Writing, Lab Work, Packing, & New Love

Today’s Inbox Ideas section is on rap and hip-hop, which tied to an LA Times article.

I turned my draft in just before The Daily Show last night (which is ahead of time for me); so I managed to get some other reading done and get some sleep before going down to the CCLI to help a little with ECAC. Mostly I just pointed to things in FrontPage and tried to stay out of the way. I’ve found that if you stand in the passageway between the Mac and Windows portions of the lab, you (1) get the excellent breeze from the super fans, and (2) manage to avoid questions from either room. Course, I only used this tactic when they were working with software I couldn’t help with on both sides. Really. I promise.

I convinced myself that I really do have to leave Michigan this evening, and I began the packing process. I packed up the clothes that I won’t need and started piling the various hard drives and other such technology into the proper bags. The biggest accomplishment is probably that I packed the suitcase of books and wrestled it into the back seat. I’m not even sure that I used 1/2 of the pile of books that I brought with me, but that’s probably because I didn’t get much writing done on those 125 pages I was supposed to accomplish. Somehow I just can’t manage to write, and I’m about out of time. When time runs out, I’m into some major big trouble. Like MAJOR.

So did I write this evening while I watched the second running of The Daily Show? No. I couldn’t help it. I was too ashamed of my toenails, and I justified that if I just redid them, I would be able to pack the nail polish. See? Perfectly logical.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m in love. I saw someone with a baby 12-inch iBook. So cute. So lightweight. I want one. I have been searching around and daydreaming about replacing my cute clamshell iBook for months now. It has two annoying problems: the modem doesn’t work anymore, and its 6 GB hard drive is ridiculous by modern standards. Here, I’ve been thinking that I need a mega-huge, 17″ powerbook. You know. Big screen. Bigger is better, so they say. (I wouldn’t really know, being a pure young lady and all.)

When I saw the 12-inch ibook in the lab this afternoon, suddenly I rethought everything. Here I’ve been lamenting that my lovely, cool Win laptop is just too heavy to carry around and use. It’s an excellent machine, and it takes care of my needs for a work-engine computer. I was reluctant to go for a 17-inch Powerbook precisely because the Win laptop is a good machine. I couldn’t really justify two great machines. What I need is a more portable machine that I can carry around with me.

And that’s why the cute little 12-inch iBook suddenly seemed perfect for me today when I saw it. Oh, and I left out that it’s the least expensive of the laptops. How often does that happen?

Tomorrow, if that laptop’s owner is around again, I’m going to ask if I can put my hands on the keyboard. I always know about a laptop when I orient myself to the keyboard. That’s how I knew that the clamshell was the right one. The keyboard fit. If he’s not around, there may be a trip to Indy or St. Louis in my near future. Get me to an Apple Store :)

Tags: English language arts | iBook |
K12 instruction | music | NCTE Inbox

someone heard me

A few months ago I wrote that I wanted an iPod for my television, so that I could load up everything and carry it around—and even more importantly if you’re as lazy as I am, change and load things up without monkeying around with the DVD player and the cases and whatnot.

Apparently such a thing exists: iPodlounge | First Looks Special: Nyko Movie Player. Still smallish, but I’m guessing that eventually you’ll be able to hook things up to your TV directly.

Stolen Words

Apparently my Ideas section from last week’s Inbox was so exciting, someone borrowed it:
Digital Literacy Resources from NCTE

Now I know that on the Internet, it’s hard to hold onto your text; but couldn’t they have at least cited the source?

Backdating

Cheryl is still giving me grief. She doesn’t care that it’s Father’s Day, and I have enough grief of my own to keep me hidden in the darkest corner of the room.

The problem with any event that I enjoy enough to write about is that I’m so busy at the event, that I don’t have time to write the travelogues until very, very late at night—when I’m usually far too tired. I always think that I’ll eventually get it done, but as the night creeps up on me (and it’s one damned slow creep in the UP), I run out of energy.

Cheryl says that my public demands me to produce. I may need Cheryl some day. That’s what she told me anyway. So that means that I better write or she’s gonna smack me up.

Those of you who know her, realize that she’s not even in the UP right now. She left almost a week ago. Her body left, that is. Her voice is well implanted in my head, and she has programmed it to switch on and narrate what will happen to me if I don’t write travelogues. I’d share what she says to me, but it’s too ouchy scary.

All this has led me to thinking about how I write these things in the first place. I have a black notebook that I carry from conference to conference. The masses are either frightened that I’ll divulge what I’ve written down about them or horribly entertained by my completely factual construction of our encounters in the past. Try as she might, for instance, Cheryl will never leave that bagel with cheese behind.

In the past, after the events are over each day, I sit up even later with my notebook, transcribing the day’s events. And that’s the problem. Days only have 24 hours, and in the UP, you are tricked into thinking that the night is younger than it really is.

So this trip, I’m trying something different. Not so much by plan, as by the fact that this is just how things have fallen out. CIWIC is over. Everyone has gone home. Really they left days ago—Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m alone with my notebook, reconstructing the past by backdating and posting all my notes as if I wrote when things really happened. Actually, I did write my notes when things happened. It’s the entries that I didn’t get to write immediately.

I imagine many ifs: if I had a lighter laptop and lots of wireless, I would write these things as they happened online, rather than saving them all in my little black notebook. But we can’t all be Sordid Boi at C&W.

In many ways, this world I’ve set up is very sad. Everyone else has moved off, moved on, and I’m sitting in a studio apartment up on the hill reliving the past. I thought that I would get called to help with ECAC, but not a word has filtered up to me. I’m not sure when or where I’m needed. Maybe I’m not needed anymore? I dunno. I’m sort of rethinking this whole thing. Maybe it was a mistake to stay on. It’s so much quieter when everyone is gone and you’re all alone.

I should take advantage of the quietness and get some writing done. I still have over 100 pages to write, and the number of available writing days is quickly dwindling. But it’s so quiet, the lonely kind of quiet. And it’s Father’s Day, and I feel terribly sad.

Tags: tengrrl’s travelblog

Scholastic Reading Counts! e-NEWS Newsletter

Just found that one of my lists is referred to in this Scholastic Newsletter!

Unusual Sleep Patterns

Edited and posted a 9–12 lesson plan, Copyright Infringement or Not? The Debate Over Downloading Music.

Sadly, my other major accomplishment for today is that I didn’t lie back down and take a nap. I’m not the most motivated person, and between that and the fact that I don’t have office hours or anything, I’ve fallen into bizarre sleep patterns.

My inner clock is totally mixed up. I mean, it’s set normally for my body; but the problem is that my body doesn’t like anything like a normal time system. I’ve been up till 4 am the last few nights. Wake back up between 12 and 1 pm. I’m quite rested and all, but the problem is that between my odd schedule and the fact that it’s summer in the UP, I really have no sense what time it actually is. Could be 8 pm. Could be 2 am. No clue.

There’s no real problem with that I guess, since no one cares when I’m awake or what I’m doing. Hell, I’m not sure that anyone would notice one way or the other. I had been spending a lot of time chatting in IRC in the Blogshares channel, but apparently my point of view isn’t meshing with the people in power, so I’ve stopped going there and I’m selling off all my “assets” in the game. The whole series of events has reminded me how territorial the female gender can be. I’m only keeping a handful of things that have sentimental sorts of value—my own blogs and my ideas in the Lord of the Rings industry. Everything else I’ve sold off. I can’t get rid of artefacts, so I’m stuck with those. I wouldn’t sell off the LOTR artefact anyway. Who would sell “The One Ring”?

It was an interesting experiment while it all lasted. I enjoyed chatting with smart people who understood the nerdy things about technology. I guess I missed MOOs more than I thought. But it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

Tags: blogshares | English language arts | K12 instruction | lesson plan | ReadWriteThink

Another Lesson, Another Web Site

Edited and posted a 6–8 lesson plan: You Know the Movie is Coming–Now What?

And due to a momentary lapse of sanity, I bought listsoften.com (that’s Lists of Ten, not List Soften because I don’t think they’re soft at all, and not Lists Often because I haven’t written anything in like a decade or something). It just redirects. We are not sure what I have learned from this experience. Maybe that I need a life.

Tags: English language arts | K12 instruction | lesson plan | ReadWriteThink

Two more lessons online

Edited and posted two 3–5 lesson plans: Opening the Door for Reading: Sharing Favorite Texts to Build Community and Once Upon a Time Rethought: Writing Fractured Fairy Tales.

Tags: English language arts | K12 instruction | lesson plan | ReadWriteThink

Exploring Computer Literacy

The ideas in this week’s NCTE Inbox focus on “Exploring Computer Literacy.”

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
NCTE Inbox |
technological literacy

WordPress

Apparently my new hobby is to install a piece of software each weekend. Last weekend, Gallery; this weekend, WordPress. Folks in the blogshares online discussion were comparing MT and WordPress, and I was inspired to try WordPress.

It was another easy setup, once the fantastic and fabulous Eric Crump gave me a mysql login. He didn’t even make me explain why I’m fiddling with WordPress when he already has Drupal installed. (It’s cuz I wanted to play, Eric.)

Installation was only a few minutes, but making it do what I want is another issue. I managed to get it to list my bloglines subscriptions as a blogroll, and I added a customized calendar. And I’ve fiddled a great bit over the weekend with the layout. I’m trying to figure out whether I can get it to do what I’m already doing with flat pages AND whether it will go beyond what I’m already doing in ways that would make the trouble of converting everything worth the bother. I’m told that I can easily import the Blogger entries that I already have. The biggest concern is managing the Lists of Ten and other resources that are outside of blogger but that would benefit from the RSS feed.

You can peek at my current status, but realize it is a very rough work in progress. I’m not sure yet, but after two days of playing, I do feel like I accomplished something. Even if I decide not to use it, I’ve learned a good bit about PHP and RSS in the process. Not bad for a weekend procrastination project (e.g., a project that’s real purpose seems to be to provide an excuse not to work on those 125 pages I’m supposed to be writing).

Tags: WordPress