Des Stanton - a pilot with history

Ethel Stanton married James Porter in 1911, and after her father's death they took over running the stanton family property, where we now have Minippi Parklands.

Their second child, Stan Porter, grew up loving planes. As a boy he rode to Eagle Farm for a joyride with Kingsford Smith in the Southern Cross. At the age of thirty-two he took flying lessons and in 1947 he bought his own plane and made an airstrip on their land.

In 1954 Stan Porter crashed into Bulimba Creek with his two sons on board. They had been scattering the ashes of local identity,Tom Kelly, over the Kelly quarry. Stan and one of the boys, Keith, were killed, while Des was rescued from the tail of the plane.

The surviving son, Des, later bought one of his father's old De Havilland Dragons. On October 1, 2012, Des, with his wife and four friends, were returning from a vintage aircraft show at Monto, when they crashed into a hillside.  Tragically, all six of them died. 

Facebook in reality

Sometimes it is good to look at these things from the outside and realise what the implications of them really are!

Social networks

There are things I like about social networks. I like having contact with people I have not seen for ages on facebook. I like hearing about their lives now and looking at pictures of their kids. I do not like getting messages and emails from them too often. I do not like the feeling, sometimes, that I am being stalked. Like all these htings I played it obsessively for a couple of weeks and then got bored. I like some of the applications - playing scrabulous or D&D is fun - though no more fun than playing them on game sites.

I guess you could define some of the gaming sites as social networks. I have played backgammon with some lovely people over the years and round the world!

I think Ning and Bebo could be really useful for clubs, groups and even families - a space on the internet that reflects an actual relationship and interactions. In fact, I think that is what the social networks I like have in common - they are expressions of existing relationships. One creates a ning group with people who know or interact with each other, and you do not invite strangers to be friends in FB (though it is a bit close to that with the young!).

Second Life, however, is a totally invented world, with pretend interactions between pretend people. This seems fine to me if it is a game - I remember discovering a MUD years ago (I got to it through Gopher so it was really years ago, pre www) and the excitement when I realised that it was a real person I was interacting with. WOW and the other RPGs are pretty much extensions of this. I do not really see what people get out of Second Life, however. Nothing much seems to happen except for commerce and blah. Maybe I have never given it long enough, but I got bored and did not come back. Club Penguin seems much the same and more fun!

Bebo could be great for bookclubs, or networks of bookclubs, for local studies groups, for individual branch libraries - though it would mean letting go of control in a way that most libraries are adverse to. I have qualms about libraries in Second Life - rather like the librarian coming up and being buddy to the students in the pub. I don't think they want it!

Online applications

Here is the link to the travel calendar I made in Google Doc last year http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dcb674hv_1f4ctc5&hl=en. I ended up actually just using a word version and keeping it on esnips - was just easier to edit at home with one right on the computer. However, this was fun to make. The tools have improved a lot since then.

On Zoho I tried out the wiki tool as we are looking for one that it is very simple and has minimal advertising but is still attractive. http://harbison.wiki.zoho.com/Testing-a-zoho-wiki.html
Zoho had a lot more applications than Google and seemed to have more formatting options, but I could not understand some of the formatting terminology in the image insert and things. It is great that you can use your google or yahoo accounts to login though!

Have never really got into these much, but some of the other tools are wonderful. I do not know what I would have done without Zamzar. When people came into the library to print out documents from macs or some versions of office that would not work on open office, I could always convert them using Zamzar. If I needed to send a pdf document to someone, it was the only way to create one at BCC. Doodle could be wonderful for trying to schedule weeks to burn off at Barney or weeding weekends or even dinners with a lot of people. esnips means I can share all the schedules, scans of passports, etickets, etc and still have them available if all our documentation gets lost.

Mashups for Local History

I think a mashup for local history could revolve around a map with images and history information. There is a one of the Somerset Hills, but it is not particularly attractive(http://www.t3consortium.com/drafts/interactivemap.php)

The Get London reading one could be really well applied in Brisbane - it could be used for reading, galleries or historical interest: http://www.getlondonreading.co.uk/Books-in-London

Even more interesting could be mashing oral histories with photographs, maps and historical information. You could morph the then and now photographs or mosaic the street scenses.

More mashups

I made a Warhol of Clea!

and more

and a Hockney of Sam!