Categories
Personal

Day Three

Still early, but I’ve already been over to the Job Placement Center. Score was 78342695 public libraries from California, useful job information, 0. But it was good to see…people keep telling me that the center at Annual is much better and more useful, but it’s in June, in Orlando, and I’m just not sure I’m going to be up for it. But we’ll see.

Blogging this time from the 2nd floor of the Convention Center, at the Canon Internet Cafe. Free access for Con goers, but the line is 20 minutes long. So I’m gonna head out, and let someone else have the seat.

Miss everyone, and I’ll be back soon! (Love ya, Bets!)

Categories
Personal

Day Two

Cooler, but still over 50 degrees F. Took time today to go to the San Diego Zoo; fabulous photos to follow upon return to safe haven. Blogging from Internet Terminal in Hostel, very interesting interface and technology, but it works.

Tomorrow = ALA Placement Services to attempt to discover new and wonderful jobs that haven’t come to my attention yet, another session or two to attempt to network like mad, and the Exhibition Hall to attempt to get as much free shit as possible. Details when available.

Categories
Personal

On the way to sunny SoCal

Ok guys, I’ll be off tomorrow morning for San Diego for the ALA Midwinter meeting. Expect updates from the convention floor, and pictures when I return. I plan on taking lots of photos (would photoblog if there was going to be 802.11 access on the con floor), and I’ll throw them up when I return.

See you all next week!

Categories
Master's Paper

Back in Town

So this morning at 6am, I threw Bets on a plane to San Diego. Come back to town, run around like crazy for a day, then throw my wife on a plane.

Sounds like just the time to start thinking about school again. 🙂

So in that vein, I’ve decided to start trying to work out aspects of my Master’s Paper on this blog.

My first idea: to try to tie the economics of Open Information (Creative Commons and such) to Communications Theory and the idea that when you increase the node count (or the number of open information sources) the overall usability of the system increases. It may even be possible to use that theory to determine the “magic number” of sources that will be the critical mass for Open Information to be as useful as traditional copyright. All very theoretical, all very nebulous, and all very much like the stuff I did for years in Philosophy. But interesting (at least to me).

Categories
Gaming

$10K reward for Magic Cards

We’re reasonably close to Roanoke here in the Triangle, so those of you that read this and are gamers…keep your eyes out!

Star City Games offers $10,000 reward for thief
On Saturday morning, December 20th, sometime between 1 – 6 a.m., someone (or several people) broke into the back of StarCityGames.com’s Roanoke, VA warehouse, not an easy thing to do. Once they finally got in, they quickly, but methodically, stole significant quantities (exact numbers are still being compiled) of older, collectable, Type One singles. This included numerous Black Loti, Moxes, Ancestral Recalls, Time Walks, Timetwisters, Juzam Djinns, Library of Alexandrias, etc.
Our insurance will pay to replace the cards, and our already heavy security measures are being increased by tenfold. At this point, most people would probably chalk this up to “experience” and simply leave it at that. However, I am not “most people”, as whoever did this is about to find out.

Today, I am publicly offering a $10,000 “no questions asked” bounty on the individual(s) who broke into our warehouse.

Categories
Personal

Interesting Google Fact

Via my referal logs, I’ve determined that I’m the 5th result on google for “naked women free access”

Now there’s something to be proud of.

In other news: INLS 201 test = done.

Next up, paper for Chuck Stone = in progress, as we speak.

Categories
Media

The Matrix…

So…saw Matrix Revolutions yesterday, and I’m now amusing myself with attempting to figure out if it was either

A. Brilliant and well done, with a complex, coherent plot
or
B. Sophomorish and overblown, with intensional vagueness overlaying plot holes that one could drive a truck through.

I’d appreciate any thoughts on this from those that have seen it.

Also, since they set the whole Matrix up as a system of opposites/opposing forces, help me fill in some of the blanks here:

Neo = Smith
The Architect = The Oracle
Seraph = The Merovingian
Trinity = ?????
Morpheus = ???? (possibly both of them are opposite the “twins” from Reloaded)
The Source = ??????
Pati = ??????

Again…feedback?

Categories
Digital Culture

Penn State and Napster

Terrible reporting from Reuters via Yahoo News concerning a deal Penn State struck with Napster. The article screams “Penn State University on Thursday reached a deal to offer thousands of students free access to the Napster music service” but then goes on to say “Students can also buy permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each…”

So…it sounds like they’ve just agreed to pay Napster to let students stream music. STREAM MUSIC. Something that they can almost certainly do from any number of websites currently. Streaming music isn’t hard to find….hell, if all students want to do is stream, they’d be better off with iTunes streaming from each others computers. That’s free…

Sometimes, I really think there’s a significant disconnect between people who get digital music, and people who don’t. And people who don’t shouldn’t be agreeing to pay money to other people who don’t….people want to own the music. They want to use it with their portable music players. And they want to burn it to CD if they wish.

UPDATE:
Story on Wired News also about Penn State deal, where it is claimed that the service “includes unlimited streaming and tethered downloads, 40 radio stations and an online magazine and message boards.” Now what the hell is a “tethered download? I’m assuming (since again, we’re short on technical details) that it’s a download that’s DRM’d to your computer. I’m also assuming that it will have “can not burn to CD” DRM attached.

One further assumption: It will take about 3.5 minutes for someone to crack this DRM. Updates as they occur.

Categories
Digital Culture

Why I love iTunes….

I think I have mentioned this, but I don’t believe that I have fully discussed my adoration for this little application. How do i love thee, iTunes? Let me count the ways…

1. I love you for your Smart Playlists. iTunes allows you to use, basically, boolean logic when designing playlists for your music. Want all the songs in your collection with the words “rock” and “child” in them, but don’t want anything by Guns ‘n Roses? Smart playlist, to the rescue!

2. I love you for your “Top 25 Most Played” playlist. iTunes automagically keeps track of the songs you play the most, and arranges them in a playlist for you. So, at your disposal, you can immediately have those songs you just KEEP PLAYING. Conversly, you can tell it to only play songs you’ve NEVER played before. So good, soooooo gooooooooood…..

3. Most of all…I love you for your “shared music” capability. You can choose to share the music you have, and anyone on the same network can stream it from your machine…and of course, you can stream from theirs. Right now, I’m on the library’s network, and iTunes sees 5 other users, any of which I can stream music from. So useful…I can listen to a TON of music that I otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and sample bands that I would like to hear.

All this, and not even any mention of the iTunes Music Store, the only way to legal puchase music that isn’t completely moronic and full of DRM goodness (yes, I know that the files you get with iTunes have DRM attached…but you can immediately burn to CD, and poooof! No more DRM). All I can say is, after trying iTunes, Napster 2.0 can suck it.

The end result is that I want both and iPod and a 12 inch Powerbook. Neither of which I can actually get, but the longing is there. I’ll go out on a limb and say that thanks to iTunes the iPod will be the most popular christmas techie gift this year, hands down. Apple is gonna sell a ton of them.

Categories
Digital Culture

Holy crap, batman! OCLC combined with Google!

Check this out! OCLC opening some of its records to Google!

OCLC has announced to its library members that it will begin testing the opening of WorldCat records to Google access. The project will extract a 2 million record subset from the more than 53 million records in the WorldCat database. The subset will target the most popular and widely available books by only selecting records with a minimum of 100 libraries holding each item. Searches on Google will retrieve the records and link through OCLC to library holdings. The move expands the scope of the Open WorldCat yearlong pilot project to make library resources available from non-library Web sites and will “test the effectiveness of Web search engines in guiding users to library-owned materials.”

Why haven’t I heard about this yet? Libraries should be shouting this from the rooftops.