Yearly Archives: 2009

Happiness Grid

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Are you happy? That’s a reasonable question and I suspect most folks answer in the affirmative. It’s kind of not cool to be unhappy. If pressed for The Meaning of Life, being happy works pretty well for me. I bring this up because I think of myself as a happy person. And getting happier, it seems.

I don’t remember much about the early years but I think I was a happy baby and child. The high school years were good because it came at a good time (1962-1966). Same for college. My 20’s and early 30’s were The Radio Years and good times for sure. The next big uptrend came in the mid-90’s when the Internet blossomed and it’s just gotten better from there.

A superstitious person might warn it’s not a good idea to talk about such good fortune. But if something happened tomorrow, I’d like to have this on the record.

Concrete Man (Director’s Cut)

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Clarence Lee Sherrill and Crista Meyer sell concrete lawn ornaments. Their business is called Concrete Castings and they’re located on I-55 just north of Cape Girardeau, MO. I have a strange fascination with “yard art” and decided to scratch the itch on a recent trip down south.

Clarence and Crista work in a small, cluttered room heated by a big wood stove and covered in cement dust. Gazing in a large window was a magnificent peacock. I didn’t see Miss C, the camel that’s usually in a pen out front, and Clarence explained she was “visiting her boyfriend” but would return in a few days. Gotta be tough to breed camels in this country.

On a technical note, I shot the video with the Casio Exilim FC100, but the battery went dead on me. So I recorded a few minutes of audio on the iPhone and dropped in some stills. You’ll notice the change in audio quality.

5 questions for Sheryl Crow

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Regular readers know that Barb and I are from the same small town in southern Missouri as Sheryl Crow. A small Brush with Near Greatness. On a recent road trip I came up with five questions I'd ask Ms. Crow, if I had the opportunity. In the off chance her publicist or agent (or daddy) finds their way to this post…

  1. What group or artist do you have on your iPod that would be most surprising to your fans?
  2. Do you have a favorite book you've read more than twice?
  3. If you could pass along just one life lesson or bit of wisdom to young Wyatt, what would it be?
  4. What do you miss most (if anything) about being a civilian? (Sorry, but answer cannot be: "Running in to QuikTrip for a quart of milk, wearing Roy Rogers pajama bottoms & torn sweat shirt.")
  5. Do you have any skill or trick that would win a bar bet?

Casio Exilim EX FC100

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I’ve only had this camera for a few days and really haven’t played with it enough to offer much of an opinion. The review at InfoSyncWorld says it’s “good” but not “great.” So why did I buy it?

My current Casio is fine and I’ll keep it. But I’ve had such good luck with the Exilim line from Casio, I buy a new one every year or two, just to get my hands on the new features.

I think the FC100 would be a good choice (review above not withstanding) for a parent with youngsters involved in sports. The “High Speed Burst Mode” should let you capture that frozen frame as the soccer ball is kicked or the bat is swung.

The “High Speed Movie” mode claims 1000fps which should make for some fun slow-mo video. I’ll look for opportunities to try out both of those features and post what I get (good or bad) here.

Camera costs between $300 and $350 but that will come down pretty quickly.

Blogs turn websites into conversations

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A couple of years ago my friend Everett asked my advice on a website. He’s a veterinarian and had your basic Web 1.0 site. I suggested he think about a blog because I knew he was a good story teller and would be a natural. And he is.

He often writes about cases he sees in his practice and gets lots of feedback from readers, many of whom have questions.

“Even though I certainly cannot prescribe for a pet that I have not examined, sometimes I can clarify a situation, or make suggestions.  Sometimes they just have questions that weren’t addressed in the original post, but are related to the topic. I receive questions from around the country, and even Europe and (today) Tanzania.”

I share this as just one more example of the powerful difference between a blog and the old “brochure” sites that are still all too common.  Some day –soon, perhaps– this will not be worth mentioning. Everyone will get it and all or most websites will be blogs or have a strong blog component. I believe this is called the “Duh Moment.”

Everett’s blog is YourPetsBestFriend.com. If you have a pet, it’s a must read.

Hometown Radio

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A long-time radio pal shared this item from AllAccess:

DELMARVA BROADCASTING adds an FM partner for Talk WICO-A/ SALISBURY- OCEAN CITY, MD, flipping WXMD (MAX FM)/POCOMOKE CITY, MD to Talk as WICO-FM and installing separate programming from the AM side. The WICO-FM calls move from 97.5, which changes to WKTT, but retains its Country format and CAT COUNTRY slogan.

After a 5-6a simulcast of “AMERICA IN THE MORNING,” the FM carries syndicated QUINN AND ROSE, PREMIERE’s GLENN BECK and RUSH LIMBAUGH, TALK RADIO NETWORK’s JERRY DOYLE, MICHAEL SAVAGE, and RUSTY HUMPHRIES, and then simulcasts WESTWOOD ONE’s JIM BOHANNON and PREMIERE’s “COAST TO COAST AM” with GEORGE NOORY. Weekends feature music programming.

The AM side is carrying DIAL GLOBAL’s MICHAEL SMERCONISH, TRN’s LAURA INGRAHAM, DIAL GLOBAL’s NEAL BOORTZ, syndicated DAVE RAMSEY, DIAL GLOBAL’s CLARK HOWARD and TRN’s MICHAEL SAVAGE. Weekends include “best ofs” from LIMBAUGH, HOWARD and BOORTZ along with the syndicated KIM KOMANDO, CIGAR DAVE, TAMMY BRUCE, and CAR AND DRIVER shows.

My pal estimates that four major network syndicators provide 95% of programming on 80% of all talk stations in the country. Just a guess, he says, but not far off.

iTunes DJ

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I’m not sure, but believe the DJ feature is new with the latest version of iTunes. @georgekopp played with it for just a few minutes on Saturday at the Coffee Zone and if I understood his explanation, it works likes this.

If Taisir is playing music (through the Zone ceiling speakers) from iTunes on his laptop and that laptop is on the Coffee Zone wifi network, I can see his play list from my laptop (or my iPhone) and “request” a song from his list. That song would then be moved up in the queue.

You can see how this could quickly get out of hand. An Elvis nut could take over the play list. Perhaps iTunes DJ gives you some control over that. Maybe a limit to 3 requests or something.

But it looks like fun way to add some interactivity to the morning coffee experience. Stay tuned.

Scott Adams: “Super-local news”

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“It’s not just news about your community, but also about your homeowner’s association, your apartment building, your kids’ classrooms, and the sports teams they belong to. Every family would have their own online local newspaper, assembled electronically every day based on that family’s log-in information. Your personal and super-local news would include everything from world events to school lunch menus for that day. Eventually it might even include your child’s report card. Obviously the schools have to be partners in this, and I think that could happen. Most school information is online already or heading in that direction. It just needs to feed to the newspaper’s site for aggregation.

The key is for the super-local information to come to the newspapers from volunteers. For example, every youth sport team would have a parent with a digital camera and the willingness to upload some pictures and write a few lines about the game. A simple user interface would make it easy to integrate the news about little Becky’s soccer game with news of the Lakers. They would have equal billing.”