libraries are hip with the youth but not in the way you might think. reuters is reporting on a study today finding generation Y as the new, hot age group using libraries. but more interestingly they’re there to use the computers.
i can picture a day when most books are digital. then a library can be small and serve even more content then ever. librarians are still needed to help people find and research topics, but hey, no more late fees! that vision must certainly be in the minds of the Google Library Project. i’m glad they’re leading a charge in this direction and taking the initial heat with book publishers. i also appreciate that this will be super disruptive to book publisher’s business models and cause some pain in the transition. It’s a net positive to me and i feel it’s just a matter of time really. as more and more things become digital, there’s added value for us all. but it up-ends existing situations. onward!
upgrading php on the server required new blog software. so this site has a slightly new look, and the major change is easier comments. try leaving me a comment here to see what i mean. there’s still a little image to thwart spam robots but it’s much easier to read and then comment lacking links post immediately without any moderation.
ok, so one of my side projects - that i’ve been contemplating for over a year - is starting to roll now. it’s the beginning of an online buddhist encyclopedia. not a general one, for all buddhists, but one specific to the shambhala (aka. surmang kaygu) lineage of tibetan buddhism that i’ve enjoyed practicing so much. there are many books, transcribed talks, and interesting references in my lineage in english now. still much to translate from the original tibetan, but enough in english and other languages that an encyclopedia and extensive glossary of terms would be really valuable.
if one had been available when i was preparing for and going to my seminary, it would have been tremendously helpful. and just fun to follow links, reading about different things.
after spending some spare time this year editing the Wikipedia, i feel ready to setup a similar project and guidelines for a group effort. then next month or two i’ll slowly bootstrap the initial articles, guidelines for editing, and citations. then i’ll plan to invite more volunteers and build a pool of editors to help. but i’m SOOO excited and inspired by the project. it’s going to be great! and potentially really change how future transcription and translation is published.
the voyager 2 spacecraft just passed an important threshold in space, and is reporting back some surprising results as it entered the heliosheath. we’re still learning so much about our larger environment. the next few hundred years are going to be so interesting for physics and astronomy. let’s continue to fund NASA and other space agencies well, ok everyone?
oh shoot. i just made a classic mistake. i’ve been editing the wikipedia enough to feel like i have a good feel for it now. and then i spotted a relatively new contributer making point of view edits and i jumped all over him. i bit a newbie in my haste. just apologized a bunch on his talk page and the article he’s editing this weekend. but i feel bad. even if my points were valid, by coming on so strong it must have been alienating and possibly discouraging for him. and that was really my mistake.
ok, so i just swapped out a comcast modem and used their little Comcast Wizard Installer to setup the new modem on my Mac. this was necessary so the modem would have its customer account setup properly. but for some incredibly dumb reason the installer didn’t just setup the modem, it modified my local computer’s network configuration for no good reason and in doing so it broke my Airport menu status icon completely. afterwards it just read “Airport: Not configured” even with the network connected and working fine. also, i could no longer use an “Automatic” network location in the System Configuration; every attempt to do so would automatically switch me to some new and pointless “Comcast” location it created. I say pointless because the network is setup to be a generic, automatically configured wireless network - no special settings at all. no configuration needed, you know? so why are they modifying my local settings in any way at all?
this is the kind of behavior that really used to piss me off when i worked in apple’s os engineering group: poorly behaved developers writing shoddy software causing needless aggravation.
anyway, after finding their uninstaller on the CD and uninstalling their software everything is back to normal. but i really want to know what they were doing that caused so much odd behavior. also of note (and so you gentle reader who got here via google can find this page), under status for my wireless connection it no longer said “Airport” but instead said “PCI Ethernet ‡±¨Ä, Port 2″ (yes, those garbage characters were really what showed up). that was disconcerting to say the least. what was the installer doing?!
i want the hour of my life back, comcast. thank you for your needlessly poor customer experience. i’m available for some consulting, by the way. i’d be happy to tell you in more detail how to improve this mess. please, let me help you.
scientific american ran a cute and short video about one of the measurable effects of meditation, called attentional blink. see the explanation here shot in the midst of times square chaos. (warning: it starts with a short ad, click about 15% in to skip it.)
just discovered lieutenant shin’s blog about serving as a buddhist chaplain in the u.s. military, and was lucky to read this wonderful post of her’s about having confidence in her path.
i’ve contemplated taking a similar path as lt. shin; i even talked to the army chaplain recruiters about it. however, the back surgery i had as a teenager is going to keep me out of the military permanently, even the chaplain corp had a problem with it.
i’m not entirely sure why i kept an interest in military service, even after my medical disqualification and discharge so many years ago, but there’s something about service that still interests me. now that i consider myself pacifist and confirmed in my buddhist path, i still would find great value in serving as a chaplain in the midst of such a violent situation. but there are aspects of the military that touch me to my core. primarily, it’s the level of connection and intimacy that members of the military develop with each other. i bet that only occurs in professions that are potentially fatal. i bet coal miners and fire fighters experience this too. during my short stint in the u.s. army i discovered that when the lives of your friends are on the line, everything matters. and that was very compelling - a life with that much clarity and importance. serving as a chaplain would have a similar clarity, to provide peace and support for those in the most difficult and perilous situations. that would be quite meaningful.
i guess then i should ask, “how does one find similar clarity and inspiration in a non-perilous life?” have any ideas?
funny, the same social networking features that have made facebook take off - like their mini-feed and affordance to know what your friends are doing - made it easier for a petition drive to counter their new beacon feature. facebook reversed today and announced they’re going to an opt-in model instead.
if it weren’t for the negative consequence, this would be a great example of how passionate users get involved in your site and participate in your design. but because it was after the fact, they really blew it. but i’m not sure this feature was ever tenable. inviting discussion before hand wouldn’t have helped. starting opt-in and then switching to opt-out probably would have the same issues. this really was a marketing problem i think, they didn’t predict the vehemence of the reaction in their customer base and they should have.
i wonder how age ranges correlate to this. were the millenials just fine with beacon?
personally, i find the beacon feature onerous because it violates an unspoken need for control of my identity. if i go to a movie, i don’t want all my friends to know automatically. what if i’m embarrassed about a particular kind of movie interest. say, hypothetically, i like chick flicks. the announcement of that fact to my social scene could be devastating or at least generate negative social capital for me. the site really needs to help me manage my identity, not poke holes in it.
(thanks to mike monteiro for the awesome image mashup)
monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
