Inspiration from the pain behind my right eye

Death of a blog

2009-07-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

Change is good, so I'm starting fresh. If you want to keep following the great adventure of my life, turn yourself to the Davestown Gazette for a cracking good time!

No fooling: something everyday in April

2009-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

In an effort to write more, I am going to post something every day this fine month of April. While I will attempt to be as fresh and original as possible, I cannot rule out that some blog memes will step in as filler material.

Since Oliver had his own feature a few weeks ago, here's a little piece on my other cat, Emma. Three years ago, we said goodbye to our old cat, Ivan. I insisted on a "period of mourning" before getting the next cat. Three months later, we found a little calico kitten hiding in the rose bushes behind the house. It turns out she was a full-grown cat in dire need of food and flea medicine. As far as we can tell, she is probably eight years old now, just one less than Oliver. Every night she insists on sleeping right against my chest, which is cute, but not exactly comforting during those warm summer nights. Probably the cutest thing she does is "squeak" when you pick her up, hence her nickname "Squeakers". Right now she is sleeping, after what seemed like hours of banging on the closet door (there's nothing in there) or rubbing her face on sharp corners. It's really distracting when you're trying to do your homework.

Emma is painfully camera shy (she goes into hysterics when she hears the zooming of the lens), but I managed to get this one on my cell phone:

Fun fact: All of our cats' names start with vowels. At first this was a coincidence, but as of Emma, it has been intentional. Who's next? Alvin? Ursula? Yentl?

Garfield minus Garfield strikes again!

2009-03-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

I have nothing original to say right now, so I turn it over to the fine folks at Garfield Minus Garfield. Who knew that cutting the main character out of his own comic strip would produce an entirely new phenomenon that works on a completely different level?

You just have to be library-tough to work in my field.

Ten years later

2009-03-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today I can indulge in a person milestone of ten solid years of work. I did experience one scary month of unemployment following a relocation, but I prefer to think of that as a hiccup rather than a full disruption. Ten years ago I was twenty-two and starting my first day of work at Kepler's Books and Magazines in Menlo Park. I'm so jaded now it is hard to image being excited about working a cash register forty hours per week, but it was a place I wanted to work and the thrill of having a real full-time job, no matter how low-paying, was almost tangible. We have all scattered to the wind for the most part. I wonder where most of them are now. Some are still there, one is no longer of this world and the rest...I might have a stray e-mail address lying around if I feel like dropping them a line. I don't think that ten years ago I would have

In other anniversary news, the Obama administration turns fifty days old this month. So how is Obama doing with all of those promises from the campaign trail? Here's his scorecard, as reported by PolitiFact. 19-2-2 is a score any sports team could be proud of, and politics is certainly one of the nastier sports out there. I agree with Cory Booker (the mayor of Newark, NJ) when he said on the Bill Maher show last Friday that we have the best president we could possibly ask for right now. Of course, I'm a shameless partisan. Sin embargo, it is good to keep this kind of news in mind when faced with the neverending chants of "no we can't."

The unkindest irony

2009-02-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

People need libraries more than ever:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/28/recession.libraries/index.html

Local governments are bleeding their libraries dry:

http://www.tribstar.com/local/local_story_047233527.html
http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/02/13/news/local_state/doc499502dceeefb016143206.txt

I respectfully disagree with the sentiment in the CNN article that this recession is a "boon" for libraries. This is a disaster for libraries. I have nothing against more patrons, but to cut library services knowing that people are relying more on their libraries to help them is simply irresponsible.

This represents misconceptions at their most painful:

You don't cut police because they protect the citizenry from the bad guys.
Firefighters are heros so they can't be cut, either.
Librarians shush people and read books all day at taxpayer expense - CUT!

Along with slashing education, shuttering libraries is one the great components in the Dumbing Down of America. Cutting libraries and education may provide some immediate budget relief, but you also get the collateral damage of a dumber population causing a scarcity of ideas that could be used to save money without bloodshed down the road. Don't get me wrong: we need police and we need firefighters to protect us from the worst elements of society. But don't destroy the libraries and schools, and in doing so deny yourself the best elements of society in your community.

I live in an area that is well known for classic conservative thinking. The newspaper believes that their should be equity in pay between the private and public sector, and that public sector employees are overpaid. Again, librarians are a favorite target. We get lumped with bookstore clerks as "similar jobs" between the sectors. Having worked both sides, I can tell you this is a total joke. Bookstore clerks get hired based on the question "Can you work nights and weekends?" Librarians have to get a Masters degree in the field. Bookstore employees work with the collection their are given from some central brain elsewhere in the nation. Librarians need to assess the needs of their community and develop a collection that supports these needs. Bookstores want your money. I cannot imagine a community that reduces their libraries to the status of bookstores, or, even better, they close the libraries and let the bookstores provide. They are tearing out their own souls to save money. If your local library is no more than a Borders or Barnes & Noble, then your community has forfeited its cultural heart.

Attila reconsidered

2009-02-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

RAWR! We are ***ATTILA***!!!

Monday marked my latest (and first for 2009) music acquisition, the suppressed, self-titled and only album by the band Attila from 1970. Most people have no idea what makes the lone Attila album so interesting, so I will clue you in: the notorious personnel. On drums: Jon Small, formerly of the Hassles. On everything else: William Martin Joel, also of the Hassles and prefers to be called "Billy". Yep, Attila was Billy Joel's "heavy metal" band.

First, some perspective: by “heavy metal” I don’t mean the opening act for Metallica, Slayer or Napalm Death. In 1970, the heaviest sounds around (that most people were aware of anyway) were coming from Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Jimi Hendrix. Attila was the natural progression from the garage and psychedelic output of the Hassles and many bands were moving into a much heavier direction. Joel pretty much does the work of three musicians with the kind of distorted Hammond sound he developed for the album. The discordant grinding sound at the beginning of "California Flash" is particularly good and the wash of static that slams into "Rollin' Home" is pretty cool, too. Small pulls off a few nice tempo switch-ups throughout the album, so his contributions should not be overlooked. The lyrics are pretty silly throughout, but I don't care; they are on par with a lot of other stuff being released at the time. Vocal delivery varies throughout, but I have to admit to this sick thrill I get hearing Billy Joel scream out "Jesus Christ!" (the exclamation, not the prayer) in "Wonder Woman". Really, though, look at the cover of this album and tell me that Joel and Small were out to a create a deadly serious piece of work. The whole thing is meant to be fun and relatively mindless, a point some people completely miss.

Critics hate this album. They hate it passionately and with a vengeance. Get a load of this review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine. I think much of this has to do with some kind of embarrassment that the "Piano Man" not behaving like the sensitive singer-songwriter we’ve come to know and love. Critics seem to be allergic to the different and uncharacteristic of the artist. Diehard Billy Joel fans probably don’t care for this kind of music, but for somebody who is indifferent to most of his output since 1971, listening to Attila gives me a new and more open-minded perspective of the man. (Oddly enough, allmusic.com stamped the album an "AMG Pick".)

Billy Joel HATES this album. He calls it "psychedelic bullshit" and has suppressed every track save an edit of "Amplifier Fire" that appears on the Billy Joel box set. Trying to dismiss the album, to me, feels like denying you pegged your pants in the 1980's and burning any pictures of yourself wearing eighties clothes, or refusing to admit that you said some dumb things to strangers when you were a little kid. Like physical growth, musical development is a series of phases and not all of them give us warm, fuzzy memories.

My take? If you want to find this album guilty of something, then press inconsistency charges. When I see a title like "Amplifier Fire Pt. 1: Godzilla" I expect a heavy slab of monster-grade hard rock, not a Jimmy Smith inspired instrumental. And yet "Amplifier Fire Pt. 2: March of the Huns" is exactly what "Godzilla" was not. It's either Jimmy Smith style music ("Brain Invasion") or hard-hitting drums and keys ("Rollin' Home", "Wonder Woman") and the two styles lead a somewhat uncomfortable coexistence.

I classify Attila with three other unusual listening experiences: (1) the self-titled album by Armageddon, which was ex-Yardbird Keith Relf’s final and heaviest hurrah, (2) Sam Gopal’s Dream, featuring Lemmy Kilmister, later just "Lemmy" of Motörhead, and any of the singles by Ronnie and the Prophets, the band fronted by Ronald Padovana, aka Ronnie James Dio, of Rainbow-Sabbath-Dio fame. I guess I'm a sucker for those "before/after they were famous" moments that put the entire musical output of an artist in a whole new light.

Oliver

2009-01-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Oliver decided to brawl with something (cat, possum or other wild animal) and was hurt pretty bad. Frances found him yesterday evening curled up in his basket in an almost comatose state with big bite marks under his front arms. We decided not to chance it and Frances drove him to the emergency clinic. They gave her an eye-popping estimate of over $1000, which included blood work, x-rays, surgery etc. Egad! We decided to endure a painful night of confining a scared and confused animal with an "elizabethan" collar and have our own vet check him out in the morning. Let me tell you, this cat does not wear the collar well. Every time the collar brushed into something, he jumped, causing the collar to hit other things and scare him even more. I equate it to throwing a ping-pong ball into a room filled with mousetraps. Frances held him virtually the entire night, while I kept Emma, our other cat, away from him (the collar scared her too, and she wouldn't stop hissing). The next morning she took him to the vet and she learned, to our relief, that the wounds were not as serious as previously thought. Best of all, the collar came off. Now the fun part is keeping Oliver inside.

Oliver has always been a bit odd. Frances adopted him back in the summer of 2000 when he was a few weeks old. He was still in the last days of kittenhood when I first met him the following February. We aren't sure what kind of breeds he resembles; I say Balinese, Frances says Ragdoll. We started calling him "Boo" as a shortcut for "boo-boo" and now I think we use that name more than Oliver. He has had some housebreaking issues that might drive some to sell him on eBay, but we just can't resist his playfulness, expressiveness (he's a talker) and affection toward us. Therefore, we let him go between indoors and outdoors, which, unfortunately has led to some injuries, including what happened yesterday.

Our big question now is what to do going forward. We have tried to confine him in the past, but he either (1) breaks out of the room or (2) yowls until we can't stand it anymore. I could wall off the hole under the house where he most likely had his encounter, but I'm a little worried about trapping other animals under the house that could die and stink up the house. Any advice on how to curb an the freedom impulse of beloved pet with minimal agony? Please share!

Finally, I want to thank Frances for being such a great kitty-mom and our vet for not trying to scare us and soak us for a thousand dollars we don't have. Time like this make me realize how much we love our cats, even if they misbehave frequently. Now go read my friends' comic strip, Monsieur Chat and have a laugh.

Regrets? I've had a few...but not today

2009-01-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Age of Obama! Barack Obama has inspired many people to do many things, things they would not normally have done for just any candidate. A year ago, I was working the streets of Las Vegas and Henderson getting my precincts "fired up" and "ready to go" for Obama at the Nevada Caucuses. Needless to say we've come a long way. I remember arguing with two of my co-workers about why Obama was preferable to Hillary Clinton, and these two co-workers ultimately transformed into two of his most enthusiatic supporters. There was a time where, for the first time I can remember, I could not discuss politics with my own mother because we were so split between Obama and Clinton. Yet by September even she was on board the Obama Express. Perhaps most amazing was learning my own father even considered voting for Obama in November (I won't out him - you will have to ask him how he actually ended up voting).

Even through all the caucuses, primaries, debates, upsets, blowouts and close calls, it was still amazing to watch our new 44th President of the United States sworn in this morning. So what has Obama inspired me to do? Blog. There are other things too, ranging from the mundane (wash the car) to the far-reaching (start a family, develop a career), but today I want to blog. I want to leave an electronic time capsule that me, my friends and my family can look back at, say eight years down the line, and think about the road we've been traveling.

The last eight years have been a time of many changes both for myself and the United States. I won't succumb to the temptation of saying that the last eight years were the worst years of our lives because of George W. Bush. I certainly have to say I'm far better off in January 2009 than I was in January 2001. I won't say things like "Bush is stupid" but I think he was unable to move with the times, leaving us with a 20th century President almost one decade into the 21st century. Looking back on the sweep of Presidential history, this feels like one of the great paradigm shifts of the likes seen between Adams and Jackson, Buchanan and Lincoln, and McKinley and Roosevelt. I hope Obama can use the tremendous goodwill and energy he has generated in the months since his election to confirm this belief of mine. Being mindful of blind optimism, I am nevertheless feeling very hopeful in this first day of the Age of Obama.

Don't take my word for it, though. Read the transcript of the inaugural address.

It has been a regrettably long time since my last post here. So, without further ado, I list my top five regrets about not blogging since August.

1) One of the craziest elections in my lifetime passed with nary a word from me here on this blog. To those who know me best, they know I can lay in on thick politically when I find a willing ear. Alas, my "David's Election Picks" ranging from President to the Fullerton city council went unpublished.

2) I've been taking Spanish classes and enjoying them. I'm not exactly ready to bust out full-length rants en español but I've been known to Twitter a few lines here and there, so check the Microblog in the side bar for daily developments.

3) I've received quite a few wedding photos from friends and family in attendance and I've been meaning the organize them in a shareable way to document the day beyond the dusty photo album.

4) I'm ashamed to admit I've let Facebook seep into my life, causing content I want to share to be locked behind the walls of their proprietary design. I want to "syndicate" myself more, meaning that I can update the blog and various profiles I keep all at once. This goes on my blogging "to do" list.

5) While I enjoy reading books and watching movies, I have a bad habit of giving away my reviews to other sites. In keeping with the notion of syndication, I will try to post book and movie reviews here first and copy them to whatever sites I have participated with in the past.

What sort of regrets have you harbored, three weeks into the new year? Do you plan to resolve them? Anything I can do to help? I love getting comments, so feel free to talk back and get some dialogue rolling!

And the award for further spreading misinformation about my profession goes to...

2008-08-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, kids just hate librarians. Here's a book that will really challenge those librarian stereotypes.

Actually, the book sounds pretty funny, even if it is putting the verbal smackdown on the hard-working dedicated librarians of America.

Check out the website for Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.

Can anybody think of a book that makes librarians sound like the cool and interesting people? I have found that even books with the best of intentions, such as Because of Winn-Dixie, still fall into the trap: the librarian is a nice, old woman who is all-knowledgable about books but seems to know nothing about technology. And for the records, male librarians get treated even worse.

Honeymoon photos are up

2008-08-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

I had so much fun talking about my boring life that I totally forgot to mention that my honeymoon photos are available for the whole world to look at courtesy of my Flickr account. The wedding photos are coming soon. If you have any, let me know!

Me and Robert Crais - tough guys - one of us anyway.
This picture has nothing to do with my honeymoon.

What to blog? A mixed bag of stuff

2008-08-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

It's another fine Saturday at the reference desk at Fullerton Public Library. We've been pretty busy between basic ready reference work and computer help but nevertheless I feel compelled to update this poor, poor blog.

The main issue is that I don't see the point of blogging about mundane stuff. Do you really need to know that I ate Cheerios with no milk this morning? Actually, there's a good story behind why I did that, but I may be the only person who finds it at all interesting. Also, I don't want to be the blog where you hear about it last. The chances are that if an interesting news item or cool web site has come to my attention, you've already heard all about it.

So all I think of is a "life update" for whatever it's worth to whoever is reading. Very LiveJournal, don't you agree? If you are of the LJ persuasion, let me know, even though I am of the Blogger persuasion I still read other people's LJ stuff.

Movies, Books and Music

I may not work for Borders anymore but they still define my life.

The last movie I saw in the theater was (huge surprise) The Dark Knight which I felt actually lived up to most of the hype. Other than that, it has been a steady diet of Netflix. As of this writing, the last movie I saw on DVD was The Departed which was plenty good, but shouldn't Scorsese have nailed his Best Picture Oscar any earlier (ahem...Raging Bull...ahem)? I happily joined A Netflix Community a couple weeks ago, but I really don't plan on being particularly active other than writing reviews that clear up obvious misinformation about various DVD's. Some of those "top reviewers" are scary. I do appreciate their campaign to purge those stupid "non-reviews" from the site. You know, things like "I haven't seen this movie, but I know it will be awesome!" or "The DVD doesn't play, so I hate it." Right now I've been watching a recording from TCM of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Not bad, but wantonly harpooning sharks and hunting sea turtles for provisions is probably no longer in good taste!

It has been a bad year for magazine reading because I've been pretty heavily into reading library books, and running into due dates left and right. I did a quick tally and fiction is leading non-fiction, much to my surprise. Probably all that beach reading is what did the trick. Last summer I read the entire Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais, so this summer I boldly moved on to Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series, but with much less success so far (I've only finished the first two books!). My favorite books this year thus far have been The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell, Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock and On the Laps of Gods by Robert Whitaker. If you wanted recommendations, you now have them. For lighter fare, Harlan Coben's stand-alone books are great.

Not much new to report in the Music department. I've download about three albums in the last year: Icky Thump (The White Stripes), Astronomy for Dogs (The Aliens) and Roots and Echoes (The Coral). I guess I'm just content with what I have right now and new music isn't really grabbing me at the moment.

Sharing Stuff

Using Facebook's Posted Items application has made me lazy. Here are some of the weird things I've been sharing:

Don't bother watching this video if you are at work or don't like bad language. Just a little heads up.

This is pretty funny, too, if you use or have any familiarity with Second Life (compare the two for maximum comedy effect):

Get a First Life!

Finally the FAIL blog has been rocking my world everyday with ridiculous images. Here's one from a bookstore, which reminds me of the time we put bibles under a sign that said "Inspirational Fiction" which caused a customer to angrily confront us, shouting "You know, for some people it's REAL!!!"

So what do you want to hear about? We're accepting comments at this time. Actually we always have been (and why am I saying "we" - who else blogs here???). Finally, if you know of a mashup application that Twitters current iTunes tracks (and isn't just for Mac), let me know. Otherwise, I need to design one, stat! In the meantime, check out the microblog which now is doing double-duty for both Facebook and Twitter.

The power of a name

2008-07-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just my imagination, but a lot of things seem to be named after Reagan or Bush. I guess I'm thinking mainly of airports and government buildings and aircraft carriers, but it seems like twelve years of the 1980's have been glorified by the administration of the past eight. Who knows if they will succeed in replacing Alexander Hamilton with Reagan on the ten dollar bill or adding Reagan to Mt. Rushmore. Here is something that is probably closer to becoming reality. And yes, it's from my favorite city, San Francisco! Read about the renaming of a certain special utility building in San Francisco.

Until I think of something meaningful...

2008-07-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

...here's a video, brought to you by the Onion.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

New content on sidebar

2008-05-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's t-minus 8 days until my wedding, but I've added a cool "delegate tracker" to my blog sidebar. All you political junkies can get off my back now. Let me know what you think. In the interest of full disclosure, I am and always have been an Obama man.

Year of the slacker

2008-03-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Blogwise, this is turning out to be a pretty uneventful year. However, I am happy to report things are very busy on the wedding front, getting vendors lined up and, as of this past weekend, visiting the site so they can observe the canvas they are putting their art upon. It was interesting to watch the florist on Saturday, then the caterer on Sunday, each mapping out the event and how it would play out in the backyard. I can only hope the DJ, photographer and officiant are cool with it. Beyond this, the rings are done, the invitations are done and the cake is coming together as well as can be expected. In the meantime, you can enjoy some photos of the site, keeping in mind that the trees will be much leafier and the landscaping completed, front and back. Here's a zoom-out of where the ceremony will take place. You will have to imagine the landscaping and leaves, though.

Other than stress about the wedding, I have also been doing a lot of reading. I keep track of most of what I've read so far on Facebook on the somewhat imperfect iRead application. Also, Netflix has been supplying Frances and myself with many good and not-so-good movies. Unfortunately, we destroyed our DVD player at the tender age of five, so it's either (1) bite the bullet and go Blu-Ray power, or (2) getting a piece of junk to tide us over until we go Blu-Ray power? Any thoughts on that? We have pretty conflicting interests on what kind of television is worth watching, leaving pretty much the completely morbid "Breaking Bad" as the only thing we can agree on. I'm pretty upbeat about the John Adams miniseries on HBO, but I may be the only one in the household, alas.

In other news, there have been some minor life events (and it all seems minor compared to what's ahead). I spent a week in Las Vegas volunteering for Barack Obama. I took some great pictures, but they are trapped in my cell phone. The canvassing and phone calling was pretty taxing work, though doing a visibility rally before the debate at UNLV and the caucus process itself was pretty exhilarating. My astute canvassing partner, Anna, and I served as precinct captains for the mighty Clark 1063 in Henderson and delivered for Barack, though we had to settle for a delegate tie (even though more actual attendees stood in the Obama group). No matter what happens down the road, I am grateful for the experience I had (even though I nearly died from the flu after I got home!). Also, soon after my return from Nevada I made the much anticipated switch from the Sunkist branch to the Central library in Anaheim. Although I miss the people at Sunkist and the (sporadic) enjoyment of working with the public, I feel I made a big step up and I am now in a position to see how the entire library system works. Finally, Frances and I celebrated our seventh anniversary of knowing one another on February 2nd in familiar style with dinner at The Cat & the Custard Cup.

What's ahead? After the wedding and honeymoon, the next big step is going to be moving into a place that we will actually own. Where is that going to be? No idea, but the market is getting too good to ignore for much longer, from a hungry renter-wanting-to-buy perspective. From there, I will be putting my degree to use and consolidating to jobs into a single professional position. Where is that going to be? No idea, but it hinges on the move. I am looking forward to all of it, though.

Happy new year! New layout!

2008-01-01T00:48:00.000-08:00

I felt that a new year called for a new layout, so here it is. Feedback is welcome, but Blogger defaults are renowned for their incredible lack of controversy. Although tempted to change the blog name to "Absurdity Central", I decided the current name is good enough for another year. Again, feedback is most welcome if you think I made a horrible mistake in NOT changing the name!

Anyway, I hope you all rang in the new year in a way you felt most fitting and best wishes in 2008. I know I have a lot on the agenda this year! If I'm feeling crazy enough, I'll share my new year's resolutions here and then check back later to see if I'm on the ball or just full of hot air.

In other exciting news, Frances and I created our first ever holiday newsletter. I tried to include everyone I knew, but for anyone I missed, go ahead and read the newsletter for yourself.

Again, have a great 2008 and keep in touch!

The book just got more interactive

2007-12-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

The Library of Congress is showing off its latest toy. Neat. It doesn't even matter that I can't read the original text. I suppose if I had just paid more attention in Dutch class.

The most wonderful time of the year?

2007-12-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

Once again, the question mark appears in a post title. I'm sure this is a sign of deep uncertainty. I'm taking a break from my severe responsibilities at the Fullerton Public Library information desk to blog up an update.

Update #1: I am finished with library school. With all due respect to the study of library and information science, I am glad to be done. Any less and I'd feel incompetent and any more and I'd burn out like a flaming comet. The best for you: my portfolio is now available for all the world to see! I should warn you that it's drier than Ozu, but more lively than G. Edward Evans.

Update #2: I'm getting married. There will be more time to discuss this life-changing event, but I am already coming to the stark realization that weddings are more for the people you invite than for you and your spouse-to-be. Nevertheless, Frances and I have met with some good people and I'm sure we'll be in good hands on The Day (May 17, 2008!).

Update #3: I'm currently going through a done-with-school-hurrah! binge of movie watching (if you are on Netflix, become a Netflix friend and you can follow along). However the time is coming where I need to really explore how I want to live my life. It's a pretty dreamy list I'm concocting: learn Latin, play guitar, read Ulysses... I'm sure a full-time job and/or children will postpone these pursuits until retirement, alas. The important thing is to keep a record of what I want to do so I never keel over from boredom.

Finally, I want to do more with Internet radio applications. I'm about as stupid as you can get currently in this area (wireless Internet also confuses the heck out of me for some inexplicable reason). A post on MediaShift got me interested. If you have any input on what has worked best for you, please let me know.

The end of television?!

2007-11-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

Today the WGA (Writer's Guild of America) went on strike, the first time it has done so in almost twenty years. The crux of the matter lies in how to pay writers their fair share from DVD sales and Internet streaming broadcasts and downloads. This may prove to be more than a mere strike, but rather a clash of the old and the new in the world of technology. On one side you have a system that was built for old media. Enter new media, distinctly unmeasurable by the old systems of counting and evaluating. It is not too far removed from the questions being asked by this video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Clearly, not all the questions raised by Web 2.0 have easy answers.

Here are some thoughts by Marc Andreessen, called "Suicide By Strike":

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/suicide-by-stri.html

You may remember him as the guy who brought us Mosaic (or Netscape if you prefer post-1994 lingo) and is now a respected technology guru.

MediaShift is also expressing real concern that television as we know it may be entering the beginnings of its death throes:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/11/whats_the_role_of_unions_in_th.html

Here we have it. A battle of the Old versus the New. Perhaps the opening salvos in a new technological revolution. Here's hoping the consumers end up the winners when the dust settles. My own personal belief is that good writing is already starting to dwindle on basic cable and broadcast televisions channels, stuffed to the gills with formulaic "reality" show garbage that does not actually reflect anything I would consider "real". What is worth watching requires so much attention (the "24" effect) that watching scripted television live is impractical. The DVR or TiVo is changing people's viewing habits to the point that "appointment" television and even commercial breaks are becoming irrelevant. Although it still looks like regular television, the DVR has shifted the central appliance of mass media from the classic television set to the personal computer.

In the world of movies and film (since they, too, are affected by the WGA strike), I present a couple facts:
(1) Seeing a film at an actual movie theater is more of a pain in the derriere than fun. I have lost most of my inclination to watch a movie with 100+ strangers with cell phones for $10 or more (even if I do smuggle in the sodas).
(2) Studios need to face the fact that technology is becoming cheap enough that amateurs and thrill-seekers will provide equally-intriguing content for free over the Internet, for the sake of getting exposure. I hate tread on ground already much trodden by others, but most star-driven vehicle films are lousy and too much movie budget goes to compensation already-rich celebrities.

In more personal news, I just want to announce that I am two weeks away from completing my masters degree. Since finishing my portfolio is a priority, this blog will continue to be pretty quiet until the end of the month. After that, I'll try to make up enough stuff to keep things interesting around here. Until then, read my "microblog" on the sidebar, a sporadic list of my thoughts at the time.

Let's get connected

2007-09-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

It seems like everybody has a blog now. Also, news articles seem to seep out of every pore of the Web 2.0-fortified Internet. How does one manage it keep on top of all of it? Well, there is always the issue of Overload, which I cannot help with, but RSS is a nice little tool to help keep things more organized. Instead of maintaining a huge list of sites to visit (only to discovered nothing half the time you visit any given site), the news and blog posts come to you. Once you see it in action, it isn't much more difficult to comprehend than e-mail.

Watch this video first. I think it helps emphasize the important role of RSS for the information-craving person:

If you already know about RSS, good for you, you early-adopter. If the video inspired you even a little bit, get yourself set up with a reader (I've used Yahoo!, but Bloglines has been better to me) and try subscribing to this blog. I don't have once of those orange logos on my blog yet, but if you use Firefox, you will see the icon in the URL field, and Internet Explorer puts it somewhere on one of those toolbars (can you guess which browser I prefer?).

Subscribers to my blog enjoy the luxury of having me tell them when I post the monthly-or-so update, rather than forcing people to keep checking up on me. Besides, I feel a little strange have people "checking up on me".

Pictures from Napa

2007-09-11T23:38:00.000-07:00

Frances and I came back from Napa over a week ago, and only now have I got the photos up on Flickr, complete with witty descriptions. I'm still getting the hang of Flickr, but I stumbled around long enough to test drive a decent set of pictures. So, without further ado, some photos from Napa Valley for you to inspect. For best results, view them as a slideshow and turn on the information capsules. Enjoy! Be warned, however, my camera is ancient.

Dude, these games are, like, old

2007-08-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

I am just about to begin another semester of school, so my mission in these final days is to waste as much time as humanly possible. I've managed to keep IQ-lowering stuff to a minimum. When it involves the TV, it is something of quality like Renoir or Ozu. I read an entire series of mysteries by Robert Crais. Harry Potter...check. In fact, if you have finished Harry, check out the wiki. I had to use it a couple times just to figure out who the heck so-and-so was. Unfortunately, something brainless was bound in enter the scene in these dog days of Agosto: Rogue!

The 1980 UNIX classic lives on, now as an addictive java game. There are tutorials for the curious, but my overview goes like this: You are the @ symbol. You get objects that look like punctuation. You fight letters of the alphabet that represent monsters. Excited? Go there now: http://www.hexatron.com/rogue/

Paging Dr. Evil

2007-08-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Um, I don't think there is this much money in the whole world! Anyway, somebody is suing Michael Vick (the dogfighting ring-involved football player, for those living in caves like I am). It's a lot of money.

Web Awards, if they must

2007-08-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

We humans like to give awards to everything. Back in the days of Infoseek (see previous post), there was some dumb logo people slapped on their websites that said "Top X% of All Web Sites" like anybody cared. The systems have changed, becoming more fluid and interactive, but the awards remain. Behold the 2007 Web 2.0 Awards, from your friends at the rank-crazy Seomoz.

The most striking observation of the list is that there is so much stuff that creates Web 2.0 and that is just the ones that actually registered in the rankings. If you actually tried to use all of these resources to the fullest extent you would have no life! Somebody should make the ultimate mashup and combine all of these wonder web utilities. I think I will be putting something up that links them all from my blog, essentially creating my own personalized web portal.

Secondly, the different domains of Web 2.0 are divvied up by each one's various competitors. Most telling and easiest to relate is the MySpace versus Facebook wars (oh yeah, Friendster was in the running once upon a time). Most people relate to one or the other and most people settle on one or the other. Of course there is nothing stopping you from doing both (like me), but that is twice the work. Now I have Facebook friends and MySpace friends and I have to run back and forth to appease both camps. I lose. It is like having a lot of email addresses; it splits the focus. This mashup I referred to in the last paragraph should be called the "ultimate aggregator". It should be simple. MyLifeBrand lost me on the very first page, but perhaps I need to give them more time to get set up. The bottom line is the the Web 2.0 apps need to learn how to talk to each other even better than they do now. XML is the key, but everybody will need to their XML homework so nobody gets shafted. MySpace, especially, needs to clean up its act and do something to halt the tidal of hideous HTML work its pages sport. My advice to anybody with a MySpace account is DO NOT CHANGE THE DEFAULTS. Well, at least learn proper XHTML before doing something terrible with wallpaper.

And so I bid adieu to the Summer Fun Program, exhibiting the wonders of Web 2.0 and proclaiming myself a believer in the power of building better web applications and then messing with them for the power of good. I think I'll keep blogging here, so stay subscribed and I will attempt to entertain in my delightfully ham-fisted style.

Documents, documents

2007-07-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

Today's rant was brought to you by the power of Google. It is pretty strange writing anything longer than a few sentences without being in the confines of Microsoft Word. A lot of people don't even realize that the idea of a word processing program that manipulates text the way you would see it if you were to print. In other words, if I want something to appear in bold type or italics it will look that way on both screen and paper. I remember using a very old version of WordPerfect or some other oldish program and the only way to tell what font or style a character was in was by highlighting the text and seeing what "attributes" it had been endowed with.

Now documents and spreadsheets are going to the next level: collaborative. Unlike putting something to disk or tossing around an attachment, a shared document on Google Documents keeps everybody on the same page...literally. This is really great for group projects. No more trashing old versions or recklessly overwriting something that you actually meant to keep for reference. For individual use, it's a nice way to get around the cost of Microsoft Office programs. Too bad there are still many people out there who will insist documents stay in a Word format. Oh, and there is a spell checker on Google Docs, too. They seem to be everywhere now (Firefox has become particularly obsessive about watching what I type!).

What is Not So Good? I'm pretty positive about how Google Docs runs, but a couple worries surface:

(1) Your work lasts only as long as Google remains in business. Sounds crazy? Remember Netscape? We thought they were going to be the new Microsoft, but instead they were consumed by AOL, which in turn became a decaying mess. AOL today retains none of the spunkiness of the Netscape it consumed. The Netscape name today, in 2007, means nothing of importance. Even sadder, one of the greatest search engines of 1995, Infoseek, twelve years down the road, is nothing more than an alias for Disney's tepid Go.com search engine. AltaVista, the greatest search machine before Google burst on the scene, is now a bit player in the Yahoo! family. The point to all of this is that those things we think are going to be with us forever often die, and the online world tends to be more accelerated than the physical one.

(2) I feel kind of weird having no local home for the stuff I write. I feel like I am giving Google a little bit of ownership of my work with every document I create with their programs.

Everything you just read was made in a Google Documents template. Here's a very special link that will take you right to the meisterwerk itself:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhgdfjf6_0dxcd3q

Creating and remixing culture on YouTube

2007-07-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a truly awful commercial, which somebody put on YouTube. Little did they realize, a cultural phenomenon had been born (and the spot on the Ellen DeGeneres show didn't hurt). Go ahead and watch the original, but don't except to get the next two minutes of your life back:

OK, that was really bad. However, various people saw this as raw material from which to create their own masterpieces. Although a bit on the long side, the following clip demonstrates some of what people have done to the "classic" original.

Finally, some people are just sick of the whole concept. And yet they have inadvertently contributed to a cultural phenomenon that only YouTube could have birthed. Enjoy this final (and thankfully short!) clip.

To see more of how dumb raw material can be honed into remixed classics, check out the latest craze, and at least one clever remix of the concept. Judging by the high number of hits, this is even bigger than old Flea Market ever got. The lightning short running time helps, too.

Misadventures in social networking

2007-07-19T16:42:00.001-07:00

Today I decided to snoop about some of the finest social networking site the Internets have to offer. First it was off to MySpace to see what all the fuss was. MySpace has a truly awful search engine. Don't even try quotes in your search. My first successful search on "Fullerton Public Library" (no quotes, mind you) turned up many places that had all of the words present in the profiles, but it had nothing to do with the library. For example, Joe Bob Public graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1994 and watches public access cable shows when not maintaining his large library of comic books. What a charming false drop. I was fortunate to find the profiles of some fellow employees of the library as well as the TAG (teen advisory group) profile. Nice work, everybody.

Before bidding adieu to MySpace I decided to see how the latest crop of president candidates reach out to the electoral through this forum. Not only did Barack Obama have more donors than Hillary Clinton, but he also has more MySpace friends! If this isn't the smell of victory, I don't know what is. Both sites, however, are easy to read (no crazy wallpaper and/or clashing colors). Unfortunately, like Cylons, there are many copies. Anybody can make a site for a candidate, and some have done a good job at confusing the casual potential voter. Watch the spelling the names in the URL if you have any doubts over the authenticity of a profile.

I moved on to Facebook, where I am currently faceless. The layout is much cleaner than MySpace. That is good. Not so good is that I cannot jump in and start randomly spying at people's profiles. In fact, I cannot even show you the account I just created. I guess you will have to join my network or become my friend to see it. Since this sucks a lot of the spontaneity out of the experience, this may explain the diminished popularity of Facebook next to MySpace. We want our instant gratification!

Moving right along to Twitter... When I plan to make my life an open book, I will thank Twitter for making it all possible. Now if there was some way to send Twitter messages in my sleep. "I am asleep" - I would say...no...think with brain waves. My initial impressions here aren't too incredibly negative. Functionality over multiple platforms is one of the trademarks of Web 2.0, so Twitter is definitely part of this family. In fact, it brings back warm fuzzy memories of college, using a crummy old system called "Broadcast", which we students liked using more than the phone to do things like flirt and meet up for Chicken Finger Night at the dining hall. That's 1998 talking, buster!

Looking to the future, I trolled over to something still developing called MyLifeBran d. Again, the goal is to keep things looking a bit more organized than MySpace, but I wonder if it may actually be a case of entering too late. I would like to see the inner workings of this system, but right now I need a sponsor to go any farther than the "About Us" page. An aggregator of the different social networking site would be valuable. That way I can put this blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Gmail tools, etc. into one big toy chest. Right now the closest thing I have is del.icio.us, but I just looked at my sorry list on that site and I don't think it is particularly representative of who I am. However, in the way VHS vanquished Beta, the best functioning, best looking inventions often still end up as the big losers.

In closing, I left a trail of breadcrumbs behind so you can see the mess I made. Here is me on MySpace, something I put together a few months ago so people would stop bothering me about not having a profile. It is what it is. Again, if you are with Facebook and you know who I am, try looking me up and see what happens. I'm so alone right now! I have a single word in my Twitter profile right now, which pretty much says it all until I get this post published. Now if there was some way to send Twitter messages in my sleep. "I am asleep" - I would say...no...think. Anyway if you want to become my first follower, go there right now! Deals like this don't last!

Web 2.0 in the library

2007-07-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

I think we can use Web 2.0 technologies in many ways to benefit the library. While the first things that spring to mind are those which help the staff work with each other, I am more interested in what can be done to involve patrons in positive ways with library functions typically most often handled by the staff. Two big ideas come to mind.

RSS and patron records
A lot of patrons want to see a history of all the things they have checked out. For privacy reasons, that is currently not available. However, a site people pay for, such as Netflix, has meticulously kept five years worth of my rental history on file. Five years is how long I've been with them, so this means the entire history. I should be possible to create a personalized feed with checkout history and wish lists, all conveniently accessible through the patron's RSS reader of choice.

Flickr maps of the library
The chaotic half of my brain has a murky vision of a Flickr mashup in which many more pictures of the library get taken and suddenly the visual data of a catalog search is not just a book cover, but directions on finding it. I haven't put much more thought into it, but it would require a lot of involvement of people reaching beyond just the staff.

Geeks still rule

2007-07-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was over at Technorati today and found definitive proof that geeks still rule. Simply go to the "most popular" section and pretty much every blog, starting with the mighty Boing-Boing (currently posting info on how to make your own Mont Blanc pen for five bucks), then working down to a blog that helps people "pimp" their MySpace site.

However, I do appreciate the integration of text, video and image results when searching for something. After all, if blogs mix things up, why shouldn't the tools that search them?

In other breaking geek news, I started a del.icio.us account. You will be amazed at all two things I have bookmarked to date. You go check it out now. And does anybody else find it bizarre that soap gets more bookmarks than the New York Times bestseller list?!

Tasty

2007-07-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

I just returned from trolling around on del.icio.us. It is a pretty nifty idea. True, there is the risk of "crazy tags" that don't really don't benefit the concept of metadata, but it washes out in the safety of numbers. It is akin to voting. Sure, some people are going to write in "Donald Duck" for president, but it is negligible in the overall results. So just let them have their fun vandalizing 0.000000000000001% of the world. No one will notice. Have faith that most people competent enough to actually use del.icio.us will employ helpful tags and contribute positively to the folksonomy in progress. It is the same concept of openness that makes wikis click, which I think is a matter that will be addressed later.

While the budding information professional inside me says there must be guidelines, I have to concede that the Internet is too big to be diligently indexed by the chosen few. The masses, over time, can do it for free. Let the professionals turn their attentions toward educating others on the art of evaluating information. Don't expect me to say things like "everything in on the Internet" or "if it is on the Internet it must be true." We can file those statements with "since the Internet is now commonplace we can do away with libraries."

I think I'll be setting up an account with del.icio.us, pretty much for the same reason I choose to blog here and not on Myspace: cleaner presentation of data, increased flexibility in its arrangement, and all-around greater accessibility. When the account is finally born and has something to show, you will hear about it.

Regression session

2007-07-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

Since the program is taking a break this week, I thought I would regale you with some videos that made me the person I am. Enjoy.

A most excellent CSE

2007-06-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

Most people are fooled by nerdy demeanor and don't realize I have long had the love of heavy music. I will probably be That Crazy Old Guy about forty years down the road. So, here is a custom search engine (CSE) I built that dredges up information on various hard rock and heavy metal acts. I test-drove it and was pleasantly surprised, considering I've only put in a mind-boggling three preferred search sites. You can probably thank Google more than me for whatever you retrieve. Have fun.

LibraryThing: Yeah, I've got one

2007-06-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, I had a small LibraryThing, mainly of stuff I've already read this summer. I should really add some stuff to it because it is very small and highly unrepresentative of my actual bookshelf. I also have developed a problem with reading books I don't own (ie. library books!) and it would unfair to catalog those, seeing there is already a perfectly good system in place for looking those up.

Robert Fugmann Meets Andy Warhol

2007-06-28T21:30:00.001-07:00

I am very tempted to say I am sharing my own private collection of lost Andy Warhol treasures, but I'm actually only sharing the results of me goofing around with an image generator, the Warholizer, available to all through the FD flickr toys. Go try it yourself.

Who is Fugmann anyway? Here's a short biography and here is the HTML table demonstration (the links to the other tables don't work at the moment!) where I orginally used the "normal" photo. Oddly enough, the site where I found the original photo has totally vanished. They had no idea how much it changed my life.

Testing the retrievr application

2007-06-21T22:10:00.001-07:00

Lake Peyto - Canada, originally uploaded by Reinhard.Pantke.

Retrievr is a great idea, but it doesn't work very well. The great idea here is that you draw something and then it matches up photos from flickr that look like it. This photo is the result of me drawing a crude landscape with a built-in simple drawing program on the retrievr home page. About half of the retrieved results were landscapes and the rest were...I don't know what. Before this attempt, I tried to draw a picture of a brown cat with big green eyes and all it returned were pictures of not cats. There was one really artistic shot (read: black and white) of a cat and that was pretty much it.
Where does retrievr excel right now? Color recognition is quite good and I presume that is where they attempt to make the matches from. Either that or I need to learn how to draw better.
What do I suggest that would make retrievr better? They tell me that save all the sketches you make, but I can't seem to find the button that let's me save the sketches to my own blog/disk/whatever. I did get to rate some spectacularly bad sketches made by other users. This means all the sketches are being saved. I can only hope that the other raters who are lucky enough to see my sketches go lightly on me. I'm a pretty easygoing person, but I hope the folks who made retrievr have covered themselves on copyright issues, because I felt like I was signing away to them my hard(ly worth the time) work on those sketches!

Flickr goodies

2007-06-21T21:42:00.001-07:00

Shadow Traffic, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

Was this picture taken from a plane? Nope. Try a building. A really tall needle-like building called One Rincon Hill in San Francisco. I've seen this thing. It is very tall (and still being built, I think). You have to be made of money to live there; it's a yuppy beehive. It is funny to think that the area used to be the kind of place you didn't want to go after dark. I remember going up to San Francisco as a lil' rugrat and being scared of the industrial wastelands in that area. Now it has been "revitalized" and "sanitized" for your convenience. AT&T (formerly Pac Bell) Park, sort of to the right of this picture is a nice place to catch a game, even when the Giants are chronic losers.

Week 2: I'm a slacker! (testing things out)

2007-06-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

I want to apologize to my wonderful group, The X Factor, that I did not complete week #2 in time. Unfortunately an excessive number of hours at the other jobs coupled with my natural scarcity at FPL. It's looking better for next week.

So I gave birth to this thing. Fitting it should be on a Saturday night, one maybe better spent over a couple ciders at The Olde Ship. Before you even start thinking it, I want to be a record as saying cider is NOT a "chick drink". When I say "cider" I'm talking about Blackthorne, Strongbow or the much missed K, not alcohol-laced apple juice like Wyder's. Uh, anyway, I digress. Blogger is nice because it ties right into my gmail account. That means one less password to memorize. I have done some blogging on MySpace, but it is pretty weak. I want to give this thing a running start in the hopes I can break free of the cyberdorm mentality.

Web 2.0 is the greatest thing since I first tried to navigate with the unwieldy Mosaic back in 1994 (between Gopher sessions). I'm glad to have an excuse this summer to play with all of these toys and maybe get a reward, edible or audible.

If you don't know me, why not visit the reference desk on Monday night?