“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Attributed to Simone Weil
Category: Responses
What is sadder than seeing a domain die, to see it reincarnated as brushed nickel door levers http://melcashen.com/brushed-nickel-door-levers/
Day 7 of 7: 7 black and white photos of your life. No humans, no explanations. Challenge someone new every day. Challenged by @IaninSheffield I now challenge @hbailie
I’ve never started a book project — and I mean that all the way back to my dissertation — in the way that I have always thought I was supposed to: (a) Having an Idea; (b) Researching that Idea; (c) Outlining the Book exploring that Idea; (d) Writing the Book detailing that Idea.
Mine have gone more like (1) having some vague annoying idea with a small i; (b) writing multiple blog posts thinking about things related to that idea; (iii) giving a talk somewhere fulminating about some other thing entirely; (4) wondering if maybe there are connections among those things; (e) holy carp, if I lay the things I’ve been noodling about over the last year and a half out in this fashion, it could be argued that I am in the middle of writing a book.
Heather, not sure what you are looking for with TimelineJS, but @twoodwar has created a plugin to replicate it using WordPress http://bionicteaching.com/portfolio-timeline/
Chris Aldrich (BoffoSocko)Replied to Why Not Blog? by Kathleen Fitzpatrick Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)
My friend Alan Jacobs, a key inspiration in my return (such as it is, so far) to blogging and RSS and a generally pre-Twitter/Facebook outlook on the scholarly internet, is pondering the relationship betwee…
Day 6 of 7: 7 black and white photos of your life. No humans, no explanations. Challenge someone new every day. Challenged by @IaninSheffield I now challenge @justlego101
Chris Aldrich (BoffoSocko)I’ve written up a bunch of details on how and what I did (as well as why), so hopefully it’ll give you a solid start including some custom code snippets and reasonably explicit directions to make some small improvements for those that may be a bit code-averse. Hint: I changed it from being a sidebar widget to making it a full page. Let us know if you need help making some of the small code related changes to get yourself sorted.
I have been wondering about your following page / blogroll lately. I looked into Colin Walker’s plugin, but really did not want to rewrite all my links.
I have also been looking into archive page templates and assume that just as an archive can be incorporated into a widget or within a template, you have done the same thing with your ‘blogroll’, therefore when you add somebody new (seemingly weekly, if not daily) then your page automatically updates?
As an elementary school principal, here’s the approach I’ve been taking with change: “Here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, and here are some of the ways I will support you!” Now I’ll be toying around with the idea of also proactively addressing the elephants in the room. Furthermore, we should allow for teachers and staff to respectfully and honestly discuss these obstacles, as opposed to us trying to sweep them under the rug. After all, flaws will be talked about in one way or another, and critical conversation that gives everyone a voice is preferred to potential venting in the faculty room.
Ross Cooper discusses the idea of putting your worst foot forward taken from Adam Grant’s book Originals. This involves trusting the idea at hand and starting with reasons why it might fail. Cooper suggests that this can be useful as it disarms the audience, critique involves effort, helps to build trust and leaves audience with a more favourable assessment. He also looks at this alongside Simon Sinek’s concept of ‘start with why’, highlighting the reason why and the challenges that might be faced. I wonder if the challenge in focusing on the why and why not is about finding balance? This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of Generous Orthodoxy.
Grant cites four reasons why we should accentuate the flaws in our own ideas when “pitching a novel idea or speaking up with a suggestion for change.”
“Leading with weaknesses disarms the audience.” When we’re only presented with positives, we become skeptical and look for holes as if to say, “What’s the catch?”
“People think an amateur can appreciate art, but it takes a professor to critique it.” We hold in higher regard those who can praise and critique vs. those who heap on nothing but lavish praise. Think restaurants reviews, movie reviews, book reviews, etc.
“It makes you more trustworthy.” This speaks to the credibility of the person pitching the idea.
“It leaves audiences with a more favorable assessment of the idea itself.” If the idea is a good one, and we’re already pointing out its worst problems (which aren’t so bad in the first place), there’s nothing damaging left to uncover.
I wonder Ross if the challenge in focusing on the why and why not is about finding balance? This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of Generous Orthodoxy.
Bookmark for this post is here.
Huston’s analysis steps through the seven layers in the OSI stack, beginning with changes in the physical infrastructure (massive improvements in optical signalling, more and better radio, but we’re still using packet-sizes optimized for the 1990s); then the IP layer (we’re still using IPv4!); routing (BGP is, remarkably, still a thing — on fire, all the time); net ops (when oh when will SNMP die?); mobile (all the money is here); end-to-end transport (everything is about to get much better, thanks to BBR); applications (Snowden ushered in a golden age of crypto, CDNs are routing around stupid phone companies, and cybersecurity is a worse dumpster fire than even BGP) and the IoT (facepalm).
This report into the web is intriguing and interesting to compare with James Bridle’s discussion of infrastructure and the impact of global warming on things.
via Boing Boing
indigenous-android – An app with extensions for sharing information to micropub endpoints and reading from microsub endpoints
I have started testing the alphas version of Indigenous on Android:
An app with extensions for sharing information to micropub endpoints and reading from microsub endpoints.
Here are my initial observations:
- Connecting with Apeture: So far I have been unsuccessful with my efforts to connect to Aperture, although the display has changed.
- Starting with a capital letter: One of the minor points I had was that responses begin with lower case, rather than a capital. On a desktop this is fine, but it can be frustrating on a mobile device.
- Share Via: Sharing the native ‘Share’ functionality often adds the title and link into the link field. I have found this when sharing from Twitter and Inoreader.
- There is no means of ‘cancelling’ a post. If you open the window to ‘like’ a post but then change your mind, there is no obvious answer for cancelling the action, as clicking ‘back’ has the same consequence as clicking ‘post’.
I am sure there are other things, but at least this is a start. Maybe I need to look at the issues on Github and add my issues there.
What has changed, what remains the same, and what general patterns can be discerned from the past twenty years in the fast-changing field of edtech?
Martin Weller looks back at twenty years of EdTech, highlighting the various moments that have stood out across the journey. This brings together many of the pieces that he has written for his 25 years of EdTech series that he has written to celebrate 25 years of ALT. As he points out in his introduction, we are not very good at looking back. This post then offers an opportunity to stop and do so in a structured manner. Another interesting take on history is Ben Francis’ post on the Firefox OS.
I remember at a team dinner once Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s Chairwoman and “Chief Lizard Wrangler”, talked about the importance of…
This is a fascinating read about the evolution of a technology project, how ‘good ideas’ fail and what is learned. It leaves me wondering if organisations like Google and Facebook have historians and documentation keeping track of where they have come or is it all hidden within the meeting minutes and test cases?
Marginalia
The problem with competing on price is that you soon get into a race to the bottom and whoever has the biggest economy of scale ends up winning.
The web isn’t a world of monolithic apps with clear boundaries between them, it is an experience of surfing from one web page to another, flowing through content.
With no real constraints put on the ideation process and an insufficient process for evaluating them, people were coming up with all sorts of suggestions from smart watches to reinventing the concept of currency!
The premise of Ari’s talk was that Firefox OS had set out to compete with Android and iOS and it had failed. Firefox OS was too late to market, the app store hadn’t taken off and the smartphone war had been won. It was time to move onto the next big thing — the Internet of Things.
The flagship Firefox team and supporting platform team had been complaining about a lack of resources for a while, and with Firefox market share slipping the finger of blame was pointed at Firefox OS.
There was a general feeling that Mozilla had “bet the farm” on Firefox OS and it hadn’t paid off.
It’s possible that rather than being five years too late, Firefox OS was actually five years too early!
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)Assuming that the list of those we follow will remain relevant over time is incredibly naive and will invariably lead to an unsatisfactory experience.
On her long-awaited debut album, the Gold Coast success shows off different sides to her sound and showcases the songwriting that’s made her such a relatable success.
Love Monster is a bit of a roller-coaster – in a good way. One minute you can imagine Amy Billings singing the songs accompanied by an acoustic guitar, then the next minute the drums and synths kick in. The sound never quite settles.
Being her first full length album I wonder if this mix of styles and sounds is a consequence of time. I would probably put it on the shelf somewhere between Of Monsters and Men and Lorde.
One secret of leadership development is providing time for others to engage in self-reflection.
- What do you already know? How might that apply to current challenges?
- What are you doing that makes you feel energized? What does that say about you?
- What makes you feel connected with people? What blocks connection?
- When do you feel most powerful? Anxious? Successful?
- What is your role – not title – on the team? In your organization?
- What’s confusing? Where do you need greater clarity, simplicity, or focus?
- What do your hobbies say about you? How does that inform your leadership journey?
- What frustrates you?
- What are you reluctant to try?
- How might you maximize your strengths?
- Who on your team should you be developing? How?
- Who has helped you on your leadership journey? How are you different because of them?
Grohl certainly gets around. Very eclectic too http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/dave-grohls-guest-list-21-amazing-musical-cameos-146685/
Another useful application for quiet students is Verso as it provides anonymity.