Stewart Marshall

A rare solo visit, normally Joseph brings his friends and they make a hell of a racket arguing about worker's rights, socialism and the troskys ...

I've just submitted my final count for this weekend, my first Bird Count! It's been a blast. In total 15 species visited my yard, principally on my feeders. Looking at the results for the four days I can paint a picture of what a typical day has been like.

Normally for this time year I have what I call my regular cast of characters. Top of the billing is the Northwestern Crow, who is still relatively new to the regular cast. Now, they sometimes come singularly or in numbers but they don't like the limelight very much and easily give way. Major supporting roles are filled by the Steller's Jay and Northern Flicker. The former by far the noisiest although the latter can certainly hit the volume switch when provoked.

The Northern Flicker despite loving the attention is very supportive of the rest of the cast, whereas the brash bully boy Jay tends to unsettle everyone. It's very common for the Flicker to lead the extras in the day's events. Juncos seem to feel very secure around the Flicker and quickly they arrive in numbers giving the Flicker a chance to take a break.

Black-capped Chickadees entertain with their wonderful range of song, with harmonies provided by the Red-breasted Nuthatch and percussion by the occasional House Finch and Song Sparrow. Oblivious to all above we find the Spotted Towhee picking up the scraps below the main action.

Outside of the above we have the virtuoso Anna's Hummingbird who appears most days, but having it's own feeder, it doesn't interact too much except to chase the odd junco through the bushes when it gets too close! Above the yard the Bald Eagle soars keeping itself aloof to the concerns of lesser birds below.

As with all performances we have some participants who like to make cameo appearances. Chestnut backed Chickadees, European Starlings and Bushtits come to mind. Some though have true Superstar status as is the case with the Downy Woodpecker, or Robert as he is know to us.

All in all a magnificent cast, I'm sure you will agree! What's more, as the year goes on there will be another dozen or so species returning to join in the performance. Some replace the regular cast, many supplement it. It makes sure that no one performance is the same as any other!

I thoroughly enjoyed the Bird Count this weekend, it allowed me to quantify what I knew was already happening! I hope you've had as much fun as me?

After the excitement of Day 2, I wasn't able to spend as much time watching the feeders on Day 3. However, as it turns out the birds timed their appearance with mine and I recorded a new high in terms of the number of species. The photos in this post are the rarer visitors to the yard. The Bald Eagle of course and three squabbling Startlings!

Also today I managed to spot three nuthatches at the same time. Somewhere I have a shot from a few weeks ago when all three were lined up on the feeder support. It was also fun to see around 50 bushtits being chased out of the trees by a crow.

My submitted list from Day 3 is below, roll on Day 4!

Observation Date: FEB 14, 2010
Start Time: 9:00 AM
Total Birding Time: 8 hours
Party Size: 2
Skill: fair
Weather: good
Snow Depth: No snow was present
Habitat(s):
coniferous woods
suburban
Number of Species: 13
All Reported: yes
Checklist:
Bald Eagle - 2
Anna's Hummingbird - 1
Northern Flicker - 2
Steller's Jay - 1
Northwestern Crow - 1
Black-capped Chickadee - 2
Bushtit - 50
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 3
European Starling - 3
Spotted Towhee - 2
Song Sparrow - 1
Dark-eyed Junco - 6
House Finch - 1

Yesterday I took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count with gusto! On Friday I observed for an hour, filed my report and then realised that I should not have been so hasty! Yesterday I watched for most of the day and decided to share my experience with everyone on Twitter. By using the hashtag #gbbc I was able to join in the hundreds of tweets being shared all over North America.

It was exciting and it was great to connect with a lot of fellow birders, @kiowah, @fugolmann, @jimbinder and @swanny203 to name a few. In the process I learnt something new. For character codes to describe the species you see. It can look quite confusing. For instance for me, at one point I tweeted the following:

2 NOCR, 7 UDEJ, 2 NOFL, 1 BCCH, 1 RBNU, 1 SPTO, 1 DOWO, 1 ANHU

I will put the full list of birds I submitted at the bottom of this post, but first a couple of things of note. In addition to our normal friends at the top of this post, the nuthatches, sparrows and juncos we had a particular visitor I was most excited about. A Downy Woodpecker! We haven't seen one on the feeders since early November and he/she picked today to come back!

I got myself organised and was thrilled to be able to capture one of the visits on video. I'm afraid my little camera is not up to the best quality but I hope you enjoy the clip anyway:

Inspired by the above I decided to push the little camera more. So for about 3 hours, almost 4 I set it up to create a time-lapse movie. It took one shot every 30 seconds. I then edited it to slow the resulting clip down by almost 80%. You never know what you are going to get and I wish I had a more featured camera (I would shoot 5 secs of footage every minute or something, rather than stills), but it's fun. Watch for our friend DOWO just before the minute mark.

FInally below is the report I submitted. The whole day, the birdwatching, the interactions on twitter, the photos and video were a blast. I can't give every day of the weekend to this to the same degree, but the urge to jot down what I see is very wrong!

       Anna's Hummingbird - 1

       Downy Woodpecker - 1

       Northern Flicker - 2

       Steller's Jay - 1

       Northwestern Crow - 7

       Black-capped Chickadee - 2

       Chestnut-backed Chickadee - 2

       Red-breasted Nuthatch - 2

       Spotted Towhee - 2

       Song Sparrow - 1

       Dark-eyed Junco - 10

I realised thanks to a new twitter contact @kiowah I realised that I had shared this guy on twitter but not here on ourbirdfeeder.com!

I was awake before the birds. This normally happens when I bring the feeders into the house before going to bed. I only do this when the forecast suggests high winds. The consequence of this of course is that I like to be up early to put the feeders back out before the birds wake up. Such was the case today. The upside though was it was a perfect opportunity to participate in my first ever bird count!

As the event is called the Great Backyard Bird Count I decided to count the birds in my yard. This has one clear benefit. I am very familiar with the birds, so my identification should be accurate. I started at 7.30 and counted for an hour until 8.30. Almost all our regular visitors came to the feeders during that time. Sadly, at about 8.10 I had to chase off another familiar but unwelcome visitor to the feeders, a black squirrel.

I think the birds are used to me coming onto the deck and shouting at the squirrel. In fact I think on many occasions they are in the nearby bushes and trees laughing at me! (I'm talking about YOU chickadees!). Filing the report was pretty straight forward and according to the map on the site I must be one of the first reports in Western Canada! on the website and I've included the email I received back (minus a couple of details) below:

Observation Date: FEB 12, 2010
Start Time: 7:30 AM
Total Birding Time: 1 hour
Party Size: 2
Skill: good
Weather: good
Snow Depth: No snow was present
Habitat(s):
coniferous woods
suburban
Number of Species: 9
All Reported: yes
Checklist:
Bald Eagle - 1
Northern Flicker - 2
Steller's Jay - 1
Northwestern Crow - 1
Black-capped Chickadee - 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Spotted Towhee - 2
Song Sparrow - 1
Dark-eyed Junco - 4

So 9 species in total. Not bad for the time of year. According to our records we have had around 25 different species on the feeders since August, so I'm happy to settle for 9. The most recent addition was actually the Northwestern Crow. A lot more nervous that say the flickers or even the jays, but a dramatic sight when you see how big they are compared to the juncos and nuthatches!

Stay tuned over the weekend as I hope to repeat this mornings experience, maybe at a different time.

So before I know it we are coming up on the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend, starting tomorrow. I've been to the site and downloaded a form (an easy way to record what I see) and also a guide to the birds I can expect in my area.

To be honest I suspect I will see my normal visitors, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, flickers, jays and now it seems crows! It will be fun. I've not decided the exact time I will be make my observations or how many days I will take part. Either way though it should be fun!

The birdsong is steadily increasing day by day at the moment. The chickadees are expanding their rang of different songs and it would seem all the birds are getting more and more excited. My only fear is that the mild weather we've been having is playing a trick on the birds. I suspect there might be a very cold snap before this winter is done and I hope the birds can sing their way through it.

I'll report back on my bird list tomorrow :-)

Given the behavieur ef the cemmittee which is invelved in the erganising ef the Winter Elympics in eur fair city, the auther is cencerned that we are a shert step away frem hearing that the 15th letter ef the alphabet and the digit representing nil are banned due te the resemblance te the five rings ef the Elympics. Se in erder te ensure the auther is net subject te any expensive litigatien, they heve decided te replace all uses ef the 15th letter ef the alphabet with the 5th letter ef the alphabet in this bleg pest. Likewise all uses ef the digit representing nil will new use the digit 4.

The ether day I was reading a bleg pest abeut hew the city had needed a Barack Ebama to head VANEC but ended up with a Geerge W Bush. This seems censistent with the anti-Elympic feeling I have seen grewing in the city. Maybe it was the rediculeus campaign against the Elympia restaurant, er the ferced remeval ef an art mural, perhaps it was the news that velunteers cannet wear any branded item (that weuld mean persenally that I weuld need te tape up my designer spectacle frames) er maybe it was the feeling that the Vanceuver 2414 games may benefit lets ef peeple, but nermal Vanceuver residents will de nething but pay fer them, prebably fer decades te ceme. All fer shert-term gain...

It weuld seem that the main winners will be lawyers, whe spend their time trying te enferce legal claims against peerer peeple whe de net have the reseurces to fend them eff. But lawyers are net the sele target; it is VANEC itself. The eriginal Elympic ideals seem te have been translated inte a menstreus marketing premetien which, amengst ether things, has pushed preperty prices beyend the reach ef nermal peeple. The wealthy nen-residents, the enly felk that can afferd te attend the events, will race up te Whistler en a new read that has the petential te be mere dangereus than it was befere. Still: that ceuld at least ever time impreve the gene peel.

And afterwards..VANEC will be gene, with nething left but its legacy. An unafferdable city, meuntains ef debt and a wasted eppertunity which has embarassed the city and its eccupants. Wenderful!

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Interesting, it is true that the whole idea of e-books, or e-magazines has yet to gain sustained momentum. But I don't think the killer point here is selling into an established hardware base. The question is "would I buy an electronic version" - if not, then I'll buy the paper mag. If I do want to buy an electronic version am I likely to do that if all I have a tired old nokia a couple of years old?

Newspapers are folding, magazines are fading, ad pages are down and angst is up in the serial publishing business as it struggles through a global technological transition and may not survive.  But what will be our next New York Times, our new Field & Stream, our improved Playboy?  That’s what the big guns of publishing are fighting about with their Kindles and iPads.  But I think they may have it all wrong and my friend Anina, the fashion model/girl geek may have it all right.

Anina has reinvented the magazine for your mobile phone.

Isn’t that what Apple is doing with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch?

Not even close.

Anina, whom you may remember from her 2006 interview on NerdTV, has come up with a clever way to put magazines in your existing mobile phone. Her Mobile Magazines can be read on 2000 different mobile phone models.  If it has a color screen, your phone — however cheap it was to buy — can be an eReader.

Selling into an existing hardware base gives Mobile Magazines a huge advantage over fancy competitors like Apple or an Amazon.  Those companies have to first get people to buy their new hardware platform for hundreds of dollars before they can even hope to sell content for that platform, while Anina is sending content — color magazines with multiple pages, embedded links, and even e-commerce built-in — to the phone you already own.  And it doesn’t even have to be a smart phone, which is good, because 94 percent of mobile phones in use aren’t smart phones.

Mobile Magazines are the 94 percent solution, ready to go and ready to scale right now.

Apple, Amazon and Sony are playing catch-up to Anina but don’t yet know it.

If your web site or blog has an RSS feed, you can use it to automagically make a Mobile Magazine.  I made one for this blog in less than 10 minutes and it will keep publishing for free until I turn it off.  Adding more pages and active links costs some money but not much.  You can read my magazine on most any phone that can receive (not even send) SMS text messages.

You can read a Mobile Magazine where you don’t even have mobile phone service, like in a tunnel or on a plane!

If you have an iPhone  you can mount it permanently on the desktop with your other apps, completely bypassing both iTunes and the App Store.

Use your phone to read the Mobile Magazine version of this column: http://mobilemags.360fashion.net/10703.

Or (again with your mobile) just click here:

Picky readers will say, “The screen is tiny, the content is hobbled, there is nothing to be excited about here.” But remember this same content can be read today on two billion devices throughout the world.

There will never, ever be two billion iPhones.

<embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="never" height="295" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nFicqklGuB0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480"></embed>

This is pretty much exactly what most new indie and studio movies look like to me. Not just the Oscar-hopefuls and the Sundance selections. And not just the trailers, but the entire movies themselves (which are usually laid out, beat by beat, in the trailers). This one's funnier, though, because it doesn't pretend to be anything more than a familiar schematic diagram. Which is exactly what these comfy, risk-averse movies seem to be aiming for.

Starring Robert Pattinson or Adam Sandler, Natalie Portman or Sandra Bullock. Directed by Ron Howard or someone whose only previous work has been on YouTube.

(tip: Max Kleger)

Mapmobility first came on the scene thirty years ago.  At that time they developed the first Canadian map for the Toronto Real Estate Board that used a style of cartography known for its visual cues and colours. 

Yesterday, Mapmobility announced a new industry first that will resonate with anyone frustrated by often unreliable electronic maps such as those presented by Google and MapQuest.  The company behind the giant MapArt brand of maps, known for being the most up-to-date products in the industry, have crossed over into the digital world.

Currently a selection of maps are available on www.mapmobility.com.

Gord Woit is the president of Mapmobility:

Our maps are complicated in their production and detail but simplistic to the reader.  It's an art to communicate as much detail as possible about where someone is without confusing the user. Colour coding areas and using universal symbols among other things allows the reader to gain information intuitively. People know what a stop sign looks like way before they come close enough to read the word stop. Now imagine this kind of intuitive map on your GPS for reference while you're driving.

Mapmobility has already won an Award of Excellence from GIS software provider ESRI for its sophisticated mapping ability.

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Personally I was a Dragon32 person who failed to learn 6809 machine code and instead wrote a double entry book-keeping system in Basic. This unlike my commodore peer made me absolutely no money and contributed nothing to my university education!

[WARNING: this post is pretty much pure nostalgia for 1980s hardware, and has little technical content.  It does, however, set up something else that I want to write about soon.]

I was born 1968; I finished primary school and went to secondary school, at age 11, in 1979.  At that time I’d never seen a computer, but at secondary school I met Myles Kelvin, and we quickly became best friends.  His dad had recently bought a Video Genie to run a small business on, and that was the first computer I used.

I cut my programming teeth on two computers more or less simultaneously: that Video Genie, and a Commodore PET 2001 belonging to Richard Lewsey, the father of a boy that my mum used to child-mind. I’ll probably write about the Video Genie some time, but today I want to concentrate on the Commodore stream, because that’s where I ended up putting most of my efforts for the next seven years.

Remember the PET 2001? The PET was the initial line of Commodore computers, predating the VIC-20 (see my blog banner image) and the Commodore 64.  As far as I recall, the 2001 was the earliest model, blessed with 8 Kb of memory (half as much as the Video Genie), and a 40×25 character monochrome screen. PETs have a very distinctive profile, and the 2001 is instantly recognisable by its hideous keyboard — an array of tiny, closely packed squares, with lots of blue and red all over it.

I can’t begin to tell you how my inner self wells up with nostalgia just as seeing this image. The funny blue OFF/RVS and RUN/STOP keys; the white letter and number keys and silver punctuation; the weird graphics characters above the main glyphs (which you got using SHIFT, since there were no lower-case letters.)

Richard was an amazing man. It’s been 24 years since I last saw him, but I owe him a huge debt. He let me spend a huge amount of time camped in the corner of his living room, hacking away on his computer; he taught me all sorts of important techniques, critiqued my early programming efforts, and built me a truly unique piece of hardware (see below).

Programming on the PET was either using the built-in Microsoft BASIC interpreter (back from when Microsoft were the Little Guy) or in machine code. I’ll admit I did much more of the former than the latter, but enough machine-code stuck that I still remember far too many of the 6502 op-codes: A9 for load immediate, AD for load absolute, AA for transfer A to X, 00 for BRK. (What is all that stuff still doing in my mind, when I can’t seem to find space to remember the difference between the virtual factory maker pattern and the virtual builder factory pattern?)

When I was about thirteen years old, I started doing a milk round to earn the money to buy my own computer. I got up at 4:30 in the morning every Saturday and Sunday, and worked through to about mid-day, for £5 a week. (Sorry if this is a bit of an Old Fart story, but it’s in here as background.) By Christmas 1981, I’d accumulated about £140, and for Christmas my parents gave me the rest of the money that I needed to make it up to the list-price of the VIC-20 — a number engraved forever in my mind, £189.95.

A few days after Christmas, Dad took me shopping — I think this was literally the most exciting day of my life (sorry, Fiona!). I’d been happily expecting each programming session to consist of turning it on, writing a program, turning it off, and starting all over again the next time, but to my amazement Dad had another forty quid or so, and I was able to get the external tape-drive that would enable me to save my work! Awesome!

It was called a “Datasette”.  With a VIC, you had to use Commodore’s official tape drive, unlike the Sinclair Spectrum and other such computers that would let you plug in any old tape deck.  Under control of the firmware provided, the Datasette could transfer a less than awe-inspiring 50 bytes per second.

The VIC-20 was both less and more than the PET. On the positive side, it had a much better keyboard, eight colours, three-channel sound (the PET was silent, although I seem to remember that Richard had hacked his hardware to get a non-standard sound-card working on his PET) and lower-case letters (though not at the same time as the graphics characters). And of course, it had a much lower price. On the negative side, it had only 5 Kb of memory, of which 1 Kb was used by the system and 1/2 Kb for the memory-mapped screen, leaving a rather meagre 3583 bytes for the programmer — one byte shy of three and a half Kb. Finally, its truly tiny screen resolution: 22 characters across and 23 down, each drawn in an 8×8 pixel space for a total size of 176×184 pixels — 32384 pixels, or 0.03 megapixels in modern camera terms.

It’s worth taking a moment to think about that. My main work machine now has a 1920×1200 screen, which means you could tile it with 71 VIC-20 screens.

So about that three-and-a-half Kb. You could actually do a surprising amount in that space: I remember writing a Donkey Kong game with custom graphics characters, a fruit machine, various games where your spaceship had to avoid meteors falling down the screen and suchlike. (I got really good at writing Meteors. When I was in the local shopping centre, I’d often pop into Dixons, write that program on their display model VIC-20 and leave it running.)

Still, more memory was obviously needed, but I had a problem: money. We weren’t a rich family, and I’d stopped earning from the milk round because I was now spending all my early-morning time playing with the VIC instead of delivering milk. If I’m remembering right, the 8 Kb expansion cartridge cost a massive £35, and there was no way that was going to happen.

Richard Lewsey to the rescue! He made a memory expansion. I didn’t even know that was possible. He got hold of the chips, designed and soldered the board and housed it all inside … a cassette case! I still have it up in my office, and here it is for your enjoyment:

Armed with a full 11.5 Kb, I was ready to start making some real programs, and what moved me most was Adventure games. (“I’m in a forest. I can also see: trees.”) I wrote a whole sequence of these on the VIC, of which the first two were published: Magic Mirror and Nosferatu. Thanks to the wonder of emulators, I can still play them today, which I think is pretty astonishing. More worryingly, I can see the horrible code that I wrote back then, and marvel that it ever got published. (I’ll talk more about this in a future post.)

Those two games made me a bit of money — I think something like £650 all together, which was a lot for our family.  I spent nearly all of it on more Commodore hardware: first the amazing new C64, which had a massive 64 Kb of memory:

Yes, the 64 looks very, very much like the VIC-20: basically identical except that the plastic casing is a duller shade of cream and the function keys are grey rather than sand-coloured.  Around the back, it was a little more different — for example, the cartridge expansion slot was narrower.

Of the 64 Kb on board, 38 Kb was directly available to programs: if I’m remembering correctly, 16 Kb of the remainder was hidden behind the ROMs (8 Kb kernel and 8 Kb BASIC); some of the other 10 Kb was screen-mapped or zero-page, but I’m not sure where the rest of it went.  (Note that loading a program that used the easily accessible 38 Kb, at the rate of 50 bytes per second, would take 13 minutes, plus however long it takes to get the milk.)

You could switch out the kernel and BASIC ROMs by setting certain magic memory locations to special values; but of course if you did that from BASIC using POKE, the interpreter would suddenly not be there any more and the computer would crash.  So to access the hidden memory, it was necessary to use machine-code.  I remember writing routines to copy chunks of memory in and out of the hidden banks to an area where I could access it from BASIC.  A popular trick was to copy the ROMs through to the RAM hidden behind them, then switch the ROMs out and run the kernel and BASIC from RAM, where they could be tweaked.

As well as the C64 itself, I bought the astonishing (I am not being sarcastic) 1541 disk drive:

The reason I describe this drive as astonishing is that it was connected to the computer by: a serial lead.  Yes: a line with DIN plugs at each end, connecting to a bit-serial IEEE 488 interface.  Although its capacity of 170 Kb per disk compared fairly well with the disk drives of competitor computers such as the BBC Micro, the super-slow serial interface meant that its speed was tortoise-like.  What’s that?  You want a number?  OK, here it is: 300 bytes per second.  That’s 3000 baud (allowing for stop-bits and suchlike), which is 1/17 as fast as a typical modem (if you can even buy them any more).  At that speed, copying a 170 Kb disk took ten minutes — but that was if you had two drives and could copy directly from one to the other.  In practice of course, with only one disk, the process was read into memory for a while, prompt the user to switch disks, write to the destination disk for a while, prompt the user to switch back, and vamp till fade.  All in all, it was a twenty-minute-plus process.  To add insult to injury, lots of third-party drivers turned up for the tape drive, increasing its speed by an impressive 10x, yielding 500 bytes per second: the upshot was that the cassette drive was actually half as fast again as the disk drive.

How did we ever get anything done?

Completing the mangerie was the Commodore 1702 monitor, which meant I could dump the old black-and-white portable TV I’d been using:

Later I got a slow, noisy Commodore dot-matrix printer whose characters were bitmaps in an 8×8 matrix, and which therefore lacked descenders for the lower-case g, j, p, q and y characters.  It printed, of course, on fanfold paper — everything did in those days.  But I don’t remember the model number, and googling for photos hasn’t turned up anything that rings bells, so here is a picture of battleship-style salmon roe sushi instead.

Armed with my C64, 1541 disk drive, 1702 monitor and the printer, whatever it was, I was able to get more done, more quickly, than with the VIC-20.  I wrote a multi-user[1] adventure game called The Causes of Chaos, which I sold via a London-based software house called CRL, and which made enough money for me to survive through university without accumulating any debt.  (Note that this was in England, where tutition is free; and in the late 1980s, when there were student grants instead of loans.  So this is not as impressive as it probably sounds to anyone who’s working their way through Yale.)

So by 1986, I was firmly established in the world of Commodore computers, subscribing to ICPUG (the newsletter of the Independent Commodore Products User Group), and cheerfully hacking away mostly in BASIC with a bit of 6502 machine-code on the side, and dreaming of the day when amazingly advanced languages like COMAL would revolutionise the programing world by being even better than BASIC.  (I knew this because I’d read about it in Practical Computing.)  I was very comfortable and very happy in this world.

Then I went to university and met Unix.  But that is a story for another day.

Note [1].  I am embarrassed to admit this, but “multi-user” here meant that the players would take turns at the keyboard.  I doubt that anyone, ever, actually played it that way.

As a result of failed contract negotiations, Disney pulled New York affiliate ABC7 off of cable company Cablevision’s channel lineup early this morning, leaving more than three million people without a channel to watch the Oscars on tonight unless they tune in over the air.

We’d like to offer those three million people the following online viewing alternatives. These options will also be good extra material for folks who do have the ability to watch on their TVs.

For the Ceremony: Liveblogs

The live video options on this list won’t cover the Oscars ceremonies; they’ll just plug you in to what’s going on on the red carpet and backstage. If you want to follow the awards show itself without turning on the TV, liveblogs are your best option.

As with the other choices on our list here, these can also be supplements to over-the-air, cable or satellite TV viewing. Here are a few to choose from.

The A.V. Club
Associated Content
Entertainment Weekly
Film.com
Greencine

The Red Carpet: The Associated Press/Livestream

We’ve embedded the Associated Press and Livestream’s “AP Live” video widget above. It will show red carpet coverage, and you can use it to track and make Twitter and Facebook updates about the Oscars.

You can also watch AP Live at Livestream, Facebook and AT&T Entertainment.

Oscar.com Facebook Webcast

ABC’s live red carpet show streams stream at Oscar.com from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. PT (6:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET). The stream will be attached to a Facebook discussion engine, and many of the reporters’ questions will be pulled from there.

It’s similar to what CNN did with Facebook for President Obama’s inauguration and the Michael Jackson memorial service.

After the ceremony starts you’ll be given a look backstage, but there won’t be a live stream of the ceremony itself. You might get an even more in-depth experience, though. Oscar.com will host a “Thank You Cam” for award winners who want to say more than they did on stage.

TVGuide.com

TVGuide’s “fashion cam” will probably be minimalistic but it will be sufficient for seeing all the fantastic clothes the stars will wear as they walk down the red carpet. We’re not able to embed it here because TVGuide hasn’t provided a way to do so yet, but we do have the link to TVGuide’s Oscar video library.

You can also check out TVGuide’s six-part Academy Awards preview video series.

Twitter

You can use social media to track what’s going on with the Oscars. “Oscars” is already a trending topic even though it’s several hours before the show as we’re writing this.

Just watch the stream for that topic and you’ll definitely hear about each big turn and revelation as it happens. The commentary of the masses should prove interesting too.

[Previous coverage: Oscars Live Video: Watch the Academy Awards Streaming Online]

Update: The issue between ABC and Cablevision been resolved with a tentative deal between the two companies. The ABC affiliate is back on the network for now, but that happened after the Academy Awards had already begun.

Tags: abc, academy awards, backstage, cablevision, disney, live video, livestream, new york, Oscars, oscars-2010, red carpet

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Mismatch 101

This is why you're fat.

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I live the quote from Lord Snowdon

What seems like a very long time ago, I wrote a little essay titled “Art is a Verb, Not a Noun“. In it, I advanced my argument that it’s the actual practice of artmaking that’s important, and not the objects that are the end result.

Viewed from this process standpoint, the best art is not the art that you buy, it’s the art that you participated in making. From the process perspective the photograph you made this morning is more valuable than a vintage print of Moonrise over Hernandez, NM. And the photograph you print tomorrow is more valuable than Pepper #30. Most importantly, the photograph you are making right now is the most important photograph of all, because it’s an unfinished image; you’re actually in the process. Process is important; the print is just an artifact, a byproduct of the process. The real goal of making art is to be making art, not the objects you create.

So I was delighted to read this interview with Lord Snowdon, where when asked if he had a favorite photograph, he replied

“Yes.” Pause. “I haven’t taken it yet.”

The photos you have yet to make are better than all the ones you’ve made. The photos you’ve made are all dead, ossified things. They’re mementos of an event, and not the event itself. Only the one you’re making right now and all the ones beyond it hold out the prospect of being in that process.

Shared by TroyAngrignon
Not often you get to see the line "group of green nuns." Great story about some cool work by Michelle Kaufmann.

What do you do with a group of aging nuns in Denver, Colorado who are having trouble going up and down the stairs in their giant two-story convent? Scrap the whole building and hire green prefab expert Michelle Kaufmann to design modular homes for the Sisters of St. Francis Sacred Heart Province and the surrounding community, of course.

In addition to the 16 modular nun homes, Kaufmann and developer Urban Ventures are building 160 homes, 110 rental apartments, and 80,000 square feet of retail and office space on the former site of the Marycrest Convent campus. The project, dubbed Aria Denver, will begin construction by the end of the year.

Kaufmann's homes will feature a number of sustainable elements, including low-flow showers and faucets, CFL and LED lights, sustainably-harvested wood flooring and cabinets, natural ventilation, and high-performance insulation. And perhaps best of all, the homes are affordable, ranging in price from $250,000 to $500,000.

The Sisters of St. Francis are part of a growing movement of green nuns who believe that ecology and spiritually are connected. The Sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York City have begun construction on a new convent that they hope will be sustainable from the ground on up, with a rooftop garden, rainwater collection, natural light and ventilation, and water heated by solar power.

[Via MNN]

Design: unknown
Client: Garibaldi Olympic Development Association
Date: 1961

In 1966, after six years of construction and development Garibaldi Lifts Limited (a for profit sister company to Garibaldi Olympic Development Association) opened a skiing lodge with gondolas, T-bars and a double chair in Whistler. But long before any amenities were in place, GODA was already generating support for an official Olympic bid.

This postcard shows a kinetic oil pastel rendering of a skier and a figure skater, as well as an early iteration of Garibaldi’s bid logo, featuring a stylized torch sitting atop a bold slab-serif G.

Unfortunately GODA’s efforts were unsuccessful, and they lost the Canadian nomination to Calgary, Alberta; which in turn lost to Mexico City (which features some of this author’s favourite non-Canadian Olympic designs).

(Via Whistler Museum & Archives Society)

Molly Riley writes:

Covering hockey at ice level is rarely without excitement but usually without injury to photographers ... until the game I was working at last Friday.

I was covering the last of three hockey games in one day from our assigned position in a seat against the glass. During second period a puck that was shot up to the net above the glass dropped straight down and hit me on the leg. I didn’t think much of it and while fans scrambled for the loose puck I thought ‘what are the chances of that happening?’

Then during the third period another puck was shot up into the net and came straight down, this time on my head.

I did not see it coming but knew what it was when it hit, and I thought 'hmmm I just got hit on the head with a puck...' It didn’t hurt much but I felt my head and found it bleeding. I cleared my cameras and laptop away, leaned over the isle watching blood drip from my head to a pool in the floor, and signaled for help.

A doctor from the crowd came down and said the cut didn’t look too deep. Soon a couple of medics appeared, moved me to a seat a couple rows up, and proceeded to wrap an over sized bandage around my head. They stood me up and as we walked up the isle, spectators in the two neighboring sections applauded. The medic told me that they were applauding for me. Embarrassed and laughing, the only thing I could think of to do was to wave to acknowledge their applause.

We arrived to the clinic onsite and after getting treatment I walked out to a group of waiting colleagues who were concerned and eager to show me the photos, some of which had already been tagged on Facebook.

My Olympic souvenir: While in the clinic dealing with all the commotion, I reached into my pocket and found a hockey puck. Apparently the fan who scrambled for the puck after it bounced off my head thought that I should have it, which I thought was very nice.

Molly Riley, defense

Shared by Stewart
Amazing!

Shared by Stewart
Very well done.

A few days ago, I noted that Seesmic Web had perfected the management of Twitter contacts. I was wrong. A new service has been brought to my attention that is much, much better. Actually, it’s a must-use.

While Seesmic Web is great for a number of things (it’s arguably the best Twitter web client out there), ManageTwitter is great at one thing: managing your Twitter followers. To use it, you simply link up your Twitter account (via OAuth) and it lets you know which of the Twitter users you follow aren’t following you back, who is inactive, who is talkative, and who is quiet. Each of these are great gauges for whether you should still be following them or not.

Personally, I was able to eliminate over 200 people I was following that I determined I shouldn’t be. Most of these were users I followed a couple years ago that either were simply not using the service any more, or were no longer that interesting to me.

Unfollowing users is as simple as selecting their name and clicking the “unfollow” button. You can also do this in bulk. And hovering over any users gives you more information about them including their average tweets per day. You can also sort the various ManageTwitter fields by ‘date followed,’ ‘username,’ ‘followers,’ or ‘timezone.’

While there are no shortage of services that recommend people you should follow, I’ve long needed one to suggest who I maybe shouldn’t be following. Of those, ManageTwitter is easily the best.

Created by the Australian company Melon Media, the site notes that it has unfollowed 17092 people for 381 users in the past 3 days.

A few days ago, I noted that Seesmic Web had perfected the management of Twitter contacts. I was wrong. A new service has been brought to my attention that is much, much better. Actually, it’s a must-use.

While Seesmic Web is great for a number of things (it’s arguably the best Twitter web client out there), ManageTwitter is great at one thing: managing your Twitter followers. To use it, you simply link up your Twitter account (via OAuth) and it lets you know which of the Twitter users you follow aren’t following you back, who is inactive, who is talkative, and who is quiet. Each of these are great gauges for whether you should still be following them or not.

Personally, I was able to eliminate over 200 people I was following that I determined I shouldn’t be. Most of these were users I followed a couple years ago that either were simply not using the service any more, or were no longer that interesting to me.

Unfollowing users is as simple as selecting their name and clicking the “unfollow” button. You can also do this in bulk. And hovering over any users gives you more information about them including their average tweets per day. You can also sort the various ManageTwitter fields by ‘date followed,’ ‘username,’ ‘followers,’ or ‘timezone.’

While there are no shortage of services that recommend people you should follow, I’ve long needed one to suggest who I maybe shouldn’t be following. Of those, ManageTwitter is easily the best.

Created by the Australian company Melon Media, the site notes that it has unfollowed 17092 people for 381 users in the past 3 days.