Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 32 of 146)

Carl on Public Resources; Fred on Candidates in Niche Social Networks

Ole friend and Internet radio man, Carl Malamud presents his ideas about making government resources truly public in a presentation at the UC-Berkeley I-School (as linked to from Lessig.org). And he describes his Public.Resource.org projects entertainingly and well.

Fred Stutzman draws on his online campaign experiences with Clark and Kerry as he comments in a Boston Globe article “On specialized websites, candidates home in”

What Egypt, Viet Nam, Mongolia and the American South have in common

All of them have digital library challenges that are very very similar. How to represent calligraphed scripts that run in a variety of directions. How to handle fragile materials. How to describe the materials well enough to find them but sparse enough to be able to get the works processed within budget. How to federate work projects. How to choose metadata elements and how to deploy them effectively. How to represent the original object as an image and as searchable strings. How to use non-English characters in metadata effectively.

This after discussions with folks independently working on projects in the Nam characters, in Arabic, in Mongolian, in Slavic languages and in the antebellum South. Part of the trick to getting to a solution is to see where the problem sets overlap and where the solutions need to be independent and local.

Still thinking about all of this but at the same time putting the principals in touch with each other.

Durham Zombies lurch, Raleigh Zombies walk, Portuguese Exorcists associate

Cleaning up my mail after travel is always an experience. This time three messages in a row seem to have some sort of relationship — not necessarily one with me though.

First, we are all alerted of and invited to the Durham Zombie Lurch with this note:

“There’s nothing quite like dressing up as a rotting corpse to excuse you from polite, rational, and lady-like behaviour.”
-Annie Smith, Melbourne, Australia

Dear living-impared,

Join us in lurching through the unsuspecting streets of durham as a horde of zombies! Bring your friends, family?anyone who might get a kick out of stalking downtown for brains on october 27, the saturday before halloween.

Here’s the plan:
We’ll meet at 5 p.m. at the parking lot at the corner of foster and seminary streets, across from the piedmont restaurant (401 foster st.)
There will be a pre-lurch gathering at 4:30 p.m. for folks who want help with makeup.

frequently asked zombie questions:

Q: Is this event free/open to the public/all-ages?
A: yes! yes! yes!

Q: Do I need a costume?
A: Not necessarily. If you arrive before 5 p.m., we can help you with makeup, and that’s all you really need (besides a broken-down shuffle) to look like one of the undead. Wear an old shirt that you’ve torn strategically, or just come as you are and be one of our victims.

Q: How far will we lurch?
A: About 1.5 miles roundtrip.

Q: Should I bring my camera?
A: Definitely bring your camera!

Q: What else should I bring?
A: You might want to stash a little cash and your ID in your pocket in case you end up at one of durham’s fine establishments after stumbling through town with your zombie friends.

Q: rain or shine?
Q: rain?? hahahahahahaha!
But yes, even *if* it rains for more than 5 minutes, we’ll brave it — it’s not going to kill us. Since we’re already dead and all.

Q: Are there any rules for the zombie lurch?
A: Well, since you asked:
rotten rules for the zombie lurch
This is for everyone’s safety. Have your own darn lurch if you can’t hang with the nice zombies. We want you to have fun and be able to do this again!

1. We can raise the dead, but not your jail bond. We assume no responsibility or liability for any mishaps that occur during the walk.

2. Be chill, undead ones. The lurch does not qualify as a parade, so please stay on the sidewalks and keep out of traffic. We have made the police aware of the event, and everything’s fine if we keep out of the street. If they ask us to disperse, DO IT, or you’ll be marching down mangum street, if you know what we mean.

3. Always bring a designated victim, and chew with your mouth closed. Don’t attack anyone who isn’t a voluntary victim. That’s what bloody friends are for! Speaking of blood, try your darnedest not to get it on the sidewalk or on windows.

thanks!

And remember, zombies are eat people, too. Zombies like tortles, too

Then thereminist Steve Burnett chimes in with a note about the Raleigh Zombie Walk:

In addition to the earlier zombie lurch in Durham mentioned in Scott’s message that starts at 5pm for about a mile and a half, there is a zombie walk in Raleigh the same day, starting in Moore Square at 7pm.

I found information on this at [the MySpace NC Zombie Walk site].

There’s a zombie makeup clinic in Raleigh Sunday afternoon, details on the page above.

Finally, I find somewhat appropriate or at least topical spam from Fr. M. Humberto Gama of the Portuguese Association of Exorcists:

Honorable

It is with great honor and pleasure that I the President and Founder of the only Portuguese Association of Exorcists located in Fatima, Portugal, wish to introduce to you our goals and objectives in anticipation of your future collaboration with our organization.

In order to familiarize you with the founder I wish to offer you the following curriculum vitae information which will clearly shows my lifelong dedication to this study and cause.

Your past and present interest in this area is of mutual interest and more so to our organization as it is composed of only international professionals in the area and study of Exorcisms.

As a roman Catholic Priest, ordained in the Jesuit Seminary I have now seeked to establish a society where all members would assist and collaborate towards a common goal of continuing study and practicing of this ritual.

We will be promoting the assistance of priests and other practitioners from all religious and non religious sectors in order to provide this much needed and in high demand service to the needed. The society members will be recommended after properly certification from our Society to perform the ritual as it is requested from all parts of the world.

We further intend to hold an annual convention of practitioners in our headquarters in Fatima, Portugal and would be honored to have your presence in this event to be scheduled at a later date.

The International Society of Exorcists, proudly invites you to become a member of this organization and would be very interested in receiving your reply and recommendations as early as possible.

I wish to thank you in advance for accepting this invitation and we are looking forward to meeting with you here in Fatima, Portugal in the very near future.

Best Regards
Fr. M. Humberto Gama
Founding President

Signs, signs, signs

First there was my horoscope on Facebook with this warning: Working with computers will cause you some problems. This is not because of the technology but more because of the people you’re involved with. Opt for an old-fashioned way of doing something during this cycle rather than relying on inventions and modern gadgets, or worse still, people who promise a lot but deliver nothing.

Nice message to wake up to before giving a talk.

Then the storms. We have quit having rain in North Carolina. Of course I didn’t bring rain gear. Heck, I can’t even remember when I last needed rain gear or where I left my rain gear. I have no mental picture of rain gear. Another sign I was sure.

Then the set up of the room was too easy and too quick. I had kept my slides low tech and simple to be sure but it was all too easy. Now that’s a disturbing sign!

I met the former governor of Kansas who was also the Archivist of the United States. That was I think a good sign or was it a sign of how badly I was about to embarrass myself and my host?

As it turns out, the talk went well. I started and ended on time — always a good sign ;-> — and we had great questions and discussion afterwards.

On to meetings around campus for the next two days.

Kansas City – Free Wifi, tolerable bbq

Long layover at MCI, or is that KCI?, where I’m enjoying the free wifi. Thanks KS and MO! I visited the airport Arthur Bryant’s BBQ originally looking for eggs, but who would pass on the famous KC BBQ? Well, it’s beef. Not so dry but not like chopped pork. The sauce is brown catsup with a few flavors to help the bland beef pass for more than overcooked slightly smoked stuff. Forgetable slaw, called cole slaw here, as a side.

Jessamyn West in Chronicle and at K-State Libraries blogs

“Young Librarians, Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation”, a link that may given the ways of the Chronicle of Higher Education go away shortly, features interviews with 8 young librarians including Librarian.net’s Jessamyn West (her blog is hosted on ibiblio.org) who talks about the relationship between libraries and publishers. Jessamyn is handed a loaded gun when the Chronicle asks “Should the relationship between libraries and publishers change? If so, how?” and later (in audio) “What are libraries doing right? Doing wrong?” Jessamyn toasts Free Culture and disses libraries resistance to embrace rapid change.

Thanks to Jeff Pomerantz for the link to the Chronicle.

Jessamyn’s talk at Access 2007 gets reviewed on the Kansas State Libraries blog. In return, she links to bogs and feeds there at K-State.

I’ll be at Kansas State tomorrow through Friday (as I mentioned in an earlier post) and I’m looking forward to talking to the library folks there especially now that Jessamyn has pointed out their blogs to me and I’ve been able to read a bit about what they are up to.

Go in Indy and in Chapel Hill?

The Independent has a story about the rise of the game of Go in the Triangle over the past few decades. As part of the story, a list of a few places where Go is played is included. Somewhat vaguely, we learn that “There are also weekly games played on the campuses of UNC and NCSU.” When you go to to the Triangle Go Club website, you once learned that weekly games were held on Sundays at UNC. I wrote the webmaster and asked “Where?” Err. No one knows. Now the website says Regular games were previously held at various locations at UNC and NCSU.

If you know of any Chapel Hill Go gaming, please let Bob Bacon of the Triangle Go Club and me know of them.

History of Franklin Street

Franklin Street

Just back from last night’s opening of the “History of Franklin Street” at the Chapel Hill Museum. It’s well-worth stopping by the Museum, itself on Franklin Street in the old (but not oldest) Chapel Hill Library. The show contrasts the current shops on Franklin with pictures of the street in the 1940s and visits each of the older shops as you stroll through the exhibit.

One pleasure in attending the opening was that many of the folks there had been in the shops in the 50s if not the 40s. The side stories, the old rumours whispered as if they were still fresh, the sudden look on peoples’ faces as they remembered businesses long gone made the exhibit all the more live.

Lyceum 1.0 Released!

Lyceum
JJB and ibiblio are “extremely proud and excited to announce Lyceum 1.0. We’ll be talking more about the larger Lyceum landscape [on the Lyceum blog] over the next several days.”

For now, here’s a list of improvements since 0.34:

* Synchronized with WordPress 2.0.11
* Even greater plugin and theme compatibility with WordPress
* Improved and expanded search functionality
* Vastly improved interface for assigning permissions to users
* More complete set of system-admin tools for managing users and blogs
* Ability to restrict number of blogs a user can create
* Refined admin interface layout
* Performance optimizations, some of them very significant for large installations
* Bundled plugins: Lyceumified Akismet, Creative Commons wpLicense
* Dozens of bug fixes

University Distinguished Lecturer

That’s me. Pure vanity in this post so be warned.

I’ll be in Manhattan, Kansas next week as the University Distinguished Lecturer at Kansas State University and speaking about “Keeping It Free from Code to Content” an appropriate topic for ibiblio’s 15th year. Reprising my topic from my 2001 Communications of the ACM paper I say and will say that I “advocate[s] for open source[s], saying that libraries and collections must be open, must be collaborative and must be loud.”

I should not be confused with Paul Jones, fallen mayor of Ravenna Ohio for whom a building at KSU (Kent State not Kansas State) was recently unnamed. NO NO Different KSU and a very different Paul Jones.

ibiblians in the News!

Stutzmania continues! If you missed Fred’s talk “Do You REALLY Know Facebook?” you can see it now at the ibiblio speakers page or directly here. Thanks for Cristobal for making this available.

Speaking of Cristobal. He and Doug Whitfield of COSI (Carolina Open Source Initiative) give good ink as they explain Open Source Software in today’s Daily Tar Heel as they talk about “Finding Freedom with Open Source.”

Dave Mason of INTRAHealth Informatics is blogging about global Public Health in an article called “The emerging open source health community.” There he notices my wiki of Open Source Software for Public Health. Thanks Dave.

Jazz Deals of the Century – Following Monk

Aaron Greenwald of Duke Performances is offering a jazzy peaceful outreach to UNC and NCCU students and to community members in the form of reduced prices for some upcoming concerts in the Following Monk series.

NCCU, UNC, DPS & Triangle Jazz Society Friends:

Over here at Duke Performances, we’re looking forward to three exceptional, upcoming performances in the next month celebrating what would have been NC-born jazz legend Thelonious Monk’s 90th b-day. We would like to offer you, your students, your members & friends a special deal on tix for these monumental concert events:

Half-price tickets for community members and Duke employees.*
$5 tickets for all students, an extension from the usual Duke student exclusive offer.**

Charles Tolliver, Andy Bey, and Jason Moran, extraordinary artists, deserving of a full house, will each give a rare performance for the Following Monk Festival.

:::
CHARLES TOLLIVER ORCHESTRA

Exclusive Concert Event
THE THELONIOUS MONK ORCHESTRA AT TOWN HALL, 1959: REVIVING A LANDMARK
Saturday, 10/13/07, 8 pm, Page Auditorium

For the “Following Monk” festival, the man who’s played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, and Max Roach will lead his critically acclaimed orchestra through Monk’s legendary ’59 Town Hall tenter concert, start to finish— the first time this storied section of the Monk catalogue has been played in nearly 50 years.

Tickets were: $38 • $30 • $22 • $5 (Special offer: price applies to all students)
Special offer: $19 • $15 • $11 • $5 (Students)

:::
ANDY BEY TRIO

Exclusive Concert Event
CARMEN SINGS MONK: A NEW INTERPRETATION
Thursday, 10/18/07, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater

For this special “Following Monk” festival show, this “ferociously talented” singer-pianist (“New York Times”) interprets selections from Carmen McRae’s iconic album of Monk arrangements, “Carmen Sings Monk,” 14 tracks of of Monk’s iconic tunes given voice.

Tickets were: $26 • $20 • $5 (Special offer: price applies to all students)
Special offer: $13 • $10 • $5 (Students)

:::
JASON MORAN OCTET

A World Premiere
IN MY MIND: MONK AT TOWN HALL, 1959
Saturday, 10/27/07, 8 pm, Page Auditorium

In this world-premiere performance, a prodigy pianist, gifted composer, and heir to the Monk tradition debuts IN MY MIND, a full-length original piece based on Monk’s legendary 1959 Town Hall concert, W. Eugene Smith’s documentary work, and Moran’s 2007 pilgrimage to Monk’s ancestral home in North Carolina. The piece incorporates live performance by an eight-piece ensemble, video projections, and recorded samples of Monk rehearsing his band for the Town Hall performance.

Tickets were: $38 • $30 • $22 • $5 (Special offer: price applies to all students)
Special offer: $19 • $15 • $11 • $5 (Students)

:::
To purchase tix, visit dukeperformances.org, or call (919) 684-4444 and let the box office representative know you would like to take advantage of this deal.

When purchasing the tickets online, you will see the discounted price once you have added tickets to your basket.

*Four half-price tickets per purchase.
** Two $5 ticket per valid student ID.

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