In honor of the most famous zombie story ever, some guys in Philadelphia are organizing an Easter Zombie Pub Crawl.
Amazing! If anyone in the area is going, I’d love to see pics.
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Author: griffey
Jason Griffey was most recently the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he worked to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise was useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of Library IT and a tenured professor at the University of TN at Chattanooga.
Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently a chapter in Library 2035 - Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries by Rowman & Littlefield. His latest full-length work Standards - Essential Knowledge, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, was published by MIT Press in March 2025.
He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.
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Irony writ large
So my previous post linked to a digital short done for SNL by the comedy group that calls themselves Lonely Island. Said short was on YouTube for a short period of time before being yanked for copyright reasons.
The group that produced it was hired by SNL recently, and their hire was at least partially influenced by their popularity online.
A popularity that grew because they licensed their comedy shorts with a Creative Commons license, allowing people to share their work freely.
Which NBC is no longer allowing.
Even though the Lonely Island guys own homepage links to copyright infringing pages of the material they produced for SNL.
*boggle*
Ha! So NBC has their own stream up of the rap. Except: the quality is terrible, it’s WMV, which means windows only, you can’t blog it like you can the YouTube vids….jesus christ on a pogo stick these media types just do not get it.
Is SNL getting funny again? Cause this is awesome with a side of fries. Potentially NSFW, depending on how uptight your workplace is. 🙂
Interesting…the above now gives a “removed due to copyright infringement” notice. Is NBC crazy? Seriously? Let me get this straight: they (NBC/SNL) get money, from advertisers, to broadcast SNL. These advertisers pay SNL/NBC a given amount for airtime to shill thier products, and this airtime is charged for depending on how many people watch SNL. More people watch when they think it’s funny….and this is FREE ADVERTISING FOR THE FUNNY.
Truly, deeply insane. Plus, it’s already up under another name:
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More on Religious? Litigious?
Just a quick follow up…if you’re following this story, here’s the happenings over the last 24 hours:
- Get thee over to Digg.com and Digg the story to help get the word out.
- I get a mention over at Writing Right, and there’s a little discussion going on in her comments.
- Fantastic writeup of the case over at The Angry Fag.
- Yet another post in support of Justin over at Smart Kitty.
- And of course, comments and such both here and at Justinsomnia.
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Religious? Litigious?
My good buddy Justin gets served with a Cease and Desist because of the parody billboard he created in photoshop.
Anyone else want to mirror the image in protest? Or perhaps download a blank photoshop file (right click and save as) and make your own?
As Justin noted, I got my wires crossed on the directionality of my particular parody. Corrected version now in place. Sorry about my initial image, ACLU! I had the best intentions…directing people towards you as a relief mechanism, not a cause.
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David Beckham Chia Head
Ok….sometimes, I just can’t help myself. I see something for sale, and it’s just weird enough that I must own it. This happened last weekend, when Betsy and I took a trip to the Unclaimed Baggage Center. This is the place where all the stuff that the airlines lose goes to die be sold. My favorite part about this process was seeing the sorts of things people lose/airlines lose/people leave behind on planes. Things like…oh…wheelchairs. What happens when they lose your wheelchair? They had an anatomical model of the lower arm. They had random sporting equipment. They had used underwear. There is seriously anything you can imagine, and a few things you can’t. This is one of them.
Yes, this appears to be a David Beckham Chia Head. I’ll say that one more time for those of you in the back: A David. Beckham. Chia. Head.
While I’m not a huge soccer fan, even I know who he is. Why it is that someone, somewhere felt it necessary to make a model of his head with which to grow vegetation is another question.
Well, I had to own this. Not only that, but I decided that I had to photograph the evidence, and try to actually grow said vegetation. I’ll document this, and post updates and analysis here on my blog. Stay tuned for the ongoing saga of the David Beckham Chia!
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Welcome to the Lyceum
A new blog product launched today with less fanfare than I’d imagine: Lyceum, from ibiblio.org, a multi-user WordPress fork. It is designed to allow for one installation which supports multiple individual blogs, something that WordPress users have been looking for for a LONG time.
I’m planning on trying it out locally, and seeing if it is suitable for a university installation. I can’t imagine that it is anything short of brilliant, coming from Ibiblio. You can test an installation at their demo site, and see what the backend looks like. It’s pretty much WordPress, for those that use it, with a few administrator tools thrown in.
For those of us at an academic institution, this might be the answer to our blogging prayers…single install, multiple instantiations, all built on the most versitile blogging platform out today.
EDIT: Also seen on BoingBoing! Go Paul!
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ClaimID
I’m currently a beta tester for ClaimID, a new project from some of the brilliant minds that revolve around ibiblio.org. The “about” page for the project describes it like this:
Imagine that you are applying for a job. You know that your prospective employer is going to search for your name online, and since you’re a rational person, that worries you. How will your employer know what online stuff is actually about you, and not about that other person who shares your name? And what if the good stuff about you online doesn’t mention your full name, or uses a name you no longer go by (such as a maiden name)? How would your prospective employer ever find it? Why do you have to lose out in the eyes of that employer? And the worst part is there’s no way for you to easily influence what search engines say about you.
Enter claimID. ClaimID is a service that lets you claim the information that is about you online. That information is then associated with your name, providing folks an easy way to see what is and isn’t about you online. In doing so, you get to influence the search engines, and provide people more relevant information when they search for you. It’s time to reclaim some power back from the search engines. ClaimID is about letting you have some say in what search engines say about you.
So it’s a method of tracking the various places online where things about me are. Which to me, is a useful thing, but I’ll be interested to see if this is something that the public at large even thinks about, much less will work to track. As well, I’m interested to see how they plan to “influence the search engines.”
If anyone else wants to see/play with this, my beta code is good for 5 more activations. Leave a comment, and I’ll hook you up.
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Inventing a term…
For anyone who has spent any time on the web on discussion boards, there is a particular sort of image that pops up occasionally. As far as I know, there is no descriptive term for this type of image, and I think there should be. The images invariably show up during heated/humorous discussion threads, as either a put down or a humerous comment on the thread or a specific comment on it. The images normally have text, sometimes text that is itself a net-witticism or initialism. Mostly these are used for comic effect. They’ve been around a LONG time.
But as far as I know, there’s no word to describe them. We’ve got “emoticon” as a image that is composed of puncuation used as a reminder of emotion behind words, but nothing for these.
So I ask the Interweb: what should these things be called? You need examples? You asked for it:
Again, these are normally posted into a discussion thread as a method of communicating humor/anger/other emotion.
So, Interweb…what should these things be called? Imagesmacks? I need to know how to refer to this group of things!
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Root of All Evil
Here’s a great example of a TV show that will never, and I mean eeeeeeeever, be shown in the US. via BoingBoing
The Root of All Evil, a Channel 4 production in Britain, starring my main man Richard Dawkins. He’s been the loudest critic of religion for many years (the Salon article from April 2005 is a great example of his stances), and it appears that he’s taken his views to the small screen. His point of view is absolutely refreshing in this time of over-reactive religion in the US…it’s a bit like “what the hell is all this?” He’s just incredulous that in our age of better science than ever in the history of the world, and more and more proof for facts of the world like evolution that we’ve got more and more of the US buying into religious ideas. I’m not sure when this may be able to be purchased in the US, so I’ll just mention in passing that if you were to search sites that involved a type of file that rhymes with “RitRorrent”, that you might be able to find a copy now.