Category Archives: Technology

That is SO last decade, senator

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The McCain campaign sent me a fund-soliciting e-mail pushing "John McCain Mousepads:"

We are asking that you join us today by making a generous contribution
of whatever you canMouse_announcement_large
afford. With your contribution of $75 or more, we
will send you one of the official John McCain 2008 mouse pads below as
a special thank you. If you are not able to give $75 at this time,
please select the additional contribution options below. Thank you for
your support!

My question is, in a time when even the hand-me-down mouses I get to use here at work on my Windows 98 desktop are optical meeses, who on Earth still uses mouse pads.

Some have tried to make an issue of Sen. McCain’s age. This doesn’t help. It’s like he said, "Let’s put out something high-tech, that shows we’re ‘with it,’" but you know how grandpa always embarrasses himself when he does that.

What’s next, Walkmen? How about a $1,000 buggy whip?

Anyway, if you actually do want any McCain stuff, the coffee mug is much more reasonable, at $15.

The unkindest of all

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One of my colleagues yesterday remarked that Mitt Romney’s candidacy is doomed to "the death of 1,000 YouTube cuts."

I’m thinking he may have a point. What think you? Will we South Carolinians, who have seen more of all of these candidates than almost anyone, soon be able to paraphrase Caporegime Clemenza:

"Oh, Romney? Won’t see him no more."

‘Just dreadful’

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Since I started shooting video clips of candidates early this year, the one who protested the most vociferously to being on camera was Karen Floyd, who is arguably the most telegenic candidate running for major office this year. I thought that sort of ironic. She finds being photographed at all — video or still — "just dreadful."

She has a point. The camera is intrusive, although I try to minimize that by using a very small camera sitting next to my notepad on the table. Some candidates don’t even notice it; others have trouble putting it out of their minds.

This makes me worry about polluting the process by making candidates too uncomfortable. But in some cases, I think the video clips can help readers understand a little better why we form some of the impressions we do in these interviews.

I remain torn about this, and my colleagues on the board remain leery of it. They sometimes find it distracting, too. At times in the past, I’ve talked about video-recording entire interviews — say, with gubernatorial and presidential candidates. But I’ve been talked out of it because those chats can be tense and difficult enough without people playing to a camera — we want the candidates’ undivided attention, and we want to give them ours.

It also makes going off the record — a far more useful tool to editorial writers than to reporters, since we don’t want quotes as much as we want to know what is really on people’s minds — rather awkward. When they are on camera, candidates are unlikely even to suggest going off the record, and we might never even know there was something else we could have learned.

Anyway, this is an experiment — sort of dipping our toe in the video waters — and we’re still evaluating its pros and cons. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.

Jake beats up Mickey, etc.

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Sorry to have fallen so far behind with my notes from endorsement interviews. I hope to get caught up in the next week.

In the meantime, I’m still honing my video editing skills. I’ve now learned how to cut clips so I don’t have to give you the whole file, just the best bits. My cutting is rough, but I continue to learn.

Here are two short clips from interviews with the candidates for the 2nd Congressional District — incumbent Republican Joe Wilson, and Democrat Michael Ray Ellisor. These meetings were more fun than usual because these guys are actually good, longtime friends, so we were able to skip the acrimony on both sides.

In the first clip — and it you only watch one, watch this one — shows Mickey Ellisor telling about how he became friends with Jake Knotts. It happened when they were both in the 4th grade in Cayce, and it all started with Mickey making some wisecrack to Jake, and Jake whuppin’ the tar out of him for it. The story had already begun when I cut on the camera, but he repeats enough of the main points that you get the gist. It’s a fun piece.

The second clip is less fun, but I thought it was interesting. Joe Wilson is explaining that you can’t do away with earmarks, and that the money’s going to go somewhere, so a conscientious congressman needs to get what he can for his district.

‘Grady Patterson: The Prequel’

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Since Treasurer Grady Patterson
declined to face his challenger in tonight’s "debate," here’s the next
best thing to his being there. I really had intended this to be sort of
a "Director’s Cut," dumping in all the video I shot during the
interview. But that was too much for YouTube to handle.

So I just gave you another short clip. The one you saw before was
from near the end of the interview. This is from the beginning.

To set the scene: In this clip, I happened to turn on the camera
right in the middle of Mr. Patterson saying he wanted to tell us about
all the "new" things they were doing in the treasurer’s office. You can
follow it from there.

Note that my little camera only shoots three minutes at a time, so
if a clip stops in the middle of something interesting, I can’t help
it. I can turn it back on a few seconds later, but crucial material can
still be lost.

Note also how my technological prowess grows. I’m now putting music on
my intros. Impressive, huh? Even if it is just stuff that’s in the
public domain.

Tommy Moore video

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OK, this time I really have posted a video that works. And if you go back, you’ll see I’ve fixed the previously-posted Sanford video.

Anyway, this one features Sen. Tommy Moore, D-Aiken, explaining himself to our new publisher, Henry Haitz, who had never met him before. That’s me at the end stumbling through a question…

Sanford video (and it actually WORKS!)

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Finally, I’ve figured out a way to share video with you that seems to work. Please give me feedback on this: Does it work for you? Do you want more? I have several other Sanford clips. Do you want me to go back and post video on other candidates I’ve written about? I have clips on all of them; I’ve just been saving them up for lack of a good way to post them.

Anyway, this one features S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford explaining how he believes he has improved "soil conditions" for economic development. This is from his endorsement interview with The State‘s editorial board on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006.

Video experiment

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As some of you may know, I’ve been trying off and on for the past year to post videos on my blog in a convenient form. Lots of frustration, particularly since I started video recording bits of endorsement interviews. I think they would add a lot to people’s understanding of the vignettes I’ve been posting.

So I decided to put one of the recent batch on YouTube and see what happens. I put up on in which GOP Rep. Jim Harrison, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, talking at the beginning of the meeting about his opponent, Democrat Boyd Summers.Check it out. Let me know how it works — if it does.

Hello, World! And thanks…

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Gasp! Sputter! Snort! Hachh! Ptui!

Ah! Air! I’ve broken the surface! I’m back in the world!

Three days without broadband service — partly because I’m on vacation and not trying very hard, partly because whenever I did try, I had trouble connecting. First I tried a coffee shop where I’d never been before, and no dice — the laptop wouldn’t pick up a signal. Finally, I came back to this place where I have blogged before, and blogged well — but still no signal. So I wimped out and called the gurus back at the office, and while they were busy talking me through various solutions, I finally noticed the button with the little broadcasting tower icon, and switched it back on.

So here I am. Duh.

And I have to say, I am grateful and humbled by the fact that y’all have taken my invitation to dialogue seriously enough to run the comments up to 202. That’s like the second-most ever. Sure, I realize it wanders off the subject here and there, but that’s OK.

Now that’s a pretty intimidating string for any interested party to wade through, so I’m going to see if I can put together a Cliff Notes version, and make it my Sunday column. In the meantime, the conversation continues for the appointed fortnight.

Yours in el blogando verdadero,

Brad

Smarter spam

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Has anybody noticed spam getting smarter all of a sudden?

We’ve got a pretty good filter at the office, but I just checked a personal account a minute ago, and noticed something  ominous. Instead of the usual, nonsensical series of apparently randomly-chosen words and phrases (such as, "magna may far cookies," "parenthetic what above reader" or "Very rhombus whether fiesta"), the headlines make sense. Worse, they are keyed to recent news developments, which could fool the unwary into thinking they are about to read something relevant and/or interesting.

Some examples from my mail today:

  • The Discovery crew conducted three sp…
  • Bush’s remarks were picked up by the …
  • A massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean…
  • Six of those seized were later releas…
  • According to the U.S. Geological Surv…
  • A British soldier was killed and anot…

This is really not an encouraging development. I wonder how it works? Is someone keying these things in, or is the software going about and cloning real news stories, or what?

Whatever it is, somebody needs to put a stop to that … stuff.

What does a trackback DO for me?

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You may recall that not long ago, I asked what trackbacks were. I did it because I had enabled my blog for trackbacks, but I hadn’t gotten any bites yet, and I was wondering what the point was.

Laurin was kind enough to give me a brief lesson in how they work, for which I am appreciative. And I notice Tim has set up a couple of trackbacks to his site (or would that be, from his site? Obviously, this still confuses me).

But the last 13 trackbacks I’ve gotten have been spam — links to sites that sell cheap watches, gambling, and various unmentionables. It’s like wandering through a bazaar in Juarez.

This came up because Phillip mentioned an interesting post on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and I went to it, and I noticed the trackback option, and I thought about trackbacking to it, but then I wondered: What on Earth does that accomplish that Phillip’s link didn’t accomplish? I can make links as prominent as I want — so can other people who want to link to stuff I’ve posted.

So what good is the trackback option — especially when it’s mostly being exploited by spammers? Laurin? Tim? Anyone?

Wait… it just dawned on me. Trackbacks enable me to go to Andrew’s site and place a link to mine there, right? And that depends on whether he has enabled the function, no matter what I’ve done on my site. Right? Well, I want to be generous, too, but should I be letting advertisers use my site for free promotion? I guess I’ll have to decide that.

What do y’all think? Should I keep it enabled, or what?

Sorry about that

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Typepad seems to have been down for about 24 hours. That’s why you weren’t able to post comments since about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

If you commented during the 10 hours before that (between 12:30 and 10:30 a.m. Wednesday). the comments may have been lost. I know I lost a post during that time.

So basically, we lost a day’s blogging due to technical difficulties that Typepad has yet to fully explain. Their nonexplanations don’t even mention comments.

If you lost anything, I feel your pain. It was pretty frustrating for me, too. Here’s hoping they fixed whatever it was.

Technical difficulties

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Yes, I know the display on the main page of my blog is messed up. I’m trying to fix it. So far, none of the usual stuff is working. Basically, every change of format in a post — indented type, or italics — is imposing itself on every item below it, and never switching off. The coding and everything looks fine, but it’s fouled up.

The good news is that for the first time ever, pictures are displaying on the main page. I don’t know why that’s happening, either.

As I say, I’m working on it, but under difficult conditions, including:

  • The fact that I’m very busy today doing my real job, the one I get paid for.
  • You know how maddening it can be to have a song running through your head, and you can’t get rid of it. I have that, only with aggravating circumstances: It’s a song by a fictional band (Stillwater in "Almost Famous") running through my head:   

    "FEE-VAH DAWG, bah-bah-da-buh-BUM-BUM
    Scratchin’ at mah back daw….ba-DUM-BUM…"

A colleague suggested I get professional help, but I don’t have Lester Bangs‘ phone number, and anyway, I think he’s dead.

Now, let’s see how all those format shifts I just did further complicate my problem…

It doesn’t know what I’LL do

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This was an interesting piece in the NYT yesterday. (And I would have posted it yesterday, but I kept looking for it at the WSJ site, thinking I’d read it in their print edition, and only realized my mistake today).

Headlined, "The Internet Knows What You’ll Do Next," it discussed the idea that … well, I’ll let the NYT explain:

    A FEW years back, a technology writer named John Battelle began talking about how the Internet had made it possible to predict the future. When people went to the home page of Google or Yahoo and entered a few words into a search engine, what they were really doing, he realized, was announcing their intentions.
     They typed in "Alaskan cruise" because they were thinking about taking one or "baby names" because they were planning on needing one. If somebody were to add up all this information, it would produce a pretty good notion of where the world was headed, of what was about to get hot and what was going out of style.
    Mr. Battelle, a founder of Wired magazine and the Industry Standard, wasn’t the first person to figure this out. But he did find a way to describe the digital crystal ball better than anyone else had. He called it "the database of intentions."
    The collective history of Web searches, he wrote on his blog in late 2003, was "a place holder for the intentions of humankind — a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends."

Scary, huh? I mean, if you’re privacy advocate. I generally don’t worry too much about that stuff. I mean, I suppose I want to be left alone as much as the next guy, but if the government wants to include my phone records in a database that helps us catch terrorists, I figure it’s the least I can do for the war effort. Have at it.

I worry even less about what such a database of intentions would reveal about me. Of course, Battelle is talking about a collective database to track trends among millions of users (he sounds a bit like Obi Wan explaining The Force). But obviously, the same thing can apply — and already does apply, among marketers — on the micro scale to individuals.

Well, anybody who tries to read my intentions is going to get pretty confused. Any prophetic analysis based on my footprints on the Web would show that I have a greater-than-usual interest in:

Good luck predicting the future from that, Merlin.

What ARE trackbacks, anyway?

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A week or so ago, I quit trying to figure out what trackbacks are, and went ahead and authorized them on my blog.

I did so mainly so that when I got some, maybe I could figure out what they are.

But I haven’t gotten any bites. I’ve had 700 comments in the past week (a definite record; HALF that number of letters to the editor would be a really big week), but no trackbacks. And yeah, I’ve looked up definitions, but they fail to enlighten me.

They have something to do with blogs referring to each other. I refer to other blogs all the time, and they refer to mine, but still no "trackbacks."

Can anybody help me out? Of course, I’m not dismissing the possibility that once I DO find out what they are, I won’t want to have anything to do with them. We’ll see.

Primary-day column, WITH LINKS!

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Read all about it. Then go vote!

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

AT MONDAY morning’s editorial meeting, we wearily debated how we might have done a better job on these primary elections. Should we have interviewed candidates in fewer races, opening time and space for more detail on the top contests? Did we make the best endorsements we could have? Did we give readers all the information that they need?
    The answer to that last question is, “Of course not.” Resources are limited, and at best, even when our board has been as thorough as it can be in making a recommendation, ours is but one voice in a much broader conversation. Careful voters should attend thoughtfully to all of it.
    My purpose in writing today is to refer you to additional resources, so you have more information available to you on this day of decision than we can fit onto one page.
    Start by going to my blog on the Web. The address is at the bottom of this column. If you don’t feel like typing all that in, just Google “Brad Warthen’s Blog.” Click on the first result.
    Here’s what you’ll find:

  • An electronic version of this column with one-click links to all the other information in this list.
  • The full texts of all of our endorsements. We don’t expect you to be swayed by the brief capsules at left; we provide this recap on election days because readers have requested it. Please read the full editorials.
  • Additional notes from most of the 51 candidate interviews that helped in our decisions. Please leave comments to let me know whether you find these notes helpful; it’s a new thing for me.
  • The Web sites of major candidates. These sites vary greatly in the detail they offer on issues (and in their frankness), but some can be helpful.
  • Addresses for state and local election commissions.
  • More links to last-minute news reports. The State’s news division is entirely separate from the editorial department, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you find the news — including the Voter’s Guide from Sunday’s paper.
  • Recent columns, including an unpublished piece from teacher and former community columnist Sally Huguley, explaining why teachers should vote in the Republican primary.
  • Various explanations I’ve given in the past for why we do endorsements, and what our track record has been with them.
  • Much, much more — from the silly to the (I hope) profound.

    Please check it out, and leave comments. I want to know what you think — so would others — about the election, about our endorsements, about the blog itself. There were 138 comments left there on one day last week. I’d like to see that record broken. Broaden the conversation beyond the usual suspects (no offense to my regulars; I just want more, and you know you do, too).
    And then, go vote your conscience. Please. A number of observers have said voter interest is low this time around. It shouldn’t be. This election could help determine whether South Carolina does what it needs to do to improve public schools — and therefore improve the future for all of us — or gives up on the idea of universal education.
    I’m not just talking about the governor or superintendent of education contests. As we’ve written in detail (which you can read again on the Web), there are well-funded groups from out of state trying to stack our Legislature so that it does what they want it to do from now on. Don’t stand back and watch that happen. Exercise your birthright. Vote.
    Finally, after the votes are counted, be sure to tune in to ETV from 10 to 11 p.m. I’ll offer live commentary off and on (it won’t be just me for that whole hour, so you’re safe). You young people, ask your parents to let you stay up late. If you’re big enough to be reading the editorial page, you deserve it. You older folks, try to get a nap in the evening and rest up — after you’ve voted.

Here’s the address: http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

How do y’all like my sticker?

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This post is just to solicit feedback on the latest look at the top of my main page.Wnew_copy2

It sure took me long enough to do such a simple thing. First, I thought
I could do it in Paintbrush, then I tried it in Word, and was about to
give up when my son asked me why I didn’t try Photoshop. Well, that
worked. Made me feel kinda dumb. But I was happy with the result.

So, what do you think?

I’m wondering which side I’ll infuriate the more: Democrats who take this "homage" as proof positive of my "Republican allegiance," or Republicans who will decry this "base mockery" of a revered logo that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt my "Democratic enthrallment."

DemarcomugMostly, though, I’m hoping to whip up the spirits of the Unparty faithful, to whom no party icon is sacred. I haven’t heard much from those folks lately. Well, maybe Spencer Gantt, but he hasn’t been talking much like an Unpartisan lately. As Paul Simon sang, "Where have you gone, Paul DeMa-ar-co?"

Think of this as the first idea I’m running up the flag pole in preparation for my exploratory run as the Unparty nominee for governor — what with the alternatives being so dismal and all. I’m thinking of starting the Uncampaign right after these primaries are done. Maybe. So I need to start smoking out any potential supporters that exist.