Steven Tackles Copyright

Steven Colbert did a pretty hilarious report on a villainous polka pirate a few nights ago. It really highlights the seemingly arbitrary and sometimes absurd decision to pursue and prosecute copyright infringers.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Polka Piracy
www.colbertnation.com
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The End is Near

The semester is coming to a close and I've managed to continuously neglect and write about neglecting this pathetic excuse for a blog. Here's to the final push.

I'm interested to take part in the synchronous session on this upcoming Wednesday morning. I'm even more interested to see how successful it is and whether or not it will become a staple of the program in the future. Perhaps by the time Cohort 10 has finished we'll be engaged in video-conferenced discussion. It seems like a natural next step in the evolution of the program.

I hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to a bit of a break and a fresh start.

I haven't given up!

My last post was about neglecting my blog and here I am, after many days of neglect, back at the same point. I swear I'm going to make a change this time. This really isn't that hard.

How is everyone's LIS 2000 paper coming along? The confluence of the mid-term, FastTrack weekend, the paper, and the next LIS 2600 quiz are crushing the life out of me to some extent, but I'm sure it'll be a great relief when we finally reach the other side.

Blog Posts

I am having an enormously difficult time coming up with things to write about in this here blog. It's not something I feel accustomed to doing and I still feel fairly self-conscious about it. I guess I'm unconsciously avoiding it, but that's definitely not my goal. Is anyone else suffering from blog-block? Are others in the class experienced bloggers? Are people commenting on each others blogs? Mine feels static and isolated which I think adds to my subconscious desire to distance myself from it. Maybe I'll go post a comment on someone else's blog and hopefully get some crosstalk going.

An Unforeseen Consequence of the eBook Era

I stumbled upon a comic with LIS relevance and therefore feel it is my duty to share. I have to say that I'm very surprised this didn't come up during our discussion in LIS2000. Enjoy.

Zotero Tutorial Screencast

Here it is, the first true cinematic masterpiece of the 21st century: my Zotero Tutorial. Enjoy!

Double Up

Glancing at the syllabus today made me realize that I'm one post short here so I'm going to follow up a bit on the last one by providing links to two books about math that I've really enjoyed. The first is Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife which chronicles the origins and history of the number and all that it represents, including the concept of nothingness and its complement infinity.

The second book is The Mystery of the Aleph by Amir Aczel. This work follows the many mind-bending discoveries (the bulk of which dealt with properties of infinity) of mathematician Georg Cantor and the lapses into madness which too often followed.

If anyone is actually reading this sorry excuse for a blog, I hope you feel compelled to pick one or both of these books up.

Linked

I'm really loving the extent to which the readings for LIS 2000 and 2600 are dovetailing with my own interests. I was especially pleased to come across information about Paul Erdos, an incredibly prolific and delightfully eccentric Hungarian mathematician. I've always liked books about advanced math for laypersons (as I have pitifully little talent for the subject myself), but I especially like learning about the sometimes extraordinary lives and personalities of the individuals involved. If anyone else's interest was piqued, here's a link to a documentary about Erdos produced before his death. It's pretty dry, but interesting nonetheless.

N is a Number Pt. 1

Overwhelmed

I'm still struggling a bit to complete the required readings and assignments (including posting here) whilst maintaining other responsibilities, but I'm plugging along. Since the last post, I've finished Tim Berners-Lee's lecture on the semantic web and spent a while pouring over the Wikipedia entry on the concept. I couldn't possibly say that I fully comprehend all of the particulars, but I believe I have a rough understanding of the philosophical framework and functional possibilities and I think it's very cool. I can only imagine the enormous analytical potential inherent in the immense quantity of information already available online if properly incorporated into the semantic web's URI-RDF system. I'd love to contribute, but I fear I've neither the brainpower or time to do so anytime in the near future. For now, I'll patiently look forward to benefiting from the dedicated work of the many many people, much more capable than myself, that are developing "Web 3.0".

Blog Inaugural

Welcome to my mind-blowingly dynamic and epically enthralling mandatorily created blog! Stick around and maybe, just maybe, I'll post something of interest before the term has come to a close (full disclosure: I probably won't).

What am I up to, you ask? Oh, you didn't ask? Well, I'll tell you anyway: I've just now finished The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for LIS2000 after a grueling two day read-a-thon. After finding my way out from that dense thicket of language, I imagine that the bulk of our other readings will be like the contents of the back of a cereal box in comparison. Now to finish virtually every other reading assignment from this week and last that I've neglected in order to finish 'Structure'. In all honesty, I'm extremely frustrated to feel as though I'm playing catch-up from the start, but I also have faith that I'll be able to strike a more workable balance soon.