Break Bread for Brad

Break Bread for Brad
Originally uploaded by jessajune

I'm not in Austin for SXSW Interactive this year. My budget and other commitments won't allow for it. I'm sorry to miss all the great people that I usually only see once a year, but my only real regret is that I am going to miss Break Bread for Brad.

I was in Spain when I got the news via Twitter that Brad had passed away. I think more than anything I can say, the best measure of Brad is the huge number of friends he has left behind. Many of them are gathering tonight in Austin, where instead of a party hosted by Brad, it is a party for Brad and for those who remember him fondly.

So many people have written wonderful eulogies for Brad. I will only say that he had a generous spirit, a quick mind, and a wicked wit. He will be much missed.

I wish I could be with you all tonight, to celebrate Brad. But know that I am lifting my Bradlands mug in solidarity.

I'll finish by sharing Brad's words from the back of the mug, which make me smile every time I read them, which is almost every day.

My favorite animal at the zoo is the lesser kudu. You have to admire an animal with a name like that, laboring as he must in the shadow of the greater kudu. It must be like having an older brother who excelled at sports and academics in school, to whom you have always been compared and found lacking.

A few months ago, I was visiting the zoo at lunch with a friend and discovered the area where the lesser kudu is ordinarily found was empty.

I hope he made a break for it. I hope he made his way out into the world, free of expectations, shedding labels, determined only to be the best damn kudu he could be.

-- Brad L. Graham, July 28, 2001

Saratoga Cemetery Public Meeting

In case any of my readers are in the Saratoga area - there is a public meeting next Tuesday at Oak Street Elementry School to discuss the future plans for development and expansion of the Madronia Cemetery. I'd encourage, nay entreat, anyone in the service area for the cemetery to go, hear the plans, and give feedback. The cemetery serves the community, but the community needs to participate in the process to make that work.

Details about the meeting can be found the Madronia Cemetery website. (If you can't attend, they have posted a form for comments as well.)

Aliens

E and J visit the Monk's Kettle and order hamburgers. Some way into the meal...

E: Can I have a french fry?
J: What happened to YOUR french fries?
E: Aliens. Very dangerous. They came all the way from Mars.
J: [elbows him in the ribs] Fine. You may have a french fry.

Several moments pass.

E: [reaches for fries again]
J: It's not my fault you let aliens steal your french fries!

The great enemy of clear language

Quote of the day, from The Quotations Page:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
~ George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946

Love this. It's so true.

Cowl & California

I wasn't all that happy with the way the cowl turned out, as you could probably tell; however, this morning I was chilly and sore-throated (stupid cold), so I slipped it on. I am happy to say that regardless of appearance it is warm, comfy, and highly functional.

(That's as much as you get to see of sick Jessica. But I am definitely pleased with the knitting. And yes, I'm wearing my Calorimetry as well.)

Otherwise, I've been working on gift knitting and listening to the California Legacy podcast, which I subscribed to as a good member of the project but haven't spent much time listening to (since I hear most of the pieces as they're being recorded). However, this morning I browsed through some segments from 2006, and I am finding that there are some I'd forgotten about that I want to share with E (we were just chatting about Raymond Chandler, and I think we might both enjoy reading F. M. K. Fisher).

More SXSW bits

My plan for today is sorting and filing some very very old paperwork while listening to some of the SXSW Interactive podcasts for panels that I missed. Should be a very constructive way to multitask.

Speaking of SXSW, artist Mike Rohde has posted the "sketch notes" he put together at the conference this year - you can find them on his Flickr. I am quite interested in these, because back when I took notes by hand in undergrad, I used to format them in a similar sort of way, bolding important concepts and organizing things in sections or bubbles. Unfortunately, my handwriting was not nearly so attractive or tidy as Mike's, and no one else would have found them legible, much less interesting.

Personal Websites

Hmm, this post from Zeldman is a perfect echo of what I've been thinking, both while redesigning my website (no, it's not finished/visible yet) and musing on the overwhelming number of web channels we possess.

Or perhaps I should say that my thoughts echo what Zeldman was thinking almost a year ago.

I may be late to his particular party, but I'm certainly not the only one. As I've been scouting other people's sites I've been feeling like everyone is still putting their blog front and center. I've chosen not to, and this makes me feel better about it. Almost as if I knew where things were going.

Most of my links will point OUT, to web apps, sites, and projects that I'm involved with. That's the nature of the web these days. My site will only be a collection point. Whether or not I feel comfortable being scattered all over the internet, that's how it IS. And I think it's right for the site to reflect that.

Too many channels?

In the car last night, I was composing a blog post in my head about the gorgeous sunset and fog-rainbow that I experienced last night driving over the Santa Cruz mountains. The mood was somewhat jarred by the fact that there was a car on FIRE at the summit - not smoke, actual flames.

And when I got home, instead of blogging about it, I updated my Facebook status.

Instead of blogging my concern about California's water situation and the wish for rain, and my disappointment when it fails to come and my happiness that we're finally getting some this week - that all went into my Twitter and Facebook statuses too.

The only thing I've been using the blog for with any real consistency is for my knitting projects. And then I joined Ravelry. I find I'm using my project notes sections on Ravelry like a mini blog! For example, here is part of my project page for my Calorimetry:

(Click for a bigger image.) You'll see that I made some notes when I started the project, and then made dated updates as I knit the pattern. Excerpt follows:

I’ve been meaning to make one of these for a while. Shockingly, I did the full gauge swatch as indicated and am exactly on. I actually would prefer to be a bit under, so I’m going down a needle size...

Jan 16
Done, except for finding a button for a fastener. I actually went down 2 needle sizes, and while the length ended up right, it’s wider than I’d like. I think I’ll leave it, though - it definitely fits, it’s just more hatlike than I’d anticipated. At some point, I’ll probably knit another and eliminate some of the rows for a more headband-ish look.

Jan 19
Buttons purchased & sewn on. The wood matches just the way I thought it would. Pity the weather is so warm, I have no cause to wear this for now…

There is the relevant information, targeted to those specifically interested (any member of Ravelry who is interested in me, the yarn involved, or the pattern can find this page). And it's not on my blog. Because face it, not very many of my friends knit (and those who do, I encourage to join Ravelry!), and therefore are most likely not interested in the minutia of how I created a given project. They might be interested in the pictures, but those can be found on Flickr.

I can't decide if this is a good thing. My blog is starting to feel a bit obsolete. Reserved for only the things not targeted to a specific (knitting) audience or more than 140 characters long, I find I am not often drawn to make entries.

I find myself wondering if engaging in all the various social media outlets, we are spreading ourselves too thin? I certainly feel like my blogging efforts in this incarnation are nothing like what I was creating in 2001. Part of that is maturity, both of personality and internet savvy, but some of it was that blogging was the only way I had to communicate with the internet world. Now I am flooded with options, and it feels like there are too many channels available to do all of them justice.

Ancient Injury

Still working on classifying newspaper articles at Santa Cruz... I'm looking at The Mountain Echo, published in Boulder Creek in the late 18 and early 19 hundreds. Browsing through these aged papers - this one was obscure enough not to have been converted to microfiche - is quite an experience. I find myself wondering about the people who produced them, and how many hands before mine have carefully turned the pages.

I'm not sure if it says something about the work, humanity, or just me, but as I'm moving through the articles, I've ended up inadvertantly following the story of one Mr. Dool, who had an illness which required his being sent to San Jose for treatment. After a September 1904 entry indicating his return home and improved health, I felt a pang of genuine surprise and concern when his name came up the following month next to the word "operation."

Mr. Dool has most likely been dead for some time now; but somehow I find myself concerned for his health. We humans are funny folks.

Archives? What archives?

Bush E-mail Records Could Be Lost to History
from the Lost in Translation blog of the National Journal

This makes me so angry. We KNEW this was happening, now seems a little late (but better than never, if only in terms of precedent for the future) to be suing people about it.

Here's a little gem from the article:
There's a couple of issues relating specifically to Vice President Cheney and the office of the vice president. It's our understanding that the vice president's office came up with stamps that said "treat record as classified." Or as "secured compartmentalized information." Now, classification is not sort of just a generic term, it's actually a term of art that refers to classification according to the standards that have been established by the president in an executive order. The executive order is 12958. Things that do not meet the standards of the executive order should not be labeled as classified. So it was improper to label some of those things, at least, as classified. And the problem is that once you label it as classified, it makes it far more unlikely it's ever going to be released, because it's going to require significant additional significant review to determine if it's really classified or not....

Now we'll just have to wait and see if Obama's administration does better...

The first thing is, we would like the new president to state up front and clearly that he is committed to preserving the historical record, the documents, presidential decision-making. That's something that we feel like the Bush administration has not wanted to do.

It seems like the sort of thing we could count on him for, but after all this mess, I am feeling far from certain.

Love More

Kevin made a lovely post last night about his heroes, starting off the Jim Henson, and the song "It's in Every One of Us".

There's a recording of that song on the Muppet Christmas Album, from one of the Muppet/John Denver Christmas specials. We have the record, which we bootlegged into a tape before letting go of the record player. I tear up Every Single Time I hear it. But it's a good thing.

I only see Kevin a couple times a year, less now that he's not working at AOL anymore, but I honestly think he isn't as far from honoring the ideals of his heroes as he thinks. Which is not to say he should stop striving to be better - we all should. That's how the world becomes a better place. It was a good reminder.

Also, if I had any stamps in the house, I'd be mailing off for a "Love More. Fear Less." bumper sticker RIGHT NOW. Must remedy that.

(This blog post blatantly ripped from the comment I left on Kevin's site.)

A Personal Reading History

From the LISNews feed, a link to Art Garfunkle's website, where he has listed every book he has read since 1968. What an interesting idea... while amusing for other people, it would be most useful for one's own perusal, not just for memory lapses but to look at the reading trends in one's own life.

I confess, I broke out a text document to start doing the same... when I remembered that I signed up for GoodReads aaaaaages ago, and never did anything with it, because the prospect of documenting my personal library that way was just too daunting. So I may try to remember to use it going forward. We'll see how the exercise goes.

My first completed book in the system: A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth Century New York.

I have several other books going at present, but I shan't enter them into the system until they're complete:
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
A Year in the World by Frances Mayes
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

That's actually balanced more towards non-fiction than is usual for me. Anyway, we'll see how this idea pans out. I might have more luck with the text document, if anything. But I'll try GoodReads for now.

Feeds and 'Casts

Today has been new media day - I've subscribed to several podcasts (mostly of the crafting variety) and added feeds for several new blogs (from some of the ladies featured in the 50 Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers article that Christine pointed to via Twitter).

The podcasts I'm listening to while crafting - a great way to multi-task in my current television-and-Netflix-impaired world. The feeds... we'll see how I like the new sites and whether I'll keep them. I like the idea of following more sites, but the LISNews feed is SO busy, it makes it hard to keep up as it is.

I've thought about dropping LISNews, but it's so useful for keeping up with what's going on in the library world - if I could subscribe to a "half-feed" sampling, I totally would. But I can't, so I just have to resign myself to occasionally marking the backlog as read without getting to them. It is painful, but less painful than looking at 50+ unread posts.

Tweet Cloud

The Tweet Cloud app is pretty fun: here you can see my twitter cloud.

For me personally, it's interesting to see my vocabulary reflected - which words crop up the most often (feeling, paper, gorgeous) tell me interesting things. Paper especially, perhaps, what with the whole digital archive kick I'm on.

Earlier I did a scan without excluding @ words, which showed me that my most frequent replies are to boobolina, kplawver, and esinka. No big surprises there.

I was glad to see that while "crap" was noted, it wasn't in one of the stronger fonts. I feel like I've been using that word a lot lately. But cats and coffee trump it by a long shot.

Lost in Translation

Here's a useful example of how to translate business speak to something we can all understand:
Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s Company-Wide Memo Regarding the Microsoft Takeover Bid

hat tip to James

(also, holy crap, what is the problem with the formatting here?)

Digital Preservation

Other than the complete and total angst this paper is causing me, I absolutely love it. For my preservation class, I've managed to wrangle a research paper topic which focuses on exactly the problem I'm interested in.

Of course, I don't have a SOLUTION for the problem. But I'm enjoying poking holes in other people's so-called solutions.

(Disregard the bad writing, this is still my first draft.)

Some choose the goal of the physical preservation of the bits as all that can be managed, relying on future efforts for managing the “logical preservation”, or ability to render the bits into comprehensible data. “Not only is it a good bet to assume that technological innovation will continue and afford us the ability to decode the data later, but we should also assume that entirely new kinds of software may, through new types of data mining, find entirely new types of valuable information and expressiveness in preserved bits.” (Smith, p. 7) This is an understandable position, as it requires the least amount of time, effort, and budget from library institutions, which have many other tasks to focus upon. However, the assumption that is being made in this line of thought is a very big one indeed. While it is a possibility that the technology will be available to decode bits in the future, it is unlikely to be an easy task. And unless very good metadata is kept, and kept in readable format, it will be impossible for these future efforts to select which bits to rediscover.

I think I kept that politic, instead of saying what I really feel, which is "How can you be so stupid and irresponsible? 'Not my problem, kthxbye!' does not good librarianship make. Also, did no one ever tell you "assume" makes an ass out of you and me?"

Smith, A. (2007). Valuing Preservation. Library Trends, v. 56, p. 4-25.

How About A Shave?

Not surprisingly, I'm quite excited about the upcoming Sweeney Todd movie.

Here are a bunch of clips from the movie (can't decide if I should have waited before watching them so as to be surprised, but oops, too late now!). It's definitely different from the musical in some respects, but the characters and much of the music do seem to be true to the Sondheim version - and he seems to have endorsed it. I can live with that. (Especially once I saw they hadn't cut "A Little Priest".)

The history featurette was my favorite - it included this amusing quote from Sondheim about the original play: "[I thought] it would really be fun to scare an audience, and see if you could do it while people were singing."

He certainly succeeded, and I can't think of any director to better carry out his goals than Tim Burton. Can't wait!

Good Reads

Really, I did not need to be sent to the GoodReads site. It wasn't necessary.

But, um, I've got a profile on there now. Not much in it, because ALL MY BOOKS ARE IN BOXES, yo. Because I'm moving. And I don't have time to list and review all my books at the moment.

But I want to.

(I'm jessajune - if you're in there, we can be friends! BFF. Have a great summer! KIT.)

Male Librarians

Today's Penny Arcade is about librarians!

Bucket: LIBRATORR
j3ssajune: IMO it sounds a lot like vibrator
Bucket: um
Bucket: yes
j3ssajune: like a librarian, a handy thing to have around

Feeling Strongly About Office Supplies

The new building over here is quite nice. High ceilings, spiffy new ergonomic chairs, lots of natural light. Not enough to make me feel sorry to be leaving, of course, but it's certainly a nice place to spend my last few weeks. The windows are especially nice for making me feel like I'm not entirely losing the long summer days.

I sit near a bank of supply cabinets - always good to be close to a source of Post Its, I have to admit. I was walking by on my way to get some water from the kitchen, and was noticing how they'd all been labeled with their contents. Binders, notepads, pens, etc.

The second cabinet from the end is marked:
Compressed Air
Rulers

Which of course I read as "compressed air rules!".

And hey, as someone with 2 cats and plenty of computer equipment, I'm not going to argue with that sentiment.