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Ha Ha Ha

To combine this as both a baby and a library-related post, I'll go back to an entry from a couple weeks ago where I talked about my favourite presentation from my year in library school which was on the topic of online broadcasting. 

One of the main points I discussed in the presentation is how we're now at a point where web-based video clips are picking up audiences that rival their traditional broadcast counterparts which, in turn, will be one of the main factors in the shift from television as the dominant communications medium in our society to the Internet. 

One example I used in my presentation was the daytime talk show, The View, which averages about 2 million viewers per episode but how a clip where Danny DeVito appeared after a night of heavy drinking had amassed nearly that many views within a couple days after being posted.  And unlike traditional broadcasts where something is lost the minute it's shown (unless it reaches syndication or gets a release on DVD – both unlikely scenarios for a morning gabfest), this clip would continue to gain views as it circulated as a meme within  cyberspace and beyond.  Another related factor was the back and forth with traditional broadcasting.  For example, a supper news broadcast might mention the incident, sending even more viewers to the Internet to view the clip.  Or someone who only saw the clip online might watch “The View” to see more about what happens on the program.  (CBS entered an arrangement with YouTube to post clips from their late night programs and saw significant gains in their ratings.)

Which is all a long way to say, can you believe that eight million people have viewed the clip I linked to above?  Wow!

Posted 29 January 2007 § Baby § Library § Main Page § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Oscar's First Photo

We had an ultrasound today.  Unfortunately they didn't provide VHS or DVD video nor allow us to record even a short clip ourselves (it is a diagnostic procedure after all.  But man, are they ever missing out on a guaranteed cash cow if they provided that option!) 

Anyhow, they did give us some photos including the first 3-D shot of “Oscar Beckham Hammond”.  (Uhm, I think I mentioned before that Oscar isn't the actual name we've picked.  Neither is “Beckham” but it is new.  I thought baby needed a middle name too, that, like Oscar for his/her early grouchiness, reflected his/her current athletic regime of kicking Shea in the kidneys every five minutes!)   Here's Oscar…



Shea's got a few more on her Flickr account.  She also finally found the perfect t-shirt.  Too bad they only had small sizes and it won't fit in a few more weeks.  (And on a completely personal note, doesn't she look smokin' in this photo? )


Posted 27 January 2007 § Baby § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (4) °

Friday Fun Link – "Homelessness: It's No Game" (Jan 27, 2007)

Beyond the irony of that I’m writing about a game called
“Homelessness: It’s No Game”, there are other problems with this Flash
project. But before I get to that, here’s some background from the
designer:

“I created this game
for a graduate-level course on game design I took at the School of
Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University*. The intent
of the game is to raise awareness of the situation faced by the
homeless, as well as to aid in my research into the effectiveness of
serious videogames.”

Although the concept has lots of
potential, the execution (at least in the current version) is lacking.
This Flash-based game asks you to simulate life on the streets by
taking on the role of a homeless person. You wander a small area of a
city picking up bottles and other items to sell, panhandling, dealing
with hunger pangs and a heavy bladder, visiting parks, diners and
churches while avoiding trouble and trying to earn “esteem” points by
your actions.

You have a 24-hour window (accelerated obviously) to earn
24 esteem points. If you do, you “win” the game. If not…well, I don’t
know what happens if not since I’ve played the game four times and
never “lost” once (I think my record was raising my esteem enough was
before 10 hours were up out of the 24.)

The author promises
future revisions to improve the game in various ways – a larger area to
explore, more visual elements, localization options and unique
characters. Hopefully this comes to pass as the game has potential to
at least give a taste of what it is like to be on the streets – even if
only virtually and from behind the safety of a computer screen. And
it’s definitely a bit more meaningful than games dedicated to stealing cars, killing enemies or eating magic mushrooms that give you amazing jumping powers.

Posted 26 January 2007 § FridayFunLink § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Head Tale – Anniversary Survey

Today is 11 months to the day that I started this blog.  And sure, if I wanted to be like everybody else, I could wait another month to post this on my much more appropriate one year anniversary.  But since I'm thinking of it right now, I'll post it now instead…

I've created a really quick ten question survey about this blog and would appreciate if you would take a couple minutes to fill it out. 

This blog software gives me aggregate information for all visitors – how many come, when they come, where they come from and stuff like that – but this is a way for me to get some more specific details about how people get to this blog, what they read when they're here and so on. 

Again, if you can take a couple minutes to fill out the survey, I would really appreciate it. 

Posted 26 January 2007 § Blog § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Bend It Like Oscar!

Today's the first day we felt Oscar kick!  Well, Shea's been feeling it internally for a few weeks.  But today's the first time we could feel the thump on the outside.  According to Shea, the kid likes to kick like nobody's business.  (Hopefully a $250 million soccer contract is in his (or her – must be gender positive!) future.) 

Oh my god!  Now, Shea held her breath and I was able to see the baby thumping right under her skin.  Jesus, there's an alien in there!! 

Posted 26 January 2007 § Baby § Blog § Main Page ‡ Comments (1) °

LibraryThing Redux (and a glimpse into my real world book collection)

I just wrote about LibraryThing last Friday (indirectly when mentioning a new competitor it has called Shelfari.)  But that entry inspired me to revisit the site and my explorations since then have, in turn, inspired a more in-depth post about LibraryThing. 

First off, for anyone who doesn't know, LibraryThing is a Web 2.0 web site that automates the process of adding your book collection faciliates interaction with people who share similar tastes.  I think you can enter 200 or so books for free before having to buy a $10 annual membership or a $25 lifetime one.  (A percentage of the site was also bought by ABEBooks.com so it's got a fair bit of stability and shouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.)

I'm going to go back a bit and explain a bit about how I tend to use hot new sites like this one.  Even though I consider myself fairly  “techie” in a lot of ways, I often tend to be a late adopter as well.  I'd been reading MetaFilter for years but was only inspired to join  after September 11 and I *had* to make comments on what happened that day.  I only really got into Digg last year even though I've been aware of the site for awhile. I only started a blog last year (I have a Blogger account I created in 2001 though it had a grand total of one post.  And that post is a joke about how I'm three years behind the trends by starting a blog at that time – which is pretty much the same joke I used in my very first entry when I started this blog in 2006!)  I resisted RSS for a long time but now love it. 

It's not just hot new web sites and cutting-edge Internet technologies that I sometimes am slow to come around to.  I only bought my first digital camera and my first MP3 player this year.  And I'd joined LibraryThing over a year ago (Sept 15, 2005) according to my Profile page on that site but added a couple books initially then promptly forgot about it. 

But as I said, writing about LibraryThing and its newest competitor (and having some time on my hands) inspired me to revisit the site.  Also, seeing “What I'm Reading” widgets on a few blogs I visit regularly made me want to add something similar to my site (which meant, of course, that a catalogue of just two books would never do.) 

So I've added 100 books so far – mostly my favourites but also with a bias towards ones that had cover images already associated with them since that's the only type of book that I've setup the widget to display. 

(Slight tangent: I looked up the difference between setup, set-up and set up the other day and have promptly forgotten the difference – I think one is a noun, one is a verb and one is an adverb? For the purposes of this blog, I will ignore proper grammar and use whichever one looks best at the moment I type it, similar to how I reserve the right to use both “color” and “colour” interchangeably, often within the same entry.)

I've got a lot of work to do if I want to add every book I own.  Here's a photo of the library in my office (it's usually not that messy but I still haven't unpacked a lot of the paperwork/boxes we brought back from London.  That's the curse of selling off all your bookshelves, desks, etc. but keeping all the stuff that would normally go on them!) 

In addition to the books shown, I have another bookshelf in the office that's just to the right of the camera, one upstairs (and Shea has one specifically for her cookbook collection).  And on top of that, I have another college-style bricks and 2×4's bookshelf with a similar number of books in my parent's basement.  (That phrase about real world stores being “bricks and mortar” has a definite relevance when thinking about my book collection!)


The question everyone who comes over inevitably asks if “Have you read all of those?” and the inevitable answer is: No, of course not – I read fairly fast but I'm not a speed reader by any means.  “So why do you have so many books?”

Well, I just like books.  I like how they look and the potential they have, even just sitting on a shelf.  Also, part of my problem is that I can't resist them.  I go to garage sales and used book sales and bookstores and will basically take anything that looks semi-interesting and/or is cheap. 

I was out at the local technical college the other day and they had a book sale going on.  I bought a book on cardiac nursing for Shea, a book on the government policy in the 1970's in Saskatchewan, a book on book-related careers and a slightly outdated sociology textbook that would probably cost $80+ if new.  Grand cost to me for all four books?  A loonie!

I also get a lot of free books – from working with publishers and writers, from doing book reviews.  I've belonged to book clubs.  I've been to BookExpo Canada twice and probably brought home a few dozen books from it each time.

Hmmm, can anybody make out anything embarrassing or incriminating in that photo?  I hope not!  (It's like the “Where's Waldo” of messy bookshelves – see if you can spot the Elvis biography!  Hint: top right.  And worse, there are a few of them.   In my defence, I borrowed them from my dad when I was working on a screenplay when I was participating in the Calgary Screenwriters Group.)

That actually leads nicely into my next point.  As much as I love what sites like LibraryThing (and LastFM for music and Digg for news and so on) offer in terms of being to see what other people with similar tastes are reading/listening to, the flip side is that you have to put yourself out there as well to be effective. 

I don't know if anybody pays attention to the “Recently Played” songs on the right side of this blog but I know there have been times when say, a Paris Hilton song, would pop up there after I listened to it.  Then I'd go to CLA for a week and it's be stuck there as if that was the only song I ever listened to that week.  Embarrassing but I mean, I did listen to it (and didn't even mind it that much.  It can't be Sujfan Stevens all the time, right?) 

The same with the books I've put in LibraryThing.  I debated only adding the books I wanted to “represent” me – the cool ones and the controversial ones, the literary ones and the legendary ones.  But that's not really the purpose of the site, again, especially if you want it to be as effective as it can be.  For instance, the more books you enter from your library, the more likely you are to find people with similar books in their libraries.  (The person I link to has 5 books out of the 131 they've catalogued in common with me.)

So my goal is to upload all of my books someday (if you're not a member, it's very easy.  Type in the name of the book – or author or ISBN or whatever – and the site queries the Library of Congress or Amazon or a University catalogue or another site of your choice – then presents a list.  You select your book from the list and it, along with all relevant information, is added to your profile.  If you have a laptop with wireless to take right to the bookshelf, it is an incredibly fast process.)

We learned at library school that you should never be embarrassed
abouty our reading so, as I said, I'm going to upload everything…eventually.  My
biggest secret shame is that I used to be a huge pro wrestling fan
growing up (Stampede Wrestling was inevitably a big part of your childhood if you were a boy growing up on the Prairies in the 80's.)  And I'm sure that the few wrestling books I own aren't even the most embarrassing things in my collection.  Some people look down their noses at any plebian who would own a Stephen King paperback.  I (not Shea) own at least a few Harlequin romance novels.  I own way more self-published books than is healthy for your sanity.

There's still a lot of exploring left to do.  Can you classify books as “read”, “to read”, “own”, “to own”?  That would be handy.  Tagging would probably do it, I guess.  But I'd like the option to keep that information private – maybe I don't want everything about my reading habits out there!

So anyhow, this has turned into yet another long, rambling, middle of the night entry.  But getting to the whole reason I decided to write about LibraryThing – when I was entering some books tonight and exploring the site some more, I realised they now also have social networking functions, one of which is groups.  So you can join a group of like-minded people – based on genre or occupation or whatever – and post messages to a discussion board, see what the others in the group are reading, etc. 

Here's a group called “Librarians Who LibraryThing” (and really, this could've been a single line entry consisting of those seven words if I wasn't such a windbag tonight.)  Librarians Who LibraryThing happens to also be the largest group on LibraryThing with twice as many members as its next most popular one (a group for SF fans.)  Librarians rock! 

Posted 24 January 2007 § Internet § Main Page § Photo § PopCulture ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

I Want A Firefox Extension To…

One of the beautiful things about Firefox as a browser is how customizable it is.  According to my stats, the vast majority of people reading this blog use that browser so I thought I'd pass along this site that I had bookmarked: I Want A Firefox Extension To… which is a collection of over 200 extensions that add functionality to the Firefox browser in areas from Ad Blocking to Links to Weather.

I think I may have listed this elsewhere on the blog already but there are some new ones on the list since then so here is a list of extensions I have installed.  My absolute favourites are in bold italic (I'm too lazy to add links to all of them but just do a Google search on any of their names and you'll find them) :

Adblock
– blocks ads (duh)

AddBookMarkHere
– helps control where bookmarks get added in your folder structure

AlwaysRememberPassword
– just like the name says, useful for banking sites and others that tend to clear your password, even if you told the browser to remember it.

Answers
– ALT-right click on any word to get a definition and other information

Colourful Tabs
– makes your tabs different colours which helps usability way more than it sounds like it should! 

CopyURL+
– allows you to copy to the clipboard the current document's address
along with additional information such as the document's title, the
current selection or both.

CustomizeGoogle
– just like it says, provides all kinds of hacks to make Google more usable

delicious
– adds buttons to your navigation bar for quickly adding bookmarks to Delicious

DOMInspector
– provides easy access to meta information about a web page

DownThemAll
– download all links on a page.  Useful for sites that have things like multiple MP3 files or multiple programs to download.

Foxylicious
– combines your Firefox and delicious bookmarks

FoxyTunes
– provides controls for your media player within your browser

GDirections
– provides right click access directly to Google Maps when you highlight an address on a web page

GooglePreview
– provides thumbnails of web pages in your Google results

GoogleToolbar
– adds a toolbar to provide direct access to all Google functions

IETab
– allows you to switch to Internet Explorer without leaving the Firefox browser.  Useful for those sites that are still only accessible in IE.

MetaFilthy
– tracks various information about your reading habits on MetaFilter

PDFDownloader
– provides a few extra options for reading PDF files

Screengrab!
– allows you capture an entire web page as a graphic image rather than just what's displayed in the browser window as is the case with a “Print Screen” grab.

SearchEngine Ordering
– gives you control of how your search extensions are ordered

TabMixPlus
– gives you complete control over all aspects of your tabbed browsing

Unplug
– easily grab video clips from YouTube, Google Video and other video sites

Posted 24 January 2007 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Alternatives to 'R" Rated Movies For A Business Ethics Course?

A professor teaching a business ethics course assigns certain films (“Thank You For Not Smoking”, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, “Wall Street”) but has had a request for alternate films from a student who doesn't watch 'R' rated movies. 

The professor posts a question on AskMetafilter looking for alternate selections but in addition to giving suggestions, people respond with proposals covering a range of ideas from assigning the print-version of the scripts, assigning a paper instead of allowing the student to view alternate films,  or simply requiring the student to watch the assigned films or suffer the stated consequences (lower grade or whatever.)

There's no explanation why the student won't watch R rated films – one poster speculates that they might be religious, another speculates they're just trying to get out of work.

There are a couple good quotes in the thread defending each point of view:

“Don't most ethical violations come from seeing oneself as an exception to a rule somehow?”


vs:

“If
they can make a solid case for it (and isn't that what most of
business/professional life is all about), then I'll allow them to come
up with an alternative…[plus] their ability
to find a creative solution to the issue and pitch it to me
successfully was a teaching opportunity in itself.”


Unless I had more details, I'm not sure what I would do if I were the professor in this situation.  It's possibly a bit more work for the prof to come up with alternate suggestions but if they're willing to do so and can find films with themes along similar topics to the ones assigned, if it doesn't unfairly unbalance the class in terms of both workload and discussion, I don't see why something like this should be a problem. 

I had a similar situation in my “Collection Development in Academic Libraries” course – I wanted to focus on public library-related issues for my assignments and approached the professor about doing this.  After some discussion, we reached a compromise where I could do 1-2 of the five assignments on public library-related topics.  I ended up only doing one like this, (I think) it helped add a different dimension to the class when I presented it, and in retrospect, I'm glad I wasn't allowed to focus completely on public library topics because as much as I want to, there's no guarantee I'll end up working in a public library so the exposure to academic topics has been invaluable (I got a slightly panicked IM from a classmate – “tell me everything you know about collection development in academic libraries!” right before they went for a job interview.  I was able to send them the assignments I'd done for that class and hopefully it helped them out a bit.)

As for the issue at hand about respecting the sensitivities of people, I'm reminded of what a friend on the Writers Guild of Alberta mailing list wrote around the time of the Dutch “Mohammed” cartoons controversy. 

“Just because you can give offense, does it mean that you should?” 

I'm usually a “people should be able to see and do anything” and it's the other person's problem if they're offended. But this person was heavily involved in the Calgary Freedom to Read Committee and I respected them a great deal.  So that perceptive comment really stuck with me.

Here's a link to the full thread:
PG Alternatives for R-rated Business Ethics movies | Ask MetaFilter

Posted 23 January 2007 § Censorship § Main Page ‡ Comments (6) ° Tagged:

RoryGate – Did the NHL "Fix" The All-Star Game?

The NHL All-Star Game is coming up in a couple days.  This year is the first All-Star game since 2004 (2005 was missed due to the lockout, 2006 was skipped due to the Winter Olympics) and many saw it as an opportunity for the league to continue their rebound from the bad feelings caused by the lockout, highlight some of their brightest young stars like Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, and reach out to the fans by allowing them to vote for the starting line-up soley via an online system for the first time ever. 

To encourage fans to be involved, the NHL allowed fans to vote as many times as they wanted.  Unfortunately, one fan decided to take advantage of this rule by starting a write-in “Vote For Rory Fitzpatrick” campaign (Rory is a journeyman defenseman with the Vancouver Canucks who, as of today, has a whopping 1 goal and 2 assists this year.)  The campaign caught on with fans and the media across North America and Rory quickly vaulted up to one of the starting positions.  Part of the reason for this was some tech-savvy fans who wrote bots that thwarted the NHL's (feeble) security measures and automated the process of voting multiple times for Rory.  (An analogy might be that they saw the “take a penny/leave a penny” jar and took all fifty pennies in it to buy a chocolate bar – technically “legal” but definitely not in the spirit of the penny jar.) 

But, even with all of the fan support, both human and automated, when the final results were announced, Rory wasn't among the starters named. 

There are obviously two sides to this – people like Wayne Gretzky were on record that this campaign made the league look like a joke (even though the All-Star game is often viewed as a joke anyhow by hockey purists) while others thought “Vote For Rory” was a great media hook that would only serve to stir interest in the league. 

But now, a report in the online magazines, Slate, uncovers evidence that indicates the NHL may have purposely distorted the online voting so that Rory didn't win a spot in the starting line-up.  Reminiscient of the electronic-voting scandal during the 2000 Presidential election, this is a black mark on the NHL if true. 

It's been almost two years since a lockout
almost ruined the sport. Now the league has baited, misled, and
rejected its fans. The NHL has hit a new low. It's turned the All-Star
Game—an event that's supposed to be about giving people what they
want—into a repudiation of the game's most loyal supporters.



http://www.slate.com/id/2157741/

Posted 22 January 2007 § Main Page § Sports ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged:

Hanging Out In Tommy Douglas' Basement

After Shea got off work last night, we drove down to Weyburn to visit her parents for the weekend and I had a busy day today.  I met with a local librarian (and former FIMS grad) for a long chat this morning, made mis-shapen buns this afternoon, then met with another local librarian, who is also a FIMS grad and was my professional mentor during my last semester, for drinks tonight.  (I'd specifically requested a mentor from Saskatchewan knowing I'd be coming back so that it would be nice to have somebody who was more connected to this province than the Ontario-based mentors I'd had in my first two semesters.)

Shea's uncle is fairly involved with the NDP so I had a pretty cool experience as well when he invited me to join him at the AGM for the local federal NDP constituency association in the afternoon. It was held in the basement of the original church where Tommy Douglas began his career.  Following the meeting, I was able to go up and see the church (which is now a performing arts centre) and the small Tommy Douglas museum they have in the building. 

In addition to the regular business of an AGM, the group are beginning to gear up for an election which will likely come in the next few months, possibly as soon as the summer.  They're looking for ideas for candidates, especially new blood, and I even had one old timer lean over during this discussion and ask, “So, you live in Weyburn?” 

I didn't have the heart to explain to him that by having a blog, my chances of ever getting elected to any public office are less than zero.  So I just told him the truth – that I lived in Regina!   I still got to hang out with Tommy a bit though…

Posted 21 January 2007 § Main Page ‡ Comments (3) °