Gadget Report

I promised one and I’m delivering. I’ve made three big gadget purchases recently, though I’ve only really explored one to its fullest.

The two I won’t say much about are 1) the Edirol R-09 voice recorder, which is amazingly light and easy-to-use. I bought it and promptly lent it to Erin, a doctoral student of mine going to Ethiopia to do some fieldwork for 4 months; and 2) a Shure SM-7b microphone, which is the microphone one uses, in combination with a compressor, to achieve the “voice of God FM announcer” sound. I’ve used them before in studios and it works well with my voice. If all goes well, you’ll hear it in use later this summer.

The big purchase, though, was a PDA: an HP Travel Companion

This was originally motivated by the complete breakdown of my paper calendar, which has served me so well for so many years. It just wasn’t cutting it anymore as I was planning ahead all the way to 2008-9 at this point and needed something that I could use in conjunction with an electronic calendar (even though I like iCal better, I’ve been using the Exchange calendar just to keep everything in one program).

I had actually planned to purchase a midrange iPaq, but Carrie came into the store with me, took one look at the silver box and said “this one looks way cooler.” Which is true, since the others with their smartly-designed flip-top screens vaguely resemble oversized Star Trek communicators. Anyway, I was originally all set to purchase a smartphone or a blackberry or at least a Palm, but then I discovered Skype and that Skype ran on Windows Mobile, and my mind changed. The Travel Companion has WiFi and Bluetooth, so I can connect to the internet when there is wireless around and skip the expensive cellphone data plans. I also like not getting my email automatically dumped onto my PDA, but rather having to check. The kicker, though, is that it runs Skype (which Palm does not), which means that I can call Carrie for free from the road anywhere I can get WiFi. Way cheaper than using the cell, and super useful for future trips to Europe (though perhaps a calling card will do). I thought I’d foresworn Windows, but Windows Mobile appears to be a solid OS for my limited uses and I like being able to open Word documents on the unit. Perhaps I’ll be able to travel without my laptop if I’m not doing any serious writing.

The other thing the Travel Companion has is a GPS system, which is absolutely freaking amazing. It was really handy on our roadtrip to DC, allowing us to recalculate routes from different places, and to choose alternate routes when the traffic got bad (on the way back; on the way down we were kind of doomed). There’s also something very pleasing about looking up (from the passengers’ seat; don’t worry) and seeing the road unfolding before you, and then looking down and seeing the video representation of your movement through space. I’m sure that there are already 10 space theory papers on this sort of thing, but for me it’s just more of a gee-whiz observation.

I’m not saying I’m not psyched about an iPhone as a true convergence device, but who knows how long it will be before it is a) available in Canada b) works with McGill’s Exchange Server, Skype and other software I use and c) will be obtainable without some stupid hundreds-of-dollars-per-month service plan from Rogers Wireless. So until then, it’s an iPod, cellphone and PDA for me, which sounds silly until you realize the PDA is smaller and lighter than the paper calendar I was carrying around for the last 8 years.

Conference Report

I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything like the last week. Our department has (nominally) 14 faculty members, so it’s not a particularly big place. And yet there were three conferences in a single week, all based in our department and all exquisitely executed. I couldn’t have managed full attendance at every event given other obligations, but I did at least manage to make it to all three.

The first conference was more like a workshop — not open to the public or anything. It was a meeting of the Augmented Reality Research Team (though we’re really more writing about various forms of Mixed Reality than Augmented). We brought in a couple guests and each did 40-minute presentations with responses and discussion. The result was just like one of those workshops that I sometimes travel to attend — where a small number of people have intense exchanges of ideas for a couple days and get to know each other. Except that this time, it was with some of my own colleagues (plus a few others), which is an experience relatively few people get to have. Most of the time, departments don’t have occasions to meet to discuss their own professors’ work-in-progress.

Thursday was the [CTRL] : TAS symposium. I was only able to catch Ken Wark’s keynote, which was exceptionally clear and crisp, and as usual, he didn’t shy away from challenges in the Q&A (no, video games really aren’t a form of narrative). I was especially taken with his approach to putting Gamer Theory online before its book-form publication to solicit commentary. I am tempted to do the same thing with the mp3 manuscript, depending on cost, time, and a few other factors. I think I already have the necessary resources.

Friday and Saturday was the symposium of Crime, Media and Culture, which I also caught only a little of — though I did manage to crash both of the social events (a benefit of being married to one of the organizers). But all the participants were praising the event; and the panel I attended was outstanding, and one of the more politicized sets of papers I’ve seen presented on the McGill campus.

Today was all about recovery. Since I don’t know how to celebrate Victoria Day properly tomorrow, I’ve got a dissertation or two to read.

A Whole Week of Conferences

I’ve always said Canadians love conferences, and this week is an intense one, with me not even leaving town.

T&W: I’m at a workshop for my Augmented Reality Research Team (well, it’s not my team; I’m just on it)

Th:

[CTRL]: TAS : Technology : Art : Society — organized by a grad student collective (Anna Feigenbaum, Horea Avram and tobias c. van Veen), with the always-provocative Ken Wark as keynote and combining academia, activism and art.

F-S:

Crime, Media and Culture Symposium — co-organized by Carrie, Will Straw and Anna Leventhal and featuring a bunch of cool people from here and away.

The gadget report will have to wait.

Back from DC — more family gossip

Wow. I don’t know if we’ll do that drive again. It was over 14 hours there because of traffic jams. When it’s already a long trip, a few traffic jams can really mess you up. I have a major gadget report coming your way, but in the meantime, the family history discovery of the year was this:

My aunt Helen (my mother’s sister) copyedited Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics. She did a lot of copyediting work out of high school, and did a bunch of books from the Modern Library. But in the midst of some other recollection, she casually mentioned a dinner with Wiener and his wife and so I inquired further. Turns out she’d copyedited the book and they’d become friendly afterward. Indeed, her name — Helen Avati — turns up in the finding aid to his papers. She was surprised to find out that I was interested. I was simply blown away by the small-worldness of it all.

Wiener’s Cybernetics and The Human Use of Human Beings make short appearances in my mp3 manuscript. And so another circle is closed.

Last year’s discovery is here, though I somehow forgot to mention that another one of the family shoe store’s customers was Enrico Caruso (who makes a brief appearance in the Audible Past), and there was at one time supposedly a picture to prove it, though nobody seems to know where it is. I doubt it still exists.

Vegetarian Paella and Travel

I’m up early, so you get a blog entry before I hit the road. We’re off to Washington DC for a few days for my annual family get-together around the Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lecture. Some years we fly, some years we drive. This year, we’re driving. It’s a long drive, but we like the time together in the car once in awhile (we used to do it twice a year back and forth to Minneapolis when we were in grad school) and the drive is mostly beautiful, at least until we get to New Jersey. The long drive at the end of school is a good head-clearing exercise as well. And we’ve got a lot of head-clearing to do.

In the meantime, here’s a recipe for vegetarian paella. It’s not really much like paella I’ve had a Spanish restaurants, it’s somewhere between Spanish-themed risotto and paella. But it was a hit at our end-of-term student potluck last weekend. We doubled the amounts. The recipe is lightly adapted from Rebar: Modern Food Cookbook

Vegetarian Paella

Olive Oil for stir-frying
1 large onion
6 garlic cloves, crushed
½tsp red chile flakes
2tsp salt
1Tbsp chili power (yes, that’s a tablespoon)
1Tbsp sweet paprika (ditto)
2tsp minced thyme
2tsp minced oregano (we use Mexican)
2 large red and yellow peppers
1 can chopped tomatoes, with juice
1.25 cups arborio rice
3 cups vegetable stock
½ lb asparagus or green beans (I prefer the asparagus; we couldn’t find either in good condition for the party version and left them both out)
cracked pepper
½ bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch scallions
parmeggiano reggiano

We strongly recommend making this dish in a cast iron skillet or pot.

Heat the stock so it’s ready at hand. Measure out all the spices so they’re ready too. Heat the oil and sauté the onion and bell pepper until cooked. When finished, add the garlic and tomato. Add salt and spices, then stir in the rice and coat well.

Add the 3 cups of stock, cover, bring to a boil and the simmer on low, covered for about 30 minutes.

Steam the asparagus or green beans until tender.

Stir in the asparagus, parsley, scallions and parmeggiano reggiano into the cooked risotto. Serve.

And for something positive

It’s impossible to follow up a post on the death of a loved one and sound anything but banal, but here goes:

Friday, I got a call at the office from my old friend Matt Ruben, an urban studies scholar in drag as a literature scholar (or is it the other way around?) Anyway, I always liked his work — sophisticated, critical, engaged in the way that the best urban studies is, and very politicized. Matt got his PhD recently and so has decided to run for an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council. The election is coming up soon, so I sent in a donation. It will be tough but he has a chance. How often do you find a political candidate in whom you can actually believe? It’s true that I don’t live in Philly, but sometimes it’s nice to support one of the good guys.

Tetrys: June 1992-May 1 2007


This morning, I found Tet lying on his side, by the door to the patio, like he’d laid down to rest. He passed away during the night — he was still a little warm when I found him.

After a year and a half’s battle with cancer, partial renal failure, and a variety of other complications, the cancer finally got him. His last few days saw a significant upturn, as often happens shortly before someone with terminal illness dies. He came out and socialized with people at our end-of-term potluck for our students on Saturday night, and yesterday he dined on sizable helpings of tuna and 2% yogurt — we’d long since given up on the kidney-saving diet and just offered him food he would eat. He also spent a lot of time sitting on me as I read an essay of Carrie’s and a dissertation during the day, and later as we watched some TV. Up to the end, even though he was impossibly skinny, he had a strong will to live, an interest in affection, and an obsession with the faucet in the bathroom sink. He was a sweet and gentle cat, and we will miss him.