An interview with a link spammer

From the Blog Herald a must read in The Register an Interview with a link spammer.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:39 PM | TrackBack

January Advisory Committee Report

I'm making up for being so late last month. *S* Here you go.

Posted by prolurkr at 05:31 PM | TrackBack

Some news is too good to keep to yourself

From the BBC News: Judge backs Guantanamo challenge

A US judge has ruled that special military tribunals being used to try hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are illegal.

Judge Joyce Hens Green said the tribunals denied the detainees their basic rights under the US constitution.

I think Judge Green says it best.

The war on terror "cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years," she wrote.

Posted by prolurkr at 01:42 PM | TrackBack

Ahhhh Yes, well said

From KevMoTown - Grad School Vortex's post Grad School Vortex.

As you may have guessed by the sudden drop in posting at this hyar blog, I have been sucked into the grad school vortex. Assigned reading leads to recommended reading leads to background reading leads to further development of selected reading to flesh out concepts found in previous readings all leading to a few pages of hypertextual analysis that despite all the reading make you feel that you haven't read enough.

Does the feeling ever stop? Me thinks not. *sigh* Do I know this feeling well, I'm sure many of you do as well. I think it's become lodged in my medulla and has become as natural to me as breathing. Scary ain't it.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:58 AM | TrackBack

An absolute must have for any self-respecting blog researcher

You simply have to have one of these don't you? Yes yes yes you do. Check here for products with this image on them.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:48 PM | TrackBack

Missing girls body found

On Thursday an Amber Alert was issued for Katlyn "Katie" Collman age 10 of Crothersville Indiana. This particular alert caught my ears for two reasons: 1) Crothersville is where my husband's company is located, so it's a town we know fairly well, and 2) because this appeared to be a stranger abduction rather then the usual non-custodial parent "abduction" that hits our airwaves in Indiana. Now while the non-custodial parent issues can be dangerous for the kids, usually they are more of a legal issue then a health and safety of the child issue. But Katie's disappearance is the kind of thing that gravely worries those of us with children in our lives.

They found Katie today, her body was located in a stream bed outside Seymour Indiana. An autopsy will be performed in Louisville tomorrow. News story is here.

There is no doubt that I will be watching every well-maintained older white Ford F-150 pickup truck, driven by a young skinny white guy, that I see in southern Indiana looking for someone that looks like the drawing. We will need to get this person in custody quickly for the safely of the children.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:19 PM | TrackBack

Interesting new study on adolescent sexual networks

I ran across this article in Eyebeam reBlog. The network diagrams are very interesting, click here to see. Ohio States News Release is available here. I will have to pull the article when I'm on campus next.

Bearman, Peter S., Moody, James, & Stovel, Katherine (2004). Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks. American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 44-90. Available: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJS/journal/issues/v110n1/070259/070259.html.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:32 AM | TrackBack

Thinking while I read blogs for coding

I am spending this evening and tomorrow, no doubt, helping my research team at BROG code data for our upcoming presentation at SunBelt. Coding blogs is always an interesting undertaking; I usually find blogs I want to follow for a while, blogs that scare the cotton out of me, and blogs that make me think. This particular blog's entry made me think so much I felt I had to share it here. Check out EuroPundits post HELP! by Nelson Ascher.

Ascher makes some excellent points about the apparent homogeneity of American culture that is illustrated every four years when we vote for president. He reminds me of comments I have oft repeated to my friends in Australia when they tell me their impressions of America and Americans, things like we all carry guns and believe in the death-penalty. I consistently say to them that "This is a big country and we all don't do anything the same consistently."

Posted by prolurkr at 10:39 PM | TrackBack

Adolescents and Teens Online Bibliography

I've added a new bibliography to the sidebar. The Adolescents and Teens Online Bibliography is available for your use. As with the weblog and blog bib there is no promise of all inclusiveness and this is the format there is. *S* Enjoy.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:26 PM | TrackBack

Breaking in new working spaces

This morning finds me breaking in a new work space at the IUPUI Library. It's somewhat odd that when I was working on my first masters, through SPEA, I parked just about exactly where I am sitting now only 4 floors down on ground level. I can look out of the window on my right and see my old office on the third floor of the Business/SPEA Building. When I would look out those windows I had an uninterrupted view of the Indianapolis skyline. Now this side of campus has a much more claustrophobic feel then it did back then.

I think I have found a carrel that is large enough and comfortable enough to allow me to work in this space. After I settled in and getting the wireless connected, I spent the morning combing through my blog citation database and the IU systems to make sure I have copies of all of the articles I need. Now I'm going to spend the afternoon reading. I need to finish reading and taking notes on - Serfaty, Viviane (2004). The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Then I get to start on - Blood, Rebecca (2002). The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge MA: Perseus Publishing. While reading this book I need to put together a general outline of topics for this section of my quals paper. I expect Blood, and a few other prescriptive writers about blogs will help form the backbone for this section of the paper.

Posted by prolurkr at 01:12 PM | TrackBack

Pictures from the trip to Hawai'i

I am posting my travel pictures from the trip to Hawai'i. I post them under the actual date the pictures were taken, so the first entry A trip to the top of Mauna Kae and is posted under January 7, 2005. You can get to the post by clicking the link above, or by going to either the archive for January 2005 or the category "Travel...on the road again".

Posted by prolurkr at 03:17 PM | TrackBack

Indiana University Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects, Student Representative

For the last 18 months I have served as the Sudent Representative to the Indiana University (Bloomington Campus) Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. It has been a wonderful learning experience. I am privileged each month to sit in a room and listen to a group of very experienced researchers share their ideas on the proper use of human subjects in research, question development, and research design. It has been an invaluable learning experience on many levels.

Over the holidays I began to think about requesting an extension on my two-year appointment for a second term. As things stand, I will be eligible to serve for the entire two-year period as I will not have completed my dissertation process before that time. Primarily I have really just begun feeling as though I have the knowledge required to fully participate in the process at the monthly review meetings. So after the last meeting I discussed the possibility of extending the appointment and I was encourage to make a formal request. Which I did on Monday.

I am pleased to say that my request was approved by the Director of the Committee, having been previously approved verbally by the Committee Chair. I'm not sure if that is the final word administratively, but it is good enough for me to announce it here.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:21 AM | TrackBack

A distributed blogging book?

SplaTT's Blog points to the beginnings of a distributed book on blogging, 100bloggers.

I looked over the initial list of bloggers involved in the project. None of the names jump out at me as being academics. To bad we do have things to add to the conversation. I sincerely hope that someone from the academic weblogging community is invited to participate.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:52 AM | TrackBack

Moving in the right direction

I've start down the path of making improvements to this site that should make it easier for all of us to use. I have undertaken a search for a project based webmaster to work with me to optimize the site and I hope to be working on that project as soon as possible. I will be documenting changes in posts so the rational will be available. In the mean time, I received an email from Andrew Stevens suggesting some changes that I can do with my somewhat limited technological capabilities.

First, I am changing the number of posts that appear on the main page from 30 days to 15. When I set up the blog I set a goal of two posts per week. At that rate the 30 days on the page option made sense. As I am posting far more often then projected I have been thinking that the page is to long, Andrew's email underlined that for me. The decision to set the limit at 15 days is fairly unscientificly, though thoughtfully, arrive upon. When I am traveling, and out of Internet reach, there have been up to 10 day gaps in posting. I don't want to have a blank page so the 15 day limit should prevent that from happening.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:35 AM | TrackBack

Productivity

It's that time again...when all the deadlines have actual dates attached and they seem to be looming at me from the calendar, project planning, and time management softwares.

So I have gone back to a technique I've used previously and should use continuously. I have a multifunction kitchen timer on my desk, in fact it sticks magnetically to one end of a metal shrouded powerbar. I set the timer to countdown 1 hour. When the alarm rings I get up from my desk and go do something from my household to-do list and drink a glass of water. Then I come back to the computer and reset the timer for another hour. It's amazing how much work you can get done this way and how much better you feel with a steady water intake, plus you get up periodically and walk around changing position and stretching as you go. All very good things.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:54 PM | TrackBack

Updated Weblog and Blog Bibliography

I have posted an updated version of the Weblog and Blog Bibliography, the sidebar has been updated to reflect this change. If your work is listed without an abstract please send me one and I will add it to my database. If you have weblog, blog, or we blog articles and presentations that are not listed, please send the the citation - with an abstract, if possible - and I will add that information as well. Contact me at lscheidt at indiana.edu.

Posted by prolurkr at 01:08 PM | TrackBack

CFP - Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies

Epistolarity in the Twenty-First Century For a Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies

(Published biannually by the Autobiography Society, supported by the Dept of Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater) Issue Editor: Margaretta Jolly

Deadline for abstracts: 1 August 2005

James Hewitt puts his love letters from Princess Diana up for auction; J.D. Salinger sues Ian Hamilton for quoting his archived letters in a literary biography; a circular e-mail petition about the oppression of Afghani women crashes its originator's university computer system; anthrax on envelopes adds to fears of terrorism; a woman accused of setting Colorado's biggest wildfire says she was burning a letter from her estranged husband; the testimonial letters of Korean "comfort women" help to get women's rights included in human rights charters; rockstar Alanis Morrisette riffs on unsent letters to former lovers; Ruth Picardie's e-mails, with her magazine column about dying of cancer, are published posthumously by her husband. Most people still write letters-though common opinion is that the art is dead and they are now rarely published as literature. Letters persist as celebrity or literary artefacts, faxes, e-mail, fantasized archival and genealogical heritages, testimony, visual communications, personal ads, and fan mail, as well as in more traditional forms of literary devices, historical resources, journalistic petitions, correspondence courses, and everyday communications. Arguably, letters like autobiography and biography have been energised by the age of information and global communication, confession and celebrity, testimony and trauma. Essays are accordingly invited that illuminate the practice and art of letter-writing in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, or that consider letters-or their study-from previous eras in the light of contemporary concerns. Examples of topics that essays may engage:

Truth, confession, witnessing, and the contemporary letter

Persuasion in letters; postmodernity and rhetoric

Letters, loss, and trauma

Letters and the biography industry

E-mail, faxes, mobile phones, and the death/regeneration of letter writing

Letters, historiography, and the return of (grand) narrative

Publishing, archiving, and epistolary ethics

Letter-writing, migration and diasporic identities

Visual letters; the letter in art and media

(Virtual) genders, sexualities, epistolarities

Literacy and letter-writing outside the academy

Letter-writing, globalisation, petitioning

The history of epistolary theory, letter-metaphors in critical theory

Fragmentation, individuality, community, and the letter

Please send abstracts of 300-400 words to the Margaretta Jolly at m.jolly@exeter.ac.uk, School of English, University of Exeter, Queen's Building, Exeter, EX4 6DD

Posted by prolurkr at 05:19 PM | TrackBack

CFP - Speech Acts/Oral Traditions

A Panel Discussion at the Eighth International Literature and Humanities Conference,INSCRIPTIONS '05: an arts and culture conference and festival at Eastern Mediterranean Universityin Famagusta, on the island of Cyprus May 12th - 13th, 2005

Submissions are invited for a Panel Discussion exploring the forms and modes in which literature, broadly defined, is transmitted orally; and how the production, transmission, and reception of "texts" in oral traditions may be addressed in terms of speech act theory or theories of communicative action.

.oral traditions.

For our purposes, forms of orally transmitted literature may include (but are not limited to) traditional narratives such as the epic and the ballad, and ritualized performances (lullabies, incantations, laments, paeans, etc.); and also oral histories, folktales, myths, legends (urban and other), fables, fairytales, ghost stories, proverbs, riddles, jokes and shaggy dog stories, improvised theater, "street talk" or argot, rap or popular song, gossip, rumor, hype, and buzz.

Such language forms may contribute to preserving existing cultural traditions and systems, or to creating new ones. They interact in complex ways with the methods and technologies used to record, print, archive, and investigate them, which codify and transform them through processes of editing, translation, and annotation; by extending their duration, and by recontextualizing their existence in time and place. These codifying processes are framed by, and at the same time generate, the shibboleths and creolized discourses of schools of theory and academic disciplines.

The global reach of electronic media and communication technologies-radio, television, the internet in particular-used to broadcast them has further complicated the study of oral texts not only by modifying their method of transmission, but by dislocating and decentering their cultural/historical provenance, their space of existence, and their audience.

.and speech acts.

In this global context, where the local conventions and assumptions of a culture are constantly being questioned or reconfigured in interaction with other cultures, the literary forms and modes of oral communication and their reception in academic and other disciplinary contexts provide an ideal field of inquiry for the various dimensions of speech act theory articulated by theorists such as Austin, Grice, Wittgenstein, Searle, Derrida, Iser, and Pratt, and the theory of communicative action developed by Habermas.

The relation between speech act theories and social theories of communicative rationality pivots on the operation and validity claims of "illocutionary" speech acts-that is, performative utterances with some inherent degree of agency-which depend on the complex system of socio-cultural assumptions, rules, and attitudes in which they occur.

Since the meaning of illocutionary acts-the "perlocutionary effects" they produce-depends on these conventions of their performance, the forms and modes of transmission and reception of oral literature would seem to constitute critical sites for investigating the illocutionary force of literary/fictional speech acts, and for developing models and paradigms for social action in real-world speech situations.

Prospective panelists are invited to send 250-word abstracts/proposals for 15-20 minute presentations on any aspect of these areas to rodney.sharkey@emu.edu.tr by 11th February, 2005. I look forward to learning about your research, and to a provocative discussion.

For more information about INSCRIPTIONS '05, please visit our website at http://www.emu.edu.tr/elh/inscriptions Please also check out our links to "Individual Research Presentations" and "Creative/Performance Work."

Posted by prolurkr at 05:08 PM | TrackBack

December Advisory Committee Report

Between HICSS and the blog being down, I am behind in posting my December 2004 Advisory Committee Report.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:20 PM | TrackBack

Abstract writing

I play on the boundaries of a variety of academic disciplines, which makes me a master of pretty much nothing. Or at least that is often how it feels when I sit down to write something new.

I have spent time this previous week reading and rereading sections of texts on semiotics preparing for an article that has been fomenting in my brain for some time. Semiotics is not necessarily a new field for me, but neither is it one in which I feel like an expert. Does one ever feel like an expert in semiotics? I think that goal could be a moving target.

Today I began my abstract preparatory work by rereading the first couple of chapters of:

Schechner, Richard (2002). Performance Studies: An Introduction. London & New York: Routledge.

I find that taking the time to reorient my thinking helps me to sidestep some of biases that seem to build up in my thinking as I wonder through my daily life. The process of discrimination, as a part of selection from the infinite whole, needs to be unblocked to allow the eyes to see something in a new and potentially different way.

So here I sit, surrounded by semiotics, linguistics, and performance texts as I work through the 250 words I am penning on the performative aspects of adolescent blog naming.

Posted by prolurkr at 01:49 PM | TrackBack

A week of blog thought - in retrospect

It's been an interesting week of thinking about blogs and blogging. On Tuesday, January 18 Google announced the creation of "nofollow," one tool in the fight against spam - SearchEngineWatch news story is here. I installed the MT plugin as soon as it was available, though I have not - as of yet - set comments back on by default.

On Wednesday January 19, 2005 Lilia Efimova of Mathemagenic spent some time with the BROG group. Pete Welsch blogged her presentation and some of the subsequent discussion.

Thursday, January 20, I spend most of the day crawling through the IU online resources looking for blog related articles and grabbing copies of those I don't have for my personal archive. I will be updating the Blog Bibliography shortly to reflect new entries.

Then on Friday I got my blog back and spent the day reinserting posts. Not tough work but it definitely meant some serious mutli-tasking was going on for most of the afternoon.

So here it is, Saturday. I get to pen an abstract for NCA today. Plus I'm sure I will be thinking more on the "close a door, open a window" concept as it relates to spammer. See this morning I found I have four new trackbacks to my post about the death of J. I. Miller: Two are to a prom dress site and two are to porn sites. So we closed, we attempted to partially close, the door on comment spam but left the window open for trackback spam. *sigh* This is very sad since much of the blog conversation that does happen, actually takes place through formal and informal trackback processes.

Cool I just found out that the MT plugin also blocks trackback spam. Excellent. It's amazing what you learn when you read the documentation. LOL I should do it more often.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:17 AM | TrackBack

Permanent link for Adolescent Diary Weblogs and the Unseen Audience

Adolescent Diary Weblogs and the Unseen Audience now has a permanent home on the SLIS Working Papers site. Sidebar links have been changed to reflect this and the temporary site of the paper will be removed from that server.

Posted by prolurkr at 03:36 PM | TrackBack

Professional-Lurker is BACK!

After an absence of almost two weeks Professional-Lurker is back. Thanks to the folks at 2xtreme Media for their assistance in repairing my damage. And I promise never to do that again.

I'm working to reenter all the posts that were not in the backup, so give me a day or so before you expect to see new posts.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:04 PM | TrackBack

AoIR Conference 2006

In case you don't read the Executive Committee notes for the Association of Internet Researchers let me be the first to tell you this. *leans in to whipser* The 2006 conference will be held in Brisbane Australia. So save your dollars cause it's an expensive trip from the US. But count me in for the whole thing. Oh and for you folks in Europe or Anya in Sydney, save your pennies for the airfare and so you can take a poor starving American to dinner. Personally I can't wait.

The following comment was added to the orignial post on January 13, 2005 11:50 PM and has been readded here:

My response was also posted as a comment January 14, 2005 08:33 AM:

Posted by prolurkr at 08:10 PM | TrackBack

Blog on hold

My ISP is restoring the full blog from a December 23, 2004 backup.  This should give me most of my comments back.  *sigh*  So the blog will be dead until the restore is complete.  Cross your fingers.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:05 PM | TrackBack

The merger of blogs and diaries - SixApart purchases LiveJournal

The rumors are true. Check out the facts here.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:21 PM | TrackBack

Home but not happy at the moment

I got home a few hours ago and just sat down to check email, etc. One of my routines is to pull the latests MT-Blacklist data from Jay Allen's site and add it to my own list. Sadly I did this and "co" was added to the kill list. Which means that when I ran the delete function all of the comments, save 2, on the blog were deleted. I am not happy, not happy at all. I don't know if I can recreate them from the .tar backup. I will have to find someone with much more experience with servers then I personally possess. For those of you that have commented I apologize.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:48 PM | TrackBack

South Kohala and Hilo

We awoke this morning to the pounding of the surf against the retaining wall outside the condo. It was a fairly heavy rain with lots of wind.
I had decided to head for Hilo after taking Dan to the airport so he could pickup a rental car. He headed south to Volcanoes National Park. I had visited Hilo on my whirl-wind Big Island trip roughly 10 years ago. I liked the town then and wanted a chance to see it now. Another one day trip, I'll have to remedy that in the near future and stay for awhile in the Hilo area.
My first stop was to make the drive through Waimea to the Waipio Valley Lookout. Waipio is on the other side of the Pololu Valley, roughly six valleys away actually. There are no roads connecting the two.
I snapped this picture as I wound my way on highway 240 from the junction with highway 19, toward the lookout.
This picture was taken from the Lookout parking lot before I hiked down to the shelter house.
Waipio is a fairly inaccessible location. The valley is 900 ft below the lookout. There are signs everywhere advising against driving down into the valley unless you are in a 4x4. The state highway department has a website detailing why only a fool would drive this road in anything else, click here for the specifics. The road has a 25% grade over all that ranges up to 45% in spots...not something I am likely to drive myself down anytime soon.
It is a lovely setting though. I do want to get down to the valley floor sometime soon and to some walking around.
After visiting the Lookout I started back toward Hilo stopping to snap this picture just so you can see how rolling the landscape is from the highway down to the ocean.
As I drove first down to the Lookout and then toward Hilo, a trio of ships were often visible below me. I caught this picture the seventh or eighth time I saw them.
Looking down into Hilo.
I had a nice time walking in downtown Hilo. It was fairly wet so I didn't cover the ground I would have had the afternoon been brighter. Of course Hilo gets a significant rainfall so this is pretty much the usual weather, though I am told that it often rains the morning and it bright in the afternoon. Many of the stores and buildings were closed as it was Sunday. I was able to grab an excellent lunch at Café Pesto very good food and great Sunday Jazz. I then decided I would drive out the University of Hawaii at Hilo Campus. I had tried to find the campus when I was here 10 years ago but had not driven out far enough west when I went south of town. I didn't find it this time either, seems like a theme. I got caught up in the incredible amount of growth that has taken place. I remember the turn back to the airport quite vividly as happening in open grass lands edged with forest. Now it is all strip malls. Probably a good thing economically but sad for the beauty of the place. . I remember the turn off so vividly because across from me at the turn was an elderly women in a bright medium blue early 1950's car, with white roof and trim. I really caught my eye. Then a couple of years later I was watching a documentary on the volcanoes and there she was again in the same car. Turns out she and her husband were important Hilo citizen. Wish I remembered their names but I don't. I will post more about my first trip to Hilo later, much of it is very funny or at least pretty ironic..
Well after tooling around Hilo for awhile I decided I would start back to Kona. Dan and I had left it that we might have dinner before my plane left the island and me being me I wanted to be in range should he call. On the way back I took the scenic drive along Onomea Bay. The drive goes past the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden sadly they were closing as I drove past so I will have to save a visit for a future trip. Reading the website I linked here makes me wish I had known to go there and possibly skipped Hilo, but hind-sight is always 20/20 isn't it. I did get some great shots of the bay though, and the countryside around it. Here is an overview.
At the end of the drive is a community building or a church I'm not sure which.
Behind the buildings is a lawn and field that roll down to the bluff overlooking the bay.
On the road there is a nice section of retaining wall that was overgrown with moss. I have a thing for moss, the way it looks like velvet and often feels like thistle. *shrug* It's cool stuff.
There are lots of bridges over beautiful streams that roll down from the mountains to the bay. This is just one of them.
And then there is the bay itself. Check here for history of both the Botanical Garden and the Onomea Bay.
This mission building caught my eye because of the name "Hongwanji Mission" in the title. Which is the same as the cemetery I had photographed the day before on the other side of the island. Now that I can access the net and do some searching I find that Hongwanji are Buddhist missions to the islands, some of which operate schools.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:22 PM | TrackBack

North Kohala and Waimea

Decided to take the day and head up the north up the coast. Dan Kutz joined me for my expedition. We made our first stop in Hawi (pronounced Havee). I had been in Hawi briefly in 2004, an liked the area I saw, our Flume the Ditch adventure departed from Hawi.
We stopped in Hawi to walk around a to begin our quest, a day long quest, to find Dan coffee.
Hawi is a little town with both a tropical and a mountain feel. In many ways I reminds me of the old towns I love in the Rockies.
We next stopped in Kapaau. I had to grab a picture of the local library. Just my kind of place I'm sure. I love the bright red roof.
Across the street from the library is a statue of King Kamehameha. Here is a link to a much better picture then mine.  There is a great story behind this statue, I strongly suggest you take the time to read it.  Clink here to read. Sadly none of the versions I'm finding online are as well written, and as thorough as the one posted on the community building behind the statue.
This lovely park sits to the side of the community building, behind the Kamehameha statue. After seeing the statue and grounds we walked up the road and grabbed lunch at the Bamboo Restaurant before continuing our drive along the coast. I had an excellent kailua pig roast sandwich with waffle fries.
We also wondered through the Kohala Book Shop. I bought three books: Cleeland, Hokulani (1994). OLELO 'OIWI KE KAHUA He Puke A'O Olelo Hawaii. Hilo HI: Aha Punana Leo, Inc. This book is a primer to learning to speak Hawaiian. Something I can play with between all of my academic pursuits...something fun. Seabrook, Jane (2004). Furry Logic: A Guide to Life's Little Challenges. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. it's a cute book of animal illustrations by the author with quotations. I love these little books of quotes for every occasion and state of mind. Heiderstadt, Dorothy (1963). Lois Says Aloha. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons. I simply could not pass up a book with both my name and a reference to Hawaii in the title, doing so would have been a crime. If you are interested this is also amusing because it's a young adult book.
We stopped just north of Pololu Valley Lookout where the road ends. Of course there were other visitors so we had to park up the road a bit and walk down to the actual end of the road lookout. I snapped picture of the view along the way.
There simply are no words of the beauty if this place. I sincerely wish that I could have done the 0.5 mile hike down to the black sand beach below. But if I had made it down it probably would have required a helicopter to get me out, my knees would never have survived the hike back up to the top. Swimming and snorkeling are NOT recommended in winter as strong surfs roll into this beach. The trails between Pololu and Waipio Valley Lookout are considered to be very beautiful and very treacherous. Look for my Waipio Valley Lookout pictures here.
After we checked out all the views of Pololu Valley we drove back toward Hawi stopping to take roadside sightseeing pictures along the way.
We decided to turn off the main road and check out Keokea Beach Park. There were several parties going on around the park so we tried to stay out of the folks way as much as we could.
A lone kayaker tried out the water.
The surf is pretty rough along the beach. Rough but lovely. The sound of waves crashing always tends to make me sleepy.
Dan contemplates the ocean.
The ocean contemplates Dan.
Along the road to the beach park is Kohala Hongwanji Mission Cemetery Halaula (North Kohala), a search on the name found recent obituaries but no history of the cemetery as I had hoped to find. I snapped pictures of several of the grave marker/headstones both old and new. The burial vaults remind me of those you see in New Orleans. Which makes sense given the volcanic soil here would not be easily dug for conventional western graves.
What a beautiful peaceful place to rest.
We then drove into Hawi and turned inland toward Waimea (South Kohala) and alternate road back to Kona. This is Parker Ranch country. Where cattle are grass feed from birth until they are old enough to ship off island to the mainland to be grain feed and fattened out.  I'm not sure that all of this land, in the pictures, is part of the Parker Ranch but the chances are good that the cattle are part of their herd.
Both Dan and I decided that we preferred the country up above 2000 feet. Much more my kinda place for sure, I'm such a country girl. Wish I could work this as my daily view.
Sadly it was dark by the time we headed down from Waimea so no pictures. At every stop during the day we had tried to find Dan a cup of coffee to no avail. By the time we stopped in Waimea it had become pretty funny that all the coffee shops were either closed or out of coffee when we were there. We had dinner back in Kona with John and Marie before they flew back to the mainland. Finally Dan could get coffee. LOL

Posted by prolurkr at 11:06 PM | TrackBack

A trip to the top of Mauna Kae

I got to met my primary goal on this trip to Hawaii. I signed up with Mauna Kea Summit Adventures for a trip up to the observatories near the peak of Mauna Kea. The van picked me up in Kona and headed north, with another stop near Waikoloa resorts, then we headed inland toward the Saddle Road. I didn't take the picture at the top of this entry. I posted it because it gives a nice overview of the campus in the snow.
Saddle Road is one of those mythical places. Anyone who has been to the Big Island and rented a car has heard how travel upon it voids your agreement. Saddle Road runs east and west through the center of the island between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and directly through a US Army Bombing Range. It is not the greatest road on which to be riding.
Once we reached the mountain our first stop was the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station. I bought some souvenirs - patches for the kids, a pin for hubby, and a fleece jacket for myself. This picture looks south from the visitors center. You can see that we are above the treeline already. We spend 40 minutes or so at this level to allow our bodies to begin to acclimatize to the altitude.
After we acclimatized and had a warm dinner with soup, sandwiches, and drinks we headed up to the first level of observatories. The temperature at the top was 30 F with 35 mph winds...which mean that it was very very cold. The guides pointed out each of the telescopes to us, but sad to say I couldn't make notes and memory is not good at altitude. Lucky for me the University of Hawai'i has a site that allows me to identify which instruments I saw and photographed. This shot is of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
This shot looks up from the Caltech toward to upper level instruments. If you are also checking the University of Hawai'i site these buildings are pictured on the near left. That tiny telescope on the far right of my picture is the UH 0.6-m telescope, the first telescope built on the mountain. It is the only instrument with an actual eyepiece, all of the others are digital and allow remote viewing. We were told that the UH is also unheated so it's not the most popular of places to hang out if you are an astronomer.
This picture looks at the lower instruments and tries to catch the variety of structures present. The metallic tin can building is the Subaru Telescope. Next to the Subaru are the twin buildings of the W. M. Keck Observatory. The Keck has been in the astronomical news of late because of the amazing pictures they have been able to capture since modifying the twin instruments.
I snapped this pic to show you the ski and snowboard tracks that run down the snow slope. Sadly even with PhotoShopping, at my minimalist skill level, I can't get the tracks to show clearly. If you look closely along the lower third of the snow field you can see the edges of a few turns cut into the field.
This shot looks east out over Hilo. I am told that the shadow of the mountain stretches almost 200 miles, far out to sea.
This shot looks north and catches some lovely colors bouncing off the cloud cover below us.
This is my favorite picture. It looks up at the Gemini Telescope from our vantage point alongside the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
A sunset shot with United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.
Sunset colors reflected on the snow pack. The red and white banded stakes are used to gage snow removal and keep the plows on the road...cause it's a long way down.
Other cold people in our tour provided parka's. It was really cold up here. I had brought fleece cap and gloves with me from the mainland. I wore then under my issued parka and gloves. Thank goodness for them, since it meant when my hood blew off or I wanted to take pictures I was not exposing totally bare skin. Even with all of this warm covering I had windburned cheeks for a couple of days.
Sunset from the mountain. No green flash but a very beautiful end to the day.
You can't see the difference well but some of the telescopes are opening as the night sky begins to bloom after sunset.
After sunset we went back down the mountain, stopping first at the visitors center to allow access to restrooms. Then we went down Saddle Road to the entrance to the Girls Club Camp so we had a clear dark sky, and warmer temperatures, for stargazing. I tried to override my autoflash option and get a nice shot of the sky. I tried twice and couldn't make it happen...garnering a stern reprimand from our guide. When I got home I decided to PhotoShop one of the apparently black pictures just to see what might come forward. I was amazed when this beautiful star field popped out.
The star gazing part of the tour was worth the money in and of itself. We were viewing the night sky through Celestron Nexstar 8 GPS telescopes. I saw things in the sky that I have only seen in photographs. I got a great view of the Zodiacal Light with my bare eyes. I saw the rings of Saturn and it's moon Titan through the telescope.
I am not usually a "tour" kind of person. But the difficulties in gaining access to the Mauna Kea summit, the inhospitable conditions, and the fragility of the ecosystem; I think the only way tourists should try to access the mountain is with one of the several tour companies that run daily trips to the observatories. For more information on the problems with accessing the mountain yourself check here.  For pictures of the roads and what can happen on them check here.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:55 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - Persistent Conversation Track - Sit, Hollan, & Griswold

My final blogged paper is:

Sit, Ryan Y., Hollan, James D., & Griswold, William G. (Jan., 2005). Digital Photos as Conversational Anchors. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Sorry there was no abstract on the paper. The full paper will be available on the ACM archive at a future date. The presentation was given by

My notes follow:

The author handed out a single sheet of paper to the audience. On it are two photos, one at the op of the page and one near the middle. Below each photo is chat discourse. On the back is a clip of online discourse where a photo is used as an avatar to anchor each exchange.

Experimental tool was used to create these exchanges. It is called JussPress.

Digital photo sharing includes capturing, transferring, editing, organizing, and publishing.

JussPress decreases the work to just capturing the picture and then the system performs the other steps automatically.

The system was demo-ed for the audience. The site is available at JussPress.

Design Rational for the conversation. Photos are shared between the photographer and the viewer. This sharing engenders comments from the viewers.

Commenting component of the site was hard to write, hard to read, and hard to check. [These are the same issues that commentors face within blog structures as well.]

The comment system was then demo-ed for the audience.

The use of JussPress improves coherency in turn adjacency, overlap, and topic decay.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:55 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - Digital Documents Track Best Paper Winner

Kutz, Daniel O. & Herring, Susan C. (Jan., 2005). Micro-Longitudinal Analysis of Web News Updates. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Good work Dan and Susan.

Posted by prolurkr at 05:57 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - Persistent Conversation Track - Dennis & Jarrett

The last weblog presentation in this time slot was:

Dennis, Brian M. & Jarrett, Azzari C. (Jan., 2005). NusEye: Visualizing Network Structure to Support Navigation of Aggregated Content. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

No abstract was presented with the electronic (CD-ROM) version of the paper. The paper will be available from the ACM archive at a future date. THe presentation was given by Azzri C. Jarrett.

New aggregators are becoming increasingly popular.

Snapshot of BlogLines is shown.

New aggregators do allow you to keep information neat but they do not allow you to track content across feeds.

NusEye
Goal: Reduce information overloead by improving navigation to users of news aggregators.
Increase scanability
Avoid source stagnations

initial approach
Exploit social network analysis structure amongst content items, content sources, and users.
User end: Extending news aggregator.

RSS feeds that are connected to RSS feeds create a network.

Three affiliation networks

Radial diagram was presented that display the word analysis of the network. See the paper for details.

Focus groups with 12 participants both those that use and are unfamiliar with aggregators.

Network visualization was problematic.

Azzari Jarrett's blog hardscrabble is available here.

Posted by prolurkr at 04:21 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - Persistent Conversation Track - Efimova Presentation

The Persistent Conversation track started out this morning with Lilia's presentation.

Efimova, Lilia & de Moor, Aldo (2005). Beyond personal webpublishing: An exploratory study of conversational blogging practices. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Abstract: Although initially developed as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, weblogs increasingly appear to facilitate conversations. The objective of this study is to identify practices of conversational blogging. This paper presents results of an exploratory qualitative analysis of a weblog mediated conversation case, focusing on participation rhythm, media choices and specific linking practices. Based on our findings we propose attributes of conversational blogging: linking as conversational glue, tangential conversations and interplays between conversation with self and conversations with others. Finally, future research directions are discussed.

The paper will be available from the ACM archive at a future date. The paper was presented by Lilia Efimova.

Lilia polled the audience and most knew what blogs were. Several keep blogs.

Weblogs were designed as tools for personal publishing not as tools of conversation.

It's not the first time that people have used technologies to communicate where the tech was not originally designed for communication.

Average blog is not conversational (Herring et al 2004). When they are when, why, and how are they conversations?

Weblog conversation occur though links between blogs. Links are connections.

Conversation occurs through comments within the post, and trackback between blogs.

Definition of weblog conversations: Multiple weblog posts on a topic connected via links.

Conversations are distributed and fragmentary.

Links are uni-directional which limits the readers ability to pull together the conversational threads.

There is a lack of tracing technologies to pull together these threads.

Distinguishes between tools, practices, and artifacts.

Want to understand the practices of particular subcultures of blog users.
Culture specific tools.
Culture specific practices

Actionable sense conversations defined as knowledge management bloggers who are early adopters.

Results
The slides presented include several charts that are difficult to read on the overhead. Please check the paper for information.
Multiple media conversation
Skype
phone
email
SocialText Workspace (wiki)
Graph that shows links between blogs was displayed. See the paper for information.
A graph showing summaries between posts was displayed. See the paper for information.
A graph showing linking within the authors posts was displayed. See the paper for information.

Conversational blogging
Conversation with no shared space
Distributed over multiple blogs.
Links that glue it together
tangential conversations instead of a single one
Global conversations and local in comment to specific posts
Parallel discussion of subposts.
Conversation with self
Use of different media
Conversation with self net to conversations with others
Linking of ones own posts.
Choices between postings
Results
Hard to generalize
Other cases
Frequency scale of weblog conversations
Nature of weblog conversations
Tools for conversation tracking and visualization
Shaping research methods

Posted by prolurkr at 11:06 AM | TrackBack

HICSS-38 - Advances in Teaching and Learning Techniques Track

I attended the following presentation during the 3:00-4:30 p.m. session.

Du, H. S. & Wagner, C. (2005). Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Abstract: The study investigates the impact of weblog use on individual learning in a university environment. Weblogs are a relatively new knowledge sharing technology, which enables people to record their thoughts in diary form and publish those diaries as web pages, without programming or HTML coding. The research sought to empirically determine whether the keeping of on-going (web based) learning logs throughout a semester would result in better overall student performance. This was hypothesized, because web based learning logs appear to promote constructivist learning, provide reinforcement, and increase accountability (non-anonymous idea sharing). Results from an information systems undergraduate course with 31 students indicate that weblog performance is a significant predictor for learning outcome, while traditional coursework is not. Weblogs appear to have highest predictive power for high and low performing students, but much less predictive value for medium performers. Results also suggest that there is a learning effect for weblog authoring.

The paper will be available on from the ACM archive at a future date. The paper was presented by Helen S. Du.

My notes from the presentation follow:

The authors are from the City University of Hong Kong

Weblogs were used as online learning logs. Students reflected their weekly learning experiences.

Weblogs provide a venue for assessing student learning, and active learning.

Weblogs are instant publishing, auto-archiving, allow hyperlinking, and allow others to provide comments and feedback.

Weblogs further enhance the effectiveness of a traditional learning log.

Examples shown from free Blogger accounts used by students.

RQ: Does the continuous use of web-based learning logs increase students performance?

Underlying theories:
constructivist
Cognative Constructivism
Collaborative Constructivism

Theoretical Development:
Promote student active learning
Reinforce individual accountability
Facilitates collaborative learning

Hypothesis
H1: Impact of weblog on learning performance
H2: Continuous impact of weblog use
H3: Learner group impact

Research Design:
Visual Organization course with 31 students
One semester (13 weeks) in 2003/2004
Weekly learning log exercises using weblogs
Learning assessment
Weblog performance. completion of exercises
Coursework performance
Exam
Data Collection and Measurement
9 weblog entries graded on scale from 4.0 (excellent) to 0.0 (fail)
Graded by one instructor
Based on Weimer's learning log, 2002
Richness
Evidence of thoughtful responses
Support provided for other students
Relevance to source content
Technical skill
Empirical results:
Grades of students who blog predicted final class grade.
Weblog performance over time correlate week to week, particularly from week 5 to week 9.
Discussion and Implications
Learner centered learning
More active outside the classroom
Benchmarking and self-assessment.
Predictability rather then causality
Empirical results show that weblogs impact learning
Promote new ways to teaching/learning.
Quantitative evidence for the usefulness of weblogs as a knowledge sharing medium and as a tool.

The authors used Blogger free accounts but plan to use Modblog.com in the future.

The authors have used Modblog in their most recent class. You can see the master blog, which acts as an aggregator for the student blogs, here.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:36 PM | TrackBack

HICSS-38 - Information Retrieval and Digital Library Applications. Kutz & Herring

Blogged by John Paolillo

Kutz, Daniel O. & Herring, Susan C. (Jan., 2005). Micro-Longitudinal Analysis of Web News Updates. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Notes:

News websites have dynamic content.
How dymanic?

Microlongitudinal content analysis: content analysis, but with a really short time scale (every minute). Study used three sites (CNN,BBC, al Jazeera) focused on top news stories, analyzed with a critical linguistic approach. Automated data capture method were used, with one-minute intervals (after initial testing showed two-minute intervals of change, so as to capture all change)

Headline, blurb, image, caption text all captured.

Coding categories
Text: new, update, revision (w/ five subtypes:
clarification, more/less ideology, retraction, repeat)
Images: revision, new, repeat, other

... (because I was focussing on the talk I didn't manage to blog a lot of this, so see Dan's slides if possible) ...

examples

Updates: Kerry in the Dem primaries.
Clarifications: car bomb kills ... tuesday -> yesterday
Ideology: die -> killed, President Putin -> Russian leader, says -> blames

Images: more images with a news story, an easy way to show dynamic activity for a news site.

examples
George bush in a CNN story, updated six times, text updated 3 times in same period.

Most changes are changes in context, but al Jazeera uses a lot of repeats (randomly cycle through 3 images, repeat in a way that BBC and CNN do not).

Top stories do not change frequently; only 1/2 add new info.

Implications for IR: sample in 3 hour intervals in 3 hour intervals, for all detail, look at 2 minute intervals.

Digital documents are dynamic, so editorial process is taking place in the public eye, but this is not necessarily noticed, archives could support understanding of these documents.

Future: look at whole site, and look at weblogs etc.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:15 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - Genres of Digital Documents Track

I started off today with the Digital Documents track. I saw the following paper presented:

Emigh, W. & Herring, S. C. (2005). Collaborative Authoring on the Web: A Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias. In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a genre analysis of two web-based collaborative authoring environments, Wikipedia and Everything2, both of which are intended as repositories of encyclopedic knowledge and are open to contributions from the public. Using corpus linguistic methods and factor analysis of word counts for features of formality and informality, we show that the greater the degree of post-production editorial control afforded by the system, the more formal and standardized the language of the collaboratively-authored documents becomes, analogous to that found in traditional print encyclopedias. Paradoxically, users who faithfully appropriate such systems create homogeneous entries, at odds with the goal of open-access authoring environments to create diverse content. The findings shed light on how users, acting through mechanisms provided by the system, can shape (or not) features of content in particular ways. We conclude by identifying sub-genres of web-based collaborative authoring environments based on their technical affordances.

This paper will be available on the ACM archive at a future date. This paper was nominated for the Best Paper Award. The presentration was given by John Paolillo

Following are my notes:

Looking at encyclopedias online compared to the idea of a know;ledge repository.

Slide shows a continuum of Knowledge Repositories ranging from Print encyclopedia through Wikipedia and Everything2 ending with the possibility of Usenet newsgroups functioning as knowledge repository.

Continuum is divided into User Created and Expert Created resources.

Wiki allows users to freely create and edit web page content using any web browsers

Challenges are editorial control vs. authorial control.

Wikipedia solution is to take a neutral point of view on policy...anyone can be an author and anyone can be an editor.

Quality is maintained through cashing pages for potential reconstruction.

Everything2 solution is to rank entries so that anyone can author but their additions may not be considered to be of equal value.

Super editors can remove content.

Supplementary sites include Wikipedia Discussion and Columbia Encyclopedia

Sampling: 15 topics from 4 sources (N=49), common to Wikipedia and Everything2. Each is 100+ words across a range of topics.

Uses Quantitative genre analysis - Biber, Chafe, etc.

Qualitative observations as well.

Factor analysis slide shows a complex figure that should be viewed in the paper.

Wikipedia is somewhat more formal then Everything2.

Wikipedia and Columbia Encyclopedia entries are suprisingly similar.

Implications
Print vs. online distinction is not supported.
Expert vs. User-created distinction is not supported.
Distinction is drawn between the edited and unedited sites.

Posted by prolurkr at 03:25 PM | TrackBack

HICSS 38 - E-Democracy Cluster

I attended this session to hear one paper that discusses blogs/blogging.

Green, D. T. & Pearson, J. M. (2005). Social Software and Cyber Networks: Ties That Bind or Weak Associations within the Political Organization? In Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Abstract: The 2004 U.S. Presidential election has tapped into the online medium to reach the growing demographic of online citizens. In the Democratic Party's primary season, the Howard Dean campaign organization proved to be phenomenally successful at incorporating the online medium into its fundraising and grassroots mobilization, going beyond the online organizing and fundraising success of campaigns of John McCain in 2000. Both the Dean and McCain organizations were praised for their use of the Web to organize at the "grassroots" level as well as their accomplishment in raising money. The current paper examines the unique social network ties that are created through the use of social software (i.e. blogs, email, instant messaging, meetup.com), specifically focusing on its use by political campaigns to engage potential voters in what could be considered a growing electronic democracy. Media richness is also taken into account.

The paper will be available from the ACM archive at a future date.

Following are my notes from the presentation:

The paper deals with how the media uses the internet to solicit the voters in the US.

Media use can influence the ties between political parties and their members.

What roles does media richness have in this process?

Defines social software as software that allows individuals to communicate.

2004 US Presidential race saw the most intense and diverse use of the social software to date.

Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean used social software in a way that dramatically altered political discourse. Example: Used a weblog to keep voters up to date on the candidates activities.

Dean campaign
Embraced the internet early
Opponents said that he was the "first politician to take full advantage of the self-organizing networks of supports that sites like Meetup.com and Web loggers can provide."
The Meetup.com site suggests that over 180,000 people registered for Dean get-togethers through its site.
Generated more than $40 million in contributions via the web.
Employed SocialText software and 400 volunteers to decentralize news analysis.

Strength of ties:
A tie is said to exist between communicators wherever they exchange or share resources such as goods, services, social support or information.
Strength of a tie is normally assessed by looking at a combination of factors:
frequency of contact
duration of association
intimacy of the tie
povision of reciprocal services, and
kinship.
Propositions
Latent ties initiated online will develop into weak ties, and subsequently strong ties through the continued and frequent use of a variety of social software.
The use of multiple types of social software in communication presents a setting where ties can form
Thew internet provides both political as well as other organization are quick and easy.
Media richness helps determine the development of the ties
Richer rather then leaner media provide the best setting in which latent ties can develop into weak ties.
Richer rather than leaner media provide the best setting in which weak ties develop into strong ties
Online ties may take longer and more frequent interaction to develop into strong ties
Media richness helps determine the speed at which ties can develop over time
Richer rather than leaner media provide the better seeing in which latent ties can develop into strong ties.
Conclusion
Potentially bring together a large group of people with similar interests quickly and cheaply.
Which demographic is effected by the use of these technologies.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:10 PM | TrackBack

A quiet Sunday on the Big Island

We slept in on Sunday January 2 and enjoyed a quiet morning watching the ocean from the lanai. Our condo is waterfront and ground level, so we have great viewing. This morning we were greeted by whales spouting and breaching about 500 yards out from the beach. No pictures of them now...I was to busy watching to get the camera. In the afternoon we headed south to toward Captain Cook and the Place of Refuge.
Across the inlet is the Captain Cook Monument. Look for the white obelisk, the picture was taken with the cameras telephoto lens. Sorry this is the best I can do. The tip of land, in the picture, is the property of the United Kingdom to this day. It memorializes where Captain Cook was killed. The actual facts of his death are disputed, did he cause the actions that lead to his end or was he attacked unprovoked. For more information on Cook click here to see a links list.
Next to the landing across from the memorial is a Hawaiian Religious site. The entrance was blocked and visitors were asked to respect the place. On the wall is a plaque that says: In this Heiau January 28, 1779 Captain James Cook RN read the english burial service over WIlliam Whatman, Seaman. THe first recorded christian service in the Hawaiian Islands. Erected by the Kona Civic Club 1928
This shot shows the length of the walls that protect the shrine.
This shot looks along the length of the shrine and to the waterfront.
After the Captain Cook Monument we moved further south to visit The Place of Refuge. This shot shows the edge of the beach as you enter the park.
A shot of the ocean from the first beach we encountered.
A mockup of a temple.
Following are two shots from the demonstration area of the park. Where they are storing kayaks and creating statues for the park.
There were many green turtles swimming, eating, and sunbathing around the tidal pools. Following are several shots that let you get a good look at these beautiful creatures. Many of my pictures were taken with the telephoto lens, as one must stay at least 15 feet from the endangered turtles.
How many green turtles can you find in this picture (magnification may be required)? The easy answer is more than one.
After The Place of Refuge we stopped at a coffee roaster and bought ice cream...consider it a challenge to the organization of the place. *S* In their gardens we saw a variety of escargot on the hoof, as it were.

Posted by prolurkr at 07:21 PM | TrackBack

A day in New Orleans

Hubby and I spent the day of December 31, 2004 wondering the French Quarter. I didn't snap a lot of pictures since I was here earlier this year, see June 8, 2004. We started the day with breakfast at Cafe' Pontalba, one of my favorite spots in the city. From the cafe' one can take in most of the sights and sounds that surround Jackson Square.
We spent lots of time sitting at the RiverWalk watching the people and the ships and talking.
This ocean going ship was heading down river from the port. We watched it work its way under the bridge then fight the currents to turn toward the sea.
For some reason I got confused and was thinking that my June 8, 2004 post included only balcony pictures and no galleries. *sigh* Sadly it was the reverse. SO here are more gallery pictures but still no balconies.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:59 PM | TrackBack

The drive from Houston

Hubby and I drove from Houston to New Orleans, on December 30. We saw some interesting sights.

In Texas we passed a field that was filled with a herd of Brahman cattle.

Southeastern Texas is home to many rice farms. We passed several on our drive. It's a very different form of farming then I am used to from Southern Indiana.

We also passed a palm tree farm. I've never seen so many palms in one place, let alone in rows.

We stopped at a truck stop outside Beumont Texas. I wondered the rows a bit looking at stuff - pine airfresheners, tie-down cables, and mud-flaps - when I noticed the map rack and had to laugh out loud. On the rack there were the usual regional maps one would expect for Texas and Louisiana. But along with them were three compartments of maps for West Lafayette/Lafayette Indiana. I can only assume that someone misordered and intended to get more Lafayette Louisiana maps instead. Click here to see just how far apart these two cities really are.

Once we crossed into Louisiana we made a short stop to check directions, our stop happened to be next to a swamp. I rolled down the window a bit and was amazed at the sounds of the frogs crocking...lots of frogs were making their presence known.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:44 PM | TrackBack