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SNG Newsletter December 1, 2009

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:52:25 -0600

SNG NEWSLETTER – December 1, 2009

In this issue—First Ever Franklin Frolic on December 5…Milwaukee Ave. Walking Tour…2010 Census is Hiring…and more!

I. SNG News and Upcoming Events

- Franklin Frolic, December 5

- Milwaukee Ave. Walking Tour, December 5

- GiveMN.org Fundraising Success!

- Annual Meeting Report

II. SNG Committee Calendar

- Crime and Safety Committee, No December meeting

Next meeting January, 2010

- Community Development Committee, December 8

- Environment Committee, No December meeting

Next meeting January, 2010

- Board of Directors Meeting, December 16

- History Committee, TBD

III. Seward Longfellow Restorative Justice Partnership

- Support SLRJP and Shop Fair Trade this Holiday Season

IV. Community News and Events

- A Brush with Kindness Home Maintenance Services

- The Seward Concert Band Holiday Concert, December 12

- Vine Arts Center Holiday Sale, December 19

- The Census is Coming!

- 2010 Census Jobs Available

- Power Check Energy Meters Available at Libraries

- Help Spread the Word About Energy Assistance

I. SNG News and Upcoming Events

- Franklin Frolic, Saturday, December 5

Noon - 5 p.m., all along Franklin Ave. E.

From noon to 5:00 p.m. businesses all along Franklin Avenue East will be having sales and special holiday deals. Sip cocoa or cider and nibble a cookie as you wander down the avenue, enjoying the holiday decoration displays that businesses have created as part of the “Light Up the Avenue” contest.

At 5:00 p.m. gather in Triangle Park (26th Ave & Franklin) to light up the park! Enjoy roasted chestnuts, refreshments, a performance by the U of M Fire Dancers, interactive art by Minneapolis Art on Wheels, and music by the Brass Messengers.

An event brochure with the full listing of activities is available at neighborhood businesses and at Seward Redesign, 2619 E Franklin Ave. The Franklin Frolic is sponsored in part by the Seward Co-op Grocery and Deli (2823 E Franklin) and brought to you by the Seward Civic and Commerce Association (SCCA).

- Milwaukee Ave. Walking Tour, Saturday, December 5

1:00-2:00 p.m., gather at Second Moon (23rd Ave & Franklin) at 1:00 p.m.

Discover the gem of Seward along this historic avenue with the Seward Neighborhood Group’s History Committee and local resident and architect Bob Mack.

- GiveMN.org Fundraising Success!

Thanks to the generosity of 44 donors, SNG raised just over $2700 on GiveMN.org’s Give to the Max Day on November 17, with $500 targeted for the Seward Longfellow Restorative Justice Partnership. In addition, we will receive close to $100 in matching funds. We are so pleased and humbled by this show of support—thank you Seward!

Statewide, some 3000 non-profits raised more than $14 million on Give to the Max Day.

- Annual Meeting Report
Over 80 neighbors attended the Annual Meeting on Wednesday, November 4, to enjoy a fabulous potluck dinner, hear updates on neighborhood projects in 2009 and plans for 2010, bid on dozens of items in a silent auction, and elect new board members.

Thanks to the generosity of dozens of membership contributions and silent auction bids, we raised $3000, helping SNG end the year on a good financial note!

Welcome-and thank you!-to the following new SNG board members: Peter Fleck, Stephanie Jacobs, Hilarie Martin, Ken Webb, and Michael & Dianne Trdan.

Thank you also to the following board members re-elected for another term: Anne Cronmiller, Charlie Hoffman, Sheldon Mains, and Marne Zafar.

Thank you to the following continuing board members: Diann Anders, Myrtle Hall, Adrienne Hyde, and Annie Welch.

Thank you to Pat Rosaves for once again coordinating the silent auction-great job!

And a very big thank you to the following local businesses and individuals who contributed so many wonderful items and services to the silent auction: Madden Accounting and Tax Service, True Thai Restaurant, Crown Video, Mezzanine Salon, Seward Co-op, Zipps Liquors, Welna Hardware, Hoffman Guitars, Laura Flynn, Meridian Clinic - Joanne Skarjune, Bernie Waibel, Melis Arik - Diamond Willow Massage & Bodywork, Birchwood Café, Jim the Barber, Precision Tune Auto Care, Resource Center of the Americas Movement Arts Center, Kathryn Rosebear, Coastal Seafood, Longfellow Grill, Articulture, Cedar Cultural Center, Katie Cross, People’s Acupuncture, Memory Lanes, East Lake Liquor, Soderberg’s Flowers, Skol Liquor, Himalayan Restaurant, Schneider Drug, Wing Young Huie, Pam McConville, Tim McConville, Dunn Brothers, Fratallone’s Hardware, Wood from the Hood, Marne Zafar, and Craftsman Restaurant.

II. SNG Committee Calendar

- Crime and Safety Committee - NO December meeting

Next Meeting Monday, January 11, 2010

If you have topics you would like to discuss at this meeting, please e-mail Annie Welch at anniemwelch@gmail.com.

- Community Development Committee, Tuesday, December 8

7:00 p.m. Matthews Park, 2318 29th Ave. S.

For additional information, or if you have topics you would like to discuss at this meeting, contact Bernie Waibel, bernie@sng.org.

- Environment Committee, NO December meeting

Next Meeting January, 2010

Contact Carol Greenwood, carolgwood@comcast.net, or 612-724-8430, for further information.

- Board of Directors Meeting, Wednesday, December 16

7 p.m., Seward Towers East, at the intersection of 30th and Franklin Avenues

Board meetings are open to the public—all residents and those who work or own property in Seward are invited to attend.

Please enter the building from the parking lot on the north side of the building. Just inside the airlock, turn left, and follow the long corridor to the office. Take the stairs or elevator to the second floor meeting room.

Contact board chair Sheldon Mains, smains@visi.com, for further information.

- History Committee, date TBD

10:30 a.m., SNG Office, 2323 E. Franklin Ave.

For more information, contact Dick Westby at sandrich22@comcast.com.

III. Seward Longfellow Restorative Justice Partnership

- Support SLRJP and Shop Fair Trade this Holiday Season

SLRJP has partnered with the on-line fair trade catalog Trade Expressions. SLRJP receives 20% of purchases made in our name. Follow this link to the catalog: http://www.TradeExpressions.com/SLRJP

If you have questions about restorative justice, SLRJP, or want to find out how you can get involved, please contact Michele Braley, Program Manager at 612-338-6205 x108, or michele@sng.org.

IV. Community News and Events

- A Brush with Kindness Home Maintenance Services

A Brush with Kindness is a program of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity that helps preserve homeownership by partnering with homeowners struggling to restore and maintain a safe and decent place to live. The program offers services such as house painting, repairs, and general clean-up for low-income homeowners. The home maintenance services occur throughout the year and are performed by teams of volunteers.

FFI call 612-788-8169, or visit www.abwktwincities.org.

- The Seward Concert Band Holiday Concert, Saturday, December 12

7:30 p.m., Roosevelt High School Auditorium, 4029 28th Ave. S.

Suggested donations are $6 adults, $5 seniors and $4 students/children. Bring the entire family. As always, audience members are invited to join the band for refreshments following the performance.

The Seward Concert Band is a non-profit organization comprised of amateur brass, wind and percussion players from the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. The group works to promote music education and appreciation, and is under the direction of Foster Beyers. For more information, visit www.sewardconcertband.org

- Second Annual Vine Arts Center Holiday Sale, Saturday, December 19

Noon to 5:00 p.m., The Ivy Building 2637 27th Ave. S.

Find unique arts and crafts from great locals artists, including jewelry, sculpture, original wall art, and more. Visit www.vineartscenter.com for more information.

- The Census is Coming!
Taken once every 10 years, the census provides valuable information about the changing demographics in our community. Residents can expect to see Census forms in early March. For more information go to http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/index.php

- 2010 Census Jobs Available

The US Census is now hiring people to help on the field work for the 2010 Census. The jobs are temporary and will start sometime between January and March and continue into June. These positions pay between $14 and $18 an hour. Persons who are bilingual or multi-lingual are particularly desired. Access to a car is necessary. To be hired, you must be able to commit to a 40-hour week of paid training.

To be considered for hiring, please call toll free to 1-866-861-2010 and ask for an appointment at a testing session. If you are interested in a supervisory position, then also request an appointment for the supervisor test.

For further information, please go to: www.2010censusjobs.gov

- Power Check Energy Meters Available at Libraries

Fifty easy-to-use Power check energy meters are available to borrow at Hennepin county Libraries. The meters will identify high energy use appliance in the home; determine how much it costs to use appliances; predict savings from reducing use; and provide other valuable conservation information. Place requests online or in person at any of the Hennepin County libraries. The meters come with home-energy assessment instructions, worksheets, and information about rebates, money-saving energy tips, and incentive programs.

- Help Spread the Word About Energy Assistance

Under the Minnesota Cold Weather Rule, special payment terms are available to gas company customers who apply for and receive Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding, and/or meet certain income guidelines set by the state. Contact CenterPoint Energy at 612-372-4680 for more information.

_______________________________________________________________________

This newsletter was compiled by SNG with the assistance of neighbors who contributed suggestions and news items. To subscribe, send an email to admin@sng.org with “subscribe” in the subject line. To unsubscribe, send an email to admin@sng.org with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. If you know of an upcoming event, meeting, or news item that should be included in a future newsletter, please email mike@sng.org. Thank you!

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The irrevocable rights we relinquish when we publish to the Web. (It's not just Posterous, folks.)

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:47:22 -0600

As many of you already know, I’ve fallen in love with the Posterous tool as the easiest way to publish to the web—especially for the non-tech, potentially digitally-divided communities. If you can email, you can post to Posterous.

So I get a little defensive when I see something like this on Twitter:

Didya know: You grant Posterous the irrevocable, fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify…

I responded:

IOW, Posterous requires a basic Creative Commons Attribution license. You still retain ownership and copyright of your stuff.

And this is true. These terms of service (TOS) are very similar to the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (without the attribution). But with Creative Commons select the licensing. You don’t have a choice when you use Posterous. They require certain rights detailed here:

Posterous TOS

You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous the irrevocable, fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous’s business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.

But Posterous’s terms are no more onerous than the other web tools we’re all using (including Twitter, where this conversation began). (Do I hear “boilerplate”?) In fact, Google has blanket terms (below) for all their stuff as well as specific terms for their various tools like Blogger. (I would hope the Gmail TOS isn’t granting Google the right to share content from my email!)

I’m not worried about this personally and just assume this allows for some marketing on the part of the tool vendor for which they can use content I’ve placed on their site. I trust that they won’t do something stupid or offensive with my content and I hope that they will let folks know where the content came from.

I pulled up some TOS statements around repurposing your content with links back to the TOS pages. Remember, you still own it and you have the copyright. All of these sites also state that clearly. (I didn’t look at the Facebook TOS but I assume it has similar language.)

Twitter

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Tumblr

Subscriber shall own all Subscriber Content that Subscriber contributes to the Site, but hereby grants and agrees to grant Tumblr a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable right and license (with the right to sublicense), to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services.

Google’s Blogger

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services.

Google

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

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NetRoots MN: The Blogasota Session with @RobinMarty ((tag: nmn09, blogasota

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:41:31 -0600

We are discussing the nuts and bolts of blogging with Robin Marty. Some high-powered bloggers in attendance. Shaping up to be a great discussion! We are currently talking about how to make money with your blog.

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MPR on U of M and the increasing transfer population (mostly community colleges)

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:31:50 -0600

via minnesota.publicradio.org

Interesting article by Tim Post (@posttim) looking at the increasing population of mostly community college transfer students. The cost of tuition is a prime reason for starting at a two-year college.

The article leaves me with several unanswered questions. Community college officials state their students do as well or better than students who do all four years at the U of MN but offer no evidence.

The U of MN has survey evidence that transfer students are less satisfied with their experience than students who start as freshmen. A national survey (National Survey on Student Engagement) finds that transfer students take part in fewer campus activities.

We need student ages to understand this better. What’s the median and average age of the transfer students? If they are older — say past 25 — it would make sense that they might feel a bit out of it and this would make them less satisfied. I would also guess that many of these students are holding down jobs and going to school part-time which does not help in integrating them in campus life.

But really, I shouldn’t have to guess. The U of MN should do the research and share it. This would make a great longitudinal study (and probably should have been started a few years ago).

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Why I voted "No" on Minneapolis Charter Amendment #168

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:51:26 -0600

Here’s what the amendment reads:

Should the City of Minneapolis adopt a change in its charter to the composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation so that the Board’s membership consists of the members of the City Council, with the actions of the Board subject to the powers and duties of the Mayor?

Here’s what Green Council Member Cam Gordon says:

As we begin the constructive discussion next year about how to improve the ways that the City Council works with the Park Board, we should do so with the BET in place and ready to be reformed and more fully utilized to help make our City government more responsive, accountable, transparent and fiscally prudent.

That pretty much sums up my own take on the amendment and BET.

I certainly agree with much of what Aaron Landry says about the BET including:

I strongly favor having our elected City Council be held responsible and accountable for these things, like almost every other major city in the country.

But I think we need to have more discussion on how to reform the process and not just jump off the current horse. While I don’t think voting “yes” will spell the end of the independent Park Board, I do think BET is one of the very few places (maybe the only place) that the Park Board and City Council sit down together and talk.

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Twin Cities Media Alliance Fall Media Forum this weekend (Nov. 7)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:53:10 -0600

via tcdailyplanet.net

This year’s Twin City Media Alliance Fall Forum’s lineup is more an unconference style than previous years and that’s always a plus in my opinion. This includes a wiki for program suggestions.

Yours truly will be talking about hyperlocal news reporting and the new Seward Neighborhood news blog (and looking for feedback).

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Fluid for Wave: Instructions on building an app

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:03:03 -0600

I use a Fluid app to engage with Google Wave. The TC Wave has links to how to do this but the TC Wave is becoming harder and harder to navigate and find things. So here’s the blog post with links to how to integrate Fluid and Wave and Growl.

Download Fluid then drop by Guillermo Rauch’s devthought blog for how to create the app (plus a link to a very nice Wave icon to use for your Fluid app). Then if you’re interested in Growl notifications when new messages arrive at your waves, install Growl and then add this script to your Fluid app. (Guillermo’s page describes how to install a script in a Fluid app.) Growl notifications only work when your Fluid Wave app is open.

I’m happy with the Fluid Wave app performance and I’ve had no serious problems. It can be slow but no slower than Firefox (3.0.15). I have heard Chrome is snappier but I don’t think Google has released an official Mac OS X Chrome yet.

Please add any useful links about Fluid, Growl, Wave etc.

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Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: From Here to Neutrality. Why we need that neutral Net & a look at the some of the silly arguments against neutrality.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:36:35 -0500

via thedailyshow.com

Jon Stewart nails why we need Net Neutrality and pokes fun at Pony Express McCain.

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Followup to the kitty video posting: What happens with video at Posterous?

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:58:03 -0500

Here is what happened when I emailed out my last Posterous kitty post with an attached .m4v video.

It took forever for Posterous to process the video. It took so long—from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.—that I started thinking it just didn’t support m4v format. But Posterous handles the situation well and doesn’t send out status or blog updates until the processing is done. For anyone that found the video (and “still processing” message) at my Posterous account, it did allow viewing.

Results from my Connected Services

YouTube and Flickr: Posterous processed the video and sent it along, adding it to my accounts.

Tumblr and my PF Hyper Blog: No embedded player. Provides link to download or to view on Posterous. Includes text of my Posterous blog post. I went back to both Tumblr and my blog and added the Youtube embed code.

Facebook: Status update with the embedded video. Includes start of the Posterous blog post and a link back to Posterous to finish reading the post.

When I checked the video in Flickr, I found that a group of tags had been added: cleaning, stretching, cats, cat, licking, cleansing, and lick. I hadn’t tagged anything myself and some of the tags were not from my blog post. Checking my Flickr Recent Activity, I found the footprints of that infamous cat and pizza lover, s4xton. Thanks Aaron.

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Kitty Chronicles: The Cleansing (video)

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:22:00 -0500

Two reasons for this post.

General cuteness in sharing our new kitties’ life with you.
Testing video uploads to Posterous. I haven’t done this before.

The video should get bundled up and sent to YouTube with an embedded player in Posterous. (Wonder if the video will also go to Flickr.) The video was taken with my Canon SD850. I saved as a desktop video for the web out of Quicktime to get it smaller. Quality did not seem to suffer very much. It’s still hit-or-miss with this video stuff for me.

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Two new kitties at our place. First look.

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:07:00 -0500

As some of you know, last year, our cat Marlmalade died. That made us catless after some 35 years and at least seven cats.

Marmalade

Last week, we saw a post in the Seward Community Forum that two kitties needed a good home. We tried to talk our nephew and his wife into becoming cat people with these kitties but they decided they weren’t ready yet. So we finally decided to enlarge our family again and invited the kitties to our place.

Here’s a first look and I’ll have more pictures (and video) up soon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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First thoughts on my Wave World adventure

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:05:47 -0500

Somewhat random notes from my first visit to Google Wave.

“A wave is a hosted conversation.” (from the Google Wave in Action video) Ah ha. That’s a good description. A wave is also boring when you’re all alone. Video says you can drag and drop from iPhoto but neglects to mention that you have to install Gears. Wonder if I can do that directly from Flickr.

Installing Gears.

With Gears installed, I can drag photos from desktop or from iPhoto. I was not able to drag an image from a web page however. Very nice and Waves gives a full-screen display when you click the thumbnail.

SHIFT-ENTER closes or opens “blips” which are the things waves are made of. Double-click a blip to reply/edit that blip.

You can edit someone else’s blip as they are editing it. There was some highlighting indicating the other editor at one point but it went away. There doesn’t seem a way to identify who typed what if you are in the same blip. Easy to get lost in a Wave if you are replying to previous blips or editing old ones. Is there a way to manage or sort? Ah ha. Playback mode goes through the wave in chronological order and indicates edits with yellow highlights.

I’m using Firefox 3.0x. Friend using Safari. Compatibility seems fine.When you mute a wave you can see it by choosing All from navigation pane. To “unmute,” select wave and click the inbox tab.

Finding waves with a particular contact: The search box for the inbox area is not useful unless you know the wave email address. It won’t give you a hit off the name (unless I’m missing the query term for it). So you would have to look for “pfhyper” for me and not “Peter”. You can search on “Peter” from the contact search and the pop-up will reveal recent waves. (Checking Wave help and they mention you can’t actually search on names yet.) The Google Wave overview video is telling me I can link waves and publish them to my blog. Do you have to use blogger for that? Ah, you need a gadget or robot or something. Wavety.com has a list of robots and gadgets.

I finally found the Tweety robot (made by the Wave team) and installed it. Tweety will display your Twitter stream in Wave and allows you to tweet from Wave. Or at least it will do that when they finish with it. Right now, it will grab your current twitter stream but then not continue updating and you can’t post to Twitter.

Check the Wave help forums if you are trying to get gadgets, robots, extensions to work. That’s where I found out that Tweety is broken for now. When they get it ready to go, it will be put in the Extension Gallery located in the “Welcome to Google Wave” wave.

For the record, this is how you install the Tweety robot. The instructions may be useful for other robots and gadgets.

Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts.
Start a new wave.
Drag the tweety contact to the contact area above above the new wave.

That’s all from my first Wave adventure. If you’re on Wave, you can connect to me at pfhyper@googlewave.com.

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Is Michael Pollan anti-agriculture? Agriculture critic's appearance angers university alumni (via @KTAndrea)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:15:38 -0500

via latimes.com

Although “agriculture” often means big farm enterprises, it can also simply mean “the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock.” I don’t think Mr. Pollan objects to that. For him, it’s all in the means whereas for Big Ag, it’s often more about the ends especially getting the animals to market really fast and increasing profits.

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Support rural America! Call a sex chat line today! (AT&T, Google Voice, & Net Neutrality)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:56:17 -0500

Google Voice blocks calls to certain rural areas because of outdated regulations that require the big phone companies to pay access charges to the rural companies when calls are completed in the rural company’s phone network. The original idea behind this regulation was to help in sustaining rural phone networks that may not have enough subscribers locally to pay for all their costs. AT&T, Verizon and the rest of the big telcos have no choice about paying these fees. At the moment, Google Voice does have that choice. AT&T is not happy about that and has raised a bogus charge of Google violating net neutrality.

It gets juicier. Some rural carriers figured out a lucrative business getting “popular” chat lines to use their local numbers. Each call that (mostly) men made to the (mostly) women at the chat service resulted in AT&T (Verizon, etc.) paying the access fees. This amounted to a lot of money. Enough money that the rural carrier chould just give the number to the chat service and in some cases kick back some of the wealth. In their defense, the rural carriers point to stimulating local economies, providing local jobs, and American entrepreneurial spirit. (I made up the part about “entrepreneurial spirit.” The local jobs would come from potential chat lines and tech help centers located in the rural area.)

Google’s Richard Whitt says it best at the Google Public Policy Blog: ”This issue has nothing to do with network neutrality or rural America. This is about outdated carrier compensation rules that are fundamentally broken and in need of repair by the FCC.”

Read Matthew Lasar’s article, Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop “traffic pumping”?, over at ars technica for the deets.

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Backyard Snow Photos

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:22:09 -0500

See the full gallery on posterous

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Backyard Snow Photos

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:45:44 -0500

Taken October 12. Way too early for this kind of snow.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Backing up is hard to do: A quick look at my OS X data backup plan

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:02:52 -0500

Backing up is hard to do. OS X Time Machine makes it lots easier if you have a dedicated drive connected up to your Mac. But my main machine is a MacBook and I don’t have a single workspace in the home where I can leave a hard drive ready to connect. I move around. Also not ready to spend the funds on any wireless backing up.

Second best (for me) is to turn Time Machine off and use on demand. I enable the TM status in my menu for this. Then connect the backup hard drive and choose “Back Up Now” from the menu. I try to do this every evening.

I just bought a 750GB Western Digital My Book drive from Amazon (+-$100). The My Book includes Firewier 400 ports along with USB 2.0 and I need the FW for compatibility with some older computers (an Apple Cube for one). Not crazy about the look and feel of the My Book and sometimes it won’t mount immediately which I think has to do with its sleep mode. But I think it will do for the immediate future.

Time Machine is wonderful and restorable if your drive goes bad. It also keeps around old versions of files until you fill up your backup space. For that reason I backup my 150GB drive to a 230GB drive. TM will delete the oldest backup when the drive is full. You can also have it warn you before it deletes.

TM backups aren’t bootable. If something goes wrong, you have to restore the backup. I want something bootable so if something goes wrong, I can reboot off the backup drive. SuperDuper ($27.95) accomplishes this and is very fast after the first full backup. It’s been upgraded for Snow Leopard. I keep my Super Duper backup on a partition of the 750GB drive. It will only “grow” as big as the internal.

I use to use Carbon Copy Cloner by Mike Bombich and free. I switched to Super Duper because CCC was very slow even when only backing up changed files. I just visited Mr. Bombich’s site and I’m curious if he’s enhanced performance in the latest version. The site itself is much slicker than before and the ad blurbs make CCC sound pretty slick. I think I’ll have to test it out.

There is an excellent user-generated Time Machine FAQ over at the Apple Discussion boards. For one thing, it explained clearly how to move my old Time Machine backup from one disk to another under Leopard (Snow Leopard lets you simply drag-and-drop.)

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Unsummit: Pete & Jeff Talk Net Neutrality & Censorship

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:46:38 -0500

Update

Here are some links about Net Neutrality that you might want to browse if you’re thinking of attending our session.The articles are reasonably short except for Chairman Genachowski’s speech.

WSJ: Neutering the ‘Net

WSJ: U.S. as Traffic Cop in Web Fight (a fairly balanced piece)

DSLReports: What Network Neutrality is REALLY About

FCC Chair Julius Genachowski’s speech.

Jeff Pesek and I are facilitating the Net Neutrality discussion at the Unsummit (@unsummit) at Minneapolis Central Library on Saturday, Oct. 10. We’re scheduled for 10:40 in the Pohlad Doty Room.

I’m working on the description of our session for posting to the Unsummit site. Here’s what I have so far.

Net Neutrality & Censorship

Net neutrality has become a big deal since FCC Chair Julius Genachowski spoke in favor of it last month. How would net neutrality hurt or help the Internets as we know them? Will it be the end of innovation and the free net markets? Will a non-neutral net allow AT&T to spoon feed us “approved” data and censor what they don’t like? Will a neutral net allow Google to dominate the world?

What the heck is “net neutrality” anyway?

Join us in a lively (and respectful) discussion on neutrality and whether it will help or hinder the Net.

Comments? Wonder if I can do the link to Genachowski’s speech.

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Update on Seward Co-op Annual Meeting

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:09:01 -0500

It was a tight election race for the Seward board of directors on Tuesday evening. Alas, I was short by some number of votes and won’t be at the table in the next year. Thanks to all who voted for me. There’s always next year.

Incumbents ruled with current board chair David Hoffman-Dachelet and Miriam Holsinger getting reelected. The third spot went to Seward employee Allison Meyer. (Allison served as the employee director this past year but ran at-large this year.) Greg Gustafson is the new employee director. Check the announcement here.

Some notes on the Co-op’s health…

We have grown from 4,700 members to 6,300 members since January and continue to grow at the rate of 100 members per month
We have 50% growth in sales since January with 34.8% of our sales from local food
We created 55 new jobs for a total of 175 employees

The food at the meeting was excellent as usual including wonderful dessert treats at the table and a personal chocolate bar from Equal Exchange Chocolates. Adam Wozniak’s band provided some great jazz music as we dined. (Find Adam on Facebook and MySpace.)

So become a member of the Co-op and you can join us for dinner next year (and vote for me!). It’s a one-time $75 payment.

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Unsummit: Pete & Jeff Talk Net Neutrality & Censorship

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:58:48 -0500

Jeff Pesek and I are facilitating the Net Neutrality discussion at the Unsummit (@unsummit) at Minneapolis Central Library on Saturday, Oct. 10. We’re scheduled for 10:40 in the Pohlad Room.

I’m working on the description of our session for posting to the Unsummit site. Here’s what I have so far.

Net Neutrality & Censorship

What the heck is “net neutrality” anyway?

Join us in a lively (and respectful) discussion on neutrality and whether it will help or hinder the Net.

Comments? Wonder if I can do the link to Genachowski’s speech.

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