Musical Taste Ecclectic?

I know I have a goofy musical taste. I enjoy punk, rockabilly, classic rock, folk, reggae and ELP. I enjoy new and very old stuff. So I found this site for people with musical taste as goofy as mine. It is a blog with a great reviewer called "Ryp", great album art, and great tunes. Check out the Twilight Zone blog! Enjoy tracks "rypped" from rare vinyl like the "Desperate Rock-N-Roll" and "Strumin' Mental" volumes. And other stuff...

Scholastic red Training

The trainer came yesterday to train me to be the Scholastic red facilitator. It looks like a great program if we can get several teachers to apply the methods systematically within out school. The program concentrates on getting students to actively participate in language and learning, rather than sit passively and avoid taking responsibility for ownership and usage of the language and classroom topics. The ideas about how to structure course content for effective delivery are all very similar to everything I have ever done - it involves accessing and building background knowledge and vocabulary skills. But the difference is in the design of the classroom techniques to get students to participate and use language skills. The real course content is in the introduction and practice of the classroom techniques. If a good number of the teachers in this school do this, then there would be quite an impact on our limited English speaking students.

The facilitator told me that the name of the program, "red" doesn't really mean anything. It was chosen by marketing people. It may have been chosen to be unconsciously associated with the other red products out there that are related to helping AIDS in Africa. Though there is no association at all with that program.

The Chicago Marathon

I am stupid. I would not have stopped. After spending all that time in training and travel, and after spending the amount of money it costs these days to do a marathon, and after having the background I do as a runner, I would have been pissed off if I was forced to stop running the race.

But perhaps I think different. The people who had to stop were the (slap me if I am being politically incorrect) slower runners. I do not disrespect them. I understand that their race is as difficult and as important to them as the faster runners. I am even joining the ranks of the slower runners at this point in my life. The slower runners are still fitter and more courageous than 99.9% of the rest of the population of this planet.

And it is hard to imagine the real scene there. There is a great slideshow at the Chicago Tribune web site (thanks to them for the screen cap) that can make some impact for those of us that were not there.

I Really Have aStore - aFew of them, actually...

Amazon.com has been so nice to add the aStore for affiliates. It gives us the abiliy to create and "publish" up to 100 customized online stores. I added it to a few sites - my Running Barefoot blog is one of them. Are you really reading this? If so, check it out!

Free Disk Partitioner

Now I need to make partitions. Found free disk partitioner software. Another ISO file, this one zipped, another CD burn. Making Linux work takes a lot of hoop jumping.

ISO Recorder

My Roxio Easy DVD software kept failing as I was trying to burn Linux install CD's from iso file downloads. After wasting three blank CD's, I decided to look around to find something free to do it better. I found this ISO Recorder. It installs as part of the Windows XP user interface, and uses the right click menu to launch a wizard for burning CD's using Windows XP's inherent capabilities. Great stuff.

Damn Small Linux

Been playing around with Linux again. Gotta get some of my old boxes out to eBay, and with a good Linux install they are liable to sell. Tried Damn Small Linux, which takes only 50MB on a CD or other media to run on a machine. So far it has failed on an old Gateway Solo notebook. Doesn't run the flat panel well enough to see the system.

The World Right Now @ play.blogger.com

I think this is a great blogger app: It is a never-ending slideshow of images being uploaded to blogger.com in real time. It is kinda like a snapshot of the world according to the blogosphere, because it is what people are writing about moment-by-moment. Cool!