After years of random doodling on rare occasion, I took up drawing on the subway to and from work. It's an inexpensive and soothing hobby and something I've come to enjoy a great deal.

I finally created a web site to display the scans I've made of these pictures.

Stacey Leggieri's Small Art Gallery
http://sites.google.com/site/staceyleggieri/


A few people received emails inviting them to take an early look. Now I'm sending it out to a wider friend's list. Since any new folks to the party won't have any context to start with, I'll just say that most of these images are small enough to slip into my purse pocket when I leave the train. No materials rise beyond the level of bog standard office or school supplies.

The page is set up to allow for comments on category pages, individual images, or whole diatribes if desired on an extra comments page. However, Google Sites won't allow for purely anonymous comments. And maybe that's a good thing, since I'm not exactly looking to open a gallery show at this time. If you would like to engage with public comments or indulge in private ones, send an email to the address listed on my LiveJournal profile page.

There's a lot of confusion about the American switchover to digital television. As an audiovisual specialist, I'd like to clear up confusion among my family and friends.

Since 2005, a law has been on the books that mandates that all local television channels switch from analog broadcasts to digital broadcasts on February 17th of this year. The purpose for doing this is to free up prime frequency spectrum that could arguably have been allocated more efficiently to begin with. (In the government's defense, few people cared about wasting wireless bandwidth until cell phones came along and portable computing became viable.) Once TV stations stop sending out analog signals, the original band of frequencies will be used to support new wireless services for portable devices plus modernized communications systems for emergency workers.

The original switchover date, February 17th, is less than two weeks away. However, there is now another date on everyone's lips: July 12th. Much confusion abounds due to uneducated bloggers who assumed last week when the Senate passed a bill for a blanket delay that it was a done deal. Of course, such a law is required to pass through both houses of Congress before being signed by the President. The House just passed a version that allows TV stations to switch to digital at any point between February 17th and July 12th. This inserts a little more confusion into the picture, but it also allows local areas to manage the transition based on their own particular situation. Some negotiation will occur to determine what exactly appears on President Obama's desk. Personally, I would prefer the President sign something closer to the House's version.

After the switchover occurs, television stations will broadcast in digital format only and on new frequencies. Many stations are already broadcasting in digital, with some stations broadcasting in both formats simultaneously for now. Customers who use cable or satellite services will in most cases see no change in their service. However, if your receiver box is over five years old, I'd suggest you call your provider sooner rather than later to see if you need a replacement box that may be offered to you for free.

The main trouble will be for people who utilize rabbit ears or building antennas to receive local stations only. These people may need new antennas and/or converter boxes for older television sets. The government has instituted a coupon program (https://www.dtv2009.gov) to provide consumers with $40 towards the equipment they need. This is most or all of the cost of a converter box for one TV. The idea is that you get your coupon in the mail - up to 2 per household - and use it to purchase the stuff you need.( Find out how this coupon program has gone mad, how unlucky consumers and other wireless devices are getting caught in the crossfire, and how the government is behind the ball on regulating this transition. )

I never enjoy being the bearer of bad news. So the good news is that for most Americans, none of this will matter. Cable and satellite providers saw this coming and prepared well in advance. The bad news is that the most vulnerable among us may be less than two weeks away from losing their main lifeline to the outside world. Or they may have up to five months to wake up, smell the coffee, and get a coupon redeemed. For those who care about how the switchover will occur in their local area, I would suggest they check the web sites for their local TV stations for more details in a few days. For people using rabbit ears, this may mean taking a trip to the local library.

To some extent, no amount of preparation will keep some people from being caught surprised. Test studies in small towns verified what you and I could guess, that even places blanketed with warnings housed an alarmingly large number of people who thought they were immune to losing their TV channels. For some percentage of the unaware, simply buying a converter box may not be the best solution. It may be time to buy a new TV, subscribe to cable or satellite service, get broadband internet, or give up the boob tube.

As a last note, there are tools online where you can plug in a house address to compare today's public analog broadcasts to tomorrow's public digital broadcasts. If you like reading charts, you can even get an idea of which way to point your rabbit ears. Here's one tool I like: http://tvfool.com/index.php?id=57

Regardless of politics, I hope my American friends will be voting in their presidential primaries. Tomorrow is "Super Tuesday," where 24 of our 50 states will hold elections. This includes New York, where I live. I applaud those who already participated in their state's primaries. They laid the foundation for the difficult choice the rest of us now face.

In most states, delegates will be awarded in a proportional manner. Your vote, whether it is a majority or minority vote in your state, will help to determine the ultimate winner. Voting for a candidate outside the mainstream is also arguably meaningful, as the increase of voting "outside the box" is increasingly being noticed and considered seriously. Those who fail to vote risk putting their needs and desires on the nation's backburner.

Please don't pretend that your vote doesn't matter.

There's a local singer/songwriter who's really gotten my attention. Those who know me well enough will realize that's is pretty rare for me to endorse a particular artist.

Like me, Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) lives in Brooklyn. His "office" is a table at a coffee shop where he answers his email. I got to see him perform locally, and I'd estimate there were only about 50 people in the audience at the time. This may not last.( So why do you care? )

Coulton's latest catchy whatsit (not counting whatever he's concocting as I write this) is a song called Still Alive. The song plays during the ending credits of Portal, a video game extra stuck into Valve's Orange Box, which is basically a company variety pack. I'd recommend the game as well as the song, both of which are rather innovative approaches to video game storytelling. You can get spoiled here if you want.

Also, you can watch him live right now. (The videos of his sessions are also kept on archive.) I think this is the second time he's let people watch as he creates and records new songs. His evil scientist's recording closet reminds me of my job, actually.

Awhile ago, I grew disappointed with my experiences playing World of Warcraft.

So I tried to figure out exactly what was lost or different. Was it the gaming experience itself? I tried lower level WoW play and single-player video games, but they were far less engrossing. Was it the sense of community? I tried a Second Life community and found myself better immersed but lacking any sense of motivation there. Was it the simple combination of the two? I tried online ARGs (alternate reality games) and found myself only interested in being a creator, not a player. Yet ARG creation would require more time than I have to spare.

So I started reading about various aspects of MMORPGs, and that took me into social theory within media studies and in gaming circles. The conclusion I reached was that my interest lies in learning how to help cooperative virtual communities thrive over time. As a species, we must learn to overcome roadblocks like creating accountability in anonymous communities, relaying involuntary language cues over the internet, overcoming cultural differences when players span continents, and so forth. Future generations will likely rely on our solutions.

It wasn't so much that I'd been playing the wrong game. I had been taking it largely at face value. Instead, I should have been taking a far more meta approach to the situation. ( Unfortunately, it took the near loss of the group enterprise to make all this clear. )

I'm extending an invitation to those reading who would like to join me and Peter in World of Warcraft on the server Ysera. Transferred Alliance characters and newbies alike are welcome. If you've made it as far as reading this paragraph, I suspect we'll be able to work together.

Our guild's web address is prime.guildlaunch.com.