I’ve added a new link in the sidebar: Violent Acres, a blog I found through an article on The Consumerist from a link on Digg.
From an article about running into women from high school you can’t remember and the inability to gossip:
I don’t blame people in the least for reading my writing and dubbing me a man. If I lacked access to my own boobs and vagina, it’s likely that I’d question myself.
I love her.
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
I’ve finally started to emerge enough from my Christmas of Cold and Flu to enjoy the rest of my break off from work. My parents left yesterday morning, leaving behind enough leftovers and groceries to feed off of for at least a week, and since my snot-filled head doesn’t want me to fly to Hot Springs, AR for New Year’s Eve (sorry, Erin) I’m just going to take it easy.
Since I’ve been feeling better (as of about noon today) I’ve found myself reenacting Christmas “breaks” from the past. Today so far I’ve mostly
So basically I’m 12. But that’s a good thing, right?
Later, I have plans to put together my new 3D puzzle of the Eiffel Tower and plug in the lights on the tree again before I start on my science and English homework.
Happy holidays!
Public librarians in Georgia have developed an open-source “Integrated Library System (ILS)” called Evergreen:
the software that manages, catalogs, and tracks the circulation of library holdings. It’s written in C, JavaScript and Perl, is GPLed, runs on Linux with Apache, uses a PostgreSQL database, Jabber for messaging and XUL as client-side software. The system allows easy clustering and is based entirely on open protocols.
You can find the article here.
This is awesome. What most libraries with dynamic websites do is plug a webby front-end into their existing circulation and cataloging database, something like Innovative. The AADL has gotten famous for their Drupal-driven site that allows users to search for materials at home, as well as manage their accounts, and library staff to blog about events and collections. AADL has recently instituted a pretty interesting search cloud, and uses the search and browse features on the website as the in-house OPAC and portal to subscription research tools. The front-end of the system in Georgia sounds like a combination of the AADL site and a del.icio.us library.
Most exciting though, I think, is incorporating open-source software at the back end. Anyone that has worked in a library has seen the often clunky systems that libraries use for cataloging and circulation, and although these commercial softwares are getting into the business of providing front-end tools, I think it might be too late: too many libraries already have websites that they’re turning into portals.
Unfortunately, though, there isn’t a lot of documentation on the bibliographic end of things yet: the emphasis is on user services. I’d be interested to know about how they’re importing records from union catalogs like OCLC, or using Z39.50…
More:
A couple days ago I got an email from the alumni group from where I went to undergrad. I was surprised that it made it into my inbox and not the spam folder, since what I usually get from them includes requests for money and/or stuff about events I have no interest in. And then I saw the subject line: the email was sent to inform the SU community that Reverend Shaheen, a beloved fixture of the campus, had passed away at the age of 91.
I’m not religious, nor particularly spiritual, but my university was/is technically affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church (the not-so-conservative one). So, there was a chaplain, who was a large round man who liked fast Italian cars and had a step-daughter who I took writing classes with. And there was a history of religious scholarship on the campus: before incorporating in 1858, it was a missionary school and a women’s college (most of this I learned about when I did a study of student women’s groups for my senior honor’s thesis).
Anyway, this is all to say that I had nothing at all to do with the religious community at my college. However, I did meet Reverend Shaheen. He knew everybody. He was an alumni, had been an interim chaplain after retiring from his own parish, and had served as an assistant to the university president for many years. He lived in a beautiful little house on campus near the library. He attended as many of the plays, concerts, and readings he could. There was a story that he had had a son die from AIDS (I have no idea if this is true) and during my first couple years at college his wife Winifred died. So, for much of the time I knew him (and I use the term “knew” very loosely) he was alone.
Everyone called him Padre.
During my sophomore or junior year (I honestly don’t remember which), I was doing work for my assistantship one evening at the library, when my advisor, Kathy, the university reference librarian, got a phone call from Padre. He had a friend who was going to be traveling to Dubai and he wanted to make sure she knew all the travel regulations and restrictions (this was right after 9/11/2001). Kathy got the information he wanted and asked me to take the printout over to him, since the ref desk was swamped. I took the sheet of paper and walked the block or so to his house.
The Reverend was sitting at a desk by the tall front window, writing by an emerald green desk lamp. I could see him through the lacy curtains. I rang the bell, and he hopped up and shuffled around to the door. When he answered it, he was wearing overalls and a faded Florida Gators sweatershirt. He was smaller than me, a small-boned, bent man with a fuzz of white hair and giant glasses. I had only ever seen him in his suit and collar before.
“You must be Devon!” he exclaimed. “Thank you so much. Kathy is such a kind woman, but I didn’t think you’d be here so fast!”
Before I knew it I was being ushered inside as he nodded and smiled at the piece of paper I’d given him.
“Would you like some peanuts?” he asked.
He led me back to the kitchen, which seemed three times taller than him, and brought out a tin of shelled peanuts. He explained that he had friends with a peanut farm, and that they regularly sent him some. While I nibbled on the peanuts (which were delicious), he asked how long I’d been working with Kathy, what year I was, what was I studying, what did I write, where was I from.
I am not one for small talk. I have had my share, from old people, the mentally ill, and the shy. However, with him it was not small talk. Any time I saw him talking to anyone, it was with genuine interest and care. He loved the college, since it was his home. He loved all the students because, I think, it was our home as well, and he was one of those people that practiced what he believed. I found myself telling him that my grandmother had gone to the school as well, several years before him, and talking about her stories about the place.
Eventually, I was sent off with two plastic baggies of peanuts, one for Kathy, and another for me (“I know you students need to eat!”). And more thanks. And the feeling that I’d just spent some time with the sort of person you don’t run into much: the kind of person who makes humanity seem good and religion maybe less scary and things just doable and bearable in general.
My point with all this is that I don’t think I’ve thought at all about Padre since I finished college. But the email gave me a shock. Not that he had died, because he was old and unwell and dying is to be expected, but that I felt as much as I did.
Defense Tech, a military and security info/tech blog, reports that when the CIA declined the State Department’s request for “names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program,” they pawned the job off onto “a junior Foreign Service officer.” The tool they provided? Google.
Those [Iranians] with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.
The CIA didn’t “approve” all the names that came out of the Google search, but that’s beside the point. (Well, maybe the fact that they even looked at the results is troubling.) The main point is: YOU’RE FINDING PEOPLE TO SANCTION BY USING A TWO-FACET BOOLEAN ARGUMENT IN GOOGLE. WTF.
So by the State Department’s logic, I can do a Google search for a nationality and a vaguely menacing and/or scientific-sounding adjective and get extremely important and accurate information about terrorists. Iraqi and chemical. North Korean and…pickled. French and crusty.
It’s like Mad Libs! Mad Libs for freedom.
This mess was found via Salon.
I’ve received, albeit through a second or third party, my first real hate (e)mail regarding my web design work.
Unfortunately the problem at the root of the hate mail really wasn’t my incompetence, but rather Safari’s inability to properly parse CSS and one of several unanticipated fuckups with the server after going live, respectively. But I’ll take the credit anyway.
I was clicking along away from BoingBoing and found this delight: a classification scheme, complete with a three-part nomenclature based on just a few properties:
For example, the snippet of wool/mohair blend yarn I just found on the floor would be Nelifrag Housarit brownecylisoftebiggerlik.
Classify your own Very Small Objects, or see those that others have classified.
This morning a 4.1 kg bundle of joy was dropped on my doorstep.
He’s very white, just like his mama, and so smart (just like…)!
I explained to his older, but smaller brother, that I didn’t love him any less now that his new sibling had arrived. Recent circumstances just called for some more help. But, I did admit that the older one’s accident, which was totally my fault because I left him unattended, but now requires him to be hooked up to an external display, had kind of contributed to having the second.
But we’ll all get along.
