Wed - July 16, 2008
iPhone Apps
I don't know how all the corporate world/exchange
server stuff is doing on the iPhone, but for music and gaming, the update's
pretty cool. If you're purchasing music for your library especially, you gotta
get an iPhone.
iPhone Music Apps that I find
interesting:
1. Pandora for the iphone
For exploring unfamiliar bands you might like, this service is really neat. There's also the regular Pandora website to try, if you're interested. Their licensing agreements with the record companies only allow six skips per "station" per hour, and it feels like it's ramming certain artists down your throat sometimes, so it could be better, but it's still worth exploring.
2. Midomi
This is showing up on other phones too. If you go to a movie theater, Verizon has an extra-long ad for one of their phones with this type of service. It might be Midomi, for all I know. The idea is for you to sing or record a bit of a song on your phone, then this service attempts to figure out what song it is. Great in theory, but... Popular music works pretty well: I tested it on some Gorillaz, Gladys Knight, Fred Astaire. Classical, international searches fail. I tried some Vivaldi piece, and the response was some Mary J. Blige song. Hit or miss. It uses music & lyrics to figure it out. I gave it the intro to Same Old Song & Dance by Aerosmith, before the singing starts, and it nailed it. I gave it "Speak Low" by Billie Holiday, and it failed. I gave it "Body & Soul" off the same album, and it succeeded.
3. AOLRadio
Basically WiFi radio, so it's got the satellite radio feel. It works pretty well. Good method to mark the songs you like too.
With all this great gadgetry and wireless, the main problem now is power consumption. Laptops, phones, ipods.They suck it up! I'm living with the first version of the phone, and I heard it's been improved with the 3G version.
1. Pandora for the iphone
For exploring unfamiliar bands you might like, this service is really neat. There's also the regular Pandora website to try, if you're interested. Their licensing agreements with the record companies only allow six skips per "station" per hour, and it feels like it's ramming certain artists down your throat sometimes, so it could be better, but it's still worth exploring.
2. Midomi
This is showing up on other phones too. If you go to a movie theater, Verizon has an extra-long ad for one of their phones with this type of service. It might be Midomi, for all I know. The idea is for you to sing or record a bit of a song on your phone, then this service attempts to figure out what song it is. Great in theory, but... Popular music works pretty well: I tested it on some Gorillaz, Gladys Knight, Fred Astaire. Classical, international searches fail. I tried some Vivaldi piece, and the response was some Mary J. Blige song. Hit or miss. It uses music & lyrics to figure it out. I gave it the intro to Same Old Song & Dance by Aerosmith, before the singing starts, and it nailed it. I gave it "Speak Low" by Billie Holiday, and it failed. I gave it "Body & Soul" off the same album, and it succeeded.
3. AOLRadio
Basically WiFi radio, so it's got the satellite radio feel. It works pretty well. Good method to mark the songs you like too.
With all this great gadgetry and wireless, the main problem now is power consumption. Laptops, phones, ipods.They suck it up! I'm living with the first version of the phone, and I heard it's been improved with the 3G version.
Posted at 12:52 PM Read More
Mon - July 7, 2008
Ruby on Rails, Python, Lua
I've been teaching myself Ruby and Python, and a
little Lua, mostly for fun, then I've been trying to apply it to what we do at
the library.
RUBY
So far, I'm using Ruby on Rails to maintain our online statistics database, process our daily pull lists, and speed up and automate our selection/acquisitions system.
For our stats database, I quit using Excel, and switched to the RoR + mySQL method. I probably cut an hour off of my monthly stats collection by creating it. I hooked up Gruff, a Ruby gem which generates quick graphs, to use with it. It's simple and efficient. Visual display of quantitative information is the way to go. I use it to compare fiscal years as well as month to month. I like creating algorithms in Ruby and Python so much better than in anything Microsoft offers, i.e., Excel, VB. With macros, I never felt like I was in complete control.
The daily pull list database takes a downloaded text file we export from our ILS, and sorts and reformats it into separate PDF's for the various departments who hunt the items down. I actually have an off-shoot of this that I use with my iPhone. As I find the items, I tap on them, and remove them from my list, via Ajax. Unfortunately, there's no quick mechanism to update the item records in the ILS, so that has to be done item by item.
The consortium doesn't have an acquisitions module with its ILS, so each library fends for itself. Our historical record keeping still depends on FileMaker, but I've been able to move the data entry method over to Rails. It's pretty cool. I added a GreaseMonkey script to trigger the data grab from Amazon. I used to do the same thing with FileMaker and AppleScript, but once Amazon updated their AWS, I had to migrate it. It's actually better with Rails. The challenge now is to duplicate the acquisitions side of the FileMaker database, i.e., ordering, reception, accounting. Batch ordering via Amazon is pretty seamless. Exporting CSV files for Ingram and Baker & Taylor works alright, if you've got ISBN's. For AV materials, it's not so good. B&T doesn't have a method to batch import UPC codes yet, even though they allow one to search individually on UPC's.
PYTHON
I started learning Python after I watched the Google App Engine demo that's available online. The App Engine is kind of like what Heroku is doing with Ruby on Rails. With Google, it's Python plus Django. That setup didn't look as straight forward as RoR, but I did take a shine to Python itself. I looked around for something to do with it, and I decided to redo the consortium's Receipt Printer application, that was originally written in Visual Basic. The core function of the receipt printer script is the file system watcher. I surfed around looking for a python version of the watcher, and while I didn't find anything useful, I did come across IronPython. What's more, inside the IronPython tutorial is a quick file system watcher example. So I modified that, and retooled the rest of the printer script using pure Python as much as possible. The Python code looks so much cleaner and easier to understand. I like it a lot. I wish I didn't have to use the .Net stuff at all, but better than nothing. Plus IronPython is in Microsoft's stable, so it's got active support.
LUA
I wrote a quick Lua program to reformat an extremely long emailed report from the consortium we get once a month or so. Lua is extremely fast, almost C speed, so if you have need to zoom through megabytes of text, parsing, etc., check it out. It's a popular programming language for game add-ons, especially WoW.
So far, I'm using Ruby on Rails to maintain our online statistics database, process our daily pull lists, and speed up and automate our selection/acquisitions system.
For our stats database, I quit using Excel, and switched to the RoR + mySQL method. I probably cut an hour off of my monthly stats collection by creating it. I hooked up Gruff, a Ruby gem which generates quick graphs, to use with it. It's simple and efficient. Visual display of quantitative information is the way to go. I use it to compare fiscal years as well as month to month. I like creating algorithms in Ruby and Python so much better than in anything Microsoft offers, i.e., Excel, VB. With macros, I never felt like I was in complete control.
The daily pull list database takes a downloaded text file we export from our ILS, and sorts and reformats it into separate PDF's for the various departments who hunt the items down. I actually have an off-shoot of this that I use with my iPhone. As I find the items, I tap on them, and remove them from my list, via Ajax. Unfortunately, there's no quick mechanism to update the item records in the ILS, so that has to be done item by item.
The consortium doesn't have an acquisitions module with its ILS, so each library fends for itself. Our historical record keeping still depends on FileMaker, but I've been able to move the data entry method over to Rails. It's pretty cool. I added a GreaseMonkey script to trigger the data grab from Amazon. I used to do the same thing with FileMaker and AppleScript, but once Amazon updated their AWS, I had to migrate it. It's actually better with Rails. The challenge now is to duplicate the acquisitions side of the FileMaker database, i.e., ordering, reception, accounting. Batch ordering via Amazon is pretty seamless. Exporting CSV files for Ingram and Baker & Taylor works alright, if you've got ISBN's. For AV materials, it's not so good. B&T doesn't have a method to batch import UPC codes yet, even though they allow one to search individually on UPC's.
PYTHON
I started learning Python after I watched the Google App Engine demo that's available online. The App Engine is kind of like what Heroku is doing with Ruby on Rails. With Google, it's Python plus Django. That setup didn't look as straight forward as RoR, but I did take a shine to Python itself. I looked around for something to do with it, and I decided to redo the consortium's Receipt Printer application, that was originally written in Visual Basic. The core function of the receipt printer script is the file system watcher. I surfed around looking for a python version of the watcher, and while I didn't find anything useful, I did come across IronPython. What's more, inside the IronPython tutorial is a quick file system watcher example. So I modified that, and retooled the rest of the printer script using pure Python as much as possible. The Python code looks so much cleaner and easier to understand. I like it a lot. I wish I didn't have to use the .Net stuff at all, but better than nothing. Plus IronPython is in Microsoft's stable, so it's got active support.
LUA
I wrote a quick Lua program to reformat an extremely long emailed report from the consortium we get once a month or so. Lua is extremely fast, almost C speed, so if you have need to zoom through megabytes of text, parsing, etc., check it out. It's a popular programming language for game add-ons, especially WoW.
Posted at 04:59 PM Read More
Wed - March 19, 2008
Receipt Printer App Email Capable
I've had a commented-out sub-routine in my library's
receipt printer code that can email the receipt rather than print it for some
time now. It required me to use Horizon's table editor to modify our receipt
slip to include the patron email address. But now, with our push to go green and
cut costs, I've done further testing on it, and it looks good to
go.
The logic is pretty basic. If an email address
exists for the patron, the program generates an email with the formatted data
and sends it off piggy-backing on the consortium's mail server. No receipt gets
printed. It looks like the 3M self-checkout stations we have do essentially the
same thing, so I think it's kosher. The staff member at the circ desk gets
feedback two ways: I added a "beep" line, and I write to the console window that
the email was sent and where. What's really nice is that the emailed receipts
are perfectly formatted for my iPhone. I didn't have to tweak
anything.
If the mail gets sent, but the address is bad, we get the bounceback through our normal channels, which is great. I'm now just putting a little "try" loopback that will print out a receipt for email users only in the case that the mail server is unavailable. I think that patrons who sign up for email notification services will really like it. I'm just waiting for final approval from the consortium's mail server administrators.
Knowing this is possible, it was very disheartening to discover that there isn't yet any way to get isbns out. Horizon's kind of clunky when it comes to customizations like that. For now, I think the only bib record info that can come out to the checkout receipt is the title. It's too bad, because once the isbns can come out, a lot of nice apps could use that data, e.g., LibraryThing, Delicious Library, etc.
If the mail gets sent, but the address is bad, we get the bounceback through our normal channels, which is great. I'm now just putting a little "try" loopback that will print out a receipt for email users only in the case that the mail server is unavailable. I think that patrons who sign up for email notification services will really like it. I'm just waiting for final approval from the consortium's mail server administrators.
Knowing this is possible, it was very disheartening to discover that there isn't yet any way to get isbns out. Horizon's kind of clunky when it comes to customizations like that. For now, I think the only bib record info that can come out to the checkout receipt is the title. It's too bad, because once the isbns can come out, a lot of nice apps could use that data, e.g., LibraryThing, Delicious Library, etc.
Posted at 09:27 AM Read More
Mostly good news from Overdrive
Overdrive sent out a PLA preview to its customers
that says they will soon begin offering MP3 downloads as well as their usual DRM
WMA fare. Also that they are going to provide a Mac version of their Console
application to download those MP3s. The downside is that their titles from
Random House will continue to be WMA, PC only, no-iPod garbage, which isn't
their fault, but Random House's.
I think it's great that Overdrive is working to
expand their range. Our consortium will probably lean heavily toward buying the
MP3 titles, and shunning the WMA stuff, hearing the news. We're serving a niche
market with the WMA's as it is. Once we can offer downloadable audio for folks
with iPods, the floodgates are going to open for Overdrive. Good for them, and
good for public libraries. Until Random House Audio opens up their model, I
recommend that public libraries avoid buying their downloadable audio. Stick to
buying their CDs and tapes.
Posted at 08:29 AM Read More
Fri - March 7, 2008
iPhone SDK released
Apple released their developer kit for iPhone
yesterday. I watched the presentation
off their website this morning. Yowza. That whole market is just gonna explode.
I will be very surprised if Apple's iPhone doesn't end up dominating mobile.
Even now, they're impressive.
It's interesting that Apple has made iPhone
development only possible via a Mac running Leopard. Hell, I can't even use it!
Gotta get Leopard. It was kind of like Vista with me. BFD. I was also happy to
hear them to tout the Model-Controller-View philosophy. I'm all over that,
having been messing with Ruby on Rails for the last few months.
For big companies, the news that Exchange Server will be accessible via iPhones must be good news. The demos that various companies showed were worth watching: EA Games, Epocrates, SalesForce.com, AOL. The premise of that game Spore from EA was funny. You start out as a paramecium, a slime mold, or something like that and work your way up. Kinda like you and me. Karma Heights. Available upgrades: spinal column, gills, opposable thumbs, massive Chess Club brain, etc. I don't know. I'm making most of that stuff up. I did see a spine in there though.
Anyhoo, the bottom line is that iPhones are probably going to do what everyone hoped PDA's and Blackberries would do. As I've said before, Apple gets it. Sure, they're like Microsoft, control freaks, yadda yadda, but unlike Microsoft, they get it. And that's why they're successful. What is it they get, you ask? Aesthetics, simplicity, logic, coolness. Something Microsoft can't buy. Even Microsoft's wanna-purchases are uncool. Yahoo? Come on.
So, what can libraries do with iPhones? Practically any report you run can be made paperless and mobile. Straight to PDF is the simplest, but for interaction, I've been toying with Ruby on Rails. Using Rails, you can omit items from your list once you've found them, tag problems, upload changes back to the ILS. Talking to the ILS is the biggest problem.
I've been working on a method to run our pull lists, so that a staff member using an iPhone can do it all, eliminating the need for a paper copy. We still need to generate the list within Horizon, then export that text file. From there, it's uploaded to a Rails app that slices and dices the report for us. If I could get the last activity date info out from the ILS, then we could give up printing it entirely. I'm envisioning that this pull list formatter/archiver could reside at the central site, and all agencies within our consortium would use it.
I have an iPhone library success story of my own: I was working the reference desk, and a patron needed to make some color copies, which we don't offer. So, I told him about Staples, FedEx/Kinko's, etc. I was about to look up the location of a Kinko's on the web for him, when it dawned on me that I had my iPhone. I went to Google Maps, searched on Kinkos, and it displayed all the locations in my area. I tapped on the pin closest to my location, and up popped the phone number, URL, etc. of that location. I tapped the phone number, and when their answering machine told me they were closed, I was able to tell the patron to save himself a trip. Not as cool as searching for all the Thai restaurants in my area, but still. I was impressed. The patron was too.
If you're a reference librarian or a systems librarian, I would recommend getting an iPhone.
For big companies, the news that Exchange Server will be accessible via iPhones must be good news. The demos that various companies showed were worth watching: EA Games, Epocrates, SalesForce.com, AOL. The premise of that game Spore from EA was funny. You start out as a paramecium, a slime mold, or something like that and work your way up. Kinda like you and me. Karma Heights. Available upgrades: spinal column, gills, opposable thumbs, massive Chess Club brain, etc. I don't know. I'm making most of that stuff up. I did see a spine in there though.
Anyhoo, the bottom line is that iPhones are probably going to do what everyone hoped PDA's and Blackberries would do. As I've said before, Apple gets it. Sure, they're like Microsoft, control freaks, yadda yadda, but unlike Microsoft, they get it. And that's why they're successful. What is it they get, you ask? Aesthetics, simplicity, logic, coolness. Something Microsoft can't buy. Even Microsoft's wanna-purchases are uncool. Yahoo? Come on.
So, what can libraries do with iPhones? Practically any report you run can be made paperless and mobile. Straight to PDF is the simplest, but for interaction, I've been toying with Ruby on Rails. Using Rails, you can omit items from your list once you've found them, tag problems, upload changes back to the ILS. Talking to the ILS is the biggest problem.
I've been working on a method to run our pull lists, so that a staff member using an iPhone can do it all, eliminating the need for a paper copy. We still need to generate the list within Horizon, then export that text file. From there, it's uploaded to a Rails app that slices and dices the report for us. If I could get the last activity date info out from the ILS, then we could give up printing it entirely. I'm envisioning that this pull list formatter/archiver could reside at the central site, and all agencies within our consortium would use it.
I have an iPhone library success story of my own: I was working the reference desk, and a patron needed to make some color copies, which we don't offer. So, I told him about Staples, FedEx/Kinko's, etc. I was about to look up the location of a Kinko's on the web for him, when it dawned on me that I had my iPhone. I went to Google Maps, searched on Kinkos, and it displayed all the locations in my area. I tapped on the pin closest to my location, and up popped the phone number, URL, etc. of that location. I tapped the phone number, and when their answering machine told me they were closed, I was able to tell the patron to save himself a trip. Not as cool as searching for all the Thai restaurants in my area, but still. I was impressed. The patron was too.
If you're a reference librarian or a systems librarian, I would recommend getting an iPhone.
Posted at 01:14 PM Read More
Wed - February 27, 2008
Random House Giving Up DRM
Now that Random House is going to sell their digital
audiobooks DRM-free to all vendors, I can only hope that Overdrive and Audible
open up their systems. Once Audible becomes a full-fledged part of Amazon, I
think they'll change their ways, but Overdrive? They're probably too beholden to
the Microsoft DRM mess to retool. If they don't retool, I hope they wither and
die, frankly. The only thing Overdrive offers libraries is a legal way to check
out digital audio. We don't own the files, can't take them anywhere else...who
needs that?
What libraries need is a stand alone mechanism that
can store files and serve them up via some kind of SIP authentication,
integrated somehow with the ILS. Any vendors doing that? I could probably tool
something together using Ruby on Rails, but the ol' ILS in and out, my droogies,
there's the rub.
Plan B:
Instead of Playaways, which we have been buying, we could just get a couple of eMusic accounts, each account allowing two monthly audiobook downloads for $19.99 a month, and buy some cheap mp3 players that have displays, and circ those. If the iPod shuffle only had a display. The price is right: $49. Those would take care of the folks who don't have computers or their own players, then we could allow the technophiles come in and download onto their own devices. We could even burn the files to MP3 CD for circulation. Still not the optimal solution, but better and cheaper than what we give them now: Playaways, Books on CD, and Overdrive. Blech.
Link to the Random House Story on Boing Boing
Plan B:
Instead of Playaways, which we have been buying, we could just get a couple of eMusic accounts, each account allowing two monthly audiobook downloads for $19.99 a month, and buy some cheap mp3 players that have displays, and circ those. If the iPod shuffle only had a display. The price is right: $49. Those would take care of the folks who don't have computers or their own players, then we could allow the technophiles come in and download onto their own devices. We could even burn the files to MP3 CD for circulation. Still not the optimal solution, but better and cheaper than what we give them now: Playaways, Books on CD, and Overdrive. Blech.
Link to the Random House Story on Boing Boing
Posted at 08:41 AM Read More
Fri - December
28, 2007
Kopfreise
An entertaining book that I've had on my bedside
table for the past week or two is The
Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness by Jeff
Warren.
Using the stages of sleep as chapter headings,
Warren talks about hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, REM sleep, lucid dreaming,
etc. with a upbeat tone, and he throws in a number of interesting bits of trivia
along the way that I often find myself mentioning to my wife or coworkers the
next day.
I'm only about halfway through the book, since I'm practically falling asleep every time I read it, but one thought that stuck in my mind from last night's reading is that for all intents and purposes we are basically dreaming all the time. All the time. At night we dream without any sensory input, while during the day we dream with the benefit of sensory input. Everything we consider reality is basically a dream that our minds construct with what's available to it. Since the waking mind has access to a lot more input, it's closer to reality, and sticks closer to the data, unlike a dream which flies off on tangents without any data to jibe with. There's such a Buddhist feel to that idea. " ...I can see two tiny pictures of myself, and there's one in each of your eyes... and they're doing everything I do...It's driving me crazy, it's driving me nuts." (Excepting my friends Greg and Kevin, I don't know who else is gonna get that reference. Good times.) The book is full of little nuggets like that. Little koans of weirdness to think about during the day.
The author visits a number of researchers and takes part in their studies, and he even goes off on his own up to the backwoods of Canada to get a feel for the natural cycle of human sleep, that is, before artificial light took over the night. Which brings up another interesting idea, a stage that Warren calls "the watch", that period of semi-alertness, half-way through the whole sleep period, when you're awake, but somewhat blissful, lying there in the dark.
If you're at all interested in the subjects of sleep, dreaming, or consciousness, I recommend this book.
I'm only about halfway through the book, since I'm practically falling asleep every time I read it, but one thought that stuck in my mind from last night's reading is that for all intents and purposes we are basically dreaming all the time. All the time. At night we dream without any sensory input, while during the day we dream with the benefit of sensory input. Everything we consider reality is basically a dream that our minds construct with what's available to it. Since the waking mind has access to a lot more input, it's closer to reality, and sticks closer to the data, unlike a dream which flies off on tangents without any data to jibe with. There's such a Buddhist feel to that idea. " ...I can see two tiny pictures of myself, and there's one in each of your eyes... and they're doing everything I do...It's driving me crazy, it's driving me nuts." (Excepting my friends Greg and Kevin, I don't know who else is gonna get that reference. Good times.) The book is full of little nuggets like that. Little koans of weirdness to think about during the day.
The author visits a number of researchers and takes part in their studies, and he even goes off on his own up to the backwoods of Canada to get a feel for the natural cycle of human sleep, that is, before artificial light took over the night. Which brings up another interesting idea, a stage that Warren calls "the watch", that period of semi-alertness, half-way through the whole sleep period, when you're awake, but somewhat blissful, lying there in the dark.
If you're at all interested in the subjects of sleep, dreaming, or consciousness, I recommend this book.
Posted at 04:39 PM Read More
Fri - November 9, 2007
Librarian Gets Burned By iTunes-Exclusive Track, Lives
I've been listening a lot of classical radio in the
car lately, part work, part pleasure, and I enjoyed a version of Bach's Prelude
in C major BWV 846, performed by Helene Grimaud, so I thought I'd get it for our
library.
I opened up iTunes, and went out to the store, and
saw that it was available on her disc,
Credo.
As soon as I saw the cover, I recognized that we already owned it, so I was
lucky enough to find it on the shelf. I looked on the back cover, and it only
had seven tracks. Bach's prelude is the eighth, according to iTunes. So I popped
it in my computer, expecting it to be one of those Easter egg hidden tracks.
Nope. Not even the extended track legerdemain, where if you let the album
continue playing, after ten minutes of silence, you get another song.
Whaaa?
I googled the bejebus out of the artist's name, the piece, the album name, etc. In France, the disc has the track included, so I thought, maybe there's a later version of the disc. I went out to WorldCat and only found my edition, and the SACD edition. What gives?
Finally, I looked up Deutsche Grammophon's website, that happens to be via Universal Music's portal, and I read that the track is an iTunes exclusive. Damn! But wait, I thought, maybe Universal, known for being pissed at Apple, offered it to Amazon for download. No. Credo isn't included in the Amazon catalog at all.
It turns out the track is available on a two-disc DG collection entitled Piano Moods, along with other performers, but it's the first time I ever ran into that. I always thought the iTunes exclusive tracks sucked. lol.
I googled the bejebus out of the artist's name, the piece, the album name, etc. In France, the disc has the track included, so I thought, maybe there's a later version of the disc. I went out to WorldCat and only found my edition, and the SACD edition. What gives?
Finally, I looked up Deutsche Grammophon's website, that happens to be via Universal Music's portal, and I read that the track is an iTunes exclusive. Damn! But wait, I thought, maybe Universal, known for being pissed at Apple, offered it to Amazon for download. No. Credo isn't included in the Amazon catalog at all.
It turns out the track is available on a two-disc DG collection entitled Piano Moods, along with other performers, but it's the first time I ever ran into that. I always thought the iTunes exclusive tracks sucked. lol.
Posted at 01:12 PM Read More
Guitar Hero Episode on South Park
This week's episode poked fun at the Guitar Hero
phenomenon.
I really enjoyed when Stan's dad whips out his
guitar and starts playing Kansas' "Wayward Son", telling the boys, "see, I can
play it on a real guitar!", and the boys aren't impressed at all. That's my
house. Only my youngest son contemplates (can you contemplate something when
you're only six?) stepping up to a real guitar. He's already halfway there. He's
got attitude: "When I have my own band, I'm gonna
rock!"
We just got Guitar Hero III : Legends of Rock, which actually is Guitar Hero IV, if you include Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. It came with a wireless controller/guitar that looks like a Stratocaster, which is sort of interesting, since Gibson must have paid for exclusive rights to be the only guitar maker in the game.
Some of the songs are ancient, which is funny. "Sunshine of Your Love", "Paint It Black", "Black Magic Woman"? Those songs were old when I was a kid. Plus it has what must be the requisite Sabbath and ZZ Top songs. Like all the games in the series, the final set of songs sucks. "Devil Went Down To Georgia"? WTF?
We just got Guitar Hero III : Legends of Rock, which actually is Guitar Hero IV, if you include Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. It came with a wireless controller/guitar that looks like a Stratocaster, which is sort of interesting, since Gibson must have paid for exclusive rights to be the only guitar maker in the game.
Some of the songs are ancient, which is funny. "Sunshine of Your Love", "Paint It Black", "Black Magic Woman"? Those songs were old when I was a kid. Plus it has what must be the requisite Sabbath and ZZ Top songs. Like all the games in the series, the final set of songs sucks. "Devil Went Down To Georgia"? WTF?
Posted at 12:48 PM Read More
Tue - October 2, 2007
I Love Lucy, The Daughter of the Devil
What's good on TV? My vote is for
Lucy, the Daughter of the
Devil.
This show is on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It's a
fifteen minute mini-show, so minus the commercials, it's probably ten minutes
max. The basic premise is that Lucy is a typical teenage girl, dating someone
her father doesn't approve of, etc. Plus she's the Anti-Christ. Hilarity ensues.
It's on Sunday nights.
A couple of mentions:
Loren Bouchard, the creator, who worked on Dr. Katz, was also responsible, along with Brendon Small, for Home Movies. Here's an interview with him. He and the interviewer talk about Animal Collective in there coincidentally. Plus he mentions the "Jealous Guy" cover by Donnie Hathaway, who sounds like Stevie Wonder, which you can find on Soul Sides : Volume One. Place a hold today! Ein kleine Welt, mein Freund.
H. Jon Benjamin provides the voice of the devil, among other characters on the show. He is a very talented voice actor/comedian, who hails from Worcester, Massachusetts. He has done the voice of Dr. Katz' son, as well as Jason and Coach McGuirk on Home Movies. He gets around. I just heard his voice in a Family Guy episode too.
Highly recommended. The pilot can be found on YouTube: Lucy Daughter of the Devil, while additional episodes can be purchased on iTunes.
A couple of mentions:
Loren Bouchard, the creator, who worked on Dr. Katz, was also responsible, along with Brendon Small, for Home Movies. Here's an interview with him. He and the interviewer talk about Animal Collective in there coincidentally. Plus he mentions the "Jealous Guy" cover by Donnie Hathaway, who sounds like Stevie Wonder, which you can find on Soul Sides : Volume One. Place a hold today! Ein kleine Welt, mein Freund.
H. Jon Benjamin provides the voice of the devil, among other characters on the show. He is a very talented voice actor/comedian, who hails from Worcester, Massachusetts. He has done the voice of Dr. Katz' son, as well as Jason and Coach McGuirk on Home Movies. He gets around. I just heard his voice in a Family Guy episode too.
Highly recommended. The pilot can be found on YouTube: Lucy Daughter of the Devil, while additional episodes can be purchased on iTunes.
Posted at 11:11 AM Read More
Thu - September 27, 2007
DRM must die
With Amazon debuting their beta MP3 download site,
the time has come for libraries to really start thinking about the future of
digital.
I gave it a whirl yesterday. Amazon's selection
isn't the best, and their classification scheme is weak, but the purchase and
transfer parts of the deal worked pretty well. And that's on a mac, folks. The
files were imported without a hitch into my iTunes library. There is a small
program Amazon has you download to facilitate the transfer into your music
library, but that wasn't painful like Overdrive's system is. Bring on the price
wars!
Finally, cheap, easy to download DRM-free MP3s. eMusic is another website offering up DRM free files. What's more, they have audiobooks available. So, how will libraries get into the act? Will we buy the files, burn a disc, and then circ the disc? What about circulating iPod fatties? What are we going to do? Is there anything we can do that doesn't break the law?
If we put the material on devices, and circulate the devices, why is that considered different from a library buying a book and circulating it? If the worry is that we might put the same title on two devices at the same time, why can't we pay a simple licensing fee to do that sort of thing? Why does DRM have to be involved?
Having said DRM must die, maybe I should qualify that. The way it works now sucks. Maybe we should revisit the idea of DRM working something like PGP. The product is unfettered. Perhaps we could circulate it, with our own key pair, based on patron barcode and PIN, as opposed to a platform-dependent, software-dependent, model. I know that it's been thought about, but I can't say what the problems with that model are. Or how about a simple DRM, that opens up with the PGP, and shuts down three weeks later. It registers renewals on the library server. The server keeps tabs on residuals, and we pay the publishers that. One price to purchase the title, a lower price to renew, since that's no sweat off the publisher's back at all. We need to create an open source, secure, cross-platform compliant, transaction method that doesn't line anyone's pockets, or tie us into a single vendor.
Finally, cheap, easy to download DRM-free MP3s. eMusic is another website offering up DRM free files. What's more, they have audiobooks available. So, how will libraries get into the act? Will we buy the files, burn a disc, and then circ the disc? What about circulating iPod fatties? What are we going to do? Is there anything we can do that doesn't break the law?
If we put the material on devices, and circulate the devices, why is that considered different from a library buying a book and circulating it? If the worry is that we might put the same title on two devices at the same time, why can't we pay a simple licensing fee to do that sort of thing? Why does DRM have to be involved?
Having said DRM must die, maybe I should qualify that. The way it works now sucks. Maybe we should revisit the idea of DRM working something like PGP. The product is unfettered. Perhaps we could circulate it, with our own key pair, based on patron barcode and PIN, as opposed to a platform-dependent, software-dependent, model. I know that it's been thought about, but I can't say what the problems with that model are. Or how about a simple DRM, that opens up with the PGP, and shuts down three weeks later. It registers renewals on the library server. The server keeps tabs on residuals, and we pay the publishers that. One price to purchase the title, a lower price to renew, since that's no sweat off the publisher's back at all. We need to create an open source, secure, cross-platform compliant, transaction method that doesn't line anyone's pockets, or tie us into a single vendor.
Posted at 01:26 PM Read More
Big Doings in the Wacky World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment just released a new patch to
its wildly popular MMPORG, World of Warcraft. The two big things are voice chat
and movie recording.
I've bought a few machinima books for the library,
and having seen the work of folks out on YouTube who've made machinima via WoW,
I can see its appeal. So this update, that will allow players to record their
play within the game seems to address that popularity. I haven't tried it out
yet, but I might try my hand at it, and pop a short demo here. I think my kids
might run with it.
Voice chat, the other new thing, isn't actually running yet. My oldest son is all fired up, because voice chat is really useful when running instances, and he was actually trying to get me to shell out for a Ventrio account. If you've ever seen the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of South Park (Season 10), you might understand what I'm talking about. Wow as a standalone application doesn't have, or at least it didn't use to have, voice chat. It was all text chat. Voice chat, in the form that Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny are using, works outside of Blizzard's software, via voice chat servers. Ventrio is one of these companies that offers voice chat. So, seeing this the next day as a free upgrade was a godsend. What's it gonna be like? I don't know. One thought I did have is that it would be harder to disguise your gender, plus it would be obvious to other players when I'm playing a character versus my son playing the same character. Stay tuned.
And then on top of all that, there's another expansion coming this fall, the Wrath of the Lich King. I guess it will be the size of the Burning Crusade expansion, i.e., it'll raise the top level to 80, throw in a few new areas, new quests, new classes or races maybe. The boys are psyched.
Which brings me to the topic of gaming and reading. My two older sons read a lot about their games. Not just cheats, walkthroughs, but the storyline stuff. I find it rather amusing. They will talk about characters in their games as if they really existed. Everything gets kinda blurry. But it's good to see them reading, huh?
Voice chat, the other new thing, isn't actually running yet. My oldest son is all fired up, because voice chat is really useful when running instances, and he was actually trying to get me to shell out for a Ventrio account. If you've ever seen the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of South Park (Season 10), you might understand what I'm talking about. Wow as a standalone application doesn't have, or at least it didn't use to have, voice chat. It was all text chat. Voice chat, in the form that Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny are using, works outside of Blizzard's software, via voice chat servers. Ventrio is one of these companies that offers voice chat. So, seeing this the next day as a free upgrade was a godsend. What's it gonna be like? I don't know. One thought I did have is that it would be harder to disguise your gender, plus it would be obvious to other players when I'm playing a character versus my son playing the same character. Stay tuned.
And then on top of all that, there's another expansion coming this fall, the Wrath of the Lich King. I guess it will be the size of the Burning Crusade expansion, i.e., it'll raise the top level to 80, throw in a few new areas, new quests, new classes or races maybe. The boys are psyched.
Which brings me to the topic of gaming and reading. My two older sons read a lot about their games. Not just cheats, walkthroughs, but the storyline stuff. I find it rather amusing. They will talk about characters in their games as if they really existed. Everything gets kinda blurry. But it's good to see them reading, huh?
Posted at 01:01 PM Read More
Wed - September 12, 2007
Zeppelin reunion in November
The BBC has a story that Led Zeppelin will
be getting together for a one-time gig in honor of Ahmet Ertegun,
the founder of Atlantic Records. It will be in England on November 26th. John
Bonham's son, Jason, will be playing the drums. Tickets will be 125 pounds a
pop.
A nice once in a lifetime thing for all the younger
crowd. I used to hide my taste for Zeppelin growing up, because of "Stairway".
But now, it's ok again. I gotta admit, they are very good. I don't think I'd
want to see the show though. It'd be too damn loud. lol.
Posted at 04:10 PM Read More
Mon - September 10, 2007
Radio David Byrne
We changed our intranet anatomy, so the mp3 server
is on another subnet from the PC I use in the back. iTunes sharing doesn't work
across subnets, I gather. So, instead of setting it up to work across the
subnets, I'm just too busy and/or lazy to do that, and I end up listening to
radio via iTunes. I like the eclectic stuff, and David Byrne's monthly music
sampler is usually pretty good. Anyone who's familiar with his Luaka Bop
compilations wouldn't be surprised. He has a good ear. The site is Radio David
Byrne.
He puts together a new two-hour or so program each
month, which loops constantly, and sometimes it's classical, sometimes, like
this week, it's pretty much pop. But no matter what, I end up enjoying it. For
example, a few months back he had a set with Panda Bear, Ron Sexsmith, Regina
Spektor, Niobe, among others, and it was super. Panda Bear, in particular, hits
the spot. There's an innocence, an optimism in there. Some of the tracks on
Animal Collective's latest, Strawberry
Jam, hit a similar vein. My wife's funny, when
I put it on in the car, she gave me a "what is that shit?" look. But then again,
I listened to the last track at least 10 times in a row.
As a sometime cataloger, longtime listener, it's fun detective work to figure out where some of these record labels hang their hats. For example, Manu Chao's latest, La Radiolina on Nacional Records: the liner notes drove me nuts. Maybe the label address was in there somewhere, but I usually end up going out to the web to find where they are. With Animal Collective, I was bouncing around, and I see today that they were in Boston the day after I bought the CD, que pena. I also found a neat interview with Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear; just questions that the label asks its artists to answer for the label's website, and it was cool to see that he grooves to Blazing Saddles, "Randolph Scott!", as well as Brazilian telenovelas, since he lives in Lisbon. Speaking of telenovelas, I wanted to call our new beagle puppy, Leiticia, because of a Brazilian soap. We didn't, but I just loved how the guy on the show always said it. It took place in the Nordeste. Now, it's gonna bug me all day. I can't remember the name of that show. It was on around fifteen years ago, right before O Dono do Mundo on Rede Globo. No, wait, before Journal Nacional. The headliner telenovela would show after JN. That was a weird time, watching the first Gulf War from Brazil, btw. Ramble, ramble...
So what do you call this kind of music? Trip-pop? I'd put the Flaming Lips in the same genre, if I had to. But, I'd rather not. It just _is_, man. (said in Homer's hippie voice.)
Anyhoo, getting back to David Byrne's program, this month he's got a song on that's by Bonde do Tigrão, "O Baile Todo" or "Só As Cachorras" , that's a reworking of the Baha Men's "Who Let The Dogs Out". This style of music, Baile Funk, Funk Carioca, was popular when we took our boys down to Brazil for the first time to meet the relatives. There's another one they had, "Tchutchuca", that was also fun. Sort of Beastie Boyish. So, when was that, winter of 2000-2001? Good times. That song makes me laugh. Brazil goes through these musical fads that sweep the nation every few years or so, then you never hear of them again. 1989-1990...lambada and Fernando Collor were taking Brazil by storm. Two years later, both were recognized for their inherent evil. Ripley's, I still have some lambada CDs in my collection. "A little classical music there, Jim." Now Collor is back in politics, a senator no less. Go figure. Fade in the Ratt: "Round and round, what comes around goes around..." (That's for my youngest son, who's into Guitar Hero.)
Another Brazilian artist I recommend is DJ Dolores, which was recommended to me by my brother. He's got some newer stuff out, but there's a song "Salvo (the Preacher), that is really cool. In fact, although it's upbeat more than spooky, (Jezebel!) it reminds me of David Byrne & Brian Eno's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts album. There are samples of a preacher throughout it, although I can't really make much of it out. "Salvo eu sou." Also a bit of the sign of the cross. My wife isn't into helping me figure it out. Just like going to a mass held in Portuguese. It's rough. All those vossas. DJ Dolores, from what I read, is from Recife, so the marching band horns make sense. Check it out. There's a snippet on iTunes, although it doesn't get to the horns part. Salvo (The Preacher)
As a sometime cataloger, longtime listener, it's fun detective work to figure out where some of these record labels hang their hats. For example, Manu Chao's latest, La Radiolina on Nacional Records: the liner notes drove me nuts. Maybe the label address was in there somewhere, but I usually end up going out to the web to find where they are. With Animal Collective, I was bouncing around, and I see today that they were in Boston the day after I bought the CD, que pena. I also found a neat interview with Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear; just questions that the label asks its artists to answer for the label's website, and it was cool to see that he grooves to Blazing Saddles, "Randolph Scott!", as well as Brazilian telenovelas, since he lives in Lisbon. Speaking of telenovelas, I wanted to call our new beagle puppy, Leiticia, because of a Brazilian soap. We didn't, but I just loved how the guy on the show always said it. It took place in the Nordeste. Now, it's gonna bug me all day. I can't remember the name of that show. It was on around fifteen years ago, right before O Dono do Mundo on Rede Globo. No, wait, before Journal Nacional. The headliner telenovela would show after JN. That was a weird time, watching the first Gulf War from Brazil, btw. Ramble, ramble...
So what do you call this kind of music? Trip-pop? I'd put the Flaming Lips in the same genre, if I had to. But, I'd rather not. It just _is_, man. (said in Homer's hippie voice.)
Anyhoo, getting back to David Byrne's program, this month he's got a song on that's by Bonde do Tigrão, "O Baile Todo" or "Só As Cachorras" , that's a reworking of the Baha Men's "Who Let The Dogs Out". This style of music, Baile Funk, Funk Carioca, was popular when we took our boys down to Brazil for the first time to meet the relatives. There's another one they had, "Tchutchuca", that was also fun. Sort of Beastie Boyish. So, when was that, winter of 2000-2001? Good times. That song makes me laugh. Brazil goes through these musical fads that sweep the nation every few years or so, then you never hear of them again. 1989-1990...lambada and Fernando Collor were taking Brazil by storm. Two years later, both were recognized for their inherent evil. Ripley's, I still have some lambada CDs in my collection. "A little classical music there, Jim." Now Collor is back in politics, a senator no less. Go figure. Fade in the Ratt: "Round and round, what comes around goes around..." (That's for my youngest son, who's into Guitar Hero.)
Another Brazilian artist I recommend is DJ Dolores, which was recommended to me by my brother. He's got some newer stuff out, but there's a song "Salvo (the Preacher), that is really cool. In fact, although it's upbeat more than spooky, (Jezebel!) it reminds me of David Byrne & Brian Eno's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts album. There are samples of a preacher throughout it, although I can't really make much of it out. "Salvo eu sou." Also a bit of the sign of the cross. My wife isn't into helping me figure it out. Just like going to a mass held in Portuguese. It's rough. All those vossas. DJ Dolores, from what I read, is from Recife, so the marching band horns make sense. Check it out. There's a snippet on iTunes, although it doesn't get to the horns part. Salvo (The Preacher)
Posted at 04:47 PM Read More
Tue - August 28, 2007
The Future That Never Happened
I'm reading David Talbot's Brothers
: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, and I'm enjoying it.
RFK is the focus of the book, and it's pretty obvious that Bobby knew his
brother's death was a conspiracy.
With Vincent Bugliosi's new book out supporting LHO
as the lone gunman in JFK's assassination, it got me thinking about the topic
again, and for me, it's hard to believe that Jack Ruby's silencing of Lee Harvey
Oswald isn't textbook proof of conspiracy. I also was fishing around on the web,
seeing if any recent revelations were about, and I came across the E. Howard
Hunt tale, a recording of him telling his son how things went down in Dallas.
Hunt's story jibes with the BBC investigation that has the killing blow coming
from the grassy knoll, fired by a French mafia hitman, Lucien Sarti. I guess
that would make him "Badgeman".
Anyhoo, back to Talbot's book. The hope for the future and the optimism most Americans felt with JFK's presidency comes through, and for some reason it got me thinking about a place in Ohio. It's called Materials Park, and it is the world headquarters of the American Society of Metals. It's off Route 87 in Novelty, or South Russell, depending on the source. But here's a picture of it:
And here's some information about it:
http://www.asminternational.org/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutASM/MaterialsPark/MaterialsPark.htm
The complex was dedicated in 1960, at the beginning of the New Frontier, and I can't help but feel optimistic when I'm there. Buckminster Fuller designed the dome. It's a beautiful place. The dome is open-air, so the rain and wind come in, but you still feel protected somehow. It's really something. What's also funny is the feeling that I'm back in time, back when things were looking up! Before JFK's assassination, and forty plus years of American decline. Which brings me back to conspiracy. The guys who killed the Kennedys got what they wanted. Endless war. Good for business. Bad for you and me.
Anyhoo, back to Talbot's book. The hope for the future and the optimism most Americans felt with JFK's presidency comes through, and for some reason it got me thinking about a place in Ohio. It's called Materials Park, and it is the world headquarters of the American Society of Metals. It's off Route 87 in Novelty, or South Russell, depending on the source. But here's a picture of it:
And here's some information about it:
http://www.asminternational.org/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutASM/MaterialsPark/MaterialsPark.htm
The complex was dedicated in 1960, at the beginning of the New Frontier, and I can't help but feel optimistic when I'm there. Buckminster Fuller designed the dome. It's a beautiful place. The dome is open-air, so the rain and wind come in, but you still feel protected somehow. It's really something. What's also funny is the feeling that I'm back in time, back when things were looking up! Before JFK's assassination, and forty plus years of American decline. Which brings me back to conspiracy. The guys who killed the Kennedys got what they wanted. Endless war. Good for business. Bad for you and me.
Posted at 10:29 AM Read More
iPhone Hijinks
Making the receipt printer program better
Moving Autodialer Over to an Intel Mac Mini
Foghorn Stringband
The Battle for Azeroth
Computers in Libraries 2007
Genetic Line of Succession
Rock of Ages Series from Rodale
Apple and EMI announce DRM-free downloads
The Daedalus Project
Yes, it IS a popularity contest!
Computers in Libraries 2007 & WoW
Free Publicity!
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Published On: Jul 16, 2008 12:52 PM
Published On: Jul 16, 2008 12:52 PM