I am on my way to Rapid City, SD for the annual gathering of Western States Folklorists. Normally this meeting takes place somewhere in the in the West. This year the meeting is in the Midwest and Folklorists form the MidWest have been invited to participate.

WESTAF supports this gathering each year and sends a representative. This year, that person happens to be me. I will be doing a little presentation of The Ties That Bind web site that I've been working on. The site has a few cleanup items, but is for the most part complete. I'll also be doing a workshop on Monday on Web 2.0.

A couple of weeks ago I finished updating TourWest for work. WESTAF uses its own CultureGrants Online(tm) Basic software to administer the program. I helped develop both the first version of this software many years ago and then, to rebuild it from the ground up about two years ago. It continues to be refined.

CultureGrants Online(tm) Basic has all the general tools a grants adminstrator needs to accept applications, process them, create panel books, run a panel with scoring, fund, and communicate with applicants. It also has some basic reporting tools.

This isn't a flaw in Qumana.  It isn't a flaw with Blogger either.  When I post to my Drupal site, the process is seamless.  I type in the Qumana screen, edit, spell check, link, embed.  The process is slick and quick.  In many ways it is a better experience than typing into the blog itself.  This morning, when I connected via DUN, and posted my previous entry it was lightning fast even on the Treo 650.  In other words, I think that Qumana will ultimately make me more efficient.  I may well load it onto my iMac at home as well as the portable I carry for work.

I bought two Mac minis today.  One for work--we are going to try and make use of it for ZAPP(tm) juries in the future.  We need one on the bench to figure out what it can or can't do for WESTAF.  The second was for my daughter.  She has been drawing keyboards on a typing paper, folding them and drawing an Apple on the back.  I've set up the little computer between Paula and my work stations.

One of the things that I absolutely love about MacOS X is parental controls.  Paula spent about 45 minutes setting up the Internet sites that our kiddo can access.  No more, no less.  You can lock down access tight as a drum.  Very cool.