January 2008 Archives

A few items that didn't make it...
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

My library has been closed for about a week now due to a pipe burst. Today was the first time I've been out there since it happened. It first happened when I was in Toronto, then Thursday evening the assistant director called me and asked if I wanted to work at another branch through the weekend. As I told my supervisor in an email, "I just go where they tell me to." Actually I was pretty happy not to have my hours cut since I have taken a lot of time off to travel this month.

There's a few pictures of what I came to work to today, only crappy camera phone quality though. We spent most of the day putting books back on shelves. I think they moved them in order to raise the shelving to suck out the water or something. I really don't know.

It also sounds like I got the cushy deal this weekend, some of my co-workers were the ones that had to move the books off the shelves. They also went to another branch that is opening from renovations soon to unpack boxes. They were there today putting the books back on the shelves, one of them said, "I'm really starting to hate books." I don't blame them. I now appreciate the opportunity I had to play reference librarian for the weekend, even if it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world.

We're planning to be open by Thursday. I'm back in tomorrow to help get things ready to open the library. It's not so bad, at least I get to hang out with my cool co-workers. Based on the number of phone calls we got today, I think we're going to be slammed when we finally open. I don't work Thursdays but I'm sure Friday, when I do work, will be equally busy.

I haven't written much about my Toronto trip yet, mostly because I was still trying to form exactly what I wanted to say. I honestly still don't know, but I will tell you it was a fun and unique experience. But where do I start?

One thing I did know is I wanted to dig back to an old blog post I wrote a little over a year ago, about an experience I had using Plazes in Ann Arbor, and the first time I ever went to a2b3. I'll get to that blog post later though.

We had been planning this Toronto trip for some time, Alex received an email from somebody at University of Toronto asking him if he would be interested exploring the idea of going to his lab for a postdoc. This was a bit unexpected because up until then he was only considering a few labs in Germany. It was also a good thing because this lab is doing some of the best research in his field. Of course I wanted to come along, if there's a possibility that I'm going to pick up and move to another country, I at least want to know what it's like.

This story really starts a few days before the trip. My head has been all over the place since school started and I was in Vegas for a few days at the beginning of January too. I only had a few days between Vegas and Toronto but thought it best of me to start narrowing down a research topic for my classes. I decided on doing something with social networking, not sure what exactly, but I knew it would be something that kept my interest. Trying to start to narrow down a focus I decided to contact my friend, Andy Piper, who also has some interest in this area and always seems to point me in the direction of great articles. I should also add that I've never met Andy in person and we pretty much only met each other through social networking. Was that because of Plazes too, I actually can't remember? Oh the parallels and the ironies!

Andy more than came through, of course. Well I still don't have a completely narrowed topic, but I'm getting close! I have to be getting close because my research statement is due on Thursday (yikes)! He gave me plenty of information, and even the names of some great people to follow. It's really about the people anyway, right?

The Friday before my trip Andy gave me one more name, Sacha Chua, I went to her blog and liked her right away. I saw this post immediately and I could totally relate. Then I noticed she lived in Toronto. I don't know why, maybe because I was going there in a few days, but I felt the world kind of shrink to half its original size. Andy did send an introduction through email and I think by Sunday (the night I arrived in Toronto), Sacha and I were planning to meet!

Sacha and I met for lunch on Tuesday and given that I had pretty much used my free time in Toronto to do homework, it was a very pleasant and welcomed meeting. We talked about social networking (of course), blogs, wikis, and stories. Sacha enjoys writing, and as somebody where writing doesn't come very naturally, her enthusiasm was a bit inspiring. I also got a very long list of book suggestions from her; hopefully I have time to read all of them! My favorite part of the lunch was her story of how she got hired at IBM. She said next time we meet I'll have to tell her the story of how Alex and I met, but that's a pretty boring story. Instead I offered up my wedding story, that one is five times more interesting.

So this brings me back to my old blog post from long ago, simply called Plazes Experience. It's another example of how social networking shapes our experiences, this one happened much more locally though. I had to look it up because I remember calling that experience something, but I couldn't remember exactly what that was. I knew it was something similar to serendipity or spontaneity, or was it both? The words were still in my head when I read this tweet from Andy. I was wondering what Andy was doing in my head!

I just looked it up earlier this evening; it's about 'planned spontaneity'. That was how I described it anyway, read the comments of the post and you'll see that Ed Vielmetti described it as 'manufactured serendipity'. I think both of those apply (I personally prefer Ed's version though). There was one paragraph in that post that I really liked and applies here again:

I was really interested in the planned spontaneity of the whole thing though. The fact that I was in the right place at the right time, and with the right tools I was able to have the experience. It is another testimonial to how technology doesn't just shape our online lives anymore, it is also giving us richer experiences offline too.

And that may have been the first time I have ever quoted myself in a blog post. To round out the whole situation, I decided to go to a2b3 on Thursday. I hadn't been in a long time with my class always being on Thursdays but I'm glad I did. It was a great lunch and I even gained a new LinkedIn contact. The fun never ends!

And the Toronto verdict is that we are indeed moving there. Alex is accepting the position at University of Toronto. I'm really happy about this too. I certainly would've loved to move to Germany, but at least in Toronto I'm still able to drive home and visit my family on occasion. It's a wonderful city too. We're not moving too soon, it'll still be over a year yet, but it is something new and exciting to look forward to.

Technorati Tags:social networking, social networks, toronto
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

This thrills me to no end, it is a way to scrobble my Rhapsody music to Last.fm. Finally! It's called Rhobbler, or the few words on the website that describe it, "the dead simple tool to submit your Rhapsody listening information to Last.FM."

All you need is your Last.fm info and your Rhapsody tracks feed. It will send your listening history to Last.fm every hour based on your feed. Of course your Rhapsody listening history needs to be public for this to work.

It's not completely real time since it is sending updates every hour. I also don't think Rhapsody is too quick about updating my feed, I listened to a few tracks before the hourly update and the feed hasn't updated with those tracks yet, but they will probably be there before the end of the day.

Previously I was using Yottamusic, which had a few drawbacks from pulling straight from Rhapsody. One drawback was that current releases weren't always available in the catalog; the other was that I could never get my library and listening history to synchronize so tracks I listened to on my mp3 player were never sent to Last.fm. But now since Rhapsody is no longer supporting the non-public API, and Yottamusic decided to close down their service, I lost my only method of even getting those tracks to Last.fm.

That is, until now. Although delayed, the real benefit to using Rhobbler is that I can actually send a more complete picture of my listening history to Last.fm. I do listen to things through my computer, but I probably listen to more of my Rhapsody music on my mp3 player. The tracks are synched when I plug the player into my computer and my listening history is actually updated to reflect what I listened to on my player. A feature I do like about Rhapsody. I don't spend a lot of time creating playlists either, but I love 'Rhapsody Channels'. I only listen to one channel regularly but when I plug in my mp3 player that channel reloads automatically with new music, usually about 4.5 hours worth. I listen to audiobooks most regularly with my mp3 player, but having at least one constantly updated channel on there is a great way to ensure that I always have music when I want it.

I am pretty excited about this so I hope it continues to work!

Technorati Tags:rhapsody, music, rhobbler, yottamusic, last.fm
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

I'll probably write more about my trip to Toronto tomorrow, but in the meantime here's an annotated map of our trip in Google Maps.

Toronto Map, January 2008

I usually make these for geocaches, but since I didn't take a whole lot of pictures I did one of our entire trip (plus 2 geocaches, just because I can). The map includes some landmarks, places we went, and even the geocoded pictures from the trip.

I don't know what motivates me to do certain things, I just go with it. I started this little blogroll project about 2 months ago, I finally finished it today and it probably took me all of 10 minutes to finish. So now I wonder why I just didn't finish it 2 months ago. I'll never know.

Actually most of the work happened behind the scenes with the blogs; I did some major house cleaning in my Google Reader and reorganized everything. I also got rid a few blogs I either don't read anymore or had invalid feeds for. I utilized Google Reader's tagging structure a little differently, instead of "tagging", like I did before (some feeds went into several categories), I actually use the tags more as folders. Every feed goes into exactly two folders/tags/categories (they all mean different things but Google doesn't seem to care), one descriptive tag and one action tag. The descriptive ones are exactly as they sound, the hardest part was coming up with the labels and then determining what labels would be public and which weren't. The action labels are numbered so they always appear at the top of my reader. I sort of modeled this process after this blog post on 43 Folders:

Sink or Swim: Managing RSS Feeds with Better Groups

Which I now realize I don't subscribe to 43 Folders, I think I actually read most of their posts through Lifehacker. Funny how that works.

I wanted to keep descriptive tags and I also wanted action groups at the top so here are my first 3 groups:

1 Everyday

2 Can't Miss

3 Skip 'em

Ok, so it turns out that I don't read the first one every day but it is still a million times more manageable than before. I am still reading the things I really want to read first, the things I would like to read second, and it even turns out that the "Skip 'em" category accounts for a lot of stuff that I don't feel bad about not reading. Only once now the number in "Skip 'em" got over 1000 and I marked all read and never looked back!

The reason why I kept the descriptive groups was because I wanted to try using Google Reader as my blogroll. I had one on my blog before but I never seemed to update it. It seemed to make more sense to push those links through dynamically. My categories are designed in a way that some are public and some are private, depending on what it is I'm saving to that category. I have 27 total tags in Google Reader right now and I'm only sharing about 14.

A couple of special tags include the "Tryout" category (private). That's just one I created to try out a new blog without actually committing it to my reader or blogroll yet. Not sure how well that will work, but I thought it might give it a shot. I have an "ego feed" category that keeps track of the various things ego feeds keep track of, and categories for keeping track of tags through del.icio.us and technorati that are of interest to me. As I was writing this blog post I also did some more rearranging and created a category called "Omnifarious" (public). Other than being a super cool word, I decided it was best way to group people without actually grouping them. They're people I know in person, online, from school, or whatever. Much better than labeling people "Miscellaneous", don't you think?

The one problem I have with the blogroll on my website is the formatting. I like the categories, I don't even mind the "read more" link under each one, but I do wish that link was right justified. It looks a bit cluttered. Right now I don't know if there is much I can do about that, but that's how I'm going to keep it for the time being.

I'm really looking forward to this semester at school. I'm taking two classes, Research Methods which is a physical class and Information Behavior which is completely online. I started off a little disorganized for the Info Behavior class because I was in Vegas when everything was posted online. Once I got things together I realized I can probably use the same research in both classes this semester. My Info Behavior project has to be done with a partner though, which is alright, I might have to tailor the research to suit their interests too.

Last night I realized that I have a short paper due soon though for Info Behavior. She's calling it an "interaction diary" where I have to record an "information-seeking experience" and write about 8-9 pages about it. I've started taking notes on my Toronto trip, traveling to a new place seems like a good comparison and something interesting to write about. I believe I could probably get about 8 pages on the Detroit-Windsor Bridge alone! Another possible experience to write about is how using something like GPS technology changes the way we move around and find things within an area. I realized when the GPS gave us a different route than I wanted to go that our familiarity with an area can change our decision to rely on the technology or not. We also have less of a dependency on printed maps, or printing directions before we leave. I have also used the GPS to find places to eat or stop for gas along the way, instead of relying on road signs or researching locations before we go.

Information Behavior is a pretty interesting class so far and it's within my specialization too. I enjoy my library classes as well, but I usually enjoy my Information Management classes a bit more. I keep going back and forth about whether I want to continue to work in libraries, if I do I certainly don't want to be in public service anymore. I think that's a general consensus between most of those in IS in the program right now. We all enjoy libraries but none of us want to be reference librarians. That's ok I suppose, there's still plenty of people out there that do.

Plaza
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

Just trying to get the last of my Vegas pictures up on Flickr. My last day was mostly pretty stressful, but after the stress subsided we made it to Downtown Las Vegas to visit the Fremont Street Experience. We did this on the way to the airport, however, and I didn't actually get to experience the experience. We just barely missed the first light show and I didn't want to be late boarding the plane so we didn't see the next.

Hopefully next time though! Downtown was pretty interesting though, it's all Old School Vegas. It's nothing like being on The Strip at all.

My overall experience with Vegas was pretty positive. I would definitely visit again. I guess I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the city. I don't know what I was expecting but it exceeded my expectations.

The one thing I would do differently next time is probably rent a car. Sort of accidentally I found out the renting cars is actually not that bad if you do it from the airport. Since I will likely be staying with my dad again then it'll be easier to get around and I wouldn't have to rely so much on my dad's work schedule to visit places I would want to go. Also parking is totally free in Vegas...I'm still excited about that! We're going to Toronto for a few days starting Sunday and we're paying $30/day for parking, that's just a lot of money just to park your car!

Hoover Dam Panorama
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

We didn't do much more than go to Hoover Dam today. It was a pretty short trip too, we didn't go on the tour or anything so we didn't even walk over to the Welcome Center.

Hoover Dam looks impressive, but it seems more impressive in photos than it does in person. I'm sure I would've been more impressed with the history of how the dam was built than anything. It was a lot shorter across than I expected, although it is pretty tall up. Considering the dam was built over 80 years ago, it is a pretty decent engineering feat.

What I didn't expect is the amount of people all over the place. It seemed cars and people share the road on top of the dam. No buses or trucks are allowed over on the dam, but it's probably a good thing because you have to watch out for people walking out in front of your car.

The picture is a vertical panorama that I cropped because I had a lot of the concrete barrier on the bottom. Ever since yesterday I started messing around with panoramas, they're actually pretty fun to take so you might see more of them from my pictures.

Tomorrow is my last day in Vegas and then I head home with what may be very little sleep in the evening.

Red Rock Canyon
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

Today we went to Red Rock Canyon and that was about it. Both my dad and I are pretty tired, although him more so than I am since he's working the weird hours. I think he made some comment that we look like a pair of old folks walking around like we do. Red Rock Canyon was an amazing sight though. I can tell you that this, I have never seen anything quite like this in my lfie, since I grew up in the cornfields of Ohio. No mountain ranges in sight where I'm from.

I had hoped to find some geocaches here, and there were quite a few, but none seemed to be any closer than .2 miles walk. I decided that since my back is still a little sore I didn't want to walk that far on rocky ground to try and get one. Plus my dad was in no mood for hiking either.

Now I actually have to attempt some homework or reading. It's been hard for me to get anything done because I seem to start to crash this time of the day.

Tomorrow we're actually heading off to Hoover Dam and then I get to decide what to do on Wednesday. I'd probably like to head back into Vegas again and do something before I leave.

I'm so behind on my feeds, but this one through TechCrunch really bummed me out just now:

Rhapsody Pulls Plug On Non-Public APIs, Effectively Shuts YottaMusic Down

I used YottaMusic because it was the only thing that I could find that would let me use my Rhapsody account and still scrobble those songs to Last.fm. So now I'm back to square one when it comes to Rhapsody and Last.fm integration. There is a Rhapsody scrobbler out there, just one, and I have never been able to get it to work.

So now I have to resort to begging. Rhapsody, please make give me Last.fm integration on my account! I'm begging you!

I'm starting to have a real love-hate relationship with Rhapsody. I love the service and the access I have to any music I want any time I want it. I love that I can listen to new music the day it comes out, and I love that I can put it on my mp3 player all for one price every month and not worry about downloads or anything like that. I hate how closed off Rhapsody is. I want my Rhapsody service to work with all of these other things I want to use it with. If there is ever a comparable service that lets me have all of those things I would likely drop Rhapsody and go with that. In the meantime I'm still sticking with it. I'll just have to keep digging for some way to continue to use it with Last.fm.

Technorati Tags:rhapsody, lastfm, yottamusic, music
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

The Mirage
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

I'm in Vegas! I came to visit my dad who has been living here for about a year. I even got a few pictures I took around the city uploaded on Flickr. The one in this blog post is of the Mirage, where my dad is currently working. He actually just started his new job there last night when my flight came in so I didn't actually get to see him until this morning.

The flight to Vegas was pretty uneventful, but I did think of a few things that I had wanted to tweet but didn't want to pay for internet while I was waiting. One thing was how airports and flying give me anxiety. This is only the second round trip flight I've ever take in my life. I would much rather take a slow boat to China than fly there. My anxiety from airports comes mostly from picking Alex up or dropping him off all the time. Ironically when I drop him off for his flights I'm fighting what seems like a million cars doing the same thing, but this time there was maybe 3 cars including ours outside the terminal. Figures.

The other annoying thing was that Google Gears doesn't seem to be working all the time with my Google Reader. I had wanted to go through some feeds in the airport and on the plane. In the airport the browser kept redirecting me to buy internet and on the plane it would catch for a second and then send me to a network error page. I had plenty of other things to occupy my time with though.

Once at the airport I had to catch a taxi to my dad's house, as I mentioned, he started his job last night so I didn't get to see him until this morning. I threw the taxi driver off guard when I gave him an actual address in North Las Vegas instead of one of the typical hotel/casinos. He asked me if I knew where it was, I said, "no but I have GPS." I had already loaded my dad's address in my device before I left. He said I was his first GPSer. That dang thing really does come in handy...and I think I had him impressed enough to want to go buy one himself. My dad used to be in real estate so he had one of those house key locks hanging on the front door for me...I guess those things come in handy too.

Today he just took me around some of the different casinos. I actually like Las Vegas a lot more than I thought I would. I'm not really into the casino thing, but with the amount of shows and other things to do, it's actually a pretty cool place. Sadly the thing that impressed me the most is free parking. This is sad because there are a lot of really impressive things in Vegas and I choose parking. I guess I need to get out more.

So this is the first post of the New Year on my blog and I'll warn you, it's nothing special. That to do list I posted about earlier never happened, as a matter of fact this new year hasn't started out all that great for me. I hurt my back on Christmas Day and I've been in a lot of pain since then. My New Year's Resolution is to be able to walk without looking like an old geezer again. Today is really the first day I ventured out into the world to run errands on my own. I don't think I got much past noon before wishing I were at home and in bed. I'm in for a long evening though because class also starts tonight. Driving a manual transmission with back pain is not recommended either. Pain is a motivation sucker; I haven't even had all that much motivation to even be online. Work isn't fun either. I don't have the luxury of sitting at a desk all day, I move around constantly, bend, stand, sit, and move heavy boxes. I started shifting biographies a few weeks ago but could only work for about 30 minutes before I got tired or hurt. I'm envious of people who can walk. The whole situation sucks for me because I have to rely on other people and I hate relying on other people. I've actually prefer to work through the pain than to ask another person for help, and usually that's what I do.

I went to the doctor, even though I hate going to doctors. He told me that it's a chronic flare-up; basically I just have to deal with it. That's fine because now I can systematically avoid more doctor visits. It is getting better, some days it doesn't always feel like that, but the first week it happened I could feel it in my whole back, now the pain is just centralized in one spot on my back. I can't walk real straight though so that's making me overcompensate and after some time my leg muscles start to get sore.

But life goes on. I'm leaving for Vegas on Saturday so I'm hoping to be able to move a little faster by then so my trip doesn't suck. I'm also hoping to be fine by the time we leave for Toronto because I planned some geocaching and sightseeing that requires us to walk a lot.

Last year wasn't bad; I'm not worried about this year being bad either (despite the rough start). My life philosophy is to take things as they come and deal with them as they happen.