User Interface

If you have Ice Cream I will give it to you,
If you have no Ice Cream I will take it from you,
This is an Ice cream Koan.

What is the difference between a Walke Talkie and a Radio? Some say the Radio is crippled since the same hardware could be used to send as receive, just as any speaker can be used as a microphone and every microphone a speaker, but no one does that. The Radio is no more a crippled Walkie Talkie than a Walkie Talkie is an insufficiently broad band radio. Each of them are used differently and each of them uses things differently. The Walkie Talkie uses the airwaves, sends things upon the waves and out into the world. Shakes the aether and makes invisible marks in the sky. The Walkie Talkie Uses the airwaves, and in turn the airwaves shake the speaker and command the listening part of the Walkie Talkie. It uses and is used in return. The Radio does NOT use the airwaves, it is used BY the airwaves. The Radio does not, even in a small way shake the sky, the sky shakes the radio and the electronics turn the waves into sound. Similarly I rarely use twitter. I often read twitter and twitter informs my interactions and tells me what my friends are doing. The aether is folded into brilliant packet origami and sent to me, shakes the computer and moves my eyes, my mind my hands. in this twitter is using me. Sometimes, rarely, I will use twitter. I want to tell the world what I am doing or where a meeting will occur or promote something and my mind fires my hands type and the aether flows from me into the world. Aggregate sites, Filters, Readers, etc. you use the agregator, and twitter also uses the aggregator but you are not using the Twitter, you are listening actively and atttentively to be sure, filtering your perceptions. Like the FM radio you filter out which waves you wish to shake your speakers but you are not using the airwaves. I have a plug in called Zemanta it helps me use blogger. Me using Blogger not blogger using me. It seeks out pictures, links and content so that when I wish to speak to the world it will be a little bit shiner, a little brighter and a little better connected. I have another plug in, it is called DDN. DDN uses my blog. It uses my blog, I have no way of programming it, of telling it anything or anything other than relaying its choice of news. It uses my blog and I am glad to give it the space to use my blog as it is cute and doesn't take up much space. Remember the words of Joss Whedon "I wear the cheese, the cheese does not wear me."

Kiths 2 of 6

Darklings: insubstantial wispy creatures of smoke shadow and darkness. Blessing A merit retest to any stealth or subterfuge challenge. can spend glamour on mentals as per vampires spending for physicals. Curse: 3 trait penalty to all actions performed in daylight. -2 penalty to all actions performed during the day. Their contract is Darkness.
Darkling Kiths:
Antiquerian: scholars and historians
Blessing: Discipline retest on all academics or investigation challenges
Gravewight: goths, necromancers
Blessing: for 1 glamour, shroudsight as per necromancy for one hour
Leechfinger: horrible swamp things like leeches
Blessing: on a successful unarmed attack, drain a point of blood from creature touched, Leechfinger turns an ag to a lethal or a lethal to a bashing or heals a bashing from himself.
Mirrorskin: creepy putty people, Dopplegangers
Blessing: Discipline retest to any disguise attempt as their body and face shift to look different.
Tunnelgrub: gooey worm people
Blessing: spend a point of glamour and become a liquid for a round, still susceptible to damage but can slip through cracks or around things.

Trying to Get a Sandwich, Finding Child Porn

So I went to Trabant in search of a meal. Normally I count this as a mistake due to overpricedness but today it was a mistake for a far different reason. I'm apparently engaging that part of my brain that cares about journalism again so I'm listening to all the conversations around me. Frat boys in ties for their frats in front of me talk about how the announcer for their hockey games has been arrested with six computers full of child porn, the girls behind me lament about how they forgot that chick-fil-a is closed sundays so what on earth should they eat. They then start talking about social events. The man making sandwiches talks about under staffing and changes in Trabant. A boy I walk past, looks to be in high school bumps me and looks out after his sister, clearly a freshman, she is showing him the campus and it turns out he's involved in some sort of skate something happening soon.
I choke back the urge to ask questions of any of them and all of them. Eventually I decide that even normal people would ask about the child porn so when most of the frat boys leave their friend on the sandwich line I ask, he tells me what he can. I find out he's wearing a tie for a chapter meeting, but there are a thousand threads of story that lead out from here.
I decide not to eat there and immediately go home to find out if the story has hit the papers yet. It turns out it (or something like it) has. I link to it in my blog. They didn't take the tactic I would've. I might have had a sentence about the Wilmington Man. At least I used to, I would have asked, where does he work? how is he known? did he make the films himself or were they sent. I do have an advantage over the reporters, I started hearing about the story as a piece of someone's life with a connection to the community. I know he announced at college hockey games. The person who wrote the piece probably only saw it on a police blotter.
Something interesting about the even shorter story here, it says there were 30 videos and 29 counts of child pornography. What's in the 30th video? What is the disconnect? Also why didn't they at least google the offender's name. one of the firts hits when I goolgled it, after the child porn thing is this.

Bill Panuski
Director of Broadcasting

Email: xxxxxxx (email and phone hidden by me as some sort of vague attempt at responsibility)
Phone: xxxxxxx(if the university takes the site down thoug I want to keep this copy of the bio here)

Bill Panuski is in his 6th year, as the Voice of the Fightin' Blue Hen Hockey Club. He is the Public Address Announcer, as well, as the Radio / Internet Play-by-Play Broadcaster. In addition, Bill became the ACHA Director of Broadcasting, for the Division I National Tournament. He is also, the Voice of the Blue Hens Volleyball Team and the Men's and Women's Lacrosse Team

This is a far more interesting story. The way I would have written it and its still short and only takes 30 more seconds.

Wilmington/Newark
Local Sports Announcer Charged With Child Pornography
Ben Walker March 6 2009

Delaware State Police have charged The Director of Broadcasting for the University of Delaware Hockey Team with more than two dozen counts of child pornography.
State Troopers carried out six computers out of thirty-eight-year-old William Panusik's home today. A forensic preview has so far found 30 videos depicting child sexual exploitation.
The source of the videos is as-yet unreleased.
The University so far has no comment.

Here is where you show the mugshot.

The whole thing would have been in 12 point courier new.

Then again what the hell do I know.

Music, Interview, and Radio Blogging

Now the Textbook we have recently downloaded for class, Journalism 2.0,says that in order to have sound podcasts on your blog you need some kind of ftp or other file hosting site. I ran this idea past the wonderful human being who A. thoughtfully archived my interviews from last year's Otakon and B. runs the servers in my house and he says such sites have at least one standard deviation more viruses and horrible spyware than any other net site. So I am at a quandary, if anyone out there has any good ideas how to host 2.2 gigs of sound without catching something nasty please do speak up. Since I had planned to upload one of my old interviews in my trademarked soothing baritone and am stymied by the lack of hosting, here's Steven Fry once again with a much better story.