Life without MS Office saga, continued 

Google Spreadsheets needs a few more features. I'm planning to work from home part of the day tomorrow, and realize I won't be able to convert an Excel file to the XML format needed to import a member list into our CMS. Excel even has a nice little feature that creates a schema based on a sample file. I'm sure there are XML editors I could find and learn and use, but then there's that what-you're-used-to thing, you know? I may need to break down soon and... no. I'd try OpenOffice first, but not just yet. Anything else I could try first, that's free and online and has more features than Google's stuff?

Got all sentimental again 

I was thinking about listening to the radio and remembered getting a darling little radio for my 10th or 11th birthday. Doesn't this look modern for the middle 60s? (My image of design in that era is more like this, like a yellowed old wall thermostat.) Mine was red, which was even cooler. It seems dumb, but I think I'd like to get that one on eBay, just to recapture a smidge of being 10 and sitting on the back porch in my own world.

I missed the sitting around watching the radio era. That was the fireside chat period, my parents' day, but I was thinking an image of that scene would be a good illustration for this idea I have to hold events in a chat room where a small group listens to a podcast or radio program or lecture together, stopping it when anyone want to talk about something.

Making a sketch 

Dave is sketching his upcoming talk to a public broadcasting group in a podcast. Seems like a good way to get one's thoughts together in preparation. Like Demosthenes building oratorical muscle by the seashore, only we can hear it too.

It'll be interesting to learn how the talk is received. Sounds like Dave's trying hard to make it not heard as a philippic. I hope he's able to get through to a few people; maybe that should be the modest goal, to win over a handful of influencers and chalk up those who won't buy the rap to inevitable resistence to change.

I love public radio but I'd like to see it get better and more relevant. I'd also like to see more work done on bringing kids into the fold. My 18-year-old and I are going to a live taping of This American Life a week from Thursday. Last time they went on the road, four years ago, we were there, too, and I saw way too many grey heads. Way too many old hippies. We're going to start dying off in droves and our ranks need to be replentished.

I'm doing my part. Aaron loves the idea of storytelling on the air, and I think he has a crush on Sarah Vowell. I approve.

A divide 

For what it's worth, and that's probably not much, here's some advice for Dave in appealing to the public radio folks. I think that as a group and in general, they really really don't like the idea of completely unproduced audio. That could be a dealbreaker, the kind of thing some will hear you say you like, and because they hate the whole idea of off-the-cuff audio, they won't listen to any of the other ideas -- not even the ideas about politics and society.

There already is a grassroots movement in citizen radio, but if you look at transom.org you get the idea pretty quickly that production values are important to this faction. They sincerely want the former audience to become producers, but they want it done the pro's way, with lots of planning, scripting and editing.

So, in that sense at least, the struggle may be more like the pro journalists vs. bloggers gulf than it is like the software copy protection and music DRM issue.

I'm not saying "don't bring it up." That would be dishonest because I think it's a part of your beliefs about citizen radio. Maybe you could appeal to their broadmindedness and request that if they don't agree with that part of your argument, they should cordon it off and judge the rest of the appeal on its own merits.