First of all, and lets just get this out of the way: a full-time job is actually a pretty shoddy reward for 2.5 years of graduate school stress.

Yes, I’m grateful and all, glad to be here, nice to meet ya, etc. but frankly, I think I was looking for something along the lines of “congratulations on your degree, here’s your houseboat, now get out of here you scamp.”

I suppose having a stable schedule and slightly-more-realistic paychecks is reward enough, but lately I’ve had to face what seems to happen any time you put enormous effort into something. Which is, a rather slow transition into something different that requires enormous effort.

Like learning not to scream when someone suggests you attend the Metadata Working Group Meeting.

Any of you SL-lovin’ librarians out there wanna take a crack at improving it?

Link to deletion discussion

Notability guidelines

Link to Caledon Stub (fictional places???)

I’m rearranging my books.

I’ve you’ve read Nick Hornsby’s book High Fidelity or seen the movie, you might remember Rob rearranging his record collection. Today is sort of that, but without the breakup.

When I have something big on my mind, usually related to self-definition, I become more interested in music and stories.

The music I listen to becomes Important. The books on my shelves become Me. I download. I read. I sort. I fuss and swap and graze over my books, looking for the right system.And through this, somehow, I describe myself to myself. Whatever is going on in my head benefits from the organization I’m doing with my hands.

I externalize this stuff because it’s easier than neurosurgery and cheaper than therapy.

Behold my books. They are arranged by priority, then color.

llibreria - bookstore - Amsterdam
]]> http://librarianavengers.org/2008/04/22/llibreria-bookstore-amsterdam/feed/ http://librarianavengers.org/2008/04/17/an-engineers-guide-to-cats/ http://librarianavengers.org/2008/04/17/an-engineers-guide-to-cats/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:49:26 +0000 Erica http://librarianavengers.org/?p=466 his is an excellent study of the many aspects of cats. I, for one, regularly check my cat’s depth, as it often changes depending on the shedding season, and sometimes I loose my cellphone in the fur.

Freebase is a free database. Of data. On everything.

Everything in Freebase is publicly available, including the relationships between topics. The information is culled from a variety of open sources, and includes things like, say US zip codes and Walmart Store locations.  Every week their community manager (who happens to be my flatmate and a fellow Victorian Housekeeping Aficionado) picks a topic for a “data mob”, and the community adds information to Freebase on that topic.

This week it’s libraries. So, Librarian Avengers, I encourage you to go in and add stuff. I suspect you know a bit on the subject.

Who knows? Maybe one of you will make a video showing the correlation between library locations and Something Really Good…

*Edit* You gotta have an account first. Just so you know.

If you are feeling early-adopter-y, you can hop over to mozilla.org and download the new Firefox 3 Beta build. It’s faster, slicker, and has OMG HOT new UI tools that should make your day better.

Five Things I love about Firefox 3:

1. Because this is a beta version, most of my extensions and themes don’t work in F3…and I don’t miss ‘em. I’ve been using it all day and haven’t had a single withdrawal symptom.
2. Fast. Hella fast. Hecka fast. So damn fast. The memory management of Firefox 3 is slick. It caches less, stores image data more efficiently, and plugs memory leaks from extensions before they happen. This all comes from of the kind of nerdy nerdy attention to detail that was a feature of pre-Moore’s law programming, when bits were carefully placed like bricks in an arch. Hooray for OCD programming!
3. Oh Bookmarks! Ye annoy me less! You are now a one-click thing on the navigation bar, with a cute star icon instead of a time-eating top menu monster.
4. Full Page Zoom. If you don’t like squinting, download this browser. Hitting Ctrl + makes EVERYTHING get bigger, including images. This feature eliminates the “Big Text Stomps Nice Layout” problem we saw in earlier versions.
5. Tab quickmenu. Stop worrying about all those tabs stacking up in your window. You can get at them from a dropdown in the corner. No fuss. There’s more room for page titles too, so you don’t have to find the tab you want using only the first ten characters.

I am officially Old Enough To Know Better

Here are some highlights:
Geek Love: Wonderful NYT Obit for the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dad Labs video: Man tries breast pump.

Go Josh Go! A $100 Million Donation to the N.Y. Public Library

Preparing For “The Colbert Report - Jennifer 8. Lee writes about her stint as an author-guest.

NPR Unapologetically Harriet, the Misfit Spy

Sesame Street on information visualization - This reminds me of my research recently on Learning styles in new Second Life users. It’s a real design challenge try and accommodate both the square and the musician.

I’ve been reading the webcomic Questionable Content in between naps.