Traveling Light?

How much stuff does one really need to travel with? Clothing aside, how many electronic connectable to the world wide web devices do I want to bring?

I have a camera, laptop, iPod, iPad and they're not all coming.

The camera yes, because the camera on the iPod sucks.

The iPod because it's a nifty portable device that does every thing I want it to, except take a decent picture when I want it to.

The iPad is nice. Large enough to scroll through stuff easily. Easy to connect to the cloud. If I have to get something down in writing Google Drive is becoming a good friend of mine. Light enough to travel easily.



The laptop has my life on there but it takes up more space and weight. I'm not sure if I want to travel with it this time. I'm too reliant on it and I want to get away from it for a few days. But if someone wants to look at pictures...oh Hell no one wants to see those.

Yes, I'm answering my own question here.

Is there an app for toilet training an autistic kid?

My mother bought an iPad for my son. It arrived on Tuesday night. Set up the iPad for him. Did not add anything for my personal use. I do not need another gadget to be addicted to.

It is sleek, easy to use and had amazing video quality. The camera is still a piece of crap.

Gave it to him, and he spent most of the morning watching the same video over and over on the PBS app. I took it offline, knowing I'd put it back. I'm trying to figure out a way to use the iPad as a tool in toilet training. Something has to motivate this kid.



Later, he handed me the iPad on the screen that shows the homepage of the PBS kids app. The one I took off. The one he wanted me to put back on. No sure how he found it, but he did.

Last night, he was at his mother's and asked her where it was. Later, she said he was looking at an app for learning Portuguese on her iPod. Great, another language he can learn that we will not understand.

But I will never lose my head tonight

The hurricane is headed up the East Coast. Like many, I have plenty of family and friends in Irene's path, including my parents. I spoke to my Mom yesterday, they're fine. She mentioned the long lines at the gas stations, that they had plenty of food. They're going to be fine, as long as no trees blow through their windows, but I worry. This is one of the frequent times I feel guilty being so far away.

My wife is going to see her Father for the first time in over two years this week. He and her Sister are even further away. It's hard to imagine what she has done for love, crazy! This week she filled out the paperwork to have her permanent resident status updated. Today I mailed that out. We're likely to hear back from Homeland Security soon, with a note that her status has been extended another year while they review the paperwork. Sometime after that, she'll find out she can stay another ten years.

We've been watching my son for about ten days straight. When he gets on the bus Monday morning, I will not see him until the next Thursday. While I'm away, he will turn nine. He's a great kid. Even greater once toilet trained. He's been listening to a song on my iPod all weekend, walking all around the first floor of the house, holding the iPod, taking the beginning of the song in, then restarting. I'll post the song tomorrow, as part of the 'What I've been Listening to" project.

Shit Gaze as Poetry

My son has been using the iPod Touch. When I take it out all of a sudden I'm his best friend. He finds movie trailers and keeps playing the one for Rango, which is alright and Jackass 3, which make me wonder. He also gets into the music and finds his favorites by KT Tunstall. This weekend he's been listening to Here Comes the Sun and has found a song by the Acid House Kings that he likes as well as Airport, by The Motors. He does not like My Morning Jacket.



We were also in the yard in the afternoon, where he took a soccer ball and threw it against the fence, then the garage, then the fence on the other side of the yard. No, I never did anything like that ;)

Had an opportunity to meet up with a fellow blogger yesterday. He came down from Fredonia and we went to the Columbus Crew match. Good to talk about Fredonia then (as he was not there when I was) and now and some other conversation. The Crew were victorious!

The National Poetry Slam finals were held last night. Congratulations to team Nuba form Denver as they won the title. Writing Wrongs, from Columbus came in fourth. The Nuyorican team from NYC finished second and Team Providence third. From all reports is was a great bout with inspiring poems all around. Congratulations to Simone Beaubien and her staff for putting together a great event whose sole 'problem' was the bouts being sold out, with overflow crowds. What happened that was out of the organizers control was a fire in a venue, and when the venue was moved a poet had a seizure on stage. No one was injured, all is well today.

Have a few poems that are more than half finished that should be completed by the time we leave for Scotland. Some meaner stuff than usual. Some of it necessary, some of it deliberately spiteful. I'm a bad man.

You Think You're Lonely?

You think the sun does not shine upon you ever? Ralph McTell knows where the sadness is, and he's going to take you by the hand and show you.



One app I have is Tune In Radio, there's a great station out of the Netherlands that plays minor hits, or hits such as McTell's that were popular across the pond during the sixties and seventies.

Are you still sad?

Have you changed your mind?

A Year of Discoveries

One of my favorite apps on the iPod Touch is Tunein Radio. It's a very impressive app that I'm having a lot of fun with and have not even scratched the surface of the stations available.

My stereo system has a dock and charger for an iPod and I tried plugging it in after I bought the iPod, with no success. Finally realized that the back cover had to be removed for the unit to function properly, and it's plugged into the stereo right now, BBC Radio 6 is on. Beautiful.

I've found a couple of stations from the New York City area, one of them being WINS. It's an all news station that is lacking in the Columbus market. For decades they have been delivering the news 24/7. Their slogan remains, "Give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world."

When I was growing up on Long Island WLNG could only be tuned in if the wind was right. They're located on the east end and from where I lived, the signal was rarely strong enough for good reception. I love this station's approach. They keep the ads local, there is a sincere personality to the on air talent, and the music is oldies. Their oldies format runs deep to, not just the top five singles, but they go a bit more obscure - and I like that. Plus, the DJ's voices are processed with a bit of reverb. It's a fun station.

Yesterday I somehow lucked into listening to a soccer match live on Radio Merseyside. Most of the BBC stations live soccer matches are blocked over here for copyright reasons, but Everton/Stoke I was able to experience live, and despite the Everton loss it was a thrill to hear as it happened.

This morning I tried to find a link to the Old Firm match, but was unsuccessful. Managed to find a decent video link on the laptop. I cannot be stopped when the urge to see a match exists. Celtic won 2-0 and all was right in the world.

Goofing around a bit later I managed to track down the audio from the second half of the Chelsea/Aston Villa match. Very exciting as the lead went back and forth and Villa tied it, seconds after Chelsea thought they earned the victory.

This season I've been listening to a lot of the Bills losses on the laptop but I listened to 97 Rock's feed as the Jets kicked their asses in today. Looks like the Bills will have a top five draft pick.

This iPod touch is a fancy piece of technology. Bought a cassette adapter so it can be used in the car and a cigarette lighter adapter so we can charge the battery in the car. A lot of wires but to put a new stereo in the Subaru would involve demolition, filing of edges and would lost much more than the twenty five bucks just spent.

Trying to get my writing discipline back. Too many distractions that are my fault are keeping me away from how I want to get it done. Plus, my son has been bouncing off the walls all year. Thank God school starts back tomorrow. Little sleep has made me a grumpy dragon.

I've only been following stats for this blog since April, but thanks for the 2,863 visits. I know I'm not The Dooce, but I do what I can.

Back it up. I'll Take it!

Got everything packed for the move to the new offices. Tune in on Monday to find out if everything got there in one piece and is hooked up properly. I've spent the last day and a half working a group project at the Fine Arts Library. Pulled a few hundred books off the shelves and the physical activity wreaked havoc on my legs, but mostly my right ankle. It was on fire today!

Never been in that part of the building before so the moving shelving on the second floor was pretty cool to play with the first couple of times I had to go up there. That's where the over sized art books are kept. It was also a kick seeing a few books I've processed over the past four years. My scrawl behind the title page is quite recognizable.

I hit a wall a bit early today and left earlier than I wanted, but I was overwhelmed - and it a bit of pain.

Did head out to the OSU Forestry Department's annual Christmas tree sale and picked up a Scotch Pine. It's lovely, but a bit wonky on the bottom. A lot smaller than last year's, which took up a third of the living room. I recommend this place, the prices are fair, the trees are farmed from Ohio and the service is great. They're located on Fyffe Road due west of the Schottenstein Center.

The other new addition is an iPod Touch. To synch it up we had to upgrade our operating system to Snow Leopard, which took some time but seems to be well worth the twenty nine bucks. As I type this I'm backing up to the external hard drive with Time Machine. Seems to be quiet and seamless.

One of the main reasons we got the iPod is to download some apps for autistics. When we borrowed an iPod a few months back my son seemed to be very interested in touching the screen and playing with it. I've found some free apps for some basic things he may try to communicate to us, we'll see how this works out. There is some more expensive software available, but I'm not willing to jump into that yet.

Been quite the whirlwind this week. More over the weekend, but not as intense. My son's been feeling better. Off the bus earlier he seemed more his old self than he's been in a few weeks. Swimming should be fun for him in the morning.