Categories
Digital Culture Personal

New stuff

So…I’ve decided to try out Google AdWords. You can see them in the left hand column, and I hope that they are not particularly intrusive. This is literally just an experiment, to see if people actually click them, especially on a blog with as low traffic as mine. If they become an issue…off they go!

Plus, if you just want to throw some support my way…click away! 🙂

EDIT: Justin left a comment, but I’m interested in hearing from anyone…what do you think about adwords on blogs? Is advertising the devil? Are there different levels of hell depending on how it’s done? I’m curious what people think/feel about ads on a private (that is, non-directly-commercial) site.

Categories
Digital Culture

Bunny Thespians

Want to waste a few minutes, and see 14 good movies?

You need Angry Alien Productions, and their bunnies.

No, really. Bunnies.

Here’s my favorite: Highlander in 30 seconds. With bunnies.

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues

Strip Generator

Here’s a really cool flash tool that you can use to create your own comic strips. Here’s my first try…and yes, it’s a joke, people. I love my time at the reference desk, and I love helping my patrons.

at the reference desk...

Categories
Digital Culture

EyeOS

I’ve already crowed about this application to a number of people, but the more I play with it the more impressed I am.

EyeOS

EyeOs Screenshot

I have trouble describing it, but…think of it like a personal information support system. It’s a web based system that allows you to interact with your information wherever you are…and provides you with basic tools to do so: word processor, calculator, notepad, phone directory, calendar. These all exist as widgets inside the browser, and act just like local tools.

I’m terrifically impressed. The best thing? It’s not a host-only system…you download and you install. It only requires PHP to run…no database, nothing. It’s all flat files and XML and javascript and it took me maybe 3 minutes to get it running. This thing is brilliant. It’s also GPL. Hack away!

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues

Yahoo and the Internet Archive?

Wow! Huge news today from Yahoo and the Internet Archive, among others:

The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo’s vice president of search content.

So Yahoo et al are going the opt in route, rather than opt out, which was Google’s plan. There is a lot of support for the idea that Google’s plan is completely within the bounds of copyright law, screaming from the various interest groups notwithstanding. It’s very interesting to see Brewster sign up to work with Yahoo on this…I’m curious to see where it goes.

Categories
Personal

Can’t take the sky from me…

Serenity

Short review of the new Joss Whedon film Serenity:

It rocked my face right off. Seriously. I’m looking around for my face right now. Has anyone seen it?

Go see this movie right now so that Joss may make many more of these.

Categories
Digital Culture

The Disneyfication of us




100_0093

Originally uploaded by griffey.

I only realized a couple of days ago that I hadn’t added our copious Disney trip pics to the flickr account. I’m still adding them (we took an enormous amount of pics) but the ones that are there are cool. I like this pic of Bets and I at Epcot.

For the record, the hat was a necessity to keep from killing myself. I burned the first day I was there, and my face and neck had to have some shade. It’s not just that I’m rocking my new Tennessee-ness.

Categories
Digital Culture Personal

Squid? Or Savior?

I’m sure that most people have seen by now that the first ever film of a live Giant Squid (Architeuthis) was captured by some Japanese researchers, and stills from the film have shown up at National Geographic.

squid

But I think something more is going on.

Is it just a coincidence that the Squid reveals itself to us now, after all these millenia? Choosing now to come forward and appear before our cameras? I think not.

Behold! The truth!

FSM vs Squid

These Giant Squid are the messengers of the One True Being: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They are truly created in His image, and low he has given unto us their smaller brethren as tasty fried snacks. Truly He is a benevolent entity.

This also explains why we are to dress as pirates in worship: because it reminds us of the times when we were on the sea, and closer to the Messengers of the FSM (rAmen). Many pirates may have indeed been touched by their noodly appendages, and brought closer to the FSM in so doing. This also brings into the realm of Holy Scripture such works as Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, wherein a Holy Messenger attempts to convert Ned Land and the rest of the crew of the Nautilus.

I am in awe of the revelation of the grand designs of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You should be too.

Categories
Library Issues Personal

TENN-Share, and thoughts

I spent last Thursday and Friday at the Nashville Public Libary attending a small conference made up of Tennessee Libraries called TENN-Share.

The venue was really quite nice…the Nashville Public Library is in a wonderful building. However, none of the technology worked as it should (basically all presentations were done without computer assistance) and when a major portion of the program is Federated Search, that’s an issue. Also, for a major metropolitan library to not have wi-fi? Whassupwidat? I had planned on live-blogging the sessions, but NO wi-fi left me in the technological dark ages.

There were a number of good sessions, especially the ability to see different vendor products and be able to ask questions about content and usage of those products. It was also a great opportunity to meet other Tennessee librarians and network a bit…something that I haven’t really had a chance to do yet here.

Due to the majority of Thursday being about federated searching, I learned a lot about a word that was unfamiliar to me. De-duplication. Possibly this is because I haven’t done sufficient real database work, but I had never encountered the word before. I’d used the classic deselect, a grand old library term for remove from the collection. Patrons tend to be less excited about that when you use a word they don’t understand.

Categories
Personal

Me and Mom




IMG_0285

Originally uploaded by griffey.

Bets and I are going through our photos and choosing some to print and hang in our new house. Bets chose this one of my mom and I. Gotta admit…it’s a good shot. This was taken at Tim’s Ford Lake two years ago.