Movin on up!

Please note, this blog has moved!

The new home of Ground On Down is:

 

http://GroundOnDown.SquareSpace.com

Thanks!

Tweet Shirt

Its been a while, On Wednesday I orderd The Tweet Shirt by Made from Dolly.

It’s a customized twitter shirt with my twitter username on the front, and, “Follow Me” on the back.

I found it via Please Dress Me The new venture from the Vaynerchuk boys that aggregates cool t-shirts from around the web.

Notes on the Debate:

As I sit watching follow up coverage/spin/punditry, I thought I’d offer my notes, in raw format and in tag form transcribed more or less exactly from my iPhone notepad.  Video, links, and more to follow:

• McCain re-frame: “Ask Paulson to step down” vs, “If I was president I’d fire him”
• McCain laugh line in opening comments on economy
• First Back and Forth
• Use of, “Mainstreet”
• Another McCain zinger on Bear legislation, “legal vs paternal”
• Use of , “Fundamental Difference”
• McCain, “The Sheriff”, “Ms. Congeniality”
• “Tomorrow, er the next day, or sometime next week”
• “On Paper”
• Camera angle differences when in split screen
• Amount of time spent on wide shot
• “Hard to reach across the aisle from that far left”
• New Challanges=?
• Fix-Kill-Prison
• Obama, “Components we can’t do”
• Obama, “Tom err John” (Tom Colburn)
• Obama, “I have a bracelet too”
• Spending Freeze
• $700b per year overseas to countries that don’t like us, some to terrorists!
• Values
• Major Health Care Decisions (weighing heavily)
• Vital Part
• Jim…John
• Obama, “Orgy of Spending”
• Miss Congeniality
• Surge (40 min in)
• Difference between a tactic and a strategy
• Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
• Don’t say, just do
• Prudent
• August a year ago
• McCain. “Take up issues on MY subcommittee…”
• Russia not democracy?
• Achmadenijad?!
• Port…port…perestroika
• McCain’s notepad (70min in)
• Kissinger toss
• Meeting w/Spain
• McCain, “I don’t even have a seal yet” (snarkey but funny)
• Obama, “I’m against nuclear waste…”
• McCain, “Nobody could be against alternate fuel, Nobody!”
• Obama, “Snukes!”
• Obama: Conspicuousness of their presence vs. our absence…
• McCain: comparing Obama’s stubbornness to Bush
• In this administration

Well there you have it.  If you watched the debate, some of that might ring a bell, if you didn’t, I’m sure most of it won’t.

Gary Vaynerchuk – Building a Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

Gotta love GV, anyone getting overwhelmed trying to stay motivated in the fast paced world of social media can definitely draw some inspiration from his 2008 Web 2.0 Expo NY speech here:

They Asked For It: “Little Person Wrestler Face-Slide Edition”

Continuing with the semi-regular series of videos featuring people getting hurt doing dumb things, I present without further ado: They Asked For It: “Little Person Wrestler Face-Slide Edition”

First “iPost”

Just testing out the WordPress app for the iPhone before I fall asleep.

Diploma Unboxing

Well, it doesn’t get more official than this, my diploma arrived today.  Click the pic for the Flickr set…

 

Click Here

Thoughts On Google Chrome

So, I just caught the tail end of the Google Chrome press conference live web-cast, and am already playing around with the new browser. Having already perused the leaked comic press release last night, and watching the now officially released YouTube videos as I type:

Here are some first impressions:

• Out of the box functionality:
  • Instillation – Chrome asks to import settings, passwords, and bookmarks from the default browser. This is similar to what Firefox 3 does when upgrading from an earlier version, but works better than any cross-browser settings import I’ve done. My saved passwords, and settings all seem to have transfered.
  • Plugins – I was able to stream the live web-cast of the Chrome press conference in WMV, open pdf files in a tab,  watch YouTube videos, and play Pandora radio without installing any plugins. I was unable to use the Java uploader to upload photos to Facebook:
  

  No Java Plugin Available

  I was excited to see that most of the activities that require special plugins in IE, Firefox, or Safari were able to run without them in Chrome, however I won’t consider making it my default browser untill support for third party extentions such as AdBlock Plus, Delicous, and Java are made available.

• Speed: I noticed the same sense of increased speed moving from Firefox 3 to Chrome as I did moving from Firefox 2 to Safari (for Windows), and as I did moving from Firefox 2 to 3, which is substantial.
• Interface and design:The simple layout is nice, although I would like a dedicated , “Home” button. [edit: It's in the settings, just disabled by default (dumb). Thanks dNor!] The “most visited” page is the default homepage. It is interesting, but most users will probably change it to their preferred starting point  The address bar is used for searching as well, which is handy as far as simplifying the interface; but makes it difficult to use alternate search providers in the way I’ve become accustomed to in Firefox.

Overall, I’m impressed with the browser’s completeness as a beta product. Save for the few issues I’ve mentioned, I could see myself using Chrome as my default browser very soon. I’ll try to post some more updates, as I continue to experiment.

Windows only at the moment...

Download Google Chrome for Windows XP and Vista

Hurricane Gustav – The Political Storm Surge

Politics is not something I normally post about, despite an active interest in it. In general I don’t think my opinions offer more to the discourse than is already available, so I choose not to offer them in a public forum.

That said, I wanted to comment on something that has been bothering me; the politicization of hurricane Gustav.

I’m glad to hear that New Orleans seems to have been spared by Gustav, but am disappointed to see the plight of people living on the Gulf coast yet again becoming fodder for political cannons.

In marked contrast to the devastation hurricane Katrina reaped in 2005, and the epic failings of government and infrastructure it highlighted; it seems for Gustav that important emergency preparedness lessons have been learned. The evacuation was handled efficiently, and communication at all levels appears to have been greatly improved.

The pitiful reaction to Katrina by the Federal government was a political nightmare for the Bush administration, and the republican party. Over the holiday, with Gustav and the RNC looming, it appears they were determined to prove that political lessons had been learned as well.

By restructuring the schedule for their national convention, the republicans have positioned themselves well as a party sensitive to, and capable of handling a national crisis. Had it been left at that, a moderate political victory could have been reaped. But in an example of the lack of sensitivity, and greed that has become a hallmark of the current administration Bush spoke moments ago under the guise of an update on Gustav.

He began with a disjointed and awkward assessment of Gustav’s impact on the oil industry versus Katrina’s, and then quickly turned his comments not to the ongoing serious challenges, and threats to infrastructure that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would point out only a few minutes later; but into a political pitch for congress to support more offshore drilling.

Bush was essentially saying, With Katrina, our offshore oil rigs came loose, destroyed underwater pipelines, and may have produced the worst oil spills on record, but luckily Gustav wasn’t as strong, so lets build more offshore oil rigs.”

It strikes me as arrogant and insensitive that Bush assumes the successful handling of a storm (aka doing his job) translates to a big political win in the same way a disastrous response translates to a big political loss.

This is a further example of the lack of coordination between the White House and the McCain campaign, whom I’m sure were as disappointed to hear Bush’s remarks as I was. Peter Baker of The New York Times wrote about a long history of gaffes and miss communications between the White House and the McCain campaign this weekend in an excellent article about Bush’s legacy (beginning on pg. 5).

I doubt this issue will get much play in the mainstream media, as it appears both candidates are treating it as it should be treated, and this could easily just be cited as the last throes of a lame duck.

Edit: Video Added

In Minneapolis/St. Paul – Not For The RNC

After a few days with very limited and sporadic WiFi access, we’re back in civilization.  It just so happens we’ve rolled into the Twin Cities area  just a couple of days before the GOP National Convention while we won’t be sticking around for any of the weekend’s festivities, it made finding a motel difficult, and it should be an interesting time to see what Minneapolis has to offer.

The past few days have been pretty incredible. Most notable was yesterday’s 10.3 mile hike along the Siyeh Pass Trail in Glacier National Park. Check Facebook and Flickr for more pics soon.