We had a pleasant afternoon at the Vista Rod Run today. California car culture turns on the fact that we don’t use road salt here, so we don’t lose our vehicles to rust. A little Bondo, a little metal flake paint, and some chrome electroplating and I could probably make that RAV4 out in the driveway look pretty cool. Well, maybe not.

An observation: All the kids from Tom Wolfe’s “Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby,” the girls with the bouffant hair-dos and the skinny guys in jeans with a pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of their t-shirt have aged enormously. Enormously is actually right on point. The California car culture is boomer dominated, and too many of us are carrying a little too much weight.

Fifties Chevys seem to continue to dominate the custom restoration market. I noticed this in Escondido a year or so ago. One of the fanciest cars we saw today was a restored 1936 Auburn boat tailed speedster. It’s the one parked next to the Cobra in the short slide-show above. The show today was visually rich… stunning enamel paint jobs, fancy upholstery, chromed and sculpted metal. It was also rich in cultural referents… surfing vehicles, an honest to goodness little deuce coupe with a powerful engine under the hood. And countless one-of-a-kind custom cars, from an old Willys to a right hand drive MG that had seen service in the post WW2 Lancashire constabulary. Lots of sixties era VWs, some more Nazified than others… low-rider culture was well represented… I hope we visit again next year.

We moved and for many months I got along fine using my cell phone and wall clocks and car clocks to check the time. But, there came a point when I had to admit  that having a wrist watch was a convenience I missed. Maybe it was when I read about some absurdly expensive watch, a watch that was more jewelry than timepiece, but at some point I decided I’d try to replace the watch I lost. I looked for an exact match and could not find one. After a little research, I decided I didn’t need diamonds and gold and such. I didn’t need a Rolex or a Piaget. This expanded the range of affordable options open to me. Anybody who has used Google and Amazon to help them find a product or realize a materialist fantasy doesn’t need me to recapitulate my process. I searched. I compared. I priced. I weighed and considered. And eventually I came up with a product that Amazon could provide that I thought would do the trick. While I hadn’t tried it on, I was comfortable that if I didn’t like it, I could return it, so I ordered it up and what do you know? It’s been everything I hoped it would be.

My new watch is a Citizen Eco-Drive with a perpetual calendar. I’m hoping it’s my forever watch, the last one I’ll need to buy. (Did you know that some people collect watches? They have a watch wardrobe that they swap around and mix and match with their attire like some people swap out cuff links. Did you know that there are some people who wear cuff links?) My new watch has a sapphire crystal that won’t scratch and a titanium case and band that are both tough and lightweight. If I fall off a boat and drown in less than 200 meters of water, the watch will keep running. It’s the only watch I own. I flatter myself that it would look good whether I was wearing a tuxedo or a wetsuit, if I owned a tuxedo. Or a wetsuit.

The watch is solar powered. I’ll never have to change a battery. I could leave it in the dark in a drawer for a couple of months before it would run out of stored solar power. It’s radio controlled. It sets itself to the atomic clock so while it can gain or lose a few seconds every month or two, if it does, then it will correct itself and be synchronized to provide the exact time whenever I look at it. It has a perpetual calendar. I set it once, and I’ll never have to set it again. Unlike all the other calendar watches I have ever owned, this one knows how many days there are in the current month and won’t get confused until the year 2100. It keeps track of daylight savings time for me, and it has an easy adjustment to local time when I’m traveling. In the future, when I have wandered off down the twisted byways of senile dementia, this watch will be the most rational thing about me. I find that oddly pleasing.

Today I’m musing about links and personal web presence. I’m not going to talk much about Facebook, Google+, twitter, or any of the other social networks that provide people with opportunities to share their thoughts and their work on the web. Maria is an interesting person, and an interesting study in public web presence. She had a blog called “Alembic.” I think I asked her one time if she’s related to the Alembic electronics family that emerged in Marin in the late sixties and she said she was not, but I appreciated the synchronicity none-the-less. And of course everybody’s only a few degrees of separation from everybody else. Consider Kevin Bacon….

Tidying up links on this blog, I saw that my link to Maria’s blog (Ashladle.org) had rotted. Rather than delete her from the list here, I looked for another public web address where she is active and found her blog (small change blog), and I found her on twitter. Also, I found a project she started last winter, a photographic journal called “A Year of Mount Tamalpais.” I lifted this picture from that location…

Photo by Maria Benet

The project I lifted the above picture from is over. Maria still blogs at small change blog where she migrated after her ashladle.org domain name expired, and she’s working on a WordPress site called Marin Bytes. She tweets as @Alembic, and her friends can find her in the walled garden that is Facebook. Amazing the number of ramifications a web-head’s personality requires in the new age of social networking….

Time goes by and our virtual back fences get more and more convoluted, sort of cyber-Christo projects that require the participants’ engagement on a different level than we have known before. How many people actually click on the links they find in a tweet or a posting? The author put them there for a reason, but whether pressured by time or only superficially engaged, most readers fly right by the links and miss some of the allusive content that lends value to what they are reading. In the good old days, missing links were something else entirely, an evolutionary thing. “Missing lynx” of course refers to a lost bobcat, but that’s neither here nor there. In the old days, one could listen in on the party line (ask your grandma what a party line was) or a couple of neighbors could gossip over the back fence. People wrote letters and sometimes got replies. People read newspapers and magazines. Kids at camp and vacationers wrote postcards, usually with pictures on them, and no reply was really expected. All of those mediated conversations were well bounded. The same can not be said for conversations on the web.

I sent off a message to Maria letting her know that I was writing a post about her and asking for her permission to use the above photo. She got back to me faster than a letter in a bottle, faster than teh pony express, faster than airmail, faster–in fact–than the US Post Office could possibly manage. She got back to me so quickly you’d have thought we were connected by a series of tubes or something! I like the Internet for that and for the fact that so many talented people can make their work accessible. Thanks Maria, you’re a poet and , well… the conclusion is self evident.

“Meaning” and “knowledge” seem to be an obvious pairing; far more so than the silly old “truth and beauty” schtick. In 1819 Keats was rocking the odes, laying down more quotable lines than Bob Dylan. The one about truth and beauty from Ode on a Grecian Urn sticks in the brain of everyone ever stuck in a sophomore English literature course. The context will be long forgotten but the poetic platitude will remain.

Keats had no knowledge of  iPads, orYouTube, or e-publishing. no Nooks, no Kindles.  Nor were there motion pictures. Electricity was high tech theoretical with no practical applications. Gas lamps and candles provided light after the sun had set. One might retreat to a cozy nook to read a book, a nook all the cozier for the fire recently laid with kindling. Keats’ conceit, the motion pictured on the vase, the images drawn forth and animated by the prosody within his ode, was remarkable and prescient.

Keats wrote five odes in the spring of 1819. One of his favorites was Ode on Indolence. I ran across a reference to the Ode on Indolence this morning in the key logger file I installed on young Mr. Vindaloo’s machine. Is it wrong, I wonder, for an employer secretly to track the work of his employee? I feel a little conflicted about this, but since the moment I returned to the office and found young Mr. V. all a-twitter, following an online conversation about scripting and application program interfaces and what-not, I’ve also felt vindicated. When it comes time for me to settle the bill with the middleman, the contract services company that sent me young Mr. V. in response to my request for someone who could refurbish my old blog and integrate it with social media, that key-log file will be quite useful, a real money saver.

The University will seek not merely to turn out men as engineers, scientists, doctors, merchants, theologians but also as men of high character, probity and honour, whose conduct through life will show they bear the hall-mark of a great University. A teaching university would but half perform its function if it does not seek to develop the heart-power of its scholars with the same solicitude with which it develops their brain-power. Hence it is that the proposed university has placed formation of character in youth as one of its principal objects.

Malaviya ji was a partner in the life of noted theosophist Annie Besant. I am reminded of this because every time I am just gaining some headway untangling the spaghetti that is this blog’s code, Mr. Paynter will wander in and ask me some awkward question about Jiddu Krishnamurti or Paramahansa Yogananda or Theosophy, etc. I do my best to respectfully respond to these extraneous and irrelevant queries and then I find it takes me precious minutes to regain my concentration and focus on matters involving microformats and HTML5. At the end of a day at work, I am used to feeling tired but fulfilled. Since I came to this place the enjoyment of work has gone out of me, replaced by some nameless dread.

Just this afternoon Mr. Paynter asked me my opinion on the twitter exchange between Paul Ford and Anil Dash vis-à-vis scripts and APIs. I didn’t know how to answer him. Clearly he is ignorant of any browser vendor commitments relating to W3C standards. I was in the middle of crafting a style sheet that would add some font beauty and goodness to this execrable hell-hole Mr. Paynter calls his blog, and he interrupts me regarding some social media teapot tempest that has no meaning for him or for me. Then, rather than excuse himself gracefully, he had the temerity to ask if he could bring me some dinner from Swami’s Cafe. I don’t know whether he was joking, pulling my chain as it were, or simply offering to do me a favor. I’m on contract here, my services provided through a contracting firm. I don’t know how to share my disquiet with my agent. I am concerned that any complaint I might make would be bad for my reputation. Perhaps I will discuss it directly with Mr. Paynter when he returns from Encinitas.

I have decided to master the extended discipline of Google-fu. I’m going for the Google-fu black belt. Google in 2024 is a system for knowledge and sharing that requires the concentration of an enlightened master to grasp. Between the time when those kids from Stanford invented a dandy search engine and last month when they decided to open fire on Facebook with Google+, Google has become the most diversified software service provider on the planet. They offer rarefied search tools like Google scholar, consultative and facilitative utilities like Google moderator, digitized library services, comprehensive geography information, cloud data storage services; and, the full range of what was once “desktop” software is available from Google online: document creation, presentations, drawing, spread-sheets, calendaring, and of course email. All those functions provide a scaffolding for Google’s business model which requires them to be the most powerful advertising presence on the planet.

Google groups contains a searchable archive of hundreds of millions of Usenet postings from the early days of online social networking. The watershed moment for Internet users and Usenet itself came in 1993, the so-called “Eternal September” when AOL opened the floodgates and gave all its zillions of customers access to Usenet groups. Google is preparing for its own version of “Eternal September.” The day is coming soon when all the migration tools will be in place and all the Facebook users will be faced with the shiny new thing that Google is offering them: Google+.

I have faith in Google. I think they can pull it off. Back around the turn of the millennium I became a Google search evangelist. In a way it was a religious thing. I didn’t have any data to support it, but I had faith in Google search results. I preached Google search to anyone who would listen. My faith has been rewarded by Google’s dominance in the search engine wars. I’ve also enjoyed using Intel chip sets running Microsoft Windows, usually in cheap, reliable desktops and laptops by Dell. When the iPad arrived, I got one, but I have to admit I prefer my Windows netbook to the Apple tablet. At that same time I upgraded my cell phone from a kludgy if powerful Palm PDA to the iPhone 4, a decision I have only regretted a little as the Android market begins to appear competitive with the slick Apple mobile dream machine. I really like my iPhone! But check back with me when the contract’s over. By then I’ll doubtless be ready to ditch the iPhone in a Cupertino minute.

The consumer information technology world is in constant turmoil and conflict. War is a dominant metaphor. Besides the search engine wars, we’ve had the browser wars and the “religious war” of Apple versus Microsoft users. Mac users are convinced that Windows users have an inferior product. Windows users are convinced that Mac users are a smug overbearing lot of over-privileged, under-achieving do-do-heads who don’t know anything about computers. This emotional struggle is reminiscent of the American auto industry in the 1950s. People then felt the same kind of emotional attachment  to their choice of automobile brand that today they feel for the computer they drive. Ultimately, people ended up driving economical, agile, smaller cars and the Detroit dinosaurs perished, defeated by Asian imports.

The browser war may have quietly ended in detente. Magellan is gone of course. Netscape was crushed by Microsoft which, like IBM of old, tried to impose an “industry standard.” But for its corporate market share, the world would long ago have abandoned Microsoft’s Internet Exploder browser in favor of more standards compliant competitors. In fairness, over the years Microsoft browsers have gotten faster and better, though no better than the competition. A quick count shows three browsers on this computer: Microsoft’s IE9, Firefox 5.0, and Google Chrome 12. For diversity’s sake, I better install Opera 11.5 too.

I am not a geek. Maybe, I have a little nerd in me, but I’m not a techie. I am however consumed with the desire to master the Google. Anybody know where I can hang-out with a google-fu sensei?

I would not predict that Google+ will sink Facebook. Facebook today is a one-trick pony of a company that has done very well by ignoring bells and whistles, standards and usability, features and functions, and rather presenting itself as a relationship venue for people of all ages. Google is all about sophisticated programming, open standards and functionality. Google+ moves social software ahead by bringing personal control to asymmetric relationships through the use of self-defined “circles.” Ross Mayfield made a slideshare presentation that helps to explain circles: http://www.slideshare.net/ross/visual-guide-to-circles-in-google-by-ross

Right now Google+ is in a limited release version that the Googsters are calling a “field trial.” It’s not THAT exclusive, since I seem to have found my way inside. There are bugs and flaws. It’s not yet ready for a public release. If you decide to use it, be warned: you may discover something unusual. Like today I discovered that somehow all the Google searches in this household are being aggregated in my web history. This could be something specific to our router configuration, our wi-fi, the mingling of desktop devices with iPads and other alien Jobsian devices. It could have to do with how we manage gmail domains for our business and our home. This could have nothing to do with Google+ and everything to do with Google’s feature upgrades. Or maybe it’s a Chrome browser thing. Whatever the root cause, it’s wrong!

Google itself is getting a make-over. Google is always evolving. Its simple search features and functions evolve to keep up with the competition. The software and the intelligence behind advertising links become ever more sophisticated. Google has diversified well beyond the realm of “search.” The diversification has been powered by constant growth in share value. When the company went public in 2024 it closed the first day of trading with a market capitalization of $27 billion. Today Wall Street says it’s worth about $167 billion.

Google has led the way into the cloud. The company serves over three million business customers providing all kinds of business applications and data management services. Of course the Google+ project isn’t simply about business customers. It’s consumer driven, like Blogger and Picasa, two free software apps used by millions to share thoughts and pictures. According to Mashable, these apps will be re-branded and integrated with Google+. That excites me.

Google has long been a leader in the social software field, but it has never found the success that Facebook claims. Years ago, Google’s social software site Orkut emerged and quickly sank in the sea of competition here in the US. Globally, however, it remains one of the top 100 web destinations. It’s the top social software site for users in countries as diverse as Brazil and Estonia.  Google Buzz is a social software tool that’s integrated with Gmail. When Buzz was released the buzz about privacy problems almost killed it. But the signal to noise ratio in the Buzz conversation stream remains high because of the interesting people who choose to participate. Google+ with its emphasis on privacy moves Google a giant step further than Buzz in the social software race.

Right now in Wisconsin we are using Facebook as an organizing tool for our recall elections. The groups that share information have emerged organically from the huge population of Facebook users. I wonder what it will take to see that kind of organizing and community development happen on Google+.

The Government Accountability Board audited the Waukesha County canvas and turned up only a few minor inconsistencies. Yesterday they reported that their audit review included:

Total Votes Cast Report from Voting Equipment
Ballot Container Security Seals/Documentation
Inspectors’ Statement- Election Day Log
Write-In Form
Security Documentation of Voting Equipment Memory Devices
Certification Page of Poll List

They did NOT audit the voting machine programming. A hand recount is the only way to assure that the machines accurately tallied the votes. A statewide hand recount is the only way to be sure that a large scale hack-a-thon in Republican controlled counties didn’t skew the election results. There is sufficient concern about the record of the Waukesha County Clerk to gain a court ordered hand recount in her county, but unless we bite the bullet and go through the painful process of a statewide hand recount, we won’t be sure that our voting machines haven’t been hacked in a systematic way.

Waukesha County has a consistent pattern of voting irregularities with a Republican bias going back to 2024. Barb Caffrey documents them here. Wisconsin voters place a lot of trust and confidence in our elections officials. Historically, they’ve deserved it. But trust without accountability puts us on the edge of a precipice. Unless we verify results from time to time, we’re vulnerable to being pushed off that cliff but a self-serving few. The 2024 Supreme Court election is an opportunity to verify that the self-serving few haven’t found a way to steal our ballot boxes.

Kloppenburg’s decision must be made by 5pm today. From 12:30 to 3:30 today, in the State Capitol building at the Government Accountability offices a Rally for Election Fairness will be held. The Kloppenburg campaign can be reached by email at campaign@kloppenburgforjustice.com

UPDATE

She did it! Thanks JoAnne!