Does Technology Make Us Happier?
May 23, 2009
A few months ago comedian Louis C.K. appeared on the Late Show with Conan O’Brien and shared his thoughts on the numerous technological wonders we all take for granted. Watch this clip and decide for yourself, does technology make you happier or leave you frustrated?
Weekly Poll: Do You Ever Turn Your Phone Off?
May 18, 2009
I realized over the weekend the only time I turn my cell phone (iPhone) off is when there’s a problem and it needs to reboot. My last phone was a BlackBerry Curve and I used the auto on/off feature to shut it down over night. Both phones (especially the BlackBerry) require up to 1 minute to fully power up. This can be really inconvenient if I quickly need to get to some data, and yes I’m aware of how impatient this sounds! I am interested in how other people deal with this issue, so here is my question for you (post a comment if you need to elaborate!):
Loading ...Older Learners
March 4, 2009
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks or so they say, but I have a recent personal example that challenges this adage. My father, who is 71 has very quickly mastered a fourth generation iPod photo I loaded with music and passed along to him. He’s also sending me an occasional text message from his recently upgraded cell phone, with brief updates on the weather back home, travel plans, etc. What has surprised me the most is that while he loves the music capabilities of the iPod, he’s drawn to the solitary card game, one of the default games that comes on previous generations of iPods. Personally I’ve never been too interested in gaming on older iPods as there are much better mobile gaming platforms, but in his case he’s very happy, possibly obsessed with winning at solitaire, over and over again. Personally, I’ve enjoyed seeing him learn a new technology and continue to expand his horizons, which is what we should all be doing as often as we can. Here’s to lifelong learning!
Happy Anniversary Mac (Belated)
February 10, 2009
A few weeks ago on January 24, Apple celebrated 25 years of Macintosh. This prompted me to think about my own computing experience and how that has changed over the years. Although Apple released the Mac in 1984, the Apple II line continued to thrive for quite sometime and the following Christmas I received my first computer, an Apple IIc with an Apple Imagewriter dot matrix printer! If I remember correctly it came with 128k of ram, and the only boot options were directly from formatted 5.25 inch floppy discs. Looking back, those specifications seem so far beyond inadequate that it’s laughable. Fortunately at the time I couldn’t see 25 years down the road and was VERY content to have a state-of-the-art personal computer!
I was already familiar with the Apple (and other computer) platforms before getting the IIc. I had used Commodore 64 computers, a TRS 80, and an Apple II+ at friends’ houses. My parents also signed me up for a summer computer camp (insert nerd laughter here) using Apple II computers sponsored by our local school system. All this to say that I had a very good idea where to start after setting the computer up. They also purchased some educational software and a couple of games I remember talking them into. I think after a while though I had the most fun just writing small programs in BASIC (10 Home, 20 Print “Hello World”). Of course, then came Zork, a text based adventure game, which you download free of charge nowadays. There was also that early version of The Oregon Trail which I borrowed from the school computer lab (dual floppy disc drives were handy)!
I continued to use the IIc all the way through high school, but in college quickly switched to the Mac. There were several labs on campus equipped with Macs and my first student job was with the school paper as a reporter and photographer and we used Macs exclusively for writing and desktop publishing (wow, there’s a term you never hear anymore). There were also some “IBM compatible” labs on campus running DOS, but by this time I was quite the Apple snob fan. I continued using Macs through undergrad and then into grad school, but by this time Apple was on shaky ground and Windows 95 had been released. It truly looked like the end was nigh for Apple, so when I needed to get a computer for grad school, I decided to go with a Sony Vaio running Windows and was happy with the decision.
For the next 10 years in my professional life I used nothing but Windows (98, 2000, and XP), but in 2008 I had the opportunity to get a new work laptop and switched back to Apple and am currently using a Macbook Pro. However in my personal life, our home computers run XP and I think at this point I’m content being bilingual. What does the future hold? It’s hard to tell at this point. Apple will soon be releasing a new version of their operating system with some very exciting changes that I’ve read about. Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 later this year which I’m beta testing on one of my XP computers at home and it also looks very promising (it takes some great cues from the Mac OS)! I think as long as Apple and Microsoft continue to force each other to innovate, we’ll all come out ahead.
Image of the Day
November 17, 2008
Given the current state or our economy, I thought the following was funny AND appropriate:
My Wordle
November 2, 2008
Robert Frost’s poetry has long spoken to me, especially “Stopping by Woods…” Thanks to a heads-up from friends Eric Palmer and Tom Woodward, I’ve used Wordle to create a word cloud with appropriate coloring:
Click the image for full size and visit Wikipedia’s entry on this poem to learn more about it…
Lunar Transit of Earth, From 31 Million Miles.
July 18, 2008
Being a space buff, I’m blown away by this Nasa video, (picked up by the BadAstronomy blog). This is the first recording of this event from “the other side.”
Mainstream Music!
April 30, 2008
I participated in a focus group tonight for a local radio station and based on the song selection, I’m 100% sure it’s our classic rock station. The songs ranged from 80s hair metal to 60s protest songs, with singer/songwriters from the 70s, Southern Rock and New Wave all thrown in for good measure. I’ve done this type of focus group before but not for this particular station. Having been a young child in the late 70s and being a mid 80s teen, many of these songs brought back a lot of memories about good friends and good times. I found myself giving the highest ratings to songs from The Eagles, U2, The Rolling Stones, Jackson Browne, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, David Bowie, Queen, Tom Petty, and Heart for starters. Most of the songs fell somewhere in the middle of my ratings, which meant that I didn’t overly like or dislike them. For some reason I found myself tired of hearing songs from Elton John, Eric Clapton, and The Beatles. I’m not sure why. There was a total of 900 songs and we listened to “the most representative” 8 second sections of each. I’m not sure if it was the most effective way to gauge users musical tastes and preferences, but hey, I still got paid for the time! 
Here’s a muxtape I’ve put together which represents some of the songs that were sampled. And like Steely Dan asks, are you reelin’ in the years? 
New Position/Role!
November 1, 2007
As of today I am the new Emerging Web Technologies Librarian for Boatwright Memorial Library at the University of Richmond! This is the type of work I’ve been eager to focus on for a longtime now. I’m entering this job after being in the access services world for 11 years, beginning with serving as the Stacks Supervisor at Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University as well as Head of Access Services at Virginia Commonwealth University and here at the University of Richmond. My new priorities focus on serving as the library webmaster as well as exploring service delivery through web 2.0 tools, mobile devices, etc. This means I get to play with and test all of the cool stuff that’s constantly being released on the web! The more beta/open source, the better!
My initial priorities will be preparing to move the library website to the university’s new CMS - Cascade Server from Hannon Hill. I’m also finalizing a wiki that our customer services group will use to organize all of the procedures and policies that desk staff need access to. We’re also going to re-examine our IM service over winter break and see if Meebo might be more suited to our needs.
Anyway, I’m really excited about the new possibilities that exist in this position and I’ve got a long list of people out there to talk with about their experiences with various technologies and platforms, so don’t run if I come calling!
TwitterMosaic!
August 3, 2007
I was alerted that my twitter avatar/icon (along with many, many others) has been included in the newest TwitterMosaic! What’s so cool is that it’s a re-creation of the original Casablanca movie poster, which is one of my favorite old movies! Before kids, my wife and I liked nothing better than curling up with some popcorn and watching some of the best movies Hollywood has ever produced. See the mosaic here. I’m the fourth one down on the very left!
