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Made it…barely.

The “daily post” streak continues although I probably have done a few “after midnight posts for the previous day” in the last couple months.  If it's time stamped 11:59pm, that's probably a pretty big clue. 

I think it'll be a big step when I just let the streak go, I think.  In the meantime, here's a link provided by Bradtastic (link on side bar):  Nation's Gays Demand Right To Library Cards | The Onion – America's Finest News Source

Posted 16 January 2007 § Blog § Humour § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

I Did Not Know That Yesterday

Here's a new blog that regularly posts answer to reference-type questions.  (via MetaFilter)

Posted 14 January 2007 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (6) °

My Personality Type

ENFP –  “Journalist”. Uncanny sense of the motivations of others. Life is an exciting drama. 8.1% of total population.

Free Jung Word Choice Test (similar to MBTI)
personality tests by similarminds.com

Extroverted (E) 83.33% Introverted (I) 16.67%
Intuitive (N) 79.17% Sensing (S) 20.83%
Feeling (F) 83.33% Thinking (T) 16.67%
Perceiving (P) 58.33% Judging (J) 41.67%


(via Amy On The Web)

I always suspected I should be across the hall with the journalists rather than hanging out with the librarians. 

I'll always remember one of the in-depth (ie. not Myers-Briggs) work aptitude tests I did in Grade 12 prior to going to University.  My top result?  Hospital Administrator which probably isn't too far off library administrator when you think about it.  Even better is that my two lowest ranked results were farmer and nurse – my parents' two occupations!

Posted 14 January 2007 § Jobs § Main Page § Meme ‡ Comments (7) °

Friday Fun Link – 2007's Best Careers (Jan 12, 2007)

US News names their 25 Best Careers for 2007 and Librarian is right up there – although we get a “C” rating for both “job outlook” and “prestige”. (Physician’s assistant on the other hand…)

Posted 12 January 2007 § FridayFunLink § Jobs § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

The Ultimate Library Movie

Mike M. responded to my “Top 10 Memories of FIMS” post by suggesting I should write a library screenplay (noting the beautiful irony of doing a movie rather than a book.) 

Here is my response:

“Party Girl” didn't really do it so I think there's still room for a
really good library movie – either a dark indy-Canadian type flick,
starring Eric Peterson as the crusty head librarian with a heart of
gold and Sarah Polley as the ditzy but sensitive new librarian hire who
gets the library out of its funding cut crisis via innovative programs such as “Singles Night in the Stacks” and the “Rockin' Your
Books Off” concert series which triples patron visits and rallies community
support saving the library.



It could also be a big Hollywood romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks as
the crusty head librarian with a heart of gold and Cameron Diaz as the
ditzy but sensitive new librarian hire who reaches out to the people
with her innovative programs such as “Singles Night in the Stacks” and
the “Rockin' Your Books Off” concert series with her and Tom Hanks
accidently on purpose hooking up at the first event and partying down
as the end credits roll during the second one.

He also suggested the title should use the words “wild” and/or “crazy”.  So…

Title if it's an indy?  Librarians in the Wild
Title if it's a blockbuster?  These Librarians Are Crazy!
(And because it's so obvious, title if its a different genre? Librarians Gone Wild)

(I gotta work on my log lines – I'm outta practice.)

Posted 12 January 2007 § Humour § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (4) °

National Delurking Week

Amanada Etches-Johnson who I referenced in my last post, also points out that:

TangognaT reminds us that it’s National Delurking Week. If you’re a lurker, hello! Say “hi” in the comments, won’t you?

I have another idea. I posted a “Virtual Baby Guess Book” contest a couple weeks ago.  Maybe because it was the holidays, I only got a couple entries.  So I'm posting a link to it again to encourage you to post a comment.  And to sweeten the pot, if you've never posted a comment before, I'll send you both books listed plus an extra mystery book that has a library connection (providing you have the winning guess of course!)

Posted 12 January 2007 § Blog § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Top 10 Blog Usability Mistakes

Amanda Etches Johnson did a post today where she mentioned the “Top 10 Blog Usability Mistakes”.  I'd seen this before and intended to do something in response but never got around to it.  But there's no time like the present.

1. No Author Biography
Well, contrary to some people who think this blog is purely an exercise in ego, part of the reason I didn't do an “About Me” page is I didn't think it was worth it.  But on second thought, it might be useful, especially for people who stumble upon this blog from Australia or Europe or India (probably looking to outsource my rambling!)  So I'll create an About Me page in the next few days.

2. No Author Photo
I do have a picture on every page but my face is half-obscured.  I don't have severe facial scars or burns that would prevent me from posting photos of myself.  Instead, I just really like the photo and  find it appropriate for a library blog with a book being the thing that blocks my face.  (If you can't make it out, it's “A Literary History of Alberta”) Although I don't exactly avoid putting pictures of myself up, having both a category for “photos” and a Flickr account that's reasonably easy to find, I do like that it adds a wee bit of mystery. 

3. Nondescript Posting Titles
For the most part, I think I do a fairly good job of coming up with catchy, engaging, descriptive post titles that make people want to read more about the stories. 

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
I think I'm also fairly good about indicating where links go by the text description associated with them.  But I've never really understood this as a major issue either.  It's a bit inconvenient but  for non-descriptive links, you can briefly hover over with your mouse and get a pretty good idea where it goes in the status bar at the bottom of your browser.

5. Classic Hits Are Buried
I realised this was a potential problem before I ever read this article which is why I created “!Jason's Unofficial Guide to Library School” (the exclamation point to make sure it's at the top of my links section which is sorted alphabetically.  Hmm, “An Unofficial Guide to Library School” would accomplish the same thing.  I guess I do have a bit of ego!

6. The Calender is the Only Navigation
I have categories, keywords and a search box to aid with navigation although I do wish that that blog software was a bit more robust about how some of these options are implemented.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
A couple classmates have recently started blogs and my biggest piece of advice to both of them was to make sure to post on a regular basis, at least weekly at the minimum.   You don't have to post  on a daily basis like some keeners but a regular publishing schedule lets readers know that it's worth  coming back to your blog once they've visited the first time. 

8. Mixing Topics
This can refer to two things – mixing topics within individual posts and within the overall “theme” of the blog.  Regarding the first point, I try to stay on one or two topics per post or use my “Holiday Randomness” gimmick when I want to cover a few different things.  If I really want to write about multiple topics, I'll do multiple posts in one day rather than jam them all into a single post.  (I think my record is 6 or 7 posts in a single day. )  As for the second point, it was nice to come up with the idea of a blog about my experiences in library school because nobody was doing anything similar and it gave me a natural, built-in audience.  Now that I'm done school, I'm a bit more scattered now about what I want this blog to be “about” but hopefully I'll find a new niche eventually.  

9. Forgetting That You Write For Your Future Boss
In my presentation on non-traditional online genealogy resources, I cited a stat that 33% of employers Google potential employees while 10% use resources like social networking sites and blogs. 

This one's tough.  I tend to be very open and can also be very opinionated on this blog.  I am pretty sure that I won't be to the same level about my workplace when I get a job as the relationship is different between employer-employee instead of student-professor/institution (at least in my opinion.) 

I would hope that nothing I've posted here would affect my job prospects but you never know – I do use the occasional swear word, I have pictures and stories of me drinking alcohol, and there is some nudity that some people will likely find offensive as well. 

10.  Having a Domain Name Owned By A Weblog Service
Depending on what you want your blog to be, there are definite advantage of having your own domain rather than being “yetanotherblog.blogspot.com”.  I think this mainly applies if you want to use your blog for professional reasons – either to produce revenue or if you're writing about things where you want to attract a wider audience than friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances.

Posted 12 January 2007 § Blog § Internet § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Just Another -40 Saskatchewan Day

These intrepid youths, standing outside the SaskPower building, show what happens when you throw boiling water in the air when the temperature is -40 (as it is today…hmm, that gives me an idea!)


Here's the Alaskan version.

Posted 11 January 2007 § Main Page § Saskatchewan § Video ‡ Comments (6) °

"How did the province where medicare was born end up with a city this frightening?"

I've spent the last couple hours trying to write a post responding to the recent Maclean's article naming Regina's North-Central neighbourhood as the worst in Canada.  But I don't know how do to it.

So instead, here is a painting I bought from a former North Central resident who came around my old office to visit my boss for a few weeks in mid-2005. 

 


He died about two weeks after I bought this painting from him.  During one of his last visits, he told my boss and I that he was going to go to Moose Jaw to
enter rehab with a friend.  He said he had to leave the city since the treatment in Regina wasn't really rehab
at all when you were so close to all of your known demons – human and otherwise. 

Posted 11 January 2007 § Main Page § Photo § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (8) °

PeekVid

My absolute favourite project at library school last year was a presentation I did  for a class called “Shaping of News & Information Through Technology”.  The seminar-style course was offered jointly with the journalism department so we had about 16 LIS students and 6 or 8 journalism students. 

Given the title of the course and because the majority of the content was about the development of communications technology – from the alphabet to the printing press to the telegraph to television – I decided to do my final presentation on the future of broadcasting projecting forward from the point at which the course material basically ended. 

Relying heavily on YouTube clips for my presentation, I did a brief overview of the history of broadcasting in general, a bit more in-depth look at the history of online broadcasting and then a very in-depth (well, as in-depth as you can get in 20 minutes) look at some of the things happening with online broadcasting today (cancelled TV shows being resurrected online, amateurs producing shows that were as good as anything on TV, online viewership numbers that are competing with traditional television's numbers), the issues (copyright, clearance, English-speaking bias, media monopolies online that are worse than traditional media monopolies) and some of the things that will happen or continue to happen in the near future (many-to-many communication, increased citizen journalism, traditional broadcasters finally coming on board, YouTube rivals, ubiquitous media to be followed by omnipresent media.) 

Normally, I'd upload the presentation for anybody who wanted to see it but since I tend to use a fairly minimalist style for my presentations and since I did this presentation in a very ad-libbed fashion without a script, I think it might lose some of its impact seen without those elements. 

The other reason I don't want to upload it is that I haven't stopped working on it even though the presentation is over and the marks are in.  Part of the joy of doing this presentation was that every day brought a new development: Michael “Kramer” Richards goes on a racist tirade in a comedy club – is that citizen journalism or ubiquitous media?  Danny Devito shows up drunk on “The View” and attracts a bigger audience for the clip than the morning talk show normally does during its regular broadcast?  Let's add that to the section on “Audience Size”.)

Every day still brings new developments.  A couple weeks after I presented, a story got released about the Hamilton Police Force releasing surveillance video on YouTube to help capture criminals.  So I add a slide about “Official Use” in the current trends section and also incorporated info I had about the US DEA posting anti-drug messages on YouTube (which aren't very well received at all!) 
Even the fact that the unedited video clip of Saddam's hanging was online within a day fits into my topic in a variety of ways – the citizen journalism aspect, how online broadcasts demolish the space-constraints of traditional media, censorship issues, audience size issues.  (We'll leave the conspiracy theory debate about whether its release was “accidentally intentional” for another day.) 

So anyhow, that's a long way of saying the latest addition to my ever-expanding presentation is a web site called PeekVid that I just discovered tonight. 

People are already using the same technique to upload copyrighted materials that Napster users did when it first came under legal challenge.  If I remember (er, what my friends told me) correctly, you could search for the slightly altered name of the band (“EttalicaM”, “EatlesB”) that was issuing legal challenges and still find their stuff.

But if you didn't know the code, you couldn't find the music.  The same thing is being done today as people are uploading movies, TV shows and other types of videos to YouTube but giving them coded names so authorities can't find them.  The problem is that the codes are now a lot more complicated and so your chances of stumbling on all seven parts of “Borat” are mighty slim and if authorities find them, they get pulled extremely quickly. 

What PeekVid does is act as a double-blind key to help connect people looking for copyrighted material with the “hidden” content that is on YouTube and other video services.  They do this by adding an extra layer of hiding their own so authorities can't easily discover the “Eyk” by obscuring the direct links to the codenamed content but allowing you to easily see it as you would expect to see it (“Borat”, “Beatles”) via their web site. 

I am not a lawyer but technically, I don't think they're doing anything wrong (or at least their position would be that) because they're not hosting any of the infringing materials, similar to how a community bulletin board can't be responsible for the communications that may be facilitated between third parties using it. 

So anyhow, I have a feeling I didn't explain that very well.  But I'm going to sit here and watch “Kenny v. Spenny” episodes until I either fall asleep or die of laughter while I also enjoy seeing the future of broadcasting come alive before me (or something like that anyhow.)

(Slightly off-topic but how wrong is it that Wikipedia absolutely can't find “Kenny v. Spenny” as a search term but hits directly if you search for the proper show title, “Kenny vs. Spenny”?  They need to improve that area of their site pronto!)

Posted 10 January 2007 § Internet § Main Page § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: