The 24th Thingie

Well I was able to watch "Revolution OS" on the big screen courtesy of Jaye, who also provided popcorn to help keep us awake. I've been thinking about how I want to blog about this experience and I'm almost speechless. There are many snarky comments that I'd love to make about the production . In some places, I could actually see the SNL parody in place. One guy really reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite, but, since we didn't see him dance, it may not be an exact match.

Okay, enough of that.

Obviously, being in front of the camera is not what these guys do best. Creating a revolution is more up their alley. Despite, or maybe even because of, the interesting cast of characters, I found the history of the Revolution OS to be fascinating. It was very much a one-sided look at the evolution/revolution (the dramatization of Bill Gates' open letter and mood music throughout were highly entertaining), but I feel I have a much better understanding about what Linux is and the importance of open source.

The discussion of the term "open source" made me think of Valerie and "Words that Work". The connotation of the word "free" is interesting and means different things to different people. Most people think if something is free, that it must be shoddy. In order for something to have value, you must pay for it. Others, like the founder of the GNU movement, Richard Stallman (who I find to be a bit frightening), strongly believes free is more like free speech as opposed to having to pay money for something. The reason they came up with the term "open source" is to find better "words that work" to express the idea of community sharing.

It was also interesting to see when Linus's and Richard's philosophy parted company. Stallman became even more staunch in defending his thoughts, while Linus was more laid back and seemed to be grounded in the real world. Again, watching the movie, you could see a bit of the bias. At the Linux convention towards the end, when Stallman is accepting his award, after a bit, instead of staying focused on Stallman, the camera's focus wanders to Linus's daughter over in the wings. Stallman is still in the frame, but more of the interest seems to be on the little girl and her antics.

Again, overall, I found this video very enlightening. I was one of the first alpha testers of Ubuntu at HCL and found it fairly easy to use. I'm glad I know the history of Linux and why Luis, Mike and company are so rabid about it. I go through culture-shock every day as I bounce from my desktop Ubuntu, Windows XP on the info desks and Vista (not my fault) at home. I hear talk of Linux/Ubuntu laptops and would certainly be interested in trying one of those to see how it would work for what I do at home.

I did flee rather quickly at the end when the geeks started singing their own composition about Linux...=:O

Chinese Food for Christmas

My aunt sent me this video and I think it is awesome! And completely true. I couldn't find a lot of information out about Brandon Harris Walker, other than he is from Baltimore. Cool! Enjoy!

Thing-ing in Real Life: CJCS style

Okay, so we've signed Sophie up for Hebrew School this year and as I'm staring at the wall of volunteer opportunities, a little voice behind me (aka Stephanie S.) says, "Why don't you sign up for the library?" And because I don't spend nearly enough time in a library, I do.

Lots of books in crates with nice little pockets and date due cards.

Step one: We need to organize! Since I'm not about to start looking up dewey numbers for everything, we go with genre-type categories and create stickers for each category.

Step two: I jokingly told the Educational Director that he should buy us a laptop and we could create an automation system. Yeah, he thought it was pretty funny, too. But I started thinking, wouldn't it be nice if the books were in some kind of catalog form? Wait a minute....What about Library Thing? I go online to look around and wouldn't you know? They recommend using it for small collections such as ours. Cool beans. So I set up an account and show the librarian in charge. She loves it! And since she's got a crate of books at home, starts inputting books. Yay! Way cool. (And sort of sad how excited I got about this!) :) One of the librarians @ Library Thing even told me how to show items are "checked out" (by using tags). The only bummer is that there is no wireless access at OMHS. But very exciting in the meantime....

L'Engle Confession

Along with many others, I was saddened to hear that Madeline L'Engle died last week. I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time along with all of the other books in that series when I was in 5th grade or so. And I enjoyed the books, even though the physics was beyond me. I'll bet I can even dig up my old book report on it. I wish I be as memorable and thoughtful in my comments as some of my colleagues Barb, but, and here's the confession part, whenever I hear A Wrinkle in Time mentioned, all I can think about is the trauma I suffered from that book.

A Wrinkle in Time was the first (and possibly only, okay probably, just the first) library book I ever lost! I remember the getting the notice from the library and being very upset because I knew that I returned it. I was sure of it! And I couldn't find it anywhere. Not even under the bed. For a 5th grade book nerd who never (HA!) did anything wrong, this was bad, very bad. See...I'm still traumatized! Just as long as the BCPL Police don't open their cold case files and come after me, I should be fine. Relatively speaking that is.

Be Nice!

So now that I'm done, I've been looking at everyone else's blogs. I've been very impressed. I'm also very proud some of my friends and co-workers who claim to be techno-phobes, who have dived right in! Awesome.

Anyway, new episodes of House will be starting soon and I've been showing everyone the "Mother Liker" video from YouTube. But, darn it, the person took it off of YouTube. Major bummer. I've been frantically searching for another version and happily, I've found it. There is a cool site in beta called FanPop where you can be a total fan/geek/whatever. Lots of cool videos on the House MD Spot. Including, yes indeedy, "Mother Liker"! Enjoy. :)

Thing #23!!! In which Stacey does the happy dance because she is DONE!!

Wow! I can't believe I did the whole thing!

I found this to be a very interesting and informative experience. I was given an excuse/incentive to look at some things I've only heard about. I certainly feel better for the experience and for the knowledge gained. I also feel more plugged into the Library 2.0 concept. There are still some things that aren't necessarily my cup of tea, but knowing about them is helpful.

Wouldn't this be an interesting idea to offer to customers? Adapted for them, of course, but we could be quite user-friendly by offering customers an opportunity to become more User 2.0. It would certainly tie-in with life-long learning!

I was able to blast through these things for one reason only. I spent A LOT of time doing these at home. Not so much because I had to, but because I wanted to. Many were fun to do and I didn't mind spending the time. Also, this came right at the time of my transition from Glenwood to Miller. I wanted this to be off my plate as early as possible so I'd be free to concentrate on my new surroundings. I know most people will take much longer to do this, because it is hard to carve out time. One suggestion is to have people work in pairs or a small groups for some of the things, mainly because it's fun to bounce ideas off of one another and it seems to go faster when you work together.

I always enjoy learning and trying new things, so I would enjoy taking another learning journey such as this one.

Thanks for the opportunity!
mahjchick aka stacey

Thing #21: In which Stacey listens to some podcasts

Right around the time I was starting to look at podcasts, I saw this from the comic strip Zits.
Jeremy is obviously a digital native and the irony is awesome! :)

I am not necessarily one for podcasts. They are not things I actively look for, but if I find something interesting, I'll give it a listen. I did try out the various podcast directories, and quite frankly, I found them a bit more trouble than they are worth (to me, at least). The searching was a bit clunky and you had to wade through a lot of stuff to possibly find something that I was interested. Also, many of the podcasts seemed old, so not necessarily what I was looking for.

Since I heard Garrison Keillor's speech from ALA, I decided to look for some podcasts with him. I was more successful googling "Garrison Keillor podcasts" than using any of the directories. The first hit from Google was A Prarie Home Companion's podcast page. From there, I was able to add the podcast to my iGoogle page.

I will confess that this was the most disappointing of my 23 Things. Especially since I was halfway through my post when Mozilla crashed on me and I had to start over.

Despite this, I am enjoying listening to the latest news from Lake Wobegone.