Beyond Leopard and Windows Vista

Beyond Leopard and Vista: Virtualization and Windows 7!
Today is the rollout day for Apple's new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, so why am I talking about Microsoft? Emil Protalinski on October 19, 2007 posted links to some great videos recorded by Long Zheng that really show where operating systems are going. In short, the future is virtualization. October 13 Microsoft’s distinguished engineer Eric Traut made a presentation at the University of Illinois about Microsoft’s virtualization technology. Virtualization solves some of the problems there have been with operating systems, such as backward compatibility with legacy applications. Virtualization will make user OS environments increasingly hardware agnostic. Parallels software, which allows you to run Windows on a Mac OS X, is an example of virtualization at work today. Protalinski said in his post, "If you don't want to watch the 8 minute video, I'll try to summarize by saying: 'Windows 7 kernel in 25 megs on disk and under 40 megs of memory.'" This is the world of operating systems beyond our current concept of them.

Microsoft has some wonderful, smart and passionate people and Traut is a great example of that.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Apple, Virtualization, ssloansjca

SJSU investigating student for threats Daily says

"Student accused of V. Tech-like threat"
According to this story by Michael Rizzo in today's Spartan Daily:

Multiple investigations have been launched by campus police and university officials into accusations made on Sept. 29 that a resident of Hoover Hall threatened the use of guns to "go Virginia Tech" on a fellow resident.

Tonight Update News, the university TV news program put on by SJSU broadcast news students, is in production. I am looking forward to seeing their coverage of the story.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca

European Vacation Photos

Europe photos are on line here
I am done. I developed the last three (of 12) rolls of black and white film, scanned them, edited them, mixed them in with the many digital camera photos and have posted them. It has been a long and slow process but I have several hundred photos on line now that chronicle the cruise trip. I hope you like them!

[Photos on Flickr Here]

Jeremy Kemp of SLIS at SJSU

About Jeremy Kemp
I first met Jeremy in his capacity as a manager for the SJSU distance education program. He trained my help desk support staff on a half-dozen occasions. My student workers enjoyed his instruction and commented favorably on his teaching style.

Later, Kemp became involved in the Second Life community and brought his knowledge to campus with expansive passion. He is now teaching in the School of Library and Information Science at SJSU.

I consider Kemp an to be expert without peer in the arena of Virtual Worlds. I think our university is very fortunate to have him in any capacity we can get him. He has spoken to my class on this subject several times. One of the most exciting of those occurred on October 25, 2006. On that date spoke to my journalism class virtually alongside a famous SJSU alumni. Kemp presented to my class along with Aaron Uhrmacher, Senior Account Executive at the PR company Text 100. Kemp was in the class, Uhrmacher was in another part of the country. Despite being thousands of miles apart, they both presented to the class in real time side by side on the screen from within the virtual world called Second Life. The tool Uhrmacher and Kemp used to talk to each other and the class was Skype. It was a wonderful immersive experience. We recorded the session and released it as a podcast a year ago.

He did an excellent lecture on promotional aspects and public relations features of Second Life. I know he is well known in that community because he was able to secure a notable PR executive to co-present for the lecture. The students raved about the experience in a subsequent conversation we had about the class.

Kemp and I have had many great conversations since then on the subject and he has never hesitated to be a rich resource in providing me with ideas and the fruits of his research in this area. Thanks to Kemp I am planning to incorporate Second Life in a very direct way this semester. We hope to convene the class for a class session in Second Life.

Kemp is a gift this university has. I cannot say enough good things about him. We are very lucky to have him.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, Jeremy Kemp, ssloansjca, Second Life

Al Weber on Photography

Al Weber on Traditional Photography and Digital
In March 2006 photographer and conference presenter Al Weber presented at the Silver Conference at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California. I really enjoyed seeing this video of his presentation and I invite you to view it. It speaks about traditional silver "analog" photography and the relationship between it and digital photography. I can really relate to his expression of how it feels to be working in a darkroom. I really miss it!

Technorati Tags: ssloansjca, Analog Photography, Photography, Digital Photography, Black and White, Al Weber

Feeling Analog

Feeling kinda Analog
I did something radical on our vacation to Europe. I took a 35mm film camera. Then, I did something even more radical, I only brought black and white film. Of course, as well as shooting analog film I also took a digital camera. I shot a lot more digital than analog. I am very concerned about the ability of digital images to keep for many decades without a lot of work and careful stewardship of the image files. Conventional black and white photos, I have seen, can be neglected for decades, maybe even centuries and still survive long after disk drives have failed and even color analog photos have faded away.

What I discovered though was something else. Black and white film gives you a very different interpretation to a moment than does a digital photo. How the film reacts to light is much different to how a digital sensor does. Yes, you can do things with a digital photo and Photoshop that you cannot with film. But, and heres a mind blower, you can do things with film and under an enlarger that are hard to do in digital. It is all in how it reacts to light. One is not better or worse than the other. They are just different palettes, like comparing oil paint to water based paint. They are different mediums. Another side benefit was after my battery died in my digital camera, I could still make pictures. I even bought a roll of color film in Rome and shot that as my digital was dead after the battery died. (Note: If you are going to shoot only digital, bring backup batteries!)

Once in the airplane on the way to Europe a flight attendant got angry with me. She had asked me to turn off my film camera when we landed. I said I could not. She thought I was being smartellic. I tried to explain to her the camera neither turned on nor off, that my camera was powered by springs. She just could not comprehend of such a thing. It was totally off her radar.

In Europe I saw only one or two other film cameras that were real cameras. I only saw one empty film box on the ground the entire trip. When we went there eight years ago they were everywhere on the ground. But, for now I can still get film and I will continue shooting it. I do not think I will be sorry. But, I think I could be very sorry if I didn't.

Technorati Tags: ssloansjca, Analog Photography, Photography, Digital Photography, Web 2.0, Sloan Family

Anniversary of my mom's passing

On this day in 1984 my mom died
My father died in 1977 and my mom never quite found herself after that. My mom was a smoker and the records probably show that it was a smoking related illness that killed her, but she was really already slowly dying a long slow death from a broken heart. My parents grew up as next door neighbors. They lived in Pittsburgh, Kansas. They eloped before my mother was old enough to marry. They ran away from home across the state border to Joplin, Missouri where they married. They lied about her age. My grandma (on my mothers side) went after them. She found the sheriff. When they caught up with my parents my father told the sheriff they had already consummated the marriage. The sheriff then told my grandmother there was nothing he could do about their marriage. That was the law then. So, my dad lied. They did plenty of consummating later though, they had five children of which I am the youngest.

What is for lunch?

What Journalism Students are Having for Lunch
In my class today we did a fun assignment. I wanted the students to be able to tell a story on the Internet using video. So I came up with an assignment where they do a short video talking about that they had for lunch, and post it to the class blog. It ended up being a lot of fun and the answers are pretty interesting I think. They did a great job!

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca, j-school

Wet October

Normally this is Fire Season
Typically the first two or three weeks of October are hot and dry, very dry. This is normally our fire season. But, not this year. We have had a very wet and cool October. Heavy rains at times have caused spot flooding on campus. If this is any indication, it will be a long winter this year. That is good, we need the rain.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, Campus Life, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca

Major outage at the King library today

According to informed sources, "there has been a major blackout in the data center of the SJSU public library." Both their data and phone communication systems have been affected. Students have not been able to use the computer labs there. Students can go to the Clark Hall computer lab or the AS computer lab in the student union.

Update: 11:04am
Reportedly their phone system is back up, but data resources are coming back online a few at a time. It is not known when all systems will be online.