Blog moved

Hey folks –

Thanks for visiting!

I’m still blogging, but this blog has been moved to my personal Web site: go to kenstonge.com/blog for more

Haunted And Hunted By The Wumpus; Or, My Emulated Christmas Memory

The first computer I ever used hooked up to what was then — around 1986 or so — a 20-year-old TV that we kept in my brother’s room. It was a TI99 my mother bought on clearance at Zayre in Worcester. And it was awesome.

It came with a bunch of games that I really loved and over Christmas, in a fit of auld lang syne, I decided that I just had to play them again. Of course, by now, the ancient hardware was lost to antiquity (read: “parents’ attic”).

Hope was lost. Until, that is, I discovered what is quite possibly my new favorite software.

Blogroll Items Added

I put in a few links to some blogs that I like, admire or in some cases just know the authors of. In several cases all three. I’ll add more soon.

New Stories (1/3/08 Edition)

You might have noticed that my blogging has been scarce the last few weeks. It’s been a real kooky time for me, not least of which was because of the writing I have been doing.

In the last few weeks, I have wrapped up a few columns for the Hartford Business Journal, as well as a few economic forecast pieces for its sister publication, the Worcester Business Journal.

Here’s a wrap up of the forecast pieces:

Angry Hartford Guitarophiles Duke It Out On Craigslist

Oh how guitarists loathe it when others try to rip them off on craigslist. (Note: He’s right, the dude’s asking way too much.)

‘Cross My Palm With Silver, You Can Publish My Essay’

Harlan Ellison wants to be paid, man.

Welcome To The Machine

Well folks, It’s been a few days since I’ve written anything and here’s why: I was busy putting together a little project called NutmegMachine.com

It’s intended to be a blog, a news service and a resource for manufacturing in Connecticut, a topic I have been writing a column about (“Industrial Strength”) for the Hartford Business Journal since April.

New Writings (Dec. 10, 2007)

Hey folks. In case you were wondering what I have been writing lately (other than my blog), here are some new stories for this week:

• These pesky Broadway and Hollywood strikes are creating an interesting ripple in the insurance world. (Via Insurance Journal)
• The head of the Connecticut Workers Compensation Committee group warns that changes could be afoot in that state’s workers comp system. Why? Because most of the legislators are newbies. (Via Hartford Business Journal)

New Tools To Track People Down

Via Lifehacker. One of the tedious parts of being a journalist is finding ways to track down the people you want to talk to. Lifehacker puts together a nice little 101 on how to find folks beyond merely googling them.

If you don’t feel like visiting the link, here are the highlights:

• To find a person’s home address and phone number: Try Zabasearch. This is a search tool that can be done on a state-by-state basis, e.g. John Smith, Anytown, Mass. It also pulls up birth date information, although sometimes it’s conflicting. I use this tool often to track down the home addresses and phone numbers of businessmen and businesswomen I write about — particularly when their PR flacks and secretaries give me the runaround.
• To find background on a person: Try Pipl. This is a tool I haven’t tried much yet. You need the name and city address for a person you are looking for to make it work best.
• To find out what a person says about himself on social networking sites: Try Wink. Once you know the name and address of the person you’re tracking down, see if he is a member of any social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn. A lot has been written about the info on these sites damaging people’s job prospects. But in researching the backgrounds of alleged criminals, it can be a gold mine. I know a certain reporter who found this type of tool very useful when breaking a story about a high school teacher who had sex with a teenage student: Sure enough, the teacher had a racy MySpace page, which was taken down the day after the story came out.
• If you’re a Firefox user: try the “Who is this person?” extension. This feature will allow you to instantly run a name through Google, Zabasearch and a few other sites. Could be useful, but I prefer doing these by hand.

Boston University’s Strange Journo-Marketing

I just got around to sorting some of the mail and magazines on my desk. I was reading through the most recent issue of Bostonia, which is the alumni magazine of Boston University. There is a profile of WBUR, the NPR-affiliate based at B.U. At one point in the piece, the writer makes this awkward reference to an alumna, considering the story is running in a combination marketing and journalism mag.

As recently as two years ago, newspaper stories about WBUR described the station as troubled. They noted its growing debt to BU and the cancellation of The Connection, then the station’s flagship program, with a huge national following. Prior to that was the October 2004 resignation of longtime general manager Jane Christo (CAS’65) amid accusations of mismanagement, many eventually deemed not credible by a BU investigation.

Does that strike anyone else as weird, knowing this is a puff piece promoting B.U.? I can’t quite decide if it’s very bad marketing or very good journalism.

[BTW, the things an internal investigation found that Christo did were not all that interesting.]