Ending PBS Pledge Drives
11 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in ramblings
I’ve always thought that the best thank-you for a donation that a public television pledge drive could offer would be to stop the pledge drive. It feels like punishment, not a reward, to call in your pledge, then sit through six more days of your local station reps begging and begging your fellow viewers. Especially around day three, once the punch drunkenness really sets in and you have to watch that crazy look in their eyes as they try to wax ever more enthusiastic about This Old House, Antiques Roadshow, and More Motown Memories.
There was no getting around this with broadcast television, but I think we could do better now. Why not create a subscribers-only service which delivers the same feed as your local station most of the year, then gives solicitation-free programming during pledge drives? It could be delivered over the Web, through Roku, Apple/Google TV, etc. to anyone who’s pledged a certain amount and been given access in return.
It could even be set up as two “stations” to meet two different desires. One could mirror the actual schedule during the drive with the pledge breaks removed and extra programming added to fill the gaps at the ends of shows (or to fill breaks in live shows, like sticking bits of BBC World News into the gaps in the PBS News Hour). The other could continue the regular daily schedule of the station as though the pledge drive weren’t happening at all. I’d often use the latter service, since PBS and I have differing opinions on what constitutes a program likely to induce pledge-yielding euphoria, and I’ve had enough of turning on the BBC comedies for Glenn at their usual time, only to find Suze Orman’s trying to convince him to fund his 410k instead.
It couldn’t be that difficult to put together. You already have the infrastructure in place for
video.pbs.org. Make the arrangements with the streaming device companies (always happy to have new channels), create user accounts on pbs.org (with all the attendant further opportunities for viewer interaction, emailing, etc.), and when a viewer pledges $x, let the station notify you, and give the viewer instructions for accessing her new, happier PBS home. Set it up as a national service, and let local stations follow with their own feeds to match their programming schedule if they like.
If I were a PBS exec, I’d be on this tomorrow. Run your surveys to be sure, but I feel confident you could sell ten drive-killing subscriptions for each coffee mug and tote bag.
How to donate your body to science
06 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in ramblings
Twelve years ago, I wrote some thoughts about what to do with our bodies when we’re finished with them. I’d put it more sensitively now, but still think it’s a good idea to donate as much as possible to Medicine and Science, then turn the rest over to Nature.
In the course of making a will recently, I asked our lawyer whether I should use it to specify how I want my remains to be handled. He said that what I wanted could be done by first registering as an organ donor with the Motor Vehicle Administration (which I’d already done), then registering for the State Anatomy Board’s body donation program. In Maryland, that’s:
http://www.dhmh.state.md.us/anatomy/html/faqs.html
You have to ask them to mail you a form, then complete it with signatures from two witnesses, and send it back. They also give you a card to keep in your wallet, to make sure the Board is notified as quickly as possible.
Upon your death, the organ donation program harvests what they can use for people waiting for organ transplants. (Please, keep them all as healthy as you can until then!) The remains of your remains pass to the Anatomy Board for use in research and education. On average, they hold onto them for a year to a year-and-a-half. (I’ll admit to a moment of being taken aback at the thought of bits of me lying around that long, but better that they should be kept until everyone’s sure they’ve put them to all their uses.)
After that, what’s left is cremated, and the ashes interred at a gravesite owned by the Board. A friend whose grandfather donated his body said the Board holds an annual memorial service for everyone who donated that year. I wish natural burial were an option, but natural cemeteries are uncommon in the U.S., and, I would imagine, natural burial is more expensive (and certainly requires more space). I’ll write the Board to ask them to consider making it a choice, but at least cremation is far better for the environment than the common alternative.
I hope you’ll consider registering for both organ and body donation wherever you live. It’s a final, invaluable gift to the next generation.
without a net
15 May 2008 1 Comment
in ramblings, simplicity, technology
[i also posted this on freshmeat. you may find more comments here.]
i’m sitting in shelter #92 in patapso state park on a glorious cool spring day. the sunlight makes the leaves glow as the breeze tosses them, and the pair of does grazing the hillside next to us have finally wandered off. the picnic remains are back in the trunk, and glenn sits across from me, reading the paper.
it’s a simple outing, but, until recently, one that would have been hard for me to take. at the very least, i would have been sitting here anxious about getting home, instead of committed and engaged in being here. the woods would have been wasted on a mind full of all the work left undone.
the culprit, as i’ve gradually realized this year, is the computer. last year, i would have brought my laptop with me. i would have done what i could here, then hurried home and put it online. for my day in the city saturday, i would have broken my back lugging it onto the light rail, where i would have brought it out of suspension to get 15 minutes with it before i had to close it down to take it over to the subway, repeating the process all across the day. last year, i either had my fingers on my laptop, or i wasn’t working.
the problem is that a computer, especially the big computer we call the internet, is infinite. i can turn on a computer at 7:00 am, and it instantly becomes 11:30 pm, and i’m looking back on a day of youtube and wikipedia and chasing this which reminds me of that which makes you stop and wonder whatever became of those and what was i doing and why does my back ache? enough days like that, and you’re looking back on a life of wandering the electronic sinai.
i was spending long hours each day glued to a screen and brief, almost guilty ones in the physical world. the world is better and healthier, and i’ve worked for the last few months to flip the time i spend in each. i’d like to share some of the ideas and tools in my arsenal and invite your suggestions and your own experience.
how to live without a computer
millions of people today still go through lives untouched by lcd screens and laser mice, and all the bachs and shakespeares of history did reasonably good work without them, so it must be possible. is it preferable? i hit techno burnout recently and took a nine-day no-computer break to recover. what i noticed most by midweek was that the days had become much longer. they expanded and opened to me as they hadn’t for years, until they reached a natural length i’d forgotten they held, and there was plenty of time to be spontaneous, cook a good meal, listen to some music, sit on the deck awhile. reminded of what i was missing, it was painful to go back to staring at the screen and waiting for a webpage to load or an overloaded machine to start responding again. i’d like to spend as many days as i can with no computers in them.
how can a person enjoy the undeniable advantages of computers without getting sucked down the time drain? what are the ways and means of a neo-luddite life? i’ve identified two strategies. i’ll call them computer agnosticism and computer freedom.
computer agnosticism
computer agnosticism is disbelief in the doctrine of the one true computer. for a long time, my laptop was the only computer i used. it had all my files and was configured just as i wanted. it’s still my most comfortable workplace, but now any reasonably new net-connected computer is as good as any other. this gives two advantages. first, i can step out of the house anytime or travel to another city with worrying that something i’ll need is left behind. everything’s available wherever i can get online. secondly, trusting the world to provide a computer for me means getting a situation that is workable but not overly pleasant. i can sit with my laptop forever. if i’m stuck with illegible fonts, an unfavored operating system, an uncomfortable chair, and a room of boisterous library or hotel patrons, i’ll do what i need to do and get out of there. libraries are especially good, with a timer counting down and the next person on the waiting list hovering in the background.
online services are the key here. here are some tools i like for making any computer “my computer”:
- toodledo
-
when i began implementing the ideas in getting things done, i wrote my own gtd script for managing my projects and todos. over the following years, i regularly enhanced and refined it. by the end, it had a powerful, good-looking interface for manipulating tasks. tasks could be scripts in different languages, launching complex repetitive jobs with a couple of keystrokes. it handled repeating and scheduled tasks. it attached and detached screen sessions associated with various categories of work so jobs could continue in the background while i was off to something else. it integrated with a scriptable window manager and switched to a different virtual desktop each time i moved to another work category. it managed time devoted to different projects, work categories, and other things to do, counting down remaining time on a taskbar and changing the color of all the windows when i should do something else or take a break. it was beautiful.
surprisingly, it was not only efficient, but effective. i really did get a lot of good work done through it and accomplished things that otherwise would have stalled. so why did i let it go? it was a fine way to work on my computer, but i no longer wanted to be tied to my computer. it was still the right answer, but the question changed.
i looked at several online todo list/project management applications and settled on toodledo as the most open and flexible. the development team frequently extends and bugfixes it, and i’m generally happy with it as long as i actually do the tasks on my lists instead of tweaking and pushing them around (not toodledo’s fault). one dealmaking feature was the ability to print a pocketmod-style todo list, so wherever i’m working, i can print my current open tasks, stick them in my pocket, and walk away from computers for as long as i like with a clear conscience.
- gmail
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the no-brainer replacement for mutt + procmail + postfix. the spam filtering alone makes it a winner. the interface is great, and when i’m on my laptop, imap and mutt let me burn through my email even more quickly.
- google calendar
-
for a time, i synchronized this with the datebook on my palm pda. since i can’t do that from any available computer, i now print a one-month calendar on one side of a sheet of paper and a ten-day agenda on the other (the agenda includes my notes about events, addresses of places to be, etc.).
- google docs
-
a pattern seems to be forming. this is another winner for google and the home of my spreadsheets and the documents i need to share with others.
- del.icio.us
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the firefox extension lets me use bookmarks as i normally would at home and have them available anywhere.
- linode
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(or any hosting service with shell access. linode is terrific, and i’ve been hearing good things about “nearly free speech“).
an always-online linux box gives me a way to connect to other servers as needed and otherwise fills any gaps left by web-based services. unison keeps everything up-to-date so that changes i make online appear on the laptop, and vice versa.
computer freedom
so now i can roam the world freely, treating computing as a public service, like water fountains or buses. that’s a big relief to my mind and my backpack-unladen spine. can i go all the way? what could enable someone who works online to spend days together completely free from computers?
some of my answers:
- cron
-
when i moved my recurring tasks to toodledo, i looked at each and asked, “does this really need me to be present and active?”, and was amazed that 95% of the time, the answer was no. it can take some sideways thinking, but even tasks that “clearly” have to be done by you in person can be automated with a different approach and a bit of perl. i enthusiastically expanded the role of my crontab on my always-online computer, and now i just check the resulting email messages to see that all went well. any changes made to my files are pulled down by “
unison -batch” cron jobs on my laptop when i’m not looking.rss has been a lifesaver for getting out of news-checking quicksand (remember when you went to your favorite sites to see what was new? repeatedly? all day long?). i stick my google reader feeds into “monthly”, “bi-weekly”, and “weekly” folders and check them only when their time comes. for sites without feeds, a netstiff cron job lets me forget them and alerts me to anything new once a week. hpodder downloads my podcasts so they’re just there when my mp3 player runs dry.
- non-instant messaging
-
irssi + bitlbee + screen running on my always-online machine let me engage in irc and instant messaging services on my own schedule. instead of letting them interrupt me, i just attach the screen once a day (or week) to see what’s new.
- paper
-
let me say that again:
paper!
this is remarkable technology, flexible, portable, and widely available. as with cron, it may take a new way of thinking, but how many of the things you do on the computer could be done on paper? how many could be 95% completed on paper so that when you go online, you just have to transfer the results or execute the last steps of a paper-outlined plan? is an offline day stealing from your boss, or are you even more productive when you print your work the day before and worth it with a pen? which accomplishes more — 45 minutes work on paper + 15 minutes bringing the computer up-to-date, or two and half hours on the same task online, with side trips to check email and rearrange your netflix queue? which leaves you refreshed and ready for work the next day?
this article is an example of paper-based computer work. i’m writing it in an old college composition book, much more portable than my electronic notebook. how it will get online is discussed in the next section.
while on the topic, i should add my plug for the famous moleskine notebooks. they’re pricey, but are things of beauty, simple and elegant and a joy to write in. they fit right in a pocket, and with my toodledo list and google calendar in the expanding back pocket, one makes a fine pda (ppa?).
- vpas
-
the virtual personal assistant marketplace is flourishing, and online helpers can help keep you offline. they can be useful on both ends: before fleeing the net, you can hand over a list of online chores. when you connect again, you can send what you did offline for processing. this article is an example. when i’m done, i’ll tear the pages from the notebook, scan them to a pdf, and email it to an assistant to type into a reply to me. a little editing and formatting, and it will be ready to post. lather, rinse, repeat, and you have an invisible staff working alongside you all your offline days. you’re taking full advantage of the net and full advantage of that table in the park, putting out more work and pulling in more fresh air.
tim ferriss discusses the details of working with a vpa. i’ve been happy with onassist.com.
- phone-based services
-
sooner or later on a non-digital day, there’s a moment of temptation to boot the laptop just to check the weather report before leaving the house or to get directions to the coffee shop. and since you’ve sat and waited for it to come on, you may as well make it worthwhile by checking out that site you saw on a billboard. and though you definitely weren’t going to check your email today, you’re so curious to see how mike replied to… wow, you never expected him to say that. how are you and connie going to fit that into your schedule? it’s going to be on your mind all day now…
phone-based services can give you the limited information you need without exposing you to the danger of spoiling your free day with full net access. i hope they continue, and don’t fall in the face of web-capable phones. three i use regularly:
- goog411 (1-800-466-4411)
-
goog411 provides the aural equivalent of google’s stripped-down webpage look. it’s simple and powerful and lets you quickly get the address of a business, then connects you to them to ask directions or how late they’re open. i hope google adds support for residential listings.
- tellme (1-800-555-8355)
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provides news on various topics. i use it to get the weather report, to decide how to dress for the day.
- jott
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this one’s for putting information in instead getting it out. i have it linked to my toodledo and google calendar accounts so i can call to add an item to my todo list or put an event on my calendar. it’s a good way to save some typing, though their voice recognition leaves a lot to be desired. they should license whatever google uses for goog411.
conclusion
for someone professing to write about computer-free living, i’ve spent a lot of time discussing computer-based software and services. i have two excuses:
first, many of these tools provide ways of letting work pile up out of sight and mind. email piles up in your inbox as long as you like while gmail sends replies with your phone number and the request that people call you if it’s urgent (and grandcentral separates the wheat from the subsequent chaff). articles wait in your rss reader until the time you’ve dedicated for them. just keep that laptop safely tucked away (a remote shelf in the basement works well), and life becomes less interrupted.
second, and even better, are the tools that run unattended. cron jobs run even when you’ve forgotten about them, and vpas have pleasant surprises waiting when you get around to logging in again. jott’s added a reminder to check out a wine festival next fall. services like these uphold the promise of computer automation and let you get on with real life in the real world.
there’s another solution, of course — to drop the halfway measures and just go cold turkey forever. maybe it’s worth stopping by the park office to see if they have any jobs for the summer.
sorry, wrong number
22 Jun 2006 2 Comments
in ramblings, technology
my cellphone, the simplest i could buy at the time, has approximately 47 features i looked at once and have never used. despite this endemic featuritis, i would like to suggest one new feature for phones that i think many would find a great relief.
it’s very simple:
- when a call comes in, the phone should check the incoming number against its phonebook.
- if the number is found, it should put the call through right away.
- if the number is not in the phonebook, a recorded message should say “you have reached the cellphone of [click, followed by my voice] jeff covey [click]. if this is the person you wish to reach, please stay on the line, and i’ll connect you. if not, please hang up and redial the number you were trying to call.”
- after about five seconds, if the caller is still on the line, the phone should start ringing.
since small phones with small number keys became commonplace, i’ve received many more “wrong number” calls than ever before, and this seems to be true for everyone i know. just delaying the incoming call for a few seconds while the person on the other end decides if this is really what she wants could noticeably reduce the number of times each day we go scrambling to find the phone for no reason.
please mention it to your friend’s sister, the one whose uncle’s ex-wife’s stepson’s cousin’s roomate’s boyfriend is the godson of the ceos of all the major phone companies.
