habitually probing generalist » Web/Tech http://marklindner.info/blog Sun, 29 Jan 2012 03:56:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Constructing my Books Read in 2010 post http://marklindner.info/blog/2011/01/04/constructing-my-books-read-in-2010-post/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2011/01/04/constructing-my-books-read-in-2010-post/#comments Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:41:25 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2358 Constructing my previous post, Books Read in 2010, was far too difficult.  Still. I keep a simple running list of books I read in VoodooPad, a personal wiki, on my laptop.  I record them by date started, author’s last name and title.  When I finish I add that date.  At some point I look them [...]]]>

Constructing my previous post, Books Read in 2010, was far too difficult.  Still.

I keep a simple running list of books I read in VoodooPad, a personal wiki, on my laptop.  I record them by date started, author’s last name and title.  When I finish I add that date.  At some point I look them up in a library catalog—generally WorldCat nowadays—and bring them into Zotero and add them to a folder titled Books Read in 20xx.

In the past I have exported that folder from Zotero as a bibliography in HTML and pasted it into WordPress.  With some minor editing I got a decent bibliography including COinS data for every title.  But somewhere along the line over the last year or two things have gone wonky and some interaction between the COinS-formatted HTML from Zotero and WordPress have caused much of that data to be stripped out.  Last year was a real pain and seeing as this year my list was 20-some-odd percent longer I could not face all of that work simply to have much of it disappear no matter how much wrangling and struggling I did.

My next thought was that I would simply use the OpenBook plugin by John Miedema that I am using for book reviews [example post].  I was not looking forward to plugging one hundred or so ISBNs into its input form one at a time but it was in theory doable. [This was due more to how much work I had already done verifying ISBNs, "correcting" those in Zotero and pasting a copy of the ISBN into the text file created with the bibliography exported from Zotero than it was the effort to use the plugin.]

So I ran a little test trying a few “random” ISBNs from the list to see what the Open Library records looked like and/or if they had records for some of my less popular titles.  The results were horrible!  I estimated I would have to add records for at least 20 titles and fix records on 2 to 3 times that many.  I began slowly poking away at them over the course of a couple days—days when I should have been doing other things of course—and although my estimates were highly accurate I got it done.

At some point in my cataloging I noticed that Open Library had recently added a lists feature.  I thought perhaps I’ll just make a list there and point my blog readers to it; although that did strike me as rather dismal.  Of course, I noticed the list feature after I had added or re-cataloged somewhere around 30 books; which meant I had to look them all up again individually to add them to my new list.  ::sigh::

Then I discovered that you can export a list in either JSON, HTML or BibTex.  Sadly I know little to nothing about either JSON or BibTex so if they would have made my life easier—without a steep learning curve first—then I did myself a disfavor by using HTML.

Well, the HTML needed a lot of massaging to look decent once imported into WordPress.  As the native page exported by Open Library it looks OK, but WordPress treats those h3s, spans and divs much differently. [Technically not an export but a simplified page generated from your main list that you can save and/or copy from the source.]

I believe the titles are in the list in the order I entered them, or something close to that anyway.  Sadly, that order bears no relation to anything useful.  Thus, I had to cut and paste the whole list into the order I wanted.  Then I started playing with layout to see what would look decent enough in WordPress.  Once I figured it out I started changing the divs and h3s to spans and removing all the extraneous white space.  By hand.  TextEdit was of no use in the white space changing game.  As I was getting really tired of all the mousing, etc. involved I remembered that Dreamweaver might do a much better job with white space in find and replace.  With hope I fired up the long disused copy of DW and opened my file.  I highlighted a group of white space and a tag to change, hit ⌘-C to copy it, hit ⌘-F to open Find and Replace, saw that the white space was intact, put the cursor in the replace box, hit ⌘-V to paste the same in, deleted the white space I wanted removed, and hit OK.  It did what I wanted so I had it fix the rest of those and went on to the next bit needing fixed.  Thankfully Open Library had been consistent in how and where it added the white space.

After that it was rather simple to verify my data and do the odd minor correction here and there.  As for the ebooks, I pulled those out of my original list exported from Zotero and ginned them up in a text file with links to each book in feedbooks.  Yes, Open Library has ebooks but from what I could find not a single one from feedbooks.  I could have added them but I was in no mood to add another 18 books, and cataloging free ebooks that give absolutely no indication of which text they are was not something I intended to undertake.  Ebooks are great in many contexts!  Ebook metadata is in a despicable state! [That is a rant for another, and previous, occasion.]

Once I had the ebooks fully ginned up in the text file I cut and paste them into the blog post where they went in the list.  Then I wrote the text that went along with the list and waited for the end of the year a few days away.  On the 31st I made a few minor corrections to the list since I finished one of the books I had given up on and added another that I read on the 30th and 31st.  I also fixed the numbers/commentary regarding the other two books and added a bit more commentary.

Sadly, the only COinS data available is for the post itself and I doubt many of you are truly interested in adding my post to Zotero, Mendeley, or whatever.

If I had used OpenBook I could have had COinS.  But I got distracted by needing to fix so many records at Open Library and then by finding the Open Library list feature.  After spending so much time futzing and seeing what it would do for me I had given up on Open Library.  Honestly, I had no desire to copy and paste 100+ ISBNs into it one by one either.  Still, I wonder how well it would have handled the job? [John, if you are still reading, any idea how the plugin might handle 100+ titles using template 5, embedded? Certainly wouldn't want to be making all those calls to OL live.]

None of this is meant to take away from the OpenBook plugin for which I greatly thank John Miedema!

It makes me sad that it is 2011 and this task is still so darn difficult.  Much progress has been made in the sharing and linking to book data on the web but it is still so crude.  Much of the assorted quasi-FRBRization going on in places like Open Library, WorldCat, goodreads, Library Thing, etc. actually seem to make it worse.  If one only cares about pointing at a title/work then things are somewhat better.  But I cared about editions long before I became a cataloger.  In most cases if someone takes a recommendation from me I could care less which edition of the work they read or listen to in the end.  But in some cases it does matter.  And for my own purposes I want to know which manifestation(s) of the work I engaged with.

Some day the future may arrive and making a list like this in which the titles will bring their own (accurate) metadata along with them will be easy. That day simply has to arrive. Soon.

Then again, I’m still waiting on the flying car I was promised almost 50 years ago.

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2011/01/04/constructing-my-books-read-in-2010-post/feed/ 10 Books Read in 2010 http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/12/31/books-read-in-2010/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/12/31/books-read-in-2010/#comments Sat, 01 Jan 2011 01:35:58 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2262 This list of books that I finished this year is based on the date I started reading each book. Though they were generally finished in something close to this order, some books took much longer than others. I finished a total of 102 books in 2010. Five of these were re-reads. I read 85 print [...]]]>

This list of books that I finished this year is based on the date I started reading each book. Though they were generally finished in something close to this order, some books took much longer than others. I finished a total of 102 books in 2010. Five of these were re-reads.

I read 85 print books and 17 ebooks (epub) this year. I gave up on 3 print books and 2 ebooks (epub), although one of the print books was really just interrupted. I placed it on my 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge list [see below] and I will begin that one again. I am also working my way through a pdf book, Digging into WordPress v3 which is not included on this list.

My ebook reading is off due mostly to changes in travel and other lifestyle-related issues. I have not become averse to ebooks in any way, they simply do not fit my current lifestyle as much as they once did. All of the ebooks I read this year were epub formatted free books from feedbooks.com (except for the one pdf book).

Of the two ebooks I did not finish, one was Lady Chatterley’s Lover which I discovered about halfway into it that it was an expurgated version. Sara who was also reading it as an ebook found an unexpurgated print copy and started over. Although I was somewhat enjoying the story, I did not find it that compelling so said the heck with it. The other was Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. While this is an important work, she just droned on and on. There are far better examples of effective literature in this genre, even if few this early.

In August a friend of mine introduced the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge to begin in September. Here is my post accepting the challenge. Is it really any wonder that mine is a baker’s dozen? Here is my list at goodreads, at Open Library, and the 12 Books, 12 Months tag here on the blog. This small image for 12 Books 12 Months designates a book on my list.

If I wrote a ‘review’ here on the blog I have linked to it after the entry for the book as [Review]. All of the 12 Books, 12 Month Challenge books that I have read so far (7) have been reviewed here. There are more reviews at goodreads but most are simple commentary and I am too lazy to go find them and link them. [Do not get me started on the amount of work required to generate, much less format, the following list!]

I received four of these books via the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. They are identified by “Library Thing Early Reviewer copy” and a link to the review at Library Thing.

I read 31 books of poetry, not including the one for weddings. I also read 2 books about poetry (Oliver and Kooser), not including the one on syntax. The author I read the most by is the poet Mary Oliver with 13 titles (12 poetry, 1 about poetry). The author in 2nd place is Roy Harris with 6, four of which were re-reads. The author in 3rd place with 3 titles seems to be Conan Doyle, all ebooks. Perhaps I missed someone else with 3 titles though. There were several authors with 2 books each in my list: Jim Harrison, Wilkie Collins, Anne Carson, Pablo Neruda, ….

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/12/31/books-read-in-2010/feed/ 1 How It Seems To Me – Book review and OpenBook trial http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/11/06/how-it-seems-to-me/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/11/06/how-it-seems-to-me/#comments Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:52:58 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2206 How It Seems to Me: New & Selected Poems Phil Hey; MWPH Books 2004 WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder I have been wanting to try the OpenBook plugin for WordPress for a while now. When I came back to blogging a few months ago John Miedema posted on his own blog that he was working on version 3 [...]]]>

I have been wanting to try the OpenBook plugin for WordPress for a while now. When I came back to blogging a few months ago John Miedema posted on his own blog that he was working on version 3 so I decided to wait. Well, he released v3 a couple of days ago so I decided I best step up.

I installed it a few minutes ago, grabbed the handiest book that I recently finished reading and here we are. In this post I chose to embed the HTML instead of having it make a live call to Open Library.

Phil Hey is a professor of English and writing at Briar CLiff University, where Sara works. A week or two back we had the privilege of going to a poetry reading by Phil where we picked up this book and a chapbook of his St. Francis feast day poems [BCU is a Franciscan Catholic university.].  Each year on St. Francis feast day (Oct. 4) Phil gets up at first light and writes a poem, which he collected into a chapbook last year.

I quite enjoyed these poems. They are very natural and primarily focused on the Midwest, small town, and positive feelings. But as one of the blurbs says on the back cover [James Autry]: “In these poems, Phil Hey offers his unconditional and uncompromising Midwestern sensibility without limiting the work in any way that could be described as ‘regional.’ I highly recommend this work.”

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/11/06/how-it-seems-to-me/feed/ 0 Follow-up of iPad use at ILA conference http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/19/follow-up-of-ipad/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/19/follow-up-of-ipad/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:18:48 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2173 This a followup to my Iowa Library Association Conference post from last week, which was written on an iPad (at home), about the use of the iPad at the conference. All in all, it worked great. Thankfully, there was fairly reliable wifi in both the hotel proper and the conference center portion of the Coralville [...]]]>

This a followup to my Iowa Library Association Conference post from last week, which was written on an iPad (at home), about the use of the iPad at the conference.

All in all, it worked great. Thankfully, there was fairly reliable wifi in both the hotel proper and the conference center portion of the Coralville Marriott (which, by the way, is wholly owned by the city of Coralville. Nice!).

I never did figure out how to make a link in the WordPress app but then I never tried again either.

I primarily used the iPad to take notes and to check email, RSS feeds, twitter and facebook. The iPad came configured with lots of apps on it from the Briar Cliff University (BCU) Library, most of which I had no interest in or needed to use.

I used Safari to log into GMail, an app called Reeder for logging into GReader, Twittelator for twitter, and friendly for facebook. For note taking I used Plain Text. The beauty of Plain Text, besides being free, is that it syncs with DropBox automagically. Thus, no worries about what device I am on or if I forgot to get my notes off of the iPad before returning it the library where it was completely wiped and reset to the default setup when I returned it.

Now this setup—in some cases there were alternate apps available—worked for me as I just had to log into these assorted apps with my account info and I was ready to go.

On the other side of the usability and convenience fence, there were two things I did not like or didn’t work well.  The minor one is that in friendly (facebook) there was no F.B. Purity. I swear by F.B. Purity. Facebook still sucks somewhat with it (it is facebook after all) but I despise trying to find the value in facebook without F.B. Purity installed and up-to-date.

The more major issue was that 750words just did not want to act right on the iPad. To even begin to use it at all we used Atomic Browser (paid version)—which is more useful on the iPad than on my Touch—and told it to report itself as desktop Safari. Leaving it set as a mobile browser meant it wasn’t going to work. Even with setting it to spoof as a desktop version of Safari it still had issues.

What I was attempting to do, and was ultimately successful at doing with some heartache, was to copy and paste my notes from that day’s sessions/sightseeing into 750words. It did not like that at all. It would only show a small portion of what had been pasted in, there was no way to force a save, and eventually it would show you all of the text pasted in but the word count stayed at what you had written by hand, if any. You had to leave and come back and then maybe nothing was there or perhaps it had updated but you had to log in again because it wasn’t remembering that you had just been there. In the end it worked but it was a pain in the rear.

In summary, I have several online accounts for which there are multiple apps available that only require one to log in and be on your way. The iPad as set up by the BCU Library worked great for me at this conference, but my needs were reasonably light.

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/19/follow-up-of-ipad/feed/ 0 COinS. Screw ‘em! http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/10/coins-screw-em/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/10/coins-screw-em/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:49:06 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2158 COinS I’m just giving up. There will be no more in my posts; at least for the citations I include. I’m tired of all the work I have to do to get the citations out of Zotero as HTML, open the source of the generated web page, copy the div with the COinS, paste it [...]]]>

COinS

I’m just giving up. There will be no more in my posts; at least for the citations I include.

I’m tired of all the work I have to do to get the citations out of Zotero as HTML, open the source of the generated web page, copy the div with the COinS, paste it into HTML view in WordPress, and then still freaking pray that it works.

I guess I’ll leave the supposed COinS generator plugin that I have that generates COinS for the blog posts themselves activated. Sometimes it fails too.  I had some back and forth with tech support a long while ago and it “failed” for stupid reasons back then. Seems it is still failing for asinine reasons. Really, anyone want to tell me what the offending character is in this post title? The Profession’s Models of Information – some comments

Not only are the COinS for the two citations I used missing but so is the one for the post itself.

This post has all of the COinS displaying that it should, one for the post and four for the four books.

Other recent posts (since I started blogging again in Aug) have varying degrees of what they should as far as the COinS are concerned.

If anyone besides me was actually making use of the COinS I was embedding then I sincerely apologize. The work involved to only get screwed over repeatedly is simply not worth it.

It may be “the future(tm)” but our tools still suck!

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/10/coins-screw-em/feed/ 3 Casual-leisure Searching – some comments http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/06/casual-leisure-searching-some-comments/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/06/casual-leisure-searching-some-comments/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:57:12 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2131 Wilson, M. L., & Elsweiler, D. (2010). Casual-leisure Searching: the Exploratory Search scenarios that break our current models. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 22 August 2010. Presented at the HCIR 2010, New Brunswick, N.J. Retrieved from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ryenw/hcir2010/docs/HCIR2010Proceedings.pdf When clearing out my aggregator a [...]]]>

Wilson, M. L., & Elsweiler, D. (2010). Casual-leisure Searching: the Exploratory Search scenarios that break our current models. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 22 August 2010. Presented at the HCIR 2010, New Brunswick, N.J. Retrieved from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ryenw/hcir2010/docs/HCIR2010Proceedings.pdf

When clearing out my aggregator a couple weeks back I came across this article in ResourceShelf (29 August 2010). It is a short, 4-page article which I printed and read on casual-leisure searching.

It appears to be a preprint from an ACM journal but the real info is lacking. I did some Google Scholar and Google searching and determined it to have been a presentation from HCIR 2010 last month. Daniel Tunkelang’s blog was most helpful, even including having the presentation embedded and linking to the mentioned Technology Review article, “Searching for Fun.”

Fourth Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval 22 August 2010

Update: The entire proceedings are available as a (big) pdf from the HCIR 2010 site: Proceedings [pdf: 18.2 MB]  Hmmm, Zotero linked to the entire proceedings; when/how did that happen? The individual article pdf is linked in the 1st paragraph (the one after the citation).

I also found a copy of the preprint at the first author’s uni site.

Casual-Leisure Searching

It turns out that, in fact, it is not only librarians who like to search. Some folks do it just to do it. The authors work in the realm of “exploratory search” and based on two different studies they have done have noticed that information retrieval (IR,) information seeking (IS), exploratory search (ES), and Sensemaking models are all incomplete.

“ES is defined as trying to resolve an information need when the searcher has limited knowledge of their goal, domain, or search system [13], normally involving some kind of learning or investigating behaviour [9]” (28).

They provide a very quick overview of these models and how they assume an information need, and that searching occurs to find information. They then discuss personal tasks versus the work-based focus of most of the research in these areas. Stebbins work on non-work and leisure activities in brought in, situating these activities as hedonistic. The area of the least research on information behavior, especially information seeking, is in this arena of casual-leisure. Some of this is now occurring and they do point to the work of Jenna Hartel and others.

All of these previous models are information-focused but in their work they are beginning to see searching for its own sake.

They did a study on TV-based casual information behaviors and one on harvesting real search tasks from Twitter. This is preliminary work but it is exciting. In the TV-based study they were able to look at both behavior and motivation. One might, if a hard-headed enough nit-picker, describe the behavior as still “wanting to find” but it is the motivation that shows the behavior is tending towards search without finding. These folks still, to me, wanted to find something. But their criteria was so loose that, perhaps, many different things could satisfy what they were looking for.

To me, it is the 2nd study, of Twitter, that shows the most promise in expanding our views, and theories, of search. One could get in a huff and say this is only browsing, except that under the previous models browsing is still assumed to be goal-directed and that it is browsing for something.

Have you ever found yourself endlessly browsing etsy.com, or ted.com, or just sort of leisurely following hyperlink after hyperlink to suddenly notice that 2 hours have elapsed? That sort of browsing or searching has no real goal except to pass the time and, as they note, this can be either a good thing or a not so good thing. But often we do just do this for the experience of it. And I must say that this is one of the few current uses of “experience” that I can get behind. People do, in fact, sometimes search for the experience of it. There is no goal except to pass the time, hopefully in a reasonably enjoyable and non-frustrating manner. But other than that, what is found is of no consequence.

This is another area of daily, mundane, life that as usual until recently has been neglected in science—social or otherwise. Info seeking research began by studying scientists and then corporate work life. Eventually studies of nurses, children, janitors, etc. came along but they were still generally work task related. Only recently has the personal, casual, leisure angle begun to be explored. Now that it is the lack of coverage of our models is beginning to show. Even the more recent exploratory search aspect of information seeking is limited in the same way.

Those who claim that “it is only librarians who like to search, everyone likes to find” are, and always were, wrong.

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/10/06/casual-leisure-searching-some-comments/feed/ 6 Digging Into WordPress v3 and its authors rock http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/09/03/digging-into-wordpress-v3-and-its-authors-rock/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/09/03/digging-into-wordpress-v3-and-its-authors-rock/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:38:02 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=2027 This post is for all of you running WordPress blogs. The short version: These guys rock hard! Buy this book! Longer version: In case you do not know it, there is a blog called Digging Into WordPress which puts out a lot of valuable information on all aspects of WP. A while ago they released [...]]]>

This post is for all of you running WordPress blogs.

The short version:

These guys rock hard! Buy this book!

Longer version:

In case you do not know it, there is a blog called Digging Into WordPress which puts out a lot of valuable information on all aspects of WP.

A while ago they released a book and an ebook (pdf), also entitled Digging Into WordPress.  The ebook was $27 and comes with a lifetime of free upgrades.  I bought the book back in March and had all kinds of ideas on how to use it.  As my regular readers know a couple of marriages and a move 10 hours further westward got in the way of a lot of things.  But I have read parts and skimmed many others and I’m here to tell you that this book is useful.

Eventually along came WP v. 3 and their book was out-of-date.  But unlike lots of software books that are released at the same time as, or before, the software itself—and thus how accurate can they be?—they waited until they could do it proper using a fully functional release version just like you and me.

Well, that book was released just a couple of days ago.  I saw the blog post 2 days ago right before bed and noticed that they said everyone who had previously bought it had already received the download link to the new version via email.  But I had not.  So in the morning I checked into it.  According to comments on the announcement post it looked like lots of people had not gotten their emails either, primarily due to overaggressive spam filters.

We were supposed to find our original email receipt and email it to them.  Well, I found an email and started replying and then came up short.  This was the email I got when I put my name on the preorder list in Nov 2009 and was for a $9 discount.  Sadly, I had failed to use that discount.  I found my pdf and accompanying files (comes with some templates) and doing a Cmd-I I got the Finder Info where I had added a note that I got it on 28 March 2010.  I also verified that date in my Google Doc that I keep of all book purchases.  So I sadly and tentatively wrote my reply stating that this was all that I had, the date and price I had paid, and asked if there were some other way of proving I had purchased the book.  Within a matter of hours—keep in mind this is 2 guys and they’re handling lots of email and blog comments due to what in most cases was overaggressive spam filters—I had a gracious and courteous response that my update email had gone to a long gone email address and should they resend it to my gmail address?

So long story a little shorter, I got my updated ebook and I got it with a minimum of fuss. I have since realized why I never got a purchase receipt and why the update email went to an address that I no longer had well before I bought the book.

Godamn PayPal!  I purchased the book with PayPal.  Well, not really true as I was trying not to but it took over anyway.  Grrr!  Well, my PayPal account is stuck with an email address that I am not allowed to change because I cannot reply to the email they send there to verify that I want to change it.  Seriously!  I understand the need for protection of your users but then there is idiocy.  I no longer have that email because my (previous) ISP changed it.  It was my Insight email and Verizon Comcast bought them out and hamfistedly changed everyone’s email addresses.  They also just killed those accounts in full after 30 days.  No forwarding after that date; just dead.  Now even Verizon Comcast isn’t my ISP because I live somewhere else and thankfully no Verizon Comcast here. [Corrected 5 Sep 2010 upon realizing my brain fart.]

So all of this was caused by PayPal not allowing me to update my email address because they asininely assume that we all have perpetual access to every email address we have ever used.  Brilliant.  And so utterly wrong.

Anyway, Digging Into WordPress and Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr are excellent! They did me right and they did so graciously while under fire from many others for these same sorts of technological issues that are often out of our control.

So if you are running a WordPress blog buy Digging Into WordPress v. 3.0 You will not regret it!

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/09/03/digging-into-wordpress-v3-and-its-authors-rock/feed/ 2 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/24/12-books-12-months-challenge/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/24/12-books-12-months-challenge/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:02:30 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=1915 A friend who was unhappy with her previous attempts at book clubs, in-person and virtual, decided a book club where we each read whatever it is we want to read might work better. Thus, 12 Books, 12 Months was born. Here are the rules for the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge: Pick 12 titles from [...]]]>

A friend who was unhappy with her previous attempts at book clubs, in-person and virtual, decided a book club where we each read whatever it is we want to read might work better. Thus, 12 Books, 12 Months was born.

Here are the rules for the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge:

  • Pick 12 titles from your To Read Pile.  These should be titles you currently own in whatever format you prefer.
  • Acquisition of other formats or translations is permitted.  So, if you have a paperback but want to read on your Kindle, you can get a Kindle copy.  If you have a library copy but want to buy your own, that’s kosher.  Heck, if you own a copy and want to check another out from the library, I’m not gonna stop you.
  • Post your list in your public space of choice by September 1, 2010.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your list.
  • Read all 12 titles between now and September 5, 2011.  Might as well tack on an extra long weekend at the end for cramming.
  • When you finish a title on your list, post about it in your public space of choice.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your review.
  • Once a month, I’ll post a round-up of the reviews posted from that month so that we all know what everyone else has read.

My list:

  1. Ronald Gross, Peak Learning I am trying to find some kind of structure (best word I can think of at the moment) to help me get a grip on my own pursuit of lifelong learning and am hoping this might have some ideas that I can (and will) implement. I know goodreads says that I am currently reading this but that was months ago and I will need to start over. I hadn’t got very far anyway.
  2. Catherine C. Marshall, Reading and Writing the Electronic Book I am interested in e-books for a variety of reasons and while I love print books I also think e-books can one day provide immense value over and above the mostly “convenience factor” that they now provide.
  3. Carol Collier Kuhlthau, Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services Even though I expect to disagree a fair bit, I did like some of the ideas from a short bit of Kuhlthau that we read in 501 (intro course), and, really, the title says it all for me. Also, seeing as Kuhlthau is one of the major players in this area I need to know her ideas better if I am going to be critiquing work in this area of the field.
  4. Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening This is another one that I started a while back. I got almost halfway through before being “interrupted” by a couple of weddings and a move. Going to start over. I am interested in Buddhism and its tenets, at least the non-mystical kind. I have another of his books on my TBR shelf that I am also looking forward to reading.
  5. Michel Meyer, Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science, and Language This came recommended by David Bade via his citing it in a couple of places and then some f2f discussion. What is problematology”? The study of questioning.
  6. George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor Metaphor and poetry. ‘Nough said.
  7. Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History From the inside jacket blurb: “The weapon of pedants, the scourge of undergraduates, the bete noire of the “new” liberated scholar: the lowly footnote, long the refuge of the minor and the marginal, emerges in this book as a singular resource, with a surprising history that says volumes about the evolution of modern scholarship.” I have been wanting to read this for several years and finally acquired a copy earlier this year.
  8. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information I have been wanting to read this ever since it was brought to my attention in LIS501 Fall 2004. In fact, I probably acquired this copy back then so that I could. ::sigh:: Oh well, I’ve had books in storage for this long that I acquired in the mid-80s and still haven’t read. Anyway, hoping that it will have something useful to say about “information” beyond society’s preoccupation with the “stuff.”
  9. Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse I have read a couple of her books and have quite enjoyed them. I am particularly looking forward to rereading Eros the Bittersweet some day.
  10. Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights Seven lectures over 7 nights in June and August 1977. Topics are: The Divine Comedy, Nightmares, The Thousand and One Nights, Buddhism, Poetry, The Kabbalah, and Blindness. I have seen these referenced in multiple places and am looking forward to them. I also highly recommend Borge’s This Craft of Verse (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
  11. Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions Can one really have too much Borges? I think not.
  12. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss I adore Middlemarch and Silas Marner and also enjoyed the other shorter things of hers I have read. I have this in 2 different editions, the Penguin Classics referenced here and a nice leather bound one from some set of “great books.” I have been wanting to get to this for a while and a couple of months back I read some idiot commenting on free e-books that “If I had wanted to read The Mill on the Floss I would have done so in college!” Screw the idiots of the world! I’ve read a bunch of e-books and almost every one of them has been free. And many of them have been exceptional!
  13. S. R. Ranganathan, Classification and Communication This was recommended to me by fellow student, friend, and all-around-brilliant-guy, Tom Dousa. This, as Tom assured me, will probably run counter to what I believe about the interface of these topics but one must understand one’s betters if one is to critique them.

Whoops! How did I end up with 13 books?

There are scores more books I want to/could read and there are certainly more on my goodreads to-read shelf besides being a couple (or more) score not on the list.

The above are all certainly currently near the top of my TBR list but things changes; i.e., interests, focus, discovery of something previously unknown or just published, ….  Thus, I am going to reserve the right to substitute any book for one on this list.  As I see it I will probably read more than 12 books in the next year anyway so maybe they’ll only be additions. One can hope.

What’s on your list? [Whether or not you intend to participate in this or any other challenge, I am interested.]

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/24/12-books-12-months-challenge/feed/ 27 Long time gone http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/06/long-time-gone/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/06/long-time-gone/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:48:26 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=1880 [This post title is, for me, multi-meta in that it refers to several things.] It has been a long time since I’ve been here. Part of me is sad about this fact and part of me thinks that is just fine. A lot has happened since I last wrote here: I quit my job as [...]]]>

[This post title is, for me, multi-meta in that it refers to several things.]

It has been a long time since I’ve been here. Part of me is sad about this fact and part of me thinks that is just fine.

A lot has happened since I last wrote here:

I quit my job as a serials cataloger at the University of Illinois so I could concentrate on (then) upcoming weddings and our move.

Sara and I were married in late May in a small but wonderful ceremony amongst family and friends in a cabin on the banks of the Sangamon River.

At the very beginning of June I started prepping for our move to Sioux City, Iowa.

A couple of weeks later, my daughter got married in Oberlin, Ohio in an even simpler, but absolutely lovely and moving, ceremony to a wonderful young man that I couldn’t be prouder to be related to.

On the evening of 3 July we left Urbana, IL and headed for Sioux City. As of 4 July we are residents of Sioux City. This is a vastly different place  than Urbana-Champaign, in so many ways. We are still getting it sorted out but we will.

We had a good week and a half before Sara had to start her job and we made good use of it. Sara worked for 3 days and then we took a vacation to the Black Hills of South Dakota to spend some time in a couple of cabins with some friends of Sara’s from high school and their respective significant others and children. On the way home we drove through the Badlands. I have a couple of pictures up but I have 100s more to be tagged, labeled, decided upon and uploaded. Suffice it to say that it was beautiful! And being the against much of pop culture fiend that I am, we skipped Wall Drug (unfortunately not the signs though), Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.

Once back Sara got back to work and is enjoying learning the ropes of this vastly different, and vastly smaller, university. I got back to work on organizing the house, merging two large book collections, much of which was in storage, along with merging two large CD collections, of which all of hers were in storage. There is still a bit to do on all the house organizing fronts but it is definitely getting there.

Shortly after we got here we bought ourselves a 32″ LG HDTV with built-in netflix streaming so we’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and some other things.

We’ve been taking an online class on HTML5 via SitePoint and in a few weeks will take one on CSS3. They were $9.95 each! So the last 2 weeks that is what we’ve been doing in the evenings when Sara gets home from work. (And, yes, I know the CSS3 course says it is $14.95 but by signing up for both at the same time we got a $5 discount!) I think that for the price they are quite good. As with any class it is (mostly) about what you put in to it.

Speaking of courses, Briar Cliff University has a 100% tuition remission policy for spouses so I’ll be taking a 1 credit class this fall called Madwomen Poets. About all I know about it is that it includes Sexton and Plath. But who cares what, if anything, else it might be? Who could ignore a class entitled Madwomen poets?

I know. I know. I’m supposed to be doing other things, “more important” things. And I am. But it is 50 minutes, 1 day/week. I figure it’ll help keep my mental chops in order. And at this point I still don’t know if I’ll be taking it for a grade or auditing.

As to that more  important stuff … I am ramping back up the work on my CAS thesis via several angles of attack. I am working on the paper proper and I am also working on a journal article, which will be highly related (as in with a little reworking can become a chapter), and I am thinking about trying to come up with a presentation for a conference in early December. The conference is “Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the ‘Language Machine’. ‘The Language Machine’ is one of Roy Harris’ early books, of course.

As for conferences, I am really sad that I will not be able to attend ASIS&T in Pittsburgh this year. But seeing as we gave up about $40k in income with me not working there is little means of justifying the expense of travel and lodging. And, honestly, the registration cost is plain crazy for an unemployed non-student, non-retiree.

Sara and I decided that the Integrationist conference in Chicago in December, along with being far cheaper, is really more where I need to be right now. I need exposure to more Integrationists and Integrational thinking and I will get far more out of a small conference (as I always do) than a bigger one. Whether or not I can get something submitted (and possibly accepted) I am highly looking forward to it. Nonetheless, this will be the 1st ASIS&T I’ve missed since I started going in 2006.

And if any of my Chicago friends are reading this, I’d adore an invite to stay with you for a couple days in early December (2nd-4th, or so), especially if you are near the Univ. of Chicago.

Tomorrow night we are, thanks to a surprise from Sara, going to see Jackson Browne and David Lindley and the historic Orpheum Theatre here in Sioux City. I have been listening to (early) Jackson Browne for close to 40 years now. I haven’t really kept up with anything since the mid-80s or so but, nonetheless, I am stoked to finally get to see him live for the first time.

We also have a Super Secret Date night scheduled for Sunday night. Sara had that lined up well before we left Urbana. She offered me the chance to find out what it’ll be last night but I passed. I like the surprises! She’s done so well every time in the past. And it also makes me aware that it is past time for me to step up in the Super Secret Date Night scheduling department.

And in case anyone who cares isn’t aware of it yet, my son is in Afghanistan for his 3rd war zone tour. He left just days after we moved. Grrrr.

I guess I best end this for now. It is getting long and the simple shock of seeing a post from me is probably enough already. With any hope I won’t be gone as long before the next time.

]]> http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/06/long-time-gone/feed/ 6 5th blogging anniversary http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/01/29/5th-blogging-anniversary/ http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/01/29/5th-blogging-anniversary/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:49:04 +0000 Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/?p=1749 29 January is the 5th anniversary of my public blogging. I had a Bloglines private blog for about 9 days before I got fed up with its lack of capabilities. That 1st proto-blog was called In My Secret Life… via Leonard Cohen. The 1st public-facing blog debuted on 29 January 2005 at bookmark.typepad.com and was [...]]]>

29 January is the 5th anniversary of my public blogging. I had a Bloglines private blog for about 9 days before I got fed up with its lack of capabilities. That 1st proto-blog was called In My Secret Life… via Leonard Cohen.

The 1st public-facing blog debuted on 29 January 2005 at bookmark.typepad.com and was called …the thoughts are broken…, which is from Ripple by the Grateful Dead. This would have been the beginning of my 2nd full semester of library school.

On 20 July 2006 I flipped the switch on Off the Mark on my own domain and hosted by LISHost after some tribulations with Typepad over many months. The story of the name is at that post.

On 19 July 2009 I again changed the name of the blog; reasons listed at the post. It is now known as habitually probing generalist.

I will make no promises as to what will or will not happen on this blog in the future. I have not been writing much for quite a while now—some of the reasons are interspersed in posts over the last 18 months or so—and I do not know if or when I will pick up the virtual pen again or how frequently. But I do appreciate having this space as an outlet and knowing that thanks to RSS anyone who truly cares what I might have to say can simply wait on that eventuality to arrive.

Thanks to all who have been here with me any of this time. Hopefully you’ll see me around here some more and I certainly hope to see you (and your feedback/comments/critiques/cries of BS/etc.).

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