This is brilliant

Its stuff like this that gets me excited to welcome our robot conquerors.

http://io9.com/5323969/fake-trees-charge-your-car-while-you-park

Fake trees that harness solar power for electricity, while at the same time providing shade for you warm summer car. Also, they could be used to power cells for smart cars. Today, this concept is really hitting home for me, because its really hot. I'm smart enough not to really complain though; by this time last summer, my A/C had already been in use for a solid 5 weeks. This summer, I've used it a whopping 4 times.

Though its been the busiest summer of my life, its been a good one.

I really hope to see something like this, but I've a feeling I never will. Who knows?

End of the Semester Freakout

Now I'm freaked out by how finite my remaining work is!! Waahahaha. Anyway, I haven't checked in here in a while but I'll be doing some more posts this week. This semester has been really tough on me but I really do feel like I learned a great deal.

My next excitement is leaving for Europe on the 3rd!!

We can do this, gang

That's right. We're gonna make it. Just put your heads down and power through. Ignore your friends who call you from the middle of whatever nearby greenspace you have in your town, a waterfront park we'll say, with a case of beer and a wiffle ball set. Just tell yourself "this isn't happening, I have to finish school".

We can do this, guys.

Fast Track was...something. I don't know what. Long? I don't know. It was fine. I ended up driving out there myself from Philly, which isn't too fun, but its no drag either. I like driving fast, and its nice not to worry about anyone else's music taste or bladder. That said, next time, I'll try to work out a carpool arrangement.

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/15/china-electroshock-t.html

In China, Electric Shock is now being administered to people who are addicted to the Internet. Parents are tricking and forcing their children into enrolling in shock treatment programs. I should be on the lookout next time my wife tells me she's planning a getaway for us.

What are we going to do in Tomer's class in P-burgh? I'm excited. This class has been loads of fun compared to the Search and Seize hell of my other.

Because I love posting YouTubes, this is me playing bass with my friends on a John Lennon song.

Dear Weekend, what did you do to my stomach?

I don't know what happened. I don't think its a stomach bug. I have a dull, sometimes not-so-dull tummyache. Which happens. But usually doesn't last for 3 or more days, which is where we are now.

Anyway. My birthday just ended. Amy and I saw "The Hurt Locker". It was OK. Too long. Also, the couple behind us thought it was HILARIOUS. This is disturbing because the film is very high-tension, and about the Army's bomb detonating team, who deal with IED's in the Iraq war. So the laughter seemed pretty inappropriate.

The top moment that they thought was funny has to be when the soldiers find a dead Iraqi boy with a bomb IN HIS STOMACH. Literally, this moment brought on PEALS of laughter.

Other somber movies that my wife and I feel like they may have ruined with inappropriate laughter in the past:

"Schindler's List"
"The Killing Fields"
"Caddyshack II"

This is me right now:

That's right, I'm doing the Ed Lover dance right now. In my dining room, in front of my computer. BELIEVE IT.

OK, not really, but I'm pretty excited about formatting in HTML and posting it to the web. I didn't even ask for help from my brother, the expert web designer.

Shout outs to:
the Discussion Board.
the wisdom of Timothy Schlak, without which I would have NO CLUE about FTP sites.
the man upstairs (not God, the actual guy who lives above me. He let me borrow an ice tray.)

Do your dance,
Grax

Jeez, Bartleby. Get it together!

So I'm working on my Search and Seize assignment for my 2002 class, tracking down quotes and citing them, and I look at the amount of windows I have open...there are 9 new IE windows I didn't open (all popups about how lucrative "working online from home" is for some fictional creeps), and once every ten search pages or so, I have an earsplitting audio-ad telling me that I've won a WalMart gift cert for $1000.00.

This is academia! What is going on here? I'm trying to work!!!

Dumb post, I know. And, I know how it all works. It just still boggles the mind that I'm using Pitt's SSLVPN to get through to this authoritative, ultra-helpful site, and this is what the site gives me! Can't trust anyone these days!

Anyway, I'll mellow out over here...

Video Cams for iPods forthcoming?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/06/prepare-yourself-for-ipod-video/

Inside sources are saying that, following the iPhone 3GS's video camera success (most people really like them, it seems), Apple's next move will be to include them in future iPods.

I don't know. Does the world need this? Clearly, the answer is YES.

Topical? You be the judge

Sometimes I feel like I'm reaching to make a topical post, since most of my reactions to stuff we're reading or concentrating on in classwork is just "hmmmmm...interesting". That said, I heard this on NPR tonight and it clearly speaks to the importance of the Web in the making of something that I care about. That's music, if you haven't been keeping score at home.

http://www.theworld.org/global-hit/hal-and-the-big-5

This is a really cool story about a band called Hal and the Big 5, comprised of individuals worldwide who have never been in the same room together, but have an album produced by world music dude Bill Laswell (who has made records with Iggy Pop, Eno and David Byrne, and Herbie Hancock) which has just been released. The producers and musicians are in England and Belgium, and the singers on the record are all from South Africa, with guest musicians from Tunisia, France and Morocco. The tool that made their colloboration possible, as the keyboardist and arranger Duncan says in the interview, is the Internet. By mailing individual tracks around, they came up with something that none of the initial trackers could ever have predicted.

This is being done quite a bit now, but it is interesting how unlimited collaborations like this are becoming. Developing cultural understanding, testing the limits of art, etc.

Anyway, its neat. The music is OK from what I heard in the piece, but the concept is more interesting. For the best in cross-cultural summer jams, I would recommend another recent album: Extra Golden's "Hera Ma Nono". Two guys from DC who grew up playing indie rock + a drummer, guitarist and a singer from Kenya all hole up in a house in the Poconos to record a shimmering, joyful cross between Kenyan benga and American rock. Clip:

Big week/big weekend

My Educational Psych course is now officially done...one class down, two to go. Aside from getting my final and final paper done for that class, I don't feel like I've accomplished much in the past week. Got the hang of Koha, despite its annoying tendency to not "get" the ISBN's that I've cut and pasted. Another vexing aspect of Koha is that it doesn't define the errors that are preventing you from moving onto the next screen (move to Virtual Shelf). At least, if it does, the errors were unclear.

Anyway, I'm keeping my head above water. I caught up with a few old friends who now have babies, which is always fun. Gearing up for a visit to Pittsburgh and finally visiting the library there. My wife's best friend's wedding is next weekend, so it'll be a busy time.

Summer is here?

Even if this video is corny, everyone should listen to this song about 6x daily for a good life.

I understand and have finished ePrints! I'm done my Search and Seizes! I have to do one stupid presentation for my Educational Psych class and its all over!

Too bad its Sunday night and I've missed 2 beautiful days of weather.

Enjoy your week...

proof of the Gloved One's power

To sorta piggyback off of Karen's post about Michael Jackson passing away and almost taking the whole darned INTERNET with him:

I was at the Free Library of Philly today and got to see firsthand (thanks to furtive glances at peoples' screens) just HOW MANY computer users were digging into some Michael Jackson clips. At one point in the day, I walked past 20 or so computer screens and no less than half the users were looking at YouTubes of Michael's first moonwalk (go watch it if you haven't lately...it is STUNNING), or some deep cuts from Off the Wall, or something MJ-related.

Point is, the guy had problems, especially recently. No doubt we will find some next-level crazy stuff he'd been involved in for the past 10 years that will make plastic surgery, Bubbles the chimp and the Hyperbaric chamber he used to sleep in look like reading the evening paper.

He could sing, he could dance, when I was in 3rd grade, my friends and I literally wanted to be HIM when we grew up. This isn't like Elvis and this isn't like Kurt Cobain either. Everybody knows a song by Michael Jackson, it don't matter if you're black or white. He was the ultimate entertainer for the first half of my life, and I won't forget it.

EPrints!

So I've spent the last few days looking at Eprints and I will admit to still being about 50% puzzled on the whole thing. I believe that, at some point, someone will explain it to me as being "deceptively simple". I'm probably looking deeper into it than I have to. This has been typical in my educational career. I just think that it should be more clear-cut where the items actually "go". Obviously, they are reviewed and then can be put into multiple repositories, but are there lists where the items can be grouped?

My poor wife has a cold and I really hope I don't catch it. At least not until next week. I can have a cold then, just not now.

Exciting times.

Atlas Obscura, or, Boing Boing is my guide to the internet

www.boingboing.net has been one of my favorite sites to visit for the past 6 months or so, because I never know what I'll get, but I'm nearly always excited by what they offer. Sometimes they point me to new stuff about green design or urban homesteading. Sometimes its about new plateaus in technology, and sometimes it is just plain weird: The most recent guest editors that the site has featured maintain a new site called Atlas Obscura: "A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica". In other words, this is practically a distillation of every weird library book about the Nazca lines, cathedrals made of human skeletons and outsider architecture that I've filled my life with since I was a 10 year old. Atlas Obscura is made more fun by the use of Google maps, which allow the reader to triangulate their next weird destination, hopefully to pay a visit. Also, it is interactive, and users are encouraged to share odd venues, surreal landmarks, and whatever else is found under the sun.

http://www.boingboing.net

http://atlasobscura.com/

not dead...just a crazy week!

Wow I need to blog more liberally. I've been jammed up with so much stuff this week. My education class at CCP has been piling on assignments and due dates like its going out of style. Foolishly, I agreed to play a show with some of my friends during this hellish week, which has created many problems that were unforeseen, time-wise. However, that's all over, my class at CCP ends next Tuesday (WHICH I AM SO FRIGGIN' HAPPY ABOUT) and things appear to be stabilizing quite a bit.

Now all I need to do is wrap up ePrints and the 3rd Search and Seize assignments.

Swamped!

It is a quarter to one a.m. I am in bed, listening to the Swirlies and trying to muster up some good ideas for this paper I'm writing for my educational psych course.

The ideas aren't coming.

Philadelphia seems like Seattle lately, or Florida. It rains everyday, at least for a few minutes. I have to say I am sortof into this weather. I'm trying to man up and ride my bike more, and getting out there in crappy weather is the first step.

Work is slowing down, so I can get a bit more schoolwork done at the office.
I'm nervous about quitting my job so I can start my library practicum Spring term, though it is still a ways down the road. Things are happening quickly.

I DL'ed the new iPhone operating system today and it seems great. Landscape texting, cut and paste, a built-in voice recorder, a pan-device search function and a bunch of other stuff I haven't even gotten to play with are some of the new features of the thing.

this is a juicy diary post. I'm exhausted and going to bed now.

Uncle Jesse helps out with "Kokomo"

Now that I have your attention, let's talk about issues in information!

I will not lie, I grabbed this directly from Dr. Tomer's Google Reader feed, but it is exciting to me nonetheless.

You can now Google Image Search specifically for creative commons images. These are images that you can use without fear of copyright infringement issues, etc.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/06/find-creative-commons-images-in-google.html
(this is getting annoying...I can't make this a link and I've tried all the advice you guys have given me!)

I think that this is super-keen, because I love Creative Commons.

In unrelated news, I modded (modified) my first amp and am pleased with the results. While I'm no whiz with a soldering iron, I followed directions and now my little amp sounds better! GO ME!!! Next up, model airplanes.

...

JING is weird and makes uploading a little strange and difficult. It just requires patience. as did installing and uninstalling Zotero 60 times and Jing-filming each one.

The due date of the Jing assignment has been pushed back, which will allow me to set up a REAL microphone as opposed to to the weirdo one that I inherited from my dad and had to put through a distortion pedal to plug into my computer.

Get psyched for my do-over, readers!

What else? I can't stop listening to the first EP by the Natural History. 5 perfect songs! if you like rock music (especially Spoon), I suggest finding it, stat.

Still puzzling over Search and Seize #2 and trying to keep up with readings for all classes.

hit the showers,
Josh

Zotero

Moving right along...

This weekend was fun...thanks to Search and Seize #2's due date getting pushed back, I got to visit my Grandmother, sing in front of a bunch of my friends, try to understand Jing and Zotero (I always feel like I'm missing something but I think I get it) and spend some time on my bike.

On the subject of technology and the way we deal with info, I feel like I should say a few things about the new iPhone that was announced yesterday, and the new iPhone 3.0 OS, but I'm going to hold back on too much commentary until I actually get the new OS. I will say that I'm excited for the cut and paste feature. From what I've gleaned from the video, it doesn't seem like the user will be able to type text messages on a landscape (widescreen) keyboard, which I would like to do.

I'm looking forward to everyone's Jing videos. Back to Searching and Seizing!

Google Squared

I'm still alive!! I AM IN HERE.

Anyway, I was just checking out Google Squared on Tomer's recommendation (from his Blog's RSS feed) and, although it seems exciting, there's much that needs to be toned up before it is effective. My Squared search was for "dead presidents" (I thought this would be a shoe-in for a comprehensive set of results, but in my Americo-centric brain I also didn't stop to think that it could give me a list of dead presidents from around the world). Anyway, it turns out that Google shares my same centrisms, but only gave me a list of 7 or 8 dead U.S. presidents. I helped a bit by adding ones I could think of, but was boggled. Statistically, most of the men that have served as President have since passed on. Very few are still alive, of the 44 that we've had. I was surprised it didn't give me the full list.

Despite this shortfall, I think that the idea is cool, and will help Google in rivalling Wikipedia for results involving groups.

Jing

Jing seems like a fun program. I like the interface, although the sun being at the top of my screen at all times (not just when I'm viewing my desktop) seems a bit invasive, for a program I won't use everyday. Of course, I know that I can move it.

I'm looking forward to this assignment. I liked the handy-dandy instructional video too. I was trying to place the narrator's accent but won't embarrass myself by venturing a guess.

My first Search and Seize is over, and it went pretty poorly for me. There were moments of near-breakdown somewhere in the area of late Saturday. I can't wait to get it back to see how I really did.

My only other noteworthy accomplishment (other than riding my bike to CCP 3x weekly for class) is throwing down FOIE GRAS when playing my wife in Scrabble last night. A bench-clearer, and a two-dollar word, easy, even if the stuff itself is controversial and really disgusting. I *almost* feel bad for restaurants that serve it when their patrons are getting megaphone-berated during their brunches.

More talk about being overwhelmed

This was a rough week to get back into. My weekend was exhausting but fun. Hard to get in the swing of things. I'm pretty short on groundbreaking insight re: the world of information right about now.

All I want to do is relax and start reading all of these awesome books I have, like "The Drop Edge of Yonder" and "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said".

I have new things to try with my Bandmaster amplifier (bridging the inputs = sweeter tone?) but by the time I get home that will be off-limits, unless I want to infuriate the neighbors.

I am Searching and Seizing with most of my free time. This is the way of the world this summer.

This doesn't bode well for me

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/us_world/NATL-Self-Control-the-Secret-to-Success-Study.html
(still trying to learn how to link in Blogger??)
The Marshmallow Experiment. I would definitely not be able to hold out, even if I'm not really into mallow.

There's a great article in the New Yorker about this same test. The crux of it is that there was a Stanford experiment in which elementary-school children would be put in a room in front of a plate of sweets, and told that if they could hold out for 15 minutes without gobbling one up, that they would get double the reward. As the researcher monitored their subjects throughout their adult lives, they found that kids with self-control were much more successful, less likely to be obese or addicted to drugs, and generally happier.

New Yorker Article link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer

Overwhelmed

Right now I'm feeling a bit stressed out. My wife and I are flying to a family wedding in Decatur, IN tomorrow and I'm trying to wrap up the Tomer assignment as well as getting on the stick for the IPL for Mahoney's class. That said, I'm actually enjoying getting the hang of RefWorks and playing around with Scopus. Still have to nail the RSS feeds though. There were a few fun trial and error phases with this assignment that I've happily gotten past.

This is my heaviest semester yet, with 2 classes at Pitt and another at Community College of Philadelphia in Educational Psych. The good news is, all this hard work will end and then Amy and I will be going to Europe on our Honeymoon. So there is a pretty bright light at the end of the tunnel!

One of the big summer bummers is that a bunch of bands I play in want to do shows in the next few weeks and I have to tell them that there's pretty much no way I can juggle practices in with 3 classes and 40 hours weekly at the office, minimum. That said, I'll still get to play a few shows, so I have something else to look forward to along the way.

This is beginning to feel like my diary. OMG! Can you just die>??

Danger Mouse to release blank cd, calls it "art"

Apparently, the embattled DJ/producer is in trouble yet again with his label(EMI)over copyrighted material that makes up part of his new collaboration with artists as disparate as Iggy Pop, Sparklehorse, David Lynch and the Pixies' Black Francis.

His cheeky, Web 2.0 way of giving EMI the finger is by releasing his new cd as a blank. That's right, no music. Just an empty place for the album to be put. I wonder if anyone will buy it? We all know that there will be someone who buys it and is upset when s/he finds that it is devoid of music. Maybe a backwoods DangerMouse fan with no computer, just a walkman and a backpack?

In tribute to DM's creativity, I will be free-downloading the album this evening and giving it a listen. I bet it is good. I like Gnarls Barkley and DM's record with MF Doom, and of course "the Grey Album".

I hate to lay the hard truth on you, but we don't need any more proof than this that the people who've been selling us music for the past 50+ years don't really care about art, right? (cue headslap)

Welcome to my blog (i hear crickets)

Hello everyone. This is my first blog, so go easy on me. It will enable me to speak my mind about all manner of issues in the world, especially those pertaining to the burgeoning amount of info we are dealing with on a daily basis. There will be deep thoughts, as well as some nacho-level thoughts. Who doesn't like nachos?