Jamie Thingelstad

My RSS reader is filled with a lot of technology stuff, a variety of Apple websites and a ton of friends that have blogs. I recently subscribed to a new blog that I had to create a new group for. The group is called Interesting, and the blog is Dictionary Evangelist.

I got exposed to this blog by watching Erin McKean’s presentation at TED entitled “Redefining the Dictionary” via their podcasts. The video was fun, and her posts are “interesting” and fun as well. Erin is a lexicographer, which is to say she makes dictionaries. Cred’ out to Dictionary Evangelist (Add Feed).

What’s in your “Interesting” group?

I have given myself and a couple of my friends (him and him) a task for the upcoming Winnipeg Folk Festival. There is a tradition on the final night that all of the performers at the festival come on stage and conduct the finale. The three songs that comprise the finale are The Mary Ellen Carter, Wild Mountain Thyme and Amazing Grace. The assignment is to learn the lyrics to these songs, especially the Mary Ellen Carter, so that everyone can sing along without looking at the lyrics in the songbook.

Now, when I say sing along I mean sing along with gusto. Think of an Irish bar 30 minutes before closing time and the whole place rocking and singing to a traditional reel. That’s the idea.

This post is the study guide for this assignment. I’ve compiled the lyrics for these songs and validated them against specific tracks from iTunes to make sure they are correct.

The Mary Ellen Carter by Stan Rogers

The Mary Ellen Carter (iTunes) is a pretty amazing song. On the Wikipedia page for the song it is credited with savings someone’s life! The lyrics for it are substantial and have some areas where emphasis is needed (highlighted in yellow). This will take a while to get it right. I’d suggest focusing most attention on this song.

She went down last october in a pouring driving rain
The skipper he’d been drinkin’ and the mate he felt no pain
Too close to three mile rock and she was dealt her mortal blow
And the Mary Ellen Carter settled low

There was just us five aboard her when she finally was awash
We’d worked like hell to save her, all heedless of the cost
And the groan she gave as she went down it caused us to proclaim
That the Mary Ellen Carter would rise again

Well the owners wrote her off, not a nickel would they spend “She gave twenty years of service boys then met her sorry end.
But insurance paid the loss to us, so let her rest below”
Then they laughed at us and said we had to go

But we talked of her all winter, some days around the clock
She’s worth a quarter million a-floating at the dock
And with every jar that hit the bar we swore we would remain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

CHORUS: Rise again, rise again
That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men
Oh those who loved her best, and were with her ’til the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

All spring now we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend
Three dives a day in a hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends
Thank God it’s only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
Or I’d never have the strength to go below

But we patched her rents, stopped her vents, dogged hatch and portal down
Put cables to her fore and aft and girded her around
Tomorrow noon we hit the air and then take up the strain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

CHORUS

For we couldn’t leave her there you see to crumble into scale
She’d saved our lives so many times living through the gale
And the laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave
They won’t be laughing in another day

And you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

2ND CHORUS: Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken your life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

2ND CHORUS

Wild Mountain Thyme

This is a traditional Irish song. As such, the lyrics are modified by various performers. This recording by Carl Peterson (iTunes) isn’t the best but it’s a good one to learn the lyrics with. It’s really slow, and you can go along at your own pace without any issue.

Oh, the summer time is come,
And the trees are sweetly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.

CHORUS:
Will you go, lassie, go?
And we’ll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather,

Will you go, lassie, go?
I will build my love a bower
By yon clear and crystal fountain,
And on it I will pile,
All the flowers from the mountain.

CHORUS

If my true love, she were gone,
I will surely find another
Where the while wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.

CHORUS

Oh, the summertime is coming
And thre trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather.

CHORUS

Amazing Grace

I’m sure you know most of the words to Amazing Grace. This recording by Anne Murray (iTunes) is a good one to hammer the lyrics in with. I know, Anne Murray? Yes, I know. It is what it is.

Amazing grace!
How sweet the sound,
That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

It was nine months ago that we added Izzy to our family. Today we added another dog to the family. His name is Chase!

We adopted Chase today after visiting him on Thursday night. He is about 5 months old and is a Border Collie/Black Lab mix. His color is all Black Lab, and his face has a lot of the Collie in it. He was born in South Dakota and found his way to Minneapolis with a couple of siblings. We found Chase on the Internet (with the unfortunate name of Lurch), while casually considering getting another dog. After visiting him we pondered it for a while and decided to take the leap.

Chase arrived today and for about five hours he and Izzy just ran around chasing each other. Complete and total mayhem. I’m pleased to say that as I write this though they have settled a bit and Chase is actually laying down. First time today.

Chase is going to be high energy and will be a good friend for Izzy. Izzy loves other dogs and will appreciate the company. Chase is going to be very smart, and even at his young puppy stage he’s already learned a few commands. I get a sense he is going to be much easier to train than Izzy. He should get to 40-50 lbs fully grown.

Tammy and I are both considering our moment of insanity. :-) Getting Chase is reminding us how much Izzy has grown since we got her. Welcome to the family Chase!

On Thursday of this week I experienced a disaster. I got a phone call and while taking my iPhone out of my pocket it slipped and I fumbled it ever so oddly, culminating in it hitting the plastic arm of the chair I was sitting in. I flipped it around and to my horror the glass had cracked!

The image above is not my phone. I was not able to get a picture of it. The image is from GeckoAndFly.com under the Creative Commons license. See the post where this picture originated.

It was really odd. I had dropped my iPhone before, and in much worse situations, and everything was fine. This was a minor hit, and on a plastic surface no less. I think the issue was that it hit exactly where the cutout for the speaker is, on one of the corners. It would make sense that this would be one of the weaker points in the glass. Same exact hit that is in the picture above.

Distraught at my lack of a perfect iPhone (it worked fine with the broken glass BTW) I headed to the Apple Store. I wasn’t optimistic that it would be replaced gratis. Upon arriving my assumptions were proven out. Apple replaced it with a “replacement only” unit that cost $249. A big $50 savings off of a brand new unit, and you have to immediately hand over your broken unit (hence no picture). The money aside, the replacement was flawless. I came home, docked it, and iTunes quickly restored exactly as my previously broken one was.

After months of waiting Pleo has finally arrived! Pleo is the first robot from Ugobe.

It seems not many people had pre-ordered Pleo (according to Jyte). Of course there were only 2,000 of the special “First Hatch” editions available.

I charged Pleo’s batteries and woke him up for the first time. So far I’m pretty impressed. Ugobe has done a great job of getting Pleo to convey a variety of emotions. I took him to work today and people had a great time playing with him. He’s already learned several new motions and actions. I had read another blog post saying that they thought he was really loud. Granted you can hear the servos, but I don’t think they are too loud. Engadget has a nice write-up on Pleo.

I’ll post more on my first few days with Pleo later, perhaps with some video.

Ever since I’ve gotten my iPhone I now have a new routine before I travel. I make sure to sync the iPhone with iTunes and get all the most recent episodes of podcasts, and maybe a movie and some TV shows while I’m at it. Since the iPhone is my all-in-one device, it’s great to be able to load up so much content on it and head to the airport.

The iPhone is a superb device to watch video on. The screen is bright and large enough to enjoy the show. Unfortunately, all is not perfect. You really cannot expect to hold your iPhone for an hour while you watch a show on a flight.

The first part of this problem is that the iPhone itself is aluminum and thus relatively slippery. I have the incase cover for my phone that is nice and grippy and I found that I could prop my iPhone on my tray by placing something behind it. This worked okay, but resulted in looking down at the seat tray for a long time, and some neck pain to go along with that. So I pondered this for a while and came up with an alternative.

I got all MacGuyver on this one. The ideal scenario is to have the screen right at the headrest of the person in front of you. How to do that? Two rubber bands and two safety pins later and the problem is solved.

If you don’t have the Incase cover you can just make the rubber bands tighter to hold it in place. You’ll want to make sure and get the safety pins fairly level. After mounting, this worked great!

Fire up a movie, recline and enjoy!

I’m presenting at Code Freeze 2008 in January. The title of my presentation is Innovation in Product Development.

Everyone wants to have the next hot product. We are constantly “pushing the envelope” and “thinking out of the box”. We have the aspiration, but in many cases it doesn’t happen. In this discussion we will review key aspects to fostering innovation in a development team, creating room to play and ultimately making great products.

I’ve got some ideas for my presentation and a theme I’m thinking of winding it through. However, I’m curious if you all have anything to say on this topic. What do you think drives innovation in product development? What are the key contributing factors that you see?

Let me know what you think.

I recently picked up a Linksys WTR-54GS travel router based on the positive recommendation of my friend Chris. He had gotten one before going on a big trip to make sure that he had WiFi in all the locations he wanted it and it worked really well.

I’ve considered getting something like this for a while, but never had a need that pushed me over the edge. The iPhone was the tipping point. When staying in a hotel I wanted to get my iPhone online and even if a hotel does provide WiFi they usually limit each room to one device (via the MAC address). By using a travel router like this I can put a small network in my room with several devices and not have to pay any additional fees. I’m using it right now in my hotel room with my Dell laptop, MacBook Pro and my iPhone all online. It works really well.

As an added benefit the WTR-54GS has a firewall integrated into it so you can protect all of your devices from other hotel guests. I’ve noticed lately that if I launch iTunes in a hotel I could see a large number of peoples shared music. Tsk tsk. The firewall in the travel router will keep me protected from such things.

The WTR-54GS itself is a nice package. It has an integrated power supply so there isn’t any extra junk for plugging it in. It comes with a nice, very packable, 10-BaseT cable. It’s small and can easily be thrown in your suitcase for any trip. One of the unique features of the Linksys model is that you can even bridge from one WiFi network to your own, thus still getting the advantages even when the hotel offers only WiFi.

If you travel with any regularity, and are an electronics pack mule like me, you should consider grabbing one of these.

It seems that I lost my Crash pen today. This makes me very sad. I’ve had this pen for a few years and I think it’s just supremely cool looking. I’ve even ordered parts for it in the past.

I think I’m going to have to order a new one. Bummer. I guess on the bright side at least I can order a new one.

If you are reading thingelstad.com via the RSS feed you will notice that I have added a copyright notice creative commons license to the feed, along with a digital fingerprint and for fun the IP address of the machine that pulled in your RSS feed. I’m doing this to fight back against website hijacking.

I’m noticing a lot of my content being stolen via my RSS feed and then republished on spammer websites. This is a slimy practice and is a growing trend. Lorelle wrote on this at some length recently. I decided to do something about it with the CopyFeed WordPress plug-in.

I went out of my way to just put the copyright notice creative commons license in a regular HTML block at the end of the post. I decided to post about this to encourage others to consider adding this if their content is being stolen, and to let you know why the copyright notice creative commons license has appeared.