The Very Rich Hours of the Lambrights

Interesting article in the NY Times about the “new” GM.  The “new” corporation is emerging from bankruptcy and everyone is excited about the direction the giant automaker is going.  I have to say that I’m skeptical and a bit troubled by this whole thing.  GM was allowed to sell all it’s valuable assets to a “new” GM while it’s old liabilities stayed with the “old” GM that that will continue to go through bankruptcy.  Creditors of the “old” GM will likely get very little, while those of the “new” GM will probably do alright.  Since when is this how it works?  We didn’t force the banks to go through this kind of process; we just shoveled obscene amounts of taxpayer money at them so they could keep up their old, criminal tricks.

Not that this new approach is much better.  Pardon me for saying that it doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to resurrect a corporation that is allowed to cherry-pick the assets and liabilities it keeps.  Wish someone would let me do that.  I’ll keep the car loan and the mortgage, please.  You can take the credit card debt.

What really troubles me is that the liabilities that the “new” GM is shedding include a ton of lawsuits and settlements from consumers who got hurt in defective GM cars.  Looks like they are just going to lose.  That is seriously wrong.

Despite China’s poor human rights record and authoritarian government, US companies have fallen all over each other to do business with the Chinese.  The US government, under both Democrats and Republicans have encouraged this business on the grounds that prolonged exposure to Western goods and markets will undermine the authoritarian regime by showing the Chinese people the example of Western freedoms and democracy.  When I read news stories like this one, I have a hard time seeing how this plan will ever work. 

PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China

I will say right up front that I don’t know who actually won the election in Iran.  And I’m not sure anyone else does either.  In the aftermath of the election, the protesters have been out in force and the government has been cracking down harshly.  People all over the world have rightly condemned this brutality.

But some have gone further, concluding that the election was stolen and calling for sanctions against Iran.  So far, US official policy has not gone this far; President Obama is taking a “wait and see” approach.  And he is taking some heat for it.

CNN.com had a good article today giving background information on the situation, including the evidence that some say proves the election was rigged.  Politico.com has an equally good article presenting the viewpoint that, despite the deplorable crackdown, President Ahmadinejad could well have won fair and square.  If true, the protesters would have to be seen in a different light; rather than being on the side of justice, they would, in fact, be attempting to overthrow the results of a legitimate election.

That’s why I agree with President Obama’s wait and see attitude.  And why I chose not to tint my Twitter avatar green.

#27 from the 23 More Things on a Stick program is Twitter.  As you may have read a few days ago, I am on Twitter.  Just follow donovanlambrigh and you too can follow me as I wander about in the great cow pasture of life.  Someone recently asked me why I left off the T at the end of my name.  That would be because Twitter restricts user names to 15 characters.

     stupid twitter… can’t scale…  mutter mutter….

OK, I’m better now.  The 23 More Things page for this thing has a lot of information about Twitter so I’m going to assume that you already know what it is.  I use Twitter mostly at work.  At home, I don’t spend so much time sitting in front of my computer and thus can’t always write up the details of my life.  I can also use my smartphone to post and I do that from time to time but my poor, pre-Internet generation thumbs just aren’t strong enough to do all that typing.  I use the service to post what I’m doing and tasks that have been completed as a way to let the folks in the office know what I’m up to.

Here’s a few things I do to make Twitter more useful:

• Use it to update other webtools.  All my tweets, for example, also become status updates on my Facebook page.  Facebook provided the functionality to set this up; once in place, it just happens with no extra effort on my part.  Many Web 2.0 websites offer similar functionality; you can also get many scripts via Twitter that do the same thing for popular websites.
• Bypass the Twitter page.  If you start using Twitter, you will quickly learn that using the webpage to post and read is pretty lame.  There are many, many tools available to let you work with Twitter.  Personally, I use Twirl on my computer.  For my Windows Mobile smartphone, I use Pocketwit.
• Tweet to let people know about blog posts.  Whenever I update a blog, I mention it on Twitter and post the URL.  This is a little controversial; many in the Twitter community feel that this kind of self-promotion is unethical or at least impolite.  I don’t understand that argument.  It’s OK to let you know what music I happen to be listening to at a given moment but it’s uncool to say that I just did a blog post on the President’s speech or a project at work?  Really?
• When tweeting a URL, shorten it with one of the many URL shorteners on the web, such as TinyURL.  With only 140 characters, every single one counts.  Or better yet, use Twirl, which has this functionality built in.

Have fun tweeting!

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning.  What’s a Ning?  Good Question.  Ning is a platform for creating personal online social networks.  Think of it as your own private Facebook.  To create your own network, you just go to the Ning website, register, and use the tools they provide to set things up.  Ning provides hosting and has free versions that allow you to get started at no cost.  Most Ning users set up social networks around a particular topic or community that wants an easy, no-cost way to enable communication between members.

So, I’m on the 23 Things on a Stick Ning.  As you might expect, it’s full of library folks sharing information.  It’s not all about 23 Things or Web 2.0.  There’s people discussing library careers, books read, and other interesting topics.  I’ve posted some information about myself and connected up with a few friends.  I don’t know if it will replace my Facebook account, but it’s a fun place to go and communicate with people interested in the 23 Things program.

A couple more thoughts before I move on to the next thing.  I use ScribeFire to post to this blog.  It’s a free add on for Firefox that really makes the posting process quicker. Once it’s setup, I just hit a button in the browser to call up a text box where I type the post.  It provides all the standard formatting tools and allows me to use WordPress-specific functions.  It’s not specific to WordPress, though.  If you’re a Firefox user, I recommend it highly.

I’ve implemented Outbrain to let readers rate the blog posts.  You’ll see that each post now has some little stars at the bottom.  Just click the stars to show what you think.  One star means the post was boring; five means you found it excellent.  I’m really curious to see if this feature gets used.  It’s free and supports itself by adding some links to (presumably) related websites who are no doubt paying for the service.  I’m not wild about ads on my blog but these are pretty unobtrusive and the company does need to stay in business. 

Thing #25 of the 23 More Things on a Stick program has us looking at little doodads that improve the functionality of your blog, either for you or for your readers.  Here’s a few thoughts:

I hate SnapShots and have disabled it in my blog.  I also have set my browser not to display them when I visit other websites.  Why do I think that SnapShots is a horrible abomination?  Because it solves a problem that doesn’t really exist by compromising the readability of the page.  Ever tried to read a blog post that is festooned with these things?  Every move of the mouse seems to rollover one of the links.  And everytime you rollover one of the links, this little popup window appears.  It’s too small to really give you a preview of the linked page.  It’s just the right size to block what you are trying to read and throw you off track.  The things are also covered with ads.  Ugh.  Please don’t use SnapShots.

Having gotten that off my chest, I’ll say that I’ve been using a Flickr badge for sometime to show recent pictures from our photostream and it’s really cool.  Very easy to install, too.  Just paste in a bit of HTML code to a text box and you’re ready to go.

I’ve heard a lot about Disqus but don’t get enough comments to my blog to warrant spending the time it would take to set it up.  Maybe I’ll take a look.  Maybe I would get more comments with a better commenting system.

If you read this blog regularly, you will recall that many of the posts in 2008 had to do with the 23 Things on a Stick program.  As described in my first post on the topic, 23 Things was designed to help library folk learn about Web 2.0.  Each of the “things” was a task involving some new, shiny internet toy.  To complete the thing, you had to write up a blog post about the tool and talk about the experience on your blog.  I got through all 23 of the things and it was a lot of fun.  I already knew about many of the tools but I did pick up a few new ones.  And I got some fresh insights on how to use some of the tools I was already familiar with.

Well, there’s a new program following up on the success of the first one.  23 More Things on a Stick picks up where the first program left off with 23 more things for us to learn about.  I registered back in the Winter but never found the time to do much.  They just extended the deadline to June, however, and my life is not quite as hectic now as it was a few months ago.  So, I’m going to take a crack at it.

Thing #24, Refresh Your Blog, asks us to take a fresh look at our blogs.  One of the suggested tasks is to update the look with a new template or design.  I’m not going to do that because I’m happy with my design and got to it after trying out several others.

I am, however, going to add a new feature to the blog.  Like many other netizens, I have been using Twitter to microblog.  I’m not going to talk much here about Twitter; if you haven’t heard of it, check out this cool short video introduction.  I’ve added a new gadget to the blog so you can follow my tweets here.  Now you too can immerse yourself in the minutiae of my daily life.  Is this what DARPA was thinking about when they created the internet 40 years ago? 

I found the 25 Basic Styles of Blogging slideshow interesting.  Like most blogs, mine fits several of the styles, including Life Blogging, Insight Blogging, and Link Blogging.

Well, I finally saw the new Star Trek movie.  And I have mixed feelings.

I’ve been a Trek fan for a long, long time.  And while I love it all, the original series holds a special place in my heart.  So, you can imagine my excitement upon hearing that the next movie would feature the original characters.  And, I have to say, the movie was great.  The plot was exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat.  The actors all did a fantastic job portraying the younger versions of the old, familiar characters.  The guys who played Scotty and McCoy really stood out and were a blast to watch.  The new Spock was even better.  I haven’t seen a Trek movie this good in a long time; probably not since Wrath of Khan. So that’s the good news.  What’s the bad news?

A few days before seeing the movie, I was channel surfing and found the original series episode Balance of Terror among the recorded shows in the DVR.  Excellent, I thought.  The new movie features Romulans and this is the very first Trek episode featuring Romulans.  Perfect way to get warmed up for the movie.  It’s one my favorites.  The Enterprise is sent to investigate the sudden loss of contact with several outposts on the very edge of Federation space, along the border of the Romulan Empire.  Earth fought a war with the Romulans over one hundred years ago, in the very first days of intersteller space flight.  The ships were so primitive that no Romulans or Earth people had even seen each other face-to-face; the ships were just powerful enough to launch nuclear missiles at each other.  That was all the contact that was possible.The war was tragic and destructive and had finally ended with a treaty negotiated over radio.

A DMZ was established between the two powers and both sides had stayed on their own side of the line ever since with no further contact.  Were the Romulans back, testing our resolve as prelude to another war?

To make a long story short, they were.  And the rest of the episode features a cat and mouse game between the Enterprise and a Romulan warship.  Based heavily on WWII submarine/destroyer combat, the two ships dodge and weave, trying to get a firm view of the other so that their weapons can be brought to bear.  One of the great things about this episode is that the time is divided evenly between both sides.  Kirk and our heroes are there but we also get a detailed look at the Romulan captain and see that he is just as passionate and patriotic as the heroes.  He’s just doing his job, fighting for his country and trying to get his crew back home alive.  No one in this episode is truly a villain.

Of course, you know who wins.  With no Enterprise there could be no show.

So, now I arrive at the movie.  And about halfway through, I learn that Balance of Terror, along with about 700 hours of TV shows and movies has been cast aside. Due to the wonders of time travel, the whole timeline has been eliminated.  Effectively, this is the very first new Star Trek story.  Now, I know that they were careful to say that the original timeline/alternative reality/whatever isn’t destroyed.  It’s just that we now have a new one.  But the bottom line is that it is extremly unlikely that there will be any more movies or TV shows using that original timeline as background.  Major buzzkill.

Like all Trek fans, I love the characters.  And like many, if not all fans, I regard the various ships named Enterprise as characters.  But here’s the thing.  I considered the whole universe of Trek a character too.  The history, the various planets, all the people who showed up or were described; it was a cohesive whole, a sweeping backdrop against which all kinds of stories could be told.  Not all the stories were great and the Trek universe wasn’t always 100% consistent.  But was the best, most detailed future landscape we’ve seen on the screen.  I love that universe as much as any of the characters or ships.  And now it’s gone.  And that makes me sad.

I’ve read the fan forums and am familiar with all the arguments.  Trek was dated; it needs a reboot to reach new fans and energize the franchise.  Sorry.  I don’t buy it.  I think they decided to scrap the whole thing and start over so that the screen writers could have complete freedom to do anything.  Who needs a bunch of fanboys like me complaining everytime a movie contradicts the increasingly complex past history?  I get it.

But let’s be honest.  The last few movies and TV shows didn’t do poorly because the canon had become too restrictive.  They did poorly because, too often, they were poorly written and/or directed.  Over the years, there were many examples of great and successful shows and movies that somehow managed to succeed within the “confines” of the canon.  If the new people running Trek cannot manage that, it’s because they’re lazy and/or incompetent.

Lest this sound like a sour, bitter rant, I want to emphasize my first points.  The movie was great and I loved it.  I will continue to see anything that Trek puts out in the future.  I’m still a fanboy.  I’m not angry at J. J. Adams.  But I will miss the canon.

NOTE:  I cannot take credit for the title of this post.  Mike, one of the guys I work with, came up with it and I laughed my butt off when I heard it.  If you’ve seen the movie, you get it.

Kaylee said “thank you” last night for the very first time!  She is changing almost before our eyes.