Monthly Archives: June 2005

Firefox rocks, again!

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Firefox seems to be working again.  Woohoo!

I copied my FF profile folder to my desktop and then uninstalled FF 1.0.4, although Windows was still reporting FF 1.0.1 was present and would not remove it due to a missing uninstall folder.  But that was a known problem.

I then ran Regedit and selectively removed most references to Mozilla, especially earlier versions.  I then rebooted and seeing as I got my desktop I checked that Outlook and IE were working.  I probably should’ve checked other things but we’ll see.  I then reinstalled FF 1.0.4.  I logged into my LEEP page and voila! just as beautiful as before.  OK, beautiful is definitely out of line, but compared to what FF has been doing to it for several months now it is beautiful.  ‘Relevance’ rears its ugly (or is it beautiful?) head in other places now.  Logged into BLogLines and everything is hunky-dory!

So now I copied my bookmarks.html file over from my old profile, relaunch FF and I have bookmarks and a properly populated BookMarks Toolbar, and still working LEEP page and BlogLines.  Now I get brave and copy the contents of my extensions folder over to my new profile.  Relaunch FF and I now have my extensions, and working LEEP and BlogLines.

Hurrah for me, and Firefox!  Still, it shouldn’t have been necessary.  At least this part of my life is back on track.  And even better, I can kick IE back to the Quick Launch Toolbar and leave it there to rot!

I am NOT stalking you…

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If you are getting weird hits on posts from the last few months from the same location, don’t worry, it is probably just me weeding my ‘Keep Alive’ posts in BlogLines.  I can’t promise you not to worry because it may not be me, and I don’t know how you’d know that it is.

Anyway, I’m not stalking, just posting the stuff I want to ‘save’ to del.icio.us and letting the rest go.  I may have to import my subscriptions back into BlogLines for Firefox to start acting right again, but I’m sure that would cause me to lose the 1200 or so things that are still awaiting decisions.  Yeah, yeah, I know it’s long past decision time—but don’t complain if I think what you have to say is important.  Anyway, tried to avoid anything that drastic, especially since BlogLines is fine in IE.  But trying to ‘use post to del.icio.us’ sucks major bad in IE—almost no functionality at all.

What I’m considering at the moment since Firefox is being generally ignorant on occasion, and constantly with my LEEP homepage, is backing up my bookmarks, noting what is installed on the Bookmarks Toolbar, and uninstalling and reinstalling.  I’m hoping that’ll solve the issue.

Then again, the computer is overall acting stupid on occasion too.  I keep scanning for viruses and spyware and so on, but stupid it acts nonetheless.  I hate Windows!  Why in the hell can’t it be easier by 2005?  And, no Microsoft, I do NOT want you taking over the management of my computer for me!  I just want you to make something that works and is easy to keep working.  I don’t see how it can be that hard by this point in time.

We’ll see how the Mac goes MS, and if this desktop gets overly stupid, well, Apple may just have another convert.

Google relevance

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Kevin of Kevin’s Worklog has a thoughtful post on Google’s page ranking algorithm and relevance.   I just made a comment asking for a little clarification of his thoughts. [Awaiting moderation]

Go read it [Kevin's post, not necessarily my comment], and the Buzzle article that he links to.  Seems Google’s patent application has shed some light on their normally fairly secretive algorithm.

What do you think?  I already have several issues with Google’s algorithms in the context of relevance.  I can’t say that this is helping me resolve those.  Just increases them, actually.  I can see where it will help with spamming of the search process, and how it can help on occasion with actual relevant search results, but I don’t see how it will generally help.

And to quote Kevin quoting someone quoting a Google rep:

once you had tons of data it was amazing the types of things you could do. The same algorithms that wouldn’t return good results with smaller sets worked much better when the data set was massive. It seems once you get past a certain point, you get a new perspective.

Sounds a lot like Total Information Awareness to me.  Maybe it is true in a algorithmical sense, and possibly even useful in some situations, but most of those with this much data and computing power at hand scare me with their ‘new perspectives.’  "Do No Evil" my rear.

I’m hoping for a response from Kevin, because he’s clearly smarter about these things than me, or at least more educated, based on his blog, but what do you think?

And since I remember some serious issues I had with the concept of ‘relevance:’

“Pertinence” and “relevance” are two terms that have been used in the
literature of information science to express a relationship between
some document and: 1) some request for information; 2) some need for
information; or 3) some individual who requests or needs information.
Thus, it might be said that a particular document is relevant (or
pertinent) to a particular request, to a particular information need,
or to a particular individual who requests information on a particular
subject. The relationship implied by these terms is one that is
extremely important to the evaluation of information services.
Unfortunately, the two terms have been used rather loosely in the
literature and a considerable amount of controversy seems to exist on
what the two terms actually mean and whether or not “relevance” is in
fact relevant to the evaluation of information services.
From the introduction to "Pertinence and Relevance" by Lancaster and Gale, in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 2003, (p. 2307 in print) accessed online 18 June 2005. [Emphasis mine.]

Although other terminology could conceivably be used, we propose to adopt the term relevance to indicate a relationship existing between a document and a request statement in the eyes of a particular judge. It would be wrong to assume that relevance represents a precise, invariant relationship; it does not. In fact, rather than saying that a document is relevant to a request, it would be better to say that the document has been judged relevant to the request by a particular individual or group of individuals.
From "Pertinence and Relevance" by Lancaster and Gale, in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 2003, (p. 2310 in print) accessed online 18 June 2005.

Ah, yes. Relevance is a subjective evaluation of the searcher; not something that any other person, and especially not a machine or algorithm, can decide for the searcher.  Google’s rankings may be, and in fact are, relevant to Google’s algorithm, but they quite possibly, and often, are not in any way relevant to me or other searchers.

Which leads me back to my comment on Kevin’s post, if I were looking for his personal journal I would now have some additional information that is ‘relevant’ in a sense, but I would still judge Google’s #1 result as not relevant to me as I still don’t know where to find The Bruised Edge. 

For the sake of experimentation I have looked a little more carefully and particularly at a link that did not look that promising at first, AND by doing a search on that page I have now found what I ‘was looking for.’  I wasn’t really looking for it, and the ‘secret’ is safe with me Kevin, but it is the example Kevin used in his post.  And honestly, it wasn’t that difficult, but if we are to believe the studies of search practices searchers don’t usually work this hard at finding what they want.  As another critique, this same page includes a link to the same post on Kevin’s Worklog, but it fails since that post isn’t on that blog.  Hmmmm? 

I just simply fail to see how Google’s brand of relevance is very relevant in this case.  Thoughts anyone?

I must be a curmudgeon

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Curmudgeon becoming.
Last Open Access Haiku
Not funny to me.

I 1st saw this from Alane at It’s all good: A haiku introduction to open access by Peter Suber, then I saw it again at Library Web Chic this morning. [Sorry I don't have a direct link to Alane's post at IAG, but I also despise Blogger's lack of decent navigation.  Her post is from 16 Jun 05 though.  Told you I'm becoming curmudgeonly.]

I actually do like a few of Suber’s haikus.  These are my 2 favorites:

If you publish it,
and readers can’t afford it,
does it make a sound?

Libraries are caught:
High prices, tight licences,
profs who demand more.

But I take issue with the last one, which was mentioned by both Alane (IAG) and Karen (LWC):

The current system
evolved over centuries.
So did dinosaurs.

Yes, I know it is supposed to be humorous, and to be metaphorical, but I find it a very shallow metaphor and displaying a lack of scientific understanding.

One could liken the disappearance of the dinosaurs due to a lack of ability to adapt to a changing environment to a possible outcome of the situation in publishing today.  But, the dinosaurs did not create their environment, nor did they have any direct control over it, unlike humans, particularly in such social processes as the publishing industry.  And one of the main reasons the dinosaurs are gone is that they could not evolve over the extremely short time frame of centuries.

Again, I know it’s supposed to be funny, and I did laugh ‘ha ha’ when I first read it, and then I immediately went, whoa—that’s not right.  It just seems to me to propogate the human attitude of another failed, lower, form of life.  There is nothing failure-like about dinosaurs.  We humans should be so lucky to live on this earth, or anywhere else, for the scores of millions of years that dinosaurs did.  With all this in mind, here is my response to the ‘dinosaur’ haiku:

Cockroach will one day
opine the same of mankind.
Could not change either.

But, lest you think I am a curmudgeon and ungrateful, I am extremely thankful to Peter, Alane and Karen because they have me thinking, cracking open my dictionary and thesaurus, looking at the book on poetry that I got from the library, and trying my hand at haiku.  That last clause is definitely a new experience for me—so thank you all!

So, anyone who wants to critique my haikus or my thinking feel free.   Turnabout is fair play sometimes, and I know that I’m asking for it.  And, yes, I do know that I am anthropomorphizing cockroaches; I don’t honestly think that they can ‘opine.’  Maybe that opens me to the same charge…?  Oh well, you tell me.  "I, too, need structure and discipline."  Er, I mean help with my thinking processes.

Eating apples?

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I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been eating a lot of apples lately—although I don’t like McIntoshes (Galas, Fujis, and Pink Ladies yum!)—but I took the plunge today and ordered a 12" PowerBook.  But by waiting so long I probably won’t have it in time for ALA next weekend, drat!  That’s my own fault though.

I sure hope that this is a good decision, or I should say decisions, plural.  First, there’s the "should I even get one?", then there’s the "which platform?" question.

I just went through the exercise of figuring out which programs that I have purchased could be legally used on a laptop with the same license if I got a PC and it was about 50%, but an important 50%.  Yet, still I did it anyway.

My academic edition of MS Office would’ve been OK, as would EndNote, and Dreamweaver.  Not the firewall, but then they don’t have a Mac one anyway.  Not PartitionMagic, but does anyone partition Mac drives?  Not sure about the broadband, but then that shouldn’t matter about platform; only the 2nd connection.

Dreamweaver pisses me off.  They actually ship a dual platform CD.  They allow 2 installs as long as the machines aren’t being used simultaneously; BUT, they don’t allow dual platform installs.  What in the crap is that?  I even emailed customer suport to ask.  I got a stupid reply telling me what I already knew, which, yes, I had spelled out in the email.  It said the same thing and to read the EULA.  Well, I had already said the same thing in my email and that I had read the EULA, which is of course where I got my info from in the 1st darn place.  Damn Macromedia to rot in the nether regions!  Lucky for me I can code by hand.  And I have no doubt that there are plenty of free editors for Macs if I must.  Just gives me an even bigger incentive to turn my ACRL@UIUC Dreamweaver template into a cascading stylesheet (CSS) and be done with it.

So if any of you Mac users out there have any suggestions for software I might need or want, reputable freeware/shareware sites, or can point me to any good reference resources, print or online, please feel free. 

I do have these 2 Mac blogs in my aggregator for now: What Do I Know and Christopher Kupec’s Weblog, who seems to possibly be a librarian based on his posts.  I have been drooling over Delicious Monster ever since 1st reading about it from Liz Lawley back in Nov 2004.  I need a new media library tool ever since the one I had previously purchased wouldn’t install on my newest computer, now almost 2 years old.  Detailed records on close to 700 CDs that have been completely inaccessible since.  Makes me mad to even think about it!  But this will do so many more media types, and automagically with a webcam or bar code scanner.  This one will probably have to wait a bit, but not toooo long.

Anyway, recommendations/tips/whatever welcomed!  I remember from my 1st Apple computer, heck, 1st computer, an Apple IIGS, that most things were pretty simple and then everything else was amazingly geekily difficult.  My impressions of other Mac users around me currently is the same—much can be done simply, and usually rather intuitively, but then there’s the much harder stuff—no real middle-ground, though.

Where am I?

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Where have I been?  I’m not even sure I know the answer to that question.  And since starting this blog I rarely write in my journal anymore …  well, that is a shame since this isn’t supposed to be my journal.

  • Last weekend and the 1st half of this week was LEEP On Campus for Summer classes so that kept me busy and working a lot. 
  • Been reading Middlemarch.  Only 300 pages left.
  • Been reading lots of articles on cataloging and cataloging education.
  • Been extremely tired lately, especially over the weekend and earlier in the week.
  • The reading has been slowed by the exhaustion though.
  • Been keeping up reasonably well on my blog reading.
  • Been tagging and posting stuff to del.icio.us to get it out of my aggregator, although some people still have way too many posts ‘kept alive.’
  • I had started a fairly involved, ‘academic,’ post about Gorman, but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it.  And then I had to agree with Walt that, "Too much is being written about this;…," so I gave it up.  I can always save it for the next time, unfortunately. [Unfortunate that there will be a next time.]

Last night I did a bit of shopping and picked up a couple of CDs and a DVD at Best Buy for myself for Father’s Day. <grrr>I leave the grumbling for Sunday but it’s a ‘holiday’ I don’t especially care for.</grrr>  Anyway, I got The White Stripes newest, Get Behind Me Satan, and also John Prine’s newest, Fair & Square.  I’m not sure how impressed I am with the Stripes, but the Prine is pretty good.  I also got Elvis Costello & The Impostors Live in Memphis but I haven’t watched it yet.  It’s even got Emmylou Harris on several tracks.  What’s not to like about that?

After shopping I took myself to Crane Alley again for dinner.  I had another of the raspberry frambois—such a lovely summer beer—and seared duck breasts with, well, stuff.  Sorry, I’m not a gourmet or food snob so I don’t remember what it was.  Very simple though, and extremely tasty!  I’m all about simple in most of my food.  Complicated can be OK, but rarely.  I’d much rather taste a few simple, but savory, flavors in a dish.  Don’t misunderstand, I loves me some tasty food—just don’t expect me to know what all the ingredients are or are called.  Anyway, it was kind of like the Mastercard "Priceless ads."  Sitting outside on a summer evening, reading a wonderful book, sipping a raspberry frambois, and having a simple but exquisitely tasty meal—well worth every penny of the $25 it cost me.  The only problem is how can I do it more often?  Heck, even when I become a "big tome" librarian—yes, that is a typo but it cracked me up so I left it—I won’t be able to afford too many $25 meals.   

And thanks to Dorothea’s reminder today I was hoping to see Howl’s Moving Castle cause I too, "Love me some Miyazaki, I do."  But drats, it’s not showing here yet!  Such a shame too because I could really use some Miyazaki in my life right now.  I have got to get more than Princess Mononoke on DVD.

Oh well!  Here’s hoping that shoulder knits soon Dorothea.  I would be happy to help you both move—seems to be a serious character flaw of mine—but I’ve never traveled that far to do so and don’t see how I could right now.  Seems that I constantly volunteer to help my friends with their moving although I hate it myself—just seems that I have a massive amount of experience at it.

Eva Hunter at Le Roy Summerfest

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Yesterday evening I went to the Le Roy (Ill.; aka LeRoy) Summerfest to see The Eva Hunter Band.   They were great as usual, and the rain actually let up from the late afternoon until after midnight.  It cooled things down a bit too, which was nice.  I picked up her latest album, Thirsty and a t-shirt.

After Eva’s two sets, an even more local band called AKA played for quite a while.  They weren’t exactly bad, and they did a decent job of playing to the crowd—you can’t get much more small town Middle America than Le Roy.  They opened with Sister Christian, and played some Journey, Uriah Heep, Heart’s Barracuda, and other assorted mostly 80s big hair stuff.  They played one Pink Floyd song that was so bad I have no idea which one it was—I have suppressed the memory.  They also played Steely Dan’s FM, which was not too bad to be good in a cheesy sort of way.  They ended with AC/DC’s Back in Black.  My friend Gina and her husband Romeu stayed, along with Eva, who happens to be Gina’s sister, and Clay, the bassist for the band (Eva’s).  We had a great time enjoying the cheesy cover band, while simultaneously making fun of them.  Their main singer sounded a lot like Geddy Lee of Rush, so pretty much every song sounded like Geddy Lee doing somebody else.  It really was entertaining after all, and Clay has a razor sharp wit.

The band is playing live on the radio here in Champaign this coming Monday on WEFT Sessions, 90.1 FM 10 – 11 PM.  Eva invited me to come down to the studio for the session, seeing as I’m their only known Champaign-Urbana fan at the moment.  I am a member of WEFT so I’m thinking I just may go.

They’re playing at the Cowboy Monkey in Champaign on Sun., 26 Jun, late.  Unfortunately, I’ll be in Chicago at ALA then.  They’ve been playing around the area a lot lately and are trying to make inroads back into C-U so hopefully they’ll come back here soon.  If you are in the C-U area that night you really should go check them out.  It’s only a $5 cover.

Continue reading →

Happy 90th Birthday Les Paul

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If you listen to any music recorded after the early 1950s then you should raise a hearty "Happy Birthday" to Lester Polfus, aka Les Paul, today in honor of his 90th birthday and to his many musical accomplishments.  Les Paul practically single-handedly invented modern studio recording techniques.

…he perfected the first muli-track recording machine, allowing separate lines of instrumental music and vocals to be blended together. His many recording innovations–including sound-on-sound, overdubbing, reverb effects, and multi-tracking–greatly accelerated the advancement of studio recording.  VOICES from the Smithsonian Associates

And no, Les Paul is not the name of a guitar model.  It is a Gibson guitar model which he invented that bears his name.  Minor semantic difference; but particularly true since Gibson sold them for a few years before they would put his name on it [Despite their "official" corporate history below] .

Some of the untold thousands of guitar gods and wanna-be guitar gods who have played Gibson Les Paul electric guitars:  Les Paul, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, Slash (Guns ‘n’ Roses), Robert Fripp (King Crimson), Peter Green (early Fleetwood Mac; blues not pop), Peter Frampton, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Ace Frehley (Kiss), B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Bob Marley, John McLaughlin (jazz), and thousands of other guitarists around the world.

He even has an award named after him "created in 1991 to honor individuals or institutions that have set the highest standards of excellence in the creative application of audio technology."
(here being given to Steely Dan.)

Les Paul at Wikipedia

Les Paul at Space Age Pop

Gibson Les Paul story

Gibson Les Paul model solidbody electric guitar

Smithsonian audio interview of Les Paul

NPR story

WaPo story on induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

So while you’re boppin’ to your iPod, listening to the radio in your car, or jamming to the stereo at home, or partaking of pretty much any other form of recorded music, or maybe even seeing a live guitarist or two today, don’t forget to raise a glass in salute to Les Paul on his 90th birthday in thanks for all your years of musical enjoyment!

Gorman, again

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Minor edits 16 Jun 05: Removed an extraneous word and clarified last sentence.

As a comment on the current Gorman flap—this is why I’m not
quite ready to give up on ALA.  I need to be a member of ACRL to be a
member of our student group, and how can I pass up the opportunity to
help get the 1st ACRL student group up and sizzling?  The balance is
certainly tilting though, I have to say.  When I no longer get away
with the student rate, and ACRL has raised their rates?  And yes, Mary
Ellen, we still want a student rate for ACRL.  The problem we are told,
fellow students, is that there isn’t enough of us as members to make it
worthwhile.  So get involved, start your own student chapters; and
agitate for a student rate for ACRL.

And while I publicly stated over at FRL
that "I agree with you that Gorman is not a racist, at least not based
on an uniformed comment using the term "hip hop,"" I do believe that
the comment borders on racism.  It is certainly unacceptable, along
with ALAs non-response.  I certainly hope that someone at headquarters
is reigning him in, although I also feel something should be stated
publicly.  As much as it pains me to say this after spending over 20 years swearing an oath to protect and defend our Constitution, Gorman needs to be censored—before
he opens his mouth or dips his pen in the inkwell.  With all the issues
facing our field in this 21st century wartime America, and our culture
even if we weren’t at war, we do not need the kinds of public comments
from a so-called leader in our field that are coming from Michael
Gorman.  Get it together ALA!  Because I fully agree with Dorothea
and many others; there is an awful lot of grassroots work that needs to
be done; work that can’t be done at a national level to begin with.  I
do believe that there is an important function to be filled by a
professional organization such as ALA.  I’m just not convinced that you
are. ALA is capable of the national-level work that needs done.  [I sincerely hope neither Dorothea or anyone else thought that comment was directed at her—but man was I unclear there!  Somedays it just does me no good at all to know what I mean.]

ACRL@UIUC Website is Live

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Announcing a Blue Light Special in Aisle 13!  [How many of you aren't old enough to know what in heck I'm babbling about?]

Anyway…as the one and, so far, only webmaster for the ACRL@UIUC Student Chapter I proudly announce that we are Live!  We have our very own website for the inaugural, and we believe still only, student chapter of ACRL.

So please check it out and let me know what you think.  I’m trying to get a little more content up over the summer, but someone has to write it before I can do that.  We should have a report from the ACRL convention because a bunch of us went.  Two of our members participated in a presentation.  We had a brunch the weekend after the conference at our president’s house, and I believe that photos may even exist. 

And then Mary Ellen Davis, Executive Director ofACRL, and alumna of our own humble library school, thank you very much, visited us back on 30 Apr.  She actually came to an ALA student chapter meeting to give a talk, but she joined some of wunnerful ACRL "kids" for afters.

I guess we all got kind of busy there at the end of the semester.  Anyway, please check out what we have up, and feel free to provide any feedback you’d like.  You can comment here, or if you click on the link in the footer of the web pages those emails are currently coming to me.