The Infinite Bridge » Daily Posts

Daily Post: 1-25-2015

Yitna Firdyiwek — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 14:25:56 +0000

The daily diet of 500 words cannot be sustained without questions. That is my realization of the day. To sit with a question in front of me (it does not have to be an intriguing one) is the key to unlocking the torrent of words that is meant to sooth my soul (probably will change this later). In any case, the question for me today is: How can I know myself? This, of course, is a question derived from an injunction, “Know thyself,” which I embrace wholeheartedly as a sound philosophical way to be. I am not saying I know myself (at least not yet), but I accept the prescription, and now take the first step asking myself for the process by which I can achieve the goal. In fact, the goal itself is not important. It may be something that can never be achieved. What matters first is the process. That is what I am committed to. So, how to begin… It seems to me I need to have one of those inerior dialogs with myself to get things rolling. I need to ask myself questions, and try to answer them myself. What am I? Who am I? Am I up to the job of such knowing? As I ask myself these and other questions, however, I am met with silence. Someone is there, but there is no answer. My first encounter in this process is with a Mute. But not an unfamiliar figure. I have lived with the Mute for a long time — probably thirty years ago. Then, I was quite the voluble type. I had been sure of myself growing up and had developed a lyrical writing voice early in my college years. I was beginning to fall in love with the English language just as much for its own gloriousness as for the freedom it allowed me to move back and forth between it and my native Amharic. I wrote in it. I translated in it. I wrote in both languages simultaneously. I even meditated in it feelings that were rooted in my otherness. But doubts began to arise in me first after reading T. S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent in which he discuss the writer’s ability to “feel” in his own language. I probably misread what he was saying — essays did not inspire me much in those days, ironically. But I started wondering whether I truly could feel in English. What did it mean to feel in a language, anyway? Up till then, my key insight into writing poetry had been “discovery” not “feeling.” I waited for that muse-driven inspiration when the vowels and consonants fell like raindrops and trickled into place. But suddenly, a corner of my mind where sparks of verbal pyrotechnics had once flared, begun to dim. I continued to write, but it was not the same. Just then I also got married. This second transformation in my life brought with it a different sort of evaluation of my words. What had been strong language that made my loved one cry was no longer a source of strength and renewal for me and, as I had assumed, for her. Suddenly, it was not some projection of angst into the universe, but a narrow and personal appropriation of some one else’s life. Who was I to say those things about anyone? What right did I have to fiddle with the balance of relationships. Retreat! Retreat! As English withdrew from me, the Mute began to assert himself, and slowly I turned away from the pen as a harsh musical instrument to seek refuge in the hardware of my own hands. So, when I ask now, “How can I know myself?” I am met with a thirty-year accretion of silence that has rotted my feelings for language. I see an old man sitting on a stump in the woods lost in thought, or maybe no-thought, looking right through me as I approach and sit next to him.

Daily Post – 12-25-2014

Yitna Firdyiwek — Thu, 25 Dec 2014 10:19:05 +0000

Elevator Speech

PAM (Personal Asset Management) is a browser-based three-stacked sandwich of programs to help anyone manage their digital assets in a flexible and personally meaningful way.

At the bottom of the stack is the Personal Asset Storage System (PASS) which handles the collection and metadata tagging of the assets.

In the middle is the Personal Asset Organizer (PAO) which allows the user to connect, mash up, or generally edit as needed any of the artifacts in the Storage System. The Organizer then hands back to the Storage System the edited item to be tagged and stored as a new artifact with its own metadata. Out-of-the-box, the Organizer will only have an open source text editor, but other types of commercial and open source editing tools (for editing images, audio, video, etc.) can be built using the PAM API and added as plugins.

The third and last stack is the Personal Asset Publisher (PAP). This last layer of the sandwich allows the user to set granular permissions (private, personal, institutional, public, etc.) before sharing items with others over the internet. The Publisher is also capable of zipping and exporting any artifact and its associated assets (if it has any) and related permissions.

The complete package of PASS, PAO, and PAP is the Personal Asset Manager (PAM). PAM is not a new or unique application. Its power lies in standardizing the stacked modules and providing an intuitive interface for the average individual user. PAM accomplishes this by avoiding the traditional operating systems and working directly as a plugin for open source browsers. Thus, it can work just as well off the grid on local machines (laptops, tablets, thumb-drives) as it can in the cloud or as an SAS application.

Use Scenarios

Scenario 1: User adds PAM as a plugin to her web browser. Three PAM icons appear on the browser task bar – Add | Edit | Share. User surfs the web and sees a page she wants to save. She clicks on the PAM-Add icon. A dialog box opens. The user can now 1) work on the storage’s folder structure, 2) save the web page (page and link) to one of the folders, or 3) upload a file from the local machine to one of the folder areas. When the user clicks to save her work, she is prompted with a metadata form to fill out required and optional fields. She clicks done to close the dialog box and continue browsing.
Scenario 2: User wants to create or edit some work in her PAM storage area. She opens her browser and clicks on the PAM-Edit icon in the task bar. A dialog box opens showing her the folders in the storage area. She can either create a new item (document, image, video — depending on the edit tools that have been incorporated in her version of PAM), or edit an existing item (also depending on incorporated tools). At saving time the user is asked whether to Save the work, in which case the user is allowed to edit the optional portions of the items original metadata, or Save As, in which case the user must fill out a new form with required and optional fields.
Scenario 3: User wants to share her work with others. One friend has a computer and broadband internet connections. The other does not. User opens her browser and clicks on the PAM-Share icon in the task bar. A dialog box opens showing her the folders in the storage area where she can select the item she wants to share. Another dialog box opens showing her the list of items associated with the item she wants to share (for example, a document with links to (or embeds of) various other items in the storage area. The form allows the user to select which of the associated items are alright to share. The form also allows her to create a url for the item (with or without password protection) and set the email address of the first person she wants to share it with. Alternatively, she can export the item as a zipped file which she can then download to another medium (local hard drive, thumb drive, or cd) or directly email it to the second person she wants to share it with.

Expanded Applications

PAM for Education: Digital literacy and ePortfolio methodology can be combined to show students how to 1) maintain a well-organized archive of their work, 2) work with and edit artifacts in their storage system, and 3) prepare presentations of their work for submission to others and other institutional systems. This use would be possible with out-of-the-box open source PAM
PAM for Home Assets: Moving companies frequently create detailed lists of a clients personal assets prior to packing and moving them. Using PAM “moving company x” can organize a client’s assets for its own reference as well as to provide the client with a copy of data. Thus, the clients would end up with a pre-populated PAM which they can continue to prune and grow as their asset collection changes. Additional commercial plugins might be developed to enhance PAM with such features as purchase receipts, user manuals, bar code recognition, and connectivity to insurance companies.
PAM for Employee Assessment and Evaluation: Employee evaluations are frequently either too loose and informal, or based on rigidly defined formats that assume one-size-fits-all. A PAM-based evaluation system would allow employees to collect relevant material and produce personalized structures that more accurately reflect their skills and accomplishments. PAM-based evaluation and assessment systems can also be pre-loaded with information, documentation, and just-in-time support to help employees improve their work as well as produce more reliable evaluation data.

Stack Notes:

PAM: browser-based (local, cloud)
- 3: PAP: share (url, email), export (zip)
- 2: PAO: edit (text, image, video, audio), connect (link, embed)
- 1: PASS: collect (files, links), metadata (info, tags, permissions)

Daily Post: 12-24-2014

Yitna Firdyiwek — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:22:32 +0000

It’s Christmass eve. My family is together. My children are home for the holidays. My daughter is home from school, and my son finally took a full week off from work. My wife is out shopping for presents and for the dinner we are going to have tomorrow with her sister and her family. This is also a new beginning for me. I have promised myself, ahead of the typical 1/1 resolution-day deadline, to follow Daniel Pink’s advice and write 500 words per day. I am not sure how long 500 words is in terms of the screen space in the WordPress blog. But if I keep it up, I will soon know. It’s not too much to ask. And persistence is the point, so I will not be too obsessive about it right now. What should I write about today? My feelings are up, probably because the new year is approaching. Much as I resisted the new year resolution deadline to get started, I am also a strong believer in the power of beginnings. So, maybe the pending change is what is motivating me to start writing again. I used to write a lot, and have picked it up again again, only to loose site of my goal and fall back to silence. This time, I hope, it will be different.

So, that was about 220 words. I just counted. I am halfway there. As I keep it up, it will be easier, I am sure. One option I have is to use this decision to enter all of the scraps of writing I have in my various partially started journals into this blog. That will allow me to catch up with myself as I build up my writing strength. Writing is meditation. If I can close my eyes and and allow my fingets to channnel my thoughts, I wiould be able to experience the peaceful flow of my thoughts more closely. So, I have turned off my monitor and ma simply following the tips of my fingers as they skate over the pesurface of my keyboard.

But I have my doubts about writing being like meditation. I guess I don’t undertand it fully yet. It freels like a theh way I felt when learning how todrive stick shift. there are a lot of startss and stops, jerky, hesitant momves that do not seem to add up to anything . Still, I go on.

there is so much on my mind. I will be teaching two classes this spring, one of them in two sections, the other one online. Theh online one I have taught before, so it should not be too difficult to reconstruct, though I have a lot of new ideas I want to try out this time. The two sections are one credit each, but both are new courses. They are also atypical courses in that they do not have any specific content. The goal is to help students understand the power of building and maintaining their own ePortfolios throughout their stay at our university and beyond. all of the students will be first year. I am really looking forward to it, but am also a bit nervouse. I guess that is par for the course.

Tiem to stop now and go out to hunt for presents. I plan to get books for my wife, my two grown children and my daughter’s boyfriend. I am sure I ahve written my 500 words for the day. Time to open my eyes!