Okay. So, I finally got around to upgrading Orient Lodge to Drupal 6.2. The migration went fairly well, however the theme got a little messed up and I still need to tweak that. I had to make a few changes to a few blocks, change a little specialized PHP code I had written and so on.

Right now, the OpenID module doesn’t seem to be working right. I’ll try a few more things on that as I have time. The FriendFeed functionality that I added needed a little tweaking, but still seems to work. However, you should be able to add comments in FriendFeed and see them here. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a little time.

I’ve added Disqus comments. They seem to be working. I haven’t done a lot with Discus, so it will be interesting to see how that works.

The Spam module that I was using for Drupal 4 does not seem to be working for Drupal 6, so I’m going to have to be a little more vigilant than I had been. However, I have added Captcha and we’ll see how well that works.

With Captcha added, I’ve also opened things up for anonymous comments. We’ll see how it goes. I expect people to comment, the way they would comment if they were sitting with me in my living room. If anonymous people cannot respect that, I will turn anonymous comments back off.

I’ve also turned on the Service Links module so you can recommend my blog posts on various sites. The Service Links module supports lots of services. I’ve only turned on the few that I’m most interested. However, if there are other services that you really like, let me know.

With all of that, I never did get back to working on laconi.ca That will have to wait for another day, since now, I need to get offline for a little family time.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time writing some programs to interface a financial model written in Matlab with a Microsoft SQL database. It has been interesting work, and there are lots of interesting things yet to be done with that. However, during this, my unread emails have piled up and the list of new technology to explore has been expanding rapidly. So, with any luck, I’ll spend a bit of today doing some recreational hacking.

At the top of my list is identi.ca. Identica is running laconi.ca, an open source microblogging system based on a lot of cool standards like XMPP, Oauth, and OpenSim. I set up my identi.ca account yesterday, and have started trying to see if I can get a laconi.ca server running on my Linux box today.

So, why do I care about identi.ca? Edd Dumbill has written a very good post about Why Identi.ca is important. So, my first comment, is “yeah, what Edd said.” Dan York also wrote about it, The real meaning - and power - of identi.ca (a.k.a. open source Twitter) and pointed to Dave Winer’s excitement about identi.ca and Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post.

So, let me add a few additional thoughts. As Edd notes, it is still version 0.4.1, so don’t expect it to have as much functionality or reliability as even Twitter or Plurk. On the other hand, if open source developers go wild with it, expect it to leave Twitter and Plurk in the dust.

To me, there are is a very interesting parallel between Second Life and OpenSim and Twitter and Laconi.ca. The new open source version is getting kicked around and has great potential. For that matter, OpenSim and Laconi.ca are both kicking around using XMPP as part of their interaction. Hmm. OpenSim and Laconi.ca integration. That could be cool. As an aside, I have been getting emails about connecting old MOOs to Twitter, but that’s a different subject.

So, I’ve started installing laconi.ca on my Linux box. I’ve hit a few snags. It needs a Validate.php file, which I can’t find. I know that Evan is swamped, so maybe I’ll bug him later.

Laconi.ca also uses OpenID. I’ve been running OpenID for Drupal on my blog for a while. It hasn’t been too reliable, but I’m running an old version of Drupal. Between the desire for a more robust OpenID for Drupal, the desire to add Disque to Drupal and a bunch of other things, it is probably time to upgrade Orient Lodge to a newer version of Drupal. Maybe I’ll tackle that.

One thing that is still coming in Drupal is support for OAuth. Laconi.ca uses OAuth. Hmm. At some point, I want to tie my Drupal sites to my OpenSim sites and my Laconi.ca sites. That ought to be fun.

Meanwhile, also on my technology play list is twine.com and SecondBrain.

So, I’ll complete a few tasks around the house, check to see if identi.ca is stable after the latest upgrade and then start a fun day of recreational hacking.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. As the month of July starts, I worry about what and how much I’ll write. I’ll be on vacation. Will I manage to keep my blog up to date during that time? What will happen to my traffic?

I imagine that I’ll have some posts, pictures of Fiona playing in the ocean, or perhaps simply of the waves crashing. Yet I won’t be interacting substantially on the Internet and that will take a hit on the materials I have to work with.

Yesterday, I wrote about confronting the blank page, and my friend Lars pointed me to a couple of articles in the Financial Times of London. One article was about Bloggers bringing a new reality for politicians, where politicians need to be careful about honestly presenting who they are, lest an unscripted moment derail them. Yet perhaps this isn’t a new reality for politicians. Perhaps this is returning us, back to the old reality for politics. We need politicians that are going to be real, authentic, not only when they are in front of a camera, but are authentically presenting their views all the time.

The other article was about one-time online outsiders going mainstream at Personal Democracy Forum. This reflects something I’ve written about from time to time here, and one of my big concerns. As the one-time outsiders become insiders, will they continue to talk with those on the outside? Will they build bridges where bridges have been missing? In a phrase, will they practice the ‘xenia’ that was talked about at ‘Sharing the News’?

It turns out that this lack of xenia is not limited to the realm of journalism or politics. Today, I read a blogpost entitled Cliques: They’re What’s Wrong With the Christian Blogosphere. It has spawned quite an interesting discussion there. Perhaps it is time to queue up Dar Williams “Christians and the Pagans”.

I stare at the blank page. I’ve put up a blog post every day for the first half of this year. Some days have been harder than others, and today seems particularly hard, especially after the two posts yesterday.

In politics, my mailbox is getting flooded with the end of quarter fundraising appeals. In technology, I’m looking for a chance to explore several sites in my queue. I have been exploring RocketOn for a while, and will write up something about that sometime. I’m also hoping to update this site to a newer version of Drupal so I can play more with integrating other social media sites.

I glance at Twitter, Plurk and Friend Feed looking for inspiration. I was glad to see a few old friends show up on Twitter today.

Sunday afternoon, I drove up to a graduation party for Avery Doninger, the young blogger who was disciplined for her criticism of the school administration at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, CT. On the drive up, my daughter and I saw lightning hit a transformer, and we captured various parts of this trip with pictures, videos and audio messages from my cellphone.

Leaving from Woodbridge, it was a sunny, pleasant day. We drove up Route 8. After passing Waterbury, we saw large storm clouds gathering in the west. I was struck by how picturesque they were, so I took two photographs.

The Coming Storm, originally uploaded by Aldon.

The Coming Storm, originally uploaded by Aldon.

I also recorded this message on Utterz:

I noted the ominous feeling of the coming storm, without knowing what I was really about to encounter.

As we approached the Harwinton exit, the rain started coming down, hard. After I left the highway, I found an opportunity to put the cellphone on the dashboard and get a brief video of driving through the rain. By then, the rain had slowed down a little, but it was still substantial.

Click to Play

We were driving along Route 4, almost in Burlington when I started seeing lightning. I wondered if I could find a good way to set up the cellphone to capture some of the lightning. All of a sudden, in my rear view mirror, I saw lightning strike a telephone pole. I pulled into the next parking lot and prepared to take another video with my cellphone. Just as I started taking my video, the transformer exploded and the power lines came crashing down, almost hitting the car we were in.

Click to Play

I called 911 to report the explosion and the small fire the downed power lines had started. Then I drove down the road across the street from the downed power lines. I hopped out of the car and took this picture of the smoldering grass and the downed lines.

Downed Powerlines, originally uploaded by Aldon.

Soon the emergency crews showed up.

Downed Powerlines, originally uploaded by Aldon.

I recorded a quick commentary:

I also posted a quick update via Twitterfone. Twitterfone transcribed the voice and sent it on to Twitter which in turn sent it to Facebook and FriendFeed. At this point, I continued on to the party.

It was a good party, but we had to leave early for Fiona’s Blog Talk Radio show. Needless to say, we talked a bit about the party and the transformer explosion on the show.

On the way home, I posted one final comment via Utterz:

Mobile post sent by ahynes1 using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Lowell, MA – Saturday, the New England News Forum convened a gathering of professional journalists, journalist educators, bloggers, citizen journalists, and others interested in the future of journalism to discuss ‘Sharing the News’. The most important thing I learned from this gathering is that I am not a Citizen Journalist.

There were many ways in which the phrase or idea of Citizen Journalism was challenged. Some wanted to see it broadened. Why ‘Citizen’? What about people who are not citizens? Do not people visiting from other countries also have a say? Should we instead use the word ‘Resident’, instead? Yet others spoke about journalism as a civic duty, similar to being called to serve on a jury. From their perspective Citizen Journalism has everything to do with citizenship. Everyone is likely at one point or another to report about what they have seen in a journalistic manner, and people need to understand that and how best to do it.

The word journalism received even more challenges. Some people recognized that not everyone who writes something online, even if they are writing in a journalistic style, even if they are writing for an organization that provides news created by professional journalists, such as people that participate in CNN’s iReports project, consider themselves journalists. This is compounded by the issue that many journalism professionals seem to think that if you don’t have a journalism degree, aren’t a member of a professional journalism guild, and aren’t getting paid for what you do, then you aren’t a journalist.

Various other names were presented, such as ‘resident correspondent’, which seems to fit much more nicely, especially for those resident correspondents that are corresponding with a traditional news organization.

Doug McGill led a fascinating discussion about discussion about the ‘Journalism in a Day’ workshops that he has been leading. One of the ideas that he presented is that it is unethical to write “I went to a meeting” type reports, listing out what happened in chronological order and expecting the readers to make sense out of it. I’m not sure that I agree with that. There are times that what is needed is simply for someone to document what happened, without trying to make sense out of it or present it in an easy to read, coherent story.

It has been a long busy week, finished off with a drive to Lowell, MA for the New England News Forum’s conference on Sharing the News. There are a lot of things to write up about the conference, but I’m too tired to focus. Those wanting some details should check my messages on the content sharing sites and microblogs. I put a little bit up there while I was there.

I did put up one post from the day, which should count towards meeting my NaBloPoMo goal for the month, but I figured I would write something a little more substantial I also managed to drop EntreCards on 300 sites for my 17th consecutive day. I didn’t read some of those blogs as closely as I have on other days.

Last night, I spent some time exploring a curious virtual world/web mashup called RocketOn. I haven’t gotten a chance to explore it any more this evening, and that will also have to wait. However, if you’ve looked at it and want an invite, drop me an email.

All of this, perhaps, foreshadows the month of July. We are going camping. I doubt I’ll drop 300 cards a day as often in July as I have in June. I may even struggle simply to get a blog post up some days.

More later. . .