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Images Personal

Griffey Men, circa late 1930

Griffey Men - 1930's

The Brothers Griffey in the late 1930s. Picture taken on Griffey Branch, Olive Hill, KY.

Left to right: Milton Griffey Sr., Van Gordon ‘Jack’ Griffey (d. 10/18/1970), James Morgan Griffey, Clay Griffey

Clay Griffey was my Father’s Father’s Father, or my Great-Grandfather…Eliza’s Great, Great Grandfather. Clay had a son that he named Van Gordon after his brother (who no one in my family knew as other than “Jack”…even his gravestone simply says Jack). That Van Gordon was my father’s father.

I had no idea this photo even existed until my aunt was googling for some genealogy information and found it online…amazing the things you can find online these days. 🙂

Photo and information originally found here.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

The Open Library Environment

Sat through a webcast today updating people on the Open Library Environment project, a joint effort between a ton of amazing libraries to build a modern, open source library system. While I wish them the best of luck, I have to say that I have my concerns about the project.

My largest concern is that too many cooks really do spoil the soup. I’ve never seen anything truly great come from committee, and I worry that there are far too many hands in this to really push it where it needs to go. Really amazing breakthroughs and products are almost always the design of one or a very few people, pushing to make the thing inside their heads real.

With that said, I hope this project produces something amazing and proves me wrong. What would I want out of a ground-up library system? A modular design, with logical connectors that allow for data sharing…and that data sharing uses open, web standards (not another “library” standard). Support for a centralized cloud database, with local records being limited to unique, archival items in the library’s special collections. Support for open sharing between catalogs, as well as sharing data between other websites and services, built in. A standards-based OPAC. Built in support for mobile use, including the backend systems. A repository system built in, to hold digital objects of any sort…if I want to catalog a video, let me embed the digital copy right into the system.

There’s lots and lots more. I’m hoping they get it right…I’ll be watching, and hopefully helping where I can.

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Antibiotics, round 2

After two nights of coughing and interrupted sleep (for all of us), a slight fever, and a terrific crabby spell that would not go away, we decided to take Eliza to the doctor yesterday. Once again, a little cold had gotten angry, this time turning into a slight ear infection and some upper respiratory junk that could have turned into an infection if we waited any longer. So, we’re on round #2 of augmentin.  Sigh.

In other news, lots of fun developments lately. She’s eating more with her fingers (favorite things right now are toast and mandarin oranges). We discovered that she prefers a straw to the standard sippy cup. And she has started to point! A little thing, but it’s pretty cute. If she’s concentrating, I can ask her questions while we look at books, like “Where’s the dog?” and she’ll point to it. It’s clear she’s starting to understand more. Words we think she definitely knows are: clap (she does it when you tell her to, even if you don’t model it); dog; cat; hi; bye; bath; book; Daddy; Mommy; shoes; teddy bear; in / out (she can now take things out AND put them back in). There may be more. We’re anxious to hear her say her first word. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard her say “Dada” on purpose a few times (when going to him), but you never know.

Categories
Personal Technology

A new, new homepage…and Sweetcron

Sweetcron homepage

So not that long ago, I decided that I wanted a homepage that more accurately tracked me online, and so I posted about hacking together a FriendFeed widget that fed my homepage.

Then, earlier this week, I discovered Sweetcron. A self-hosted php/mysql lifestreaming solution, that supports themes and all sorts of customizations. I had to give it a try, so here it is: my new, new homepage.

There are still a TON of things to figure out. I’ve not wrapped my head all the way around how Sweetcron is handling the feeds, so I’m not happy with the way it’s dealing with things like delicious. But I did more-or-less get the skinning, and was able to create custom feeds for my blog, claimid, and a few others. I’ve not added all my feeds yet, because adding a feed requires futzing with the code to make it display properly, and to make it look nice you have to write some custom css for each feed as well.

So why do it? Well, the big deal for me is that now I have the data…my lifestream is ending up on my server, in my mysql database, that I can backup. Maybe after messing with this for awhile I’ll head back to a simple solution like friendfeed. But I’m hoping with the plugin architecture and such that this garners a little development community and they starting building really cool things for it.

Take a look, and see if this solves any problems for you or your library.

Categories
Personal Technology

Which Timbuk2 bag for me?

I’m seriously considering getting a Timbuk2 Laptop Messenger bag for my forthcoming travels. I love my current laptop bag (a Waterfield sleeve with strap) but I’m needing something with a bit more room. The only thing I’m undecided on, really, is the color/pattern. So, blogosphere: which of the below do you like best? It’s clear that I like the dark orange, and earth tones…but I just can’t make up my mind. So: which do you like best? Vote in the comments!

timbuk2timbuk2timbuk2timbuk2timbuk2timbuk2

Categories
Library Issues Media Technology

Marketing in the 2.0 on Slideshare

Finally got my slides up on Slideshare…got to say, I love Slideshare a lot, but the fact that it won’t take Apple Keynote files is just wrong. If you use Keynote, you have to export as a PDF, and upload it.

In any case, here’s the Slideshare. You can download the PDF from them as well.

Marketing in the 2.0 :: Libraries and the Cluetrain

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing library)
Categories
Books Library Issues Media Technology

Reflecting on the Kindle

I have a new post up on ALA Techsource regarding my take on the Kindle, and what I think of it after living with it for 6 months.

Click on over and take a look, and leave a comment, especially if you have a Kindle as well!

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Day in the Park




IMG_5466.JPG

Originally uploaded by griffey

Today my Dad came down to visit his Grandkids, and we decided that the weather was so nice we’d picnic in Coolidge Park. Great fun, and both Eliza and Parker loved it. I’m not sure what Ellie likes most, but its probably a toss-up between the fountain and the carousel.

She also had her first taste of Pizza, and her first taste of Clumpies Ice Cream today.

If you enlarge the pic, you can see her top teeth shining through!

Categories
Library Issues Technology

Marketing in the 2.0

Finally! My presentation from TennShare 2008 on Marketing in the 2.0 is up. Had a hell of a time getting the audio and video synced, and even now it falls a little apart near the end of the presentation, but it works! Hope people find this useful, or at least interesting. Original quicktime can be downloaded from my blip.tv page. I did the presentation in Keynote, and the powerpoint translation of it is pretty bad…the fancy effects go away, and it’s not nearly as elegant as Keynote. So for now, you all get the video version. If you really, really want the PPT, let me know in the comments.

Categories
Library Issues

TennShare 2008

The presentation slides and video are coming, I promise! I’m having a hell of a time getting the audio to work the way I want, and when you have 2 hours at night to figure it out, and each time you render the video takes 2.5 hours…well, you don’t get much done.

So: it’s coming, soon.

Really.