Pterdactblog

The 23rd Thing

2008-02-07T07:50:00.001-08:00

I'm done. Here's my thoughts...
This was a very useful exercise. It presented a great deal of useful information.
I thought the live sessions we held downstairs were a great component of the course. I think we should continue to have these session weekly, and just have it open for anybody to drop in and ask questions. Not like anyone will have all the answers, but the more people looking for a solution, the quicker a solution can be found. It would also benefit to have questions answered in a public forum. We could do this every couple of weeks and weave in the "Tech Petting Zoo" idea from the last Library 2.0 webcast.

Teaching Tech

2008-02-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Last week I offered to send anyone on the staff an invitation to Gmail. The response to this invitation was fantastic! Eight people were sent addresses. I consider this my contribution for the 23 things teaching component! But I will be following up on this. Both Debbie and Collette are eager to learn more about using their account, and all the Google services it gives you access too. I thought I'd create a short introduction course which I can present at the semester's end, when all have time to attend.

Finding Podcasts

2008-02-07T06:55:00.001-08:00

The most interesting search engine I checked out was a thing called "Podscope". It claims to be able to search podcasts, both audio and video, for the actual text of spoken words.
My first attempt was to search for "Telecaster" which is a type of electric guitar. No hits. I got less specific and used guitar, which immediately brought up a bunch of podcasts, including NPR music reviews.

Next, I tried "Donahue" (no, not "That Girl's" squeeze, but somebody who plays a Telecaster). Here is where things got interesting. The first couple of hits were for some radio show called "Dawn and Drew". So it appears that Podcast is taking the actual phonetic "noiseprint" waveforms of the text you type in, and comparing that to actual waveforms of podcasts. I can imaging that "Welcome to the the Dawn and Drew Morning Show" would look a lot like "Welcome to the Donahue Mourning Show", when he finally admits to himself that his wife was right-on about the consequences of supporting Ralph Nader. But that's water-under-the-bridge.

This process reminded me of the gymnastics Jin has to go through to type written Chinese into the computer. First, a program sits in-between any other program she is trying to use. You type into the program the romanized phonetic equivalent of the Chinese word you are trying to type. A list of phonetic matches comes up, and she chooses the most appropriate characters from a list of 30 or more possible matches. If you have found what you are looking for, you paste the characters into the document you are writing. Replace drawn Chinese characters with waveform "characters" and the Podscope process is about the same - but without the element of human selection, which accounts for so many bad hits in its result list! But since they give you the whole list, you can make that selection. This is ingenious! I can't wait to see how much it improves...

YouTube

2008-02-07T05:46:00.001-08:00

NBC, CBS, CNN, YOUTUBE. Youtube is another network. It is amazing, and precious. It is an international treasure. It has changed the world. I have wasted many hours at this site.

Amongst the most useful videos I find are guitar tutorials. There are a host of players uploading little mini-lessons to learn individual techniques or specific songs. In addition, there are clips of the highest pantheon of guitar gods wailing at their best. I've heard that there is an ongoing spat with music publishers who feel that some of these lessons infringe on copyright.

Sometimes things can get a little dicey. I did a search on Kermit because I wanted to see clips of that famous amphibian. Instead I got Kermit the frog's reaction to "two girls and a cup"(WARNING, this video contains explicit and extremely objectionable content, and refers to another video which is beyond the pale of human comprehension - and has been removed from YouTube DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WATCH IT). I'd hate to have to explain this to a Sesame Street aged youngster.

But for fun, there is nothing more entertaining than to sit around on a rainy evening and watch people's pets, mentos and coke experimentation, extreme sporting mishaps, and candid-camera wanna-be's.

Wikis in Libraries

2008-02-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

When Wiki's get integrated into other library services it starts becoming exciting. Everyone is familiar with Amazon reviews... And almost everybody is WAITING for library vendors to release this in an OPAC.

OCLC's Worldcat is doing exactly this. This slick interface has it all, faceted searching, tag clouds, and integration with the largest bibliographic database in the known universe. It also has integrated a wiki for patrons and staff to comment on items (see the pdf " Wiki Comes to Worldcat", from 2005).

I think it would be wonderful if everytime a reference question was answered using a cataloged source, that question could be logged into the records wiki by the reference staff. That way, a more complete feel for the usefulness of the source good be ascertained by the user.

Cocktails Anyone?

2008-02-06T18:49:00.000-08:00

This will be the first site I will visit if I do not win the laptop. Basically, you can specify the ingredients you have, and it will spit back all the libations you can construct. Unfortunately, I don't have a bar. But I made pretend I did, and heavens, some people are very creative.
If I get drunk and fall down and hit my head against the side of the coffee table and die, then won't you feel bad? So maybe if you win the laptop, you will give it to me? Maybe?

OnLine Applications

2008-02-06T17:57:00.000-08:00

Online applications are great - and are going to be even more common as computers and devices get smaller and more connected. I've been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets since it was Writely, and expect to see more and more of these applications appear.

I'm a big fan of the KISS concept. So whereas I agree with Ramona that Zoho has a ton more features than Google, to me that's not necesarily a good thing (most of the time I do my writing in a simple text editor)! I'll have to play around with it before I jump ship from Google. It is really important to me to keep the number of things I have to log onto to a minimum - that's why I really enjoy the Google suite of applications. Gmail is my main "civilian" email account, so signing in is something I do anyway.

Library 2.0 Thoughts...

2008-02-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

Laura B. Cohen's blog's penultimate post is entitled "Snake Oil, Bandwagons, and Library 2.0". It references a blog by John Blyberg which I thought was largely on the money. Both are good reads if you want a positive and a cynical view. I think Mr. Blyberg makes a very good observation - there is a difference between the technology and the product. Just because you can buy it doesn't mean you "do" (have obtained) the technology. You've simply bought a product. It probably won't integrate with your other products, and you will probably be forced to either dump it or some other product you purchased thinking it would play nicely with yet some other product. "Library 2.0" is presenting us with more problems than it is solving.

I'm worried about the library profession.

Libraries used to be good at sizing up real situations and applying standards and best-practices to ensure efforts weren't being wasted, and that future innovation would be accommodated.
Five years ago, there was a great deal of buzz about the demise of technical services. Outsourcing of cataloging and acquisitions was just around the bend - even physical processing was going to be carried-out by approval plans and jobbers. Serial departments wouldn't be needed - everything would be online.

Of course, this isn't happening. Instead we see tech service departments (yes, ours) increasingly stretched to the limit by an ever changing landscape of incompatible systems and products provided to us by disparate vendors with few standards and procedures.
We seem to approach technology like it was a shopping cart. Vendors tell us what we need, what is expected by our patrons(although the recent survey of incoming students seems to cast doubt on what students are actually using). Software as a service is "the next big thing"- further taking the actual nuts and bolts of technology out of the library. And so why should any librarians actually set up a web-server, write an application or learn XML? It's all being handled by vendors who are acting in our best interests... DON'T BELIEVE IT!

We should be hiring a new kind of library employee who knows regular expressions, Ruby on rails, MARC records, SQL, and Perl. They should be excited by community-based free and open software. They need to know their way around a server, and be empowered to experiment. They might not even need to have an MLS (OMG!), but might actually be invited to discuss topics at top-secret Library Council meetings. Things are changing, we need to change too.
We need to re-evaluate employee work-flow and adjust what is being done in both tech services and public services, using technology to reach more people, and make things easier - not more complicated.

Finally, we should be demanding that vendors provide openly - extensible tools which are standards-based, and are well documented.

Technorati

2008-02-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

I've used Technorati on and off. As you might have surmised from some of the posts below, I'm not a really big fan of blogs. However, this is a useful service for finding buried information from the never ending, always growing blogosphere.
For instance, knowing what the top 100 most popular blogs are is a real shortcut to understanding what is important to a large slice of computer-users.
But again, I find this incredibly distracting. I just listened to Gail and Dale from the Lawrence Welk show singing "One Toke over the Line". Wuniful.
It's good to schedule a regular brief dip into this site. It's search features are robust, and is a real help in locating pertinent blogs and individual posts without having to have them pushed out at you.

Del.icio.us Exercise

2008-02-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

This too was a service for which I signed up quite awhile ago, and don't really use that much. Again the main problem for me adopting regular usage is the whole login thing. But, I sort of rediscovered this and have made a point of wanting to visit it more often.
I think of Del.icio.us as a great discovery tool. I can see how many people have a site bookmarked, which is usually the best indication that the site is worthwhile.
I imported my bookmarks initially into this service several years ago. I reimported them today, and had it check for duplicates and not import anything I already had loaded. The import took a REALLY long time, Like say, 20 minutes or so. I didn't time it, so I can't say for sure.
In any case, it was worth it to see some of my recently bookmarked pages come alive in del.icio.us.
I'm a little afraid of sharing too much in this service. There are so many ways to profile people on the internet, whether it be by marketers or other creeps. I will have to look into this a little more before I share my bookmarks with others.

Bloglines

2008-02-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've had a bloglines account for several years, but I have to admit that I don't use it much (again, I had to have them send me my password!). Ever since iGoogle came around, I've been using Google Reader instead. iGoogle places my RSS feeds right on my homepage, so I don't have to log into another service to get to them.
I find that, for me, keeping up with too many blogs and feeds of blogs is incredibly counter-productive. I did it for a while, when I first signed up with bloglines, but the mystique quickly wore off. I'm not really worried about missing out on stuff. There used to be a guy (maybe there still is) who worked for Borland, who had a column (before blogs) called "a sip from the firehose". I love that name. All this information can blow your head off. As a librarian, I would rather pursue what I need, when I need it. Maybe that is too "old-fashioned", but a steady stream of disparate information as collected by masses of other people with wide interests, doesn't work for me.
Once every week or so, I'll do a little general scanning of the Google reader stuff that has come in. If there's something there that looks interesting, I'll read it. But I have to say that, even though I've made choices for feeds of things directly related to my job or interests, 95% of the stuff that rolls by is useless babble. And 5% of a gazillion is still too much.
Does it do me a lot of good to know that Apple has an eBook reader in the pipeline? Intel to talk Silverthorne this week? OCLC and ALISE announce 2008 Research Grant Award recipients? The new robotic arm Dean Kamen's DEKKA group is working on?
ENOUGH ALREADY!
Even though I know you are supposed to let this stuff flow over you and pick out the real important stuff - it all seems important and interesting. A robot arm from the guy that invented the Segway? You bet I want to read about that. An eBook reader from the company that brought us the iPod - you bet I want to read that too. And this stuff is endless. How much real work does Stephan Abrams get done?
Rant over and out.

Rollyo

2008-02-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

I don't like this. It's not something that I think I would use very much. It doesn't really provide enough information about how to incorporate different kinds of searches into the "rolled" searches. A lot of useful searches are not simple text-boxes. It would be nice if there were good clear examples of how to integrate complex searches into a rolled search.

I ended up creating a search of the car-talk radio show, and also npr.org site as a whole. I suppose that I might use such a roll to group together news outlets with specific points of view, i.e. political leaning into different groups.

LibraryThing

2008-02-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

I've tried this site several times this year. I had forgotten my password, and had to have them email it to me! This is a very cool service, a great way to find what others with your tastes are reading. Also a great way to look at the kinds of books you have in the house in a "catalog" kind of way.
This is the kind of thing library system vendors ought to be offering yesterday or sooner...

Image Generation

2008-02-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

Well, you know what they say "She's as windy as two-dollar lizard in a swimming hole". Or so I'm told by the " Homespun Analogy Generator". While these seem to make no sense most of the time they are indeed fun.
Another interesting site was one which displays your name in Chinese. This text is supposed to say "Peter". I will have to check with Jin on this... I think the site is not really doing a real-time image generation, it seems to just be checking a database for the name you type in.

Inactive? Not really...

2008-02-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've been doing the exercises in January, just haven't written them up. So I'm not as far behind as it may look! I'm going to finish this this week!

Solid State Drives

2007-12-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

In 23 things #7 I mentioned diskless computers. Another big thing about to hit the market is the solid state disk drive. SSD's are in production and have capacities up to 63 gigs. They are sure to have an impact on both the notebook computer market, and the server market. How about an mp3 player with 63 gigs!!!!
These silent SATA compatible devices have no moving parts so are less prone to failure than the standard hard drive (I know of 2 people in the library that have experienced the dreaded "click click click" of a failed hard drive). They also cut boot and shutdown time in half, are lighter in weight, and produce less heat than a conventional hard drive.
About the only down-side is the "limited" capacity. The 63 gigs should be enough for most operating systems for a while, but I'm sure the capacities will grow in short time.
Crucial claims that it will be selling the devices in the first quarter of '08 (see http://www.crucial.com/promo/index.aspx?prog=ssd). Also check out Samsung for some great information: http://www.samsungssd.com/

Flickr Mashups

2007-12-13T06:32:00.000-08:00

Well, this didn't really excite me too much. The mashups which included mapping software were the most inspiring. I can see using them again. However, most of the mashups I found were pretty lame.
There is a mashup called "AlphaLearnr" whose aim is to teach children the alphabet through pictures. Think "A is for Apple". I thought it was a good idea, and could be expanded upon to teach foreign language words, or perhaps to quiz on any subject that can be presented visually. The actual implementation stills falls a little short. Instead of "Apple" when I landed on the site and clicked on "A" I got "Airbus". That seemed a bit of an abstraction for a child just learning the alphabet. You can change the search by replacing what falls after the "=" in the url, but they could have had an interface that allowed you to set the search for the picture-set which will represent the letter.

Flickr Discovery Exercise

2007-12-13T05:31:00.000-08:00

I'm hesitant to actually setup an account with Flickr, because my personal preference is to use Google's Picassa (here's a sample)- staying with one company's products makes moving around a whole lot easier and avoids providing passwords for multiple times. I use iGoogle as my home page, and my civilian email account is on Gmail. Most things I do on the web can be set up in one place via iGoogle.

But I do browse the Flickr photos at times to see what is there. There are some really good photographers out there! I did a search for "Telecaster Thinline" which was my first good electric guitar purchased in 1974. I was 14 at the time and spent $275 of lawn-mowing funds for the guitar, but couldn't afford the case for it. So I wrapped it up in a blanket and bungee-corded it to my bicycle's "rat-trap" for the ride back from Burlington center to Bedford (Massachusetts). My parents bought me the case for Christmas! BTW, mine NEVER had the mother-of-toilet-seat pickguard. The original was white. I now have a mahogany pickguard on it. Over the years I've changed a lot of the hardware - early 70's Fenders where not great gitfiddles. The pickups died. I've replaced them with DiMarzio and Lawrence humbuckers. The bridge is now a DiMarzio. The tuning machines are Schaller minis. I've also added two switches to split the coils on the humbuckers to get more sounds. Recently the nut cracked -so I have to repair that. But I will never get rid of this guitar!!!

My favorite Flickr search is "Nature Photography". As of this morning, the search revealed 59382 hits. There are some really spectacular photos in here! Modified tags are "Nature and Landscapes", "Beauty of Nature" and of course for fun "Animals".

TechnoBlog (#7)

2007-12-11T09:09:00.000-08:00

First of all, if anyone is using the combination of Gmail, Mac, and the Firebug add-on for Firefox, you might want to uninstall firebug. It causes the browser to crash whenever you leave the Gmail page.

Second of all, my weight was down to 170.5 lbs. this morning.

O.K., now to talk about my current interests in technology. There are a few things interesting to me right now.
The first is diskless computers. I bought another MacBook laptop at a bargain price from KeithCo this week. The hard drive had failed on the machine, so I plan to replace it. Last night I put in 2 megabytes of memory to replace the 1 gig installed, and managed to boot the machine under several linux "live" cd's. Perfectly functional for browsing the web, or using OpenOffice. All without a hard drive. If I added a usb pen drive, I could save my work too. What's the point? Nothing to corrupt! No hard drive to crash. Linutop is marketing a small footprint linux-based system in Europe which boots from a usb drive and has no fans, no hard-drive. It is silent and small. I can think of more than one application for such a device! Especially for certain relatives and friends who tend to trash their computers on a weekly basis.
The next thing that I'm interested in is the Basic Stamp module. Although my father was an electrical engineer (maybe because he was an electrical engineer), I've never had much interest in "hobby" electronics. Now I'm having fun programming lights to blink, motors to turn, and sounds to play. I'm not very far into learning about this stuff, but it has really opened up a whole world of ideas that would have never occured to me before. Suddenly, those stupid $7.00 dogs in CVS that wag their tails, bob their heads, and sing Elvis Christmas carols are viewed in a whole different light. Mainly, as a cheap source of servos.

7 and 1/2 Habits Easy/Hard...

2007-12-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

We've been asked to write on which of these habits are easiest and hardest for us. I'm finding that answering this question is rather difficult; it really depends on what I'm trying to learn. Different situations present different opportunities and difficulties.

But to generalize, I suppose habit one might be the most difficult I routinely encounter. The example in the exercise was pertinent, because I don't remember in my schooling ever thinking that I would become fluent in Spanish. That goal was never set, and as a result - I know a lot of words but can't put a sentence together! However, everything you set out to learn needn't have a goal. I recently took a gas welding course at the Brookfield Craft Center with Michael Rivera (who recently had an exhibit at the Quick Center). He was a very good instructor who gave us all we would need to get going. When we started the course, he asked each person why they were here, and what they hoped to get out of the course. I didn't really have a clear aim, I just had never been exposed to this technology before and wanted to get a feel for what it could do. Since then, my mind has been coming up with all sorts of things. I might now set some more concrete goals....

The easiest for me might be using technology to help out. I love gadgets. I love to tinker with electronics. However, this can be expensive! I'd love an iPhone, but I'm not going to be getting one in the near future. I'd love a digital movie camera, but my old Sony Hi8 has a few more years left in it. Getting a set-up to have my iPod (thanks Roxann!) play in the car - at some point I'll have to take out the toolkit and rip out the radio on the truck. Software, especially all the new web applications like those Google is providing are real time-savers. I REALLY recommend Google Notebook!
BTW. First week of this course I weighed 175 1/2. Today I weighed 173. Rice cakes and figs for lunch.... I'll soon make a side-bar to track my great personal make-over.

23 Things Post

2007-11-27T18:55:00.000-08:00

This is my first post for the 23 things workshop. It seems worthwhile to post a few thoughts about my goals for these exercises:

to be more enthusiastic about "Web 2.0" technologies:
I tend to see things such as RSS feeds, Blogs, and Social Bookmarking as being time-sinks, and huge distractions. I really hate instant messaging. I'm the type that would rather use a text-editor than a word-processor. But there are times when a word-processor can save a lot of time!
to expand my skills using these technologies:
As opposed to learning how to implement the technologies - that is, to learn them from a user perspective.
to lose weight, and get in shape:
I plan to post the results of my fitness program to this blog. If I don't win the laptop computer by the end of this post, I'll at least be in shape enough to dance to my new iPod!