An addendum (with library-themed ice cream flavors)

I wasn't sure if I was gonna post on here after my last, concluding post this past weekend, but this was just too good and too relevant to ignore. Yes, folks, these are library-inspired Ben & Jerry's flavors. I thought (though only for a second) that they were real and got excited before realizing that it's not, but of course I did join the Facebook group. Out of all of these, I liked the "Checked Out" flavor the best. What's your favorite?

In any case, I thought that since today is officially the last day of the summer semester and since everyone worked hard, we all deserve a treat. Thus, buy yourselves some ice cream (or another treat of choice since I know at least one of you can't eat it) today or at some point this weekend and have fun!

The End is Not the End

Well here we are. Some of you are already done with your coursework for this class and others are still working on your portfolios and what not. I'm very happy to say that I finished up my portfolio a few days ago and furthermore, I also submitted my final paper for LIS 2000 this morning, too. Thus, I'm done with the semester. I'm a little bit worried that I still haven't received my grade for Assignments 7 and 8 (and for that matter, the group presentation we did on-campus for LIS 2000), so I don't feel like it's quite over. Even when I'm done with my work, there's still more to do (like write this blog). I don't mind too much, though. I guess that's the nature of being in grad school. Once this semester ends, we can sit back and relax for a month, but I know that in September it'll all start back up again. Frankly, I'm worried about how I'm gonna balance everything, especially with the the Retrieval half of LIS 2005 (which is now LIS 2002, I think) being called "search and seize hell" by at least one other blogger on here. Then again, I think all of us should be proud of ourselves. We all have busy lives and lots of responsibilities and this isn't easy.

As for the final assignment, well there's not too much to say about it (for a change). That's because it's just a portfolio of all the work we've already done. I'll say that the hardest part about it was figuring out how to present the ePrints articles and doing the screen capture, saving and then embedding the code and what not. Overall, though, I'm glad that it didn't take an inordinate amount of time, though. I know my site probably doesn't look that great (thanks to those who disagree), but I'm no programmer/web designer (to say the least). I guess the functionality is the most important part.

Well, unless I feel like posting something else on here this coming week, I'll see you all in the fall! I hope you enjoyed reading this thing as much as I enjoyed making it.

Chrome vs. Firefox

If you didn't know that these are web browsers, don't you think that the title of this post could also be the title of some Xbox game or a sci-fi movie from the '70s or something?

Anyway with that said, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the points in this article. Why? Well, I've been a loyal Firefox user since I got a new computer about 4 years ago. It just blows away IE in every conceivable way. I love that, as the article describes, it's possibly the best example (outside of maybe Linux) of open-source software with a community ethic that really works. This is something we've been reading about a lot in LIS 2000.

However, when I tried out Chrome after downloading it by accident a while ago (apparently you can download it if you download Skype at the same time), I was astounded by how fast it was. Thus, I feel I'll be using Chrome in the future (at least somewhat). I also don't know if Chrome can capture the market share of Firefox or IE.

Running on Empty?

I'm honestly a little torn on this particular issue. I generally think that a cas like this should comprise "fair use", but of course this also reminds me of other cases where Republicans have tried to use other artists' music without permission. Clearly, they've misinterpreted some of the lyrics. The most famous example is perhaps Ronald Reagan using Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." (not a patriotic anthem, but a song about the effects of the Vietnam War on a soldier) in his 1984 re-election campaign. Anyway, here's the article.

Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it's definitely a huge step in the right directions. It's great that so many more books (and particularly the ones Google is digitizing that are in the public domain; like my classmate Jenny Pilling, I also have issues with Google being the sole proprietors of said digitizing, but that's for another post) are going to be available via this device, as opposed to the locked-into-Amazon nature of the Kindle. I also like that the e-reader software will enable books bought on Barnes & Noble's website to be read on other devices (though unfortunately not on Sony's or Amazon's devices). It's still a little too all-inclusive, though. It's too top-down and tied in with a specific company (in this case, B&N) for my taste (i.e. for me to seriously consider purchasing one). Obviously, I understand that they're just trying to compete with Amazon and Sony and that they need to make money, but I still think an e-book reader that lets readers load exactly what they want on there will be the book version of the iPod. It just hasn't been made yet.

Thoreau, part deux

Well, once again I put off Assignment 8 until its due date (this past Sunday), though fortunately I was able to finish it a few hours later. Between the time I started to look at it and its conclusion, though, I definitely panicked and if it wasn't for the help of Tim Schlak and others on the message board (and particularly Amiya Hutson as well), I'd still be lost. Furthermore, in a fit of panic, I called a few classmates to see if they had any hints for me. I got their respective voicemails, but each of them called me back (again, within a few hours). Thus, thanks to everyone who commented on the board and to those who offered to help as well.

The first part of the assignment was easy, or so I thought at first. All I had to do was make 10 annotated hyperlinks. To be honest, I'm STILL confused about what exactly the annotations were supposed to be like and the instructions in the syllabus for this assignment certainly didn't illuminate it. Furthermore, even after receiving more specific instructions on the message board, I was still confused. At some point, I just left it alone, but I'll get to that part later. The first part was simple enough. This time, I used Amaya (which looking back on it, was a mistake) instead of Kompozer and frankly, I don't like it at all. After opening up my fragment and putting together 10 hyperlinks, I was confused about what do next. I just couldn't grasp the CSS concept as well as that of external styling. Thus, I started a thread on the message board and asked for help. Within a few hours, I got several responses and they were each very helpful. Thanks again to Amiya for pointing me in the right direction and to Tim for the detailed help. I realized that all I had to was insert the amended example.css file into my html and that would change the background of the fragment depending upon its specifications. Pretty easy, right? Well, I certainly calmed down after I realized this.

I did my work mostly in Notepad and it wasn't even too hard to find the appropriate part of the code to modify. Frankly, I didn't even need Amaya after modifying the code and then opening it up in IE (which I really dislike, but it's the default browser that opens an html file on the laptop I was using)to make sure that my changes were working. Well, I take that back, but only a little. I did need an editor to change around the last paragraph (which for some reason didn't have some necessary spaces between words). Again, it was easier to do it in Kompozer, though, which is so much more straightforward than Amaya (for me, at least). I didn't even need to code. I made those changes in the GUI screen.

So after I did that main part, I was still confused about the annotations and wanted to make sure that my hyperlinks were enough. Therefore, after putting it up on the Unix server, I posted another message on the board with the link, he said it was OK. I hope so, especially since we haven't gotten our grades for Assignment 7 yet.

One odd thing about Wikipedia

Until I saw this article earlier today, I hadn't even stopped to think about this feature of Wikipedia. Of course, it relates directly to our current reading on copyright (digital and otherwise) for LIS 2000.