Off the Couch

“The Long Tail metaphor helps old media people feel like they’re still in charge. So does the idea of Citizen Media, because old media people are cynics about citizens, they think we’re lazy couch potatoes who have never had a good idea or a noble thought…and our job is to consume, consume, consume — what they tell us to….Nice story, but that’s not what’s going on.” – Dave Winer

RELATED

“I don’t think of my what I do here as production of ‘information’ that others ‘consume’. Nor do I think of it as ‘one-to-many’ or ‘many-to-many’. I thnk of it as writing that will hopefully inform readers.” – Doc Searls

One Dime Closer To Carbon Neutral

Every gallon of gas equals 20 pounds of carbon dioxide and there’s a 12 gallon tank in the Neon and a 14 gallon tank in the Cruiser. So, every time we fill up, we’re responsible for another 240 or 280 lbs of CO2 in the atmosphere. (The Neon’s 10 years old this year…Ouch.)

On the plus side, I just got confirmation that 18,000 lbs of my family’s CO2 (69 fill-ups) will be neutralized thanks to TerraPass. Less than $100 covered our guestimated annual driving in 2 fairly efficient cars. (We’re also 100% WindSource in our home’s electricity.)

According to TerraPass’ “Around Towner” and “Cross Towner” pricing structures, neutralization is $.10 / gallon.

One dime per gallon.

So much carbon offset for so little.

Two questions:

  1. Have you purchased a TerraPass yet?
  2. Why isn’t carbon neutralization built-in to the Gas Tax?

The swag TerraPass sent did feel a little too much like I gave money to Public Radio. Are ‘thank you gifts’ the most effective use of the money I sent?

Speaking of GreenDimes.

Elsewhere:

“I’m wondering why they’re not also asking me if I want to buy a carbon offset [at the pump] and neutralize my gas consumption?” – J Wynia

2010 Sept 09

Prices for the carbon credits … have crashed to around 10 cents a tonne from all-time highs of over $7 in 2008, and trading volumes have largely dried up.

gPod Update: Joyeur replaces JoCo

There’s been a shuffle over at the gPod. Since JoCo’s Thing a Week project is over (go buy the discs) – I’ve replaced it with the equally geeky and entertaining Joyent podcast.

The banter between Dave, Jason and the others is almost exactly what I want from a technology conversation podcast – just that little bit over my head, and completely unserious – except when they’re completely serious.

Pipes v. Seeds

I’ve been asked if Yahoo Pipes is like FeedSeeder.

Sorta. Both merge multiple feeds and allow a level of filtering on the results within a browser-based interface. Though, that description includes quite a few other projects as well. So, I thought a Q&A would be a better way to compare and contrast [P]ipes and [F]eedSeeder.

Does it create really cool diagrams?
P: Yes
F: No

Is it useful to Garrick?
P: No
F: Yes

Is it free?
P: Yes
F: No

Is it live?
P: Yes
F: No

Behind the Blog: Norwegianity

The Wege goes in-depth on all the reasons Norwegianity is a must-read.

  1. Cursing:

    “…my policy on swearing – I’m for it.”

    So few people know how to effectively curse – The Wege does. Sloppy, ineffective, low-vocabulary cursing is so prevalent that his use of ‘fuck’ (as in “Fuck the new Republican party”) is refreshing.

  2. Music:

    “I know more about Ethiopian music than you do….I was listening to hip hop in 1981”

    The Wege knows music. Frighteningly so.

  3. Convoluted, multi-topic, verbose, heavily-quoted, posts:

    ” I throw in gratuitous obscenities to keep the mainstream media from linking to me, and I complicate my posts so pissed off wingnuts can’t link”

  4. Politics:

    “I know what conservatism is, and it ain’t got a goddamned thing to do with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush or Mitt fucking Romney. I respect Scientologists more than I respect Republicans. At least they had the gonads to join a real cult, and not some faux, whatever-Karl Rove-decided-to-call-it-this-week, fundraising apparatus.”

Just what an ‘about’ section of a blog should be – full disclosure and a manifesto.

Note to Self: Stop Using Eric Rice’s Brain

Listening to the Joyeur podcast on Twitter, I made a note to look into fictional Twitter accounts.

Then I see this post by Eric Rice:

“By setting up a character-driven, fictional Twitter account, not only can I do a sultry little dance on the fine line of ARGs (alternate reality gaming), but that 140 character limit is the BEST thing to ever happen to the creative process.”

The time between when I wrote this and he hit publish: ~30 minutes.

Luckmaking in Place

“Placemaking takes time and sometimes just plain dumb luck. No planner envisioned it all, first laying out the grid of streets and creating a zoning code for Dinkytown, then deciding precisely that an alley was to be converted to become the location of a breakfast counter and a legendary, delicious business.” – Sam Newberg

A nice reminder that things like MySpace, CraigsList – while not ‘designed’ – are more valuable places than some of the more ‘planned’ places.

Postponed Due to Lack of Vision

I’ve been fighting with one aspect of FeedSeeder for quite a while now. None of the approaches I’ve taken ended up solving the problem in a useful way – many of them just mucked it up worse. The imaginary screen in my head that tells me ‘what it should be’ was blank and it was sucking up all the energy.

So yesterday, I dropped the feature. For now.

Removing it made everything else fall into place much easier. The imaginary screen flickered back on.

The need for this feature will still be there and I’m pretty sure it’ll sort itself out quite nicely when the time is right.

LATER:
Oh, so this new approach is called ‘procrascipline’.