Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog

Friday, August 02, 2002

Stephen Huneck's Sally Goes To The Farm book cover

While on vacation, we stopped near St. Johnsbury, VT, to visit Stephen Huneck's gallery and the Dog Chapel. Huneck owes his recovery from ARDS to his wife's reminding him, despite a coma, of his plans to do woodcuts of his dog Sally. Out of his recovery grew a number of Sally books, and the Dog Chapel on Dog Mountain (as he calls his farm). Dog lovers—especially Labrador lovers—this is for you.
11:55:53 AM

Technology and preserving/publishing oral history
I wish I'd taken the time to record my dad's stories, and those of his generation. (Of course, a fair amount of Dad's tales would require fantasy illustrations, probably.)

Storytelling technology. The single most interesting talk I saw at Open Publish was by Bob Jansen on "Electronically Publishing Oral Histories". This [Column Two]

11:14:08 AM

John Robb comments on Mary Wehmeier's comments on forums. Clear thinking on managing group discussions, preventing them from becoming a forum for one loud voice.

Mary Wehmeier's observations on civility and forums. I agree. If you can't maintain a civil group shut it down. You owe it to the rest of community. With decentralization comes responsibility. Few people seem to have the ethics, maturity, and civility to maintain a discussion group. If you don't, shut your group down.
If you do want to run a discussion group, remember this: If a poster is out of line, bar them from posting, let them say it on their own weblog, against their name. Don't let people post under fake names just to be able to attack a person without consequence. If they do that, delete their post. It isn't part of the public record. If they cared strongly enough about their statement they would post it along with their name.

Also, if people come out left field, engage them. Make them qualify their statements. Don't let them go on and on with wild unsupported statements. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

11:11:59 AM

I'm thinking about downloading this, having had RSI problems myself in the past.

Break reminder.
I have a consistent but managable RSI condition. I've had it for over 10 years so I guess it isn't going away. In that time I've had many programs that try and help me manage my time at the keyboard. They haven't worked for whatever reason.

I've now found one that seems to. It's called Break Reminder, it's simple to use and free for personal use (I have no affiliation with the company involved, I just like the program).

For my condition it enforces a 30 second break (called a micro pause) every 3 minutes with a 15 minute rest break after every ten micro pauses. It uses audio queues to keep you informed of what is about to happen and has options to allow you to ignore breaks (which I have disabled) and blank the screen (to give your eyes a rest during breaks). Timings for during and frequency of breaks is fully configurable.

I use the rest breaks to go do other stuff, do a little exercise or just read something on my desk.

It's irritating to have my work broken up. It can break the flow state and makes me feel less effecient. But, in the long run, I think it makes me more effective because I feel less pain and discomfort.

Recommended.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

11:04:21 AM