Ubiquity: A 5-Star Web Application

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Personal Home Page: PHP Programming

The Library has sent me to two PHP programming classes so far, two more to go but not until December so I get a bit of a break. My past two Saturdays have been spent learning the fundamentals of PHP -- which stands for PHP: Hypertext Processor, a programming language originally known as Personal Home Page -- which will hopefully help me see what's going on behind the scenes of the Library's websites a little more effectively. I think it will also come in handy creating some original apps, but not until after December's advanced PHP programming classes. For now I'm going to just experiment with PHP from home...

Last night I installed the PHP Apache Module for OS X on my MacBook (13" black laptop which runs some hacked up version of Unix.) Now I can exicute PHP pages right here on my laptop. Ah, fun times! I'm actually having a bit of trouble running the processes I'm writing, but anytime I've snagged code from the Web all seems to work properly. So before I start in on some tyrade about Macs or Unix, I'm going to assume the problem is that I just don't know enough yet. That's why I'm doing this, to learn PHP and better understand Apache and Unix in general.

When I asked the instructor if he recommended a book on PHP, he said he really just recommends the PHP Manual at php.net, which was great news. I'm more comfortable with online resources anyway. Who needs to lug a big old PHP Bible around? I'm not going to be programming anything on the bus ride in to work in the morning. I'm only going to be programming in PHP when I'm in front of an actual computer.

Now, back to the topic of my bus ride in to work. I would be lost without my iPhone! The first thing I do when I get on the bus is go straight to the iPod-portion of the phone and start up some music. Then I get to business. I tweet that I'm on the bus into work, just so everyone knows, everyday, then I read my Facebook news and status updates. After doing this I'm usually about 2 or 3 songs into my ride. I'll send a text message or two, just letting my friend Lisa know I'm still coming to NYC on Friday for a concert, making sure I still have a couch to sleep on. Then I'm downtown.

Bat for Lashes: Horse and I (Live from Lancaster Library)

National Book Week

It's National Reading Group Month. I just received a message about it and thought I should post something, but then I started thinking, "Ya know, every month is National Book Month in my world." Then I went back and saw "National Reading Group Month" not "National Book Month" so then I explored a bit more.

I'm into books every month anyway. But here's a logo and a link for those interested in more than I can say...

Also, I went to metup.com and checked out all the Meet Up Groups in my area. There are lots of groups involving photography and a few about writing, for writers, etc. I might sign up and go to one, some day.

Social Networking

Possibly the only thing everyone but me has talked about, rather endlessly I might add, through hoards of articles, blog posts, op ed pieces, nightly news broadcasts, and circular conversations, all about this social networking "phenomenon" or whatever "it" is. What is it?

Questions like "What?" and "Why?" are -- I've decided -- futile. It's a mute point, at this point, just like asking something such as "What is art?" or trying to have a philosophical or logical discussion about the existence of God or what lies beyond our mortality. I stopped having these conversations in the dorms at Ohio State some 20 years ago.

After a weekend in Columbus, Ohio, recently -- speaking of OSU -- I ran into an old friend who I hadn't seen in about 15 years. One of my first goals was to badger her to find out information about all of our old friends, long lost to me. One person came up immediately and I was told to look her up on facebook because she's also living in Cleveland and would likely be happy to hear from me.

So, I did it. I added her as a friend in my facebook and within less than a week I met her and her boyfriend out for drinks at La Cav du Vin in Coventry. Fun fun times, not all about being online. Although Julie did have a very cool gadget on her cell phone that analyzes and tells you what music is playing in the background and it's scarily accurate for some little piece of A.I. technology. Brilliant if you ask me.

Speaking of A.I. technologies, there's a really cool application for my iPhone (and a website for those of you not yet fully portable) called Pandora: radio from the Music Genome Project. You just put in an artist you like and it automatically calls up tons and tons of streaming radio selections; full-length singles from similar bands. It's a glorified "and if you think you liked that" service, not unlike what you encounter on Amazon or the personalized ads of Google.

It is, again, scarily accurate the way this thing selects music. Like it knows what you want to hear before you knew you wanted to hear it. As each song plays you have the option of giving it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, increasing or decreasing your chance of hearing similar songs, and on, and on...

So, I'm not even sure what I think any more about all this Web 2.0 stuff. I just think the term is overused. It's all kind of cool, but over rated for sure. The most fun is when you can use the technology to inspire you to buy a CD or to meet an old friend out for drinks!

Now if I could just figure out how to add a twitter or facebook feed to the right column of information and widgets. For now I've added the option for people to "follow me" and that's as good as it gets for now.

Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana

At first I wasn't entirely into this book. I'm not sure why, but I opened it and the small type and the 329 pages intimidated me. Maybe even the contents: a poem by Gerard Malanga, an interview with Camille Paglia, and a story of a man's descent into madness over his dead cat. I thought it was too much to handle at first. Maybe it is, but I'm diving in finally. I had to ask for a one-week extension, so now instead of my review being due on the 15th it's due on the 21st.

Elsewhere in my news, I just got my ticket in the mail today to the Roisin Murphy concert I'm going to in NYC on October 24th. I'm very excited, although I'm only going for one brief day and night and another brief day then back to Ohio. I should probably have booked myself through Sunday, but it would have cost an extra $100. The airlines are a real rip-off these days. I'm lucky to have found a flight for $195 on such short notice. The concert ticket was $50, then I'm staying with my old pal Lisa York Drummond. She's from Australia and she remains one of my best friends in the whole world. I met her when I lived in Brooklyn, where she still manages to stick it out. I'm not sure how she's ended up living there for so long. I wish I had that staying power, but I had to leave. There are lots of Italian Americans there, speaking of Wild Dreams.

Road Trip to Portsmouth

My trip to the All-American City of Portsmouth (IAFF LOCAL 512)...














Rt. 52 .............. Carry's Run
















Mom's new living quarters.













Tindall-Cats........................ Shelly, now living in West Portsmouth.














Trophies in the kitchen, and Mom.























Pals from kindergarten, Amy and Polly. Polly's sister Kim!

I hadn't seen Kim in about 20 years and hadn't seen Polly in about 15 years. I've seen Amy a few times in the past years. She and I went to prom. Everyone in Portsmouth knows everything about everybody else.

The infamous Blue Cloud modern art sculpture now resides in a fenced in yard between the new Portsmouth Elementary School playground and Kim's house. The Blue Cloud used to be downtown in the Roy Rogers Esplanade until some woman tripped over its far left side and fell and sued the city! Tripped over a huge blue cloud in Portsmouth.... Wowsers... And sued!

Rainbow wreck........................ and Amy!















Blue and yellow outdoor cat. Close-up of the Rainbow wreck.



Failed attempt to photograph the million logos of the million "clubs" in Portsmouth, like the Kwanis and Free Masons. A sign that reads "Unique Pain Clinic". And Shelly attacking the leg of a table.

The Tenant

I was just perusing my DVD collection and came across The Tenant, a film by Roman Polanski based on the novel by Roland Topor. The book and the film are very similar; this is a great adaptation.

Almost Forgot

Recently I reviewed this amazing book of art... the review should be out soon. I found the cover in My LibraryThing.

Reading the OED

I'm currently reading a book called Reading the OED, about a guy who reads the entire Oxford English Dictionary. It isn't in LibraryThing yet, so I'll just have to post the book cover later. I'm reading it to write a review of it for LibraryJournal. The review is due 3/28, only 5 more days remaining, I'd better get cracking on that...

George Seferis, A Levant Journal

My latest acquisition came in the mail today and I am very excited to review it for Library Journal. I shall commence reading at once! A Levant Journal of George Seferis's diaries weighs-in at only 149 pages though, so I should read slowly. My review is due 10/26, so I don't have a lot of time to dilly-dally. I'll get to add it to my LibraryThing now. Finally, an update. Feels as if it has been months since I reviewed a book.

Also note, I found this very cool blog, many probably already know about it, but it's new to me. I've listed it, The Handheld Librarian, to my list of blog-links.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

When researching libraries, computers, the Internet, and Information Science, we find that they have always been connected, if even at first just in the minds of visionaries. "A network of such, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines," said J.C.R. Licklider in 1960, "[would function as] present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and symbiotic functions."

What you see above is a photo of all my iPods and related gadgetry. To be quite blunt, I love this crap! In fact, it's not crap. From the purchase of my first iPod a few years ago (a first generation iPod Shuffle of the "white pack of gum" variety) to my latest acquisition, an iPhone, I've been criticized for giving in, breaking down, and showing off. Just last night I was talking to my mom on the phone and she decided to tell me, as she does every now and then, that it's too bad I've wasted so much money on these Apple products (I'm typing this on my MacBook, btw) because they're going out of business! Wow, hadn't heard about that (because it's of course untrue). Come to find out, she had just been reading about Apple's discontinuation of the 4GB model of the iPhone and their decision to drop the price of the 8GB version, leaving some consumers enraged, so to her this someone translated that the company was in terrible trouble and going out of business.

My whole life I have been an information junkie as well as "tech geek." I taught myself BASIC programming on an Atari 5200 when I was ten years old. I used this same computer maintain a list (on a big ol' floppy disk) of all my friends and neighbors, for whom I printed-up library cards, giving them access to my private collection of paperback horror novels and Fangoria magazines, all organized and labeled in accordance with Dewey Decimal Classification.

So, establishing myself as one who has inherently kept up-to-date for as long as I can remember, and as one who has always enjoyed the sharing of information, I have a motto I must repeat every time I buy a new computer, the latest iPod, or even a book, CD, or some other electronic techno-gadget: Don't look back! By this I mean, the minute you invest any time and/or money into something new these days, something bigger and better (usually smaller and cheaper with a few new features) will be released. Even in the world of books and music and home entertainment there will always be a first edition, then a new edition with updated introduction, or just paperback versus hardback, the latest CD or DVD as it evolves from its original release, to the one with extra tracks and bonus features, or the deluxe-digital-download version for $5 less than what you just bought at the store.

Then there is my mother who is there to remind me that all these creature comforts are just toys on which we are growing more seemingly dependent, just setting ourselves up for the ultimate let-down. With all this technology you also have the potential for total darkness in the face an ultimate "big shutdown." Yes, the world's energey sources could all be wiped out in some magnetic polar shift of the Earth or some other insane disaster, and as a result all our gadgets could be put to rest. We could lay around and cry about how much we miss the Internet and how much money we wasted, while people like my mother can sit with a candle and a magazine and say, "Told ya so."

Despite the opinions of many (even some coworkers and friends directing these opinions at me) I don't buy electronic stuff because I've fallen pray to some "new and improved" marketing ploy or to show off that I have the latest and greatest wind-up toy. Besides being a techno-information geek, I've also always been a lover of music my entire life. It took me years to build up enough trust in the technology to finally buy an iPod or a laptop computer. I buy this stuff because I love it. It supplies me with music, information, communication, and entertainment. I have no kids, I am not married, therefor I can afford these toys.

However, I don't consider these things true necessities and, not unlike my mother, I carry with me the perpetual sense of impending doom when dealing with anything that requires a power-supply. Just last week I had my first hardline installed in over five years! For the first time in my life I have caller ID and call waiting, but as you see here, I can't even "do that" right. In this photo you see my ten-year-old cordeless phone and answering machine with my most recent purchase a caller ID display-unit. Maybe one day I will consolidate these items into one big answering phone with multi-functional display panel, but until then I'll keep this little phone table of mine piled up with equipment. Maybe some day I will have voicemail! Scary.

The Night the Internet Died

Wow! My Internet connection was just down for about 20 hours, maybe less, and I have been in a slowly building panic this entire time. Now, that's sad isn't it? As I sat here, entering and re-entering WEP codes and fiddling with wireless settings and airport stuff, I started thinking about the way it was...

What would I have been doing ten years ago right now? 1997, Boston? No, Columbus :-( Yes, CompuServe, Columbus, it's all coming back to me... OK, bad time frame, sorry.

Let's say, twenty years ago... No, too far! The point is, I'm just thinking back to a particular feeling of not being bored or stressed out or chronic this, or that syndrome, or the latest synthetic pre-packaged happiness... I remember the Siouxsie lyric from Switch,

Curing their ailments
With drastic side-effects oh

I digress, I am bitter, and I am... bored. There I said it.

That is a terrible thing for someone to come out and say, "I am bored." Awfully rude, wouldn't you think? But now days I think it's fine. I watch MTV from time to time and society's rudeness meter is way off, so I'm safe. My Internet connection is back. It's great to be alive, but... I'm bored.

Library-Family: Diamond-Ortiz Expanding!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ortiz.emilio

Congratulations to Anastashia and Emilio!

A new library baby has arrived.

Davidek Dayafter

"Me" sitting on a blue cube, in Second Life. It reminds me of Mulholland Drive, the blue cube. The blue keys. the singer with the blue hair. (Note to self: watch that movie again soon).

"In the future, we will all have special names."
-- Dr. Brian O'Blivion, 1983 (Videodrome)

Davidek Dayafter, that's my "special name" I suppose. It is the nom du plume of mon avatar in Second Life. That's just one thing too many. Not buddhist at all, but I'm not a Buddhist, so here we go... I'm in the Cleveland Public Library space. Hey, it's Friday night, 10:47 p.m. I'm all alone at the library gallery. Hey, those are my photos!

It has always creeped me out to have an avatar. I had an avatar circa 1996 in project Wow! from CompuServe, and I've had avatar's in that roll playing networking online games like Black-n-White or Black & White, it was just all right. But I have always thought of that quote, from David Cronenberg's Videodrome, from Doctor Brian Oblivion, above. That was 1983. The future is now.

Take A Poll

I'm not sure yet what the question is, for the poll that might already be posted by now, just to the right there somewhere... But I will be posting a poll after writing this, and I'm not sure yet what the question will be.

Me... me... me... That's how I feel writing a blog; guilty. I'm this I'm that.

I'm awaiting nervously for October 1st to get here: my first printed review for Library Journal. It is a review of the new Steve Almond novel (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions. I think it's funny that "(Not that You Asked)" is the beginning of the title, I wonder if anyone will actually think I'm saying... "side note, 'not that you asked,'?" I doubt it somehow.

So, I review, I also have a review to be released in an undetermined future issue of Library Journal, a review of a book called Sedaris, by Keven Kopelson. Both can be found in my library.

LIBRARY

Is a blog just an attempt at self-fulfillment through self-deprecation? Maybe that has been a misconception on my part, in fear that is what I would have to offer if I took myself seriously.

Collecting information is the easy part. Dispensing it is difficult at times, with new challenges. Communication is the missing link. Usually it's the only link. Good communication is either being killed by the Internet, or creating a brand new form of interaction in the absence of any good face-to-face encounters. In regards to Second Life... It's interesting.

WOW! from CompuServe, was a project I worked on, in Columbus, Ohio, circa 1996-1997, and we had an entire land of avatars and "rooms" and merchants and the whole 9-yards. Even though you could "buy" a house or condo or rudimentary box to "live" in, and build up property, and interact with others from around the world, there was always this sense the thing would just shut down. And it did. AOL bought CompuServe and I sold my stocks and moved to NYC for a few years.

So, the whole time I'm in Second Life I'm wondering to myself, "How far does this go? How far does this take me... Before it shuts down?" I'm not sure I can answer yet, but doesn't everything have to "shut down" eventually? I have not spent enough time in Second Life to fully judge, I mean, the telephone was an idea that isn't going anywhere. So is Second Life as good as the telephone? Anyway, I digress, I'm glad good ideas don't die.

The more authoritative resources found in Second Life give the project some serious "pull" to say the least. Islands of big-name organizations abound, and its membership is growing at an exponential rate. Major library systems, professional associations, and universities make up SL, to name only a few aspects to this virtual world of information exchange.

Just Another Blog

Photoshop's "red-eye removal" makes me look evil... It just blots the red out with black.