So this is really cool. I am actu­ally speak­ing this blog using my new copy of the Dragon software’s Speak­ing­Nat­u­rally. My hope is that I’ll be able to use the soft­ware to max­i­mize my drives between Rochester and Ithaca. If every­thing works out I’ll use the soft­ware to write papers on the road, or atleast, the occa­sional blog entry.

The speech recog­ni­tion is actu­ally pretty good, and it’s sup­posed to get better the more they use the pro­gram. Unfor­tu­nately, the auto­matic punc­tu­a­tion needs a little work.

Today is just the day of voice recog­ni­tion I also tried a new free ser­vice called Jott that allows you to call into a phone number and speak a mes­sage that will be trans­lated to your blog or twit­ter feed. This morn­ing I posted a tweet using the jot ser­vice, and it came out okay. I also tried to post an entry to the blog, but that didn’t work out – not sure why.

This is like Star Trek – “content” to just say com­puter, but it’s not quite that good yet (exam­ple, in that last sen­tance it some­how “I am tempted” turned into “content”). Still, it’s a pretty good start.

ps. points to who­ever can iden­tify what the seem­ingly non­se­quiter sub­ject has to do with this blog — and no googling!

So, um, yeah… I haven’t had a chance to write about the Microsoft Social Com­put­ing Symposium… Or the Renais­sance Mar­tial Arts Fes­ti­val (which took place this weekend)… Or really any­thing at all. So to make it up to you, I present the best pub­lish­ing pic­ture evah:

[cap­tion id="attachment_874" width="300" caption="Avatars in second life read­ing the long tail"][/caption]Yes, that is an Opti­mus Prime avatar read­ing a copy of The Long Tail in Second Life. And yes, I’m using this in a pre­sen­ta­tion to pub­lish­ing professionals.

More to come in the days that follow…

The sym­po­sium on O’Rielly Radar. I’m also tweet­ing the event (see sidear –>) or my twit­ter page.

As the title sug­gests, a lot of my time is being spent trying to bal­ance my life in Ithaca and my life in Rochester. The core of this bal­anc­ing act is layed out at the top of every page of this site:

PhD Stu­dent at Cor­nell, Researcher at RIT

Add to that hus­band and pet guardian, and there’s a lot to manage. And dif­fi­cult deci­sions to make. I feel like a major ongo­ing life lesson that I am learn­ing is how to say “no” to things (admit­tedly, its not going so hot right now). Its also lead­ing to some tough decisions.

Up until this week, I’d be back and forth between Rochester and Ithaca, coming down for class on Monday morn­ing, stay­ing until after­class on Tues­day night, return­ing to Rochester and work­ing Wednes­days at RIT, trav­el­ling back to Ithaca on Thurs­day morn­ing, and coming back to Rochester on Friday night. It amounted to eight hours of dri­ving a week.

Last week, Dre and I came to the really tough deci­sion that the com­mute was unsus­tain­able. I was falling behind in my work at Cor­nell and bring­ing home way too much work on the week­end. So we made the tough deci­sion that I’d stay in Ithaca from Monday after­noon (Monday morn­ings are spent at RIT) to Friday. This is the first week that I’m on the new schedule.

In many ways its good. I have more time to work and I’m rapidly get­ting caught up on work. By my heart is in Rochester and I miss Dre so much. These are going to be a long two years.

[cap­tion id="attachment_766" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="My Debate Com­mand Sta­tion"][/cap­tion]

Some might be asking “What’s up with this post….” My PhD work is in the area of Jour­nal­ism and live blog­ging debates is some­thing that ama­teurs and pros alike have been doing this US Pres­i­den­tial Cycle. So, livin’ the anthropologist’s life, I thought I’d give it a try.

It’s not as easy as it looks. In fact, Twit­ter­ing is much easier that trying to write any­thing sub­stan­tive. This, believe it or not, was better than my first, unpub­lished attempt during the VP debate. Bal­anc­ing watch­ing, think­ing, typing, and keep­ing watch­ing is a lot harder than it seems. So with­out fur­ther adieu, my rather weak ram­blings on the proceedings:

• 10.34 pm — Gotta love what hap­pens when the can­di­dates block the teleprompter. And we go to hand shaking…
• 10.24 pm — So much for yes or no. McCain’s “maybe” was the per­fect response on that one. And we heard the audi­ence on that one.
• 10.17 pm — For an inter­est­ing view on the debate, check out Intrade’s track­ing page for the debate.
• 10.13 pm — Whelp, it’s offi­cial Brokaw should just get up and leave at this point.
• 10.11 pm — Twit­ter looks to be down from the traffic
• 10.03 pm — I want a doc­trine! The Bernius Doctrine…
• 10.00 pm — Ok, Brokaw is absolutely toothless.
• 9.54 pm — I wonder if the audi­ence is miked? McCain, whose cracked more jokes so far… But if there isn’t the sound of chuck­les from the audi­ence, it just sounds like the jokes are dying on the floor.
• 9.49 pm — Brokaw really needs to start cut­ting these guys off…
• 9.37 pm — Ball­ston Spa NY — Cen­tral NY Represents!
• 9.29 pm — Inter­est­ing pro­duc­tion note — is it me or are both can­di­dates wear­ing lapel mics? If so then why the hand helds? Are they even on? Or is it just for the look?
• 9.27 pm — The Hack the Vote live twit­ter­ing is lag­ging way too far behind the debate. It’s inter­est­ing, espe­cially since there’s a healthy amount of tweets from both sides of the aisle. But I think I’ve seen enough… let’s try some live blogging…

2 months rent down the drain, but the car is run­ning better than ever!

I’m back in Ithaca at the Library and watching/taking part in a meet­ing on Social Advo­cacy that’s taking place in Ohio at the excel­lent Mid­town Brews forum. After that its on to the Debate. All of this will be watched online — it’s a brave new world.