amount of tweets from both sides of the aisle. But I think I’ve seen enough… let’s try some live blogging…

I think I could have hugged the undergrad who asked me this earlier today, as we sat waiting for the class to start. From professor to sophomore. What could be better than that?* Definitely an advantageous start to the quarter… oops, semester. I don’t quite know what to do with myself given 15 weeks of classes instead of the usual 10.

[*Note that I’m going to ignore the possibility that she might have been thinking “man that’s a haggard looking second year!”]

So one shopped class down. Definitely won’t be taking that one (The Psychology of Social Computing). It seemed interesting, but the room was packed and apparently the waiting list was 15+ deep. Next up is my first Anthro PhD class. It’s one I began to take last year, so I’m pretty familiar with what will be asked of me.

As a total aside, yesterday, while driving back to Ithaca, I stopped off at the Thirsty Owl Winery on rt 89. I cannot accurately describe how great it is to drive alongside a Finger Lake on a sunny day, so I’ll let the picture do the talking (there’s more on Flickr.)
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Two years ago Dre and I were married here at the house. I’ve traveled to Rochester to spend this night with my love and my best friend, toasting the family and friends who were there in person and in spirit to share that day with us.

Dre is telling me to cut this short before I get to cheezy (oops, make that “too cheezy”… thanks Dre, you back-seat blogger). So I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Things continue to go well with Rita Mae’s adjustment to her “forever home” (as they like to call in in pet rescue circles). In fact, the only member of the household that RM seems to have an issue with is the vacuum. I’ll let the footage do the talking on this one:

A dog and her Matt.

Things continue to settle at the house. Lewis is now comfortable laying down in the same room as RM. And, in a major breakthrough, Lilah actually walked within 5 feet of Rita Mae. She still won’t set down anywhere near her, but we’re hoping in time for a cool detente between the two

So admittedly, we’re being those new pooch parents and taking lots of pictures. You can see the growing amount at my flickr account. What’s great for me is that this has been giving me an excuse to start really exploring some new technologies for capturing, managing, and storing pictures. Here are a couple “must haves”:

  • Shozu
    It’s a mobile phone application that allows easy upload of pictures and video to social media sites like Flickr. What’s really cool about it is how it handles meta data. Not only can you add titles, tags, and captions on the phone, but if you have GPS enabled (like on my phone) it will grab the geo-coordinates and wrap them into the metadata as well. Which means that Flickr (and other services) can immediately place them on a map. That’s particularly useful for later encoding geo-coordinates onto other picture take in the same location using cameras without a GPS feature.
  • Adobe Lightroom
    Where have you been all my life? This is hands down the best Photo Management Software out there. Between its organization capacities, the non destructive retouching, and the metadata coolness, I can do about 90% of what I normally need to do with Photoshop in Lightroom. And its faster and more organized. It also has, thanks to web folks out there, solid Flickr integration. Unfortunately, I had to loose a lot of pictures to Apple Platform quirks before I learned my lesson and made the switch.

That’s about it for now. I need to get outside and start a little gardening and then work on the HP grant for the OPL.