Someone told me about this:
http://www.chally.com/enews/powell.html
This is based on a magazine article and later a book titled: The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell.
I need to keep this as notes. Pretty sweet.

Craig L asked – a great question – how to communicate Sakai on campus?
Here are some resources:
A presentation from the recent Amsterdam conference on just this topic (Look under attachments)
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/CONF07/A+Methodological+Framework+for+Evaluating+and+Selecting+an+Open+Source+LMS
We need to get you the audio if possible – that would be helpful.
Here is a video about Sakai in general:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/media/2006/overview/overview.htm
From this page you can download a high-quality copy of the talk in
case you want to show it locally.
This is a PowerPoint where I cover a broad overview of Sakai:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/talks/2007/sakai_overview_v12_hawaii.zip
This is also a great “Sakai Introduction” PowerPoint from Anthony Whyte:
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/download/attachments/45506/Amsterdam_20070609.ppt.zip?version=1
Also there is a two page overview handout at:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/papers/2006/2006_08_two_pager.pdf
I know you said you did not want to do a features bake-off – but if you change your mind, take a look at:
www.edutools.org
If you are interested in getting a quick overview of the community around Moode and Sakai – take a look at www.ohloh.net and explore both projects.
If you are interested in communicating the notion of community source in general – take a look at these:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/talks/2007/2007_05_01_educause_keynote.ppt
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~csev/papers/2007/educause_v01.doc
You are welcome to reuse/adapt ay of my or Anthony’s stuff to help make your case – it is all available under creative commons.

This is my first use of iListen. Since I have a broken finger and am unable to tiny quickly I purchased iListen as an experiment. Before purchasing iListen I purchased a copy of IBM ViaVoice for Macintosh. When look down the package it said they’re only supported Mac OS 10.1 and MacOS 10.3. I just assumed that would also work on Mac OS 10.4. When I came home and did some research on the Internet I found that IBM ViaVoice indeed did not support Mac OS 10.4. So I got in the car and drove to the Apple store in Grand Rapids Michigan the purchase a copy of iListen because I have the 6000 page paper that it’s due by Tuesday.
So as a test I figured that I would enter a block entry using iListen. They say that the first thing to do it is to work on informal speech such as email and other things before you try to actually do serious writing about is what I’m doing. So far it seems as though it’s about 85 percent. It only gets about half of the sentences right. It does get least three quarters or more of the words right. But even with the mistakes it is far superior to typing with one hand. Because I can always use the mouse with one hand to go back incorrect incorrect words. I simply go back and highlight the incorrect word and then say again.
So far even though I have only trained at for about ten minutes it seems quite accurate the end it quite pleased with it. it important to watch as you speak because sometimes if you speak to watch him and try to go back and understand what you said when it has misunderstood your words you have no chance of figuring out what you actually said. it does work better if you speak deliberately the with a brief pause in between words.
It has this bad habit at least in TextEdit when you go back and highlight word and re-say it of putting that word in capital letters. Perhaps I’ll find a preference that solves this problem.
To compare this with the last time I used voice recognition it has improved significantly. The last time I used voice recognition was about three years ago and all I really remember is it made me so angry that I wish that the software understood curse words to mean delete the last word that I just said.

Join the Sakai community for a little bit of Karaoke tonight (Wednesday). We will be congregating at Casablanca which is located just north of the Red Light District, within walking distance to the hotel. The concierge can tell you where it is on the map.
Casablanca
Zeedijk 26e
06-12200519
The club opens at 20:00 with good Jazz, and Karaoke beings at 23:00 and goes until 3:00.

I just upgraded to Final Cut Express 3.5 – they changed LiveType’s install process to *require* 9GB of textures, etc – just to work. Sheesh!
In earlier versions Livetype installed low resolution proxies for thes files and only installed hires versions for the files you needed. What were the developers thinking when they removed this very nice feature.
I cannot afford 10GB on my laptop that I use for video editing and all the rest of my work. The net result is that I will simply stop using LiveType. Drat.

I usually am too cheap to try some technology before Lance. But perhaps I bought my Apple TV before him. The trigger was a new HD Television a few weeks ago – I am collecting gadgets that do HDMI.
I purchased an Apple TV this weekend and already it is full of stuff – we have music, movies, and video podcasts all loaded on the home computers around the house. Brent has found the comedy podcasts and is having a field day.
My finest moment was getting three episodes from this season’s Dr Who recoded into MP4 so I can play them on the Apple TV.
All in all this is a very very well designed device – it uses the iTunes libraries around the house – whichever ones are up – so you stage material at a workstation (currently 2 PCs and 1 Mac are in the net).
I also put all of the family photos into th Apple TV itself with some background music – so we can watch photos.
Next it will be all the videos from my camera.

Well, I think that I finally have to upgrade my Final Cut Express HD – I can no longer capture DV on mt Mac Book Pro.
I have cleaned and defragged the hard disk – no help – I have plenty of free space.
Frame loss happens in Final Cut and in Quicktime.
This worked for a long time – then stopped.
So I will upgrade FC and see – the next step is to wipe te OS and start over.

Continue reading →

I can’t code, I can’t write long e-mails and I cannot even write a long blog entry.
I wish there were an audio keyboard so I could say letters.
Ths week I went to Edinburgh to give a talk – it was great.
My cast comes off June 19 :(

If you watch my photo blog – you already know that my team won the Hockey championship and my Thesis advisor did not win the championship.
A picture of me with the trophy
My finger was fine – it twinged a bit from time to time but it seldom really hurt. Back to the cast so it can heal for the next few months. The next key will be motorcycling – broken finger will put that on hold for 4-6 weeks – Damn!
We won the game 4-2. Rich got his team’s first goal which tied the score. Our team was very balanced in scoring with Ray, John, Tom, and Scott each scoring – I got an assist on the fourth goal. I had three outstanding chances to score a goal. Each time I would miss the bench would laugh and suggest that it was my hand that screwed up – but of course I screw up often enough with a good hand – so that is not a good excuse.
Both teams played great. Rich’s team was really strong on offense but our defense held steadfast amazingly.
I learned some things from this:
– Winning is a team effort – it is nice to have Scott Crilley on that team
– Defense is really important
Next year – I will go back and sign up with Rich – probably we will never win a championship together – but the rest of the time is so much more fun playing with Rich.
Ah well – it is time for summer and motorcycling – and back to hockey in September.

For the past 15 years, I have played Hockey in the grownup league in Lansing, MI. Until this year I always signed up with Dr. Richard Enbody of the Michigan State Computer Science Department. Rich is my Phd. Thesis advisor and a good friend. He is a much better hockey player than me – he played Club Hockey in college and plays center – I play right wing. After 15 years we play pretty well together – primarily because I do dumb things like pass the puck without looking first – but he is the only person on the ice who knows where the puck is going and he gets there – he turns my mistakes into brilliant plays because no one on the ice is expecting it.
This past year, I was travelling for Sakai during August and a bit distracted as the signup deadline approached – Rich signed up on time – but I did not. I got a lucky spot after the deadline – but on a team other than Rich’s. So this season we played on different teams for the first time in 10 years.
We played against one another only once during the regular season – primarily due to a combination of his travel schedule and my travel schedule – his team won the game handily and I just was lousy.
So my team finishes the season in 7th place and his team finishes the season in 8th place. But the playoffs is a different story in this league – the intensity upps quite a bit and the more balanced and defensive teams tend to win in the playoffs.
Almost as if it were a Disney script, both teams have made the finals – today at 7:20 PM at the Suburban Ice Arena. So I am playing against Rich for the championship.
We have not even been in the finals for about 8 years – we lost that game 3-2 – I distinctly remember a goal we gave up that turned out to to be the winning goal. We were facing off in the defensive zone against the other team’s weaker line and a much weaker center than Rich. We have had a play that we have done for years in this kind of situation – we don’t even need to look at each other to call the play. We both push forward and try to make a very high speed breakout, catching the defense on flat footed. It works wonderfully when it works.
On this particular face off (8 years ago) we both broke away – but we lost the puck and the other center (a relatively weak player) shot it right in the net – we lost the game. The further irony is that the team we lost to back then was led by an outstanding player named Scott Crilley – and Scott is on my team this year in the finals.
So this is pretty intense and layered with irony. The funny thing is that we cannot both win the championship – one will win and the other will lose – and in future years – we will again play togther – so we will have a good time but likely never get to another championship game – ever.
So this game is likely to be bragging rights for the next 20 years.
Just to make it more fun – last week in the semifinal game I broke my left index finger.
Click here for the X-ray image.
But I will not miss this game for the world – so it is all taped up and off we go. I am sure it will hurt some – but heck – that is hockey and this is bragging rights for a long time – even if I lose – I want to be on the ice.
In 12 hours – one will win and one will lose and history will be made – for a long time. Either way – it is a cool story.
P.S. Happy Mother’s day