Personal

My Flickr Decisions

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

After last week’s thoughts on Flickr — the privacy of my children, not the silliness that ensued over merging of accounts — I decided it was time to take my children’s images out of the public domain. I didn’t delete anything, I simply used Flickr’s batch tools to change permissions on nearly 500 pictures. All of a sudden it dawned on me as I was wading through hundreds of photos of my kids that I’ve made decisions for them that has been completely irresponsible and selfish. What I find interesting about this is the chain of potential ah-ha moments the post seemed to make. Friends of mine, online and off, have made similar decisions … not all of them have been so open about closing the Flickr doors, but the decisions have been made nonetheless. Through the magic of Technorati I came across a great post by Josie over at SocialTech in which she takes the time to draw out some very good points … I am now thinking about how I can use this experience to help shape decisions in other social spaces and with other friends of mine.

It has started me down the path of asking more about my personal/professional/online/offline life decisions … what are the kinds of things that go too far? Clearly I can make these decisions for myself, but I am learning to recognize there are big differences between me Twittering my every move and doing the same about my kids. Funny though as I say that, I am tempted to Twitter something to the effect of, “The little lady wants to play Wii Bowling with mii.” So, are things like that OK? Clearly I am still wrestling with where these lines are. By participating in a social environment like Twitter am I placing myself or my family at risk? These questions will continue to expand as the whole social spaces thing continues to grow. I participate in a lot of them and I have to learn how to think a little more careful about that participation.

My Flickr decision has made start to see this whole notion of identity and privacy through new lenses … I actually feel a little “freed” (is that a word?) from the pressure of placing it all out there online. I know that it sounds ridiculous, but the further out you get, the more you feel like you have to participate. What do you all think?

FTB is Gone

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I let the From the Basement (FTB) domain expire last week. FTB was a podcast that Bart Pursel, Chris Millet, and I did on a weekly basis from November 2004 through March 2005. This was back when Google would return the, “did you mean broadcasting?” question when one would attempt to find information on it all. We started FTB really as a research project — I wanted to know about RSS enclosures and I really wanted to understand what it took to create a “podcast show” like Adam Curry had. What happened was a very fun weekly event that ended up gaining some listeners … once we realized people were listening we started to feel both terrified and amazed all at the same time. It was hard to let it go, but at the end of the day we weren’t using it and I have enough podcasting in my life at the moment.

Every week we would gather in my basement to create the show. Over the weeks it got very complicated … we couldn’t just fire up GarageBand, we had to get really creative with the whole thing. By the time we figured out how to really pull it all off we were using three laptops, a 7 band equalizer/mixer, two microphones, and a Kaos sound effects pad — and that was just the hardware side. For software we would routinely bring in “guests” using iChat A/V or Skype, iTunes to mix in music, a web browser to find interesting information and to mix in sounds from websites, and Audio Hijack Pro to record it all. Let’s just say setup took us a while.

At any rate, the shows got better and better, but more outrageous each week. We ended up taking them down in about June 2005 when it was clear they were not safe for office consumption. It was a great time and really laid the groundwork for our understanding of the power of the podcast. In our minds we were radio personalities … we also feel like we were the first vodkasters out there!

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Long Live the Limes!

Getting Ready for Max

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

We’re getting the nursery together for the arrival of our second child, Max Wilson Camplese. Kristin is due in early September … should be quite an interesting twist here in our house. We’ve gotten his room almost completely ready for him … just a couple more touches and we’ll be good to go! We hired an amazingly talented artist to come in and do a little custom work on his room — an interesting twist to the story is that Kristin selected her because she had a very complete ePortfolio from PSU. We let Madeline pick his name and the theme from the room came from a trip to see the Curious George movie that she and I took a few months back. Everyone in our house is excited and terrified!

While I am on the subject, I thought I’d share something we discovered/realized today. When we first moved into our house five years ago we noticed a bird’s nest with little eggs in it in the tree in the front of our house. When we moved in we didn’t know that Kristin was pregnant with Madeline, but had been trying for quite some time to have a child … we took that little nest as a sign that this house would be the place for our family to start and grow. When we did find out Kristin was pregnant, we put the nursery in the room right above the tree where we had discovered the nest. This morning, we were sitting in the dining room having breakfast when we noticed a bird’s nest right outside the window with three tiny birds being fed by their mother … guess where it is? Yep, right under Max’s new room. Strange but wonderful.

Here’s a little glimpse into Max’s room … clicking the picture should jump you over to a set of pictures at flickr:

Max's Name

Crash!

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

That is what my main hard drive on my home machine decided to do yesterday during the World Cup Semi-Final … I went in to my G5 to retrieve a file to review while I watched the game and what I got was heartburn.  The drive icon was there and I double clicked it to get it to open up and the little spinning beach ball cursor told me something was wrong.  Kept waiting, nothing … a little longer, nothing.  I had to do an emergency restart and waited … this time no drive icon.  Nothing would mount the drive and I knew it was really bad when it started beeping.  I tried it on my MacBook and for a brief moment it showed up on the desktop but then went away.  Now all I get is rapid beeping from the enclosure when I plug it in.

So I held my breathe, cleared off enough space on another drive to attempt a restore, and went for it.  After making space for 180 GB of photos, music, tax documents, personal items, consulting documentation, grad school work, my wife’s PhD work, and so much more Backup started to restore the files to my desktop.  It took a couple of hours, but everything is there!  Absolutely amazing … it worked!  So as I type this I am backing up my MacBook and building a new strategy with more drives to protect my digital life.  I am taking a new 300 GB drive home tonight and probably going to buy another one to make sure my prized digital assets are protected.

Now, what the hell do I do with the crashed drive?  Do you just throw that away?

Sickness in the House

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And I really mean it … our house has been in the throws of a very nasty stomach virus since Monday.  Both my wife and I (and she is 7 months pregnant, BTW) have spent the last four days somewhere in between hell, our bedroom, and the master bathroom.  It has not been pretty.  Today we were both able to eat real food and keep it in us … I know it is gross, or as my four year old would say “G-R-O-S-S, gaross!”  Speaking of the little lady, she hung in there with us … we somehow were able to muster just enough energy to drive her the two miles to her AM only pre-school and figure out how to drag our sick asses back over there to get her.  She rested on the bed with us, played quietly on her eMac, and probably roamed the house aimlessly as my wife and I layed half dead in bed.  It feels like it is behind us now as I prepare to catch up at work from not only this week’s sickness, but my three day Boston trip last week … you know what that means don’t you?  Pure wall to wall meetings for the rest of my life.  Hey, as long as I don’t get that damn stomach virus back I am good with it.  So that explains my inability to blog, participate in any sort of email discourse, answer the phone, or show up for anything this week.  It is strange, you’d think doing nothing would be fun … it isn’t … as a matter of fact it hurts.  Tomorrow I will attempt to get back at it and show back up at work — if they’ll still let me.  So much to do over the next few weeks … should be fun — as long as we stay healthy.

Please won’t you be …

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

Growing up in Wonder View right across the Susquehanna river from Bloomsburg, PA we didn’t have cable TV … we got the standard package of over the air staples — ABC, CBS, NBC, and my favorite, PBS. Back in the 70’s TV was a little different than it is today. There wasn’t time shifting, NFL Sunday Tickets, high definition channels, or anything like that … it was simple and it actually had some serious educational value. Everyday my parents would drop me off at an older couple’s home while they went to work at Bloomsburg University. In the evenings I would come home and play down in the lower level of our bi-level all the while watching and listening to Sesame Street, the Electric Company, and Zoom … but the real highlight of the day was always Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Usually it would be on during dinnertime and my Mom would come down and shovel the food into my mouth as I watched him take me through a wonderful half hour of learning. Wonderful memories that were brought back to me by watching the clip below from a 1969 Congressional Hearing on the original funding for public broadcasting. If you were ever a child, or have one this is a must watch. The world needs more neighborhoods run by Mr. Rogers.

Long Strange Trip …

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Showing the Dead roots with that title … it is so tired and so used, but what a week.  I spent the first half of last week cleaning up after the TLT Symposium and finally finishing up my group’s staff review and development plans.  I even got mine done … phew!

The second half of the week kicked off with being picked up by two of my brother-in-laws and whisked off to my time share at Lakeview just outside of Morgantown, WV.  Now, for the handful of people who spend any time here, you know I did my undergrad at WVU in Morgantown and loved every second of it.  Honestly it is why my one brother-in-law Eric and I bought a week there.  Both of us have experience with timeshares, but they are usually in places like Palm Springs, Orlando, and other “nice” destinations.  The roots of the MoTown purchase go back a few years.  Eric and I were working together at the Solutions Institute and were having one of our typical late night “few glasses of wine” conversations … I think Eric said something like, “let’s buy something on eBay …”  Well, about an hour later and $300 poorer, we were the co-owners of a mid-April week at Lakeview.  One of the best $300 I’ve ever spent.

We try to get down every year to play a little golf and get away.  This year we headed out Wed and stayed through to Saturday.  Our group was joined by two other firends from PSU … golf, downtown MoTown, campus, and just plain old fun was what it was all about.  I’ll post some pictures over at my flickr space tomorrow.
Leaving on Saturday we raced to Bloomsburg to join the families in a backyard Easter Egg hunt — a local tradition.  It was great seeing more friends and family!  I will say it was a bit sureal leaving WV to arrive in a button down Easter Egg hunt though.  The weekend was rounded out with a wonderful Easter dinner at my wife’s parents’ house.  Then back to State College.  Great weekend all the way around.  My wife was not only wonderful enough to let me escape for a few days to recharge, but when she realized I really needed to recharge from my recarging, she let me take a nap today!  I think I have the world’s greatest wife.

So that’s where I’ve been.  Later.