Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Back online after moving across the bay to Pleasant Hill. Offline for over a week was weird, but rattled my cage in many good ways. My fingertips are sore from lifting, moving and handling too many cardboard boxes.

Enduring the conditions of disaster recovery from moving many boxes of life’s accumulations requires more forethought than I had prepared for. For example, these adapters are becoming more and more common, and their fine in their place, but dislocate them from their intended connected mate, and Jim, we’ve got a problem. The conversion of AC power to DC batery storage has created an explosion of these wall socket devouring devices. One might wonder, why can’t these items be made smaller and more tidy. My Sony Cybershot camera AC recharger is larger than the camera! I had several panic atttacks trying to find misplaced the special AC chords that connect into the DC rechargers.

The philosophical words of Swami Sivananda, “Adapt, Adjust, Accomodate” came to mind while dealing with the gross material details of relocating my life. Practice this and you will be rewarded, and better yet be sure to package batteries and cables with their respective tools.

For more tales of adapters, see my pre-blogging story, “Beta Test”, in Media Spin’s Horror Story section.

In an act of compassionate brilliance, United State Congress ordered blood transfusions from steroid using baseball players into the brain-damaged Terry Schiavo. “It is the American Way, and darned good sportsmanship too, for the super strong to care for the super weak,” declared a congressman from New Mexico.

In a related story, weakened by high fuel prices, SUV owners stood vigil and prayed for government passage of a large oil transfusion from the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge.

Steven Levy’s recent Newsweek article covering a Harvard conference on blogs points out a quote attributed to Keith Jenkins. Jenkins wrote, “My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere… will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one.” Additonal fears were expressed by female bloggers. I suppose Harvard will always be the target of these kind of slings, until there is no longer is a Harvard.

I am relatively new to blogging, and not a big media player, so I do not share Jenkin’s concerns. My own first discovery in exploring blogging was Beccary, which turns out to be a wonderful young Asian woman’s web site. I enjoy her work and what she communicates, period. Nothing to do with race or gender.

Dragging race and gender preference into blogging stinks of professional paranoia and the claims of ownership that are the lifeblood of professional organizations and associations. Jenkins is a professional photojournalist. In a world where everyone is a photographer and more and more are bloggers, most likely defending territory is part of his survival story.

There’s too much goooogling on these days. A few days ago I attended the first Google AdSense Forum at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. I got overstimulated by meeting fellow Google AdSense webmasters, enthused presenters and smart Google team members, and liked it! Jennifer Slegg was one of three presenters, and she has dutifully written the Forum up in greater detail at her blog, Jensense. Another panelist, Chris Pirillo founder of Lockergnome.com gushed all over Google AdSense arousing curiousity and laughter. The next few days I’ve spent furiously tweaking parts of mediaspin.com to reflect improvements and techniques discussed at the meeting.

Did I mention that I am moving and will be off-line for almost a week? Does anyone care? I for one care, and will write to Congress to have them act immediately to prevent me from being unplugged, and becoming a brain dead demonic monster, or worse. More on this political hot potato topic later…

I’ve got a feeling in my bones. What do my bones tell me? Do I trust my bones? Kay Cordell Whitaker knows about Bone Throwing and their ability to predict for 2005. Worth a look. Of course there are cyber shaman bone throwers. Levitated, also worth a roll. Trust your bones.

Got to admit, I like monkeys. So, I was shocked by the grisly news story about a chimp loving couple who were bitten and mauled by two escaped monkeys at an animal sanctuary. The highly trained and restrained Mike Tyson was unavailable for comment. A wild wake-up call, as Siegfried and Roy got, that animals are mysterious, unpredictable, and not fully understood.
There are good and bad monkeys. Having more fun than a barrel full of monkeys, might end up as a horrific human blender. Yet we still identify with the affable ape, such as 9622.net, and Monkey Vortex. Can you trust these cute chimps? Roll over the photo above and see.

Detailed reconstructions of a number of visual effects shots from The Aviator.

On Feb. 10 Synaptics stock shares tumbled because a few Wall Street analysts rumored that Apple’s future iPods would no longer use their wheel interface. Their opinions caused a panic that brought Synaptics stock down 50% in price, from the mid $30 range to below $21. (I had to buy some at those prices!)
“Bear Stearns analyst Andrew J. Neff said Apple last week unveiled its latest PowerBook laptop computer outfitted with a TrackPad, its own touch-sensitive interface developed using chips made by Cypress Semiconductor Corp.

Further indications suggest that Apple will use its internally developed technology on the next generation of its wildly popular iPod media player, Neff said. He added that Synaptics, whose most popular design is the iPod’s scroll wheel, historically has been Apple’s sole supplier of touchpad components.”

Today Synaptics provided the much needed facts, sweet official words, dispelling the rumors.
“We have received numerous inquiries from investors and analysts regarding the use of our products in the Apple iPod. In the absence of definitive communications from Apple regarding these matters, we have not believed it appropriate to comment on unconfirmed rumors and speculation. In addition, our policy generally is not to comment on market rumors, speculation, and changes in our stock price.

We are filing this Form 8-K in order to respond to inquiries regarding recent announcements of new product introductions.

Yesterday Apple announced several new iPods and we are confirming that our interface solutions are being used in those products. As has been the case since our initial product introductions in fiscal 1996, we compete for designs on a product by product basis and have no assurances from any of our OEM customers that they will utilize our interface solutions in any of their future products.”

Apple’s iPod is so successful, Apple’s stock has doubled and is set to split, so why would they change their design? Think about it.