Many of you know my wife is an amazing kindergarten teacher, but this summer, she will add another role: part-time Ph.D. student. Yesterday she was accepted to the @uofsc Teaching and Learning Ph.D. program. This is something she’s wanted to do for a long time and I’m so proud of her for taking this next step to being Dr. Wertz.
My first guess in Wordle today eliminated all but one word. Solved in two.
The Apple Sports app for following games in progress is so much better than using ESPN’s web site. Simple, but really well done.
Just thinking … @manton … would it be possible build a Facebook import into Micro.Blog, similar to how the Twitter import works? I shared family memories when my kids were little, and I’d love to have it on my site. Facebook allows an export, but I don’t know how challenging it would be to import.
I’m really glad I was able to export my tweets and move them to Micro.Blog. It gives me a record of all of my activity on Twitter on a site I control, but it also discourages me from going back to Twitter because I know the listing at bobwertz.com/tweets/ is complete.
The price of taking yesterday off is seven meetings today.
One irritating thing about working on your PhD at the same university that you work at… If you take the day off to do school work, and you need to email someone a school-related question, you see all of your work email that you were trying to avoid.
Spring on campus.
South Carolina Women’s Basketball just beat #11 UConn by 18 points, without leading scorer Kamilla Cardoso who is off this week playing for Brazil in Olympic qualifying. This team is incredible. I think it’s the best team Dawn Staley has assembled, and that’s saying something.
My daughter was in the student section 1.5 hours before the start of the South Carolina/UCONN women’s basketball game. Colonial Life Arena is going to be hopping today.
I changed my Micro.Blog avatar to my little fish logo. I change the logo on the top of my site based on my mood and I would change my avatar, too, but I think the avatar is too small to see what expression the fish has…
An established church in a small town has a simple sign by the side of the road. The town is growing and the road in front of the church is getting much busier. A new church down the road installs a large sign. Not wanting to fall behind the times, the established church installs a new sign, too. This sign allows the church to add custom messages to the sign by manually arranging letters.
At first, the church simply puts up their service times, but some people think that’s boring. The church needs more catchy information on their sign. Something that people driving by will engage with. The pastor recommends putting the sermon title on the sign, but after a few weeks, realizes that she’s got to come up with a catchy sermon title every single week. Someone volunteers to update it with a new bible verse each week, but they get tired of updating it and eventually stop. Another person finds a list of attention-grabbing church sign messages on the internet and volunteers to put those on the sign. But theologically, some of the quotes don’t align with the church’s teachings and others of them aren’t exactly welcoming. Some people driving by are offended by some of the messages. After a couple of years, everyone is sick of dealing with the sign, but the sign is very visible on the main road into town. The sign must be updated.
A handful of members decide to get together. They don’t exactly call themselves the “sign committee,” but they meet every so often to talk about the sign and what to put on it. After months of discussing the sign, they realize that the real problem is that they have to manually update the sign each week. Going out to the sign with those letters on cards takes time and a better solution would be to have a digital sign that could be updated remotely through the internet. As a bonus, one of these signs can cycle through multiple messages.
They raise the money and update their sign to have a beautiful glowing digital display. The sign is bright, but some people think it’s too bright. They start by including the service times each week. And bible verses. And sermon titles. And upcoming events. At first, lots of people are excited about the new sign and have lots of ideas, but over time, that excitement fades. Some people think the sign changes messages too quickly. While the sign is easier to update, keeping track of multiple messages, chasing down information, and updating the graphics takes more time than the old sign did. The sign becomes more than a weekly task. It’s a job. Sometimes, the sign glitches and a technician has to come fix it. Everyone is frustrated with the sign, but the money was spent and the sign is there. It needs to be updated.
Finally, the pastor decides that they are spending too much time dealing with the sign. She switches the sign to share a single message: “All are welcome.” Some people complain that the church isn’t using the sign to its fullest potential. But secretly, everyone is glad they don’t have to deal with it anymore.
I’ve used a shorter version of this metaphor to talk about social media feeds that suck time and energy from an organization that doesn’t really need one (and usually doesn’t have the resources to support one). But I’ve been thinking that this parable/extended metaphor actually has a broader application. A couple of reflection questions:
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Trying out a new Starbucks that just opened. This location was clearly designed to primarily be a drive thru and pick up location. It looks tiny from the outside, but actually has a lot of seating.
I like the way that @manton has improved crossposting in Micro.Blog.
So happy that Project Tapestry is funded. Congrats to @Iconfactory@iconfactory.world and let’s keep going until we reach the stretch goal!
In a crowded Starbucks. I glance up to see if they’ve called my name. I didn’t hear them, but it’s been a while. A woman waiting for her drink looks at me and spells my name with sign language. I nod and then realize what she did. B-O-B is pretty easy in sign language, but it was still pretty cool.
We Asked A.I. to Create the Joker. It Generated a Copyrighted Image. - The New York Times
I don’t have an issue with the concept of AI, but especially with imagery, how you train the model matters. The most popular generative systems were trained on copyrighted material and that’s a problem.
A good week for South Carolina basketball. The men beat Kentucky. The women beat LSU on the road to remain unbeaten. 🏀
More than 30 years ago, I used a Mac for the first time in high school and was instantly hooked. I finally saved up enough money to purchase my first Mac my sophomore year in college. A Power Mac 7500 that I used for a very long time until I bought an iMac. Happy birthday, Macintosh.
So I’m working my full-time job, taking a class and teaching a lecture class this semester. I’ve got a pretty good plan for managing my time, but every so often, I wake up at 1:30 with an idea in my head and end up working for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.