December 21, 2006

espresso means books?

I just got my weekly American Libraries Association (ALA) email, which always has some interesting news, and was very interested to read this piece about a print on-demand machine called Espresso. The Espresso machine was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (which you've heard of if you listen to NPR) and was developed by On Demand Books LLC. Apparently the World Bank is the first entity to own an Espresso, which it's utilizing because of the varied demands for their publications. The lack of predictable demand has led to storage issues, where a large amount of already-published books sit in a warehouse, destined for the pulper. Of course, eco-friendliness is only one of the advantages of the machine. The machine is extremely versatile, able to publish in any language and can even print the book for right-to-left and back-to-front reading cultures. The potential to publish any book no longer under copyright restrictions allows unfettered access to a multitude of books--and it costs under a penny per page. This initiative has a correlation to the e-books movement, where the publishing industry is not hampered by traditional production methods--but it also trumps the movement, where the machine central to the product is not owned individually, rather collectively. As the e-book reader is limited to those individuals who can purchase it, so the e-book is limited as well. Hey, digital isn't everything.

December 19, 2006

she said yes!

Samantha and I had a wonderful weekend and I'm sorry for not posting this earlier. It ended up being such a busy weekend that I needed a day of rest. To start off with, Sam knew it was coming--she had conceived the design of her ring, and had tricked me into telling her which weekend the proposal would be on--so the only surprise I had in store was where we were going and what we'd be doing. It took me a while to figure that out myself. There's so many places to go in this area that I had several ideas before settling on a weekend in the Berkshires. The draw to the Berkshires is that, in the area where we stayed, there is a renowned art college--Williams College--that houses a wonderful museum, as well as the largest contemporary art museum in the States, Mass MOCA. An added bonus was my finding Eric Carle's Museum of Picturebook Art in Amherst, which was a 1 & 1/2 hour drive away. So it was a weekend filled with museums but they were small and very specific museums, which made it like going to a very large and encompassing museum over a two-day period. All of them were great fun.



Sam says I faked her out on how she thought I'd propose. I had a box of chocolates where she thought the ring would be hidden, but it was really in the menorah case. After I proposed we took some pictures of Sam showing off her new ring, which she can't get her eyes off of. Since there were a lot of pictures we took, I'll link to them here so I won't take up precious blog space.





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December 14, 2006

neglecting the blog

Sorry it's been a few days since I posted anything. I've been real busy getting ready for this weekend, where I'll be proposing to Samantha. I picked up the ring last night and it is amazing. I've been so excited about it that I just can't help looking at it every few hours. Beyond sneaking peeks at the ring, I haven't had a minute to myself today. It's a culmination of our car being in the shop, last-minute shopping for Hannumas, preparing for our weekend away, and working on job applications--oh yeah, and I have to polish our menorah. Can't forget about that, as Hannukah starts tomorrow at sundown. I probably won't be posting any more, as I have class tonight and tomorrow morning, but I'll write all about our engagement after we return! I hope to have a picture of the ring as well, which was custom made (Sam had a hand in its conception, which is great).

December 11, 2006

the beginning of the greatest blog ever?

I wanted to give a mention to my friend Jess Boldt's new blog called "Drunk Like Leaves". Not sure what that means and haven't had the chance to ask him about it (he started the blog yesterday) but I'm sure he'll give the reasoning behind it at some point. In the meantime, look forward to Jess linking to some obscure and hilarious stuff (the Mr. T song from this post is great), and poking his finger in the eye of society.





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Blues by an Irishman?

Sure, the Irish have a lot to be blue about--however, I've only heard one who can play the blues as well as those Delta acolytes. Rory Gallagher is a guitarist I've been listening to ever since last Thanksgiving. Due to my job I was forced to stay in Melrose, while Sam went to visit her parents. I ended up celebrating with my neighbor at the time--Brendan--who is about as Irish as you can get. After dinner, darts, and some poitín, Brendan brought out a video of Rory that just blew my mind. If you enjoy this clip, there's more to be had on YouTube. Be patient, it may take a minute for the video to load.

December 8, 2006

Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have . . .

I never expected to see a cartoon with Jimi Hendrix in it but should have seen it coming . . . and it's pretty funny too. It's done by a guy who apparently hangs out in Harvard Square a lot. Here's the link.



December 7, 2006

Marketing & Controlling "Bob Dylan"

After my last post, I listened to the Rolling Thunder Review concert that is on Wolfgang's Vault and noticed that someone was conspicuously absent--that is, Bob Dylan's set was missing. Nothing they had written about the show indicated it was gone--in fact, a third of it was dedicated to describing Bob's set. So was it put up and then taken off? It seems like that might be the case. Or possibly Dylan owned it outright and they didn't put it up at all, but the archivist didn't know and wrote the review anyway. Just four years ago, Dylan's Bootleg Series volume 5 was released and it covered this very time period, using songs from the concerts they have available on Wolfgang's Vault. And Dylan's people are so good about staking claim to his recordings that I wouldn't be surprised if they beat Wolfgang's Vault to the punch. Or, if this isn't the case, then they made the Vault take the files down. See, Dylan's people aren't schmucks--they're very bright businesspeople. He's looked at the bottom line ever since he began his career--his first manager, the notorious Albert Grossman, was the kind of guy who talked about money when all the folkies were discussing socialism and hippies were gushing about free love. Even Dylan described him as "a Colonel Tom Parker figure."

Now the title of my post isn't meant to be facetious. Rather, I was wanting to demonstrate that Dylan had a keen eye on his legacy and he's going to control what people see of the marketable figure "Bob Dylan" through the years. You can read this blog about how his deal with XM Radio was struck, in which the producer of the show (an XM employee) talks about how impressed he was with Dylan's operation. Another example is the massive archives of music that Dylan must have, which he's begun to open recently with the Bootleg Series. There's so many periods of his career, and so many albums whose outtakes haven't been heard, that the 6 volumes (coming to 13 CDs of music) that have been released don't seem enough to Dylan fans. After all, there is the holy grail of all bootlegs, regardless of artist--the so-called "Basement Tapes" that he recorded with The Band during his period of recovery and renewal in Woodstock--that has yet to be released, if they ever will be.

I think it's masterful, the way Dylan is keeping his fans waiting--it's just like how a great artist knows how long to wait before the encore--releasing just enough that he can't be accused of holding out, but not releasing so much that the market is glutted and the music loses its significance. This has happened to other bands who have a large amount of recordings in their vaults--two notables being The Dead and Pearl Jam. Both have released so much that it doesn't matter anymore when they release another (I mean, what's Dick's Picks up to now--volume 30?--oops, I'm wrong, it's volume 36). I mean, I was just blown away when Dylan released his memoirs, the Scorsese documentary Don't Look Back, and the 6th volume of the Bootleg Series in the same year--what some bands might find happening once every five years or so, Dylan's done just once in his career. While some people complain that Dylan isn't giving enough, I think he's giving just enough to keep things interesting.

December 6, 2006

Bill Graham's vaults open . . .

Bill Graham, legendary concert promoter and owner of the Fillmore venues, had some amazing concerts archived. A company, Wolfgang's Vaults, came along and bought them up and now offers them in streaming audio online here. It looks like the site has just started and will undergo some changes, most notably offering the concerts in a downloadable format. While the company states that they're licensed to do so under BMI, ASCAP and SESAC (which are the big names in music licensing and royalties), Rolling Stone reports that artists are considering lawsuits (I would have a link to the article here, but rollingstone.com seems to be having connectivity issues). Regardless of what the future may hold for the website and their offerings, the present situations allows you to listen to Muddy Waters' 1966 concert at the Fillmore West, to hear Hendrix at the Winterland in '68, catch Springsteen in '78 at the same venue, hear Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review play Madison Square Garden in '75, catch the Clash debut in Cleveland in '79, rock out to some Sabbath in '75 at Asbury Park (great line from Wolfgang's vault about Sabbath: "Zeppelin might have made the mold, but Sabbath crushed the mold into a fine powder, snorted it, and proceeded to scare the hell out of everybody"). It really is some amazing music, and you're foolish if you don't check it out. You do have to register to use the site, but some of us would sell our soul for the pleasure of listening to these gems.





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December 5, 2006

CRM gone wrong at Amazon

Looks like some fun things are going on with Amazon's recommendation system, according to this post. There are other good examples but I thought this one was pretty good.



Of course, recommendation systems aren't perfect--especially if you haven't built up a large base of books for them to offer recommendations for. Since I buy from Amazon maybe three or four times a year, most often when buying gifts for other people, I get some recommendations that I really don't care for--after all, what I buy for you isn't necessarily what I want. I've had an Oak Ridge Boys Christmas CD on my recommendation list for the past five years, due to me buying two of their CDs for my Grandma Mack. God bless her, she loved them but I don't have much use for their Christmas CDs. The only Christmas CD I have is Ron Spector's productions, which are pretty good. I think I might buy Frank Sinatra's too.







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December 4, 2006

My wandering mind

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't have fun when you're in grad school. When a particularly entrancing three-hour lecture is failing to make its mark on me I tend to let my fingers do the walking. These are a few drawings taken from my notes from Reference (a study of sources available to, and the theory of, reference). Unfortunately, that particular class is taught in a very uninspiring way that is well-suited for doodling.

This is my number monster series. My favorite is the number two on the right-hand side, and the number eight that's on fire and running down the highway.


Sometimes I like to make patterns. The worm pattern is one I have repeated a few times, this one being the first, and best, example.


Sometimes I just begin to draw a squiggly line and follow my subconscious thoughts of what it is. This time it turned into a lion (I think it was because I had watched Calder's Circus, which I had bought for Samantha's birthday the month before). I added to the menagerie with an ostrich.


This one started off as a series of high-rise buildings and turned into an odd party hat for the birthday boy. You might have noticed that the face is like those of the squid people in my last post. It's a really nice, easy way to abstract the face and draw attention to other embellishments, like the dancing radio.


So if you're wondering what I'm spending $10,000 a semester on, consider it an art studio that produces librarians. I had the idea that I might do a weekly post where I gather my doodles and put them on my blog but, thankfully, I've done more learning than doodling.

Oh the weather outside is frightful . . .

It's the first snow of the year in the Boston area, and it's a pretty one. Started off as sleet and now it's big, wet flakes that are drifting down. I went outside to get a picture . . .


It's amazing to think that, just last Wednesday and Thursday, it reached almost 70 degrees.
This weekend Sam and I decorated for the holidays, which mainly consisted of Christmas decorations. We have a couple of menorahs but that's about it that you can do for Hannukah--Sam complains about how our 7 foot tree makes the menorah seem insignificant, but I hope to get an electric-light menorah for the window so it can pose a challenge. Oh wow--I just decided to take a look on the internet to see how much it would cost and I found a blow-up lawn menorah! The best thing is that it's already sold out at this web site. So it's not only the Christians that have bad taste . . .

So this is our tree. Mom, you might notice the guitar and percussion decorations are on it this year.


After putting up our decorations, Sam and I did a little shopping for gifts and we made our holiday cards on Snapfish, which is a really great deal. To end the weekend, we drew in Sam's scrap book and watched The Librarian, which was a like a nerdy Indiana Jones who likes to remind you that the library can be cool. Oh yeah, he also gets busy with a girl, so he's cool like that too.



Here's what I was drawing . . . I had started a few months ago, and added the Nativity scene last night.

December 2, 2006

. . . and folksonomies, oh my!

I've already posted about the basics of folksonomy here but I have promised to go into the idea further. A refresher on what folksonomy: folksonomy is the language of free-tagging, which is what social bookmarking utilizes. Lost already? Good.

Social bookmarking is a service like del.icio.us, which works somewhat like the Favorites section of Internet Explorer. If you find a web site that you want to keep for later, there's a button that del.icio.us adds to your browser that lets you "tag" the web page. When you choose to tag a web page, del.icio.us gives you four fields you can fill in: the URL (already filled in), description (the name of the web page, which is already filled in), notes and tags. Notes are just another space where you can write more about the web page. When filling in the "tags" section, you use single words that you think describe the "aboutness" of the web page. For an example, let's use a favorite of mine--BeerAdvocate. If you go to the Beer Advocate web page, you see that it's about beer (really?), reviewing beer, beer festivals, people talking about beer (online communities), among other things. You may come up with other ideas of what it's about, or different ways of saying the same thing (synonyms). So, we take it's "aboutness" and begin to construct single-word terms--beer, reviews, fesitvals, community. That's folksonomy, those terms that you have used to describe the "aboutness." It's taking traditional taxonomies and turning the idea on its head.

What are the benefits of folksonomy? One of the major benefits is that folksonomy allows something previously uncatalogable--such as the internet--and applies the assistance of volunteers (the many who are tagging) in cataloging it. Social networks are created around tagging, where groups of people who tag the same things, or use the same terms, can come together and gain information from one another. Say I was interested in the tag "beer." I can go on del.icio.us and find someone who has a vast collection of web sites that they have tagged with "beer," and I can set up an alert (a RSS feed) that lets me see what they are tagging with the term "beer."

Businesses have jumped onto the folksonomy bandwagon as well, with no less of a notable member than IBM taking part in it. For a company that has an intranet, allowing their employees the ability to tag data within it can allow for more effective searching and increase findability. Employing folksonomy allows people to make sense of a system that is not readily accessible to the layman--such as an intranet or a library catalog. Yes, I don't think that library catalogs are the easiest databases to navigate. One of the major problems is the use of subject headings--they aren't logical, but are the result of a hierarchical taxonomy. Catalogs are getting around this problem by making subject headings searchable by deconstructing them and allowing individual terms within the subject heading to be searchable. But if you are to employ a tagging system with a traditional catalog--like University of Pennsylvania's PennTags--then you can begin to approach the best of both worlds.

Alright, I think I've written enough about folksonomy for now. If you're interested, check out del.icio.us. Or if you've had enough of futuristic mumbo-jumbo, go right to the source that will help you forget about it!

Mozilla vs. MSIE

So I wanted to post to my blog last night, because Sam had gone to bed early (I could never blame here--which one of us could deal with 30 different children 8 times a day for 30 minutes at a time?)--but I wasn't able to blog because the new Internet Explorer (release 7) that I had downloaded took a turn for the worse. I was really excited about it at first, as it's a beautiful-looking and very handy browser. Then it started to get cranky. The last straw was when it dropped Java scripts and didn't give me text formatting options (which are Java-based) when I posted this blog. So I went out and downloaded Mozilla's Firefox and everything is back to normal. Thank god Microsoft hasn't taken over the world just yet . . .

As an aside, is Mozilla a contraction of Mothra and Godzilla? Unfortunately, it's not--see the explanation here.

December 1, 2006

Free at last, free at last!

Well, not quite--but I did get through this last week, which was a real bear. I had four papers due, which are where some of the ideas I've blogged about came from. I want to go into the idea of folksonomy further, and will do so tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to drink some beer, eat a bratwurst and watch some Sopranos. Maybe even Marlon Brando's "The Wild One".