Talking about Erin Markes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 10:23Tomorrow afternoon at around 2:35, Eastern Time, I will be a guest on Rick Outzen’s radio show, "In Your Head Radio" coming at you from News Radio 1620 in Pensacola, FL. Rick has a blog where he has been writing about the Erin Markes case. Included on his blog is a link to his exclusive interview with Erin Markes. It is a great interview and I encourage everyone to listen to it.
In another entry, he points to various additional articles about Erin and her son. Last week, Erin spent the night with her son for the first time since she was arrested. New bedsores continue to develop, even though nurses are turning him every hour. However, a new formula has been found that he is managing gain a little weight again.
I know how these radio interviews go. You have so much to you want to say, and just a short period to say it in. My mind runs over different questions Rick might ask, and how I would respond. Then, when the interview is over, you kick yourself for not getting out some important point that you forgot while you were on the air.
So, I’ll probably put up a blog post afterwards talking about all those things I wanted to say, but didn’t. If you get a chance, listen in, then come back afterwards and read about what I wanted to say, but forgot.
Offline Sunday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/20/2008 - 14:29Allergies? Some sort of bug? I’m not sure, but I’m dragging today. There has been little email, and little on Twitter, so I’m staying abreast of most of that. Fiona is playing Club Penguin, and I’m helping her a little with that. I scan a few other blogs, social networks, and so on, but mostly, I’m too tired to think.
My traffic has been quite high over the past few days as people did searches on Victoria Lindsey. I hit 500 uniques in a single day and my monthly uniques has broken 4,300, but that traffic is dropping off, and traffic is returning to normal.
So, not a lot of content today. If it wasn’t for NaBloPoMo, the effort to post every day out of a month, I’d probably let this day pass. But, I haven’t missed a day yet this year, so I figure I should at least try to make it through April.
Second Life Looses a Superhero: Hunter Talon, aka Joseph Button
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/19/2008 - 08:58I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
When my eldest daughters were in kindergarten, they learned this song. They would sing it with the hope and optimism that you only seem to find in healthy young children. They have grown and they have flown. They are living lives beyond our imaginations those many years ago.
But what about a child born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare birth defect? Children born with spinal muscular atrophy rarely live beyond the first couple years of their lives. Do we believe these children can fly?
If you said no, I urge you to consider the case of Joseph Button, known in Second Life as Hunter Talon. Hunter Talon’s imagination soared and brought many people with it. He shared his imagination online and as a screenwriter and a graphic novelist. He passed away earlier this month.
I never knew Joe, so I think it is best to let other sources speak for themselves. First, I would encourage you to check out Joe’s MySpace page. His ‘About Me’ section starts off:
I slayed a hundred Nazis with a Swiss Army Knife and a standard issue PCL, or a Paper Clip Launcher to you civilians. It was slow, it was gruesome, it was a complete lie. But I need friends and killing Nazis always earns friends.
A local television station interviewed him here:
When, Joseph Button passed away. His sister added this comment on his MySpace page:
Joe defied the odds and lived nearly 25 years with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a rare medical condition, when doctors predicted he wouldn't live past age 2. He lived each day with enthusiasm and accomplished so much in life, always with the desire to help others. In death he chose to donate his body for medical research with the hope that something might be learned about his disease. We would like to continue Joe's wish of helping others and have created a memorial fund for those that would like to contribute in
Joe's name.Joseph Button Memorial Fund
c/o The Button Family
2748 Sharon Road
Jarrettsville, MD 21084
So to any of you that don’t believe you can fly, take a lesson from Joe Button and spread your wings and fly away.
Drupal and Graphviz – Working notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 14:20The other day, I got a phone call from a person interested in creating some social network graphs similar to those that I did with MyBlogLog. Those graphs were created with Graphviz, a very graph visualization package.
For the images I created, I did them all from command line prompts. I gathered the data and then ran a program that created images from the data. I then uploaded the images to Flickr.
However, there are supposed to be packages to create the graphs on the fly. One is Webdot, which is based on TCL and a simplified version that is supposed to work in perl. Unfortunately, the webdot code comes in an RPM installer, which I haven’t figured out how to use on my Ubuntu machine and the perl looks like it probably needs a little bit of hacking to set up.
So, I was pleased to find that there is a Graphviz filter for Drupal. Currently, it is set for Drupal 5, but by adding a couple lines to the info files, you can get it to work in Drupal 6, or so it seems.
I installed the Graphviz filter on one of my machines. By poking around a little, I found that I needed to install the Graphviz PEAR package as well. The way the Drupal Filter is set up, it seems like the best approach is to install the Image directory as a subdirectory of the Drupal filter’s directory. With all this in place, I the filter started working, with one minor exception. It gave me the error message:
“There was an error rendering the Graphviz file using format svg.”
Well, it turns out that the host I was working on doesn’t have Graphviz setup. So, the filter and the PEAR package appear to work, but the call to Graphviz itself didn’t generate any images. Oh well. Next step, install Drupal 6 on a machine I have that does have Graphviz running and/or get Graphviz installed on the machine where I’ve setup Drupal 6, the filter and the PEAR package.
Meanwhile, I’m still spending time upgrading various sites to Drupal 6.2. Beyond that, it is a beautiful spring day. Kim’s brother and his family are in town visiting, so I’ll probably leave the rest of this for a bit later.
Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 10:46As I go through my emails, there are all kinds of different things I want to highlight. I’ve attempted to sort them and put them into context.
Connecticut Political News
John Hartwell, who is running for State Senate reports that he has picked up the last few donations he needed to qualify for public financing and is now spending his time communicating with voters about the important issues facing the state. You can get more information at John Hartwell’s campaign website.
Connecticut Teach Against Genocide reports that the genocide education bill, House Bill 5595, has passed the Education and Appropriations Committees and is moving on to the full house.
Sheila at Woodbridge Dems reports having been called by Mountain West Research, a firm that has been accused in the past of doing push polling for Lieberman. I’m curious, has anyone else been recently called by Mountain West here in Connecticut?
She also mentioned a great report by the League of Women Voters about Emerging Media and Internet Issues: E-Democracy for Connecticut. It is a great report worth reading.
One Connecticut has sent out an email about a bill, 5618, in the Connecticut General Assembly regarding the Husky program. They are encouraging people to contact the Insurance and Real Estate Committee and urge them to pass it as well, and without any amendments!
Beyond Connecticut
Project Laundry List is reporting that Colorado passed a Right to Dry law. HB 1270 would prohibit Homeowners Associations from restricting energy efficiency measures. They also announce that April 19th is National Hanging Out Day.
Jubilee USA reports that the Jubilee Act, (HR 2634) has passed the House and is now headed on to the Senate. Jubilee USA is seeking third world debt cancellation.
Global Kids and the International Human Rights Law Institute are holding ICC101, Learn the Basics about the International Criminal Court on Thursday April 24, 7-9:30PM EDT. For more information, check out the Justice Center online.
Protests
On April 25th, President Bush will attend a fundraiser at Henry Kissinger’s house in Kent. CT Opposes the War is organizing a protest. 9 AM to 1 PM at 50 Henderson Road, Kent.
Dream for Darfur is organizing a Protest at Coke Headquarters on Sunday April 27th from 2:30- 3:30 pm at 711 5th Ave on the northeast corner of 55th St in New York City.
The spoke and sung word
There will be a production of Hair at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury on May 9th. Details can be found here.
I got an email that Vienna Teng will be performing at the Green Apple Festival at Central Park, Rumsey Playfield, in New York City Sunday, 20 April 2008 at 12:00 pm. I heard Vienna last year at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. If you’re in New York, you should stop by and hear her.
Lauren Doninger wrote about The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization. I pointed out LibriVox as well. Both are great sites for picking up stories to listen to.
Digital Social Media
digitialmediawire has two interesting articles up right now about YouTube. The first is that YouTube Says User Partners Have So Far Earned $1 Million. Then, there is the article that Egal, the company that created Lonelygirl15, has raised $5 million in its first round of financing. I’ve been a fan of Lonelygirl15 for quite a while, and I’m pleased to see them get funding.
Shelly Palmer at JackMyers.com has another interesting article up. This time she’s writing about why she doesn’t think it’s
an even remotely credible prediction that you could have 345 million digital television ready (able to interpret and receive signals from local broadcast television signals) handsets in the market by 2012. As a person that shoots video with my cellphone and sends them to friends and to the web, I think she’s on the right track, even though I would have liked to hear her talk more about the disruptive nature of people shooting their own videos and sharing them online.
and finally
Leslie Weinberg writes about the Hope in Motion, Walk, Run, & Ride 2008 fundraiser for Stamford Hospital’s Bennet Cancer Center. The event will take place on June 1st. Contribute if you can.
