Wednesday, August 30, 2000

2:02 AM
The Seattle Mariners beat the Yankees 5 to 3 on a grand slam home run by Edgar Martinez in the 8th. They are 2.5 games over Oakland and all is well with the world

Tuesday, August 29, 2000

1:03 PM
TestingTesting - The Furies
The archive for last night's webcast are up. Good show. Is there anyone out there that has a 12 channel mixing board laying around that you would like to donate????

We had 6 musicians so we had more mikes and inputs than the 8 channels we normally have. David Maloney graciously lent us a nice Tascam 12 channel mixing board. But it didn't arrive until about an hour before the show. We didn't get the board figured out until the musicians showed up 30 minutes before the show. 10 minutes before the show I discover that the Furies forgot to bring their mics. Panic! Actually, more panic! Moved mics around replugging them into the mixing board so everyone had something to sing into and I knew which mic they were on. That left about 2 minutes to set mic levels and we were off. And my friends wonder why I sound so stressed out before a show.

Being a self-employed web designer has certain advantages. For example, I can take time out on a Friday to bake bread. But people don't pay for their sites unless I actually finish them so it's been work, work, work. Two sites done, but for minor changes, and a webcast.

Saturday, August 26, 2000

2:04 PM
Meeting Natasha and Svetlana
It's alwas a lot of noise and laughter when my family gets together. Not for the shy and retiring. Even though everyone wasn't there last night a good time was had by all. We hadn't seen Natasha and Svetlana since Thanksgiving 1998. They fit right in. Must get down to LA to return the visit.

Friday, August 25, 2000

2:42 PM
The bread is out of the oven and now it's off on the bike. I have baked bread for years and whenever there is a family potluck I am requested to bake bread. Actually it's more like if I don't show up with bread I might as well not ever show up again. I do it the old fashioned way. I don't need no stinkin' bread machine. There is something about needing the bread and pushing your energy into it. There is nothing like the smell of bread fresh out of the oven. Unless, of course, it is spreading butter on a freshly cut heel piece and eating it with the steam rising form the newly cut surface of the bread. Yum Yum.

I have been giving out my recipe for years but people seem to have a hard time duplicating it. If anyone is interested in a little web site with pictures and instructions on how to do it let me know.

1:48 PM

That's my old BMW, a 1982 R100RS. (I don't have a car.) It's a great classic road bike. Whidbey Island is a great place to ride but this bike is loafing at 70 and the the back roads of Whidbey have a little bit to much traffic to really open it up. Well, there are a few places. It's off to my brother's, south of Seattle and about an hour ride, this afternoon. The family is getting together to see an old family friend that lives in Lower California and who is up here visiting. So it will be nice to go for a longer faster ride even if it is only freeway riding. Live to Ride. Ride to Live.

11:58 AM
This is from a Zeldman article. Read the whole thing. This is about an age old struggle between appearances and substance. This is true of any media and of any activity.

Style vs. Design
Many young Web designers — and let's face it, most Web designers are under 30 — view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness.

Thursday, August 24, 2000

11:36 AM
Ruminations on a birth certificate

At 5:15am on August 24, 1944, Robert Duncan Gordon Coale, Jr. was born at Seattle General Hospital. Robert Duncan Gordon Coale, Jr. aka gordon.coale.

I've been reading my birth certificate. My father, Robert Duncan Gordon Coale (Duh!), was 27 years old. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His "Usual occupation" is listed as Pilot and his business is entered as U.S. Air Corp. His address was the north Seattle address that my mom and her mom and sister lived at but my dad was busy flying B-25s skip bombing Japanese held islands in the South Pacific. My mom's maiden name is Doris Marie MacLaughlin and she was 24. She was born in Bangor, Maine. Her "Usual occupation" is listed as housewife.

It's always strange to think of your parents as being younger than yourself at one time. It's also strange when you realize that the world they lived in was so much different that the one we inhabit on this day in August, 2000. Today twenty somethings are supposed to be off working on computers writing software or creating web sites that will, if you belive the media, make them multi-millionaires or at least change the world. My dad's day at the office, in 1944, was to get into a twin engine medium bomber sitting on a tropical flightline. An aluminum tube with wings full of highly explosive aviation gasoline. An aluminum tube full of even more highly explosive containers made of iron and stuff that makes really big bangs.

This wasn't like the movies where they fly at high altitude with the bomb explosions making little puffs on the ground so far below. This was where they would fly at the island in contention just off the water. With the props kicking up spray on the ocean surface. As they approached the beach they would drop their bomb load. The bombs would drop, hit the water, and start skipping like a stone thrown by a child. These skipping bombs would skip across the water, up the beach, and into the jungle. This technique puts you pretty close to the ensuing explosion. I remember my dad telling me that one time he hit an ammuntion dump. Having an ammunition dump go off underneath you at low altitude must have been something. He told about seeing large building parts flying by him as if he were standing still. A bit more exciting than writing code. The pay was low too. But he was changing the world.

My mom didn't have any Lamaze classes available to her. Her husband wasn't with her helping her breath during my birth. Even if my dad hadn't been out of town at the time he still would not have been in the operating room when I was born with my mom out under anasthetic. It just wasn't done then.

There is another interesting item on my birth certificate. There is a stamp that, in a cursive script different than the uneven typewritten entries, says "Legitimate". I wonder if they do this anymore. I wonder what they would have thought, in 1944, about all the different fertilization options available today and things like surrogate mothers.

My dad died in 1972. He was 54. Two years younger than I am today. I will be seeing my mom tomorrow night. She is 80. This to say thank you, to both of them, for 5:15am August 24, 1944.

Tuesday, August 22, 2000

11:27 PM
My cold turned into bronchitis and I am only now starting to feel human again. But, between the cold and bronchitis, I did make it to the Island County Fair on Sunday. Sunday morning I baked a couple of loaves of bread for Katie to take to home and work. I met Katie and Michael in the fair around 6 in the evening.

The Lovin' Spoonful were playing when I went in. Small fairs have small budgets for acts so we usually get the remnants of old rock groups. Sometimes it works out. A couple of years ago they were considering 1 Dog Night but got the Animals without Eric Burdon. With a stroke of incredible good fortune the Animals backed out and the fair was offered Eric Burdon instead. It's amazing that, with all the stuff he has ingested over the years, he can still function. He and his band were hot! It was one of the best shows I have seen. Totally professional. This year we weren't so lucky. It was pretty lame.

We had a dinner of Fair cuisine. We started with a course of corn on the cob at the Lions Club booth followed by a baked potato with sour cream, chili, and cheese at the Island County Democrats booth. Dessert was a difficult choice. I must have the ice cream bar that is dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts but it is only available at the Island County Republicans booth. We steeled ourselves gave money to the Republicans. Then onto the Rotary Club booth for the strawberry shortcake with ice cream and strawberrys over shortcake. Yum!

We toured the Fair displays and checked out the carny. A Northwest all women blues band, Swamp Mama Johnson, was playing when we left. The music leaving was much better than going in.

The bummer was that Zoe couldn't make it because one of her cats hadn't come back in. You have to be careful with cats when living in the country. Zoe's cat Cassie still has not shown up. It's been hard on Zoe. We are still hoping.

Saturday, August 19, 2000

11:03 PM
My daughter Katie and her little boy Michael came up from Tacoma last night for the fair. I've been down with a cold the last couple of days but will rouse myself tomorrow and venture out into the world again to bring a report on the Island County Fair.

Oh yes! The rains have returned. Those of us from Puget Sound get real cranky when the sun has been out for too many days. The moss on our north sides begins to dry and flake off. We begin to look like Californians. Not to fear. The moss is reabsorbing moisture even as we speak.

Thursday, August 17, 2000

11:43 AM
An email sent to RageBoy. Didn't think at the time to put it here. Duh!

Chris,

I met you at the Cybercafe on Whidbey Island (north of Seattle) at a Cluetrain Manifesto reading. I do a webcast called TestingTesting.

As you said about 405: The Movie: "Artists taking over both the means of production and the distribution channels." What the 405 people did is exciting and a breakthrough in many ways. But what I see is not much of a paradigm shift. They are still really thinking big screen. That is really where they want to be. Which is fine and the web is a great place to demo yourself. But 405 is repurposing something from another medium and not seeing the web as a new medium with it's own possibilities. I also see a lot of ink and pixels on web radio and web concerts. But the same thing is happening there. Hearing radio stations from all over the world is cool but it is still radio and not something unique to the web. Same with concerts.

TestingTesting is a webcast of live music from my living room. We also do some spoken word. We want to explore the possibilities of this new medium and to not view it as "radio" or a "concert" and the preconceptions that people have of them. The early days of radio and TV were the same. Repurposing vaudeville for radio and repurposing radio and the stage for TV.

We play with the interactivity of the web. The TT show page has a simple guest book form which the Internet audience posts comments during the show and I read them to the performers between songs. The Internet audience becomes part of the show. We did a couple of concerts using this format that were very successful. Christine Lavin did a show here on the Island that we webcast. The Internet audience interaction with Christine was really amazing.

We also archive the shows. We have over a year's worth of shows you can listen to. We only have a live audio feed but we take digital stills during the show and put them up with the archive.

We don't have a large number of listeners. We are sort of a niche of a niche. Fast, cheap, and out of control is what we strive for. It lets us be free to play with this and to try to create something unique. It lets us take a "30 minute" show and end it naturally which may be 40 minutes or over an hour depending on what is happening.

I would really like to see some original things being done for the web. Something beyond what I see now.

Wednesday, August 16, 2000

10:24 PM
Things that you wouldn't see nowadays

And another thing was the circus parade. I don’t think they have them now. But we kids would wait all year. And Mother would always get me a play suit. A new play suit that I had to save for circus day.

We lived right across the street from the fairgrounds where the circus was held. We laid in bed and watched all the animals come down and turn and go up Buck Street up onto the fairgrounds. After they got up there they had to set up the tent.

When I was a little girl they came from the other town with their wagons with horses. But I was still very small when they started coming in on the train.

This is from an oral history web site that I am doing on my mom. She grew up in a Bangor, Maine, in the 1920s. It's about a community ritual, the circus, that adds to the shared experience of a community. I am lucky to live in a community that still has these kind of events. Events that you share with your friends and neighbors. I live in Langley which is on the south end of Whidbey Island. One of the events that this community shares is the Island County Fair.

The carny arrived yesterday and they have been setting up today. After 8 hours of cutting out images in Photoshop for Ace Leather Goods I walked the 5 blocks down to the fair grounds to check it out.

The carny was being set up as well as the food booths and all the various displays. Mike McInerny, the drama teacher at the high school, was there to judge the beer entries. Stopped to chat with Ken Christianson. His son and mine are friends and we met through the Freeland Chamber of Commerce. Talked with Terry Clark about how my kids were doing. Went over by the 4H exhibits and met Ben Gilmore heading towards the food booths for a German sausage to prepare himself for the pole climb at the logging show. I helped Melissa set up the sign for her cub scout den.

I hung around the poles with Ben. They were doing the preliminary pole climbs this evening. But, as is often the case here, they were running on Island Time and he had to leave before they got to him. But it was O.K. since he had climbed the poles last year and he will be able to compete Saturday. Watched some entrants practicing choker setting and axe throwing.

Walked back home. And then another 3 hours at the computer putting all this up. Getting radiation burns on the fronts of my fingers.

Tuesday, August 15, 2000

12:54 AM
Another TestingTesting archived! Tonight we had Courtney Campbell, a singer of children's songs, singing her adult songs. She is a natural for TT. Everything even went smooth tonight. It's always a plus when the musicians arive early. It's no fun checking sound levels when the show is supposed to start. The RealAudio part of the webcast went smoothly too. It was a fun show tonight. No nervous breakdowns. Zoe took digital stills during the show and will be processing them tonight and I will have them up tomorrow.

Sunday, August 13, 2000

10:34 PM
It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Actually most days here on South Whidbey are beautiful. That doesn't mean that the sun is always out. This is the Northwest. But today the sun was out and the music and food were everywhere.

Then it was off to Beverly Graham's annual Bevstock. Bev is a local singer who also started the sack lunch program for the homeless in Seattle known as Operation Sack Lunch. She does an annual potluck and invites musicians to play.

Then after way to much food it was of to David Licastro's and a Jerry Memorial with another band playing Dead covers. More food.

1:12 PM
More piles. Now I am finding hidden piles. I think I got the last of them!

Saturday, August 12, 2000

2:26 AM
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
I finally broke down and got a Harry Potter book. They are for real! If you like Roald Dahl you'll love this. Magic! Duh!

I gotta go to bed.

2:00 AM
Yale Style Manual
I first read this on a Mosaic browser 5 years ago. It provided my first direction for web design. Finding it again is a combination of nostalgia and rediscovery. It still looks good with a lot of very useful sources. I will be studying this one again.

I found it again because I was looking for the Amazon link to Harry Potter and the new book, Web Style Guide : Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, from this web site appeared on the top of my Amazon page. Reading the reviews (over 50) is a schizophrenic experience. Reviewers were totally split. It is either the greatest thing and got 4 or 5 stars or it was totally out-dated and got 1 or 2 stars. It seems those who want cutting edge sites detest it. Those into usability love it. I count myself in the latter. It is easy to make things complicated. Its hard to keep them simple.

Maybe the book is good. The web site is certainly worth looking at.

Friday, August 11, 2000

10:39 PM
I use a chronological filing system. Some call this a pile. Piles have certain fail-safe characteristics. They can only get so high before they fall over. That is when I move to multipile piles also known as RAP or Random Access Piles. When you move your office these piles are put into boxes. The pile in a box is known as the Archive. This is when having a small office comes in handy.

Parkinson's Law
This is also where C. Northcote Parkinson comes in. I read him too many years ago. Parkinson's Law, briefly stated, is that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Maybe you've noticed that somewhere. Some things don't change. But Parkinson's Law has many corollaries. One of them is piles multiply so as to fill the space available.

Today my DRS (Data Retrieval System) failed and, to find something, the piles had to go. Pile catharsis. I deleted and defragged piles.

1:39 AM
I was never sucked into chat rooms or their ilk. No gaming online or off. Not even enduring modem downloads for MP3s. But RageBoy has undone me. I have been sucked into weblogs. aaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!

12:59 AM
FSA B&W Photographs
The black-and-white photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are a landmark in the history of documentary photography. The images show Americans at home, at work, and at play, with an emphasis on rural and small-town life and the adverse effects of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and increasing farm mechanization. Some of the most famous images portray people who were displaced from farms and migrated West or to industrial cities in search of work

12:12 AM
This is the page to track the Seattle Mariners.
They took the White Sox 3 out of 4 in the last 3 days. A pennant race in August!

Thursday, August 10, 2000

10:16 PM
I blog, therefore I am.