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.

Categories
Brand_New_World Milestone Uncategorized

Eliza profile: nine months

IMG_5388.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.

Favorite hobbies: creeping / army crawling all over the living room extremely fast; standing at her musical play table; chasing the cats; reading with mom or dad; playing peekaboo with Dad; clapping, sometimes for no reason whatsoever; pulling her own hair (because it’s there); splashing in the bathtub; putting things inside bowls, buckets, baskets, etc.

Favorite books: all lift-the-flap books she can get her hands on. Some of her absolute favorites are by Karen Katz (Where’s Baby’s Mommy? and Where’s Baby’s Belly Button?, for instance). She also likes the Caldecott winner First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger and Go Away, Big Green Monster, by Edward R. Emberly. And absolutely anything by Sandra Boynton, although Opposites, read in silly voices, is one of thebiggest hits.

Favorite foods: What’s not to love? It’s food. She eats pretty much anything, although she still prefers pureed to chunky. We’re working on that. Accidentally had her first Ritz cracker the other day (long story) and thought she had died and gone to heaven.

Favorite toys: She is into a stuffed animal phase. A little soft tiger, her “Ugly Dolls,” and a teddy bear with a red ribbon that her Pop gave her are her most beloved friends right now. Also enjoys playing with everyone’s shoes (even at daycare), pieces of paper that she can crinkle / tear, spatulas and other stuff from the kitchen, and “roll arounds” from Fisher Price.

Milestones and more: Has two top teeth as well as two bottom teeth now (whew!); just had her first cold and survived; can pull up onto just about anything from seated position; is still working on her sounds (she is trying out ga ga ga now).

Lots more fun to come!

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Illness update



IMG_5344.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.

After 8 days of the cold that wouldn’t go away, yellow snot, cough, and all, we called the doctor. She prescribed amoxicillin, which we realized wasn’t working after 5 days. The doctor switched her to augmentin, which seems to be doing the trick. Today was the first time in 14 days I didn’t have to wipe her nose. Whew. This first cold / sinus infection has been a doozy. Thanks, daycare!

This picture was taken during one of our many “shower treatments.” I would put the shower on hot and shut the door. It helped her breathe and sneeze / cough some of the junk up. At one point she found the toilet paper, and I just let her enjoy it. Bad mom.

Now she’s teething (top two). So far, it hasn’t been as bad as the hell of the bottom two. But she isn’t her jolly self, either. One is almost out (an edge poked through today) and the other is not far behind.

Categories
Library Issues MPOW Technology

Guest computer access

Thanks to my coworker Andrea for the wording below…we have a quandary at MPOW, and we’re trying to work out the best answer. We need your help in seeing other ways of handling the situation. So: to the question!

The context:
Here at UTC, we require our patrons to login with a username and password to use our library’s public computers. Current UTC students, faculty, and staff have these logins, but other library guests (alumni, patrons who have purchased courtesy cards, people who walk-in off the street) do not.

At present, our Reference Librarians use a guest account to login courtesy card patrons (alumni, retired faculty/staff, those who purchase a courtesy card etc.) and faculty/staff/students of other universities. Courtesy Card patrons can also check out a laptop computer for 3-hour in house use at our Circulation Desk. For everyone else, we have set up three “research stations” — computers without logins that have no productivity software and can only access the library databases and .edu/.gov websites. No general Internet access is available on these.

Unfortunately, we consistently find all of our computers in use during the fall and spring semesters. And, we find that some of our guest users monopolize our equipment to the exclusion of our primary patrons: UTC students, faculty, and staff. We are also getting some pressure from our campus IT people to not allow “anonymous” logins to the campus network – which is essentially what our use of a generic guest login provides.

The Questions:
We’d like to know what others out there in a similar situation have done (other than buy more computers). Have you cut off access to guest users completely? Have you implemented time or access limits through some technological or manual method? What has been the reaction from your guest users to the policy change? How about from others on campus?

Thoughts?

Categories
Gaming Library Issues

Gaming post on TechSource

Just to let those of you who read this blog, but maybe not TechSource, I have a new post up over there on Hot Games for the Fall. Go check it out, and leave a comment or three. 🙂

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Knees



IMG_5230.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.

So, I’ve decided that Eliza just doesn’t “get” that her knees have any sort of function. She creeps forward on her belly pretty fast, but won’t actually crawl on all fours. In fact, she doesn’t even do the characteristic “rocking” of the pre-crawler. She never gets up on her knees period. Also, she can’t yet put herself in the sitting position from her belly. If only she could put her little knees under her and lift her butt in the air, new things would start happening.

Most of her little “friends” and her cousin are crawling now, but we’re thinking she might just skip it all together.

Categories
Digital Culture Personal Technology

Jailbroked!

Jailbroked! Jailbroked 2

So I took the plunge and decided to Jailbreak my iPhone 3G, just out of curiousity as much as anything. I wanted to see what apps were available outside the app store, as well as see what customizations were out there for the phone. What I’ve found is that I haven’t found a lot of apps that I would consider truly worth Jailbreaking. There are two or three real standouts that I’m playing with, but mostly the apps on the App Store are pretty amazing on their own.

The three things that I am having some fun with that aren’t available via Apple: Qik, Tunewiki, and Winterboard. Qik everyone is probably familiar with, and I think will eventually make its way thru the actual Apple vetting process. The camera on the iPhone will only do around 15 frames per second in ideal conditions, and streaming live to the net you are looking at only 6-8 even on wifi. But I’m going to take my phone with me Internet Librarian and play with the live streaming some, if the Jailbreak lasts that long.

Tunewiki is an amazing app that will, I think, never make it to the app store. It takes your music, and in realtime finds and displays lyrics for the song…timed to the song itself. I have no idea how it works, and its awesome.

Winterboard is a theming app for the iPhone which gives you control over certain visual aspects of the display, as well as reskinning the whole thing if you download appropriate skins.

All in all the phone has been running well since the Jailbreak, although I would say it is slightly less stable…I’ve had to reboot it a couple of times to get it unfrozen after an install or the first launch of a new program. With that said, it’s neat to have a no-longer black box phone…like they say, it’s not really yours if you can’t open it up.

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Standing up




IMG_5183.JPG

Originally uploaded by griffey

I realized that I hadn’t spoken up here in a long time, but it’s mainly due to the fact that I’m having too much fun with Eliza to write about it. 🙂 She’s come so far in the last two months it’s hard to enumerate all the changes: standing, cruising, scooting, clapping, not to mention things like sleeping through the night nearly every night. She’s fast-forwarding to toddlerhood all on her own, weaning herself down on the amount of formula she’s drinking with no input from us, eating more and more real food, and is just a little bit of balance away from running around the house on her own.

My favorite thing right now: shes learned to play peek-a-boo, and if you give her a cloth will cover her head herself in the clumsiest way she can, hold it for a second or three, then pull it down looking for you. Adorable.

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Brand New Cold



IMG_5188.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.

Eliza has her first cold. She has the runniest little nose I’ve ever seen. And sneezing, and watery eyes, and general fatigue. She still smiles at me through the snot, which is sweet. But you know she isn’t herself when she prefers quiet, sitting-down play time. We’ve been reading lots of books together. Thank goodness it’s her favorite activity, besides standing.