2011

There were 28 posts published in 2011 (this is page 3 of 4).

metadata and the back catalog

some of the backlist

This was a rainy weekend. This is mostly fine with me because the improved weather has made me insta-wistful for all the chilly indoor data projects that I got to muck around with over the winter that will now lie fallow-ish until it gets nasty out again. But with the rains, comes a little extra time.

So my new nerdy project is to go back and photograph all the 251 towns (and four gores) that Vermont has and that I have been to. Some of this is simple–I have been to most of the towns around here hundreds of times–and some is difficult. When people talk about data collection and organization and how it’s all on the internet and really you go to school to be a librarian? and bla bla bla, I look at teeny little stuff like this. Of course, with a phone and geolocation and a ready Flickr account, starting this project today is simpler [for all the towns where I can get a cell signal, which is an interesting statistic in and of itself] than starting it would have been back in 2004 when my first photo is from. Similarly, many older photo and information organizing projects are these long tatting projects merging metadata and content, preferably in some sort of machine-readable way, where previously there had been a box of photos in an attic. I could do this stuff forever. Enjoying organization and metadata in this day and age, pretty much means that I will always have a job that will make me happy.

My workflow for today has been amusing, filling in some blanks. I figure I have about 1/4 to 1/3 of Vermont’s towns photographed. Here’s an example of what I’ve been doing.

  1. Remember that I had a photo of a trip I’d made to Bennington and Shaftsbury a few years ago, towns that weren’t yet on my list.
  2. Search my email to find the exact date of the trip (because I’d mentioned it to folks)
  3. Go through iphoto to figure out what photos that I’d taken on that day
  4. Check my paper map and photo list to see which towns I didn’t have photos for
  5. Try to figure out where random nature scenes were from using context clues (okay I’m pretty sure that Welcome to Vermont sign has a highway sign beyond it, zoom in… zoom in…)
  6. Cross-check that info with the highlighted gazetteer I have which shows which roads I’ve been on to locate them
  7. Upload photos with good metadata (tags, town name, add to VT 251 set)
  8. Add uploaded photos to Flickr map
  9. Manually put an x on the paper map
  10. Add a strikethrough to the town list on the Flickr set page
  11. Do a reality check and realize I’ve uploaded a photo once calling it Rupert and once calling it Pownal.
  12. Repeat, trying to remember other trips I’ve made

Most of this starts because I have the memory of a photo. Often I can conflate that with a highlighted line on a map. Ultimately I’ll have clickable pixels and linked data and a neat thing to show people. I ge tto do this in-between keeping up with MetaFilter, running out to the post office and running out to the library where I just realized the book I am dying to read is actually checked in and on the shelf.

And speaking of neat things to show people, the other project for today was to start the Venture Vermont Outdoor Challenge. I know I sound like a weird shill for the Vermont State Parks, but really this is a fun project. A lot of little things to do, points assigned for the things you document, you send in documentation after you reach 250 points, you get a free parks pass for the rest of 2011 and all of 2012. It’s possible I lack imagination but I really enjoy the “Let’s pick from a list of things to do” process more than the “So, what do you want to do?” one. I started a little blog to keep track of what I’ve been doing on the project. That’s the rainy day report. There’s always something to sort around here.

did you say something? I WAS OUTSIDE!

my weird dilated eyes

So I’ve been gone for a lot of the past few weeks. People think it’s sort of a funny joke that there is a “high season” for library conferences but in the last month and change there have been five library conferences that I’ve been interested in and I got to go to three of them. Last weekend was bookended by MLA and CLA (MA and CT) which are both conferences that I really enjoy. Got back home Tuesday night with some pollen-induced sniffles and have been staring out the window or walking out the door, pretty much ever since.

The exciting news, which is not that exciting, is that I went in for my every-decade eye test and my vision is still good. Doc says I probably have two years til I need glasses, just on average. Coming from a family where everyone has worn glasses seemingly forever, I feel sort of ootchy because I always liked glasses. I hear that the thrill wears off pretty quickly. I also got a bone doc to look at my achey shoulder and she confirmed that it’s fine and I probably just need to do some shoulder exercises. I got sent home with my x-rays on a CD so I can look at my bones whenever I want.

While I was sitting around reading trashy magazines, I also asked the docs the questions I’d been waiting to ask.

Q for X-ray doc: What’s your opinion of the backscatter machines in the airport, and am I a crazy person for not wanting to go through them?

Answer: Less exposure is better. They’re probably safe but you’re not crazy to want less x-ray exposure.

Q for eye doc: What’s your opinion on the Zenni Optical phenomenon? Would I be okay getting $10 glasses from China?

Answer: We always like people to have one professionally ground and fit pair of glasses so that they know what a good fit and a good pair of glasses looks and feels like. If they want to get a second or third pair of inexpensive glasses, that’s fine, but I worry that people will get a bad pair of glasses and not know that they’re a bad pair.

Here are some other things that have been cluttering up my desktop that you might enjoy.

The last two days I’ve worked short shifts at the local public library and there is something about walking the half mile to work at the public library in the morning in the almost-springtime that makes me exceptionally happy to be alive.

What I did at TXLA – the food version

bananananana

I went back to Austin for TXLA and was pleased to get to eat at a ton of places that were terrific without the usual lines that sort of plague everything during SXSW. My write-up of the actual conference is over on librarian.net. Since most of what I did in Austin this time was eating, sleeping, or attending TXLA, I’ll cover all bases.

The sleeping part is simple. I stayed here, a very nice AirBnB place that was everything I could have wanted, except possibly not being a treehouse. Nice price, great location, well furnished, terrific. Having my own little apartment made it easier to manage my own schedule without having to put a Do Not Disturb sign on my door or get dressed to go have coffee. And the food, wow. We lost our only “Mexican” place here in town; it’s been replaced by a decent coffee shop so I can’t say I’m too disappointed, but I do hanker for guacamole and beans and rice, pretty much constantly.

I think the preponderance of food photos and food talk and food twittering online is often a way of letting people know both 1) I like food, I am a person of decent appetites and also 2) I am taking care of myself. See? Food! I feel self-conscious talking about food much since it’s always the cliche “I don’t care what you had for breakfast” response to people who like twitter/facebook/social media. But whatever. You might care what I had for breakfast. And if not, we are still internet-friends, or real ones.

  • Sunday I drove/bused down to MA. I think I had cereal for dinner, maybe an apple.
  • Monday was travel day. I had a bagel with cream cheese at Dunkin Donuts (my experience mirrors Jason’s, I don’t know what I was thinking except “cheap airport food”), airport crackers, and some cup o’ soup at my destination, maybe a powerbar.
  • Tuesday was talk day. I hit the Korean BBQ taco truck for lunch and ran into Aaron who was having kimchee fries. Gave the talk and decided to head back to the nieghborhood I was staying in–mainly to see if I’d left my powercord at home, yes I had–and then went out walking down Cesar Chavez until I got to Las Cazuelas and got some take-out tostadas. I’m sure there are better Mexican places, but it was walking distance and tasty.
  • Wednesday I met a local friend for BBQ at Green Mesquite which was an old timey place off South Congress. I got a pulled pork sandwich and some green beans but somehow neglecrted to photograph it. In the evening I took my friend Paul out for dinner to thank him for the airport pickup and we went to the Blue Dahlia Bistro a place I’d initially discounted because of a fruity website. The food was good though it was maybe a bit too upscale for my tastes (to be fair, I have very lowbrow tastes). I had some sort of black bean and corn salad with, yes, more avocado. We skipped out on that place for dessert and wound up at BANANARCHY which was hands-down the best thing I ate in Austin. Frozen banana, dipped in peanut butter topping, rolled in coconut. Joy. Pure joy.
  • Thursday I miscalculated and wound up walking around hungry trying to figure out what I wanted to eat. I wound up in some place on 6th Street where I had tempura which was perfectly fine. Thursday evening, however was the Small Community Libraries Dessert Social which was at 7 so I stopped in, ate several desserts (example dessert) and then went to dinner at Guero’s which is some sort of massive tex-Mexican food place. I had tamales which I can never get out here, and was super duper happy.
  • Friday I was up with coffee and met MetaFilter’s new mod Jeremy for some lunch before heading to the airport. She suggested Whip-In which is this crazy Indian restaurant in the side of a beer store. Oh and sometimes they play music. I had some Zambian seasoned rice and corn and peppers thing and Jeremy got a bowl of goat meat. It was a terrific send off to what had been a great week of eating. I had another power bar and some cereal before I went to bed in MA that night.
  • Saturday my friends Andrea and Corey and I ate at the Great Taste Diner [formerly Danny’s Diner] which is a Peruvian-type place but that didn’t mean the BLT there wasn’t terrific. I got home and had a cheeseburger.

This week I’m back on Jessamyn Chow which is mostly Kashi-type cereal, english muffins and a lot of brown rice and coffee. So far okay. If you’re wondering how I managed to maintain a list of all these places, I’ll point you to Foursquare where you are more than welcome to be my friend. It’s got limited utility, especially in a place like Vermont, but as a “Hey where did I eat last week?” listing machine, it can’t be beat.

while I’m making other plans

I leave today for a few days in Texas with a stop in Boston on the way out and back. I’m giving a longish [80 minute] talk that is more or less all new. I’m excited about it but at the same time having a hard time putting all the final pieces together. The good news is that I am the sort of crazy person who procrastinates doing one thing, by doing others. So I’ve…

  • Started rowing with the indoor rowing machine my friend gave me when he moved to Portland Oregon.
  • Pruned my mossariums
  • Paid all my outstanding bills
  • Started my taxes. Read up on how I’d ask for an extension on my taxes. Probably deciding against it.
  • Gotten down to inbox five.
  • Made sure the “libraries I’ve visited” listing is up to date.
  • Backed up my hard drive
  • Unpacked the stuff from my car from when I went down to my Dad’s
  • Started planning an Autumn trip to Michigan
  • Updated all my apps
  • Almost finished the math-y book I’m reading
  • Won a few Scrabble games
  • Assessed the state of my mutual funds [upshot: eh]
  • Installed my landlady’s printer
  • Read the paper
  • Did some HR stuff at MeFi Inc
  • Nearly finished companion website for the book [sneak peek here, it’s not done]
  • Recorded an old Cordelia’s Dad cassette from when they played in the Pioneer Valley in 1988 or ’89.
  • Got lost in the unicode tables looking for a good wingding.
  • Figured out how to use OSX’s Automator program to export my notes for my talk
  • Wrote this.

If I told you it was still snowing would you be surprised?

withoutanet

This book has been so long in the making that I think every single person who has been any sort of part of it now swears when they mention it. Barring disaster [which I have said several times previously and then endured several near-disasters] it’s at the damned printer. I’m not sure I ever linked to the final version of the essay I wrote about writing the book, but you can read it here and expand the timeline out into April a little bit but I’m really hoping the next email I get about it is asking “Where do we send your copy?” The crazy thing is that I know that even though I swear I will never write another book again–something you frequently hear from authors at this point in the game–I’m also still thinking what my next book might be about. Irrational.

Anyhow, if you know me you’ll know that I’d never tell you to go buy my book. Buy what you want. That said if you want to buy it ABC-CLIO sent me this flyer (with the old name of the book on it lord help me) offering 20% off to TXLA attendees and, really, anyone who types in the promotion code. You can grab the flyer here. I think if I do the math right, I’ll have to sell 130+ copies before I have even paid off my (quite capable and terrific) indexer, much less me. I wonder what it’s like to actualy do writing for a job as opposed to writing because you can’t not write? My landlady keeps asking me when the book is coming out because she thinks that once it’s out she can read it and know how her computer works. I do wish that were so but it’s probably not.

Meanwhile we’re having the last snowstorm of the season and I’m reminded that having a slightly porous memory can be helpful so that I don’t remember that I’ve said this “last snowstorm of the season” thing before. I went down to MA this weekend where there was enough spring-pollen-ish stuff in the air that my seasonal allergies (and some associated vertigo) kicked in. In other Jessamyn-health news I went for a checkup and am in terrific outward shape but probably need to do something about my cholesterol and the weird ache I have in my shoulder. The health insurance I have through work actually gives me money [well gift cards, which are sort of like money] for getting an annual physical. And, since I have multiple jobs, I have an additional workplace wellness program at the other job which gives actual money (not gift cards) for doing a bunch of crossword puzzles about health-related topics and keeping track of my sleep schedule.

There’s a new tapas place in town which I know looks like a typo but is true. I went there with some friends last week and am going to check it out again today. Pretty sure I can get cholesterol-friendly tapas. Today is the first day of the rest of my winter.

the long dark teatime of tech support aka the bbq hangover

So I was gone to Texas for a week. I had a terrific time. My panel went well, my panelists were wonderful. You can read the notes over on librarian.net. The best part of the whole thing, besides being a small part of what The Atlantic called “The Year of the Librarian” at SXSW, was that my panel was over by 6 pm on Friday meaning I had the rest of the conference to just schmooze and hang out. I am not a natural schmoozer (I know people who know me may disagree, but this is all hard work!) but I managed to have a terrific time meeting people, scooting all over the place, eating a lot of BBQ, taking the last bus home, staying at friends’ places and spending a lot of time saying “We should do this more often. And inviting people to Vermont, sincere invitations that will mostly never be taken up on. So some meetups

  • The Old Timers Ball, a place to hang out with people you hung out with at SXSW 2000.
  • The MetaFilter meetup, a well-attended get together of internet people
  • Lunch with a friend of the family I randomly ran into in an elevator
  • Lunch with a good friend from San Francisco who I don’t see nearly enough
  • Dinner with my co-workers from MeFi (and Andy) where we ordered one of everything from the dessert menu (N=6, we’re not that crazy)
  • Dinner with folks I’d never met who are friends from a mailing list
  • A party containing many of the people from the other meetups
  • A old-timers dinner for some of the same people from the first night
  • An open mike night where people told stories.
  • Panels that both my co-workers gave [Josh did Worst Websites Ever and Matt talked about community moderation.]

And I had some other food. And then I came home and everything was broken.

Actually I lucked out with travel as I tend to. So I got home Thursday [after an overnight at Jim’s] and fled Boston in true Evacuation Day spirit the next day. The DSL that was supposed to be installed was not installed (all my internet comes from my tethered iphone this week). The page proofs for my book that were supposed to have fixed the errors in the first proofs were not fixed. My blog was down with mystery failures. I was tired, cranky, full of digesting BBQ, cold. However, I was amped with a week full of nerd hugs and sharp people and their crazy ideas and I dug in to these projects like a marathon runner. Now, by the end of the first full day, things are mostly calm. My edits are back with the publisher. My blog is back up for now. The DSL folks swore on Twitter they’d look into this. And Jim’s on his way up to visit and I have dinner from the culinary arts kids in the fridge waiting to be warmed up when he texts me that he’s hit the Vermont border. It’s melty and muddy here. And I’m taking the weekend off.

bending towards spring

springpleaseohplease

I wrote a post about the Digital Public Library of America over on librarian.net, you can go read it there. It may not make too much sense if you don’t do some of the linked reading but hopefully you’ll get an idea of what it was about.

This week continues the travel thing, down to Boston for a friend’s 40th birthday party [celebrated by watching movies all day at the microcinema at the Somerville Theater] then back home to teach a class and then back to Boston to fly out to SXSW where I’ll be for a week. Making the choices between checking a bag and mailing some syrup down with me. My SXSW schedule is online and linkable. My talk is Friday at 5 pm. I’m doing a few meetupish things, probably not going to any giant parties. Trying to intersperse eating healthily with eating a lot of BBQ. Looking forward to seeing some friends who I only see this year at this time.

Amusingly then my next trip is back to Austin for TXLA in April. This is one of the best library conferences in the country in my opinion, and I’m excited to be one of the “featured speakers” whatever that means exactly. Other than that I’m not leaving New England for months unless my book gets published on time and I decide to go to ALA in New Orleans.