Head Tale

Myths of the Developing World

“With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks a few myths about the “developing” world.
Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s world-renowned
Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that
brings vital global data to life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey,
CA. Duration: 20:35) – More TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com”

My only comment? Watch this video. Amazing. (Plus on a purely practical level, what an awesome presenter.)

(via Citadel of the Blogs, cross-posted at LibrarianActivist.org)

¶ Posted 12 March 2007 § Humour § Internet § Main Page § Politics § Video ‡ Comments (0) °

Five More Easy Ways To Improve Facebook

I'm writing an article on Facebook for Feliciter and have spent quite a bit of time on the site recently (er, even more than usual ) so I thought I'd update my list of easy ways to improve Facebook.

1. Let users see the list of friend requests that have been sent but not accepted yet or denied. There's a whole strange etiquette, different for everyone, about whether you accept all “add” requests or how you turn someone down (it's an either/or proposition which seems harsh – and which is maybe why they don't provide this information. But my earlier idea about letting you set-up levels of contacts – close friend, acquaintance, idiot from high school who still won't stop bugging me) would allow you to add everyone then internally manage them within your profile.

2. This isn't an issue for me but I wonder if women can enter their maiden name? This would be really useful for finding those elementary and high school friends who have since changed their name (assuming they weren't married in high school of course!) It's not just a gender thing either – people of both sexes change their names because of adoption or for other reasons so this could help you track down that funny looking musical guy from grade six who now goes by “Prince” (not a good example – I know “Prince” really was Prince's real name.)

3. I mentioned this is the comments of my other post but will add it here formally. Facebook could expand the range of options for how you know people, how you met people. For example, I'm getting added by a lot of people from Saskatchewan because I started a group called “Saskatchewan Mafia”. But there's no way to signify that I know these people by common geography and nothing else. “Met Randomly” is partway there but it would be nice to record exactly how you met randomly. Online? At a bus stop? Through a Facebook group (and if so, which one.) At a conference? And so on.

4. Did I mention that I think the groups could be made a lot more useful by feeding their activity into the NewsFeeds? Well, I'm mentioning it again because I think that's a huge step to making the site better. Right now, groups tend to be little more than an extra way to define yourself – I'll join one for a band I like, one for the college I went to and to further show my whimsical sense of humour, one funny one about “If this group gets 10 000 members, Bob will fight a bear” or whatever.

5. The best way to make Facebook better? If you joined! Yes, you. Reading this. I know the number of people reading this blog versus the number of people who I've added in Facebook has a great discrepancy.

I'm calling the article I'm writing for Feliciter “E-mail for the 21st Century” and really, that's what social networking sites like Facebook are becoming. Put aside any stereotypes you have about social networking sites being full of scantily-clad, twenty year old college kids posting pictures of themselves drinking beer (that's MySpace, not Facebook) and just try it out. Signing up is free, you'll likely have an instant network of dozens of people if you're a UWO student/grad/prof, and then just treat it like e-mail – check it daily, every couple days, whatever, and there you go.

If it is a bit of ageism keeping you from signing up (“Oh, that's for kids. I'm too old for that.”), why not look up an article called: Why I Registered on Facebook., By: Lemeul, John, Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 9/1/2006, Vol. 53, Issue 2

It's by a professor who did take the leap and join Facebook. Here's the opening lines of the article:

“Yeah, I did it. I registered for an account on Facebook.com.
I'm sure I protest too much when I say it went against my instincts and
better judgment to do so. Nothing's more embarrassing than a grown-up
trying to be one of the kids. But we can't let the students have all
the fun, now, can we?

A few of my graduate-school colleagues, now
working at other campuses where I rarely hear from them, had already
signed up and pestered me to get in the loop. They had misgivings about
it, too, they assured me, but quickly found that joining led to easy
networking and positive interactions with students.

And for what it's worth, I've had more contact with those far-flung former colleagues through Facebook these last few months than I'd had in years before via e-mail and phone.”

¶ Posted 11 March 2007 § Internet § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (8) °

FTRW 2007 – A Couple Last Notes on Freedom to Read Week

When I uploaded my FTRW interview to YouSendIt a couple days ago, I didn't realise they now required you to set-up an account before downloading files (boo!)

Quinn has very generously agreed to host the file for those of who who may have found this a barrier for whatever reason.

To save the file to your hard drive, right click on that “host this file” link and select “Save Link As” to save it to your hard drive. Or click the link to listen to directly – no password or account needed.

I also had one correction from the show (so far .) I said that Little Sister's went to court because they were importing material depicting underage sex. That's not true. I mixed up their Supreme Court case with another similar but different one that happened a couple years ago which was to determine if child pornography in the form of “works of the imagination” (ie. fictional stories or illustrations instead of photos) was illegal like “real” child pornography. (If I'm reading that article right, it turns out that the Supreme Court found that it isn't.)

Okay, one and a half corrections. I mentioned that I thought Little Sister's was going out of business. Their web site is still up so this doesn't appear to be the case but there were rumours they might cease operations since they lost their case and were therefore subject to massive legal bills.

Okay, two corrections. I guessed that FTRW had been around for 25 years. (It's 24 – not bad for a wild stab in the dark though!)

Oh, why not? Three corrections. I said that ALA's Banned Books week is in November. It's in September.

(How can you tell I'm used to the written medium where your words stay there forever to be contemplated and corrected as needed rather than the transitory nature of radio communications? But if I'm putting up the radio broadcast in this format where anyone can download or listen repeatedly, I might as well 'fess up to my misstatements.)

What else? I read from “Behold The Man” on the show and Wikipedia has a nice summary of the book although they give away the big “plot twist” (but so does the back cover of the edition I own – why do publishers do that? They're getting as bad as film studios with their trailers, I swear!)

The story of how I came to know and then own this book is fun. I was a big SF fan when I was younger and found the book while browsing at RPL one day. The back cover (which thankfully didn't give away the plot) grabbed my attention so I took it home and devoured it. At the time, I remember thinking it may just be the best book I'd ever read. It was one of those books where everything fits together magically and there are no loose ends. Plus the themes being explored – faith, mythology, religion, modern society, angst – had a big impact on me in a variety of ways.

I kept the book in the back of my mind but never re-discovered it until I organized a Freedom to Read Week event a few months after I started at the Writers Guild of Alberta. I asked local bookstore Pages (excellent independent bookstore if you're ever in Calgary!) to sell books at the event and during one of the readings intermission, I went over to check out their wares.

I saw the book on the table and blurted, “Sold!” Brad, the Pages employee working the table, goes “You know that book? Wow, I only brought it so I'd have something to flip through instead of Harry Potter when the table wasn't busy!”

I bought it and a couple others I'd been meaning to add to my library and that book has come to define FTRW for me – I talked about it non-stop while serving on the Calgary Freedom to Read Week committee, I read from it during our FTRW reading last year at UWO and again on the radio show.

So what I'm saying is that you (yes, you. I can see you out there at your computer reading this blog – screw Web 2.0, that's Web 3.0, baby!) should find this book and read it.

¶ Posted 10 March 2007 § Censorship § Main Page § Politics § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: book, freedomtoreadweek

"Your Name" Game

Saw this on meme on Facebook. Here are our answers (me first, Shea second and sometimes using her maiden name, Thompson, to keep it interesting)…

1.YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet and current street name)
Lamp Schneider
Tippy Schneider
(Sounds like a folk duo!)

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on mother's side first name, favorite candy)
Wally KitKat
Thelma Bounty Bar

3. YOUR “FLY GIRL/GUY” NAME: (first initial of first name, first two or three
letters of your last name)
J. Ham
S. Ham (or S. Thom)

4.YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite animal, name of high school)
Monkey Ihhs
Beagle Weyburn Comp

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Scott Indian Head
Lisa Regina

6. YOUR OPPOSITE SEX NAME: (name of dad/mom, cell phone Company you use)
Janet Luddite
Dennis No

7. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name)
Hampeenik
Thobecsno

8. YOUR JEDI NAME: (middle name spelled backwards, your mom's maiden name spelled backwards)
Ttocs Teep
Asil Daetskceb

9. YOUR STAGE NAME: (middle name, street you grew up on)
Scott Robison
Lisa Hughes

10. YOUR SUPERHERO NAME: (“The”, your favorite color, the first thing you see when you look to your left)
The Red Mirror
The Brown Mirror

Also on Facebook, there's a growing group of current LIS students who are planning to get their cutter numbers as tattoos.

We heard tales of others who had done this but no one (at least in my cohort as far as I know) did anything like this. But I've gone back and updated my “Library School Bondage” post because this is another fun idea.

Seek them out if you're interested in participating!

¶ Posted 10 March 2007 § LibrarySchool § Main Page § Meme ‡ Comments (5) °

Web 2.0's Potential Benefits To Society

MetaFilter is having one of its periodic debates about Web 2.0. As I mentioned the last time I talked about this, young, web-savvy types are supposed to be cynical about everything, especially what they see as marketing-driven buzzwords like Web 2.0 (read the thread for more insight.)

Still, one comment in that thread caught my eye, not least of all because it's in handy-dandy list format. (Yay, lists! They make information meaningful! )

IMHO,
web-double-ought is important because it's now a cultural movement,
albeit mostly vain, shallow, and superficial.

Instead of worrying about how you make money off of it, howsabout we look at the potential benefits to society?

1. UGC is a big deal to Old Media because it's free content. And just
like Hollywood, the “best” content will rise to the top and translate
to old media. But those millions of people who are “practicing”
writing, or YouTubing, or photoshopping, or collaborating on things are
cumulatively adding to society, and gaining skills that are
transferable in the workplace, plus they most likely are learning
something new that they are enjoying.

2. Wisdom of Crowds: Individuals are dumb, markets are efficient, and
crowds can be smart (and dangerous). But democracy is a messy thing. We
pay a lot of attention to stock markets, Vegas, futures markets, and
prediction exchanges, don't we?

3. Examining big data can mean new discoveries. It can also mean false positives (ie. MySpace sex offenders).

4. The greater the level of engagement (or interaction, for people),
the stronger their feelings, and the more likely they are to link it to
positive emotions. Doing online research to pick the camera you want
and reading the opinions of others may likely cause you to enjoy the
purchase more afterwards.

5. Network effects: When you are composing a MeFi post, how useful is
del.icio.us versus Google for finding those esoteric BOTW links?

6. Openness: More transparency = more trust. If you share everything,
then you have nothing to hide (within reason). And allowing other
people to “mashup” your data gives you new ways to look at things, new
insights, and potentially new opprtunities for monetization.

Web 2.0 might be a pretentious buzzword, but it's a part of the culture now, which means it can become a real force for change.

¶ Posted 09 March 2007 § Internet § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) °

Friday Fun Link – Scribd (March 9, 2007)

Scribd is a new site attempting to be the “YouTube of documents.”
It currently accepts .doc, .ppt, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .ps, .lit, .cia and
.nhl file formats (just seeing if you’re paying attention on those last
two!)

Right now, the site seems to be a mix of pirated e-books (there’s that YouTube connection!) and documents of the type your mom might forward to you by e-mail.

But
it definitely has potential as an information sharing medium. As one
commenter in the TechCrunch story says: “It’ll be interesting to see
what kind of content becomes popular. Term papers? Government
documents? Porn? All of the above?” If YouTube is the guide, “all of
the above” is probably the most likely. (Er, except porn. YouTube
doesn’t allow that. Uhm, at least that’s what a friend told me.)

Like YouTube, Scripd allows embedding of any documents. Here’s one called “18 Tricks To Teach Your Body.”

¶ Posted 09 March 2007 § FridayFunLink § Internet § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: book

Reference Question About Online File Storage/Sharing

Does anybody know a place to store a 30MB file for easy sharing online? I'd store it on my site – I have the space but know the file transfers would eat up my monthly bandwidth in no time.

I taped the FTRW interview yesterday off the air (memories of taping “American Top 40 with Casey Kasem” as a kid sitting there with a tape recorder and the radio turned up loud) and was going to put it up temporarily until I could get a proper digital copy.

I thought about just putting a single photo over top of it and making it a video file to upload to YouTube but they apparently no longer have “Director” accounts to let you put up videos over 10 minutes (the interview is 30 min.)

I saw Odeo billed as a “YouTube for audio” but they don't do any hosting of files (which means they're not the “YouTube for audio” in my mind.)

There's a new site called “Scripd” that's trying to be a YouTube of documents (PDF, doc, PPT, txt, XLS) but although they seem to have a option to listen to any documents on the site as an MP3 (automated text-to-voice?), they don't allow you to upload MP3's of spoken word or anything else directly.

(On that note, somebody observed that as the Net grows on an exponential basis, instead of a single search engine, there might be these “category” sites that are the place to go for all video, all audio, all documents, all information relevant to a single subject, whatever it is. Interesting theory.)

File hosting/sharing sites like box.net (which I otherwise like) have upload limits – no files bigger than 10MB on that one. YouSendIt only hosts a file for 7 days and has some other limitations as well although nothing that would affect me regarding this particular file.

I could see how much WinZip or another archiving program would shrink it although I don't like that this puts an extra step on the end user.

I didn't spend any time trying to compress it myself. I recorded it at 128kps but it probably doesn't need to be that high for a voice file.

Hmm, maybe I'll
just put it on YouSendIt for the time being and anybody who wants it
can grab it now. If you're reading this and the file's not available
anymore (after March 15 I think) but you want ot hear it, e-mail me and I can use YouSendIt again to re-send it to you.

¶ Posted 08 March 2007 § Censorship § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (3) ° Tagged: freedomtoreadweek

Kiss Your Keyboard and Mouse Goodbye?

This is very possibly how you will interact with your computer in the near future. Wow.

(Quinn, who has a great post today on why he blogs, found it funny that I equated the Flames 2004 run with other major milestones in my life such as graduation and marriage in my recent “About Me” post. So I just have to note I found this link on a message board for the Calgary Flames!)

[Edit: Here's an artsy version of the demo.]

¶ Posted 07 March 2007 § Internet § Main Page § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: television

You Can Say Scrotum on the Radio (and Nut Sack too!)

Just a reminder – the replay of my appearance on the “Book Chick” radio show on local community radio talking about Freedom to Read Week last week will be replayed tomorrow at noon, Saskatchewan time (11am Alberta time, 1pm Ontario time.) You can listen in at: www.cjtr.ca

If you don't catch that, I'm hoping to have a podcast of the show up on this blog in a week or three.

¶ Posted 07 March 2007 § Censorship § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: freedomtoreadweek

About Me (A Timeline of My Life)

Following up on my promise from awhile ago to add an “About Me” page to this blog, I decided to do something a bit different than the traditional, paint-by-numbers, paragraph-long business-style bio or the fun but frivolous, paragraph-long informal version that many web sites have (er, no offense meant if that's what your web site has. )

I used to keep a timeline for my life's major events on my original web page so thought that might provide a good basis for this About Me page. The major new feature are the photos to illustrate each major life milestone. (You can also see a slideshow of all photos at full-size plus some extra photos I didn't end up using for this page although they aren't in chronological order as I can't figure out how to get Flickr to sort photos by filename.)

I've been working on this for awhile but Shea's and my anniversary sounds like as good of a day to post it as any. Enjoy!

1973		Age 0 – Hello world!
1974		Age 1 – Eat, shit, sleep. Repeat. (Although this photo looks like I might've accidentally added a comma between “eat” and “shit” that didn't need to be there, I assure you those are yams I'm eating!)
1975		Age 2 – Eye Surgery (x2).
1976		Age 3 – I don't know – playing with tractors?
1977		Age 4 – Still playing with tractors.
1978		Age 5 – Kindy-garten and I break my foot on the first day. (Also, my first love – the teacher!)
1979		Age 6 – I start playing hockey (although not as a goalie – this is just me trying out my cousin's equipment.)
1980		Age 7 – “Star Wars” and later, “The Empire Strikes Back” hit my life like a blizzard on the Planet Hoth. (Er, in non-geek speak, they had a really big effect.)
1981		Age 8 – Move to the big kids' end of the elementary school – gotta act tough!
1982		Age 9 – Grade four – first year with more than one teacher. Also, apparently no longer just acting tough as I join a local karate club.
1983		Age 10 – Braces then a retainer then a million dollar smile (well, a couple grand anyhow.) I think I went for a year without smiling.
1984		Age 11 – First big trip of my life – a family trip to Hawaii.
1985		Age 12 – Our family does a houseboating trip to La Ronge in northern, Saskatchewan. Still the coldest water I've ever swam in.
1986		Age 13 – Move to the high school (in our small town, kids go to Elementary school from Kindergarten to grade six then move to the high school from grade seven to twelve.) Also, my one and only award for brains – a Proficiency Cup for having a 90%+ avg. I couldn't find a photo of that auspicious occasion so this is a shot of me getting a Luther College Entrance Scholarship in 1991 which is another award for brains I guess although for some reason, that one didn't mean as much. Jaded, I guess.
1987		Age 14 – Really enjoying English classes more and more as I start to think about what direction I might go in a few years when I'm done high school. This photo was undated and I think I'm older than 14 in it but a picture of me coming out of the RPL's Central Branch seems to fit here.
1988		Age 15 – Illegal Drinking Age (have my first beer at a party after swearing I would NEVER EVER drink. Oops!) You can tell I was obviously already a wildman. Look at how I belted out “Mary Had A Little Lamb” (Also, my first job as a gas station attendant at the local ESSO.)
1989		Age 16 – Driver's License – lookout world! (This is my first car – a Malibu Classic I paid $600 for – but it wasn't me that crashed it. My roommate borrowed it a few years after I got it and was smoked by a drunk driver late one night.)
1990		Age 17 – Extended family car trip to Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and back.
1991		Age 18 – High School Graduation (technically at 17 since I'm a July baby.) Plus I gain the Right to Officially Cancel the Vote of the Guy Who Voted Before Me
1992		Age 19 – Legal Drinking Age (although this is a picture of me around age 25. Any shots of me drinking when I was younger are too embarrassing to put online. And this coming from a guy who put the next photo up which prompted his own wife to ask, “Is that a hat you're wearing or your real hair?”)
1993		Age 20 – During the course of my undergrad degree, I switch from my initial Business Admin major which became Psychology which became Film which became English which is the degree I ended up convocating with.
1994		Age 21 – Trip to Las Vegas to celebrate my 21st birthday. There's a really cool shot of me playing Blackjack in a casino but I can't find it so instead, you get a shot of a surprise party my parents threw me for my 21st birthday. And yes, that is a cake in the shape of a computer. (But I was really cool in that Vegas photo, honest!)
1995		Age 22 – One of five out of fifty plus applicants selected for a semester-long England Exchange thru U. of R. (and the happiest four month stretch of my life…up until I visit another city called London.)
1996		Age 23 – Graduate with a four-year BA – English in five years (okay, four and a half)
1997		Age 24 – My first real job – Web Site Designer for the Saskatchewan Publishers Group as part of a work-training program called the Graduate Employment and Mentorship Project (my major contribution is suggesting “GEM Project” might be a better way to refer to it than “GEMP”)
1998		Age 25 – Start dating the beautiful and talented Shea Thompson (or did I? A running joke is that her mom still doesn't know when we started dating since we began our relationship as roommates.)
1999		Age 26 – Trip to Mazatlan, Mexico with Shea.
2000		Age 27 – Leave the SPG and move to Calgary, Alberta where Shea's accepted a position as an RN at the Alberta Children's Hospital. I am hired by the Writers Guild of Alberta and one of my jobs is to “fix” the door prize draws in favour of any well-known Canadians who might attend the events I organize.
2001		Age 28 – Buy a new car, a condo and an engagement ring in rapid succession right around the time I turn 29.
2002		Age 29 – Trip to the Mexican Riviera in March for our wedding followed by a blast of a Mexican-themed reception in Shea's hometown of Creelman, SK in August.
2003		Age 30 – A big highlight of this year is the Calgary Flames improbable march to the Stanley Cup Finals and all the related excitement in the city, especially along the “Red Mile” which is just a few blocks from our condo.
2004		Age 31 – Move back to Saskatchewan, buy a house, start a new job. Get to partake in the province's incredible Centennial celebrations throughout the year.
2005		Age 32 – After nearly 10 years in the literary non-profit sector, I decide to pursue a new (but definitely related) career that I'd always had in the back of my mind as a possible profession. I am accepted into the Master of Library & Information Science Program at the University of Western Ontario in late 2005, and ironically, nearly 10 years to the day after my first trip to London in 1995, I'm going back – only it's to (little) London, Ontario this time.
2006		Age 33 – Guess who's pregnant? We bring home a pretty awesome souvenir from our year in Ontario!
2007		Age 34 – Pace Owen joins our family on May 19, 2007.
2008		Age 35 – Accept position as Organization Development Specialist with Regina Public Library
2009		Age 36 – Out myself (as if it was a big secret) as an NDP supporter while volunteering for Ryan Meili's campaign for the leadership of the Saskatchewan NDP.