There’s a great article about Ozmott in the Ticker, a Traverse City, MI publication. It does a great job of explaining what the app does and where we are headed.
May 16, 2012
by Andy Affleck
0 comments
May 14, 2012
by Andy Affleck
0 comments
Reunion 10 Article
My article on Reunion 10 for Mac is now live on TidBITS.com. And with that, I am now back into genealogy after close to a decade away. What’s nice, and I mention this in the article, is that in my first ten minutes of using Reunion 10, I found a set of great great great grandparents I didn’t previously know about!
March 18, 2012
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
Quasimodo for a Day
We arrived early, much earlier than we normally do. On a typical Sunday, I’ll drop Jack off and then drive a few blocks to find an open spot and get into a pew just as announcements are finishing up. Today we were early as we thought today was the field trip for Jack’s Sunday school class to a local Mosque. But today was the day the permission slips were due. So, we were a half hour early. And it was very lucky for us that we were!
Shortly after 10, a woman came through and asked if anyone wanted to go up and ring the bell. I beat the kids to saying, “Sure!” and after rounding up Jack, two other kids, me and Ann, we headed to the steeple.
The current building was built in 1816 and survived significant fire damage in 1966. Climbing up into the steeple was a trip in a time machine back to the nineteenth century. The higher we climbed, the more I felt I had to squeeze myself into tinier and tinier spaces. And the steps got smaller and steeper as well. But after 98 steps (yes, I counted, why do you ask?) we arrived at the top and had a glorious view of Providence on all sides.
The bell itself was one of the last, and largest, cast by Paul Revere and his son in the early 1800s. It weighs one or two thousand pounds (I forget what she said). When rung, it was a lovely tone but I am getting ahead of myself.
The kids had a blast looking out at the city and Ann and I played tourist taking lots of pictures. When 10:15 rolled around much too fast, we headed back downstairs to ring the bell.
A large rope went up through the ceiling above and to the pulley system attached to the bell. You give the rope a good heave down, as if you are trying to throw it through the floor) and on its way back up, the bell rings. When the rope stops moving up you grab it again (don’t hold on or you will either get rope burns or go for a ride in the air!) and repeat the process. The kids did most of the work, each taking turns to do a few pulls in succession, but I also got a good run of rings as well.
After five minutes we were done and it was time to complete the trip back down to the meeting house. I don’t know if or when I will get back up there but it was such a wonderful, fun experience. I highly recommend it!
February 25, 2012
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
“Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
“I’m not arrogant, I’m pedantic. There’s a difference. Let me explain…”
— Seen on a T-Shirt.
For my birthday a few days ago, Ann gave me “The Book of ‘Unnecessary’ Quotation Marks.” She knows me too well. My obsession with inappropriate quotation mark usage goes back to my days working for Dartmouth College in the early 1990s. The person who was in charge of communications for our department was an abuser of the quotation mark. She, like so many, used them for emphasis and, while it is a bad habit and possibly forgivable in most people, it drove me crazy that someone who wrote and communicated for a living was making so blatant a grammatical error.
Not able to stand it any longer, I finally went to her and (quite pedantically) informed her that emphasis was best handled by italics or, less often, bold, or, even less often, bold and italics together, and, never, ever, with underlining. I was politely told that this was her profession and that she knew what she was doing.
I let the matter go with no small amount of effort. But in the years since, I chafe whenever I see quotation marks being used for evil and not good. Of course, I am older and wiser now and am more amused than annoyed because I have learned in my old age that if you can’t laugh at these things, then you are just doing it wrong. My favorite example now is the card scanner at Trader Joe’s that invites me to “Swipe my card” (sounds dirty when you put it in quotes like that) and to “Enter my PIN” (as if we are both in on the joke about what that really means), and so forth.
So, Ann, being a brilliant person who knows me far too well, buys me this wonderful little book with all kinds of “wonderful” examples of “inappropriate” uses of “quotation marks” and I cannot help but be “highly amused.”
A little later, we go out to lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill and I note in the menu that for dessert they have:
Homemade “Scratch” Cookies
Part of me suspected what was going on here but I wasn’t 100% certain. So, I asked the waitress if they really were from scratch or if they were being somehow ironic? She just stared at me, not understanding at all what I was asking. I thought about explaining and then I remembered all those years ago and just smiled and said, “Never mind. Chocolate Chip and Vanilla Ice Cream.”
The cookies were from scratch and “really delicious.”
January 27, 2012
by Andy Affleck
1 Comment
Interview in Social Media Week
I was interviewed for Social Media Week on the topic of Children and Social Media. While I do think about this topic a great deal (as is evidenced by how much I’ve written and spoken on the subject), I am turning my attention to how I, as an adult, communicate with my Facebook friends who are under 18 year of age (yes, an article is being written). It’s an interesting topic mainly because I am still figuring it all out for myself. If anyone has any insights from their own experiences, I’d love to hear them.
November 30, 2011
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
NaNoWriMo 2011
Five years. Wow. Five years in a row, two as a Municipal Liaison (though I was so busy this November I hardly did anything) and five completed novels. People keep asking me if I will post them. The answer is an unqualified no. What I write is not even first draft. It’s rough sketch at best. As such, it’s also highly embarrassing. I don’t want to share that stuff with people. This year, I plan on focusing my efforts and either pulling one of the five into better shape or doing something new but not in sketch mode but actual author mode. I promise select friends will be asked to proof that and give me constructive feedback and, later, everyone else will get a shot at reading it. Whatever it ends up being.
I spent this year doing a lot of self-analysis and figuring out where I was weak as a writer and what I needed to work on. I now have a list of areas I want to target and am going to be looking at resources to help me (classes, books, whatever). I want to make 2012 the year I get my act together, hone my ability as a writer, and go from playing around with words to working with them instead. In short, me want write good.
But for the moment, I’ll just bask in the glow of five straight years as a NaNo winner. I’ll get to work tomorrow.
October 21, 2011
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
Chained
I haven’t gotten a chain letter in quite some time. I think I have managed to train most people around me that they are usually flat out wrong (or at very best, wildly outdated) and, if nothing else, sending them to me means that I will take the time to debunk them and will reply telling the sender that and a small diatribe on the evils of chain letters. I figure most people have either learned not to forward them at all or, more likely, to avoid sending them to me.
So, imagine my surprise when I received one late last night about how illegal immigrants are costing this country more than the Iraq war has and blames our economic woes on them. That was too good to pass up. It only took me about 3 minutes of searching while sitting in Panera this morning to find a good debuking of the entire email and send it along.
I hope I was nice about it. I’ve long known that being a jerk to people about chain letters makes them ignore the fact that you just debunked their screed and just get mad at me for being a jerk. So I am very nice about it, usually ending with a statement about being cranky when I get chain mail or some such.
But to me, the biggest revelation of this little event is how infrequently I get chain letters. It took receiving one to realize how long it’s been since I last got one. So, that’s an improvement!
Now, I have to go forward this email to ten friends so I can win a million dollars next week. Drinks are on me!
July 11, 2011
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
Children and Social Media Revisited
A blog post from last summer that was turned into an article in TidBITS last fall has now been quoted in an NPR article examining the subject of children and social media. When I told Jack he was going to be mentioned in a National Public Radio article his eyes widened and he said, “National?” and then did a little dance.
One point I did not make clearly in my comments to the author of the article and that I did not really make in my own writing is that the one thing I do not want to do is teach him to lie to get around the rules. He’ll learn that cynical lesson in his own time. As things stand now, he does not have a Facebook account nor does he need one. When he’s older he can have one. For now, there’s plenty of other things both online and outside he can experience.
June 7, 2011
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
In Seattle
I am currently in Seattle on business. I haven’t been here in 21 years. It is still a wonderful, beautiful city. I need to get back here more often. I’m spending my days watching testers work with a prototype of our application and listening to their comments and seeing what works and what doesn’t work for them. In the early mornings and evenings I am seeing friends, eating amazing food, and taking lots of pictures with my new iPhone 4 camera (much improved over my iPhone 3GS). I am collecting the pictures online in my Flickr account.
May 17, 2011
by Andy Affleck
Comments Off
Why Panera Doesn’t Get It
Now that I am co-starting a company with a college friend, I have no office to drive to every day. So, to mix it up and keep myself fresh and focused, I am rotating through working at home and working at Starbucks, Panera, Borders, and anywhere else I can find with WiFi and good coffee.
Today, I am at Panera. A few moments ago, at 11:30AM, I was dropped off the network (it took me a moment to figure out what happened) and had to do their silly little reconnect thing to get back on. The screen informed me that I only have 30 minutes left. That during the lunch hours they only allow 30 minutes online.
This is, put simply, very short-sighted on their part. I would have sat here until early afternoon when I have commitments elsewhere and continued working. And I would have bought lunch and likely a snack as well as the day wore on. But by kicking me off WiFi at noon, I am forced to leave. They lose a lunch customer and they lose me wanting to use their place as my office away from office and thus they lose my business.
I can think of a few reasons why this policy makes sense to them. Perhaps they want to make sure that there are enough open seats for the lunch rush by ensuring turnover. But if that’s the case, the argument holds little water. They certainly aren’t hurting for people coming in at lunch and if they lack tables for all of them, then those people will get take out. How often do you see people look in, not see tables free, and then leave? Maybe at a restaurant but at a Panera? I doubt it.
And I think they lose more business by being hostile to workers like me who likely to spend more money over the course of a day than someone who just comes in for lunch.
Oh well. I have food at home anyway that needs eating. And tomorrow when I go out to find a place to work, you can bet it won’t be Panera.
Technorati Tags: panera, wifi, business, companies, lunch, fail