Archive for the 'Blogging' Category
July 26, 2011
11/24/11 Update: It’s mostly back to Twitter for me. I’ll probably redesign this site sometime in the next year, but for the most part will not be actively blogging.
I am a bit irritated by the newly aggressive ad placement by WordPress.com. I have no control over that and would prefer no ads whatsoever, but WordPress charges for that. I will probably explore other hosting options if I do revive the site.
In the interim, I am more likely to share longer-form content on Google+. Go to my Google profile and put me in one of your circles for that stuff. You can also subscribe to my occasional public updates on Facebook, though I reserve friending for actual acquaintances.
Thanks for visiting.
Posted in Blogging, Paper & Ink, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Blogs, Google, Tumblr, Twitter
January 22, 2011
Fifteen years ago today, on Jan. 22, 1996, The New York Times — which already had a news service behind a paywall on AOL — started its free Web site, jolting newspaper publishers and editors across the land to follow suit. A happy birthday tweet prompted me to go on a memory-jogging journey with the Wayback Machine looking for another newspaper site born that month. Back then, I was working for The York Daily Record in southcentral Pennsylvania. The existential headline on this blog post is from an article I wrote for that paper in December 1995, part of a five-day series explaining the Internet. (I had been a computer dabbler since I was a teenager.)
The article is reprinted below, with permission (My favorite line: “Some people believe the Web or some future souped-up version of it will transform society. Others think the accent in ‘hypertext’ should be on ‘hype.’”) The series was later archived on the paper’s rudimentary Web site (logo at above left), a precursor to the now-thriving YDR.com. That site was pushed into the world a bit early, thanks to some bad weather.
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Posted in Blogging, New York, Paper & Ink, Social Media | 6 Comments »
Tags: blizzards, floods, History, Internet, news, newspapers, NYT, NYTimes.com, Wayback Machine, weather, Web, YDR.com, York Daily Record, York Pa.
March 26, 2010
I don’t remember how I first came across the Aeropress, but as soon as I saw it, I wanted it. I had been looking for a way to make coffee — espresso in particular — in my office without creating a lot of mess. For the past few weeks, I have discovered that something like this is possible. No longer am I the slave to the stale, vaguely machine-flavored Illy served upstairs in the cafeteria or the over-roasted swill found in the Starbucks shops of Midtown Manhattan.
Using air pressure, the press extracts delicious “espresso” (not really) from two scoops of finely ground coffee. Top it off with hot water, and you have an Americano. So far I’ve had the best results with the Kenyan Gatomboya from Stumptown and the Novo Decaf Espresso carried by Cafe Grumpy. I heat the water to 175 degrees Farenheit using this Breville electric kettle, served up in these supposedly unbreakable glass mugs.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee!, New York | 7 Comments »
Tags: Aeropress, Brazil, Breville electric kettle, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, decaf, drinks, espresso, Illy, Kenya, NYT, Starbucks
September 28, 2009
It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I’m kidding.
I don’t believe in “objectivity” and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a straw man. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.
This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.
I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don’t give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee!, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: balance, Blue Batak, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, espresso, ethics, fairness, journalism, neutrality, news media, newspapers, NYC, NYT, objectivity, politics, Sumatra, Twitter, Verve Coffee Roasters
September 9, 2009
More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first “list of iPhone apps I actually use” last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications.
Since then, the number of new applications has grown rapidly. Now there’s a cottage industry of lists, blogs and podcasts devoted to reviewing applications. Here’s a recent Techcrunch list of the “best” apps, which notes the store had 300 new apps rolling out every day. Here’s a similar post at Gizmodo, which put the total number of apps at more than 74,000. Many of the lists that try to sort out the best applications seem to focus more on flash than substance.
In August, I finally renewed my AT&T contract and upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. It seemed like the right time to reconsider the programs I had loaded onto my phone. Did I actually use them?
Here’s my revised list:
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Moving Images, New York, Social Media | 10 Comments »
Tags: 1Password, AIM, Amazon, AOL Radio, Bento, Books, computers, dictionaries, Facebook, games, Gizmodo, Google, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPods, iTunes, Kindle, Last.FM, macs, Midomi, music, newspapers, NPR, NYC, NYT, O.E.D., Pandora, Posterous, radio, Readdle, remotes, Shakespeare, Shazam, SMS, software, Stanza, Techcrunch, technology, texting, Tweetie, Twitter, Twitterfon, UpNext, Urbanspoon, Wall Street Journal, webcams, WikiHow, Wikipanion, Wikipedia, Yelp
September 3, 2009
I tried out the new PicPosterous iPhone app today to take some pictures of the wreckage from a taxi fire in front of Maison restaurant in Midtown, at 53rd and 7th. The fire was put out pretty quickly. Nobody was hurt.
Afterward, tourists were standing around snapping pictures of each other in front of the wreck. City Room has more details. So does the local CBS site.
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Social Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: iphone, NYC, NYT, photography, PicPosterous, Posterous, Twitter
August 9, 2009
Well, this is one cost of early technology adoption. I bought an original Kindle in April 2008, and it has served me well, so I can’t complain too much.
Recently, I noticed a sort of smudge developing in the upper left corner of the screen, even when the machine was turned off. There were also slight streaks of white lines going vertically down the screen, with a washed-out appearance at the top. I could still read books, but it was sort of annoying. I decided to see if Amazon tech support could offer any advice.
I wasn’t looking for a replacement, although I wouldn’t have minded a sort of cash-for-clunkers trade-in discount on a Kindle 2 or a DX. Mainly I was hoping this was an easy problem that they had learned how to fix. If they couldn’t, I would live with it.
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Paper & Ink, Social Media | 9 Comments »
Tags: Amazon, Apple tablet, Books, customer service, ebooks, iphone, Kindle, New York Times, Posterous, tech support, Twitter
April 26, 2009
It was a busy week of catching up at work after vacation, then a busier weekend that included a children’s birthday party by the Hudson River, with volunteer activities to benefit the Children for Children Foundation.
Then last night it was off to Madison Square Garden for The Dead. It was a great show, musically. There were certainly some aging hippies in the crowd, but most of the audience had a middle-aged suburban feel to it. A lot of people who might have been dancing in the hallways and aisles 20 years ago seemed content to sit in their seats and suck on plastic bottles of Budweiser.
Toward the end of the night, I was thinking more about bedtime than the music never stopping, despite a couple of quick shots of this Intelligentsia espresso blend before the show. I’ve been drinking it all week.
Let’s resume the coffee quest.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee! | 5 Comments »
Tags: Alphabet City Espresso, Black Cat Project, Coffee!, espresso, Intelligentsia, Madison Square Garden, music, musicians, Ninth Street Espresso, The Dead
