Two years ago this past weekend, we adopted this little guy from Winnipeg Humane Society, and gave him a forever home. Such a great dog. Don’t know what possessed the people who gave him up at eight months old for chewing things like puppies do. Best dog ever.
One of the benefits of working from home is playing music I like to hear, all day long. Under the category of “old timey number with guitar accompaniment,” this is Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show. This song was created from a Bob Dylan snippet. There’s a story behind it:
“Wagon Wheel” is composed of two different parts. The chorus for the song comes from a Bob Dylan outtake from the soundtrack for the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Although never officially released, the Dylan song was released on a bootleg and is usually named after the chorus and its refrain of “Rock Me Mama.” Although Dylan left the song an unfinished sketch, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show wrote verses for the song around Dylan’s original chorus. Secor’s additional lyrics transformed “Rock Me Mama” into “Wagon Wheel.”
— From the Wagon Wheel page on Wikipedia.
Clicking on the video below takes you to YouTube.
Another compelling anecdote from James R. Chiles’ Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology, this time about how Joe Shea, NASA’s Apollo program manager, managed his program. By 1964, NASA and its contractors had 300,000 people working on the project:
Shea’s main management tool wasn’t that complicated, either, just a looseleaf notebook that his staff filled each Thursday with progress reports, crisis bulletins, and cost figures sent in from every branch of the Apollo program. Shea marked up the pages working through the weekends, then releasing his incisive comments on the following Monday to be answered in time for the next notebook.
Salmon maki, salmon nigiri, dynamite roll, and my favourite, negi toro maki. Mm, mm, good!
Here’s the recipe, for them as wants.
Inviting Disaster–Lessons from the Edge of Technology is a fascinating read that deconstructs catastrophic events and why they happen. Author James R. Chiles’ style as a storyteller is particularly engaging and compelling. The book is filled with fascinating anecdotal asides on technological disasters of all kinds. He recounts a horrific accident at the Hungarian Carbonic Acid Producing Company that is the stuff of science fiction movies:
The company was in the business of removing Co2 from natural gas and selling it. The liquid was stored in small cylinders as well as in four big storage tanks, cooled by ammonia refrigeration. The gas arrived at the plant with traces of water in it that had to be removed. On occasion this stray water caused gauges, fittings, level indicators, and even safety valves to freeze shut. But the plant kept running.
On December 31, 1968, the plant shut down with the indicators showing at least twenty tons of Co2 in each tank. The plant opened again late on the night of January 1. Running short of cylinders to store the liquid Co2, operators directed the flow into storage tank C, which was supposed to have plenty of capacity. About a half hour later, tank C exploded, and its fragments blew apart tank D.
The twin explosions killed four people nearby and ripped tank A from its foundation bolts, tearing a hole about a foot across. In escaping furiously through the new opening, the pressurized liquid Co2 acted like a rocket propellant. Tank A took off under the thrust, crashing through a wall into the plant laboratory, dumping out tons of liquid Co2 across the floor and instantly freezing five people where they stood. The deluge left the room at a temperature of -108F, starved of breathable air, and covered with a layer of dry ice.
Just in from a great walk through the park and back with my trusty sidekick. A brisk north wind made it a little uncomfortable, but the sun was bright.
YWG current conditions:
Princess Diana was alive the last time I changed jobs. Bill Clinton was President of the United States. Hong Kong was part of the Commonwealth. The iPod was four years away.
I’ve worked for Boeing for over 13 years–well over a quarter of my life. Back in 2001, a director asked me to make a website to showcase our division’s capabilities. Knowing nothing, I went online. There, I fell in love with the web, and a community that gave of their knowledge freely, that taught one another, that shared their discoveries so that others might take those ideas, build on them, and set them free.
I wanted to give back to a community that gave so much to me. While I couldn’t contribute code, I knew that as a writer and editor, I could give back by helping to clarify ideas and bring them to a larger community. I volunteered at Digital Web Magazine, first as acquisitions editor, then managing editor, and eventually as the editor in chief. A few years later, I joined the staff at A List Apart, first as acquisitions editor, then as an editor, and now as editor in chief–a labour of love I continue today.
On Monday, January 31st, I get to make my internet labour of love my full-time job: I’m fortunate to be joining Automattic, a company you already know and love.
The community that gave so much to me, continues to give to me today. Can’t wait to get started giving back, full time.
ALA 321, the first issue of 2011 is live.
ALA 321: A Simpler Page by Craig Mod and Design Criticism and the Creative Process by Cassie McDaniel.
Imagine what it might be like to have perfect recall of every day of your life. 60 Minutes aired a fascinating story on five people who have Superior Autobiographical Memory–the ability to recall every day of their lives with frightening accuracy.
The discovery of people with instant access to virtually every day of their lives could recast our whole understanding of how human memory works, and what is possible. And that has implications for all of us.
MRI scans on five of the six participants revealed an abnormally large temporal lobe, (an area of the brain believed to help store new memories) and an abnormally large caudate nucleus–an area of the brain involved in learning and memory and in obsessive compulsive disorders–traits of which all five exhibit in varying degrees.
Is it possible we all have memories of every day tucked away in our brains, but we just can’t retrieve them? Could understanding these remarkable people someday help with Alzheimer’s and other memory disorders?
Krista Stevens 