teamsiems.com tagline

I don’t write about myself or this site too often, but I had a small epiphany about the tagline of teamsiems.com. Like every other story I can remember this story starts off with, “I was surfing around the web and….” I happened upon the Google’s Webmaster Tools website. This site lists, among other things, a ranking of your site’s pages in the Google search engine. It made me realize that visitors were coming to my site for some odd topics, and furthermore the tagline was basically lying or misrepresenting the content of teamsiems.com. After that revelation I wanted to fix it and make it more search engine friendly.

I started this site in 2006 as a sandbox to try new web technologies and techniques. In the back of my mind I always wanted to make this into a business. Here we are in 2010 and I have launched a few sites from here, but for the most part this site has become my collection of blog posts and PHP code. It’s time to acknowledge that this site will not become a business anytime soon and clearly state that this site, like my life, is a collection of odds and ends and (seemingly) random bits of information.

How do I reflect this idea on this site? I started with the tagline. I’ve burned through a few description tags and taglines since 2006, but the last one I wrote was done quickly and it only furthered the murky purpose of this site: organized chaos of a web developer. I am a web developer, but teamsiems.com really doesn’t have anything to do with web development.

I rewrote the tagline. It’s not as easy as it looks. It took me a while to think of a tagline that more accurately reflects the scope of this site: The Siems Team: observing life on the web. I think this is true. My name is Siems. I recently added more members to my family and it’s not a stretch to call us teamsiems. I think the last part is clever. I observe and collect information from the web and store it here – on the web.

So, until I change it again, this site will remain a collection of life taken from the web and saved on the web.

Memphis Ribs in Winter?

In my defense I offer two arguments: 1) it has been about 8 months since I made brisket, 2) tomorrow is the Super Bowl and (2.5) we had good weather today. I wanted some ribs so I found a recipe from Marlboro of all places and decided what the heck.

There is something you need to know about BBQ: all barbecue is not the same. And for god’s sakes don’t slap some barbecue sauce made in New Jersey on a rack of ribs and call it barbecue. I didn’t learn about barbecue styles until I came to Texas, but apparently there are 4 styles in the US.

Memphis style comes wet or dry. The wet is mopped with a mustard and vinegar sauce while cooking. The dry is made with a rub and not mopped.

Carolina style is rubbed and mopped with a vinegar sauce. Variants range from North to South Carolina.

Kansas City style depends on the sauce. The rubbed meat is smoked and then  served with sweet sauce at the table.

Texas is so big it has 4 regions of it own. From experience I can say Texas style is cooked with a rub and then a tomato-based sauce at the table – if you really need sauce. In fact they will probably call you a Yankee if you sauce your bbq; it’s all about the rub in Texas.

Well, I’m made wet and sloppy Memphis style ribs today. I rubbed them this morning and let them setup for 5 hours in the refrigerator. Then I made the mop sauce when I lit the gas grill. I setup the grill for indirect cooking as much as one can on a gas grill. For ribs its not really about the low and slow method. These ribs were supposed to cook within 2 hours.

Rub Ingredients

1/4 cup paprika

1 1/2 Tbsp black pepper

1 1/2 Tbsp dark brown sugar firmly packed

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp celery salt

1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 1/2 tsp dry mustard

1 1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

6 lbs pork ribs (I use two 3lbs racks of baby back ribs)

Mop Ingredients

1/4 cup prepared mustard

1 cup cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

The secret to tender ribs is to pull off the membrane on the back. Make a cut parallel with the ribs in the membrane and insert the knife under the membrane and gently pull it up. Then pull the rest of the membrane up with your fingers.

Combine the rub ingredients and rub about 2/3 on the ribs. Wrap in plastic-wrap and put in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.

When you wait for the grill to come to 200° F, combine the mop ingredients and set aside.

Cook the ribs 1 hour meat-side up then mop the top and let cook for another 30 minutes. Flip them over and mop and let cook for 30 minutes. Continue mopping and cooking for 30 minutes until you run out of mop sauce or the ribs are done. Be sure to check the temperature. I try to keep mine at 200° F the whole time. It took my ribs about 2 1/2 hours to cook.

I served my ribs with baked potatoes and baked beans.

High School Reunions Via Social Media

If it wasn’t for the Internet and the explosion of social media I probably would not know about my high school reunion. We started finding each other through email before the last reunion in 2000, but facebook, myspace and twitter make finding and communicating a lot easier and cheaper than some places (ClassMates.com). Although the other sites may have served a purpose in the past, social media sites are king today. They’re free and more and more people are using them for way more than class reunions.

Clearwater High School Class of 1990 (on Facebook)

Obama a lame duck in less than a year

Tomorrow, January 21, is Obama’s first anniversary as president. Last night Massachusetts elected a Republican senator to replace Democrat Ted Kennedy after he left office in August for health reasons. This gives Republicans the necessary 41 votes to kill any legislation in the Senate. In one quick and decisive move the GOP has rendered Obama a lame duck less than one year after he took office.

Who would have thought that Teddy Kennedy would be succeeded in the U.S. Senate by a Republican? The GOP now has the necessary 41 votes to block anything that the Democratic Senate majority wants to do, from passing legislation to confirming judges. The White House has been very slow to fill judicial and U.S. attorney slots and have squandered that opportunity. The Democrats have achieved NOTHING, and now they can’t do anything without Republican votes. George W. Bush became a lame duck with two years to go when the Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 midterms. Obama may have become a lame duck for the remainder of his term. Source: Unhappy anniversary | BurkaBlog.

The health care bill that was before the senate seems all but doomed to fail in light of this election. Time will tell, but I don’t expect any helpful legislation coming from Washington any time soon.

Budget cuts for Texas’ universities

In 2009 I said the recession isn’t over. I guess it needs to be said again – for future reference: history repeats itself! This is the third time I’ve gone through a recession or slow-down or bubble-burst in the 15 years that I’ve lived in Texas. In the public sector, especially higher education, I think the recession doesn’t really hit until 2 years after the worst of it hits the rest of the world. If we say the recession started in 2008, it was at its worst in 2009, then higher education can expect the worst (at least in Texas) in 2010-11. It’s no coincidence that the Texas legislature is deciding the biennial budget for 2010-11, and universities are facing huge budget cuts – some as much as $14 Million each year. The worst is still to come.

Texas A&M may have to cut $28 million out of its budget over two years. Source: Texas A&M looking for funds to cut after state mandate | The Eagle.

What does it mean to be the worst for an institute of higher education? It means the legislature cuts state monies going to the university systems. In Texas there are at least 6 major university systems: University of Houston System, University of North Texas System, University of Texas System, Texas A&M University System, Texas State University System, Texas Tech University System.

Texas A&M-College Station is in the early stages of identifying potential cuts. Officials have asked departments to prioritize projects in case the state doesn’t provide all the requested funding. Source: Texas universities to cut back after endowments hit | Dallas Morning News.

The Shorty Awards

This is what the social media is for: an award show for people that are online writing about being online.

The second annual Shorty Awards nomination process has begun! In January 2010, the community is invited to nominate Twitter users for excellence over the past year. The awards recognize each content creators entire body of work, not just an individual tweet. Nominations are made by sending a tweet, whether its through this site or on Twitter. In February, the nominees will be narrowed down to five finalists in each category. Winners will be determined by a combination of popular vote and by the members of the new Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. An awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in March in New York City. Source: About the Process, shortyawards.com.

Florida football is changing forever

Many are asking “Is Friday the last night of the Florida dynasty?” Source: ESPN. Friday, January 1, 2010, Florida plays Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl, but it may be the last time (for a long time) they play in a bowl. Urban Meyer, the coach that led the Gators to 2 National Championships, suffered chest pains after the loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship. He said he will retire then he said he will take off indefinitely. Add to that his star quarterback, Tim Tebow, is graduating. Florida wont be the powerhouse again for several years, if ever.

At the same time, Florida State is retiring a legion, Bobby Bowden, after 33 years. Friday, FSU won against West Virginia in the Gator Bowl – it was his last game.

Finally, 2010, The Year We Make Contact

Is this the year we make contact? With whom, you might ask. Well, if you ask that then you don’t know what I’m talking about. The year 2010…the movie 2010…this is the year! Will we make contact with aliens? Who knows.

What I do know is what I remember thinking about what will happen in 2010. I thought I’ll turn 39 in 2010, and that sounded old. When I graduated high school my first thought was that my 10 year reunion will be in 2000, and my second thought was that my 20 year reunion will be in 2010. I thought maybe I would be working on space nuclear power by 2010.

Things I didn’t know would happen include the death of both of my parents before 2010. I never thought I would be married let alone on my second marriage by 2010; or have 3 step kids. I didn’t know I would be living in Texas for 15 years in 2010.

It’s easy to say, “I wish I knew then what I know now,” but the truth is “life is like a box of chocolates,” you really don’t know what you’re going to end up with. I wish my mom and dad could have lived forever, but they’re in a better place now than where they were a few years ago. I wish I only married once – to avoid that pain – but I’m glad I met my second wife.

I’ve changed quite a bit in 25 years since the movie came out. In 1984 I turned 13 years old in 6th grade. I wasn’t thinking too much about the future. I was concentrating on making good grades in 6 classes per day in a new school. It wasn’t too long before I would start focusing on what I would do in college and beyond.

In high school I started thinking about space nuclear power, specifically space ships and nuclear powered rockets. It wasn’t until I went to college that I learned we had already made nuclear powered rockets, but we should not expect to use them any time soon. It’s 2010 – about 50 years after the first test of a nuclear rocket – and we still don’t have a nuclear rocket.

2009 A year in the life of Twitter

I think 2009 will go down as the year Twitter became a household name. I know I’ve used Twitter a lot this year, and I’ve written several blog posts about Twitter and the influence of social media. It will be connected with significant events and insignificant Internet chatter. People will say, “I remember reading a tweet about that,” or “I tweeted about that.” When asked about significant events of 2009 – Iran election, Michael Jackson’s death, “balloon boy” – I’ll bet Twitter will be mentioned in the conversation.

Many people have assumed that Twitter is just another social network, some kind of micro-blogging service, or both. It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news. The Iranian election was the most discussed issue on Twitter in the final year of a decade defined by advancements in information access.

In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world. These are figures we did not anticipate when we founded the company in 2007. Source: Why we can never rest: a year in the life of Twitter | Times Online

In much the same way that instant messaging became a household term 12 years ago when AOL Instant Messenger arrived, Twitter, and a true social media network, will spread news (and propaganda) at the speed of light around the globe; perhaps even to the ISS.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that Twitter holds immense power. Just think about it for a minute. If your product was used by more than 1 billion people everyday to talk about anything from “I’m now online” to “I survived the plane crash into the Hudson.” The potential to spread news is endless. But, I still say that a “town crier” ranting on Twitter without corroborating information is dangerous. They can influence millions of people to take action especially if the rest of the world was ignorant of the truth and the ruse continues long enough for it to grow legs and become sustained. I look forward to the time when conspiracy theorists use Twitter to actually persuade us that something happened or didn’t happen.

You can “@ me” on Twitter in 2010.

German Sauerbraten – Patience Is Key To Perfection

Sauerbraten or “sour roast meat” is a dish that is marinated in a vinegar and herb solution for several days to break down the toughness of the meat. After marination, the meat is cooked for several hours like a traditional roast. Traditionally, sauerbraten is served with potato dumplings (Kartoffelklöße) and red cabbage (rotkraut or rotkohl).

I love sauerbraten and I wanted to share it with my new family. Because it takes 3 days to marinate and 3 hours to cook it requires patience, but I think it is worth it.

I started with a recipe from Cooks.com. My technique is to start with a recipe and make it my own by modifying it a little. For my version I chose bottom round of beef and added some uncooked bacon and Merlot wine to the marinade. I also warmed the marinade to a simmer to let all the flavors come out at the start. Then I let it sit in my refrigerator for 3 days. I turned the meat over every night.

When it was time to cook the meat I saved the marinade and brazed the meat until lightly brown on all sides. Then I put the meat into a baking dish and added some of the marinade’s carrots and onions and new water. I roasted the mixture in a 350 degree oven for 2.5 hours.

Meanwhile, I boiled carrots, celery, onions and the remaining vegetables from the marinade with some new water and the juice of the marinade. I also made the red cabbage and potato dumplings. When the meat was finished I made a quick gravy from some of the drippings, flour and water.

Original Ingredients

1 kg beef
1 onion
4 peppercorns
2 cloves
1 bay leaf
1/4 liter vinegar
3/8 liter water
salt and pepper
sour cream
corn flour and water
Maggi liquid seasoning

All in all it came out alright. There were a few things I could have done better. I think one mistake I made was not covering the meat while it cooked. The meat was a little dry and not as tender as I wanted it. I also started cooking the vegetables too soon; they only need about 20 minutes to cook.

So remember, it takes patience and love to cook sauerbraten. If you take the time you will be rewarded in the end.

German Rouladen – A Warm Dish On A Cold Night

Rouladen or more precisely Rinderrouladen is a German dish made with thin beef, onions, pickles and mustard. There are many variations, but Rinderroulade uses these combination of ingredients.

I was in the mood for something from my German heritage so I settled on rouladen. At first I thought about sauerbraten, but then I thought it takes 3 days and my wife isn’t partial to vinegar.

I started with a recipe from RecipeZaar.com and made some changes. I substituted dill relish for chopped pickles and I added real-bacon bits from a jar to my cooked bacon. Since my wife’s stomach is more English-delicate than my German-hearty, I added the Dijon mustard to sour cream to cut the acidity.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs beef flank steak
4 teaspoons heavy German mustard or Dijon mustard, will do
6 slices bacon, diced
3/4 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped dill pickles
1/4 cup flour
1 (13 3/4 ounce) can beef broth

I started with cooking the bacon and onions on medium heat. I chopped 1/4 white onion into fairly large pieces and mixed it with 6 green onions chopped into medium pieces. While that was cooking I pounded 4 flank steaks to about 1/4 inch thickness. The mistake here was cooking the onions at the same time as the bacon. I should have cooked the bacon to almost done and then added the onions. Another mistake was green onions. I should have only used 1 whole white onion.

After the steak was thinned, I mixed the mustard with about 8 ounces of sour cream. (The sour cream was left over from another great meal I made the night before – .) I spread the mustard mixture over the meat, added the bacon and onions, then topped with relish. Then I rolled it up – starting from the thin side – and tied the roll with string.

I brazed the rolls in the bacon fat and set them in to a 6×9 glass dish. Into the bacon-steak-onion-pickle-mustard-broth flavored pan I added flour and 15 ounces of beef broth. I stirred this mixed until it was fairly creamy and then spooned it over the rolls. I added whole mushrooms just for something extra. (Steak and mushrooms always go good together.)

When the rolls were about 30 minutes from done I started the potato dumplings (Kartoffelklöße). I bought a box mix of potato balls so it was easy to make. I did put the optional cruton in the center of each ball just to be traditional.

The last thing to make was red cabbage. Actually, I bought a can of it from the store too. It was next to the potato dumplings and it’s so mush easier to make.

From start to finish it took me at about 4 hours to make this dish, but in the end it was worth it. I made a warm dish on a cold winter’s night worthy of any German restaurant.

How Will Social Media Change In 2010

Surfing this morning and found this. I guess it’s not too early – like everything else this year* – to make predictions about next year.

2009 will go down as the year in which the shroud of uncertainty was lifted off of social media and mainstream adoption began at the speed of light. Source: 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010 | ReadWriteWeb.com

I agree. Social media is here to stay and it is affecting our lives in profound ways: news words are being invented, grammar is suffering, newspapers are dying, wild claims and rumors spread like atomic reactions and more people believe what they read online.

* This year Halloween stuff showed up in stores in August, Thanksgiving stuff showed up in September, and Christmas stuff showed up in October. Two months is too early. On the other hand, local politics is crawling out of the news gates. It’s hard to find out who is on the ballot. If I knew now I could take my time researching candidates for the next 12 months – trying to ignore political ads – and find the one I want to vote for.

Second verse same as the first

Back before Thanksgiving I said Texas gubernatorial race is like musical chairs. Well, here’s the second (or third or fourth) verse. It’s the same as the first. On November 23, Houston Mayor, Bill White held a press conference to announce he will announce his decision to run for governor by December 4. As promised he announced yesterday that he will run for governor. After he made that announcement, Hank Gilbert dropped out of the race and endorsed Farouk Shami.

Meanwhile, Governor Rick Perry, the longest serving governor, made his announcement for an unprecedented third term.

Like Paul Burka says, “Perry is now fighting a two-front war.” One with Democrats in the general election and one with the Republicans in the primary. While most people think the primary will be a joke, Perry still has to be careful. The issues Perry raises in the primary wont be the same as the issues in the general election.

If you’re keeping a score card:

Republicans: Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Larry Kilgore, Debra Medina

Democrats: Bill White, Kinky Friedman, Farouk Shami, Felix Alvarado

Blue Beanie Day

November 30 is Blue Beanie Day. Fight bad code. Use Web Standards.

Less than a year away and the dance has begun for Texas governor

This isn’t the Texas two-step, more like musical chairs. Continuing what I wrote about having a web site to be a candidate, those web sites will come and go and they may switch focus before we vote in November 2010.

Just as soon as Tom Schieffer announced that he will not run for governor, Houston Mayor, Bill White, had a press conference to announce that he will decide by (Dec 4) if he will run for governor or stick with his original plan and run for a US Senate seat – the one presumably vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison – but White wants to hear from the people of Texas as to what he should do. You can tell him what to do at his web site.

Seeing as how KBH said she will not vacate the Senate while health care is up in the air. I don’t see White filling that seat. The others on the Republican dance card are Larry Kilgore and Debra Medina.

The Dem-dance so far includes Farouk Shami, Felix Alvarado, Kinky Friedman, Hank Gilbert.

Looking at their web sites, I want to scream, “Neeeext?!”

10 Years After Bonfire Collapse

Today, on the 10th anniversary of the Bonfire collapse at Texas A&M University, the mood is somber and reflective. We remember the 12 that died and the 27 that were injured. There are remembrances and stories of the past. The local television news on KBTX asked the question:

Where Were You When Bonfire Fell?
As a community marks ten years since 12 Aggies lost their lives, people are remembering where they were and what they were thinking a decade ago. Source: Where Were You When Bonfire Fell? | KBTX.com

My post was as follows (I know I misspelled St. Joseph.)

I was with my ex-wife in the St. Joesph emergency room. She was waiting for a shot for a migraine when the nurse came in and said we had to leave. She said that Bonfire collapsed, and they were receiving several injured.

Collapse of Bonfire 1994

As I blogged earlier, the debate about Bonfire’s return is still going on after 10 years. The governor, and former Aggie, Rick Perry, thinks it will come back to campus, maybe as soon as 2010, but he left it up to the Board of Regents and the students.

Lest we  forget, in 1994, the stack collapsed as seen in this picture from youtube.com. Two cases of collapse – although for different reasons – should stand as a reminder that stacking thousands of trees upright is very dangerous. Even if they are engineered to stand-up, gravity wins out sometimes. With that amount of risk, and its safety record, I don’t see how any insurance company will cover the cut, build and burn of Bonfire.

I also think burning thousands of logs is not only dangerous (sparks can fly for miles) but it is very ecologically irresponsible. I thought that the first time I heard of Bonfire (1995) and I think that now. I’m not a tree-hugger, but I don’t cherish the thought of billions of tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere for nothing – no homes are being heated, no electricity is created, no waste is being consumed.

…burning a tree is the carbon equivalent of driving a gas-guzzling SUV 15,000 miles a year. Source: SUVs vs. Trees, CO2 Emissions & The Environment

You aren’t in a political race until you have a web site

It seems like a truism these days: “You aren’t in a political race until you have a web site.” Looks like another gubernatorial candidate joined the World Wide Web. In addition to Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison, these guys hope to make their mark as governor of Texas.

Farouk Shami fires up his campaign Web page

Hair care millionaire Farouk Shami fired up his Farouk for Governor Web page today in anticipation of his official launch Thursday into the campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Others in the race include Felix Alvarado, Kinky Friedman, Hank Gilbert and Tom Schieffer.
Source Farouk Shami fires up his campaign Web page | Texas Politics | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

Newspaper circulation drop accelerates

It’s the largest drop recorded so far during the past decade’s steady decline in paid readership — a span that has coincided with an explosion of online news sources that don’t charge readers for access. Many newspapers also have been reducing delivery to far-flung locales and increasing prices to get more money out of their remaining sales. Source: Newspaper circulation drop accelerates April-Sept – Yahoo! News.

Newspapers are trying to recover from a steep drop in advertising revenue — traditionally their main source of money. The worst U.S. recession since World War II and the lure of the Internet have combined to make the industry’s annual ad revenue $20 billion less than it was three years ago.

This is another example of the growth of social media and the fall of traditional media. As more (young) people turn to the Internet for news and information, they are more involved, more engaged in the news; users are making the news. This is a sign of times to come – newspapers and news media are an endangered species – the Internet is the new news source and social media is the new printing press. Power to the people.

Ironically, I grabbed this article from an online news source (AP News & Yahoo News). What happens if these sources dry up? Why should they continue to pay people to report news when social media sources do it for free? Stay tuned. Those questions haven’t been answered yet.

Twitter in the news again and not in a good way

Is it just me or is it a slow news day? When the top trend on Twitter is about a dispelled rumor it’s time to take the day off. The top trend has been ‘RIP Kanye West’ for the past 24 hours. It was disputed more than 12 hours ago, but it has a life of it’s own now. Worst of all it (the Twitter trending topic) made national news.

Would a dead man have time to haunt the world by posting pictures of supermodel Gabriela Barros online? Rapper Kanye West, of course, is not dead, although “RIP Kanye West” is still the hottest-trending topic on Twitter (Pop & Hiss advises against clicking on it, unless you’re ready for a stream of baiting links to random sites).
Source: Amber Rose debunks ‘RIP Kanye West’ Twitter topic | Pop & Hiss | Los Angeles Times | October 21, 2009 | Los Angeles Times.

Actually, there is something significant about trending topics – not just RIP Kanye West – because they invoke reactions. Twitter users that continue the trend are either curious or opinionated. If a user clicks on a trending topic it receives more hits or has more weight in the trend. If a user comments (or retweets) on the topic it receives more weight. Both actions keep the momentum going – the snowball effect. More importantly than the whole world talking about you (publicity) the whole world is making its own news; trivial as it may be.

The Twitter effect is included in my soon-to-be-released review of the book, Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives and the way we do business.)

Obama coming to the heart of conservatisim – Aggieland

Hundreds expected to demonstrate Friday at A&M during presidential forum.

By Nathan Adkisson | statesman.com

Thursday, October 15, 2009

A&M official: “We expect our students will treat the president with respect.”

Officials say about 20 organizations have reserved space to demonstrate on campus, including several Tea Party groups, the College Democrats and the College Republicans. While Texas A&M has not prohibited any groups from protesting, university officials said they expect demonstrators to honor the Aggies’ well-known code of conduct.

It’s not students we fear. It’s the hundreds of non-Aggies being bussed in from all over Texas – Tea Party groups – that probably did not vote for Obama and probably will try to stir up trouble.

I think Friday will be a good day for everyone to stay home.

President Obama speaks at Texas A&M

UPDATE:
It wasn’t that bad. North of campus and we didn’t hear or see anything unsual – we were in the office when he arrived and at home when he left. But, Obama, Bush 41, and Gates all came to town in support of a Points of Light/Volunteer forum.

Balloon lands in Colorado, boy not inside

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A 6-year-old boy, [Falcon Heene,] said to have climbed into a homemade helium balloon that took off and flew across Colorado on Thursday, was not inside when the contraption landed and authorities launched a search for him.

Source: Reuters.

The response on twitter was even faster. The hastag #balloonboy shot to top trend in a matter of hours. A website was created, and of course there was a t-shirt, “Go Falcon, Go.”

The back story is that the 6-year old was a member of the family that was on the “Wife Swap” show. You can see Falcon in this youtube video.

Watch Out Teacher Retirement System Might Fund Trans-Texas Corridor

Cronyism and the Corridor
Monday, October 12, 2009
posted by paulburka at 3:07 PM
Source: Burkablog: Texas Monthly.

The Statesman reported yesterday that Governor Perry is removing Linus Wright, a former Dallas school superintendent, as chair of the board that oversees the $88 billion Teacher Retirement System and will replace him with a current board member who is also a member of Perry’s campaign finance team, Dallas real estate investor R. David Kelly. (Wright succeeded Jim Lee, who was one of three co-chairs of the Perry fundraising apparatus; Lee had resigned in the wake of news reports that he had run up six-figure gambling debts in Las Vegas.)

The removal of Wright occurred just a few days after Perry had announced the death of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

In my humble opinion this is something we need to watch and keep in check. If TRS is raped to fund the TTC we loose twice.

Twitter Backchannel, Sarah Lacy, Tony Hsieh

Sarah Lacy blows-up after SXSW 2008 interview.

I couldn’t resist posting this little piece of twitter meltdown irony. At SXSW 2008, Sarah Lacy, interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a keynote speaker. The interview went so badly that the twitter backchannel took over the show and those in attendance were making scathing comments. Eventually, Sarah lost control of the interview and was relegated to moderator of questions from the crowd. When it was all over Sarah had this tweet of her own.

Tony Hsieh visual thought map at SXSW 2009

Fast forward one year, during SXSW 2009, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave a keynote (by himself) with this visual thinking aid. Four months later, July 2009, he sold Zappos for $850 Million. Guess who reported the sale on techcrunch.com? That’s right, Sarah Lacy. Her headline was “Amazon Buys Zappos; The Price is $928m., not $847m.” Now that’s ironic.

HighEdWeb 2009 Wrap Up

UPDATE:
Links from the conference

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/highedweb/
• http://highedweb2009.ning.com/
• http://2009.highedweb.org/
• http://twitter.com/HighEdWeb

After conference links

• The Great Keynote Meltdown
• How Speakers Should Integrate Social Into Their Presentation
• Valuable Web Content
• Presentation: from receive through react to interact
• Takeaways from the Great Keynote Revolt of 2009
• Keynote ruckus at HighEdWeb
• There and Back Again, a geek girls tale of #heweb09
• speakers: learn from twitter hecklers
• HighEdWeb 2009 Wrap Up
• Twitter-heckled Key Note Speaker – Know your Audience!

HighEdWeb 2009 Wrap Up

The first-timers raise their hands at orientation.

If you read the posts in this blog tagged with heweb09 you’ll see my notes from sessions I attended. Several were good, a few were not-so-good. Going from memory of my evaluations, I would say my average score of sessions was 5.5 out of 7 (78%).

Was it worth approximately $2000 to attend? When I was in school 78% was a “C.” It was passing, but you couldn’t get into graduate school with a C average, and you couldn’t get a good paying job with a C average. Now, you should know that I grade rather conservatively. No one got a 7 on my evaluations; no one got a 1. If I like it and I thought I learned something they got 6. The first keynote would have received a 7, the best of track winners I attended would have received a 7, but these were not graded. So overall, I will come back if it is in the budget, but I wont fight for it if it is not. (It cost me a lot of money that cannot/wont be reported on the expense report.)

I met a lot of people, and followed several tweeple. I learned a few things and was entertained. Those were part of my goals so I can say that part was met. I don’t have H1N1 and I don’t think I gained 10 lbs and I got some swag, so check on those goals too. However, I was a little surprised at the skim-the-surface approach of the sessions. I know there is a lot of material for the board to choose from and they did a good job of touching on major aspects of higher education web. I felt like I was back in college: class for 90 minutes, 15 minutes to get across “campus”, and lack of detailed information about lecturers’ materials before getting to the session. (Kudos to Daniel Frommelt for putting his session, “Augmented Reality“, online before coming to the conference.)

The back channel t-shirt.

Unfortunately for the conference I learned something else – what happens in the backchannel doesn’t always stay in the backchannel. This shirt (“I Survived The #heweb09 Keynote“) is an example of what came out of the backchannel after Tuesday’s (October 6) keynote speech. My netbook battery was low so I did not get to read it while it happened. You can read the transcript of the backchannel during keynote #2.

After the conference a few us wrote analyses that reflected the words of Michael Fienen:
“I think that it’s important to admit that several of us might have overstepped a professional line, but I think the event itself was not uncalled for and is an important example that audiences are no longer passive.” Source: The Great Keynote Meltdown of 2009 | .eduGuru.

After I read the article my tweet comment was “@fienen Good observations 1) material not relevent to an educated crowd 2) reflects poorly on “us” 3) pressure for next year.”

We have something to think about for next year. In this age of transparency you must “know thyself” and be an expert in your area – experience and ignorance shine equally through the window of our minds. We are people in higher education with limited budgets that come  together to live, laugh, learn, and we express ourselves using the technology we help to create – the web.

Post Script

Conference committee for HighEdWeb 2010 remember three little words, “hella drop shadow“

WordPress University

WordPress University

Stephanie Leary
Website Administrator, Texas A&M University

October 7

CMS Capabilities

• posts and pages

• scheduled publishing

• basic workflow

• easy media embedding

• excellent seo

• ubiquitous feeds

Killer Feature is the User Interface. (made by happycog)

Post vs. Page

Posts have…

• included in feeds

• categories

• tags

• excerpts

• comments and trackbacks

• custom fields

Pages have…

• not included in feeds

• page parent (not categories)

• template

• menu order

• comments and trackbacks

• custom fields

Pages can…with plugins

• included in feeds

• categories

• tags

The dirty little secret because pages are posts and posts are pages.

Things that are posts

• blogs

• news archives

• press releases

• podcasts

• newsletters

• magazines

• journals

• …

Things that are posts

• anything you want in a feed

• anything organized by date

Things that are pages

• anything that does not change often

• anything that is not organized by date

Other things

• media uploads

• users

• links

Demo

• installation

• file import

• basic options

• reading settings

• permalinks

Less blog, more CMS

• magazine-style home pages

• great url structure

• no category or archives

• contextual navigation

• breadcrumbs

• subpage listings

Magazine Layout

• multiple content areas

• category sections

• list of subpages

• widgets

Required theme files

• index.php

• style.css

Other recommendations

• functions.php – this is where you define widgets

• screenshot.png

More files

category.php = global category theme

category-6.php = category theme for catid=6

How a theme file works

• get_header

• The Loop

• get_sidebar

• get_footer

sandbox, hybrid, thematic themes to start looking at

Inside The Loop

• title

• content/excerpt

• date

• categories

• tags

• author

• custom fields

Complicating matters

• custom loops

• multiple loops

Modify the query (query_posts)

• limit

• offset

• parent

• categories & tags (include/exclude)

• sort order

• type

• author

• status

Sidebars

one included by default – get_sidebar()

can use more than one with php file include syntax

Widgets

theme/plugin hybrid

can be defined in functions.php or installed as part of a plugin

Built-in Widgets

• archives

• categories

• calendar

• links

• RSS

• pages

• meta (log in/out, feed)

• recent posts

• tag cloud

• text

Plugins

6735 plugins and growing

Plugins can…

• add widgets

• create template tags

• modify loops

• create shortcodes

• alter user roles

• provide custom fields

• alter write screens

• add JS libraries

Putting it all together

We want…

• pages

• a blog

• subscribe to comments

• a podcast

• a contact form w/spam guard

• a private area

• users to be redirected on login

Sidbar login plugin

Peter’s login redirect

Problems with private

visibility: menus

granularity: groups

privileges: roles

Plugin to fix this – Role manager (for now)

[PressThis podcast talks about world press]

Hiding the admin area

• sidebar login

• front-end editor

• P2

• posthaste

Moving servers

• changing domains

• edit database fields

• use config file constants

• changing directories

• maintaining permalinks

Caching Plugins

• WP Cache

• Super Cache

• W3 Total Cache

What’s New in 2.9

• image editor

• trash (posts, pages, comments)

• new excerpt filters

• easy changes to contact profile fields

• included handbook (printable)

• category-slug.php

What’s different in MU

• each user gets a blog

• each blog gets a set of db tables

• users can’t upload themes or plugins

• site-wide plugins installed for all

• site admin screen (and role)

Calendar plugin: AMR ICAL Event