Author Archives: SeanMcTex

You Have Unlocked an Achievement: Prognostication

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A while back, I wrote a post on Workplace Motivation and Game Mechanics, where I speculated on the efficacy of using game systems, like achievements, awarding points, high score lists, etc., to help motivate people in the workplace.

Last week at the DICE Summit, Carnegie-Mellon Assistant Professor of Education and Technology Jesse Schell gave a terrific talk where he takes some similar ideas and goes wild with them, applying them to teaching, marketing, government incentives, and more. Really interesting, thought-provoking stuff, and well worth a viewing if you’re remotely interested in any of these areas:

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-23

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  • Dad: still alert, in good spirits, ICU. Looking at 3 months in wheelchair while legs mend. Today's task: Breathe deep, avoid pneumonia. #fb #
  • Dad: Still in ICU, waiting on regular room. Not sleeping well, more sore, but otherwise OK. May not have leg surgery after all. #fb #
  • Dad: Doing OK. Moved to Room 736, University Hospital. Surgery now likely for legs next week. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. #fb #
  • Dad: first visit from PT. Learning how to move to/from wheelchair. Surgery is a go for Thursday. Don't know when discharge will be. #fb #
  • Off to Waco with the whole family for Baylor University Sing! (Hi Jason and Barry!) #fb #
  • Dad: Shifted to the other bed in same room for window view. Plan to move to rehab Monday. Still generally doing well. #fb #
  • http://twitpic.com/14qxit – Maggie receives medal for character and tolerance at her school. #
  • http://twitpic.com/14ri1e – Maggie receives medal for character and tolerance at her school. #
  • Tonight I sadly tendered my resignation from O'Malarkey, the Irish band, effective at the end of March. Too much life going on. #fb #
  • Dad: Won't be moving to rehab before surgery after all. Measuring beds, door frames, figuring how to manage a wheelchair at their house. #fb #
  • Snow in San Marcos? That's unpossible! #fb #

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Will o’ the Wisp

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Now that I’ve found and started to get the hang of MuseScore, I’m catching up on a bit of music stuff that’s been lurking at the back of my to-do list for a while. Next up is Will o’ the Wisp, a little Irish Jig I wrote a couple of years back. It’s a trifle, but kind of fun, and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license, so you’re free to perform, remix, and otherwise mess around with it if you wish.

Will 'o the Wisp

You can also grab it in PDF if you like.

Pretending to be Jason

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My excellent friend Jason Young is deep into the part of his year where he writes and transcribes hundreds of pages of sheet music for Baylor University’s annual Sing event. Since he recently harassed me for not having posted anything to the weblog lately, I thought I’d take a stab at pretending to be him for half an hour and posting the results. Here they are:

For No OneThis is the solo from The Beatles “For No One”, which my dear horn-playing Abigail has been after me to transcribe for her for months. It is transposed here into what is (I think) an easy key for horn, and hopefully a comfortable range. (Jason, let me know if I’ve gotten that wrong!)

The big obstacle to doing this up to now has been notation software — I’ve been reluctant to shell out for the commercial packages, but all of the free/open-source stuff I’ve found has quickly made me crazy. But this morning I stumbled across MuseScore, an actively-developed, well thought-out application that allowed me to learn it well enough to knock out this simple score in about 30 minutes.

I’m really pleased with the program, and am looking forward to more easily be able to do some sheet music for O’Malarkey, the Irish band I’m playing with, as well. If you ever have occasion to write out music, take a look! (It handles scores, lyrics, and chord names as well.)

Ghost Killer

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Liam has continued to show interest in creating computer games. His latest effort is Ghost Killer, a straightforward game where your sole job is to avoid the bullets descending from the top of the screen. He created it (with a little help, though much less than for Cat Maze) in Scratch, MIT’s terrific graphic programming environment.

Nice work, boyo! It’s way better than the games I was creating at age 10.

Pop Music and Vocal Range

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This morning while walking the kids to school, I had Simon & Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York” running through my head and, since I have no filter between them, out of my mouth. As I reached for the low note at the end of a phrase, it occurred to me that the range of the song’s melody — an octave and a perfect fourth — seemed unusually large. That got me to thinking about vocal range in pop music and wondering whether Paul Simon is more ambitious than most in that regard.

While mulling this over and considering various examples, I decided it would be fun to enlist my musical friends to see what the most extreme examples of melodic range — both large and small — we could think of in popular music are. So, musical friends, let’s play! Here are the rules:

  1. Your entry can include a maximum range song and a minimum range song. (Figuring out the range is helpful, but not strictly required.)
  2. You can’t repeat a song someone else has already mentioned in the comment thread already.
  3. The song must be common enough that most people would have heard it. Thus, either major record labels or something with a comparable degree of exposure.
  4. Note to especially talented friends, and corollary to rule #3: you may not write a song just for this purpose.
  5. Multiple entries are encouraged.

I’ll throw my hat in the ring with an initial entry that should be easy to beat:

  • Large Range: Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel — an octave and a perfect fourth
  • Small Range: Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry — a perfect fifth

In order to make this a bit more interesting, I’ll buy the winner their album of choice in digital format. The winner will be determined entirely by me, and my decision is final. Anyone who disputes it will be beset by my army of trained flying monkeys.

Magnolia Conference 2009 Report

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This is a lightly tweaked version of the report I submitted to the University after returning from Magnolia’s first-ever conference, in Basel, Switzerland. I realize I need to write up a more general-interest trip report, but have been dreadfully short on time since our return. I have, however, recounted our adventures often enough now that it should be a straightforward bit of writing; I’ll do it soon!

In September, my friend and coworker Jeff Snider and I attended the 1st conference for the Magnolia CMS, on which our Gato system is based, in Basel, Switzerland.

We presented two talks at the conference: Case Study: Magnolia at Texas State University (mostly Jeff’s work) and Surfacing External Data through Magnolia (mostly my work). Our talks were well received; people seemed to particularly enjoy the window into our implementation experiences.

Other presentations covered various open-source Magnolia modules that may be of use to us, Apache Sling (which looks like a great foundation for building web-service-based content applications), some basic details on clustered instances that will serve as a good starting pointing for setting up a clustered editing environment, and the new UI and architecture for the upcoming Magnolia 5. (We were unable to attend the last, since it was opposite our own, but the slides cover the information fairly well.)

The most valuable thing for us, however, was to get to meet the Magnolia staff and community. We were able to put faces to many of the names that pass across the user support list, and to discuss lots of aspects of Magnolia with the folks who are directly responsible for implementing it. (And one of them saved Sean during his presentation when he made a mistake in my data entry — thanks, Philipp!)

While the conference itself was not without the occasional hiccup — to be expected, given that this was the first time it had been held — the chance to build relationships within the community, learn from the other presentations, and to present Texas State’s experiences made the trip a worthwhile one.

Honor Roll

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Kathy and I are just back from a 10 day trip to Switzerland which was alternately the most amazing and the most harrowing experience of our recent lives. I’ll write more on the trip itself later, but wanted to post immediately about the extraordinary kindness and care we were shown by a variety of people over the course of this trip and to publicly thank the folks involved:

  • Thank you to my brother Chris, who stayed with our kiddos for the first half of the week, and to his wife Becky for being willing to share him!
  • Thank you to my mother Diane, who took several days off from her pediatric private practice to care for our kids the remainder of the time we would be gone. When we missed our flight out of Switzerland, she  stayed another night to make sure the young people got off to school OK the next morning.
  • Thank you to Karl, the proprietor of Transcom Accommodation, who came in after hours to check us into our rental apartment and was extraordinarily friendly, patient and helpful when the B&B where we were supposed to be staying lost our reservation. Thanks also to Eva, his neighbor, who invited us into her kitchen while she called around and found Karl after hours.
  • Thank you to Boris, the CTO of Magnolia, and his family. Not only did they make us feel very welcome in Basel and give us some great ideas for things to see and do, but they also had us over for dinner and treated us to a delightful evening of excellent food and conversation. It was one of the high points of our time away.
  • Thank you to Daniel and again to my brother Chris, who surreptitiously did an entire garden installation in our backyard while we were gone. We were astounded to find two large raised beds and an irrigation system (complete with a new water supply line) installed, with Bok Choy, lettuce, and Swiss Chard (appropriate!) already sprouting, where the remnants of our pool had been when we left. Amazing!
  • Thank you to Mike McGinnis for picking us up from the airport when we came in a day later than anticipated and bringing us home.
  • Thank you to all the friends who offered thoughts, prayers, and words of reassurance while we were on the road. They meant more than you can imagine!
  • Thank you to Leslie for staying with the kids after school on the day we were returning and greeting us with a big hug and a bigger Mexican food meal — just the thing to make us feel well and truly back home. (Thanks also to Charles & Lydia, Faith, my Dad, and the other folks who offered to help out that afternoon!)

We are amazingly humbled and grateful to have friends who are far better than what we deserve. Thank you all for your love and your very concrete support.

An Open Letter to Wake The Dead Coffee House

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Hi Julie,

I saw the other day that some folks in the neighborhood are petitioning to have your beer & wine license revoked, due to a perceived negative impact on the neighborhood. As a resident of the same neighborhood, I wanted you to know that I’m against that action for a variety of reasons.

I’m a big proponent of walkable neighborhoods, since more foot traffic means less car traffic, less pollution, and better health. Our neighborhood, unfortunately, is not a particularly walkable one. Until Wake the Dead opened, there was no place to be able to meet friends, enjoy a drink, or get a bit to eat within reasonable distance. Having the shop within a few blocks of our home has been a boon to our family, as we all enjoy going by regularly — usually on foot.

When our family visited England a few years ago, we fell in love with the pub culture there. The opportunity to bring the whole family and for the adults to have a beer and a sandwich while the kids played was terrific, and somewhat unique for us, since so few places in the U.S. combine those pleasures. Since our return to San Marcos after that trip, we were delighted to see Tantra open, which brought that same spirit (albeit with a patchouli-scented style) to San Marcos. We were further thrilled when Wake the Dead opened down the street, as it brought more of that open, inviting atmosphere to our city, this time within walking distance of our house!

So it’s a rare week indeed when some of our family isn’t down there. My wife and I enjoy slipping down the road for a quiet place and a cuppa or a brew. My 13 year old daughter loves to go down and have a frappe with one of her friends. My 10 year old will happily while away a half hour taking on any willing opponents at ping-pong. And, of course, we come visit frequently for the Irish music session and for movies.

I’m honestly a bit baffled by the hostility some of our neighbors have shown, since each time I know of that concerns about noise levels, handicapped access, etc. have been brought to you, you’ve been receptive to the concerns. Further, none of the issues the neighbors cite seem to have much to do with the beer & wine license, so it surprises me that they would come out so strongly against that particularly. And while I certainly don’t want people driving drunk through our neighborhood (or at all), it is my experience that those who want to get sloshed aren’t likely to seek out a coffee shop for that purpose.

So, in summary, I do hope the shop remains open and busy for many years to come. It is currently one of my favorite features of our neighborhood, and I would be inclined to pay more for any house with a coffee shop of its quality within walking distance.

Best wishes,
Sean McMains
940 239 4202