Spawn of rock...

Watched HellBoy yesterday. Last night. Rented it. Heard it sucked. Didn't. Rocked. Whatta ride. Good FX. Not too familiar with the graphic novels. Seemed close. As true to the artwork as you could get. [Kinda too abstract to copy 100%.] I'd watch it again. Still got it. Not due back til Friday. Maybe I will. Rock. On.

Boo...

Well... I went through Penn Station today on my daily commute and, to be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Still a lot of cops and places blocked off but I had no problem and saw no incidents. Despite my "foreignality" [being Canadian and all] the MAN never hassled me at all. Of course I kinda blend in, being terminally white. Actually, it was pretty good. There weren't that many people in there. They should have a good public scare like this more often! *laugh*

Saturday night's all right...

I look forward to weekends every week and yet every weekend comes and it's a let down. I always feel like I haven't accomplished anything at the end yet I don't feel like doing anything when I have the time to do it. But maybe I have accomplished something. You be the judge. This is what I did today. [I still consider it to be Saturday. It's not Sunday until I sleep and wake up.]

• Ate.
• Played video games.
• Cleaned up a bunch of Zoe's stuff.
• Thought about how fast she'll get all that stuff our again.
• Read some of the crap on freerepublic.com and some of Margaret Cho's hate mail and felt sad for the world. My god.
• Read some news.
• Looked at some works by Mondrian.
• Typed in poo and pee into google.

What a full day!

This constant tension tired Watt greatly...

Just finished reading a copy of "Watt" by Samuel Beckett. This picture is not what my copy looks like. Mine is "An Evergreen Book Published by Grove Weidenfeld" in 1953. It's mostly olive [not drab] green with a big circle with a tiny bit pasted over. Yes. It's just as abstract as it sounds. Just like the book.

• Mathematical Fiction : Watt
• `Structures in Beckett’s Watt by John C. DiPierro. York, South Carolina: French Literature Pub­lications Company, 1981. 116 pp.
• Sur "Watt" de Samuel Beckett

Bleep-bloop-wocka, bow-wow-wow-wow...

I got a toy for my birthday!!! [Let's forget for the moment that my birthday was almost two weeks ago and am now 30 years old.] I got one of those Activision TV Games with ten (10) old Atari games. Just played 'em all once or twice each for a quite run through and some nostalgia and I found out how much time really has passed. My thumb is killing me!!!! I remember when it would take double digit hours of game play to make me notice the physical strain... And they say kids never got any exercise while playing video games! Well, I guess that just means I'm outta shape and I need to go exercise!

Cop a zeal...

Oh, happy day, Penn Station is full of cops and soldiers. And I mean full. Every few feet or so there's a little huddle of two or three cops. That really makes me feel safe. [That was sarcasm.] Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against police officers. Some of my friends and family are on the force but having that many guns and violently trained people in that concentration is a little scary. I know they're professionals but nobody joins the police let alone the military because they want to avoid violence as much as possible. All I'm saying is that I hope nothing bad happens, or nothing that appears bad happens either. It's all fine and good to want to protect people and I guess people are a little on edge. I just hope that those people on edge don't get spooked or challenged by this "could-be-seen-as-over" reaction.

'Cuz I gotta get to work.

Oops, I filtered too much...

Porn filters expose flaws
Wow. So filters don't work. That's what everyone who had any sense was saying all along!!!! Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson are terrified of, well, to be honest, everything and "want some sort of protection", and ignorantly claim that these "filters are better than nothing". Possibly. Except there wasn't nothing before and there wouldn't be nothing. Pretty much all libraries, public and academic have policies and staff to guard against naughty surfing. The thing these misguided souls want protection against happens quite rarely in the majority of libraries. And thanks to ALA and librarians in general there is usually a tight rein on what people [including children] are allowed to use library computers for, despite the beliefs of Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative Washington, D.C., group that lobbied for filters.

The American Library Association is quite sinister... They believe that children have the right to look at anything at the library and do not want parents to know what their children may be up to.

The truly sad thing is that a lot of people don't realize what they are doing and probably won't any time soon. They think that "imperfect software is the 'price of protecting kids.'" No. Stupid kids is the price of protecting kids in this way. Using these filters prevent access to all sorts of related and possible important sites, withholding a substantial amount of information, making it even more difficult to use the internet for serious purposes, frustrating users and damaging the library's reputation as an information provider. All we're accomplishing by filtering out some [not all remember] of the porn is hurting ourselves.

Woodchuck to Eagle-Eye...

Today, at work, I saw the future of fashion. Nothing too fancy. Just some guy in a suit and sunglasses. But he had one of those hands free cell phone ear pieces too. The ones that stick in your ear and have that curved piece swooping down for the mic. So, no comments about not being able to use a cell phone in the library, but I looked at him and thought, "In the future, we'll all be secret service agents!"

Clip those wings...

Terror list snag nearly grounded Ted Kennedy
Ok, call me ignorant, but HOW can prominent U.S. senators and congressmen be put on a "you can't go on our flying thingies" list?!?!? They can be trusted to run the country but not to refrain from hijacking planes with a boxcutter? "Nice work on that 1996 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act, Senator Kennedy... Oh, by the way, you don't plan on blowing us up, do you?" Good way to focus your energies on the bad guys, TSA. I'm glad America has the best and the brightest working on protecting their airways.

And they couldn't tell him why! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a riot!

Wear me...

I am a Hood. I'm a dark horse, mysterious and sinister. People are never quite sure what to think of me, but at least I make them think. What Sort of Hat Are You?

'Tis the season...

I've added a bunch of stuff to my knowledge section. I've annotated the few links that were in each subsection and added a future projects list to each of the sections. AND I made a little table of contents for each section. You know, I give and I give... It's all for you, you know. Why, of course, you're welcome.

We better stop, hey, what's that sound...

Fight for the right to copy
Excellent summary and update concerning the ongoing and frustrating argument about peer-to-peer networks and record companies. I understand the record companies' point. They own the music, they don't want people listening to it without being compensated in some way. But music is meant to be listened to, enjoyed and shared. Think of some other way to get our money, fellas.

The author of the above article brings up a very good plan, a plan I myself have been doing, a plan I think everyone who likes the idea of file sharing and believes that limiting like the record companies want would damage the very idea of freedom of information and artistic sharing. Mr. Thompson and I both refuse to pay for any music online. If I have to limit my music availability to CDs and the radio then so be it. The idea of paying even a small amount for one piece of music seems like more trouble than it's worth. I feel the same way about books and newspaper articles and such. I like owning a book. I like owning a CD. They're physical and I have control over them. I can lend them to a friend and they are still mine. But to pay money for something that I could make a million copies of by pressing a button but not be able to share it without breaking the law seems foolhardy. They might as well shut down the internet. There won't be any communication of ideas tonight, folks.

Bluebird on my shoulder...

As I was walking to the train station early this morning, I was thinking what a wonderful day it was : not too bright, not too dark, not too cold, not too warm, early enough to be reasonably quiet, but not so early that I was in a walking coma. I was thinking, "I should write about this in my blog, and oh what a happy entry 'twill be!"

Then I saw the train in the station, earlier than I thought, yelled [in my head] CRAP! and started to run [or at least walk briskly]. "Perhaps it's just early and will sit at the station for a while, since it's not due to leave for another 4 or 5 minutes, plenty of time to get across the street, through the courtyard, and up the stairs." I decided to run anyway, not very trusting of NJT as I am, and of course, just as I got up the stairs the doors shut and the train pulls away. I check my schedule and my memory of the schedule is off by 3 minutes.

I wouldn't mind so much exceptin' I now had to wait for about an hour and probably get to work JUST on time as opposed to a leisurely long hour early as I had planned. To add insult to injury [always like picturing an example of that], the subway then goes local [tacking on another 10 minutes to an already close ride] and stops midtunnel here and there, apparently lost in a long branchless tunnel. I was only 10 minutes late getting into work but this was not the happy lil' entry I was hoping for.

The little search engine that did...

Playboy Interview: Google Guys
Good article. Long... but an interesting read. Although I am loathe to get too attached to any large company [they inevitably disappoint], Google seems to be a pretty good example to the corporate world, with their company motto "Don't be evil." And although now it's kinda stereotyped, it's still good to hear about billionaires who come to work in jeans and who actually enjoy their work and allow others to enjoy their work.

Didja notice the interviewers question about librarians? "Librarians must hate Google. Will you put them out of business?" Topical question... a lot of people often think this, but annoying just the same. Although Google does make searching for a lot of kinds of information easier and faster, it doesn't do everything and will never be able to do everything. At least not anytime soon. And although Mr. Brin is right when he says librarians like and use Google, sometimes I think librarians [and everybody else] use Google too much. There are just some things Google should not be used for. If Google ever does "replace" librarians, it would be because librarians have not made their usefulness obvious to enough people.

Whatta team...

'We're Done' Can be Predicted Before 'I Do'
This is pretty good news. [Mella and I are pretty good about differences in opinion. I tell her the way it's gonna be and she says yessir!... Just kidding.] Of course, this is also pretty obvious news. Basically it's saying that if, as a team, you can handle problems well, you can handle problems [that might harm your relationship] well. A equals A. Or rather "all A's are true", "all B's are A's", therefore "all B's are true". You're welcome from your local philosophy/math major.

Funosophy...

This interactive philosophy quiz is damn hard! No content or figuring out things, just a bunch of details like when was such and such published and where did so and so die. But there's other cool philosophy games and such on the main games page. Try 'em. [BTW, I just got the TPM medal of distinction... suckas!]

Alderaan or Dagobah...

Librarians For Terror
This article title really drew me in. I subscribe to the Library Link of the Day listserv and saw this in my inbox and knew I had to read this. And of course, I was instantly sorry I did. First of all, despite the fact that every word in this article is written in a blatantly biased [if not moronic] tone, as a good friend of mine said, they're claiming this of librarians?!?!? Are there not more important, more blameworthy [even if these foolish ideas are true], more dangerous culprits? Don't you have anything better to do, Lee Kaplan? Obviously not. It's like he [or she... Lee could be a girl's name I guess] has spent years picking tiny grains of events over several decades to piece together a case against the evil ALA empire. Lee seems to have a hard time both citing examples of his alegations and coming up with examples that have any convincing force. Ames Public Library?!?!? And don't get me started about the blatant lies [re: CIPA... "an ALA victory would have allowed pornography for children in public libraries"] and almost solely linking to self-serving articles and sites. Whew! Ok. I'm done.

Life is beautiful...

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No business like shoe business...

These are the shoes I have now. I was given them as a gift on my last birthday and they are just dying now. I destroy shoes. I don't normally have more than one pair that I wear regularly at any one time, so if I have a pair of shoes, THOSE are the ones I wear. And I really wear them. I walk a lot in my job. No one else doing what I do does but I do. So, to replace them I was thinking of these or these or these but I'll probably just settle for these.

Spybrarians...

Soviet-bloc dissidents condemn Castro : Call on reticent U.S. librarians to challenge Cuba on human rights
Article about how Castro is detaining librarians as revolutionaries and censoring and destroying library collections as subversive, and how IFLA and ALA are trying to help. Wow. I knew we were important but I didn't know we could be so dangerous! It's like we could rise up and really take over... Mwah-ha-ha!!!

Tip your bookstaff...

Fixing the First Job
Although true of a lot of newcomers in a lot of fields, I think it's more common for librarians to have these kinds of concerns about mindless policies, few rewards and old stick-in-the-muds at work. We're in an awkward place : a little academic, a little pedestrian, a little theoretical, a little practical, and public and private at the same time. We get the best and worst of all sorts of workplaces. Although the stereotype is the conservative old lady stamping books and handing out overdue notices, there is some weirdness in a lot of librarians. We often have tattoos and piercings or dress oddly [sometimes even at work], we have bizarre or unique interests, we are extreme in a lot of behavioural ways. Unfortunately, a lot of library administrators don't understand that and think that libraries [and librarians] can be run like any other organization. We're different. We're important. Be nice to us.

Facts and figuring...

Being a librarian [and therefore curious about everything] and a Canadian living in the United States [and therefore not blinded by American patriotism - although I may be blinded by Canadian patriotism if such a thing exists] this link from a recent entry on hitormiss.org caught my eye and so I had to read about an electoral college worst case scenario. So I was reading about this scenario and although I know little about the electoral college concept [about as much as your average person who lives here], I wanted to know more. I searched and found an interesting article here and although it did present both advantages and disadvantages of the electoral college system, it became quite clear that it was pretty biased, which is to be expected having been written by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director for the FEC Office of Election Administration. That's ok. We're all biased in one direction or another. But what bothered me is that statement that "in very close popular elections, it is possible that the candidate who wins a slight majority of popular votes may not be the one elected president -- depending (as in 1888) on whether his popularity is concentrated in a few States or whether it is more evenly distributed across the States." [page 16]. I had the feeling that a candidate could win the electoral college vote and lose the popular vote by much more than a slight majority. I looked up some of the numbers and did a few calculations and it seems to me that in a true worst case scenario, one party could get less than 25% of the popular vote and still win. If 51% of the people in each of the states but the top ten most populous ones [Georgia, New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, New York, Texas, California] voted one way [say for the Republicans] and everybody else voted the other way, then [in this incredibly unlikely event] the Republicans would win with 279 electoral votes. How can a system that has a potential result like this [no matter how unlikely] be rational? And this is just an extreme. Results could be less extreme and still have a shocking and obviously unpopular result like this.

Here's my calculations. Tell me if I made any mistakes. I did use 1999 population numbers but that shouldn't throw things off too much.

Father time...

Well, today's my birthday. I've reached the big three-oh. I asked for a cane for my gift but I didn't get it... yet.

But seriously, I don't really feel that old despite that fact that thirty is pretty much the age where you are truly considered an adult. I can't really get away with being young and foolish and playing games like was when I was a kid... Who cares, I'll do it anyway! Happy birthday to me!

Past times...

I don't know why I'm putting this on here but here's a few days of entries from my old site "emptynet". Mostly just stuff I did on the site [so it really doesn't have any relevance anymore but there's a couple interesting memories. The entry from the 16th of August below refers to the trip I made home during a major blackout in NYC. Everything was out and I had just as much trouble getting home as on 9/11.

• [20030902] I haven't done anything on this site for a while. I've been busy working on other things. But I just filled out my reading page with a few details and reviews. Don't mention it.
• [20030818] I finished quite a bit on
  my art page. I also worked on the bare bones of the learning page.
• [20030816] Well. Thursday (14th) was a adventure. Had to get from Jamaica,
  Queens (NYC, USA) to Elizabeth, NJ. Through a series of car, bus and train rides
  and a lot walking, I made it in 7 hours. Whew.
• [20030814] I've done a bunch
  of things over the past few days but most of it's been just clean-up, details,
  and reorganization. I had an odd lady on the telephone today... She asked me a
  question but said she didn't want it from the Internet. She doesn't trust the
  Internet. So I flipped the pages of a book into the receiver of the phone and
  gave her the answer from the Internet. She was satisfied.
• [20030811] I
  started on it yesterday but I finished my philosophy page (or at least gave it
  enough meat to call it finished for now) today.
• [20030809] Changed around
  the organizational structure of the site a little. Added some little pics here
  and there. Fixed some details. AND made a whole new page. You probably didn't
  even notice, did you? You take and you take, and I give and I give. *sniff*.
• [20030807] Started on a page for movies and television. It's not much but
  you've got to start somewhere.
• [20030806] Reworked the link collection.
  Check it out!
• [20030805] Ok. I'm doing a complete reconstruction of this
  site -- for the thousandth time. No more blog. I do it for a month or two and
  then I give up. So no more. I'm actually going to put in a whole bunch of areas
  in -- finally. So nothing new content-wise yet. Just style-wise. But soon.

That last entry is pretty ironic, don't ya think?

I don't even like coffee...

Finished reading "Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 21 Days" by Jonathan A. Watt, Andrew H. Watt and Jinjer Simon. Well, I didn't really finish it all, so much as I read most of it and skimmed the rest. C'mon! It's a manual! I got the gist of it! Now I know a bunch of JavaScript. Cool.

Put him in the comfy chair...

Oh, and sorry about the pause in posting. Three days without my words of wisdom... How did you all survive?!?!? I beg your forgiveness and promise never [or rarely] to do it again. I was busy! Please! *laugh*

Such power...

It's really things like Penguin trying to aggressively harass a woman out of her domain name and the "for dummies" books' people irrationally destroying an innocent amusing website that disappoint me and make me rethink my opinion about publishers. Naively, I have thought that, since they are so tied to the academic and intellectual community, that publishers [even the big mega-corporate ones] could be trusted a little better than your average money-grubbing business. Obviously not. Of course, it's situtations like these that make me glad to be a librarian. There's a lot of librarians in this world and a lot of us buy books for our institutions and ourselves. Think about your public image, my friends.

Let override, let overwrite...

Finished this very excellent work called "The Sky so Big and Black" by John Barnes. This is, on the surface, a story about a young girl and some of the difficult things she experiences while growing up, albeit along with her father roaming the surface of Mars. Before the story ends you are treated with a fascinating tale of social progress and the nature of humanity and individuality. Both layers are entertaining.

Yo heave ho...

Ok! Been working on my knowledge page and I think it's done. I'm probably going to add a few decorative graphics here and there but I think this is pretty cool as it is. What do you think? In other words, COMMENTS ARE MANDATORY FOR THIS ENTRY. Thank you and come again.

And despite this entry's title, no ho's were harmed in the making of this page.

No, Johnny, no...

Texas Sex-Ed Textbooks Face Contraceptives Battle
Texas school boards are planning on approving four sex-ed books that mention only abstinence as a safe-sex and contraceptive choice. Way to go, Texas! Remaining irrationally fanatical as always! Wonderfully ignorant but consistent Texas!

Track that patron and step on it...

Talking Tags : New high-tech labels help libraries track books, but worry privacy advocates
This article about putting RFID tags in library books is a good illustration showing how the majority of people simply do not know how to solve problems or deal with ethical issues. I like this technology and the idea of putting it to use to make libraries function more efficiently and prevent losses but worries that it will endanger privacy concerns cannot be argued with comments like, "I don't think there is a cause for immediate concern." So what if it's not problematic now? We are all aware that there is a future and that there are consequences for what we do, so, especially in the case of technology, what MIGHT be possible needs to be addressed. And besides, although I don't know much about the technology, I don't it's a big leap to suggest that maybe the fact that "RFID tags can transmit information to devices designed to pick up the signals and interpret them" could be disabled or garbled or something outside of the library. Such transmissions are not required outside of the library, so turn 'em off! It'll cost more money and trouble but it's better than losing thousands of dollars of materials or taking away people's rights.

We're all special in our way...

Special Librarians: Not Just By the Book
This is so true. Librarians [and not just the special ones] are still dogged by this stereotype and although in many cases it's true [there are a lot of stuffy frumpy librarians], it's true in a lot of fields as well. Special librarians are fortunately in areas that allow them to break out of this bias a little easier, being in smaller groups [often alone] and in environments not always academic. One of the things that hold us all back in this context is that, although technology is such an important part of libraries and information science, too many librarians are not IT-savvy enough. Work on it, people!

Remember... don't remember anything...

Does Hatch have iPod, TiVo, Google and Legos in his sights?
This is another case of good intentions from a freakin' moron... Yes, we certainly don't want people or companies out there talking people into breaking the copyright law [just like it's pretty much just as illegal to incite violent riots or convince someone to commit murder as it is to be part of the riot or be the murderer] but this is not the way to do it. It's like banning cars because they induce bank robberies because they are so useful in a getaway. The sad thing is that this is obviously an attempt to protect copyright and protect and motivate people to create and develop ideas but this will simply damage such intentions, making it less appealing to develop new information technologies. Check out Hatch's Hit List from Corante for a list of possible targets of the INDUCE Act. I think Libraries and the Human Brain should be added to the list.