amazing new music

My dear friend, Miguel Espinoza has recently finished mastering his latest cd. You owe it to yourself to surf out to his myspace page and have a listen:
http://www.myspace.com/miguelespinozaguitar

Miguel is a guitarist extraordinaire. His first flamenco performance was when he was just 9. His music has a lot of flamenco influences, but also a good dose of latin and jazz.

I know once upon a time you could find his cds at various stores around town. Apparently you can download the tracts from his first two cds off several online sites, including itunes and napster. His previous two cds are under the band name Curandero and are well worth searching out.

Go check it out!

Roslindale library closing for a couple weeks in January

News flash:

"Roslindale Branch Library will close from January 5, 2009 to replace the
boiler. The branch is scheduled to reopen, Tuesday, January 20, 2009."

I just can't wait until we get word on when Mattapan can close to move into our new digs!

end of 26.2

wow, I believe that's it. Thanks for running with me. I look forward to reading everyone's blogs next and meeting folks on Tuesday. I'll post when I find more things worth blogging about - thanks Jennifer for pushing me to experience and express. I always thought I needed completely original content to bother blogging, but now I'm more comfortable rambling and just doing it for myself. I hope someone else benefits, but just as a self-centered exercise its been useful.

recipes

Tonight I was invited to our next door neighbors' annual Thanksgiving feast. I didn't know one of our neighbors is vegan - as I've been since 1991, s0 it was a wonderful surprise and I've now enjoyed two nights in a row of awesome, vegan, thanksgiving inspired fare. With that in mind, here's a link to a recipe on my favorite vegan recipe site, the post-punk kitchen for what looks like a great gravy. Its not actually what we had either time - search out the punk chickpea gravy in Vegan with a Vengeance for the BEST, but I'm sure this is good too.

For a great list of vegan blogs, I haven't found a source better than Wheeler's site. If you haven't tried Wheeler's yet, they make pretty great frozen desserts and are selling them out of a store over by the Symphony Hall / T-stop. One vegan blog of note, vegan lunchbox, is a great example of how someone used a blog to develop an idea and a following that has since turned into a published book. If you've ever wanted ideas on what to feed a vegan child, this author has some amazing, innovative ideas - plus she's the first person I've heard of to ever make vegan Twinkies.

micro-bloggiing

At least one good friend of mine regularly uses Twitter - I know because he integrated it with his Facebook account so I see it there, plus as a sidebar on his blog. I never really understood the point, but on Wednesday night I was listening to all tech considered and heard a great short piece about some people using a private application of the same idea: yammer.

What I remember is basically:
(I'm paraphrasing now) "Email is old, yucky technology. Its fine for one-0n-one communications (although there are better options here too). You have to spend too much time figuring out who to address, what order to list people in for your addresses lists, and people talk too much (like this blog I bet you're thinking)". Twitter's great, but if you have private things you want to share (trade secrets, etc.) its public nature is a deal-killer. So - companies get a private twitter - yammer. When you have a question, ask the group. The first person to reply will let everyone know. Likely someone else will benefit, and time has been optimized. People originally feared that employees would waste too much time if given access to this technology, but experience has shown that while there are some abusers, the advantages WAY outshine the potential troubles.

I'm sure we'll see lots more of this style of communication - both among each other and with technologically connected patrons.

social tunes

I've been using the internet to grab radio stations probably since I first heard a radio station mention that it was available to stream online. When I need want to be reminded of home I tune in The Oasis in the City, Denver's KUVO - the best jazz station I've ever heard. For years I carried around a tape of a show DJ Scotty did with his young son in the studio on Miles Davis' birthday. A truly subliminal show. I love listening to his "Origins, orgy in rhythm. Music from the Black Diaspora" show too. However, this is purely old school radio streamed over the web. I can't skip songs I'm not so into, and I have to tune in at the right time - something I'm increasing less likely to do.

In Denver I also liked to listen to CU Boulder's college station, 1190. It was widely eclectic and always something I wasn't familiar with. Its online too - and was often easier to hear online than actually tune in on the AM dial. In Boston of course I tune into WERS from Emerson College. Of the three so far its the only one that streams online without a third party player (surely using a plug in I previously downloaded, but somehow cleaner & easier than choosing one of my many music players).

Another station with a fun local flavor that I'm pleased to see has gone to online streaming (you used to have to download and install a funky player just to tune them in) is the fully solar radio station out of Angel Fire, New Mexico - KTAO. I fond emmories of listening to the morning show and being totally transported to the big open San Louis valley and the canyons up to Angel Fire, Red River...... ahhh, the perennial question - red or green? (since 1996 the official state question of New Mexico).


Lately for me its been all about Pandora (as readers of this blog on the actual page, not via RSS know from the plugin). I've found a vast majority of want I want to listen to represented on Pandora, but this afternoon I realized that last.fm and Seeqpod have deeper catalogs for at least one type of music popular with urban teens - krunk. Looking up the group j-squad I came up with nothing on Pandora but lots on the other two. One frustration I had with Seeqpod though - I couldn't easily see what it was that was playing and at one point one page seemed to be playing two different streams at the same time. I think I'll start checking last.fm out more....

archives

Since a link to BPL's first site was in the original guiding post on this subject, let me lead you to the first archived page of my first library - Denver Public Library from Jan 27, 2003. Um, the graphics really don't work... oh well. Looks a bit like one of my earliest sites: Myogen.com from August 16, 2000.

One of my favorite things to do with the live music archive is to look up concerts on a friend's birthday (I often just start with the link for finding shows on today's date and then change some text in the address bar to get the date I want) . I can usually find something significant - I found a cool Dead show in Telluride performed on my wife's 16th birthday for example (at the time you could download a lot more Dead content). Then I download the show and make a set of CDs as a gift. Another cool date to check - new year's eve. I have great shows of Yonder Mountain String Band in 1999 and then in 2000. One word of caution - diving into this archive can consume MASSIVE ammounts of your time. You'll also come across major audiophiles who are very anti-MP3 and other lossless compression formats. Read up on ogg vorbis and flac to really enjoy your time here!

electronic content

I've just finished loading up my ipod for my train ride to NY tomorrow night - or so I thought.

I don't have a kindle but I think that technology is WAY cool! I'm not crazy about the current corporate model, but I'm sure it will be exploded soon enough. It certainly seems to be a major challenge to the book publishing world and those who make a living by warehousing and selling pulped literature. What we as librarians clearly have to do is be loud and vocal about not allowing access to information - the foundation of free speech, become all contracts and only available to those who can afford it.

BUT - back to my train trip - I've of course seen Whitman's Leaves of Grass many times, yet I haven't bothered to pick it up yet. I found its on LibriVox. So I downloaded the first book and will load it up to see how it strikes me. Poetry is always best listened to, so I'm pretty psyched. (oh, I hope my second attempt at downloading goes better than the first which failed at Opera and let it manage the download - for some reason it seems to reliably do a better job than Firefox)

IMing

Is IM still new?

I first used Trillian at least 7 years ago. Even before the internet took off I recall using Apple Talk to keep in touch with friends in College across campus. I've had multiple occasions when I've sought tech support from a vendor using an IM interface, but I often had the impression that the person I was talking to was IMing with too many other people at the same time because it always took so long for them to reply.
Lately I've been a bit frustrated by facebook's IM feature - all too often I try and chat with someone only to have their status change to offline. Perhaps its just me?
I know people who've used Meebo, but too often the library networks aren't reliable enough for it. I think texting is really a better alternative, as its not as reliant upon someone being on the other end to receive it immediately - but can be a good, quick tool when someone is.

catching up - delicious!

I've been using del.icio.us for quite a while. My links are here:
http://delicious.com/ccheever
I just used it earlier today to remember a page I found that can create pdfs online - I had a publisher file I needed to view but I didn't have publisher installed and didn't want to download the huge trial version just to get a printable copy.
Another site I bookmarked a while ago that I like and mean to look at more frequently than I do is "the librarian without walls" Marylaine Block's "Neat New stuff". It brings me back to the days of Yahoo magazine and the joy of discovering new stuff I didn't know I needed - I love serendipty and often feel there's not nearly enough of it online....

be a dad - to your brain

I've read "Who moved my cheese" and expected "Who moved my brain" to be similar - buts its way better. Seriously. Go read it now.

Haven't read it yet? Have you ever read, been encouraged to read, or even thought about reading Getting Things Done? If so, you owe it to yourself to read this. It doesn't take long and is worth the time. Its a slide show from a 45 minute presentation, but it will take you maybe 5 minutes to read.



Ok, if you need further convincing, here's the crib sheet:

1. Identify leeks
2. Govern access
3. Minimize notifications
4. Work in dashes
5. Renegotiate
   

Thanks Staying With it!

onlne learning for Hyde Park Teens

hmmmm., I'm challenged to think big about "What kind of online learning program could you develop for your patrons?"

The best online learning program I recall is no longer available for libraries - Rosetta Stone. The way they combined images, sound, and text to immerse you in a language for rapid growth was wonderful. It probably still is, its just not something they're letting us make available to the public anymore, which is really too bad. My ideal online learning program would be similarly completely immersive. Think second life, but easier to enter, with more photo realistic graphics.

There was an online component to my master's program, which usually simply consisted of copies of the week's power point presentation, the course syllabus, and discussion boards. I know some if not all of the classes in the Harvard School of Public Health are filmed and the video is available from the course web site. This could be great, and would be really cool if there were a way to share all these courses with the world.

In my ideal online learning environment, a real person would be (virtually) present to act as a mentor with video conferencing or another means of intimate communication....

office online

I keep a few files online in my google docs account and have tried to interest others in using shared docs and spreadsheets, without much success so far. I love the idea of saving everything online and introduce patrons to it every chance I get - especially any patrons still using floppies.

I hadn't played with google presentations yet, so I decided to create a basic presentation with halloween pics we just got today. Feel free to take a peak.

social shopping

I'm grateful for the introduction to Etsy. It looks like a great way to find cool stuff from cool people. I ended up checking out some vegan food that people will prepare and send to you - cool idea! I've bought from other online vegan sites but I like the idea how this takes the stress out of this side of the business model.

I've used Vista Print for years - you can usually get a bunch (at least 250) free business cards from there for only the cost of shipping (< $8 last time I needed some). They through an advertisement on the back, or you can pay more and have it removed. One year I think we used them to maje holiday cards using a picture I uploaded and they were very nice. I do NOT recomend getting on their email list. Its probably easy to get off, and I really should, as they send emails avery day or two about some "amazing" new sale.

Being broke, I don't plan to use any of these sites much, but I'm grateful to know they exist for when I do get some dough....

VERY local indeed!

How cool is this, just today I learned that my son was quoted in the Roslindale Transcript from an event last week when he spoke in front his entire school (and Mayor Menino!). Earlier today I saw the quote on Wicked Local! Here's the link:
Philbrick School kids get to look ahead at Alma mater day

Looking for spooky stuff - most has already past, but I was reminded of the free walking tours at the Arnold Arboretum, something I've seen but have yet to participate in.
I did put the Roslindale news on my google reader page, which I'm quickly coming to love.

I was disappointed that I didn't find Hyde Park on Wicked Local, only on American Towns. I thought the page layout on American Towns was too busy and I don't see myself going there often, even though I did register and post the Teen party we're throwing at our library tomorrow night. I wish it had RSS, as I also wish the Bulletin newspapers would do. I will be coming back to check on the calendar, as I see someone else has already been posting some of our events there - a nice surprise to be sure!

virtual book shelves

Library Thing, Good Reads, Visual Bookshelf.... I've had accounts with all three. I really appreciated Daniela's comparison of Visual Bookshelf vs. Library Thing as it pretty accurately described my experiences as well. I currently only update my visual bookshelf, and even that not as frequently as I should (at least this post got me to update it again). I have more friends using it than any other tool. GoodReads keeps sending me updates of what my one friend who uses it is doing, so I frequently feel guilty about not participating, but I just can't take the time to maintain my bookshelf in more than two places (the first being my physical bookshelf of course).

One issue I have is I start a lot of books, but some I have to return to the library before I get a chance to finish them, others I own but keep getting interrupted by other books that I need to read before I have to return them, and these books end up stranded in my "currently reading" list. If I don't intend to finish them I'll take them off, but its a good place to remind me what I want to return to. If only there were somewhere else to put them. I also wish Visual Bookshelf had a tagging component. However, its still very easy to use, and I especially like how I can easily keep track of books I come across that I want to read - if only that list wasn't so dauntingly large! Recently, Visual Bookshelf launched a site external to Facebook that also provides a cool portal into this app. Here's my home page on that site.

I really like how Danbury has integrated Library Thing into their site. I'm impressed they were able to do this on top of Innovative's OPAC. I only wish it was a tighter integration. At first I didn't see LT anywhere, it was only when I got down to an individual title that LT's contributions became apparent. I only wish that after navigating the tab cloud and finding another title the link to the title was a little more intelligent, and that the pop-up window would stick around so I could go back if I wanted to. I actually found the browisng behavior to get quite odd when I clicked on links from LT - if I followed a link and then tried to go back I went back two steps, not the one step I wanted. I wish Innovative would do something more like this in combination with their attempt at integrating social web technology with their new ratings system (viewable on the Minuteman OPAC). I'm also a fan of the aqua browser (here's a link to its application by Queen's Library in New York). I like the neural network of related search terms.... if only a tag cloud could be intpreted this way....

Here's a link to a spooky book you may want to read this weekend, courtesy of Library Thing (Visual Bookshelf is only rarely how I find books, its more how I keep track of my own, I like the recommendations, but more so I like seeing what friends are reading and being able to remember what I've read). To entice you (because I wouldn't have picked it up just by the cover) I pasted the poublisher description and the LT tag cloud at the end of this post. Hope you have a great halloween! Wow - I love searching through Library Thing - I may have to go back to using it again!

TAKEN, by Edward Bloor: BY 2035 THE RICH have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and kidnapping has become a major growth industry in the United States. The children of privilege live in secure, gated communities and are escorted to and from school by armed guards.

But the security around Charity Meyers has broken down. On New Year's morning, she wakes and finds herself alone, strapped to a stretcher, in an ambulance that's not moving. She is amazingly calm - kids in her neighborhood have been well trained in kidnapping protocol. If this were a normal kidnapping, Charity would be fine. But as the hours of her imprisonment tick by, Charity realizes there is nothing normal about what's going on here. No training could prepare her for what her kidnappers really want . . . and worse, for who they turn out to be.

10(1) 11(1) 2007(3) action(1) At School 2007(1) col(1) currently cool(1) December(1) divorce(1) dystopia(5) dystopian future(1) family drama(1) Fiction(8) First Edition(1) first read 2008(1) Florida(2) future(4) futuristic(4) gated communities(2) Girl(1) grade 7(1) grade 8(1) Hardcover(1) hc(1) kidnapping(13) latino(1) lib read 2008(1) non-pic(1) read in 2008(1) ReadNotOwned(1) sci-fi(2) science fiction(4) social class(3) suspense(6) teen(4) teen girl(1) to read(2) unshelved(1) Voigts(2) wealth(1) wealth division(1) wishlist(1) ya(7) YA-Fiction(1) yf - sf(1) young adult(6) Young Adult Fiction(3) young adult literature(1) Young Teen

casting makes me miss a commute

Its not often that I miss the daily commute I gave up when I started working 5 minutes from home. However, this is a case where I do miss it. I enjoyed podcasts most when I took the bus every day and had a full hour of time every day I could dedicate to listening to podcasts. Now, I basically feel its another thing I am just chronically behind on. Like a subscription to The Nation, I know my life would be good if I kept up, but there is just so much competition for my time!
My favorite podcast of commuting was Democracy Now, but its a full hour every weekday. Now I try and make time to watch it at night (you can subscribe to either the video or just the audio), but I must say, I'm behind!
One downside - I can't easily listen to many podcasts while I do something else - I just get distracted and don't pay enough attention. I was listening to a podcast the other day though from all songs considered, which I found really saved me some time and led me to the cool tunes I'm presently enjoying. (It was a story on the new book "1,000 recordings to hear before you die" with snippets from the artists they highlighted. I learned about Lô Borges). I found it in itunes by looking at NPRs various offerings. I also subscribed to The Car Guys top call of the week, the top emailed stories of the day, Wait Wait Don't Tell me and a couple others - but I haven't taken the time to listen to many.... Like I said - if only I was spending more time on public transportation or in my car....

Other podcasts I'd listen to if I could find the time:
Free Speech Radio News - "a grass-roots media worker-run independent half-hour newscast"
Open Source - a blog with a radio show or a radio show with a blog? Quite electic and often very engaging. If you haven't listened yet you owe it to yourself to listen to at least the show "Passion: Libraries".
Oh, I really should find time for Open Source.....

Library Videos

The last time I spent much time on You-Tube I was tracking down Monty Python skits my first grade son could enjoy. Today, I quickly came across another video I know he likes: Mr. Bean in the Library (a great example of why silent libraries are not always a good thing):





I certainly spend the most time watching videos that are funny. There's just so much out there that a video has to really grab me to be worth my time. I couldn't stand to watch a boring instructional video - I can't bother usually to open the instruction manual where I can flip to whatever page I might actually need, so I'm really not going to wait at someone else's pace unless its funny and I'm getting something else out of the experience. A library video that I liked was the following one which was apparently submitted for a library's tech week contest. I especially like it because it:
a: Is made by a fan of a library, so its inherently interactive
b: Shot entirely within Sims 2, sucessfuly employing MACHINIMA - the practice of shooting movies within virtual worlds. This is something I've read about but not had the time to dive deep enough into virtual worlds to experience much of. Too cool and so ripe for creative development
c: In another language (sounds Asian but that's as close as I can get) with English sub-titles - for some reason that really worked for me on this one. Let me know what you think:

my memories just been sold

at least one teacher in a local middle school asked each of her students this fall to download google earth, find their house, and print out a picture of it.

I remember when my school used to have an aerial photograph of the city and I could find the tree in front of my house - and thought it was pretty cool (ok, I became a geography major so perhaps I'm just wired this way). I still remember the first time I went to Google and realized I could get a picture of my house. Now I use street view to help me visualize driving directions anytime I'm going to drive in town to somewhere I haven't been before - you know how Boston street signs can be tough to spot! For fun I just went and looked up an old address where I used to live. Turns out it was torn down and replaced by a monster so the lawn where my first puppy played no longer exists. Reminds me of the house where my grandfather was born that's now a convenience store (which I can also see on line). At least its only a block from the original Chipotle, although you won't find references to the dog catcher who used to find my parents dogs licking the ice cream tubs behind what was then a Dolly Madison anywhere on line. At least there's a starbucks across the street - news to me as well today.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this. I know all these sites want to make money off me and my browsing. Are my memories really being sold back to me in a twisted way? How will our collective memories be affected by this ability to get near instant access to places of our past - especially when those places really don't exist any more? Time to cue up the radio and figure out how to deal. (Thanks Pandora & J Geils Band).

at the end of the day, how much is a picture worth again?

Wow, I strongly encurage everyone to check out the work that BPL is digitizing. I recently saw the exhibit on WWII propaganda posters on one of the last days it was up. I walked through a couple days later and found myself disappointed that I couldn't see it again - only to find out today that we can see SO MUCH MORE of the same on line. Here's one of my fav's - if only we could do something to keep the rich from hoarding today:

I started using flickr a couple years ago after attending a cousin's wedding and collecting a ton of photos that I wanted to be able to share with people all around the country. I used it a lot more when I had a working digital camera, and perhaps this post will help kick me to get one up again as I really enjoyed it. The only downside is I never had enough time to fully take advantage of the features it has - I pretty much uploaded pics, tagged them, and sometimes threw them into albums. Something I'd like to do more of is adding them to a map - especially when I travel. Here's a link to my map (which will show how poorly I've been at using this feature).

One thing on privacy - I had family members giving me pictures but they weren't always comfortable with the idea of me uploading them so anyone on the web could see them. Then one day I got a weird message from someone in JAPAN commenting about a rather poorly composed shot of my kids riding bikes in a parking lot near our house that would only be of interest to people who knew my kids (and only marginally even then). It freaked me out to have complete strangers interested in my kids, so I decided to make photos of them only visible to certified "family & friends". As this was a bunch of the pics on my site, the public profile is a little odd, but so it goes. Here's my photostream if you're interested.

Social Networking Sites

I first dove into Social Networking sites after participating in a library leadership institute a couple summers ago and everyone who participated was encuraged to join Facebook in order to stay in touch. I've since been a binge Facebook user - I'll use it intensely for a short while, then tune out for a while. I need to go check it again soon - and figure out how to manage it better.

I've yet to set up a myspace page, as most of my friends aren't using it - primarily only musician friends, for whom a myspace page is pretty much required anymore. I've thought about establishing one for the Hyde Park Teen Advisory Board, or the Teen room, but I need to get some feedback from the board before I dive in - I'm not sure how it would be perceived.

Lately I've been trying to be better about Linked it, and several superiors at work have recenly asked me to link to them, which I have certainly agreed to do. It does rase the issue of professional etiquette though - if a boss wanted to be my friend on facebook, how would I feel? Of course, it would depend on my relationship with my boss. Some bosses I've had I would be happy to have as a friend. Others, well, weren't always people I wanted to share my personal life with. I had an interesting experience recently with my change of jobs from Watertown to BPL. I had friends in Watertown on Facebook who I hadn't told I was considering moving to BPL, so I had to be careful about my status updates so that I was able to properly manage those relationships.

At this point, I really don't think I have time for more social networking sites - I have some friends on Good Reads but I'm still using visual bookshelf for tracking my personal reading - it just seems pointless to keep typing in my profile and uploading personal details to tons of different sites. We really need a new protocol to help us merge all this together. I recall when email first emerged, you could only email people within your own group - aol users could talk with other aol users, compuserve with other compuserve, but an AOL user couldn't talk with a Compuserve user without one of the other getting a new account. Hopefully something similar will bring this new 2.0 web together.

Rate THIS!

Wow, you could sure spend a ton of time on Digg!

I just found a story about a college student the FBI tried to recruit to be a mole to infiltrate vegan potlucks during the RNC and:
"investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines."

I've been to a far number of vegan potlucks. I hope the FBI gets some good cupcake recipes (and if you happen to need some, check out the post punk kitchen, where can you can rate the recipes). Speaking of The Post Punk Kitchen, I really appreciated the comments on the recipe for Matzoh Ball Soup. When we made this for a sedar last year it went over fantastically. We did warn our friends that there was tofu in it and one who is ultra-orthdox decided to decline, but everyone else, who were raised on the traditional chicken broth / egg version loved it - and couldn't tell the difference. The comments helped us manage the religous side, as a rabbi was even consulted....

Back on the subject of Digg, I looked it up on wikipedia and found an interesting article that I recomend for some history. Somehow I missed Digg's role in the movement for free speech, but I hope they keep it up (it was all around posts of the AACS encyption key which is "one of the cryptographic keys for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs").

Classified

Craigslist is such an institution, I find it hard to remember how we lived before it. I do remember searching for a place to live once before the net and how I had to get a Sunday paper on Saturday and madly start calling numbers for any potentially attractive place hoping to be able to talk with soeone before it disappeared. I think the housing market has relaxed a bit (I've owned my home for a while and not been forced to look for a rental since moving to the Boston area 6 years ago), but I know that when I was last searching for a car to buy I felt I had to log on a ton to make sure I was on top of the latest posts - I didn't want to miss anything. SO - while its great to have the classifieds so much more accesible and so easy to post when you want to sell something, I think its only increased my unease that perhaps if I was only more diligent in my searching I could find a better deal - how much shopping do I need to do? I don't like shopping in the first place and this seems to make it both easier and more complicated.....

Anyway, its here, so I have to deal - I don't see a better option, that's for sure. I've certainly benefited greatly from Craigslist and Freecycle - both finding things and getting rid of stuff. For grins I just tried searching Craigslist and Boston.com for an Alfa Romeo Spider (see picture below). Craigslist quickly found one on the north shore that just came out of dry long term storage and would be fun to buy (price unknown - I guess if you have to ask its too much?) if only I had the means (and was actually interested in driving such a tiny sports car - I should have looked for a classic VW bus). Boston.com? Well, once I got past all the adds and was treated like a fool having to pck from drop down menus, the search failed, then clearly pasted in a search from cars.com, which still hasn't returned anything.....

Here's a pic for eye candy:

First post

Another Roslindale Librarian enters the blog-o-sphere. World, watch out!

I'm not sure how often I'll post, so if you're interested, I suggest adding this to an aggregater - like Google Reader, igoogle, or whatever you prefer - let me know your favorites in a comment.

I'm creating this blog initially to participate in a class called 26.2 things in Boston which is covering the social web from the perspective of Boston Librarians.

Ciao for now,

Clayton