(In no particular order) 1. Droid I bought my Droid in November 2009 and it has changed how I interact with people, sometime for the worse, but usually for the better. On the one hand, even though I’m a technophile, I really don’t like the 24/7 culture of new communication technology. I used my first cell phone only to call out and for emergencies. On the other, the convenience and entertainment value of a smart phone make me wonder why I went so long without one. I still have a bad habit of leaving my ringer off, missing calls, and forgetting all about the phone’sRead More →

Trains provide an excellent location to study a culture. They are at the nexus of so many life patterns: work, play, family time, doctor’s visits, shopping. In a city like Tokyo, people from all walks of life take trains, unlike in the US where there’s a distinct distaste for mass transportation in all but the largest cities.  You can learn a lot about people’s customs by observing the world of trains. In Tokyo, the train culture is fascinating, both in infrastructure and in people and their behaviors.  The Metro system in Tokyo is complex, and reflect complex negotiations. As a tourist, you can see thisRead More →

Day trip tour guides are hit or miss.  Only two guides stand out for me from all my tours. One was very fun; he made us dowse for ley lines at the Avebury stone circle in England. The worst one was on our tour to Hadrian’s wall in Northumberland at the border of Scotland and England. He had on a kilt and hiking boots. It should have forewarned me about what to expect. In any case… Our tour guide to Mt. Fuji stands out as the best and most entertaining. He went by the name of Harry, obviously a concession to English-speaking tourists. Like mostRead More →

The Viator day tour to Mt. Fuji is underrated. This is an indisputable fact. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The itinerary is easy. We took a bus upto Mt. Fuji, stopping first at a small rest stop along the way. That rest stop was simply a pit stop, and an opportunity to look at the top of the Fuji volcano in the distance. We were there for maybe fifteen minutes. Our second stop was the fifth way station up the mountain, which is as high as vehicle traffic is allowed. We were lucky because that level is generally inaccessible in the winter due toRead More →

We have arrived in Tokyo. The time adjustment is crazy, but the logistics are smoother than predicted. All the little things that you take for granted are up for grabs when traveling in a non-English speaking country, and I was predicting doom and disaster for the most minor needs and requirements.  The greatest concern was getting lost.  Other concerns were bizarre bathrooms and money conversion. So far, due to the Droid’s superpower capabilities, I have been victorious over these challenges. Of course, this is only Day 1. 1. Money – A nifty money conversion app solves switching from Yen to USD and back.  I haveRead More →

On this Veteran’s Day, stop fake supporting your troops. Today is Veteran’s Day, a day that spawns a number of cut and paste micro-memes on Facebook.  After last month’s screed on pinkwashing, I feel compelled to repeat my rant preemptively as the first posts start to trickle in. People see the “Support our Troops Cut and Paste,” and they dutifully follow directions without taking a moment to honor the sentiment, and without admitting that they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing meaningful in any way. Flag-waving “support your veteran” statuses on Facebook are amusing. They’re pointless. We might as well cut and paste a status from a statusRead More →

Using PowerPoint in speeches sucks. Always. Many speech teachers probably feel the same. PowerPoint becomes a teleprompter, which defeats the purpose of giving a speech. Last semester, I taught Business Communication for the first time in my entire teaching career. In thinking through that class, I felt obligated to teach PowerPoint since it’s expected in the business world. Also, the POD listserv, discusses visual resources a lot. Those two things motivated me to teach PowerPoint and to do it well. As a result of these explorations, I experimented this semester. One thing I incorporated is a Pecha Kucha format speech (you can use Prezi too,Read More →

My first version of VoXYgen was posted in 1996. It was fun building the most rudimentary webpage and exploring what could be done on the internet. Since then, things have changed, and I’m suffering from “information fatigue” sans the extreme levels of anxiety or sleeplessness that it presumably provokes. I have noticed, however, that I can’t keep up with Facebook. I bookmark sites that friends post and then waste time deleting them without reading them because the list is obscenely long. I skip surfing my usual reading spots. RSS readers have made blog surfing incredibly easy. The downside, however, is that with a simple clickRead More →

This week I received many Facebook messages urging me to tell my friends “where I like it” in my Facebook status. I’ve seen my friends post such mysterious statuses as “I like it on the chandelier” and “I like it on my car seat.” This morning I posted, “I like mine without pinkwashing.” Many people didn’t understand my status or why the meme makes me so angry. I have two simple answers: 1. I hate pinkwashing. 2. This is nothing but Facebook slactivism. Put differently, I do not believe that if I post an “I like it…” status on Facebook, I have done something significantRead More →

Why I haet Blackboard Learn: 1. There is no mass edit. 2. It’s sticky as all hell. When you create something new (an announcement, test, file, module, -anything-), you get a dashboard with a box for a title and then a box for the text. Sometimes, you try to type in one of the boxes and you simply can’t. It hangs. The only way to work with this is to click in whatever is the opposite box until it un-sticks. So if you’re in the title box, click on the text area and wait for the page to unstick. What utter effing b.s. 3. ItRead More →