Churbuck.com

Please Do Not Annoy, Torment, Pester, Molest, Badger, Harass, Heckle, Tease, or Copyedit the Bigshot New Editor – Gawker

My buddy Charles DuBow gets Gawkered. I’m wetting my pants laughing.

I think I made a blunder booking my ticket out of Singapore tomorrow afternoon. This city deserves a week’s exploration at the very least. A full day of meetings in the typical windowless hotel conference room was relieved by a trip to Clarke’s Quay for some Peppered Crab and Chili Lobster at Jumbo Seafood. A post-prandial stroll along the Singapore River revealed a massive riverside mall of trendy tapas bars and — horror of horrors — in the former Fleshpot of the Orient, an honest to god Hooter’s with waitresses in the ubiquitous orange gymshorts. I guess that’s why the water taxis are called bumboats.

The jet lag ain’t bad. Yet. So I strolled and strolled with my Australian-based colleague Patrick, and giving up on an interminable taxi line, we hit the subway for a ride back to Bugis where my hotel is located. Kind of weird walking around in bazillion degree heat and absolute humidity in a city devoid of trash and then boarding a space-age airconditioned subway. I did see one piece of trash, something pointed out to me by Patrick which made me make the excuse that it must have been a tourist.

Hard to describe this place without falling into travel writer clichedom. The first impression is the immense density and newness of the skyscrapers. Nothing feels old, not many vestiges of colonial architecture as there are in Chennai and Delhi, and even Raffles, the hotel named after the first British governor, Stamford Raffles, has been modernized out of whatever romantic notions of Singapore Slings, Pink Gins and those weird white pukha helmets I’ve always associated with the Disney vision of Singapore.

The seafood was amazing. I now know how to cook crab and lobster and isn’t by boiling them and serving them with melted butter. Black pepper and chili sauce rules. You have to get down and dirty with these things — Baltimore style. I did get a plastic bib — too late — after I exploded a crab joint all over my pink Brooks Brother shirt. Totally nuked myself. Hence this post is tagged under the “clamming” heading.
I wish I had decided to hang out for the weekend. Two nights in the InterContinental, a day and half in meetings, one night on the quays, a subway ride, and a cab to and from the airport does not a trip to Singapore make.

Sorry, but the last time I was in Asia (1991) one had to fight to find a fax machine, let alone a PC. Sitting through a day long meeting in Singapore, with participants dialed in by speaker phone, instant messaging commentary across oceans, reviewing metrics delivered in real-time over 10,000 miles, discussing manufacturing in Latin America, China, Taiwan …

Getting pinged on my cell phone, blogging onto a server in Mashpee, Mass. — sorry to state the obvious, but all this PC and connectivity hype that started in the early 80s is paying off in a very, very real and big way.
I’m here not to communicate but to meet people, face to face, the most crucial element and perhaps the cliche of the old “community” movement. But nevertheless, “meat space” versus “virtual space” is the prized commodity in the Flat World. Not the communications.

New world, new thinking.

Singapore 4.20.06

Is expensive. $23 bucks a day. Granted it’s Singapore bucks, but still. I’ve dropped $50 since leaving Boston on Tuesday to stay connected. I am totally time-zone challenged right now. It’s Wednesday at 1 pm on Cape Cod. I left Cape Cod on Tuesday at 7 am. I arrived here at Wednesday at 11:30 pm. Now it is Thursday at 2 am.

Singapore? Hot. Humid (gee, it must be on the equator). I didn’t get caned at customs. The hotel is nice. The scotch tastes the same.

Time to eat a sleeping pill and aim for six hours of unconsciousness.

Jonathan Spence’s The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution. I’ve been a China tear for the last three months (for obvious reasons), and having taken Spence’s class on Chinese history at Yale in the 70s, I turned to his account of the lives of several revolutionaries, intellectuals, and artists in China from the 1880s to the 1980s. Excellent, excellent book about a very complex period in world and Chinese history.

Spence writes like a novelist, but is probably the greatest living Western Chinese historian. The first person he profiles, Kang Youwei, is amazing.

I picked up Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea at the bookstore at Logan Airport and finished it before landing in Chicago. Excellent book which tells the story of the whaling ship Essex, which in the 1820s was rammed by a whale some 2000 miles west of the South American coast, sank, and then subjected its crews to a horrific open-sea voyage of 93 days.

Cannibalism was involved. People in the 19th century liked cannibalism in their tabloids the way American’s today like Angelina and Britney and Whitney.

This tale inspired Melville to write Moby Dick, and was the most lurid tale in America in the first half of the 19th century. Philbrick is an excellent writer and historian. I think I enjoyed his descriptions of Nantucket more than the sea story itself. I worked on Nantucket for six years (summers, as a deckhand on the ferry) and while its fishy history has always been in the back of my mind, I had no idea about the social dynamics of the island, the strength of the women who ran the local economy while the men were off on their two to three year voyages, and the immense wealth accumulated by the Quakers.

Nantucket in the 19th and 18th centuries was the Silicon Valley of its day. Ship owners like Obed Macy and the Howlands of New Bedford were the venture capitalists of their time, seeking at least a 25% profit on their ventures — ventures which personified the meaning of risk. The crews and their captains were among the best traveled, culturally aware men of their time, discovering new islands in the south Pacific, as they chased the dwindling whales around the world, up into the Arctic.

Philbrick has me all fired up to turn Chatfield into a book.

Blogging from a broken 747 on the tarmac at O’Hare — bound for Singapore — where the trusty Treo will not work and the lame rented GSM Nokia has no browser.

Managed to devour Nathaniel Philbrick’s National Book Award winner (2000) In the Heart of the Sea, his retelling of the story of the Essex, the model for Moby Dick.

Definitely an inspiration to finish the Captain Chatfield work and turn it into a book. I brought his Civil War letters with me to start transcription during my stay in Asia.

I’ll blog when possible though not by Treo. Will be shopping for a Canon Powershot in Singapore duty-free.

I’ve transcribed the account of General Newton’s failed attack on St. Marks — the Battle of Natural Bridge.

Here’s a photo from the civilwaralbum.com showing the bay where Capt. Chatfield disembarked troops for the battle.

“This is a view of Apalachee Bay from the base of the St. Marks Lighthouse. Union ships anchored offshore here during the Civil War to enforce the blockade and Southern blockade runners also slipped through these waters from time to time. In March of 1865, Union transports moved toward shore here and ran aground while trying to land troops. The entire operation was observed by Confederate pickets stationed at the lighthouse and took so long to accomplish that Southern forces were able to organize and call in reinforcements in time to defeat the Federal expedition at the Battle of Natural Bridge on March 6, 1865. Confederate reports describe stormy weather in the days leading up to the battle, so the view offshore probably looked very similar to this. Early in the war the Confederates built a battery at about this spot, but withdrew the guns. The structure was later shelled and destroyed by the Union Navy. No trace remains”

Here’s some links to The Battle of Natural Bridge

• Wakulla County Historical Society
  
• Battle Maps of Florida
• Wikipedia
• Floripedia

You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

What could be finer than a warm Easter Sunday and the first striped bass of the year? Cousin Peter, my daughter, and dog Ned putt-putted up into Prince’s Cove and caught (and released of course) two nice shiny stripers.

I caught nothing, but I had one on for a second.

Then a quick walk on Dead Neck before returning home for the Easter Feast.

You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

This is Lake Cochichewick in North Andover. I spent three long springs on this lake rowing at the Brooks School. An all-boys school in Massachusetts. This is a cold, rough place that taught me the true meaning of the term: “pain builds character.”

Whenever I feel physically challenged I think back to the last 100 yards of a lung-busting crew race down these waters, hands bleeding, soaked in near-freezing water, and I always know that nothing will be as horrible.

This picture was taken while I watched my daughter (National High School Champion rower in 2005) scrimmage against Nobles & Greenough.

You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

While checking out at Stop & Shop I saw this monstrosity. A big box containing a full “Holiday Ham Dinner” — meat, squash, spuds, green beans. Me, I’ve been marinating a sauerbraten for four days, and have planned a full feast of rosti (Swiss potatoe pancakes), balsamic brussel sprouts with pancetta, devilled eggs, and … oops, forgot about dessert.

Cooking is a lost art. I gave myself the updated Gourmet cookbook for Christmas and have been working through it at every opportunity.

Capt. Tom cruises the gulf coast, buries the Union dead during the yellow fever epidemic in Tampa Bay (advancing a theory of germs), gets a leave and goes home to Cape Cod, returns, and pilots an invasion fleet making up for General Newton’s assault on St. Marks.

A big battle is coming

I just transcribed a big piece of the Chatfield memoirs into part 9 (apologies for not inserting an anchor tag at the point of the addition).

He’s received his own command and has taken up station in Tampa Bay to care for the victims of the yellow fever. A good deal of the account is about the plight of Northeners trapped behind the Confederate lines and pressed into service during the Conscription. Lots of refugees to take care of, but Capt. Tom is now free of the disagreeable Captain Budd and has his own command, his first since leaving the whaler Massachusetts behind in San Francisco at the beginning of the war.

A side note, I have been researching through Starbuck’s excellent History of the American Whaling Fishery and finding some good details about the Massachusett’s voyages, her building and launching in Mattapoisset in 1845, etc..

A mere 45-pages or so to go before I turn to the Captain’s war letters. Cousin Pete told me over dinner last night that he has located the log of the Two Sisters, the schooner Chatfield commanded in Tampa during the last years of the war, so that is something I look forward to as well.

Finally — there’s been some urging by Jeff Young and Jim Forbes to turn this project into a book. Having majored in American maritime history in college, my inclination is to go the non-fiction route without getting too academically pedantic as I have no interest in making this anything close to an scholarly work. Both Jeff and Jim say – “Go fiction.” I don’t know. It’s tempting and this tale certainly provides the framework for a great sea yarn.

Genuine VC: Where Mobile Advertisements Roam

Good post by David Beisel at Masthead Ventures on the impact of mobile advertising on operations, he’s riffing off of Rafat Ali’s observation that mobile advertising will need mobile friendly landing pages.

“All advertising eventually leads to some type of commerce transaction. However, there’s a spectrum along which advertisers fall that covers how immediate the transaction occurs. On one end, there’s metric-driven performance-based advertising which measures it success directly by whether or not commerce happens immediately (or in the trackable near-future). On the opposite end is brand advertising, which supports the general perspective and attributes of a brand, so that eventually a constituent who sees an ad influences a future purchasing decision, either individually or as part of an organization. And then there’s everything in between, where the ad isn’t direct response per se, but is still aiming towards a transaction sometime in future, to varying degrees.”

David is referring to the need for commerce advertisers to track, from first click through, the lifetime value of a visitor from consideration to commerce conversion across multiple sessions. For large ticket purchases (like notebook PCs), the customer is generally flipping in and out of the vendor site multiple times, seeking prices, reviews, and competitor information before ultimately committing to the sale. This is a matter of persistent cookies and smart metrics.

About the Snagboat | U.S. Snagboat Montgomery, A National Historic Landmark

Chatfield writes about being terrified that Catesby ap Jones (commander of the Merrimac) would steam out of the Florida swamps in the Confederate gunship Chattahoochee to break the blockade in part 9 of the memoirs.

“In early November 1964, the Montgomery assisted in raising the remaining section of the Confederate Gunboat Chattahoochee from the channel of the Chattahoochee River. The activities are recorded in the Master Fleming’s daily log: “Picking up stern section of Gunboat and Removing it from channel. While picking up Gunboat and trying to work it on the bank some of the upper sections of the boom were sprung.” Today the Confederate Gunboat Chattahoochee can be seen at the Port Columbus National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia.”

The raising of the Chattahoochee

The Chattahoochee today.

Churbuck.com » Part 9 – The Reminiscences of Capt. Thomas Chatfield
“Land your men, Mr. Chatfield ..”

Take one young bored officer itching for some glory, combine with eighty men in rowboats at night, head up a Florida river to spike a river battery and run immediately into trouble with some river sentries. The good Captain Chatfield keeps his head, and remembers his Cotuit roots before ordering his men out of a boat to attack the pickets when he takes an oar to test the bottom before leaping over the side and sinking dink-deep into the muck (something I forget to do everytime I go clamming).

Enjoy. This brings me up to page 131 of the typescript – fifty-six to go. Working from the original leather-bound manuscript is a treat. The frontispiece says:

“The property of Florentine Chatfield Churbuck, youngest daughter of Capt. Thomas Chatfield, author of this book. The binding was done by hand by Thomas H. H. Knight, husband of Maud Chatfield Knight, third daughter of the family. Through the kindness of Mr. Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the typing was done by his secretary, who, not familiar with nautical terms, or Father’s pensmanship, made many errors in typing. A typed copy was given to each of the five Chatfield daughters.”

Florentine, or Oie, was my great-grandmother. I remember her sneaking me chunks of milk chocolate she kept in a cleaned-out Hellman’s Mayonnaise jar she kept behind her armchair when I was about three years old. She was also fond of overly ripe black bananas, which she hid from my grandmother (who hated fruit flies). I found one once in the drawer of the sewing machine and stuck my finger in it. It was one of my earliest memories.

Abbot Lawrence Lowell was the president of Harvard University and a next-door neighbor to the family in Cotuit. He instituted the “house system” at Harvard but is rather infamously known for his role in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and the expulsion of eight alleged homosexuals from Harvard. He was a pal of Thomas Chatfield and urged him to pen his reminiscences after hearing many of these stories told on the porch over the course of several summer evenings.

A. Lawrence Lowell

To finish off my account of how to forge your paycheck, increase your net worth, make the cover of a national business magazine and have an interesting discussion with the federal authorities ….

I left off with my editor, Bill Baldwin at Forbes, challenging me to deposit a check I forged on a Mac. If it cleared then it was a story. If it didn’t clear … We really didn’t think through those consequences.

So, I took the bogus piece of paper, walked it across Huntington Ave. to the ATM in the plaza of Boston’s Prudential Center, sealed it in a deposit envelope, and sent it on its merry way, feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t taken the full criminal route, ala Frank Abagnale (Mr. Catch Me If You Can) and tried to persuade a real human bank teller to cash it. Whatever. It was done, and with some guilt I went back to my home office and started reporting another story on mainframe software vendors or some far less exciting topic.

Two days later I started calling the bank’s automated balance line (this was pre-online banking) to see if my balance had ballooned. On the third day I was a much wealthier man. I phoned Baldwin.

“It cleared,” I told him. “My balance is way up.”

There was some silence. Neither one of us knew what to do next. Finally Baldwin suggested I catch the shuttle to NYC and be prepared to return the money to accounting.

The next day I was waiting outside of the Forbes accounting department, personal check in hand, ready to tell the poor treasurer that I had committed a felony in the interest of service journalism.

“You did what?”

“Well, I was researching a story about digital forgery and I forged a Forbes check and deposited it and …”

“Oh my god.” He picked up the phone and called Baldwin to confirm my misdeed. I was dismissed. I went back to Baldwin’s office.

“I guess we should have told accounting first. They’re on the phone with the bank now.” Forbes’ bank was not pleased. They were very unhappy. Their chief of security was not having a good day. And I was told I had committed a serious felony. The check was still in the system somewhere, flying to Honolulu, and they had no idea how to deal with a customer who ripped themselves off. I took out my checkbook and wrote a check back to Forbes.
I was sent back to Boston with orders to forge onwards (sorry) with the completition of the story. The Forbes research department went into overdrive, searching court dockets for more evidence of digital forgery, a photographer was hired to come into my home office and chronicle the process of cutting the check. The Mac and scanner and laser printer were re-rented. The photographers came and wreaked havoc on my small apartment. My wife made it into the photos.

The story was published in the fall, right before Comdex, and the cover was a picture of the actual check, with my name and a bogus address on it, with the headline “This Check is a Fake.” My ego was most gratified to see my name on the cover — Forbes didn’t publish reporter’s names on the cover, but there it was. The story spanned six pages and had a sequence of step-by-step photos on how I pulled off the hack.

I got on an airplane and went to Comdex just as the issue hit the newsstands. All hell broke loose. The Forbes PR department started booking me on television and radio shows. All of my PC Week buddies were very congratulatory. Even the cool guys at Mondo 2000 were impressed by the hack.

When I returned to New York, Tennyson Schad, Forbes’ attorney, asked me if I had a problem speaking with the New York office of the FBI. They had made an inquiry through him to discuss the prank, so off we went, Baldwin, Schad, and I, to a little out of the way restaurant near New York City Hall. I didn’t know what to expect. A grilling?

A couple plastic evidence bags were produced. Inside were some checks. I was asked if I knew how they were produced.

“Looks like dye-sublimation transfer technology,” I said. It appeared I wasn’t the first person to discover the utility of desktop publishing for desktop forgery. A lot of the bogus checks the FBI were holding were drawn on German banks. Made sense, the Germans and Swiss are the masters of printing technology, and someone was doing a pretty good job (but not as good as mine) of cutting bogus paper.

It was a pleasant lunch. I was a little pissed the FBI hadn’t been forthcoming when I was reporting the piece, but it was a nice coda to a long story.

Upshot of the whole affar — Nova came to my house on Cape Cod and filmed me forging a check in a special on digital risks. RiskDigests — the USENET group that detailed computer crime picked it up. The FBI’s site even gives me credit. The National Association of Science Writers awarded me the story of the year, and I picked up two other big prizes for the piece. Nothing I’ve written before or since has received so much attention.

To this day, maybe once every other month, I get an email from someone who has found the story and has questions, many questions, about inks and paper and passing techniques.

They all go unanswered.

The best part of the whole story though, in the end, was seeing Frank Abagnale make the big screen. He is, without question, the most colorful person I’ve ever interviewed.

Why do those words make me feel creepy? My emotional attachment to blogging is hard to explain. Caoecethes Scribendi — the itch to write — is my primary motivation. Thirty years of professional writing, one bad unpublished novel, a nonfiction book still in print, magazines, newspapers — I figure I need to expend 500 words a day or go insane. Still, when someone remarks — “I read your blog” — for the first time in a long writing career I feel weird about it. There is definitely some exhibitionism involved in throwing words onto the Net, but I never approach blogging the way I approach other writing — with an ideal reader in mind or a high degree of perfectionism. Some people dig the maritime history stuff in the Chatfield Project, others like it when I turn goofy and take pictures of holes in my socks, others leap onto the pedantic discussions of metrics and community theory.

I dunno, it’s all a dog’s breakfast and that’s why I like it. No theme. No mission. Just me and the “Write Post” window on wordpress bloviating on whatever, whenever. It’s the fact that strangers are reading it that gets creepy. The fact that there’s no way to delete a bad statement, etc. Looking through the server logs is especially weird. Who at Raytheon is reading this? At Pfizer? I know my circle of buddies — the one’s who comment — but still, parsing through the logs reveals all sorts of mysteries.

In the department of “how can I miss you if you won’t go away?” Bloglines is spazzing today and reinforcing how essential the service is to me for blog monitoring. I would estimate I spend more time in front of Bloglines than any other single screen.