Month: January 2005

tsunami

I’ve been thinking about the tsunami and what I can do to help the people affected by it.

I’ve been thinking about the tsunami and what I can do to help the people affected by it. There’s been a lot of talk about donating money to your charity of choice, and even more one-upmanship among world leaders over which country can promise the most per-capita. A lot of this has turned me off of giving, but I’m trying not to let it.

I don’t have money budgeted for a charity this month (my first utility bill arrived – oy!), but I am budgeting it for next month. This gives me more time to decide where to put the money. My first thought was to give it to Mennonite Disaster Service. MDS is staffed mainly by volunteers, and the emphasis is on clean up and repairs, rather than evangelizing. Your faith is shown by your works. I like that about MDS.

However, I changed my mind after I heard a story on NPR yesterday about grassroots aid organizations for tsunami victims. Groups of people are getting together to send money directly to the people who need it. Business owners in some industries are sending supplies to help their counterparts get their businesses running again. To me, that sounded much more enticing than just helping with the cleanup and repairs, which so many other aid organizations are already doing. So, I set out to find a charity that helps libraries, and I came across Book Aid International. I’ll probably send my aid money to them, unless I find out that they aren’t a reputable organization after all.

gmail invites

I have more Gmail invitations to give away. I seem to have a never-ending supply of Gmail invites now, and all of my friends who want one have them, so from now on, they will be put in the isnoop.net’s gmail invite spooler.

I have more Gmail invitations to give away. If you would like a Gmail account, send me an email. You can also post a comment on this entry, but comments get closed after a while.

Update 1/25/05: I seem to have a never-ending supply of Gmail invites now, and all of my friends who want one have them, so from now on, they will be put in the isnoop.net’s gmail invite spooler.

journal feeds

Woo-hoo! More RSS feeds for online journals!

I was excited to read Karen Coombs’ entry about IngentaConnect-supplied RSS feeds of table of contents. I’ve already created a new Bloglines folder for Journals and moved some journal TOC feeds from the Library folder and added a few new ones from the IngentaConnect list. Unfortunately, it appears that the Elsevier (no surprise here) journals do not have TOC RSS feeds. I guess I’ll have to keep up with Serials Review the old fashioned way: by checking the TOC online every three months.

the slits

One of the first female punk bands of the late seventies was the Slits. Never heard of them? You should.

One of the first female punk bands of the late seventies was the Slits. Never heard of them? You should. They toured with better known acts such as the Clash and White Riot, but did not gain the long-term fame and attention of their tour mates. Koch Records has recently reissued their 1979 recording Cut on CD with two bonus tracks, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Liebe and Romanze.”

When the band formed in 1976, none of the members could play instruments very well, but thanks to the punk movement of the time, that was no impediment to their musical creation. Cut has minimal instrumentation, with heavy emphasis on vocals and percussion, but it works. The producer, Dennis Bovell, came from a reggae background, and this is evident in the recording. The combination of reggae and punk stylings with a feminist approach to rock music gives the recording its unique sound.

It is obvious that the Slits influenced many of the all-girl bands of the 80s like the Go-Go’s and others. The retro music revolution that is sweeping through modern indie bands should pause and take a page from the Slits, as well. Their use of repetitive musical and non-musical sounds, call-and-response, and emphasis on lyrical song crafting are techniques well worth paying attention to.

Don’t expect to find this band on your top 40 radio station or MTV (do they even show videos anymore?), but if the music directors at the college stations are paying attention, this reissue will be heating up the CMJ charts, if it isn’t already.

Article first published as The Slits – Cut on Blogcritics.org

bcr rss

BCR, the Bibliographical Center for Research, is now providing an RSS feed for The Third Indicator.

BCR, the Bibliographical Center for Research, is now providing an RSS feed for The Third Indicator. The Third Indicator is “a technical memo focusing on OCLC products and services. It includes general OCLC news as well as detailed technical information on cataloging, reference and resource sharing.”

blog readership up

Why is there so much hype about blogs in the library tech world when only 38% of Internet users even know what they are?

Blog readership may be on the rise, but do most people know what a blog is? Jon Gordon discusses this with Pew Internet director Lee Rainie in yesterday’s Future Tense. Rainie said, “It’s still very much a niche phenomenon online. As a matter of fact, we found that 62% of Internet users do not know what a blog is.” This begs the question: Why is there so much hype about blogs in the library tech world when only 38% of Internet users even know what they are?

love songs

Only those who are confident that their sweethearts would not dump them for this chanteuse should pick up a copy of this CD.

My first introduction to Marlene Dietrich occurred a few weeks ago when I picked up a copy of the movie Witness for the Prosecution. As an Agatha Christie fan, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see yet one more dramatized version of her writing. I had heard of Dietrich before watching the movie, but it wasn’t until I saw her that I began to understand the attraction so many had (and still have) for her. Needless to say, I was eager to give the new Sony Legacy release Love Songs a spin.

The CD is a collection of songs recorded by Dietrich mainly in the 1950’s, with the first three tracks recorded in 1930 and 1931. A handful of the tracks are available on other recordings, but many have been languishing in vaults or private record collections until Sony picked up the masters and dusted them off. The sound quality is most impressive. Harry Coster did the digital sound restoration, and did it so well that one can hardly tell that the originals were 78s. The three tracks recorded in the 30’s do have that canned sound of recordings from the time, but without much of the hiss and pops of the old records. The rest of the recordings are fuller and warmer, a tribute to not only the re-mastering, but also the improvements in recording technology in the intervening twenty years.

Dietrich’s vocal technique is less than perfect, but her alto voice drips with a seductive quality that makes up for whatever may be lacking. As the liner states, when she sings, she transforms “strong men into masochists and beautiful women into groveling slaves worshipping at the alter [sic] of Sappho.” The CD will be released just in time for lovers shopping for Valentines Day gifts, but only those who are confident that their sweethearts would not dump them for this chanteuse should consider picking up a copy.

Article first published as Marlene Dietrich – Love Songs on Blogcritics.org

browser history meme

Oh, why not…

Oh, why not…

A = Amazon
B = BookCrossing
C = Comics
D = Data Swets Connect
E = eclectic librarian dot net
F = Fasola – Sacred Harp and Shape Note singing
G = Gmail – anyone want an account?
H = Half
I = Indigo Girls
J = University of Chicago Press Journals Division
K = Lexington Herald-Leader
L = MPOW (to borrow an acronym from Karen)
M = Meetup
N = NASIG
O = Online Northwest 2005
P = Powells
Q = Quickcare
R = Rate Your Music Knowledge Base
S = SF-Books
T = The Breast Cancer Site
U = User Friendly
V = VALISblog
W = Where’s George?
X = GeoCaching WA
Y = Academic Cartoon of the Day
Z = USPS Zip Code Lookup

Wow! Something for every letter!

happy new year!

Resolutions, shmezolutions.

I’ve given some thought to new year resolutions this year, and I’m not sure if I want to bother with resolving to do something. So, here are a list of things I’d like to accomplish, but I do not intend to be crushed if they don’t happen.

1. Keep a written list of books I read in 2005. I’d like to know just how much reading I’m doing, and what it is that I’m reading.

2. Get into some sort of regular work-out routine.

3. Be able to hike all 1400 feet elevation change to the top of Manastash Ridge by the end of summer. This is related to #2. I’m really out of shape for Washington hiking, despite all of the hiking I did in Kentucky.

4. Write an article for publication. I have a few ideas in mind already.

5. Pay off my credit cards. This one may happen by August, if all goes well.

6. Buy some furnature. A comfy chair and a bed frame for starters, with more to come. Maybe a futon for the guest room.

That’s all for now.

css.php