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 "honors" The Beatles with this effort? The album cover shows Jay-Z in the centre, with The Beatles standing behind him, as if to suggest collaboration. Still other versions have him sharing space with The Beatles on the Revolver and Yellow Submarine covers. Sacrilege.

Many artists allow sampling of their music, but the process begins with permission to use copyright material, and then negotiations for compensation with the copyright holder(s). Many other artists, The Beatles included, do not allow sampling.

Then again, this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.

OED Word of the Day: blog

:: Mike sent word (no pun intended), that the Oxford English Dictionary chose blog as their Word Of the Day recently. In the OED, blog has two definitions, one as a verb, and one as a noun.

Also, here's the OED entry for weblog, which as you will notice, has two definitions; the one from 1993 has nothing to do with blogs.

Blogs & Blogging: The Ten Most Important Ideas of 2003, and Other Ideas as Well

:: Dave Pollard, of How To Save The World, offers his list of the ten most important blogging ideas of 2003. He also has a page that links to his various entries on blogs & blogging, many of which provide advice, tips, surveys, and other items of interest. Examples include Good Weblog Design and Layout, and Secrets of Breakout Blogs. Also, check his list of favorite Canadian blogs (no, I'm not on it.) Also worth checking, his list of 14 time-savers for bloggers. My favorite is #13: "Learn to type properly."

:: In addition, the New York Times Magazine featured its annual Year In Ideas issue on Dec 14, 2003, and considers these 67 movements to be the most important of the year. (Free registration required.) Do you agree? Billboards That Know You is cause for concern, the Pod Car is kinda cool, but Tribute Bands in Denial?

Zempt

:: Geoff, on a blogging tear of late, wrote about Zempt, a multi-platform program that works with Moveable Type, and allows for blog posting without having to login to your MT site. I downloaded the app at work and at home, and it works brilliantly. Give it a try if you are an MT blogger. Another related app is w.bloggar, which works with MT and other blog software.

Loss of Control

:: When composing an entry for your blog, remember to try really, really hard, not to accidentally hit CTRL and W keys together, the combination of which closes the page you've been working on, resulting in the loss of everything you've just written.

Like I just did.

Good night.

Blogs vs Forums

:: Geoff and I gave a presentation on Thursday afternoon called biblioBLOGS: Building Blogs and Sharing Information. During the session, we were asked about the difference between blogs and online forums. This is something I've thought about in the past, and the one difference that comes to mind first is this: forums seem to exist in a "question and answer" environment. Two days ago, I asked a question in the Moveable Type Support Forum about a style sheet problem. I checked back a day later, and a kind soul provided me with the solution, which worked nicely! I've posted "I need help" types of questions and received help, in other support forums such as Dell Community Forum and Blogomania. Forums need not be restricted to Q&A, mind you; many forums bring together those who share similar interests, such as music. Check out the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, featuring discussions on a wide range of music and hardware topics.

Blogs are more personal and of an individual nature. Posts tend not to be moderated, there isn't an FAQ to read, and you don't need to register and login to participate. One theme I see running through some of the discussion I've read is that blogs tend to reduce the signal to noise ratio - there is more content of substance and less waste of space in blog posts and related discussions. And consider that if you find information on a blog site that you want or need to know, why would you bother going anywhere else, subsquently, if your need has been filled? It doesn't matter, necessarily, if the route to that particular blog was serendipitous. There is no way on the planet anyone anywhere, anymore, can get a handle on all that's happening out there. Who are we kidding? (Well, Triumph likes to kid, "I keeed!!.")

In any event, here are a few interesting entries that discuss blogs, forums, online discussion, and the like:

• Coates, Tom. Discussion and citation in the blogosphere... Plastic Bag, 25 May 2003.
  
• McIntyre, Al. Blogs vs. discussion forums. Al McIntyre's Radio Weblog, 28 Aug 2002.
  
• Murphy, Gary Lawrence. Blogs 'n' boards. TELEDYN :: have blog - will travel ::, 27 May 2003.
  
• Ozzie, Ray. Architecture matters: the rebirth of public discussion. Ray Ozzie's Weblog, 12 Aug 2002.
  
• Plato. Forums vs. blogs. The Ducks of Plato, 22 Nov 2002.

See also: Castledine, Steve. Let's blog together. Castledine began a discussion of blogs vs forums (or fora) that took place in the OpenNTF.org Main Bar forum. Follow the thread below Casteldine's first posting.

It Takes ... Balls

:: I was at the Netspeed 2003 conference today in Edmonton, and attended a number of interesting sessions, including ones covering virtual reference services, and PDAs in the library. One of the keynote speakers, Ian Whitten, currently the iCore Visiting Professor at U Lethbridge, and Director of the NZ Digital Library at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, discussed Greenstone Digital Library Software, a suite of open-source software used to build and digitize library collections. During his engaging and at time hilarious talk, he showed us examples of digitized collections created with Greenstone, including this page on castration from Basic Husbandry Practices and Veterinary Care. (The foreword of the book states: "The manuals are based upon experiences documented through a series of intensive field work activities over a one-year period with a group of livestock small-holders living and working in Cavite province of the Philippines.")

Note the picture of the farmer tossing the animal testicles onto a roof of made of galvanized iron. This is an indigenous practice done on hot days, as the belief is that the testicles will dry up faster, and thus so will the wound to the animal.

The attentive crowd watching Ian, myself included, had just finished eating lunch at this point in time.

:: I've been playing around with Blogger sites again, ones I've created to keep myself familiar with how to set up an instant blog on that site. Among these sites is my original blog from July 2002. I need to maintain familiarity so that I might sound somewhat intelligent and coherent when G and I present blogging sessions in the not-too-distant future. As some of you might notice, I'm also experimenting with the font size and styles here as well.

The Flipside of Life

:: Well, that didn't take 72 or even 48 hours. Heck, not even 24. Like, overnight, baby. My domain name transferred quietly overnight from Edmonton to somewhere in Jacksonville FL. Blogomania is their name, web hosting, their game. Why the switch? The local host company wasn't that reliable, and they wouldn't support programs like Gallery, of which I am looking forward to loading onto my server. I did some homework in that Geoff switched to Blogomania last year, and still sings their praises. I can report that each in a series of questions I sent to their helpdesk have been answered with, as Monty would say, "With all speed."

:: It's been a stressful week on a number of levels, I'll write more about this shortly. Today I put a stainless steel U of A mug with coffee in it into a microwave to warm up the coffee. The microwave melted a small part of the plastic handle on the mug - which was a gift, btw. I had to clean the microwave afterwards, wiping away the sootlike black crud that adorned the its innards after the meltdown. This, plus missing a meeting, and struggling for hours, literally, trying to get a document to the CNS Plotter. Suffice it to say that by 4:30 pm, I was 1) in virtual tears, and 2) ready to put my fist through my work computer screen. Good night.

Slow But Steady, Sho' Good Eatin'!, Show Biz Kids...

:: I took another baby step tonight, preparing for the move to another host. Yesterday I successfully loaded Moveable Type 2.64 onto the new server. Today, with a dose of patience, I was able to initialize the system so that I can reach the MT prompt on the new host. Patience was important: I encountered two errors while working, and was pleased that I was able to determine their source, and correct them. One was a typo (I had typed DBI:mysql instead of DBI::mysql - damn extra colon!), and the other was an incorrect URL I had loaded into the mt.cfg file. Whatever. Details, details.

This is too much detail, but forgive me the indulgence: this blog, the one you are reading, is running on as a Berkeley db (whatever that means). The new one will run as a MySQL db (whatever that means - Geoff, he knows what that means; so does Kenton.)

What's next is that I have to create a weblog on the new site, and then try to import the entries from here to there. As well, I want to import my templates. I hope I can do it without much grinding and gnashing of teeth.

:: Perhaps the best nutrition site I've ever seen is this one: NutritionData. It features a db of 7,154 foods, and "generates nutrition facts labels and provides simplified nutritional analyses for all foods and recipes." The only drawback: no foods found only in Canada are in the db (such as Vector or Optimum cereal).

:: This article on "geezer rock" is more annoying than anything else. It's been interesting watching rock music age, from its beginnings in the 1950s, to present day. The musicians who create and play pop, rock and folk rock music, seem to be the only ones who get slagged because they get older. Musicians working in classical, bluegrass, country, blues, soul, rhythm and blues, opera, klezmer, whatever, are never bashed around because they get on in years. But in rock, journalists like to lambaste them, as Jim Derogatis does here, almost just for the exercise itself.

Derogatis' thesis: that "the best rock 'n' roll is immediate, urgent and vital--it is music that celebrates living in the moment", is a good one, but it doesn't necessarily need to apply across the board. I mean, do the Artists That Matter need to rebel 24/7? I'm biased towards Steely Dan, but damn it if their new album doesn't haul ass, and sound better than most of the shyte being fobbed on music fans by artists and acts half their age. Derogatis offers five geezer lists, from Geezers who still matter, to Geezers who never mattered and are now less relevant and more offensive than ever. In the end it's all subjective. Who's to say the music being made now by (some of the) artists who've been active in these genres for 25-40 years can or cannot stand on its own merit?

Check out these responses from the Hoffman forum, many with which I agree. My favorite comment: "Terrible article. I wish I could have written something so shallow and negative when I was 15 and get paid for it. Might as well tell us that Jazz is for dead people. Go fling yourself in front of a schoolbus."

Blogospherics: Whither the weblog?

:: From Blogcritics comes word about a review by Mark Bernstein of Rebecca Blood's book, The Weblog Handbook. Read "A Romantic View of Weblogs" for an different view of why people blog. I read Blood's book last year, and found it a valuable resource with which to begin a blogging experience.

SARSfest in Toronto, Bill Maher

:: The largest rock concert in Canadian history happened yesterday at Downsview ON. The Rolling Stones and 15+ other musical acts performed a show to support the city of Toronto, hammered on many fronts, mostly tourism, since the SARS breakout earlier this year.

The television coverage in Canada, well, SBT'd: Sucked Big Time. Broadcasters from Much More Music and CBC interviewed teenage girls and aging hippies for their (constant, non-stop) moronic perspectives of the event, as if anyone gave a rat's ass. At one point during the CBC's waste-of-time two hour broadcast, Ralph Ben-Mergui "interviewed" a beautiful, waif-like young thing from Florida who looked as if she just left a casting call for Blue Crush, asking her dumb question after question, getting close and closer to her each time. It was a sad performance from someone who knew better.

In addition, the MMM VJs often interviewed the performers, and again, like, who cared? I wanted to see the concerts, the performances, the music. Live Aid, anyone? Remember how pathetic the coverage was for that in 1985? Didn't the CBC or MMM learn anything? Ooooops, sorry, I forgot: contractual obligations! Must show commercials endlessly. Must show idiot interviews. Must show videos of old concerts. Toronto rocked, the rest of Canada was passed over.

:: Derryl advises that Bill Maher is blogging. This is a good thing, I love Maher. But Bill: c'mon, let us comment on your postings - DUDE!

Report from Winnipeg (3): BBQs and Satire Blogs

:: Each visit to Winnipeg is not complete w/o an evening with a group of important local friends, including Tony, Steve, Mike, and others, and usually in the form of a bbq, which we did this evening at Steve and Val's house. Mike and Susan are on vacation, so I missed them this time around.

As always, we had much fun, the burgers and smokies were downed, the beer flowed, the conversation continued for hours. Claire, Tony's daughter, will be entering UW this fall, and recently began an online journal. I love her concise and to-the-point movie reviews!

:: Tomorrow is Part 1 of the high school reunion. And I get to sleep in again.

:: I'm running searches on Google trying to find a specific satire blog (which really pokes fun at blogging in its simplest form), and I found a reference to satire blogs by Dubya and Saddam. Oh, I found it.

One Year On

:: Keith said that there is nothing more boring than bloggers writing about blogging. This may be true. I just realized that a year ago, in early July, I started my first blog, so I've past the first anniversary. Doesn't seem like it was that long ago. It's still fun to do this. Watch for changes in the site sometime soon.

:: I've been anxious most of my life. I've done what I can so far to deal with it. Question: what can you (or I) expect to replace anxiety, if/when it goes away? What replaces it? Confidence, happiness, sense of well being, acceptance, contentment?

About.com Adopts a Blogging Model

:: An interesting entry from Sitelines mentions that About.com, historically one of my favorite subject-based portal sites, has adopted a blogging model based somewhat on MT, changing the appearance of each subject page. See examples here and here. RSS is available on the pages that have converted to the blog format.

About.com began as The Mining Company in 1997: "Each site in our unique network is run by a professional Guide who is carefully screened and trained by About. Guides build a comprehensive environment around each of their specific topics, including the best new content, relevant links, How-To's, Forums, and answers to just about any question." I've added some of their sites to the subject guides I edit at work.

Blog Glossary, 404 Error Parody Pages

:: This blog glossary comes from Samizdata.net weblog ("A blog bringing you news & views from a robust critically rational libertarian perspective, updated several times daily")

:: Keith brought the Weapons of Mass Destruction parody page to my attention. (NOTE: Search "weapons of mass destruction" in Google, but click on "I'm Feeling Lucky"). The creator of this page in Anthony Cox, an "Adverse Drug Reaction" pharmacist in Birmingham, UK. Cox has created another brilliant "...cannot be displayed" page, in reaction to the Jayson Blair blow-up at the NYTimes.

Take a Blogiday?

:: Dave Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, has suggested that we take a break from blogging during the first two weeks of August. Do you agree? Discuss.

Am I the only blogperson growing blogtired of the blogixon of words with prefixes beginning with or suffixes ending with a version of the word "blog"?

Photoblogs Gaining Respectibility

:: More evidence seems to appear weekly that suggests blogs are swiftly moving into the mainstream. Today's NYTimes Arts & Leisure section's cover story is titled, "Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo Blogs." (NYT ID& PW: podbay)

:: I attended my Pilates class tonight for the first time in two weeks, since I started coughing and hacking. Tough class, hard to get back into it. Tomorrow I'll try a regular workout.

:: This weekend was a scorcher: 31^oC on Saturday and 26^oC today. Hard to believe that we had this weather only three weeks ago.

Blogumentary

:: Kelly's friend Chuck is making a movie about blogs, called Blogumentary. Check out the trailer in Windows Media or Quicktime. (PBS has also made a documentary about blogs.)

:: I'm keeping the shoes.

Blogging on Campus

:: I was going to write a piece on the edu-blogging session which Geoff and I presented this afternoon on campus, but Geoff already has posted a good summary here.

:: I'm thinking, my previous post garnered 18 responses, a new PBD record. How can I ever post again? It's like, I don't want to post another entry because I'll break the spell or something...

The Perils of Personal Blogging

:: Today's NYTimes has a fascinating article by Warren St John, Dating a Blogger, Read All About It. The article details how what is written and published in a personal blog may return to haunt the writer: hurt feelings, relationships permanently harmed, employers ticked off, and the like. A wakeup call for some of us? St John also writes about the state of NYC blogs, including Gawker, a NYC web site that describes itself as "a live review of city news and Manhattan culture." NYC Bloggers, a site I've listed on my page since last year, lists >2,100 blogs in NYC, grouped together by distance from subway stations. (Note: NYTimes member ID and PW: podbay)

"What's So Great About Really Deep Thoughts?" Wiki Wiki!

:: Here's a compelling and interesting essay from Andrew Grumet: Deep Thinking About Weblogs.

:: I didn't buy shoes tonight, but gave the idea some deep thoughts.

:: Seen this term popping up lately?: social software. Here's an article about it by Stowe Boyd. There is a social software blog. There is a Social Software Alliance Wiki. Wiki?

:: In an effort to keep up with developments in all things web-like, Wiki came up in conversation today. I investigate a few sites before my brain exploded, including the original site and the FAQ, which notes that "this Wiki thing" is: "A collection of web-pages which can be edited by anyone, at any time, from anywhere." Wiki Wiki is Hawaiian for "quick". One major project is the Wikipedia, a "multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia. We started on January 15, 2001 and are already working on 120,700 articles in the English version." How did they create 120,700 entries in just over 2 years? Regardless, the creators think Wikipedia is great. A Wiktionary is also being created.

:: An entrepeneur in Spokane purchased 10 Segways, and is renting them to people looking for cheap, quick transportation. He couldn't do this if he lived in San Francisco, however. In the end, it may not matter.

:: We try to stay in at least the slow lane on the information superhighway, but lately I feel like I've pulled over on the offramp to change a flat tire.

Guardian Unlimited: The Weblog

:: The Guardian maintains a fascinating and detailed weblog site. In addition, check "Onlineblog.com, a weblog covering internet and technology news produced daily by the Guardian Online team."

A Question of Balance

:: I've watched this blog unfold and grow since July 2002 (when it was a Blogger site), never really knowing what my next entry will be. I've waffled back and forth between posting library-related entries, and everything-else-besides-libraries entries. Recently I started another blog, The (sci-tech) Library Question, which may soon take on a collaborative life of its own, and is a place for me to post library-related items of interest to colleagues working in science, engineering, math, life sciences, agriculture libraries, and the like. Geoff and many others are doing a stellar job of covering an increasingly widening array of library issues on a daily basis.

All of that said, I may choose to concentrate on the rest of my interests here, at the risk of boring my six or seven regular readers. For example, I'm fifteen minutes away from leaving to see The Good Thief. At work today, I neared completion of my talk on guerrila marketing of engineering libraries, to be presented as part of a panel at SLA in NYC on June 10th. Is anyone else watching 24 and cursing when each episode ends? How weird is this? Scientists have discovered a bizarre jellyfish in deep California coastal water.

Snow is still on the ground, the sky is still dark and grey, and I am all over the place.

William Gibson abandons blogging, or ... ?

:: William Gibson, who started blogging in early January 2003, has (apparently) decided, after three months and such, to give up the activity, at least for now. Or has he?

Gibson is currently in Ireland on a book tour for Pattern Recognition. In an interview with Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times, he notes that to prepare for his next book, he'll have to give up the blog:

I do know from doing it that it's not something I can do when I'm actually working. Somehow the ecology of writing novels wouldn't be able to exist if I'm in daily contact. If I expose things that interest or obsess me as I go along, there'd be no need to write the book. The sinews of narrative would never grow."

I've enjoyed reading his blog entries, as have others, and I will buy the new book soon (I need a break from non-fiction). I met Gibson in Vancouver in the 80s, while still an active member of sf fandom, and saw him a number of times afterwards. He was invited to be a co-Guest of Honour at the ConText'89 in Edmonton, the conference that served as the launchpoint for what is now known as SF Canada, and for the nifty Canadian magazine, Edmonton-based On Spec. The last time I saw him was when he was on tour for Virtual Light, and came through Edmonton. After his reading, Derryl and I rescued him from the masses and took him for a beer on Whyte Avenue.

He said in the interview that he's giving it up, but he's posted an entry today. Can we expect more?

Thanks for Doc Searls for the lead into this story.

All RSS, All The Time

¦¦ Props to Heavy G for his extended entry on RSS (Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary - where RDF means Resource Description Framework). Head hurting already? Well, mine has been for some time, as I try to stay on the information superhighway, rather than in the ditch, changing a virtual flat tire.

Geoff cuts through the quagmire of RSS, RDF, XML with a few timely tips and lucid explanations. (Am I lucky that his office is right next to mine? Duh.) Take the time to read his posting and you'll see a reference to an experiment I tried a few days ago. Suffice it to say that it hasn't worked, but it was worth the try. I realized afterwards that trying to move an extended discussion spanning five listservs at once, over to a blog set up to collate the responses, isn't going to work unless you convince the participants to join you, in advance. That said, the idea of creating a subject-specific library blog for, say, engineering librarians, continues to intrigue me.

I am working through Geoff's entry in an attempt to learn more about this subject and its applications. If you are interested as well, take the time and learn from an up-and-coming master.

¦¦ In other exciting news, I met with the sports physician today re: my continuing tennis elbow condition in my left arm. While it could take months to heal, I can play guitar and mandolin without too much difficulty, while at the same time abandoning free and machine weight exercises involving those muscles for the time being. I will return for a shot of cortisone in May, which given the area of injection, is predicted by the doctor to be very painful. Am I having fun yet?

The good news is that after six weeks of Stott Pilates classes, I'm already noticing an improvement in the form of the absence of lower back pain and stronger muscles in the abs region.

What I Did This Morning

¦¦ This morning I woke up, hit the snooze alarm a couple times, then had a shower, and made a smoothy with orange juice, some strawberries, peach yogurt, a banana and some wheat germ. I watched Sports Centre on TSN. Then I drove to work. Now I'm at work. I credit my inspiration for this entry to this site. Thanks, Stephen.

Hiatus On Hold

¦¦ For Reasons Unknown, the problem I've had all week connecting from home to my website has dissipated for now. I'll leave well enough alone and end talk of it here.

¦¦ We have war, a new disease, airlines in bankruptcy, really cold and unseasonable weather, and in the midst of all that, this.

We're in a time when being publicly critical is not in vogue. Kathleen Parker is an American journalist whose nationally syndicated column runs in >300 papers, including the Salt Lake City Tribune. When Tribune staffers learned that her 19 March 2003 column was an unflattering piece about Ed Smart, father of Elizabeth Smart, they petitioned the editorial page editor not to run her column, which is what happened. In the eyes of other Tribune editors and columnists, it amounted to censorship. Parker contends that since the return of Elizabeth Smart to her family, Ed Smart has been mugging before the cameras non-stop, and that he's, well, kinda creepy. Do you agree? (Do you care?)

Temporary Hiatus

¦¦ The problems mentioned in the previous post are continuing. I am unable to connect to my site from my home computer, due to a router problem. When I do a "tracert" from the DOS prompt, it hits a wall at the fourth or fifth node and times out. Oddly enough, I can get my site from my work computer (which I'm doing now), and other visitors are connecting without a problem from their machines.

As such, don't expect another entry for a couple of days, or more, and the site itself might disappear temporarily. It will return (I own the domain name through to Sept 2004), and may look different for a while. Thanks for your patience.

Server Problems

¦¦ I have been experiencing major problems with my web server host for the past 48 hours or so. My apologies in advance if this continues. I am very frustrated at this time. I am investigating other options.

Trackback Blues

¦¦ With encouragement and guidance from Heavy G, I successfully embedded trackback coding into my templates tonight. (I know, it doesn't make much sense to me either). But I'm glad I finally did it. Geoff mentioned an interesting graphical show-and-tell about how trackback works. I think it's finally beginning to make sense. Now the Amazing Trotts, creators of Moveable Type, have written A Beginner's Guide To Trackback.

Now I need to learn how to use it!

What Th- ?

¦¦ The Edmonton Journal published a feature on blogging in the Friday 14 March 2003 edition. Written by Mairi MacLean, the two pieces feature comments from a number of locals, including Geoff, Robert (in Lethbridge), Jen, myself, and a mention of Kelly's site as well. Given the small amount of coverage available in a newspaper, I thought Mairi did a good job introducing blogging to the EJ readers. My only quibble: the URLs for the websites mentioned were not included in the print or online(!) versions of the articles.

¦¦ In the world of You-Gotta-Be-Sh*tting-Me, a woman in Germany began emerging from a 6-year coma when her parents took her Regensburg to listen to a Bryan Adams concert. My favorite take on the story left me in tears from laughing. Previously Bryan Adams was known only for Waking Up The Neighbours, not comatose fans. Meanwhile, in Kenya, sadly, three people died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that fell into an open-pit latrine.

¦¦ It's unfortunate that you need to subscribe to read stories from the NYTimes Magazine online. The March 9 issue features three fascinating articles on: face transplant surgery, "smart-mobbing" the antiwar movement, and a disturbing piece on Mel Gibson and his father, orthodox Catholic theologian Hutton Gibson. Discussed is The Passion, Mel Gibson's upcoming movie on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, with the actors speaking in Latin and Aramic only. There will be no subtitles. "Gibson has has said that he hopes to depict Christ's ordeal using 'filmic storytelling techniques' that will make the understanding of the dialogue uncessary." (NYTimes, 9 March 02, p53) The publication of the article has infuriated the younger Gibson. What is disturbing about the article in the NYTimes Magazine are some of Hutton Gibson's beliefs such as: the Sept 11 jets were not flown by Al-Qaeda operatives but were remote-controlled, and that the Holocaust never happened.

¦¦ Why are there not enough hours in the day to do what you want to do?

¦¦ Forthcoming project: to record in a notepad every song that appears in my head in one day from wakeup in the morning to going to sleep at night the same day.

Bits and Pieces

¦¦ With all due respect to my many dear American friends, occasionally you shake your head in disbelief at what some of them do to get attention, especially in the name of so-called patriotism. Will the "average" American ever learn that there is sentient life outside the 48 contiguous, and, gosh darn it, that it matters too?

¦¦ Another pronouncement from the established media that blogging is now mainstream.

¦¦ Late night musical discovery: Secondsight, from North Carolina.

¦¦ It makes good sense that my friend and colleague Stephen Abram is a member of the Internet Librarian Hall of Fame. My question is: how does one qualify, and who makes decision to induct?

¦¦ It was great to see SNL pay tribute last Saturday to Fred Rogers. Horatio Sanz sat on stage near the end and sang a song in his honour. In the past, SNL skewered him mercilessly, the high water mark being the early 1980's with Eddie Murphy, when he did Mr Robinson's Neighborhood. National Lampoon was in on it as well, satirizing him on one of their first albums. Read a most heartfelt tribute to Rogers from PopMatters.

¦¦ Make your own online kaleidoscope! The Internet justs gets better every day.

What's All This, Then?

¦¦ At Geoff's suggestion, I've added Blogrolling to manage the weblog links in the right hand column. So far I've added the locals only. I am behind in learning more about CSS, RSS feeds, etc. In time...

¦¦ Curb Your Enthusiasm, already through its third season on HBO, finally made it to Canadian television a few weeks ago. It's hilarious, and I'm hooked. Yes, we still cannot get HBO in Canada. Bloody CRTC, protecting me from that dangerous American culture, and helping Canadian broadcasters produce other stuff of no interest to me in general. My feeling: let the Canadians produce a zillion shows, but don't deny me the right to watch HBO as well.

¦¦ It's late...time for bed.

My Eye Feels Better

¦¦ Mike notified me about this story on MSNBC: Marketers at Dr Pepper (the soft drink) have decided to use blogs as a new marketing tool, to advertise their new milk-based product, Raging Cow. A blog has already been created that is home to a fictional account of the history of the drink. From the MSNBC site: "Next comes a blog-related twist on viral marketing—recruiting “key influence bloggers” to promote Raging Cow by sharing their enthusiasm, linking to the site and distributing special screensavers, banners and skins." Does anyone else think this might backfire, except among dough-headed teenagers (which means not ALL teenagers, just the dough-headed ones)?

Then again, just by mentioning it on my site, I've added one more link to their product (out in April), so maybe I'm part of the plan.

¦¦ My right eye is healing, after using prescription eye drops for a day.

¦¦ Every so often while maintaining this blog site, I reach a point of minor frustration - I want to clean up the coding, make the site work better in other browsers, etc. I'm working on that now, albeit really, really slowly.

¦¦ There is no end in sight to our frigid temperatures, expected to continue into next week. But there is a lot more hours of sunshine!

My Eye Hurts

I am behind in my posts, and I apologize. Sometimes other things take over, like work, food, snow, workouts, sore right eyes and left elbows, and the like. I'm working to clean up some of the MT coding on my site, it's a long, drawn out process. It helps to have friends who are patient. I think, also, that many of us are a bit worn out from the weather; it's -24C at the moment here in Edmonton, and will be bitterly cold for the next few days, with the weekend lows checking in around -37C. Enough, already...

Wakeup Call? Losing Your Job Because of Your Blog

¦¦ Surfing around through Kelly's site, one surf leads to another (isn't that a song?), and I ended up at Dooce.com. On Feb 26, 2002, the author of this site lost her job because of something she'd written in her blog. So I'm reading away, and notice her post from today has 131 responses, and I'm like, that's a hell of a lot of comments. So I go to put in a comment because the thread is about if you could take one song and one book as you fled the nuclear holocaust, what might they be? I look over the entire page, and can't find any place on the site that lets me submit a post. Argh! Frustration sets in.

So I start checking some of the 131 posts, and end up at Paul's Boutique, and discover that Paul (Gutman) has written the following paper: Did You Just Say That?: Blogging and Employment Law in Conflict, to be submitted for publication to the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts. Paul writes: "While it might be pretentious and unnecessarily legal and long, I think bloggers might find this worthwhile reading if they like their jobs." I like my job (thank you, God, for tenure.) (I don't agree that it's pretentious - it is a submission to a scholarly journal. Legal, yes, but it needs to be.) In the submission, he highlights a number of well known incidents in which bloggers were fired from their jobs because of something they wrote that miffed their employers.

This is serious food for thought, and I encourage you to at least scan Gutman's submission.

UPDATE (15 June 2004): The draft of Paul Gutman's article is no longer available for viewing online. It has been revised and modified, and published in v27 n1 of The Columbia Journal of Law & The Arts.

Why Protest The (Impending) War?, and Ranking Blogs

¦¦ One of the first two blogs I started reading in early 2002 was Laura's. The other was Geoff's. On Laura's site I discovered a link to brain-terminal, which "seeks to provide thoughtful analysis of the various political, social, economic and technological trends that affect our daily lives." It is the brainchild of Evan Coyne Maloney. Why he chose the horrid colour scheme will remain a myster. Whatever. Anyway, you must watch the video of his interviews with various NYC anti-war protesters from earlier this month. It reveals that they are passionate, but it many cases, clueless. Of course, leave us not forget that we are seeing only the interviews he chose to let us see. But it makes for entertaining viewing.

¦¦ Daypop is a search engine that searches "14,600 news site and weblog for current events and breaking news." You can see the top weblogs, the Amazon top wish list items, top news, and the top 40! The Top 40 "is a list of links that are currently popular with webloggers from around the world". At the top of the list is ready.gov, the US gov't site that helps their citizens prepare for terrorist attacks. The site is odd and creepy, and at best, necessary. The top search, sadly I suppose, is currently "great white."

Google Buys Pyra Labs, Creater of Blooger and Blogspot

¦¦ Chris Sherman comments on Google's purchase of Pyra Labs, creator of Blogger. How will this affect blogging? How might this affect you if your blog is supported by Blogspot? The story was broke by Dan Sherman in San Jose.

Bloggers Blogging About Blogs

¦¦ Mike sent a link to this article on blogs as social networks. The author examines blogs as a social network, using power law distributions. Some of his conclusions are interesting, including how the A-List bloggers may eventually morph into mainstream media-types as their audiences grow. He also suggests that the term "blog" itself may drift into the background as blog technology becomes a platform for other types of online publising.

¦¦ It seems like a lot of "serious" bloggers are now analyzing blogging in their blogs - does this sound a bit redundant? I thought this was supposed to be all kinds of fun!

Weblogging Along

::Geoff and I are near completion of the first draft of an article we are submitting for publication in the journal Feliciter, on the topic of blogging in libraries. Meanwhile, more and more articles are appearing in mainstream newspapers and magazines on this burgeoning phenomena. Web of blogs, a typical article designed to make readers aware of this new web activity, appeared recently in the The Journal News, the newspaper for New York’s Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. In Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette is an interesting piece on how blogging (almost) changed journalism (thanks, Mike). For some, blogging is an unrelenting assault on journalism.

An interesting article in the USC Online Journalism Review compares media versus meta-journal coverage of the Columbia disaster. The author asserts that the meta-journal coverage is more complete, and notes that "It's no accident that these columns are in weblog format, and that they have loyal industry followings." The Review also examined mainstream media coverage of the Columbia, noting the power of the Internet and blogging.

Far and away the most detailed coverage I've seen on this event was posted by Steve McLaughlin in his blog, Saltire. His first entry includes details about the shuttle itself, possible scenarios, and debris reports. To appreciate his coverage, check each entry since February 1st. I am overwhelmed by the amount of detail he has offered since Feb 1, and frankly, I wonder how he does it.

Next up is wireless blogging. Meanwhile, academia is begging to recognize blogs and their impact, now and beyond. Check out the education weblog called Weblogg-ed.

The Weekend, The Pianist

This was a good weekend, a sad weekend. Sad because of the space shuttle tragedy. Good because I spent time on Saturday night having fun with friends, ate a damn fine dim sum today, saw The Pianist, the amazing new movie from Roman Polanksi (note: site is in French), and enjoyed a 90 minute full-body massage on Saturday afternoon. The weather warmed up as well, making life easier to take for a change.

The Pianist is based on the true story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who lived in Warsaw at the time of the German occupation in WWII. He escapes deportation to the death camps, lives for a time in the Warsaw ghetto, and then escapes, living in the ruins of the city until the war's end. The movie features a career performance by New York actor Adrien Brody, in the title role. Attention to detail is meticulous, especially scenes of deserted neighbourhoods in Warsaw, devestated by bombs and artillery. It was in such a neighbourhood that Szpilman hid to survive.

This is a long movie, and for a while, I found myself edgy and impatient for things to pick up. The pace of the story seems to slows once Szpilman escapes from the ghetto and hides in Warsaw, first in deserted apartments where he is locked is for his own safety by members of the underground, and then when he is forced to leave and live in a deserted hospital, and then a mansion. But afterwards, I realized that these lengthy scenes were important, because it helped me feel the isolation and impatience that he must have felt, waiting for the moment when he might be a free man again. Highly recommended.

Aside: The voice-over for the trailer for the movie pronounce it The Pee-ANN-ist. In North America, we would say The PEE-ann-ist. Perhaps they wanted to avoid having it sound too much like penis?

I'd like to welcome an old friend to the world of blogging: Michael Hall, currently of Ft McMurray AB. Mike and I met as members of Winnipeg science fiction fandom in the mid-1970s. Toys and Cookies was a phrase we used many times in those days.