Who's Got The Moves?

I got back to Virginia just in time to make a swell video with my co-workers. Please take ten minutes of your time to check it out.

Libraries Will Survive

Inception

I went to the Squirrel Hill Theater yesterday and saw Inception. It was entertaining, mesmerizing, confusing, and frightening. It tries to work upon the ideas of dreams within dreams, and much of the movie is set in these somewhat lucid settings. To describe the plot would explain little. The gift of this film was being in the moment.

Acting was top notch. I like Leonardo DiCaprio immensely and feel that he is becoming the best actor of his generation. Joseph Gordon Levitt is right there with him, and Ellen Page manages to hold her own with an emotional resonance.

The movie operates a bit like a heist flick, with a team being assembled in order to carry out a mission that will take place within the subconsciousness of their target. What I really liked were the rules that they established early on, and how they managed to adhere to or play with those rules as the movie progressed. Rules always manage to heighten the emotional experience, whether it be not crossing the streams in Ghostbusters or the logic of time travel in Back to the Future or Primer.

As much as I like the idea of doing a gigantic expensive blockbuster that also demands that you pay close attention, I was wondering if that much money really had to go into the production. It did look phenomenal, but I feel like just as much can be accomplished on a shoestring budget. Either way, when you direct one of the biggest superhero movies of all time, as Christopher Nolan did, you get some cash to throw around.

Another One Rides the Bus

For my year in Pittsburgh, there have been two services that I have relied upon the most, and I am eternally grateful for the both of them. The first is obviously the public library system. It has provided me entertainment, intellectual stimulation, and an overall sense of joy.

The other service has been the Port Authority. The bus system has been in a constant state of transition since I have moved here, changing routes and stops left and right every few months or even weeks or days. But they have always managed to inform me early enough in advance for me to be ready for these changes. Right now to get to work, I take the EBA downtown, and then take either the G1 or G2 up the West Busway. those buses come every 20 minutes and my commute is only 40 minutes. The Pitt Student ID makes everything free (or I guess $90 a semester, which is still a deal).

I have lost my wallet on the bus, and someone sent it to the IS building for me after seeing my ID. I lost my phone a few months later, and the Port Authority contacted me immediately. They have been amazing.

Sometimes I'll be sitting on the busway and just be thinking about all the people that it takes to get me to where I am. The driver, the other driver, the people who made the road, the people who made the computers that run the traffic lights. Thousands of seemingly unrelated actions led up to my commute, and I guess my actions are going to lead to a lot of other things for other people.

Who Knew I Had the Gift of Premonition

This is a song I wrote on the first day of orientation. I think that in hindsight...it fits.



Pay Attention

You better get your focus

Buckle up and buckle down

Or else a plague of locusts

Will come and run you out of town

Cross those eyes, hold yer breath

Do your best to fight that itch

Don’t forget to do the rest

No one wants a sonuvabitch



CHORUS:

Check please, the bill has come

And did I forget to mention

It’s all on you. Here comes your cue

Get ready to pay attention

Bout to get like Alex in Clockwork

Hold onto your Ludwig Van

Is your heart in this? Your pancreas?

Do you even give a good goddamn?

Bite that lip but don’t close those eyes

How can you? We’ve got them pried.

My mistake, let’s all just take

A deep breath and jump inside


CHORUS


BRIDGE:

I’ve got a plan and I’ve got a clue

And I’m the one who can see things through

So take off your shoes. Remove those socks

Welcome to the school of medium knocks.

Quiz

Saw this article over at Boing Boing. I might do this for our weekend quiz.

Funny Kid's Answer to Quiz Question.

Huzzah

I worked a twelve hour day yesterday. Eight of them were at the library, and I did an additional four in our upstairs community room with a free science show for children.

The show was done by Gerry Lewis (he said with a name like that he HAD to go into science). He did experiments with dry ice, pressure, and liquid nitrogen. We had about 50 people in attendance, which is very good for our small library.

Gerry's website is http://www.brotherscience.com/

Grievances

I ate leftover spinach pasta for breakfast this morning. When I say "spinach pasta" I do not mean some sort of gourmet creamy green tortellini. I mean leftover spaghetti with frozen chopped spinach. At this point I have 22 days left in Pittsburgh and do not really want to go shopping for anything that I'll have to throw out or move 200 miles away. My only breakfast alternative was oatmeal, and since I have no air conditioning I didn't really want to be eating hot mush that early in the morning.

I'm getting rid of all of my furniture too. It's not worth paying for a truck to relocate 15 year old furniture that collectively costs about 50 bucks. Eventually it will either be sold on Craiglist, or end up in the dumpster.

There's a lot of pressure to hit the ground running with this transition between grad school and the next step of a professional career, but I seriously need a mental, physical, and emotional break before I do mentally, physically, and emotionally break.

I just want to go to my parents house for a few months and do the following:

1. Work as a sub at the positions that I was working at my hometown library
2. Get into a jogging routine
3. Watch new episodes of Mad Men
4. Make some music with my friends
5. Save up money so I can buy a car
6. Start paying off student loans

Nice break eh?

The Future Is Now!

So I just found this really innovative web service that just might change the way that we all think about and use the world wide web...nay...our entire existence.

BEHOLD!

Boppity boo!

My sister's getting married this weekend in Virginia, also ALA conference is happening in Washington. Guess who's going to both? That's right.

I can't believe the program is almost over. This year (not even a year...11 months!) has seemed longer than any other period of my life ever, when in all actuality it was a blip on the scale. This semester is shorter than all the others and it is obvious that everyone is trying to stuff a 15 week semester into a 12 week frame. On top of that, you have a job and apartment search, while tying up loose ends in Pittsburgh. Whoopee!

Billy Nayer Show

Jing Assignment

Boo!

It's A Gosh Darn Crypts Party!

Right before I left Virginia for Grad School, I recorded an album of Garage Rock with some of my best friends. Our group is called the Crypts. We don't do any of it for profit, it's just really wonderful to go into a room together and end up with a song 30 minutes later. So we did that for about half a year, playing originals (revolve around the subjects of monsters, food, and comic books). We also played some of our favorite cover songs(The Ninja Turtles theme for example). Played a few bars here and there. Just had a ball really. The album was recorded in 4 hours, all the takes are live. I'm the one screaming.



So in the past year, I've been reading so much about Creative Commons licenses and Copyright. This can be attributed to classes like Understanding Information and Copyright/Fair Use. By posting this album to archive.org's Community Audio, it really feels like I'm contributing to a larger discourse. Punk Music Producer Steve Albini, when asked about the state of musical production in the wake of this post-file sharing decade, compared the music industry to Tennis. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically you have a lot of people who play tennis for fun, and then you have an extreme minority who make a living off of the activity. I play tennis for fun and I play music for fun. Welcome to the future. The rest of that interview (from the excellent show The Sound of Young America) is below.


The Sound of Young America: Steve Albini


So here's an example of tennis for fun. The name of this album is "It's A Gosh Darn Crypts Party!" You can hear it all by clicking on the player underneath those snakes and you can download it here!

Hope you like it.




Music by the Crypts, Illustrations by Mike and Kristin Tschirn.

Hey Bulldog.

I found the lab to be frustrating, not because the tasks were challenging, but rather because there was no explanation of the importance of each step. I felt like anyone who knows their way around an Excel spreadsheet could do that lab, but more time and care has to be put into why we are doing it.

Dom Deluise.

The Refworks assignment was challenging. I felt slightly in the dark with the paragraph of instructions, but as time progressed, I found out how to export, search for the right steps to take, and format my citations. I think this ultimately led to a more rewarding experience than if I had to simply push whatever button I was being instructed to push.

That said, I think the followup assignments aren't going to be any walk in the park.

The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls

I liked the practicality of last week's readings and lecture. It really seemed to focus more on the tangible nature of technology rather than simply philosophizing. The latter can be fine in its own right, but I'm always more excited about seeing the practical nature of things.

I am becoming fed up with my Windows Vista OS and Microsoft Windows as a whole. I picked up the Windows 7 expansion pack from Bellefield Hall, but the disc would not install because I had not downloaded specific expansion packs. I went to download those, and when I ran them, they would say that an error has occurred, leaving me back a square one. I guess part of my issue is that I should be extra vigilant when these updates happen. It's not simply about following orders when the computer needs to update something, but instead it's about taking the initiative to do so without anyone or anything instructing you to. Hopefully this class will help me see the importance of that.

All you Zombies!

Hello all,

I'm in my third semester of Pitts MLIS program. I'm primarily focused on youth services within public libraries. The program has been pretty great, particularly by making me a better and more varied reader. Some of the assignments in my classes have allowed me to devour books that I had placed on the backburner for years.

I chose the program because of its brevity, but also because I got some romantic notion into my head about moving to Pittsburgh (I'm from Virginia originally). I think I want to get out of Pittsburgh once the program is over. I like the city and I want to continue liking it. I'm looking for jobs all over the east coast.

My love of libraries stems from my desire to just work with media. I'm a voracious consumer of music, film, and literature. So I guess it's a somewhat selfish desire. Damn you Neitzsche, you were so right. It's not all about that though. I got in library work simply because I had such a positive experience at my public library as a teenager. I sometimes think I want to recreate that same experience for other teenagers and kids.

I'm certainly into technology to some degree, but I wouldn't call myself a technophile. I used to take old computers apart, so seeing all the video card, RAM, and mother board in class brought me back a bit. I'm simultaneously open-minded and cautious about technology and its ability to solve problems for society. That said, I'm looking forward to this course and beyond!