The Invisible Library

I’m sitting int he airport in Sacramento, on layover back to Portland. Sacramento has free wifi but LAX does not. What’s up with charging for wifi, LA?

Comic Con was a blast and a half but boy howdy, am I frackin exhausted! We saw Wicked in LA, spent four days running like mad little nerds around the hugest convention ever, ate much Mexican food, drank plenty of margaritas and slept very little. A full report with geeky pictures will be forthcoming, as soon as I’ve had some sleep.

The best news: The Machine of the World is now available on Amazon! No cover picture yet but I’ll have one up shortly. I’ll also be signing up for the search-inside option. The first person to write a review on Amazon (and email me to let me know) will win something special.

Update 7/29:

The cover picture is up and so is the first review!

We’re off to Comic Con tomorrow. Pictures and a full report will be forthcoming!

The text and slide show of my presentation, Using Social Network Tags in a Library Setting is now available. I’ve put it on it’s own page, so that I can have it handy for future reference. There’s a permanent link to the presentation page on he sidebar, under Pages. As always, comments, criticism and tips for future expansion are much appreciated!

One part of the presentation I did for my recent job interview was about how libraries and other institutions are using Flickr to attract attention to their photo archives. The Library of Congress has been doing this for a while and now, via Xeni at Boingboing, news that George Eastman’s House has put over 200 historical pictures on Flickr, including several handcolored autochromes.

I should have the text of my presentation and the slides ready to go in another day or two.

Elvira and I saw The Dark Knight on Friday and we’re both really impressed. If Batman Begins was the film that Batman’s Mythology deserved, a crystalline compilation of everything great about the character with the excess fat of seventy years of history trimmed off, then The Dark Knight continues the story, as if it was simply Act 2. In several ways, I’m not entirely sure how Christopher Nolan convinced DC/Warner to let him make such a dark series of films but good on him for pulling it off. Both films work seamlessly as a whole but his film especially takes a long hard look at where the boundaries of civilization and civilized behavior lie. Not exactly the stuff of a Summer popcorn superhero movie. And that’s a good thing. You want that, go see Iron Man. But if your looking for a really, really dark view into what makes humans want to fight and define right and wrong, this is the film for you.

As usual, some spoilers may leak out.

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I’ve added a few more pics of our cross country trip. Have a look!

If you haven’t already, go and watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It’s Awesome!

Update 7/20 to elaborate– per the comment by Jason on John Roger’s blog: Indeed.

This in a nutshell is what Annakin Skywalker’s fall should have looked like. Annakin should have been the geeky Jedi kid with cool ideas about how to make bigger, better lightsabers and force-powered exoskeltons who was in love with a girl but didn’t know how to tell her and his jelousy over a rival (Obiwan) drives him mad until he accidentally kills her. And that’s how he becomes evil.

But this is why Joss Whedon is now King of the Geeks instead of George Lucus. Joss can tell a good story that as a tengent, sums up the crux of someone elses universe, in a musical tragicomedy. Bravo!

If you thought George W. Bush was an asshole before…:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Just wait. It’s only August. By October, he’ll be publicly urinating on copies of the Constitution. When Obama moves in the White House in January, there will be a flaming bag of dog shit in his desk and dirty cartoons scrawled with sharpie on the walls. The Secret Service better count the silverware.

Via.

OK, look, this whole thing with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is getting out of hand. Now, I don’t claim to be an economist, but apparently I have one thing most economists don’t, and that’s half a brain. If the Fed bails out the owners of most of the country’s mortgage debt, this will lead to crushing inflation,* because the only way to do that is to print more money, which makes all the money worth less due to some weird voodoo invented by Warren Buffet.†

So yeah, I’ll never be able to afford to retire and may not be able to buy a house because by the time BushCo. and friends get through with the economy, the Dollar will only be good as toilet paper. But as Atrios pointed out, there is a way to avoid this mess: let them fail. Then rebuild Freddie and Fannie as federal institutions. This would force the shareholders to eat a turd sandwich rather than half the home owners in the country. I don’t now about you, but I won’t loose any sleep knowing a bunch of rich idiots are slightly less rich. And if it means my parents get to keep their house and maybe one day retire, I call it a win win situation.

The reason it won’t happen is because Socialism is evil and poor people have a moral weakness, or so I’m told by McMaverick McCain. Unless they are already rich. The wealthy should always be able to gamble with the lives and means of the people, and then get a government handout to ensure that they never, ever learn their lesson. That way, we can repeat this fun exercise in flirting with societal collapse again in a few decades. Fun!

Link via Aaron at Semiconscious.org

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*Or stagflation as they called it in the 70’s. Boy, wouldn’t it be great to go back to the 70’s? Rising gas prices, an unwinnable war draining the heart and soul of America and an economic malaise that could very well teeter into a new Depression. Sounds groovy!

† The weird voodoo in question is related to the fact that we have fiat currency. You may recall that this is what gets the Paultards and Randians in a twist, because we’re no longer on the Gold Standard, where our currency’s value is tied to a kinda sorta stable commodity. The fact that this commodity, gold, like all others also fluctuates never enters their dense little skulls. The short of it is that we’re kinda screwed and it’s all because some shriveled old uber-capitalists decided that it’d be swell to gouge the American citizens for a few decades. Unlike the old story of the Indians selling Manhattan for a box of beads, these guys sold all of America for a fat bank account, which they have thoughtfully moved offshore and are busy converting to Euros as we speak. That way, when we all get shit on real good, they will still get to keep most of their money, all the while, talking shit about how helping the poor is Socialism. This Buffet guy really should just stick to singing crappy songs about salt shakers and pirates.

I usually refrain from discussing work or job-related things on the blog, but I have to share the good news: having been unemployed for less than a month, I have a new job! Starting August 4, I will be head of Technical Services and Systems at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.

I am super excited about this job! At the interview, I felt like I was talking to people who really got what I was saying about using new technology (all that web 2.0 stuff you may have heard about) in the Library. That’s a good feeling.

Posting around here will continue to be light as we look for a new apartment (a new new one, closer to work) and continue with the whole “I’ve just moved across country, where the hell am I,” feeling that has been our life for the last week.

But!

We’re still going to Comic-Con at the end of the month! So there will be pictures. And reviews. And blood. OK, not blood. But powerpoint slides! I’ll have the presentation I did for my job interview, on using web 2.0 tech in the library, online before too long. Won’t that be fun.