The Huffington Blog

:: Mike sent an e-mail reminding me that Arianna Huffington's new blog debuted this week on the web. It gained notoriety weeks before it began, when it was announced that the blog, part of the new web site, The Huffington Post, and known simply as "The Blog", would feature up to 300 "celebrity" bloggers, including the following who have already contributed brief entries: Larry David, Walter Cronkite, Tina Brown, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, Mike Nichols, John Cusack, Ellen DeGeneres, David Mamet, Harry Shearer, Paul Krassner, and David Frum. The group (so far) leans heavily to the left, and features mostly members of the entertainment industry. I love John Cusack (I want to BE John Cusack!), but I'm not sure what qualifies him and the others from film, tv, and music, to be blog columnists. Then again, doesn't that define blogs - anyone can write about anything at any time, without the worry of a deadline or an editor? In this instance, the posts are edited, according to Mike, but I can't find anything on the site to confirm this.

One thing missing from the blog are comments - readers cannot respond to the posts. Another section of The Post, The News Wire, does allow comments. It's unfortunate that comments are not allowed on the blog. Comments on blogs are what make them interactive and worth revisiting. Comments make a blog lively and challenging by allowing for discussion and discourse.

I was talking recently with colleagues who like myself, contribute library-related blogs to the field. There are many good blogs covering many different aspects of librarianship. That said, I wondered out loud if we are approaching the moment where library blogs experience some kind of dot-com bust, wherein we reach a critical mass, and the library blogosphere does a self-correction, and reduces in size. Might the same thing happen to other subject-related blog communities?

My Bloglines feeds currently number 143 - there is no way I can keep up with following most of them. Arianna Huffington has created a community blog, with up to 300 handpicked contributors, perhaps the highest profile blog of its type. Will it be possible to keep up with so many contributors, or will it be easier because all are contributing to the same site?

The politics notwithstanding, I'll be interested to see how this new template of a blog is received, and how it will develop. If only she would add comments to the mix.

Also published on Blogcritics.com.

Comment Problems

:: I've learned today that the comment function on my blogs isn't working. Comments can be submitted successfully, but never reach the site for approval. I'm working to repair the problem asap. My apologies to those who have posted messages and may have thought I was late to approve them, or was deleting them.

:: Update: Comment function is working again. Thanks to Tony for his help in solving the comment problem, as well as Demonsurfer on the MT-Blacklist Forum for suggestions on how to solve the problem.

Spamalot

:: No, no, not the play currently running on Broadway, as much as I'd like to see it. (The web site is hilarious!) Maybe it will still be playing in the fall when I return to NYC (dates yet to be determined, trip yet to be confirmed.) I've been fighting a steady battle with blog spammers lately. The amount of spam targetting blogs is torrential. After Tony advised that my comment function wasn't working, I upgraded to MT-Blacklist 2.04b a couple weeks back, and in the time it took to upload and install the necessary files, I was hit with over 100 comment and trackback spam. Even with 2.04b installed, I've been moderating and deleting hundreds of blogspam a week.

Until a few minutes ago, MT-Blacklist had blocked 34,932 spam on my site since its reinstallation, and for that, I bow in a southwest direction towards California and give thanks to Jay Allen for creating the program. Earlier today while checking my sites, I noticed the new link to "Introducing SpamLookup." Desparate for anything to improve the situation, I read Jay's entry, and immediately went to Brad Choate's site, downloaded, unzipped and installed the gobbler, and I'll be damned if it doesn't work brilliantly. I have had NO spam since it was installed this morning. I bow for a second time in the same direction. Thank you, Brad, for writing this program, and thank you Jay, for letting us know.

BTW, ever notice that the plural of spam seems to be spam? Who made that decision? I've never seem a statement that read something like, "I've been receiving a lot of spams lately."

:: I played guitar today at Amelia's annual spring tea, including a few songs with her, and a few with her group, The Harvest Moon Fiddlers. Next Sunday we have a gig in Smoky Lake.

:: It took me half a century, but on the weekend, I bought my first one of these. I feel like such a guy's guy now. What's next, NASCAR? Meanwhile, the house renos continue. Floor screws were drilled into the floor by the front door entrance to help reduce floor squeeking. It seems to have helped somewhat. Next, the purchase of 70 feet of MDF baseboard.

Comment Fuction Working Again

:: Thanks to Tony and Jen for letting me know that the comment fuction wasn't working properly. I downloaded and installed MT Blacklist 2.04b, and all seems well again.

The State of the Sphere

:: Via Rafael's site, a link to David Sifry's "State of The Blogosphere, March 2005, Part 1: Growth of Blogs". He reports that Technorati is tracking >7.8 million blogs and 937 million links. The Technorati site as of just now lists 7,945,854 weblogs watched, and 950,635,179 links tracked. The blogosphere has increased in size 16 times in the past 20 months, and ~30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created daily. It's not all good, Sifry reports, as part of the growth can be attributed to spam blogs.

What's Up With My Pals?

:: Deb and Steve Feisst are about to take a three-month trip to South America, leaving March 12, and returning June 12. Deb is a library colleague and kindred spirit. They will document their trip at aventura de suramérica.

Peter Binkley, colleague at the U of Alberta, has started writing at his new site, Quædam cuiusdam, aptly titled given his background as a medieval historian, in addition to being the Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian on campus. (Watch out, Peter! Michael Gorman just tossed a book at you!)

I met Diane de Rooy at the Steely Dan concert at The Gorge in Washington State, in 2000 and again at the SD concert there in 2003. Her blog is Big Thinker, Small Town: "My motivation behind this blog is to contribute something to the way people think, hoping they will become more aware of facts, and ultimately, they will become motivated to do one or two small things about issues that need attention." Sounds good to me.

Stuart Bayens has created Last Link on the Left:"The aim of The Last Link on the Left is to provide entertainment, education and observations of modern culture as reflected on the internet and in other forms of communication." Wow. Good luck sorting through that quagmire!

Meanwhile, Tony is writing up a storm at A Sea of Flowers. Good God, man, where are you finding the time? ;-)

ALA President-Elect Michael Gorman Slams "The Blog People"

:: Michael Gorman, Dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, President-Elect of the American Library Association, and considered by many to be a leader in our profession, is taking a beating online for his Library Journal column, Revenge of the Blog People. The column begins with (and maintains throughout) a condescending tone, as he writes:

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.

Ostensibly, Gorman's column is a response to criticism leveled at him by bloggers for an op-ed piece he wrote for the LA Times ("Google and God's Mind," December 17, 2004), in which he questions "the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine." However, he also chose to use his column to condemn anyone who dares to blog:

It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.

I do not recall ever reading something so hard-edged and mean-spirited in its dismissal of a new, exciting movement, There is little point in defending Weblog Nation, or the many diverse applications of weblogs being utilized in libraries today. In my library system, at least fourteen blogs are used for applications including dissemination of library news, project management, e-journal maintenance, software working groups, digital projects, management of our knowledge common, and more. My guess is that none of the participants consider him- or herself a charter member of The Blog People. The weblog, for what it's worth, has provided a new way for rapid distribution and exchange of diverse ideas, new ways to communicate, to share information and opinion, and create communities of like-minded librarians interested in sharing their knowledge and experiences with others. (As an engineering librarian, I introduced the weblog as a project management tool in 2004 to a number of engineering design classes in which I teach sessions on library and information resources, and continue to do so this term.)

The larger concern, however, is that he is the next leader of the largest library association on the planet, which means he is moving into a position of major influence in the profession. On his website, he stresses that he hopes to be "an effective advocate for our shared values and a leader who can help the association to seize its opportunities and rise to its challenges." In acknowledging his adamant disdain for weblogs and those who create them, I wonder how he plans to accomplish this without alienating a growing population of intelligent, articulate, and passionate librarians, committed to their profession, and who are already among the converted. I also wonder, what about younger librarians, those new to the profession or about to enter it, what might their reactions be to the dismissal, by one of its noteworthy leaders, of a relatively new but growing component of librarianship?

Of note, Jessamyn West reports that Gorman has since indicated his column was intended to be satirical, but does state that he is not a fan of blogs, and notes that he has "an old fashioned belief that, if one wishes to air one's views and be taken seriously, one should go through the publishing/editing process." Times have changed. That process still exists, and must continue to do so, but it should not be the only way to air one's views and be "taken seriously."

One of my favorite of many responses to Gorman's column appeared on library_grrls:"Despite the fact that this is indeed a satirical piece, I resent being compared to a B movie." Imagine the sequels... The Blog People vs Larry Flynt. 24 Hour Blog People. Ordinary Blog People. The Blog People That Time Forgot. Darby O'Gill and The Little Blog People. The Curse of the Blog People. Games Blog People Play. An Enemy of the Blog People. Where Have All the Blog People Gone? Blog People Who Die Mysteriously In Their Sleep. I Like To Hurt Blog People. Blog People Hate Me and They Hate My Glasses. The Best of the Village Blog People. All Power to the Blog People. Let My Blog People Live. Man of the Blog People. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blog People. Blog People are Dead. We The Blog People. The War of the Six Million Blog People. OK, enough. Thanks, IMDb.

Jessamyn, who supported Gorman for the ALA Presidency, wrote the following in his website guestbook:"Lovely website, have you considered a blog?" My guess is, no. Then again, who knows?

NOTE: This post originally appeared in my work-related blog, STLQ; comments from that post are here.

Charlie Rose Goes Blogging

:: Charlie Rose discusses blogging on his show tonight with four well-known bloggers: Andrew Sullivan, Ana Marie Cox, Glenn Reynolds, and Joe Trippi. This group represents political bloggers, and Trippi hasn't updated his site since February 6th. Should be worth dialing up, nonetheless.

Update: I watched the first fifteen minutes of the segment (will watch the rest tomorrow), and it was good. One point made: that blogs allow the submission of comments by readers, immediately after reading the blogger's post(s), thus connecting reader and writer in real time, as opposed to, say, a magazine or newspaper column, which can take days or weeks, or months in some cases. Readers can provide feedback and opinion, point out errors, make suggestions, etc. What's interesting is that of the four bloggers on the show, only Joe Trippi's blog allows for immediate submission of comments. Sullivan's site allows for submission of e-mail for publication, which are then published anonymously, if at all. The most recent e-mail published is dated 31 January 2005. Reynold's and Cox's blogs do not allow for immediate comments either, but accept e-mail feedback. And who's linking to whom: Cox: links to Sullivan and Reynolds. Sullivan: links to Reynolds. Reynolds: links to Sullivan, Cox. Trippi: links to Cox.

:: I have been extremely busy at work the past while, preparing a couple of major presentations, one on Friday, one next Tuesday. I will resurface soon. Also, regarding the rock band, I've decided to stick with it and see what happens. More on that later.

Blogomania Update - Back To Normal and Getting Better All The Time

:: Special thanks to Christina of BlogMoxie and Christine of Blogomania for responding quickly to my last post. Important points to note:

• Blogomania is going nowhere but up - the company is growing and expanding. Blogomania has extended its hosting service to Blogmoxie clients, and vice versa: Moxie Design services are being offered to Blogomania clients.
  
• Christina corrected my impression that BlogMoxie had suspended new hosting applications. In fact, by partnering with Blogomania, BlogMoxie is accepting new applications for hosting

So why was I having so many problems? Christine responded with the following critical information that explained what happened:

1. On Friday night, Blogomania and BlogMoxie experienced a DDOS attack, followed by a second one. This ended around 4:00 am CST. It took staff members a few hours to resolve this, working through the night.
   
2. On Saturday, the server on which Blogomania resides had a primary hard drive failure. A new drive was installed, and the backup was restored.

It's important for me to emphasize that since switching to Blogomania in the fall of 2003, the service has been excellent. Christine and her team respond to Help Desk tickets quickly, and provide rock solid customer support. (My thanks also to Keith, who read my post and called to say he had no problems getting to the Blogomania site.)

What happened today was an anomaly. My father said many times, "Mechanical things break down." Such is life. If you need a host, or need to switch, consider Blogomania.

What's Up With Blogomania?

:: Weird things are happening, if at all, with Blogomania, the service that hosts my web sites, and Geoff's and Tony's, among many others. If you're reading this, then something is working, but not everything is kosher, and I'm worried. I cannot reach the Blogomania site, the Blogmania Helpdesk, my website's Control Panel, nor my e-mail.

A websearch revealed this post, advising that Christine, the Blogomania girl, has joined forces with Blogmoxie. The girls of Blogmoxie are here, including Christine. The thing is, I haven't heard boo from Blogomania that this was in the works, and if so, what the implications were for BM customers. Are we being transferred to Blogmoxie? If so, check this out: Blogmoxie has suspended new hosting applications. Say what?

The Blogmania site isn't working, as of 1631 hrs, MST. This is what you see when you try to reach the site, or Christina's BigPinkCookie.com - not reassuring at all.

For the time being, i.e., the weekend, I've giving Blogomania the benefit of the doubt. I hope Christine resolves this within a day. Blogomania's reputation, solid until now, doesn't need a hit like this.

Guide For Fighting Comment Spam

:: Sick and tired of comment spam like everyone else? Jay Allen, creator of MT-Blacklist and Six Apart, have released tbe Six Apart Guide For Fighting Comment Spam, also available in PDF format

:The guide covers many of the concepts and tools available to fight comment spam and explains the strengths and weaknesses that we've seen of each. We also included our "best practices" recommendations for not only keeping spam off of your site, but making sure that you and your readers have the best possible experience. The document is intended to be a fairly comprehensive, living document which will change and grow over time to reflect the changing nature of the topic.

Jay's brilliant creation, MT-Blacklist, is now embedded in the latest version(s) of Moveable Type. Since downloading and installing the newest versions in mid-November, 2004, MT-Blacklist has blocked 12,811 comment spam. We love Jay Allen.

:: Martha Stewart's team fails to claim victory in prison decorating contest. Armageddon is near.

Stylesheets and Rehearsals

:: There is little time to eat or sleep these days. I may be joining a rock band - yes, you read that correctly. I sat in on a couple of rehearsals with a local group known as Hardy Drew and The Nancy Boys this month, and there are two more rehearsals this week. The band has a gig at The Sidetrack on December 14, opening for two other bands. The music is different, written by David, the drummer, and features time signature changes such as 7/8 to 4/4 to 5/4, with one song featuring a 11/4 break (as best I can determine, if there is such a thing.) Is 51 too old to rock?

:: I'm continuing work on a new stylesheet for STLQ. The first draft, as it were, is near completion. The book chapter I'm writing on the literature of petroleum engineering and refining is also near completion, but continues to drag on. I'm desparate to finish it this week, as I am working until December 17, and won't return until Jan 4th.

Lately

:: I continue to have problems with Firefox, and the time being taken trying to make it work is wearing me out. I downloaded FF 1.0 for the second time at home this weekend, making it my default browser. The problem begins when I login to MT 3.121 to manage my blogs. The login page is out of alignment - note the top bar on this picture - when I log in, and the page that opens up after I log in, listing my blogs, is skewed to the left. It gets only worse when I go to the create a new post page, also skewed left, and looking like absolute shyte. I ran AdAware again, made no difference, so FF is once again uninstalled on my site. *sigh* This is getting ridiculous. I want to embrace this new browser, which is getting rave reviews from Geoff, Kenton, and others, but I keep hitting brick walls. I think there are ghosts in my 2.5 year old Dell Dimension 4400. That, plus the machine is aging quickly. I am methodically removing music files from the 80g hard drive to free up space in hopes that it won't be as sluggish. Most likely, I need a faster processor. 1.6 doesn't cut it anymore.

:: I am way behind answering e-mails, with 200+ in my inboxes between work and home. I'm working on a book chapter, about the literature of petroleum engineering and refining, which is taking up most of my time these days. I will get to the e-mails soon. When I solve the Firefox problem, I also need to install new templates for STLQ, which doesn't line up properly in Firefox.

:: After watching Modest Mouse on SNL on Dec 13, a band with whom I was unfamiliar, I purchased their two most recent albums, The Moon and Antarctica, and Good News For People Who Like Bad News. Modest Mouse makes interesting, eclectic music, not easily accessible, but so far, worth the listening effort.

Moveable Type 3.121

:: Yesterday I upgraded my Moveable Type installation from 2.661 to 3.121. Did it go smoothly? HA! And the Boston Red Sox Chicago Cubs won the World Series this year, too! I do not have the template/CSS/coding savvy of Certain Other People I know and respect immensely, so I will ask you to bear with me for a while, please, until I determine how to deal with the new comment templates, which are sucking eggs right now. As well, STLQ looks like shyte in FireFox.

What I need to do is simplify things, and rebuild both sites (STLQ and PBD) with a new set of templates. For now, I'm going to bbq some salmon.

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet. (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) --- results and comments about the experiment appear at that location.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate -- the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e (Note: this replaces the longer, original GUID -- listed below -- which didn't format nicely in narrow column layouts. Those sites still using the longer GUID will still be found in the data set).

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for the any sites that contain either the short GUID (above) or the long GUID (for your reference, the long GUID is a single 72 character string comprised of the following segments put together with the white-spaces removed:
as098398298250swg9e 98929872525389t9987 898tq98wteqtgaq6201 0920352598gawst -- they are listed here as different segments so that they will format better in narrow column layouts.)

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://alreadygone.blogspot.com/2004/08/testing-meme-propagation-in-blogspace.html

(2) I found it via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Browsing the Web

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.podbaydoor.com/

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 03/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 20:38:00

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(7) My blog is hosted by: Moveable Type 2.661

(8) My age is: 53

(9) My gender is: Male

(10) My occupation is: Public Services Librarian (Engineering)

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Awazu, Sharpreader

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: MT, Zempt, w.bloggar

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 11/07/02

(14) My web browser is: IE 6.0.2880

(15) My operating system is: Windows XP

St Elsewhere

:: My mind has been elsewhere for the past few days, for reasons known to some of you. Here in Edmonton, a few days of grey skies and wet, clammy weather ended today, with that bright, shiny thing called Sol beaming light and warmth on the city, improving everyones' moods.

I spent part of today at the TELUS Centre, where NanoForum Canada is being held. As one of the engineering librarians, building and maintaining the UA Libraries' collections in nanoscience and nanotechnology is my responsibility. NINT, The National Institute for Nanotechnology, is housed on our campus, and will move into its own building when construction is completed in 2005. At this time, faculty from at least nineteen different departments on campus are working and/or have research interests in nano-whatever.

It would be interesting to prepare a list of all the new words entering the language that begin with the prefix "nano". Today I learned two new ones: nanorosette, and nanostencil. No, "Nanook" doesn't count. A rosette is a six-membered supermacrocycle. Rosette nanotubes that self-assemble could be used as tiny scaffolds. The chemist leading this area of research is Hicham Fenniri, formerly of Purdue, but now working at the U of A as a chemisty professor and a NINT researcher.

:: With Geoff Harder, I maintain another blog, STLQ. I was pleased to learn that STLQ has received some press of late. Stephen Abram mentions STLQ in the latest issue of Information Outlook, and the blog was highlighted twice, once in a brief review, in the latest issue of SciTech News, the newsletter of a number of SLA divisions.

:: Jenny mentioned a new book out this month that I think will be worth reading, especially since I'm old enough to have lived through the period in question. The book is Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, Edited by Jim DeRogatis and Carmél Carrillo:

Kill Your Idols is a collection of 34 essays in which some of the best rock critics of Generations X and Y address allegedly “great” albums that they despise. This anthology is every bit as thoughtful, provocative, entertaining, and valuable as Stranded, but it also returns some vital, stimulating debate to the canon of rock and roll history. Kill Your Idols is a spirited assault on a pantheon that has been foisted upon this new generation of music critics, a defiant slap in the face to the narrow and hegemonic view of rock history presented by the Baby Boom generation’s critics. As a collection of the new generation of rock writers, it is the first of its kind, as well as the first and only anthology devoted solely to critiquing rock and roll’s most sacred cows.

Nothing like insurgents kicking dust in the face of the old guard. Go for it, I say. Some of the albums ripped apart by these young lions include The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street, The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks . . . Here’s the Sex Pistols, and U2, The Joshua Tree. Will it be informed criticism, or Gen X whining? The foreword is available, as are a few reviews.

Nashville

:: I am flying to Nashville tomorrow to attend the annual SLA convention. I'll be back in a few days. I may try to post once or twice while I'm there. The editors of Information Today are blogging the conference already; technically, it started today.

:: Kudos to Heavy G - he's taking the summer off from blogging to concentrate on other things, like his upcoming wedding!

:: It appears I do not have shingles, thankfully, as previously speculated. More likely it's a problem with a rib in my back, with the discomfort following nerve endings to the front of my ribcage. I've got Robax Platinum for the pain.

:: Congratulations to Darcy and Michael, on the announcement of their engagement!

Sidebar

:: With dozens of e-mails an ever-increasing number of electronic messages to answer, together with work, home and musical projects requiring attention, I'm taking a short break from posting. Be back soon.

Various

:: Today, Geoff and I completed revisions to an article we wrote, for the journal, Science & Technology Libraries. The article is about applications of blogs in an STL environment. As well, Geoff is fine-tuning a presentation on blogs, which we are co-presenting this Saturday at the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper. I was amazed as I watched a short animation that he designed and embedded into one of the powerpoint slides, which demonstrates how to create a simple blog entry using Moveable Type. The computer we use for our session will not be wired to the Internet, so the animation will suffice nicely in its place.

:: Deadwood has quickly become my favorite show on television. Sunday night, with The Sopranos and Deadwood back-to-back (at least in Canada), has become the definitive night for quality television viewing. The language on Deadwood is graphic enough so as to make comparisons with The Sopranos moot. The actors are outstanding, with Ian McShane as Al Swearengen and Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane, giving career-defining performances week after week. The colourful language (to put it mildly), combined with the actors' deliveries of their lines, provide for much "water cooler discussion" every Monday at work with my friend Debi, and the HBO website for the show has a list of the "Best Lines" from each episode to date.

HBO continues to present most of the best television on television, if you will. But in Canada, we are not permitted to subscribe to HBO, but instead to limp, lame Canadian cable stations that advertise themselves as "The First Home of HBO in Canada." Problem is, no station IS the first home of HBO in Canada. We haven't seen the third or fourth seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Real Time With Bill Maher is not broadcast in Canada on any cable station.

Various

:: Recently I joined Foster Parents Plan, and information on my sponsored child arrived in the mail last week. Her name is Welalo, she lives in a village called Lama Tessi, in Togo, and is in third grade primary school. She lives with her sister and mother, in a small brick house with a straw roof.

Her village has no electricity, and her home has no plumbing. In lieu of a washroom, her family must use and open field or public area for their needs. Welalo's family gets their water from a open well approximately one kilometer from their home. To cook their food, they use an open fire, fueled with wood, and their house is lit with kerosene lamps. Despite the foregoing, the documentation sent to me indicates that the familes in Welalo's community live a rich cultural life, telling and listening to stories, talking with friends, and listening to the radio.

Needless to say, as I sit in front of my Dell computer, with lights on, drinking cold water from the fridge after eating a satisfying meal of meatloaf with fresh vegetables and bread, reading about how Welalo lives puts my life in a perspective I hadn't considered before reading about her and her village. I really, really don't know how good I have it, living in Canada.

:: I mentioned previously that my friend in Winnipeg, Tony, began a blog a couple weeks ago. Tony is in the midst of difficult times, and he is showing great courage in detailing this on his site, something I'm not sure I could do myself. I have avoided writing about Certain Things on this weblog since its inception, issues too painful for me to write about publicly. Tony is choosing to do so, and I applaud him for his effort, as I believe it can't be the easiest thing to do. However, writing can be cathartic, and whether or not one chooses to do it publicly, shouldn't change that. I'll leave it there. When a friend is in pain, one shares that pain with them - I wish him and Claire well, at all times.

:: The Harvard/UNC study on downloading, mentioned earlier, is in the news. One of the authors, Koleman Strumpf, an economics professor at UNC, thought the paper, The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, written with Felix Oberholzer of the Harvard Business School, would be of interest to a handful of academics, and nothing more. Instead, its release, in draft form, has touched off a flurry of responses and uproar, most of it coming from the music industry. The RIAA released a six-page response (which, despite my best searching efforts, I cannot locate on their web site anywhere), saying that "The results are inconsistent with virtually every other study", and asking ""If illegal downloading is not the cause of the precipitous decline in sales of recordings, what is?" Well, duh. Where does one begin? From newsobserver.com:

There could be many causes for the decline, Strumpf said. The economy is weaker. More entertainment choices might be drawing consumer dollars. Radio consolidation has reduced variety.

He says the industry's response amounts to, " 'We have 20 studies, they have one.' If 20 or 100 or 1,000 people say the sun revolves around the earth, it doesn't make it so."

Two years ago, Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee set out to research the matter. Strumpf's interest was piqued by the Napster trial, where the recording industry alleged copyright violations that led to the demise of the pioneering Web site in 2001. In the testimony, experts argued that music downloads had to be the cause of slumping sales.

Strumpf read the studies they cited. They were horrible, he said.

"I was like, 'Boy, this is pretty amazing,' " said Strumpf, a Philadelphia native. "Nobody has done a serious study."

Translation: Strumpf and Oberholzer read the industry-sponsored studies, and realized that they were a collective crock of shyte, most likely scientifically unsound. Strumpf also notes that his paper is not complete, and the reason it was released was so that the two researchers could get feedback, which is happening in spades. Of course, one other reason that sales have dropped is that so much of what the Big Labels release these days is CRAP!

:: This small, unassuming blog posting, about a tag with washing instructions in French and English, has generated at least 354 comments, and 86 trackbacks.

My Friends, They Are A'Bloggin'

:: My first web site saw the light of day in 1995, and I added a counter to it in January, 1996. I became aware of blogs in 1999 or 2000, at which time I made mention of them on my both my library page and search engine page. I attended Peter Scott's presentation on blogging in Oct, 2001, and thought about starting one at that time. Blogging was still in its infancy, and foreign to most people at that time.

Geoff, meanwhile, had started his first blog in 2002, at the time known as The Anonymous Librarian (if memory serves); however, he forgot to renew the domain name, and it was snared by some, well, let's just call them non-librarian types, so he revamped and started again with The Blog Driver's Waltz. In May 2002, unbeknownst to me, my belly-dancing songstress librarian pal in Florida, Darcy, began darcysworld. In July 2002, I began The Pod Bay Door, using Blogger as the software package. I wondered if any other friends would start blogging as well. It didn't take long to find out.

Shortly after PBD appeared, Derryl jumped in with Cold Ground, and Jena was right behind with naked bootleg. Claire snuck in there somewhere with There Be Giants Here, Kim offered Bibcognito, and Keith followed with Bloggo - The Non Blog, a site that has had at least "10,937,458,548 visitors since May 1974." Kenton started blogging around that time, and Mike was next, with Toys and Cookies, although he has been quiet since last fall.

In 2003, Robert returned to writing with I'm Not Boring You, Am I?, also the title of his fanzine from the 70s-90s period. My fanzines, fwiw, were called Odds 'n' Ends (1969), and Winding Numbers (1975-78, or something...); look around my site, you may notice a reference to one of them. My cool SLA pal, Cindi, started her blog, Chronicles of Bean in 2003 as well, Bean being the pet name of her unborn child (at the time), now known as the beautiful Bethany.

OK, so now what's up? Well, my Winnipeg pals are blogging. Please let me introduce Steve and Tony: Steve, aka Stephen R George, aka Valerie Stevens, aka Jack Ellis, is one of the many friends I met while participating in sf fandom in the 1970s in Winnipeg, publishing zines and attending sf conventions. One of Steve's zines was Gleet Glort, thus the name of his web site, glort.com, and his blog, glort Web log. Steve is also a horror author, which is why he has a few pseudonyms. Tony and I met in 1971 while attending St Paul's College at the U of Manitoba. One of our first connections was when he tried to assure me that Horse With No Name wasn't sung by Neil Young, while I, like the cocksure moron I was, insisted otherwise, and would have none of it. I'm sure he thought I was a complete idiot, so much so that we've been friends ever since. Tony's new weblog is called Sea of Flowers. Both blogs are worth checking, you won't be disappointed. BTW, adding our mutual friend Mike Nichols to the equation (no, not THAT Mike Nichols), and you get Bike With Mike.

Lordy. These people are my friends. It's a blog family!

Illiterate Spam, Juno Stuff

:: Spammers, knowing no moral code or caring about anyone or anything, continue to astound and confuse. On my work-related blog, we keep receiving spam comments, which means I need to continually run Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist. The next version of Moveable Type will deal with this problem, hopefully in a permanent way.

Regardless, here is an example of the kind of bad, broken English that accompanies most of these spam comments:

Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with the rot of honey dampness, lowered my insert spam product here. In truth, much as the owners of cats depended these unstressed folk, they hopped them more.

Er, what?

:: I volunteer again tonight at one of the Juno-fest venues, The Power Plant, which happens to be two buildings over from the library in which I work on campus. It promises to be rather uneventful. I'm one of the two media contacts assigned to that venue, and as of this writing, no media have booked any time with any of the acts there tonight. I will be there from 8:00 pm - 2:30 am or so, which is really 3:30 am, as DST starts tonight.

:: Has anyone noticed that searches on Google seem to be taking longer than usual, of late?

TypeKey Almost Ready

:: Six Apart, creators of Moveable Type and TypePad, is nearing release of its authentication service, TypeKey: "TypeKey is a free, open system providing a central identity that anyone can use to log in and post comments on blogs and other web sites." I've been using Jay Allen's MT Blacklist, which has worked quite well, to block comment spam. But even Jay is acknowledging that with TypeKey and the forthcoming Moveable Type 3.0, MT Blacklist's continued development won't be needed.

:: For those of you interested in a wallpaper update, yesterday I applied Polyfilla to the wall where required, and sanded it afterwards. I'll check it today for touch-ups, and then begin washing the wall, in breathless anticipation of the forthcoming application of primer. Does it get any more exciting than this?

:: A slightly different version of my Dennis Miller post was uploaded to Blogcritics, and has garnered a few interesting responses.

Weblogs, Licence Plates, and Sampling

:: What's next in writing tools for weblogs? Dave Winer wants your opinion. I'm wondering if something like Textpattern is where things are headed. Then there is the corporate blog movement; anyone heard of SilkBlogs?

:: When I drive, I play word games with licence plates on vehicles in front of me. When it's a plate with three letters, I try to form words using the letters in the order they appear from L-R. For example, my plate's letters are WZN, which could be wheezing or waltzing. My previous licence plate was STR, which could be straight, stretch, mustard, magistrate, saturate, etc. Today I saw a plate with CRD, and could though of chord, card, cradle, etc. I also though of The Communards, an 80s UK band. Later while driving, I was switching radio stations (all of the pop music stations in Edmonton suck bobos), and the first song I heard was "Smalltown Boy", by the Bronski Beat, which later became...The Communards.

Coincidence? Psychic phenomenon? Rift in the space-time continuum?

:: Grey Tuesday happened yesterday. An LA DJ, Danger Mouse, "created" a remix of Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' White Album, and released it on the Internet, calling it The Grey Album. (Jay-Z had released an a cappela version of The Black Album to encourage sampling.)

EMI, claiming copyright of The White Album, is attempting to stop the album's distribution, having previously sent Mouse a cease and desist order, re: online distribution of the record. The Grey Tuesday web site notes that "Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z." Jason Kottke suggests that "musical sampling without prior consent of the copyright holder should be legally allowed because it does our society more good than harm." Hundreds of web sites turned grey on Tuesday in protest.

I can't buy this argument. I've been a musician for 37+ years, and don't see anything creative or inventive in the "sampling" of another artist's original work by adding new lyrics or rhythm, then claiming credit (or co-credit) for it as an original work. That opinion notwithstanding, how does not informing a copyright holder that her or his music has been taken by another "artist" and morphed into something else, do harm to society? WTF?

So why am I against this, while not against downloading? Because I believe these are two different issues. If the music industry can get its act together (right, and the sun will go nova this weekend, too) to create a fee-for-service downloading service, I'd be happy to pay to download music, if the fee structure was within reason, and the quality of the product could be guaranteed beforehand. So far, the industry hasn't responded. And P2P downloading is legal in Canada. With "sampling", an artist takes an original work, changes it, and we are expected to view this as a new, creative and unique product.

DJ Danger Mouse "honor