Just watching the snow fall

Wednesday



.....................Thursday

just spending time watching the slow progress of snowflakes piling on snowflakes





Saturday

......................Sunday

Naked Conversations

Before we left for India, I posted about going to the Alaska Apple Users Group (AAUG) and starting to read and review the book Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I finished the review in that hectic week before we left and never got to post the review. Actually, I just give you a little synopsis here and there's a link to the full review below.

Basically the authors are arguing that large companies need to get into the blogosphere for two reasons:
1. People are blogging about you. You need to subscribe to service (such as Technorati.com) that emails you when your company is blogged about. Then you can jump into the conversation - get good feedback, answer questions, clarify misconceptions, etc.
2. Companies should let employees blog about the company as a way of engaging all your stakeholders - customers, suppliers, employees, etc.


They also give tips for small businesses (and this could apply to non-profits). Basic advice is not to 'sell' on your blog, but to show your expertise by talking about your business, giving information that would be interesting to people.

All this advice is based on the notion that old style marketing is out, that nobody trusts the hype that comes out of big business. Rather, the essense of the market, they say (citing the Cluetrain Manifesto that I've had up as a link since I first mentioned this book review) is conversation between buyers and sellers. Blogs give this opportunity to have such direct conversation between the customers and businesses.

I think this is something marketing folks and CEOs ought to read. They give lots of examples of how organizations have blogged successfully and not so successfully. It isn't a technical how-to book as much as a 'why you should' book. For the whole review, click here.

Helsinki Complaints Choir

There's something about the contrast between what the music sounds like and what the words mean, that captured me here. Also, the universality of modern problems. Listen a little bit without reading the subtitles. Then start reading.

For more info on the choir itself, and others like it, go here.

Blind colors - What food is like blue?

We went to dinner and the opera last night with our friend Lynn and her seeing eye dog Mary. We got into a discussion of colors and what they mean to Lynn. She knows all the names but doesn't really have a sense of them - contrasts, bright and dark colors, the emotional impact of colors on others, etc. So we tried to find a way to share that. We came up with two different tracks by comparing colors to things she knows:
1. Trying to think of tastes, or foods that would have the same effect as a particular color, or foods that might have the same relationship to each other as different colors
2. Doing the same thing with sound.



So, what do you think? Red seemed to be the easiest - clearly it was hot peppers, not because they are red (the hottest seem to be green) but because when you taste them you really notice them. They stand out. But the various blues, greens, and even white were more difficult. She wanted to know if purple was like red? How was lavender different from purple?

Sounds weren't so easy. A loud, brassy trumpet seemed to be like red, but we weren't real happy with that.

So, my challege to any readers out there is this:

Make a list of colors and the foods/tastes that would help a blind person
a) understand the individual color and
b) understand the relationships between colors

The other approach is to use sounds to do the same thing.

Or if you have a suggestion for a totally different way of getting colors across to a blind person, send it in.


By the way, Lynn is an incredible person. She grew up in New York and says from early on she was not going to sit around and be blind. She insisted on exploring the streets of New York. Her son turns 32 today - Happy Birthday Dimas. She has an undergraduate in Psychology from Cal State Northridge and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Southern California. She came to Alaska on Dec. 27, 1991. She had gotten a job as peer counselor coordinator and older blind Alaskan coordinator for Southeast Alaska Independent Living (SAIL). She came to Anchorage in 1993 after getting colitis. In Anchorage she got a job with Alaska Information Radio Reading Education Service (AIRRES), where she was program coordinator. She was president of Alaska Independent Blind 1997-2003 and she's been a participant in Leadership Anchorage 2003-2004. She has traveled frequently to conferences and to visit relatives and friends. She has a incisive intelligence and a strong sense of rights and standing up for the rights of those who are different from the norm.

Maytag fixed - thanks automaticwasher.org

I have to give another thank you to automaticwasher.org for a) convincing me that our 32 year old Maytag was worth repairing and b) walking me through the repairs. I was able to get a new 'water injector kit' - Part No. 204660 - here in Anchorage ($60 at Harold's Appliances) and we leak no more. The insides of the washing machine are also very clean now. You can compare this picture with the ones on my earlier post.



As some people (like the author of "Bowling Alone") lament the loss of community groups and organizations, this experiencs reinforces for me that we still have community, it's just shifted to the internet. I had people all over the US helping me fix my washer and giving me encouragement when I was about to quit and call the repair man. If you want to see how the process worked go to the link (click on the title of this post) then go to "Imperial" and my thread is #9522 (first post 12/18/06).

May 31, 2007 update
This story has, unfortunately, been updated several times. Later posts are

May 22, 2007 and May 30, 2007

Snow

The backyard this morning.







The front yard.












Since then it has continued to snow all day.

Words Indians don't translate when speaking English

These are words I noticed at the conference and later on tv and in newspapers. (There were several earlier posts - poverty conference,, , other conference shots. conference) These are Indian words (I guess Hindi, though the same or related words show up in other Indian languages.) I'll try to give a little explanation, but my knowledge is scanty and these are based on what I understood people to be explaining and some internet checking - mostly on wikipedia. So don't take any of this as absolutely certain, but rather as a starting point.


Lakh (sounds like 'lock')= 100,000

Crore (rhymes with 'roar') = 10,000,000 (100 Lakh)

Panchayat - Village council - elected by the villagers. They make decisions about village matters, including settling disputes. This came up in the conference because many Indians go through the Panchayat instead of the court system because, as we were told at the conference, the court system is millions of cases behind. One speaker said that understanding Eternity was easy once you've been through the Indian court system.

Jirgas - The Pakistani equivalent of the Panchayat, though I think these are made up of village elders who may not be elected. While some cases have brought international condemnation of jirga decisions, conference attendees argued that millions of decisions are made regularly that generally satisfy both parties. Some conference presenters talked about restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice. Instead of punishment being the object, making the victims whole is the object. However, when the discussion got to Jirgas, making the victims whole included things such as: A male member of the family has murdered someone. To make the victim's family whole, a sister of the murderer is given to the victim's family. One presenter, a very articulate Pakistani attorney, argued that this does not come from Islamic law, but from tribal law. Such verdicts have caused Jirgas to be outlawed, but they still exist and fill an important need.

Dalit - A members of "backward castes" including untouchables and some low caste peoples. The caste system continues to survive in people's minds and while there are affirmative action type laws that set aside seats at universities,etc. for dalit, there is still a long way to go.

Goa Pictures

These are just some pictures from Goa I didn't have a chance to post.

It wasn't until I looked at the picture that I realized how closely the butterfly matched the flower.


I didn't compose this picture, There were large piles of shells on the beach.


The beach next to our hotel. Quiet, no one around. This cove had the rocks. The one right in front of the hotel was just sand.


Colva Beach, not so quiet.


src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_PeLB7KALD7UhIOJa3z5azUqXaqqY4qGu-VvwVs1Ni7JjDebh0viXKfrcCJvv9YapRfU7zxciZjyvrRjKgEX6R1yKyID8GzbFhoTpBtLtoKKAQgeLJbjhJlDRHTZWAFpvYE8/s400/talisman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5010489497682217490" /> The peppers and lemon on a string are to ward of evil that might otherwise come to his new car.


Look carefully to see the sandcrab so well camouflaged.

See also Bambolin Resort.

The Power of Old Maytags and New Websites

There was water under the washing machine the other day. Change is hard. Maybe it will just go away. But when my wife watched another load, there was more water. Not a lot, but enough.

We got Consumer Reports from the library. Their advice - any top loading washer older that 4-6 years is better to replace than repair. Our Maytag is 32 years old. We bought it when our son was born.

The Maytag repair number in our local book suggested we have the repairman come look. They don't build them like they used to. All our calls are for new ones, and they don't last very long.



A quick Google search got me to Automaticwasher.org. I found the Discuss-o-mat page and went to the Imperial link (machines built before 1985). There I added Thread #9522 Maytag A207 - purchased 1974 in which I put a picture (above) and asked the world if we shoul repair or replace.

There were 8 responses by the time we got home from the movies (Factotum.) Not only were they unanimously for repair, but they suggested what the likely problem was, told me how to get the front and top panels off, and gave me a diagram of the insides of the washer.

To see this amazing example of community recreated on the web, hit the link above, go to the Imperial link, and then click on Thread 9522. Thanks to all the guys - I think they were all guys - who helped diagnose and give me great instructions.





On top you can see pictures of the Maytag as it normally looks. Then there's the picture of the top panel lifted up. Finally, we have the fill-flume that was suggested as the culprit and so it appears to be. Lots of calcium build-up. There was a lot more gunk where the screwdriver is, but we cleaned it up a bit. But most likely the water that deposited all the gunk, was the water that was leaking.

[for later post on this topic click here.]

Blood Diamonds - Give a cow not a diamond

After talking earlier this week about how difficult it is to explicate the links between events in the US and events in other countries, I saw Blood Diamonds. Certainly movies can get one closer to other realities quicker than most other media, and while it still isn't the same as actually being there, this movie makes both the beauty of Africa and the horror of anarchy much more real than reading about these things in the newspaper. Or even seeing short clips on tv. Here, the movie is trying to connect the buying of diamonds in the US with the kidnapping of child soldiers and the weapons that cause such massive violence. Anyone can find fault with details in the movie - DiCaprio certainly manages to run through flying bullets without getting hit through most of the movie - but what was important to me was the whole general sense of what is going on in parts of Africa. (It is also important to recognize that as bad as the violence is, it doesn't represent Africa any more than the murders portrayed in television cop shows represent the US.)

Add this movie to Hotel Rwanda and The Constant Gardner and we have a trio of powerful films showing the links between the worst of Africa and the Western world. In Hotel Rwanda, the links aren't quite so obvious. While the pull-out of the UN troops plays a major role, the role of the colonial heritage in setting up conditions ripe for violence is not as obvious. Constant Gardner does clearly show the Western drug company using Africans to test their drugs in drug trials that would never be allowed in the West. Tsotsi is another film for people wanting to get a sense of Africa.

But how does one respond to all this?
1. One can simply block it out of one's mind on leaving the theater, or at least some people can.
2. Or one can throw up one's hands and say, "There's nothing I can do."
3. Or one can become more conscious of the links between the violence and Africa and Western exploitation of Africa's natural resources - like the oil in Nigeria. Then join organizations that fight these things.
4. Or one can just write a check to one of the many, many organizations that work to improve the lives and living conditions for people in places like Sierra Leone where the events of the movie took place.


The picture above is DiCaprio at the SOS orphanage in Mozambique where some of the actors were recruited.

Another such organization is Doctors Without Borders. which gives medical assistance in war zones.

Before you give to any charity, though, you should check it out at a site like
Charity Navigator which evaluates a charity's efficiency and effectiveness.

You can give directly to an organization, or you can make donations as gifts in the name of someone you love. It's a great way to teach children about the world and about helping other people. Heifer International makes it pretty easy for kids to understand. At Heifer you can give a cow or rabbits or other animals for a family to raise. They'll send you a card for you to send to the person in whose name you donated. So give your love a cow or a goat instead of diamonds this year.


I would also note that the film does a good job of portraying what happens when government fails. Good government tends to be invisible. We enjoy the benefits - clean water, good roads, regulators that keep banks honest and enforce safety standards in the workplace - without even realizing that government is what makes them possible. It is only when they screw up - when potholes don't get filled, or when hurricane victims don't get rescued - that we realize government's role. So we often get a distorted picture of government as ineffective, because we only notice it when it is. It's invisible most of the time, because it works. Movies like this one remind us what happens when law and order are not upheld. It isn't a pretty picture.