Dan Coleman’s column from the Chapel Hill Herald about Carrboro poet laureate Patrick Herron is up on Orange Politics now.
Archive for December, 2004
Dec
31
2004
2004 of ibiblioPosted by Paul in Alumni and other friends, General, Information Commons, Virtual CommunitiesA few selected highlights from the past year of ibiblio.org Grants and contracts: We received contracts for streaming video in support of the NASA education site. We also received an IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) grant in support of digitizing films for the Folkstreams project. We’re up for a much needed server refresh via an IBM SUR Grant which will be reported in January. Radio on the net: We celebrated the 10th anniversary of Internet radio with WXYC with music, panels and interviews as well as a free CD for download (from ibiblio of course). We now stream 6 stations and will likely add two more early in 2005. We also participated in the first IPv6 continuous streaming of radio on Internet2 with WXYC and WCPE. Speakers and visitors: ibiblio visitors and speakers for 2004 included Cory Doctorow, Doc Searls, John Hood (of John Locke Foundation), NC Senator Eric Reeves, bloggers Eric Muller and Corey Dauber, and others. Many ibiblio speakings are available for watching online including the WXYC panel. Press. We’ve collected our press information including recent articles on ibiblio as well as technical information in an online press kit. One important new item there is Jessamyn West’s article from OCLC Systems and Services: International Digital Library Perspectives. Vol. 20. Number 2 (2004) “Free as in Tibet: ibiblio’s cultural cultivation and community creation” We have two maturing free software projects. Lyceum is an open source blogsphere and Osprey is a peer-to-peer enabled content distribution system using Bittorrent. An very early version of Osprey is already in use for the WXYC CD downloads and a few other selected offerings. Bandwidth: We still have to shape our bandwidth use and have with very good results. Even so we regularly use 300 – 400 Mbs. That’s a 100% increase from last year. We’re looking forward to an increase in 2005. Storage: We’ve just added a NetApp filer which will provide highspeed file access that we desperately need, This is an additional 5+ terabyes of storage. Management: We have a new CIO for UNC, Dan Reed, who comes to us from UIUC and NCSA. He’s very supportive of ibiblio and I expect we’ll have some opportunities arising from his RENCI projects soon. Staff: John Reuning and Fred Stutzman are our two full time employees, sysdamins and project leaders. Nancy Wilson, Josh Myer, Sean Slovney, Max Gustashaw, Patrick Herron, TJ Ward, Bret Dougherty and Adi Unnithan are with us as student employees. Sean and Max have just graduated. Nancy is expecting her first child in January. Conferences: John and Nancy presented at the Libre Software conference in Bordeaux in the spring. Paul and Fred were among the select invitees to Tim O’Reilly’s FOO Camp. Fred was a presenter at the American Library Association’s Information Commons Summit. Paul was among the invitees to the Wired/Creative Commons’ benefit concert by Gilberto Gil and David Byrne. Paul and Dr. Helen Tibbo presented at the Imaging Science and Technology conference. Paul was a speaker at IBM University Day and among the 3 UNC faculty invited to meet with selected members of the IBM Academy. Fred was a panelist on the Future of Music in the Triangle. Paul spoke to visiting Jordanian journalists. Other honors and milestones: Contributor Jessamyn West of Librarian.net was an offical blogger for the Democratic National Convention and was featured in many news stories. Collections: we continue to add important collections of all kinds from video tutorials to health care to poetry festivals to software to Tibetan culture. No slowing down there. That is Chapel Hill Public Library is a champion having received (again) the very top rating of any public library or library system in North Carolina. In the recent HAPLR ratings for NC libraries — HAPLR stands for Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings — the Chapel Hill Public Library scored 783 or 93% in the adjusted percentiles. Congratulations to Librarian Katherine Thompson and her staff and to the Town for funding the Library well and especially to the voters who on November 4, 2003 approved the issuance of $16.23 million of library bonds. The Library was the only library to score over 90% in North Carolina, but the goal should be to crack the National Top Ten for our population which would require a score above 860. The building expansion and other improvements funded by the Bonds should take us in that direction.
Full disclosure: I am a member of the Chapel Hill Public Library Board of Trustees. Malcolm Gladwell is concerned about how things change. So is Jared Diamond. Diamond is best know for his Pulitzer prize winning “Guns, Germs and Steel” in which he describes the factors that he believes have made certain civilizations triumph over others. Gladwell is perhaps most well known for his “Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Difference” best seller in which he, without complete attribution, brings together a variety of theories and stories about the mysterious tendency of humans to begin to act more like lemmings for better (as in less crime if there are less broken windows) or worse (as in tatooing going mainstream).
In less happy, but related, news, Salinas California is closing its three public libraries. The Friends of the Salinas Public Library have kept up with the latest events and news stories for us. Sitting at home with a new computer, high speed network, wireless and/or time to think about intellectual property and to be entertained? Check out Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain Moving Image Contest Finalists. The Contest will end with an announcement of the winners on January 15. So watch. Vote. And enjoy. The expert judges want to see if you agree with their choices. Hillsborough-er and old friend Allan Gurganus wrote a special story for Christmas eve that aired on All Things Considered that night whilst we were at church, but we (and you) can hear it now on the ATC site. In “A Fool For Christmas,” Vernon a pet store owner offers part-time work to a pregnant teenage runaway who has been hanging out at the mall.
Dec
26
2004
Triangle Bloggers Conference – Feb 12 – updatePosted by Paul in General, Information Commons, Virtual CommunitiesAnton writes to say that this is the better address for the wiki being used to set up the Triangle Bloggers Conference planned for February 12.
Dec
24
2004
G’boro bloggers get more attentionPosted by Paul in General, Information Commons, Virtual CommunitiesJay Rosen’s PressThink site has a nice longer article on the Greensboro News and Record’s blogsphere vision and a bit about the Piedmont Bloggers Conference, Ed Cone, Lex Alexander, David Hoggard and others. Rosen praises G’boro’s paper for being on the leading edge of citizen and journalistic blogging. It’s no surprise to me that the News and Record is on the forefront; the paper is owned by Landmark Communications whose Virginia Pilot had the first live blogging reporter at the John Malvo trial. Anton Zuiker has it undercontrol (mostly). The Triangle Bloggers Conference is set for February 12 in Chapel Hill. Anton has set up a Wiki so that you may propose sessions, topics, give directions, recommend restaurants, introduce yourself and the like. Those who cracked an unprotected wireless connection in a Lowe’s store in Michigan will soon be doing time. Brian Salcedo, 21, of Whitmore Lake, Mich is looking at 9 years — greater than the 5 1/2 years given to Kevin Mitnick. Salcedo was facing 12 – 15 years, but the sentence was reduced by Judge Lacy Thornburg (AP misspells Thornburg as Thornburgh) because Salcedo cooperated with Lowe’s.
Dec
22
2004
The Evil that is out there (computer version)Posted by Paul in General, Information Commons, Virtual CommunitiesNo Comment: First, we get comment-spammed to death on every variety of blog on ibiblio. I set up authimage and all is happy (except you guys quit commenting) for me. The Moveable Type comment-spam drove the load on our servers through the roof. Fred and John were on top of that and we are undercontrol there. Santy: Yesterday and last night, we, like every place that has anyone running phpBB, were attacked by the NeverEverNoSanity worm (aka Santy). Only a few sites were hit, but it was not pretty. John spent the evening before his travels patching all 30 or so of the not updated phpBB sites that we could find on ibiblio. Like many ISPs and universities, we’re still finding defaced sites and instances of the worm. Background Reading: I’m at the same time reviewing a chapter for an upcoming computer security book on spam. One line sticks in my mind: research shows that there are only about 200 active spammers in the world at one time, but they generate more spam than three times the population of the earth every 24 hours.
Dec
22
2004
Blog Conference here? Mark your calendarsPosted by Paul in General, Information Commons, Virtual CommunitiesAnton Zuiker writes proposing a conference follow up to the Piedmont Bloggers Conference that was held in Greensboro earlier this year. Assuming we can secure a room and a date, we’ll be convening in mid-February on a Saturday. The best date candidate is now February 12. ![]() Exotic pizza chef, Wolfgang Puck, has added his name and brand to single-serving self-heating canned coffee. Puck already has a branded milk-jar shaped coffee drink. The new drink will use calcium oxide (aka quicklime) to heat the coffee/latte as hot as 145 F. No, the CaO will not be in the drink directly although that might be a boon to those with osteoporosis. It will be in a patented recyclable container surrounding the Puck formulated drink. The quicklime will be pressed into a tablet or a “puck.” The technology, which was known to the Romans, is a patented product from On Tech who will be deploying the technology for hot teas and soups as well as other products. Last night the temperature dropped to 13 F and the wind blew down from Canada before the power went off in our house. I was sitting in bed wondering when I’d have to load up my family, our lizard and Sally’s mother and head off to a Day’s Inn. As the first hour passed, I thought of the wonderful F. Scott Fitzgerald story, “The Ice Palace.”
The irony over time is that Zelda eventually died in a fire in Asheville, NC while a patient at Highland Hospital many years (1948) after the story was published. There is also an image of how the story looked in the Saturday Evening Post of May 22, 1920. ![]() See also Linda Wagner-Martin’s Top Ten Jazz Age books in the Guardian UK.
Thanks to Jason Moore for keeping these available.
Channeling Sonny Boy Williamson via J. Geils Band with a bit of rock and rolling the Temptations on occassion to a biker bar audience at the Blue Bayou Club in Hillsborough, the Nighthawks were the perfect band for the crowd. The average Harley Davidson owner is between 35 and 54 (white male as you might expect) with an income of $78K/yr. I can find no source for the average age of a blues harmonica player and less about their average incomes. I can tell you that the show started at 9:30 as opposed to shows at the Cat’s Cradle which start close to 11 or midnight. The band, the Nighthawks, are very tight and very aware of each other, having played together for 30 years you might expect that. They were very casual as if they walked out of the same 50+(age) biker crowd to play with their tattoos, black t’s, old school lace up sneakers or heavy boots. Songs were mostly about women. Women, who dispite the bands superpowers, could not be gotten next to (“Can’t get next to you”) or couldn’t be called “Sugar” (“cause sugar ain’t that sweet”) or who shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (that is to say the band is past their glammor boy days) or were the sweetest thing in town, but had let them down. The band and the audience has put on a few pounds, but that stopped neither for dancing and getting down. It’s been a while since I was in a smokey club — the Blue Bayou which as a private club allows smoking as well as drinking and dancing is certainly smokey. I had forgotten how it gets in your hair and clothes even if you stand by the slightly open door with the draft blowing the cold night air in toward the bar. Happy anniversary to the Blue Bayou.
Dec
17
2004
Anton Zuiker and VanuatuPosted by Paul in Alumni and other friends, General, Virtual CommunitiesAnton Zuiker returned to school after some time in the Peace Corps spent on a tropical Pacific island in Vanuatu. Luckily for me, he came to UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication to study Medical Journalismand to get evangelize for blogging. All of that is a lead-in to saying that Anton has a nice article on paper in this week’s Independent in the Front Porch feature about Survivor and Surviving in Vanuatu. |
















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