Beach Haven

This post was originally published in February of 2016 on another platform:

At the NAB conference last year I picked up a book by this title. It was written by Andrew Dubber. It's interesting where he took this work. I had assumed he'd focus in on new technology and how it's changing what we do. He eventually gets there in later chapters. What he did instead at the beginning was to question what radio even is. On page 10 he says, "As part of a changing media environment, radio becomes a moving target." He continues, "Something is happening to radio - indeed something has happened to radio - and in order for us to understand what has changed about it and what that means, we need to stop and attempt to gain some clarity about what 'radio' was in the first place."
 
Dubber eventually describes a context to define and understand what is meant by the word radio. He proposes a list of 10 categories through which radio is defined. Here is the list:
 
Device
This is the tool used to listen to radio. It could be the traditional device in your car dashboard, on the kitchen table or the home stereo system. He also includes less traditional devices such as mobile phones, computers, and tablets.
 
Transmission
Here he includes electromagnetic radio waves that are modulated, wired internet connections, cell phone data streams and satellites. I would add audio channels on TV cable and satellite systems.
 
Text
By this Dubber means the programs offered through the medium.
 
Subtext
Here Dubber is speaking of the intentions behind the programming. What are the underlying purposes for making radio content? The motivation shapes the outcome.
 
Audience
This refers to the people who consume the content no matter how it gets to them.
 
Station
Dubber uses this term more broadly than the traditional idea of a business entity that broadcasts a radio signal over the air in a geographic location. He also includes any organization that produces texts (content).
 
Political Economy
Here he wants us to consider political and economic forces that shape the content shared and the funding mechanisms. Dubber also includes the ideas surrounding performance of some social or civic function.
 
Production Technologies
Tools used to create radio texts (content). Think hardware and software.
 
Professional Practice
In this area Dubber refers to techniques and work flows for using the technology to create and distribute the content.
 
Promotional Culture
This one relates to several of the others, but with the intention to have a specific effect on the consumer behavior of audiences.
 
Whew! So... How do YOU define RADIO? Let's see what you think. Of course that assumes anyone is actually reading this and has/shares an opinion that I'm OK leaving posted here. ;-)

This post was originally published in January of 2016 on another platform:

I was sitting in a meeting some time ago where we were discussing collaborative efforts. The graphic below was included in the slide deck that was being looked over. I'm certain it was developed internally by other staff at NPR. I thought it was helpful and decided to share it here.
 
Essentially there are four strategies depicted on a sliding scale. The scale is defined on the top line in red. At the left there is less inter-operation between organizations. As you move to the right there is ever increasing inter-operation.
 
In the meeting there was not a belief that we should always be in the collaborate category. In fact all four of these strategies make sense depending on the situation. There are times, for example, when an organization or person might take action independently and simply communicate with others about it. That would be the strategy at the left side of the continuum.
 
As human beings we will regularly employ one of these four strategies whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. As the scale implies the strategies to the left take less effort so there might be some temptation to mostly take that approach. As we interact with others perhaps we should consciously look for opportunities to use strategies to the right side as often as it makes sense to, and not be tempted to overuse those on the left because they are easier.

This post was originally published in January of 2016 on another platform:

Innovation is often defined as the introduction of new things or methods (see http://dictionary.reference.com). Another way one could think of innovation might be combining existing things or methods and using them in new ways; case in point, parking meters.
 
This is a topic I really had not thought about in a very long time, if ever. For more than twenty years we have lived in areas where there are no parking meters. On occasions when we went to visit a city where they have meters we would just park in a parking lot or tower. If we did have to use a meter on the street there was nothing novel about them. Put in your quarter and be sure to add time before the meter went red.
 
Now that I work in downtown Washington DC and have more opportunities to park in the city my experience has changed. Generally I don't park at all since most days I ride the train into the city and walk from the station to NPR. When there is a reason for me to drive to work, I usually just park in the underground parking facility at the NPR building, but sometimes there are off-campus evening events that take me out into the greater parking world. Several of those experiences caused me to get to know the more innovative approaches to street parking metering that have evolved as of late. Those experiences caused me to look around on my daily walk between Union Station and NPR. The result is a recognition that some smart innovation, in the sense of combining disparate technologies, has brought the world of street parking meters a long way from the simple coin-op days.
 
The first step-up in metering technology I see looks deceivingly like the traditional coin-op parking meters. In fact they are backwards compatible (geek speak) in that they actually will take change if you so desire that payment method. What's new is that they have more apps (geek speak again) available. For instance if you don't have coins in your pocket you can swipe your credit or debit card. Additionally, set up an account on the city's metering web-app, and you can update the parking time with a simple text. No credit card required in your hand, just in the account. What I like about the texting version of payment is if you have to renew your time you don't have to leave your meeting, event, etc. to run down to the meter and add time. You just send another text with the number on the side of the meter and instantly you have averted the threat of a ticket from parking enforcement.

The electrical power to do all this is furnished through a small solar panel and the connectivity between the meter and the network is done via wireless. Just a few years ago all of these technologies would not have been available in such a small package as an average-sized parking meter. What a smart way to combine different technologies that were not developed for anything like this sort of application.

Another parking advance is even less hardware intensive. Instead of a block lined with individual parking meters, some locations have shifted to something akin to paying for a space in a parking lot. Somewhere within the city block a driver is trying to park on is a single kiosk. At that kiosk, as with individual meters, there are multiple ways to pay. The driver can park anywhere on the block, then interact with the kiosk through a touch screen or touch sensitive pressure buttons. Again the kiosk is powered by a small solar panel and interacts with the network by wireless connection.
 
I have seen two different versions of how a driver can show they have paid for their time via a kiosk. The first is what I think of as likely the earlier version. In this case the kiosk kicks out a small receipt on paper which the driver then places in the car dashboard. When the parking enforcement people come by they can read the receipt (typically with a bar-code reader) and determine if there is time remaining or if they should issue the bad kind of ticket. The negative to this version is, like the old coin-op or credit card swipe payment, a driver would have to physically go back to the kiosk and their car to pay for added parking time. On my motorcycle, the ticket is accessible to anyone walking by and another driver could adopt my ticket for their car.
 
What I consider the most advanced of all of these options is the kiosk that does not issue a receipt, rather it requests the license plate number on your car. Once entered, the parking enforcement people simply connect with the parking database and look up the license plate number to see if there is still time on the meter. Like the text option on individual meters, a text can be used to recharge this virtual parking meter saving the need to physically go to the space to recharge the time.

This new kiosk arrangement would have made Cool Hand Luke even more frustrated than he already was. You may recall the movie that starts with a Paul Newman, playing the drunken protagonist. He cuts off the heads of a bunch of parking meters. Then he sits down and waits for the police to come by and arrest him.

The remainder of the film is about his experience in prison. It is likely that the most well-known line from the movie happens when Luke is uncooperative with the prison guards. The lead guard (or maybe it was the warden, I don't remember) bellows out in a thick southern accent, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." The guard then proceeds to make Luke's life more miserable than it already is.

Drivers who park on city streets may view parking enforcement a bit like prisoners view prison guards. Unlike the prisoner and guard communication problem, these new parking technologies make for better communication between drivers and parking enforcement. Well, OK, if it's not better communication, at least it is easier communication.

This post was originally published in October of 2015 on another platform:

Most have probably heard the analogy of perspective; is the cup half-full or half-empty? We have a 2008 Chevy Malibu. We've had it for about four years. For months we had the occasional check-engine light pop up, but the car didn't seem to have any issues. For this reason the wallet was focused in other places. A little over a month ago the check-engine light took a turn for the worse. More messages associated with the light came up on the dashboard when starting the car, and would intermittently insert themselves temporarily during a drive. Then finally the biggest concern, the battery light came on. All of this happened as our deadline for getting the emissions check done for registration renewal was approaching.

My wife found a place recommended by someone we know. We took it in and, not surprisingly, when they tested the alternator it was bad. The other alarms, they said, were common when the electrical power was low. True to their word, when we got the car back everything seemed better except my wallet. Within a day the computer system reset (as planned), then some alarms came back (not as planned). We just figured it'd be some sensors to replace. Unfortunately things went downhill fast. Another day and all the old symptoms reappeared. We believed it couldn't be the alternator since that had just been replaced. A quick stop at an auto parts store proved the battery was not holding a charge, so they replaced it. Luckily that was free since the battery was still in warranty. It didn't fix the symptoms though, so back to the shop. They tested the brand-new alternator and pronounced it as bad also. A replacement was installed and we were back behind the wheel. Since this one was a replacement to the one they supplied it didn't cost us anything.

A few days after this we saw a few alarms again pop up, but they seemed unrelated. The check-engine light was intermittent. This went on for three weeks when I got an unhappy text from home. The battery light was back. Not sure we could trust the same shop, we took it to the dealer. Sure enough… the alternator was bad. They lightened my wallet by putting in a new one, but they had more things to say about the other alarms. Over the next week we fixed the problems (turned out to be several) and simultaneously lightened our bank account again. Just today, after fixing a number of issues, we got word that all the faults are gone and the emission test passed.

While all this was going on, the financial impact was timed just right in a month that we had some "extra" money come in. My initial reaction was, "Of course. We get a little extra money and instead of being able to use it for something we want to use it for we have to use it for that stupid car." That is clearly a cup-half-empty perspective. I can remember similar experiences when my reaction was more along the lines of, "How blessed we are. Just when something bad hits us we get the extra money come in that we need to cover it." That is the cup-half-full version of the exact same situation.

After thinking it over, it feels like our ability to cover our costs seems to ebb and flow fairly consistently in sync with the ebb and flow of the needs we have. That is a testimony builder for me in that it feels like we are being watched over and cared for. At the same time there are days when I wish that the revenues as compared to the liabilities would stay above the changing financial tide so that when family costs go down the margin between the two would increase even if the revenues don't. I think I would consider the positive version of this financial allegory gratitude. The negative financial wish could be some display of ingratitude.

I don't know why these sort of life experiences appear to me differently at different times. Why do I see some as half-full events in which I feel gratitude for the blessings? Why do some of them feel like half-empty events that bring me to grumbling in at least a partial spirit of ingratitude? Once I recognized this experience in context of my reaction I was quick to chide myself for not counting my blessings. It does help to understand that despite this specific occurrence of a first-world problem, our life is actually very good and we have every reason to be grateful and happy.

The effort isn't over until I get the car registration renewed and can legally drive it on the street for another year. Although all this made my wallet thinner, I wouldn't recommend the process for weight loss. On the question of half-full or half-empty, I know a former colleague who liked to say neither was true, but rather the cup was over-engineered.

This post was originally published in October of 2015 on another platform:

Some months ago one of my friends posted a link to an article on Facebook. In this case the poster is not just an "FB friend", but someone I consider an actual friend. The story was about a study conducted by someone in the world of academia. The gist of the findings was that non-religious people have a higher IQ than religious people. For whatever reason I didn't respond online. I generally like to take a breath before jumping into a fray. The pace of FB posts doesn't really allow for measured contemplation. By the time you can think something through, the topic has long been buried and forgotten. I'm sure my response here will not be read by many, if any, and it is just my opinion which is probably worth as little as I think the study is worth. My initial reaction was that the study findings sounded something like what I might have heard in the sixth grade. "Oh yeah! Well you're dumber than me!" I was waiting for the next study to have findings showing that "My dad can beat up your dad!"

As I thought it over for a few days I was reminded of the old adage that you can make statistics say whatever you want them to say.

I have not spent any time digging into the study or how thorough it was. I'm sure people could quickly point to this as a reason my response is not defensible. I would, however, like to remind us all about some basic ideas in statistics. The first is the symbol N. It is used to define a total population, or a complete set of actual or potential observations. In the case of the referenced study this could be something like all adults in the United States. Then there is the symbol n. It is used to define some smaller part of N that will represent the group as a whole without needing to consider every subject contained in N. The symbol n is specifically the subset of the population selected according to some scheme. These definitions are not mine. I took them from The Basic Principles of Statistics for Introductory Courses, published by BarCharts, Inc.

The story linked in FB said the study used two samples to come to its conclusions. The first was a sample of people chosen from among college educated adults. The second was a sample of people chosen from among adults of all sorts. The results were that those with higher education had a lower percentage of people who believed in God or considered themselves religious. Those who came from a more general population had a higher percentage of people who believed in God or considered themselves religious. There was a link made depicting those with higher degrees of education having, in general, higher IQ than those who did not.

Based on the definitions of N and n these conclusions should come as no surprise at all. It's self-fulfilling prophesy. If we accept the premise that those with higher education also have a higher IQ then it is no wonder this study drew its stated conclusions.

For one thing, those who attend institutions that tend to disagree with religious principles are more likely to adopt the perspective of the institution. If the sample of higher-educated people is limited to just that group, then it is no wonder that this group would have a higher instance of non-religious perspective. Those who do not receive academic indoctrination will be less persuaded by the arguments of academia. If the "regular Joe" population includes many other groups then the average religiosity would obviously shift upward since more perspectives are included.

The idea of linking IQ with non-religiosity is also in question.  Using much the same argument, if the "regular Joe" population has more people of lower IQ then the average would be naturally lowered. Not because as a whole these people are dumber, but because there are many more of them who have not attended institutions of higher learning. It's likely there are "dumb" people who attend college and "dumb" people who do not attend college. It is also likely that the percentage of lower IQ individuals in higher education is less than the general population. If that is true then the IQ of educated people would average higher than the general population. I'm only stating what the study argues and I'm not really sure any of these assertions are true.

Which institutions of higher learning were selected could also have much to do with these findings. For example, if the study had focused on universities that are owned or sponsored by religious organizations the sample results n might have actually shown the exact opposite. These people would likely be a population that is both highly educated and more likely to be religious.

The problem is the issue of coincidence and correlation. The study is arguing cause-and-effect. The study argument is that people are less religious because they are smarter, and that people are more religious because they are dumber. I am arguing that the supposedly smarter group is less religious because of the smaller population. Many other factors can also be associated with cause such as institutional indoctrination. I am also arguing that the supposedly dumber group is more religious because of the larger population size. More people with a wider range of IQ involved will naturally explain a lowering of the average IQ and raising of religiosity among the group simply because of the larger sample size.

I think the study would be more telling if people in the study were actually tested for IQ both within the higher-educated group and within the lesser-educated group, then religiosity could be compared based on IQ and not based on level of education.

Within the study I don't fit the mold. I have an advanced degree and am on the cusp of completing another. It would seem I'm the anomalous highly-educated dumb person who is religious because of my dumbness. If I were smarter I would have better understood the concepts shown me in my education. That greater understanding would have made me less religious. At least, so goes the argument of the study. 

Well… I'm OK considering myself a highly-educated dumb person. It fits better with an argument from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:27. "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty…"

I doubt my little quibbling would confound "the wise" or "mighty". I'm certain some person connected with the study could point to why I'm off base since as I said earlier, you can make statistics say anything you want them to.

This post was originally published in August of 2015 on another platform:

A week or so ago the day was just perfect outside. I felt inspired to make another roach coach run. I even had a little cash in my pocket. For me that is highly unusual. I decided on Yummy...Yum Food. It specializes in Persian food. I had the Lamb & Koobideh Kabob. The food was good. The lamb was nice and juicy. The koobideh (beef) was a little dry. The sauce they poured onto the meat and rice was quite tasty.

It wasn't cheap. I spent slightly more than I tend to at the brick-and-mortar restaurants across the street. I had to walk across the street to find a place to sit down, but that didn't take long.

They don't seem to have a website, but the truck lists their Twitter and Facebook sites.

It was a literal mom-and-pop. "Mom" was in the back cooking and "Pop" was in the front taking orders and money.

This post was originally published in April of 2015 on another platform:

In the late 1980's I was serving in the Navy, home ported in San Diego. When we were actually in our home port, my ship, USS Duluth (LPD-6), would usually dock at the 32nd Street Naval Station. A few times we needed upgrades or repairs which resulted in a few months at a civilian ship yard. A daily ritual in the ship yard for many, ship's company and contractor alike, was to wander out to the head of the pier at lunch to visit the food truck, commonly called a roach coach.

I assume that most reading this have some idea what I am referring to, but for the overly sheltered I'll explain. A roach coach is a decent sized box truck. They come in various sizes. Inside the truck would be some sort of refrigerator, a grill or other cooking device, and an assortment of cooking tools. You read the menu (usually painted on the side of the truck, or attached to it), place your order, pay the bill, then get your hot lunch handed to you in some sort of to-go packaging.

The nick name might lead you to believe the quality, or at least sanitation, of the offerings is risky. In some cases this could be true, but not always. You might think the food would be cheap. In some cases this could be true, but not always. A food truck is all about convenience and getting a hot lunch you don't have to bring with you or cook in a microwave.

Back in my Navy days there was pretty much only one truck that showed up at the pier, and the food was always Mexican. Fast forward to now when I work in the heart of Washington DC. The area around my office is called NoMa, meaning the area just north of Massachusetts Avenue. Not many years ago it was thought of as a less-than-desirable part of DC. Recently it has been gentrifying. There are plenty of arguments for and against that sort of gentrification effort, but that's not the point of this article.

The process of gentrification has created a few blocks where a person can walk about and pick from a number of lunchtime restaurants. In one block the restaurants line one side of the street. On the other side are other kinds of businesses. With the increased lunchtime foot traffic from new office buildings like mine, food trucks have begun to line the street just opposite of the brick-and-mortar eateries.

I have seen them in the past, but had not partaken of their offerings. Today, maybe the temperature was just right, or the gleam on the shiny trucks caught my eye, or maybe there was a solar flare. Who knows? Whatever the reason, I decided to check out the trucks for lunch.

What I found was that the roach coach of my Navy days has come a long way. The premise has not changed, but the variety is striking. I'm sure this is not really new, but this one city block on 1st Street NE between M Street and Patterson Street is like a mini UN of the roach coach. Most of the trucks listed a website and social networking sites on their sides. A look at the trucks that were out there today will serve as an example. The specific trucks that show up change from day to day. Here's today's list:

• Jamaican Me Crazy (Jamaican Cuisine)
  • http://www.jmccurbside.com/
• Big Cheese (grilled cheese sandwiches)
  • http://www.bigcheesetruck.com/
• BurGorilla (burgers)
  • No website listed, but they are on Facebook and Twitter
• DC Latino Grill
  • Twitter account only
• Just Steak & Cheese (think Philly cheese steaks)
  • Couldn't find a web presence
• DC Greek Food
  • http://dcgreekfood.com
• Crepes Parfait (various food served in a crepe)
  • http://crepesparfait.com
• Healthy Fool (Vietnamese)
  • No luck finding an online presence

Yes that last one is call Healthy Fool and not Healthy Food. I chose that one for my adventure into lunch. The food listed on the menu didn't seem all that healthy, though it didn't seem all that unhealthy either. I chose grilled steak and vegetables on rice noodles with spiced soy sauce. I had to get a drink somewhere else. They had water, lemonade and tea. None of those sounded good to me. Anyone who knows me will have predicted that I picked around the broccoli. I did. The rest was tasty. I did find a hair in the food (apologies to the squeamish). The "chef" was not wearing a hair net or hat. That said, I didn't have any sort of tummy rumblings after lunch like I sometimes do with Asian food.

Next Friday if the temperature is just right, and the gleam of the shiny trucks catches my eye, and there happens to be a solar flare, perhaps I'll venture towards the trucks again to sample a different part of the mobile UN. If not I'll probably be at one of the brick-and-mortar-based lunchtime hangouts within a few blocks of this recently gentrified section of NoMa.

This post was originally published in March of 2015 on another platform:

Back in the mid-2000's there was a buzz about a new technology threatening radio. It was called podcasting (a mash up of the words "iPod" and "broadcasting"). The way it worked back then was a person took an iPod (or similar device) and attached it to their home computer. They would subscribe to podcasts being made available from many sources on the Internet. The device would stay attached overnight with the computer running. The next morning the listener would unplug the fully charged device. Any of the podcasts with new content would be automatically updated. Any that had been listened to in previous days would be automatically deleted. A listener really wasn't restricted to overnight, but there was a requirement for the device to be hooked up with a cable for a length of time to allow the automated downloading and updating of content. The idea was popular among some circles, but usage remained fairly low. The dedicated device seemed more popular for music than for refreshed podcast content.

Then came the rise of the smart phone. Podcast software has been made commonly available on new phones. One difference between the iPod model and the smart phone model is availability of bandwidth. Cell phone bandwidth and WiFi signal coverage has been steadily rising and costs continue to come down. Smart phones are so prevalent now that I've seen reports suggesting that in North America there are more smart phones in use than there are people. With the growth of bandwidth, for a person to get access to a podcast there is no longer a need to hook up a cable and wait. The delivery can come to the phone through the same data paths used for talk, text, email and web surfing. By using the smart phone for podcast content, listeners only have to carry one device. Before they would carry a phone for talk and text, and separately they would carry an iPod (or other audio device) for music and podcast content. The dedicated media player has not disappeared, but with the rise of the integrated smart phone device they are clearly less popular than they once were. Just stroll down the technology aisle at your local store and check out the ratio of smart phones to pocket-sized dedicated media players.

Interestingly, the title of "podcast" has not changed even though those using an actual iPod to play the content are probably small in number. Even when the original model was first in vogue there were other devices (not just iPods) that could download and play the content. Apple did a good job out-marketing the competing media players and the name stuck.

Recently a number of organizations have gone down the path of creating podcasts again. I assume this rise of podcast content is associated with the ubiquity of smart phones. Two of the leading recent examples are Serial, produced by This American Life, and Invisibilia, Produced by NPR. Both of these shows have had downloads numbering in the millions. The recent popularity of podcasts has been so good that it is beginning to get the attention of sponsors. Ads are often embedded in the content.

There is some cross over between media delivery methods. For example more than 200 NPR stations have run Invisibilia content on the broadcast radio air. This American Life agreed to dedicate one of its regular weekly radio broadcast programs to Invisibilia content.

The effect of the rebirth of podcasts remains to be seen. There are many audio podcast content sites springing up all over the Internet. All reports I've seen show radio listenership on the decline while podcast listenership is on the rise. That said, the scales of these two media mechanisms are degrees of magnitude different. Radio listenership is many times higher than podcast listenership right now.

The measurements are not apples-to-apples. Radio listeners are measured in cume (cumulative audience, total number of listeners) and AQH (average quarter-hour, the longer people listen the higher the AQH). Similar to television, if a radio is on there is no way to know how many people are listening. For example, how many people are in the car while the radio is on and are they actually listening? If the family is running errands, several may have headphones on, listening to MP4's in the back seat for example. The numbers are also extrapolated from sampled listeners through polling services such as Arbitron.

Podcasts are measured in number of downloads. Downloading a program is not the same as actually listening to the program. For example if a person downloads the Serial series, but only listens to the first program all the episodes count in the statistics.

Regardless of any statistical errors in counting, what is important is trending. Any statistician will tell you that so long as something is measured in the same way consistently then any error is also consistent. That means the trends will be valid even if the data is slightly off.

One last difference to mention about podcasts. Since these are recorded files shared on the Internet, they are not broadcast over the airwaves. This means that podcasts are not subject to the same rules that content shared over the air is subject to. In the United States, broadcast content is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). I have not seen any sort of rating system for podcast content. It's not required that the content producer offer warnings about the nature of the content, though many do. Rough language and sensitive topics are not unusual in this arena. Much content may be created by people who do not follow journalistic ethical standards. Like much on the Internet, fact checking may be lacking. Some might argue that such standards are not followed on broadcast media either, but at least it is supposed to be. No such restriction exists for podcasts.

As I have experimented with podcasting I find an interesting dilemma. The podcast listening has begun to compete with audio books and radio for my commute and workout listening. I've become a microcosm of the phenomenon of media splintering.

This post was originally published in February of 2015 on another platform:

After nearly a year of doing nothing with this site, and continuing to be unhappy ​with the old bhaven.org site I went back to look at this SharePoint site again and remembered why I tried it out in the first place. A static website has little appeal. At work I've heard websites referred to as a "legacy platform" meaning the old way of doing things. It maybe so. I do participate in social media (FB, Twitter, etc.) except the content there is ephemeral. There is little to no constancy. I don't think a website is much better, but at least there is no technical objection to longer form and the data stays in place for as long as you leave it there and pay the host site provider.

The idea of old media is an interesting one. Five of our children made a choice to serve as missionaries for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the girls this meant 18 months of almost no direct contact. For the boys it meant the same for 24 months. Before each of them left I asked them how they wanted me to write to them. I gave them the choice of either an email or a physical paper letter. Every one of them chose snail mail. You should understand that these kids are plugged in. They have been online their entire lives. They are digital natives in the truest sense. Yet, when they were going to be away and longing for a touch of home, they wanted something to show up in a physical mailbox. Each week my wife and I would set at a computer, type out our message from home, hit print, sign the letter, then stick it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox for the postman.

This past week I was attending a conference for the North America Broadcasters Association in Toronto, Canada. Interestingly, in the conference bag that showed up at my hotel room I found a nice leather-bound 2015 journal. It has lined pages for writing and each page is marked at the top with an individual date, one for each day of the year.

One other experience I have related to this cross-media trend. I read books. I have lots of them I have read, and plenty yet to be perused. I also have commute time each day. Some years ago I got in the habit of downloading audio books and listening to them during my commute time. I still do. Interestingly I have generally listened to audio books that I have a physical copy of. If I don't have a physical copy, then before I finish listening I often buy a physical copy and put it on the shelf. I'm using the more modern act of listening to an MP3 or MP4 version, yet I still find myself wanting the good old fashioned version with words written on paper. I do actually read some books if they are for school or if I can't find an audio book version. In my post-graduate classes students can opt to download the digital versions of text books. Many take that option, but not all.

I'm not sure what it is that keeps us tied to older forms of media. Maybe it feels somewhat more permanent. I don't know. Much of the theme of the Toronto conference was about where the media of radio is going. We heard how online tools such as podcasts are threatening radio listenership. It's not new. Every time some new medium comes along the others feel threatened. Yet in this day of television, movies, video streams, etc. the theaters are still open on Broadway. We can stream all sorts of music, yet live concerts are still common place. Don't get me wrong. Ever-growing media options to those of us who consume it will likely mean smaller slices of the pie for each of the disparate media. It can be argued whether new media are growing the content distribution pie, or simply carving the pie into ever smaller pieces. It does seem, however, that old media stays with us in some evolved state regardless. Be it our need for the familiar, nostalgia, or a perspective of the quaintness of it, old media somehow continues to stick around.

This post was originally published in March of 2014 on another platform:

I use SharePoint extensively at work. I want to start understanding how I might use it to help our family stay better connected. For years I have managed a website at http://bhaven.org but ​have not updated or refreshed it in a log time. I'm hopeful that by using SharePoint I won't have to personally update the platform as in the past, but now I'll let Microsoft do it. If this gets me where I want to go I'll keep it up. The current space I'm working on is a public space. With time I'll decide how to manage the private space. Wish me luck.

For some years I built the Beach Haven website manually using ipower.com as a hosting site. Some years ago it got difficult with the limited tools I had at the time to keep up every time browser technology changed. I also wasn't able to separately create a mobile friendly version of the site. My solution was to use Microsoft 365, specifically the SharePoint tool. I am very familiar with SharePoint, and the small cost included a public facing site. I just pointed the bhaven.org URL to the SharePoint URL and built the site there. Problem solved, or so I thought.

I ran the site that way for several years. It was convenient, though the tools were a little limited. Then recently I got an email from Microsoft telling me that they would no longer support public facing sites in SharePoint. There was no other obvious option inside MS 365 that I could see.

Lucky for me ipower.com updated it's tool suite. So here I am rebuilding this website using "free" tools included with my ipower account. Their site hosting options are quite affordable and generous with email accounts and site storage space. Unfortunately, that means I will need to repost here the content I built on MS 365. This means for the next few weeks there will be a rush of old content. It will post here as if it was new. For context, I'll add a note in each post about when it was originally available in the MS 365 space.

I doubt anyone is really reading any of this stuff anyway. If you are, I'm sorry you are putting up with my less-than-interesting ramblings. Thanks for somehow finding at least something of value in the posts to burn your time on them. One advantage to this switch is that this tool is actually a blog tool. Unlike the other location, readers can actually comment. Knock yourself out.