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Digital Culture

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

Is to tell me: What the hell is this?

Hint: I recieved it as a white elephant gift for Christmas. Consider it a librarian challenge. First person to get the answer recieves the respect of reference librarians everywhere.

Yes, I do know what it is. I just want to see how hard it is to find out with only a picture.

<edit121603>Since Catherine asked: the object is a very hard plastic, and approximately 2 feet long. The two long side protrusions are maybe 4 1/2 inches, with the two small protrusions being slightly less than 1 inch.</edit121603>

<edit121703>No to both Justin and Patrick…it is neither a thing for hanging or a handrail. This is fun! Anyone else wanna give it a try?</edit121703>

Categories
Digital Culture

Cool idea for Open Source and Libraries

But as all things, frought with difficulty.

From Slashdot, a story of one man’s attempt at getting Open Source CD’s into his public libraries in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the story is a great PDF of his story and problems that he had. A good read for librarians everywhere.

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Digital Culture

Just a quick note…

…that yes, I’m still alive. đŸ™‚ Busy, busy, busy with the preparations for celebration of the upcoming holidays.

Things I’m looking forward to:
Seeing Return of the King on Wednesday
Opening all my kick-ass presents from Betsy
Hanging out with my family

Things I’m NOT looking forward to:
Driving…lots of driving
Not seeing everyone for weeks…those of you that will be around after xmas, leave a comment, ok? Just so I know who I can go out with while Betsy is in San Diego at the MLA

Categories
Digital Culture

Check out Justin…

…on boingboing! (cool link, btw).

Categories
Digital Culture

SCO = classic humor

So, in response to IBM’s request for the source code that it is supposedly infringing upon (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can browse the Google news for it), SCO provided IBM with a PRINTOUT OF THE CODE totaling a million sheets of paper. A million. sheets. of. paper. What a great lawyer tactic! (from boingboing)

To put this in some context, a million sheets of paper is:

Over 4000 inches tall
Over 333 feet (twice the height of the Statue of Liberty) if stacked
Just a bit over 6 tons
374000 cubic inches
216.4 cubic feet

Categories
Digital Culture

I’M DONE!

I feel sorry for all of you still stuck in the throws of finals….ah, who am I kidding? No I don’t…I’m too happy BEING DONE!

WOOOO-HOOOOOOO!

đŸ™‚

Categories
Digital Culture

I, for one…

welcome our new library robot overlords.

A Japanese team of researchers has developed a robot that could help browse for books in a library by receiving instructions via the Internet…Using a laser to navigate between shelves and other barriers, it can select a book, open it and flip through pages with its own hand, while taking and sending pictures of contents.

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Digital Culture

Ah, the fun of Search Engines…

A short list of search queries that led to my blog, from my referral logs:

“burninating”
“i am completely fucked up”
“tea hand picked by monkeys”

and of course, the very best (someone out there did this on purpose, you funny people, you…)

“jason griffey free naked”

Categories
Digital Culture

New Favorite Quote

At least about librarians…from this month’s American Libraries:

“Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books. That’s rubbish, of course, but it does wonders for the image of librarians.” – Guy Browning, The Guardian, Oct. 18

Categories
Digital Culture

From Slashdot…

Public libraries moving book sales online

link to slashdot comments