Accept no substitutes

Category: Alumni and other friends (Page 34 of 38)

eTech – day one

I wasn’t on the elevator when it stalled with Doc, Steve Gillmor and Justin on board. That was definitely an upside of the conference. Each of them had an amusing version of the maybe 15 minutes of terror.

I was there to see Jeff Bezos click on YES when his computer prompted him that “Software update available install now?” I was amongst the ones shouting NO! Jeff went on to announce A9’s open search.

I was there when the folks from Yahoo! and O’Reilly announced the release of the Tech Buzz Game “a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends.”

I was delighted by Danny Hillis’ (of Applied Minds and founder of Thinking Machines) robots, maps, and highly modified H2.

There is more to say about today, but I’m competely pooped and others have some good initial takes down here.

A. Miller Alerts Us to Chris Abani appearance in NC

South African friend, Andie Miller reminds us that exiled Nigerian poet/novelist, Chris Abani will be here in NC.

At last report, Abani is scheduled to be speaking in Raleigh at NCSU’s Human Rights Week on Monday March 28 6:30 in Williams Hall.

NCSU’s site says:

First imprisoned by the Nigerian regime at the age of eighteen when his debut novel was labeled a threat to national security, Chris Abani continued, after his release, to challenge injustice as part of a guerrilla theater group that performed plays in front of government buildings. His activism led to more arrests, and, eventually, a death sentence. Released, he chose exile, settling first in the United Kingdom, and then in California, where he currently teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. Chris Abani’s experiences inform and shape his beautiful, evocative and award-winning writing, including the poetry collections Kalakuta Republic, Dog Woman, and Daphne’s Lot, novels GraceLand (shortlisted in the Best Book Category (Africa Region) for The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize) and Master’s of the Board, and his plays. Mr. Abani’s novel, GraceLand, was recognized nationally by being selected for the ‘Today” show ‘Today Book Club’. Graceland tells the story of a teenage Elvis impersonator trying to get out of the ghettos of Nigeria.
In his presentations Mr. Abani opens minds and widens horizons, showing how art can serve a just cause. Come hear from someone who has challenged tyranny with nothing more than his pen, as he fuses the worlds of politics and art while discussing human rights and democracy. A reception with Mr. Abani will follow the presentation.
Sponsored in part by the Caldwell Fellows Programs, the University Honors Program, the University Honors Village, and the University Scholars Program.

Spooky Rebirth

DJ Spooky
Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, was on The Connection yesterday talking about his movie/show/music remix of the DW Griffith movie “Birth of a Nation.” Spooky aka Paul’s version is called “Rebirth of a Nation.”
I caught a very early version of the show at the first Creative Commons Launch party/gettogether in SFO a while back. Sally and her mother saw Spooky put it on down at Spoleto in Charleston, SC last spring.
Spooky uses video software to highlight the different aspects of the film, the racism, the stereotypes, the false heroism, etc while making a pretty damn good party mix.
On the Connection, he talked a lot about remix culture, remaking, and about reserving some rights. As usual, Miller is articulate and fun the listen to and not bad to dance to either.

Fred seeks artists and performers

Fred says:

I’m writing an article about musicians who are embracing alternative copyright (Creative Commons, or anything else) in their work. This is not limited to the licensing of their work. I’m also interested in artists who work with Public Domain/CC licensed materials, or who push the limits of fair use. If you ARE these artists, or know any of them, please get in touch with me, on or off list (fred@metalab.unc.edu). I’m putting this piece to print next Friday, so the sooner I can interview you, the better.

Jessamyn West librarian.net to be here

NOTE TIME CHANGE! NOW at 2:00

Jessamyn's got the answers
Who: librarian.net’s rarin’ librarian Jessamyn West
When: Monday March 21 2:00 (Vernal Equinox)
Where: Freedom Forum Conference Center, 3rd floor, Carroll Hall
What: Postcards from the Other Edge of the Digital Divide. Political Choices and the Information Poor

About the talk: While we read blogs, tag content and swap lifehacks, people in rural areas are still learning to type. Public libraries are making many more technological choices just to provide basic information and Internet resources nowadays, yet the paradigm for learning to work well with technology differs dramatically from learning to work well with books. Jessamyn West will be talking about being a tech-savvy librarian in a profession struggling into the 21st Century.

More about Jessamyn West:
Jessamyn West is wrapping up her job as an outreach librarian at a rural public library in Vermont. She has worked in public, special and college libraries and done stints of on-the-fly reference at Burning Man, the WTO and the Democratic National Convention. She has maintained librarian.net, a weblog for radical librarians and other interested parties, since 1999. She is fascinated by the intersection of technology, the public sphere and politics.

Paris Mean Time retarded by 9 minutes 21 seconds

From several time zones away and from a different season, Andie Miller points us back in time to the year 1999 in which an article was published distantly north from her home in South Africa about the politics of time in the Guardian (UK).
Among the many delights detailed:

[T]hough GMT was declared the universal time measurement in 1884, the French, until 1978, continued in law to call GMT “Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes and twenty one seconds”.

Much there about the colonializing use of time as the fabled 2000 was approaching as the article was being published.

Black Banjos in Boone (April 7 – 10)

Sule Banjo
Dr. Cece Conway has had a fascination with banjos that goes a long ways back. In particular, she has been interested in the travels of the banjo from Africa to America to Europe to America to Appalachia. Amongst other things, Cee Cee produced the Smithsonian Folkways compilation “Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina & Virginia” and the book “African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions”.

Now Cece is putting together a conference and gathering called “Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, April 7th through 10th, 2005. It will feature lectures, jams, workshops, down home frolics, and performances–four days to meet, mix, and mingle.”

The Pleasure Was Mine

Novelist Tommy Hays writes about important human things like growing up — I mean seizing your adult life instead of avoiding it — in Sam’s Crossing, his first novel. Coming of age, as a ten year old in the South when death, race, and religion intermingle and where being a “Waffle House mystic” is an actual career choice in In the Family Way.
His third novel is just out from Saint Martin’s. The Pleasure Was Mine deals with dealing with Alzheimer’s. This time at the late end of life. Tommy will be in Chapel Hill at McIntyre’s Books on April 16 and in Raleigh at Quail Ridge Books on April 14.

Floyd Harris: NC Film Junkie

Not like Wm. Burroughs, but like a film fanatic. Not a cinema snob, but a maniac about films made in NC and about films that say that they are made in NC but in fact aren’t. Floyd’s book, “Film Junkie’s Guide to North Carolina,” was just featured on CNN and in AP articles — all amusing. Love that Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simons did at least one bad film together in Willywood in 1986.
What would have happened if they had been up the road a bit for the filming of “Blue Velvet” also a 1986 film?

A Dozen Years of ibiblio

Looking back for new ideas and successes that happened at sunsite/metalab/ibiblio. You can add your own and/or correct me.

1992 – sunsite begun with a goal 10,000 downloads a month; we exceeded that in 2 days before we were officially announced.
Linux Software Archive begun (still ongoing). WebMuseum joined sunsite (still ongoing).
Tim Berners-Lee drops by and we set up a WWW server, one of the first in the US and likely the first outside high energy physics.

1993 – Presidential Archives work with Clinton White House using WAIS.
Linux Documentation Project begun (still on going).
Dr. Fun, first daily cartoon on the Web, begun (still ongoing). CEARCH (Cisco Educational Archive) started to provide information about networking in education.

1994 – WXYC first live 7/24 radio simulcast on the Net (still ongoing).
Virtual Shtetl, the first known Yiddish site on the Web (still ongoing).
Internet Poetry Archive begun with Nobel Prize winner Czslaw Milosz’s contribution in English and in Polish, in audio and in text (still ongoing).

1995 – Henriette’s herbal page is one of the oldest herb sites on the web (still ongoing).
Invited presentation to President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter at The Carter Presidential Library on digital Presidential Library futures.

1996 – “Documenting the American South” begun with first person narratives by enslaved people in the Amercian South (still ongoing).

1997 – Roger McGuinn’s FolkDen joins sunsite and changes to streaming formats for his audio collection (begun in 1995 and still ongoing).
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy comes to ibiblio. First of dozens of Tibetan-owned sites on ibiblio (still ongoing).

1998 – Nobel prizewinner Aung San Suu Kyi ‘s videotaped address on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (smuggled out from her house in Rangoon where she’d been detained for a decade) made available on sunsite.
Sunsite becomes MetaLab. 50 million files served in the month of October 1998.

1999 – Open Book Project begun (still ongoing).
Presidency Research Group and Pew Charitable Trusts establish web resources to assist the 2001 Presidential transition. (still active whitehousetransition.org) Served two presidential transitions and nine emerging democracies.

2000 – MetaLab becomes ibiblio with large gift from Center for the Public Domain.
Afro-Louisiana Slave Database by Gwendolyn Menlo Hall made available (still ongoing).

2001 – Interactive Native American Archaeology Project, Excavating Occaneechi Town, made available online for the first time (still ongoing).

2002 – VolunteerTibet officially launched its service on December 10th, 2002, commemorating the date His Holiness the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize (still ongoing).
Mental Health Association in Durham County (NC) founded and joins ibiblio (still ongoing).
A Living Stage: Reflections from South Africa Music and storytellers from the 2002 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa.
www+ftp traffic now averages 3 million files/day.
Data flow averages 150 Mbs.

2003 – Khawa Karpo-Tibet Culture Centre (KKTCC), Dharamsala joins ibiblio (still ongoing).
GrokLaw: Digging for truth: the law and the facts with regard to Free and Open Source Software joins ibiblio (still ongoing).
librarian.net: Jessamyn West’s library themed weblog of interest to rarin’ librarians and other information junkies joins ibiblio (still ongoing).

2004 – www+ftp traffic now averages over 10 million files/day. Data flow averages 250 Mbs.
NASA Educational Video added (still ongoing).
WCPE and WXYC become the first simulcast radio stations on Internet2 usingIPv6.
Institute for Museum and Library Services awards ibiblio and Folkstreams.net grant for digitization of documentaries on American folk cultures.

2005 – www+ftp traffic now averages over 13 million files/day.
Data flow averages 350 – 400 Mbs.

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