In Memoriam: Mo

I taught a boy named Mo. He was fourteen years old when he died. This post is in his memory.

A young man in our theater troupe died a year ago today. We called him "Mo". But his real is Mohammed Charlot. He was fourteen years old. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This page serves as a memory to him. The photograph was taken before he went on stage as Arthur in our high school production of Sword in the Stone.

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Repost: The Shortest Story Ever Told

Never worn. For sale. Baby shoes.

-Ernest Hemingway
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Don't Tweet on Auto-Pilot

courtesy of Airplane! the movie

Status frenzy pervades. Twitter boasts 6 million registered users. Myspace will surpass 50 million in May. Facebook clocks 200 million users. So think before you tweet. I'm not saying censor what you tweet. I believe in the freedom of expression. But, please, at least make your status expressive and not dull.

For Twitter, 6 million does not sound like much action compared to the legion signed into Facebook. But, before you dismiss the power of Twitter, consider the difference between the two. They are not the same beast. Twitter is a status tool. Only. Facebook is many things. Bloat. Twitter does one thing and it does it well: tells the world what you're doing. Economy.

6 million people typing out what they're doing is pretty powerful, considering most of what people write, even what celebrities write. Type a few words like, "I'm cooking lamb chops for the kids" or more profound, "I am" then click update and everyone on the planet has access to the contents of your mind at that moment. Even the Library of Congress knows the power of status. They have begun to archive every twitter status update into a database designed to perpetually capture web activity for future posterity's sake.

Does that mean Lady Gaga is making history? We really care what she's wearing? Who will we care more about in the future? Will the blazing status of today measure up to the blazing status of tomorrow? So, who cares that in a hundred years, our future citizens will be able to read what you made for dinner?

So, for those of you who tweet on auto-pilot and add nothing new or creative to the online world, listen up. We don't want your "k" and "um" anymore.

It's time to brush up on our status-making skills.

Stuff to remember if you tweet on auto-pilot:

• Make the mundane interesting. Instead of an "About to eat!" tweet, "The meatballs my mom cooks look like the face of my Biology teacher"!
• Avoid speling errors. See how BAD my sentence looks? Avoid spelling errors. There. Much better,
• Do not tweet by compulsion. In other words, only tweet when the feeling or need arises. It's a moment of, "Oh, let me tweet that!" not "Should I tweet that?"
• Remember everyone probably has tweeted the most fascinating and provocative news bits from the web. So when you retweet, add your two cents to the headline. Retweet: Read this article, it's smexy! http://tinyurl.com/2w7s4sr
•  Use tinyurl. Really. It's so much better than long-ass URLs. And you can use the less character usage to your advantage.
• Make conscientious, well-thought-out responses to other people's posts. Don't be rude. Be kind. Mean people suck.
• If you don't want what you say traced back to you, don't say it.
• Don't tweet just an emoticon. :-)
• Link your facebook to your twitter to share the love.
• Link your website or blog to your twitter using feedburner to share what you've been creating to a larger audience.

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Haiku in Honor of National Poetry Month

Trees staring upward
Like tops spinning in circles
Empties our love out

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Photograph & Rant: "Sharpen Your Mind!"

In this post, I supply a photograph I took of a battered pencil sharpener along with a short quip on a sharpener's importance in a teacher's classroom.

An orange, beat-up pencil sharpener is affixed to a wall.

Even in the age of computers, it is still nice to know pencil sharpeners have a use. Any classroom teacher will tell you that one of the more valuable objects in their possession is the pencil sharpener — many are affixed to the wall so no one will take it away.

image credit: Greig Roselli © 2010

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How to open multiple webpages in tabs on startup in Firefox (3.6.3) on a Mac

If you want more than one homepage to load when you start Firefox, say your favorite news sites, for example, then this little tip may be useful so you don't have to manually load the pages every single time.

1. Go to Preferences on Mozilla Firefox

2. Select the “General” pane in the taskbar.  In the location (s) field you probably already have your default home page.

 3.  In the homepage field type in your desired web pages separated by the | key.

4. Voila. You're done. Now when you open Firefox all your favorite web pages will open in tabs.

* Caveat: If you are not sure you want tabs to open with the same web pages EVERY time you start up Firefox, and you want more control over your morning routine, then click here to learn how to create a bookmark to open in tabs.

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How to set up a bookmark folder in Firefox (3.6.3) to open your favorite sites in tabs on a Mac

In a previous post, I demonstrated how to open multiple web pages in Firefox in tabs on startup, but if you're like me, sometimes it is just annoying to have your new sites pop up every time you open up an application, so this trick may serve people better who may only want pages to open in the morning and a certain set of pages to open in the evening. Or set up pages to open for a specific task, like research a paper, for example.