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.