Wordshore

Blog reshuffling in slow progress. (Eventually) things American and Americana.

May 13th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: The public library and the forum

It is amusing when people use buzzwords to describe what they think is a new concept. And isn’t. Gamification is one such word, the concept, theory and application of which goes back into the 90s and before.

Social media is another. There were services before Facebook, Twitter and the rest – well before. Forums, in particular, were one method for people to build up a profile, add content, discuss, and so forth. This short post discusses a recent public library campaign, and the use of such a forum – which has now been operating for over a decade – in the campaign.

Lochwinnoch is a commuter village, about 20 miles southwest of Glasgow in Renfrewshire, Scotland. I bought my first house and lived there, a decade or so ago. On the social side, I ended up moderating the forum on the village website, and was elected onto the Community Council until we moved to the Outer Hebrides. I’m still in contact with a fair few people there, and hang out on the forum under the moniker of Groundhog Day (long but irrelevant story).

It’s a pretty town, with some good places to eat and drink, and a loch for doing sporty things in. It’s worth a visit.

And if you visit, you’ll find that it still has a public library.

In 2010, Renfrewshire Council decided that they wanted to move the library – or rather, the contents of it. The problem is, those contents were to be reduced drastically to just a few paperbacks and moved into the village hall, evicting the after-school club that used the space. This forum thread was the first warning and debate about it.

As you can see, it was pretty muddled as to what was happening; the council also wanted to close The Annex, an old sports building that had been neglected for decades and was obviously in an advanced state of disrepair. Much of the arguing throughout the campaign took place on the town website forum.

This is a famous/notorious bear pit for debate, and for a town of the size of Lochwinnoch generates a huge amount of online traffic. Over the last decade, the forum has been a rather incident-happy place, reflecting the busy nature of the town. It’s retrospectively moderated by a few people, mostly the senior couple (Barbara and Graeme) who set it up, with the usual courses of action for dealing with rogue poster being posts edited, deleted, then users banned. They do a good, and a fair, job of surgically removing clearly libelous material from the forum.

Though, as with all forums, it’s impossible to keep everyone happy. Some people complain bitterly because they have been censored or blocked. And a vocal minority in Lochwinnoch who don’t use it, hate it, often because it offers a means of mass dissemination and debate that they cannot control, or be the centre of. In rural communities, gossip and news acts often acts as a second currency, and forums disrupt this localised “soft information” economy. The owners/moderators of the forum and website have seen their fair share of legal threats – all of which have failed, due to a lack of substance in any of the allegations.

The forum is also notorious for attracting people who debate or argue under multiple identities for whatever reason, or for residents who hate each other and argue across many topics, over many years. Here’s a good example. Ironically, it was due to the forum that the website won the “Best community website in Scotland” award so many times in the last decade – to the extent that the award was discontinued. A pity, as the annual ceremonies were great. The multiple forum personality thing was itself debated by, ironically, several residents using multiple personalities.

A campaign group sprang up pretty quickly, complete with a “Keep Lochwinnoch Library in the Library” facebook group. They also made a pretty good video which detailed the nonsensical economics behind the argument for moving the library, and some of the aspects of their campaign:

As mentioned in the video, even at an early stage, there was some uncertainty on the ownership of the building…

14 official threads for information were started on the forum. However, most of the debates, arguing and sockpuppeting took place on several other forum threads. And while some people stuck to the facts e.g. for example one pointing out that 22,000 visitors to the library broke down to almost 2000 a month, from a population of only 2500, most of the rest argued.

People, forum users and non-forum users, wrote letters and campaigned.

The response of local councillors to residents complaints about the library closing was … not good. Not helped by councillors accidentally sending fruity emails to the wrong people. One of the local councillors returned to the village to do a presentation, putting the councils point of view with possibly the most selective bunch of statistics any of the audience had seen. This was quickly rebuffed by the local campaigners showing that the library was actually well used.

When the council indicated that they could maybe offload the library onto a community group, one such group put forward an alternative proposal, though not without controversy as to the feasibility. Alasdair Gray did a reading. A poster was made for downloading. Sockpuppeting and abuse degenerated (as it oft does) with legal threats against the forum owner – which (as usual)* did not come to anything. Another resident suggested withholding council tax. Lots of residents started taking out their maximum allocation of eight items. Letter writing to councillors became frenetic. The council held a “consultation” which was widely agreed to be a bit of a sham.

Meanwhile, the cash strapped council spent money elsewhere and tried to save money by replacing teachers with non-qualified people standing in front of a classroom. Seriously.

And, as per usual for online rural Scotland, the debate also became an arguing ground between Labour and SNP supporters.

And argumentative forum debates continued. Where it really took off were a number of residents arguing that the library should be moved, or closed, or – and this point was crucial – the existing library building being vacated. For some odd reason. “Numerous” anti-library residents joined the forum and argued against retaining the library building, often using the same style of writing, grammar or spelling mistakes.

Strange, that. As it turned out (there are ways that forum moderators can check this kind of thing) the number of real people arguing against the library staying in the library was in the single digits.

The low single digits.

In fact it seemed to be centred mostly (not totally) around one couple, who wouldn’t attend any of the protest meetings (repeatedly saying “too busy”) but who had the time to type several hundred posts. The couple ran a dog obedience training class and, as one of them posted on his facebook profile, were looking to expand into new premises, when such premises became available. Who knows why they wanted the library moved out of the library building. Guess we’ll never know, as most of their forum accounts were deactivated, and the remainder have been silent for a while. The behavior of the anti-librarian posters was best summarised in this post (Mickey Recounts is an anagram and also a sockpuppeter).

How did the library campaign end? Sort of well. And sort of not. It turned out that one eagle eyed resident spotted that the council could not dispose of the building and kick the library out. Cut to June 2011, and the councillor who did the presentation with the dodgy statistics sends this letter to residents.

And the council reduced costs anyway, as they “retired” two of the three librarians, leaving just Margaret as the lone qualified librarian in the building.

To quote Lesley from one of the forum threads:

I think that finally we can draw a line under the library issue now. We have 2 Labour and 1 SNP councillors and a council with a Labour majority. The Labour candidates said it was in their manifesto to leave our library where it is and even the SNP said at the meeting called by Lochinnoch Elderly Forum that they would not revisit the issue and the library would remain in the library building.

The whole thing was unnecessary, though. And I don’t believe for a second that it’s truly or permanently over. When the council next needs to reduce its budgetary spend – something that comes up every year – it’s quite possible that funding for books, for the last remaining member of staff, for opening hours, will be squeezed. That’s part of the problem with library campaigning; even if you win, it’s often a stay of execution. If you do manage to save your local public library, you have to use it and make sure it isn’t eventually killed, more slowly, in death by a thousand cuts.

Why is this a strange case? Because the case for moving the library was so badly made as to be bogus. And the real reason for the move was never clear. It’s possible that a developer had their eye on the library building and would have paid the council well for it. Or a business wanted it for their own purpose. Or some other reason, as the official one – of saving council money – was just false.

If you’re in Lochwinnoch, drop in to the library. It’s really nice inside; lots of things to browse; there are PCs for use, and some interesting local history material. Long may it stay open, be used, and be well used at that.

* – There have been several legal threats against the forum over the last decade, and it’s gotten to the point where the website maintainers – who do this for the community without payment – are bored with silly and empty threats. None have been credible. All have been from people aggrieved that someone has posted something they don’t agree with. Everyone has options; agree with something, disagree with something, ignore it, or start their own blog or forum.

Tags: CILIP, libraries, library, Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, savelibraries, ukpling, vftl, Voices for the Library
Posted in Libraries | 1 Comment »

May 13th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: Geocaching afternoon

A few words. I had to get some air, get out of the house, stretch the legs, calm the mind a little bit.

So, I went geocaching around Birmingham in the West Midlands, where I’m currently staying as the NHS patch me up. And I managed 9.5 miles, which after several weeks of being weak and unwell, was a bit of a surprise.

I looked for seven geocaches. Found four of them. Two more were in areas so full of non-geocachers they were pretty much impossible to get. The seventh one puzzles me, as it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I may try that one again.

A small cache (the terms micro and nano are used for caches of this size, or even smaller), magnetically attached to the inside of a metal plate:

Logging a cache find through the app:

A cache hidden inside a hollow metal pole:

…and what’s inside it:

Another tiny cache, and the reel inside it for signing, next to a smartphone for comparison:

And another tiny cache, in the hand.

All good fun.

Tags: Birmingham, cache, geocache, geocaching, west midlands
Posted in Libraries, Life | No Comments »

May 9th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: Use Libraries and Learn Stuff

Quick link to the online store: http://www.zazzle.com/geoshore

Quick link to the logo picture: Higher quality … Lower quality … Twitter icon

History

A few years ago now, I adapted (as many have done) the Keep Calm And Carry On World War Two slogan. Parodies and variations of the original are still popping up all the time, much to the anguish of hipster colleagues who, as usual, declared this meme “over” 20 minutes before it had begun.

I’m not sure why the ‘Use Libraries and Learn Stuff’ thing formed in my head, but it just seems logical and as simple as you can get.

Go into a library.
Use the services in it.
And you will learn stuff.

It’s that simple.

I stuck it on Flickr, then forgot about it.

After a while, I noticed various people were running with it on online services, such as Tumblr, Flickr and Twitter, and on their websites. The odd request came in to do something with it, so a few variations for use as e.g. icons on peoples twitter accounts, were knocked up.

Then some more requests came in, for posters (especially) and cards. A few of these were from library campaigners, and it turned out they’d been printing off copies of the logo and making protest signs with them. But this caused a problem in having low-quality printouts, as well as burning through the red ink cartridge of their inkjet printers at alarming rates.

So I knocked up a Zazzle and a Cafepress online store, and did the fiddling about to make some products for sale. The Cafepress ones were disappointing in terms of quality, so I closed that online store down. The Zazzle stuff was noticeably better quality, especially posters and cards, so I kept that running. Here’s what you get if you bought 20 cards and envelopes from the store; I’m very pleased with the sturdiness and print quality of these:

I sent off some cards in Christmas 2010 to various politicians connected with libraries (more to annoy or guilt-trip them), as well as some people in the media. No responses except a nice thank you from Jon Snow who presents Channel Four news. I also sent one to Buckingham Palace in the extremely remote hope of seeing it on the mantlepiece behind the Queen when she did her Christmas Day speech. No such luck. Oh well.

Interest died down, and sales went to less than one a month. Until a few months ago, when interest oddly started again. A look at the referrers for the Flickr pictures revealed that some traffic was due to the rise of Pinterest, and people putting the Use Libraries … logo on their Pinterest erm thing (wall? pinboard? virtual pretty space?).

So I’ve dusted off the Zazzle store – it’s still clunky, visually unappealing, and has an interface that’s a nightmare, but that’s what they provide – and added a few more products which should appear in the next day or two. Thankfully, the products look a heck of a lot better in real life than in the store.

The proceeds go mostly to Zazzle, who get around 90% of the price of each product sold. I get 10% so I’m not getting a fountain of money from this :-)

Using the image

1. Want to use it in a pro-library non-commercial manner? Then please do, and use as you see fit. No payment needed, and attribution is optional.

2. Want to use it in a pro-library manner and make a profit off it? Speak to me first.

3. Want to use it in an anti-library manner? No you can’t. Get lost. And go an educate yourself as to the benefits of libraries.

Those quick links, again

Quick link to the online store: http://www.zazzle.com/geoshore

Quick link to the logo picture: Higher quality … Lower quality … Twitter icon

Tags: book, card, information, knowledge, learn, libraries, notecard, poster, stuff, use, Zazzle
Posted in Libraries | No Comments »

May 9th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: Marking funding proposals is fun

No, I’m serious. An expansion of tweets from earlier in the day.

I’ve been assessing/marking/commenting on funding proposals from various UK funding bodies for the past decade or so, most being for programmes concerning digital games, or virtual worlds, in education. Perhaps I’m a little mad, but I find it really enjoyable.

There’s several benefits to marking proposals. It’s satisfying. You get to see what direction the field is moving in. References and citations in proposals are often of interest. And, so long as you don’t go off on an ego or power trip, then you can have a positive influence over what projects come about, and how funding is allocated.

On that last point – with marking comes a great responsibility. What you comment and mark will directly affect the lives of a lot of people. What they do. What they earn. What they produce. A particular rung on their career ladders. If you aren’t comfortable with this, or you have problems with bias, favoritism or grudges, then simply don’t mark funding proposals.

It’s also interesting to see how funding proposal writers cope with emerging concepts, paradigms, and buzzwords. Take the buzzword “gamification”, which is a mangled business speak word referencing an old concept (people have been trying to turn things into games, or add game elements to non-game tasks or systems, for many years). In the last batch of funding proposals I assessed*, approaches included:

Enthusiastically using the word.
Cynically using the word, and dissecting it.
Impartially using the word, and putting it into a historical context.
Not mentioning the word altogether.

I should stress there’s no right or wrong approach here.

And there’s a few disadvantages, to marking funding proposals. It’s rarely paid work. The systems of assessment have gotten gradually more complex and fiddly over the years, and sometimes you feel like a robotic checklist ticker. The variation in proposal quality for the same call can be unnerving. A *lot* of reading is involved, and you have to take it all in. Some funding bodies give you little time to do a good, reflective, job. You can’t tweet or discuss openly anything you’ve read. And very occasionally (has happened to me), you will come across someone slagging off your previous work in their proposal – and because of the confidentiality process, you can’t call them out on it, ever.

Some tips for proposal writers

I can’t give specific examples but here’s a few things that come up over and over.

1. And the most important. Ask for funding for the stuff the funding brief or circular says you can have. Not what you think you should have. It’s difficult to believe at times, but some academics/institutions still do submit proposals that don’t make it past the first stage because of this.

2. Yes, these are competitive times, but if you promise the earth on a shoestring budget to try and be the “best value for money” bid, you may get marked down or out as being unrealistic.

3. There is rarely any justification for the director to present the findings of your project in another continent, so don’t include eye-watering expenses so he can do so, even if he has told you to include them. Dissemination nowadays can be a cheap activity. Should be a cheap activity.

4. Spell check. Grammar check. Check your budget adds up. Get someone else to check the whole thing before it is despatched. If it’s for a UK funding body, use UK language, not US language.

5. Justify, justify, justify. The ideal funding proposal outlines something new and unique, which otherwise wouldn’t be funded, and is argued convincingly with reference to other works.

6. Humor very rarely works in funding proposals (often in real life) and I’m puzzled by what appears to be a recent trend in this. Did someone influential recently say something about winning markers over in this way? I just find it odd – especially as most funding proposal circulars put a strict word or page limit on what you can submit. Just avoid this.

7. Don’t repeat yourself. See previous point about page limit.

8. Yes, yes, interesting and well argued. But what exactly will your project have produced by the end of its funding. If it isn’t clear by the time the whole funding proposal has been read, then there’s a problem.

9. Don’t resubmit a failed proposal from a previous year with just a few things changed. Veteran proposal markers will spot this. In relatively small academic fields, we may even remember the previous failed proposal. Resubmits rarely read well, even if a few of them do get funding.

10. Please label graphs and charts clearly. There seems to be some kind of persistent problem with this in UK Higher Education proposals, and more than once have puzzled “so what do these units mean?” or even “what units are they altogether?”

Anyway, no funding body is going to phone you out of the blue and say “We’ve just found a load of money. Have it to spend on your pet project idea.” So, if you do have an idea, get writing.

(* check with funding body and they are happy with this post)

Tags: ACE, AHRC, Eduserv, EPSRC, ESRC, HEFCE, JISC, LTS, MRC, SFC
Posted in Learning, Libraries | No Comments »

May 1st, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: Why I unfollowed you on Twitter

I’ve unfollowed a fair few people on Twitter over the last month. A couple of these have noticed and asked “Why?”, which is always an amusing question – asking someone why they’ve unfollowed you on a social media system runs the risk of getting a negative, personal or hurtful response back.

My own number of followers goes up and down daily; so be it. Some people probably find my tweets boring, irrelevant, offensive, crude, too frequent, politically incorrect or different to their own. Whatevs. Getting obsessed, or worried, about being unfollowed is unhealthy – and, pointless. Social media connections are simply not the same as friendship connections. Following someone on e.g. twitter is merely stating “I wish to receive your tweets automatically in my tweet feed”. It does not mean “I now regard you as a friend” or “I like you unconditionally” or “I have more respect for what you say than all of the people who I do not follow”.

This is illustrated by the reasons why I chose to unfollow some people. Non of these were agonisingly long decisions; there simply is not the time to have a long think about whether to follow someone, or not follow them, or to unfollow them. If you do invest lots of time in that activity, you need to seriously have a hard and honest look at how you spend your very finite time. Some of the people I’ve unfollowed I still regard as friends in the real world. And some of the people I still follow I don’t regard as a friend(*), and possibly don’t even like, or would avoid in the real world. In some cases – certainly not all cases – I’m following you on twitter because your tweets are useful, but I certainly don’t want to go out for a curry with you.

To ram this point bluntly home; see this graphic from xkcd.org. If this happened to you – and at some point in your life you will become seriously ill or die – then do you want a large chunk of the “before the bad time” episode of your life timeline to just be “considered in great details who to follow, or unfollow, on social media networks.”?

Anyway; why I unfollowed some people lately:

You tweet-ranted about the “evils of advertising” in exaggerated detail. Then, straight afterwards, tweeted every time someone bought a copy of your fucking book. (Not a book about sex; it was just deeply annoying to see the same tweet over and over). Strike out for hypocrisy.
You bitched about your ex, openly, in public, in intimate gynecological detail. Whether he or she was a good person or a bad person, I didn’t want to know these details. They’re probably false anyway as you obviously hate them. Also – any future partner who comes across your tweets will run a mile away.
You made unamusing jokes about rape, sexual abuse or domestic violence. Unacceptable; to me, anyway. One of the downsides of twitter in particular is “trending topics”, where you become aware that you’re sharing the same social network with a lot of people who have a very different mindset to your own. That’s one thing, but when people who you had respect for, and thought were, well, better than that start picking up on the very dodgy hashtags and trends, it’s enormously disappointing. Not sure I want to spend time with you in real life, let alone on a social network.
92 tweets in one day (yes, counted them) was too much, blocked out much other stuff from my tweet stream. While tweeting a conference is good and often useful, tweeting literally every sentence a speaker said: not good.
“The library is dead.” Oh just fuck off.
“This [bad thing done by right wing politicians] disgusts me.” Here’s the thing. I agreed with most, possibly all, of your tweets. But with a 24/7 avalanche of news, and much of it bad things done by conservative politicians in the US and the UK, I know what you’re going to say, and seeing many tweets per day – or hour – of the same ilk means I ignore them and miss your occasionally useful tweets. In other words; your tweets are completely predictable, so it’s a waste of time reading them.
[When no football on TV] “Sport A is boring. Sport B is boring. Sport C is boring. Sport XYZ is boring.” [When football on TV] “Oh great shot. Nearly scored. Another shot. Oh he misses.” Yadda yadda yadda. There’s a peculiarity with football in particular that more than a few fans seem remarkably and vocally intolerant of everything that is not football. I don’t like it for many reasons (who benefits financially, and the violent culture which surrounds it, being two) but I accept that many do like it. Tweet that you find football boring, however, when there’s a football match on and my god the reaction is often extreme and just bizarre. Even from above average intelligent people who you mutually follow, and seem to undergo a 90 minute temporary lobotomy when the match starts.
“I’ve donated to [worthy cause]. And so should you.” Do not tell me how I should spend my money. Do not try and guilt-trip me. At best, come up with a dispassionate reason. You glowing in self-worthiness of donating is not a reason, irrelevant of the cause.
“Here’s my latest blog post:” (nothing till next day) “Here’s my latest blog post:” (nothing till next day) “Here’s my latest…”. One I am guilty of myself, and I will probably hypocritically do by tweeting this post as soon as it’s finished and live. If you do this, at least try and tweet other things, rather than use twitter solely for self-promotion.
“I’ve changed my avatar to protest [cause x]; change yours too”. “My twitter count for this week is up 3 followers, 14 retweets, 7 being an asshat, whatever these automated things vomit out.” “My klout score today is 73.3% pretentious douchebag.” “I have joined InstaHipstaGram. Follow this link to join.” One or two automated messages; okay. A regular flow of them, and they’re all vacuous; bye.

The common thread? To save time, and get a higher quality over quantity information feed from the collective herd of twitter.

Off the top of my head, that’s just my personal list of reasons why I’ve unfollowed some people in the last month or two. Your list will be different. Each to their own. Some people use filters to block out hashtags, or people who talk about certain things, but after some experimenting, it’s yet more time spent/lost on fiddling about with people and what they say.

(*) insecure people: please don’t DM me with “Did you mean me when you typed that?” :-)

Tags: connection, contact, follow, friend, grumpy old man, network, social media, tweet, twitter, unfollow
Posted in Libraries, Life | 13 Comments »

April 27th, 2012 by John

10 years since the last conversation with Pioneer 10

Today, April 27th 2012, the Space Shuttle Enterprise will arrive in New York. There’ll be lots of media coverage for something so photogenic, and thousands of pictures and amateur videos of the flight will be posted on social media and online newspapers.

That’s all good, but arguably the anniversary of something even more astounding in space exploration also happens today. And it probably won’t get much of a mention in any of the news media.

There have been many spacecraft launched out of the earth’s atmosphere. Orbiters, rockets to the moon, rockets to other planets, to asteroids, or even comets.

But few have gone on to leave the planets of the solar system and travel onwards towards … well, the stars, basically. Just four so far; Pioneer 10 and 11, and Voyager 1 and 2, with New Horizons due to join them as the fifth escapee in a few years, once it’s finished having a good look at Pluto.

Pioneer 10 was the first. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the last intelligible “conversation” between machines here on Earth, and Pioneer 10, when it transmitted 33 minutes of telemetry (clean data) from 80.22 astronomical units away.

Or, to put it another way, a spacecraft made with 60s and early 70s technology, that had been flying for over 30 years and was nearly 7.5 billion miles away, used its 28 volt power unit to successfully transmit data to Earth.

Surely this is one of the greatest scientific and technological achievements ever?

I’ll just repeat that. Nearly 7.5 billion miles away. And the data was received. But now, if I walk just a few streets to the south of here, then my smartphone reception disappears and I can no longer receive or transmit information.

****

From the now-archived NASA page on Pioneer 10 (November 5th 2004):

Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Famed as the most remote object ever made by man through most of its mission, Pioneer 10 is now 8 billion miles away.

Pioneer 10 made its closest encounter to Jupiter some thirty years ago on 3 December 1973, passing within 81,000 miles of the cloudtops. This historic event marked humans’ first approach to Jupiter and opened the way for exploration of the outer solar system – for Voyager to tour the outer planets, for Ulysses to break out of the ecliptic, for Galileo to investigate Jupiter and its satellites, and for Cassini to go to Saturn and probe Titan. During its Jupiter encounter, Pioneer 10 imaged the planet and its moons, and took measurements of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, radiation belts, magnetic field, atmosphere, and interior. These measurements of the intense radiation environment near Jupiter were crucial in designing the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft.

Pioneer 10 made valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of our solar system until the end of its science mission on 31 March 1997. The Pioneer 10 weak signal continued to be tracked by the DSN as part of an advanced concept study of communication technology in support of NASA’s future interstellar probe mission. The power source on Pioneer 10 finally degraded to the point where the signal to Earth dropped below the threshold for detection in its latest contact attempt on 7 February, 2003. Pioneer 10 will continue to coast silently as a ghost ship through deep space into interstellar space, heading generally for the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). Aldebaran is about 68 light years away and it will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it.

****

In a few months time, Pioneer 10 will be 10 billion miles away from Earth. Here’s the plaque, designed by Carl Sagan, that it carries for any curious alien races to decipher (and hopefully they won’t do this):

It is good to remember that the most amazing, challenging things mankind has done in space aren’t always the most visible, such as Space Shuttles roaring off launchpads. Often, it’s the stuff that happens far beyond eyesight, or outside of the visible spectrum. Here’s Isaac Asimov talking a bit about Pioneer 10:

The physics department at the University of Iowa did much of the monitoring of Pioneer 10 (and other spacecraft). Their page, Termination of Pioneer 10′s Mission concludes with:

Pioneer 10 called home for over thirty years of spaceflight. Its future is now transferred from NASA to Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler, neither of whom could be reached for comment.

Tags: Enterprise, Jupiter, NASA, pioneer, shuttle, space, Space Shuttle
Posted in America, Life | No Comments »

April 23rd, 2012 by John

Like: The Man In The Arena

April 23rd is a day notable for numerous things, such as Edmund Ironside coming to the throne (1016), King Charles II doing the same (1661), and much more recently, the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum.

But it’s also the anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt, fifth cousin of FDR, giving his “The Man In The Arena” speech in 1910, shortly after he finished his stint as President of the United States of America.

It’s a particularly powerful speech, up there with the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln, or Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon”. The key passage is:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

In this third decade of mass Internet use, where seemingly everyone is in the cheap seats looking down to the arena floor, on social media or the comments sections of online newspapers or news channels, on a thousand service and person and industry “ratings” websites, it seems particularly apt. Everyone is a critic; “this is no good, this will not work, this is wrong, this person failed”. And on the counterside, with the use of services such as Tumblr and Pinterest, everyone also point at things and say “this is good, I like it, look at it, you might like it too, I’m going to share it with you”.

It’s not the greatest coincidence so many websites have ratings systems, for content, services and comments, where you click an up-thumb or a down-thumb. Everyone gets to be the Roman emperor in the arena for a brief second, except that instead of a fearful and adoring crowd, and a life and death decision on a whim, the thumb-clicker merely adds or subtracts a 1 from a digital tally. It’s … not really the same. More like a field of indistinguishable rabbits, hopping around, thinking bunnily “Do I like this blade of grass, or do I not?”

But non of it is making, or achieving something. Unless you count a thousand likes on your Pinterest picture, or a thousand retweets, as something. But will you remember it in a years time? Or, if you do, even care? Or will you remember every thing that you approved/liked, or disapproved/unliked? Any of them.

The real achievements come with battle, hard work, uncertainty, dedication. Making the world a little different post-battle to how it was before. The things Teddy said, and alluded to. The things that take more than a few clicks on a thumb or ‘like’ icon while you’re sitting on your butt, staring at the screen.

Stride into the arena. Do your thing, that thing, the thing you want to do, need to do to feel fulfilled. Risky or not, succeed or fail, you’ve had an adventure, made a story, made some content, an anecdote, to remember. Because you tried. The critics? Always been critics, always will be. But when you both reach old age, you’ll be the one with the life story, and the satisfaction, for having fought.

Rather than the critic who just continually ‘liked’ or ‘disliked’ things in an stream of such items on the screen. You do not need their approval.

So stride into the arena…

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April 13th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide

I was delighted to get my hands on a copy of this book. Although I’ve never met the author, Jessamyn West, we have communicated (ironically only online), and she has been an advocate and campaigner, for many years, on library services and librarians being enablers for people to independently get the knowledge and information they need, online and off, to better their lives.

Jessamyn went to library school nearly 20 years ago, at the time of Telnet, Gopher (text-based files, structured in hierarchies) and just as websites were starting to be built. As someone who built the first library school website in the UK in 1993, to pretty much universal “what’s the point?” scepticism from others in the department, those times are remembered fondly. As was the increasing rush of people over the next few years to get online, using the Web in particular, as they discovered there *was* a point. But, as Jessamyn points out, even now in 2012, Internet access and use is uneven: “And yet, I still sign people up for their first email account even now.” There is still a vital need to teach and enable people of all ages in using online information effectively.

Jessamyn points out that her book “is not a manual”. Rather, it discusses and addresses the root causes of the digital divide, instead of ignoring the individual nature of those not online and assuming – as many other training guides do – that there is a typical, homogenous, offline and technologically disadvantaged person. Unusually, this particular book is written from the perspective that people have reasons for being offline (which may or may not be within their control), whereas many other guides in this area is written solely from why people should be online (therefore assuming, often wrongly, that they can and have the prerequisite IT skills).

As Jessamyn discusses in the book, some of the reasons why people are not online are social or economic, and it sometimes helps to know those reasons why so they can be trained, or helped, in an appropriate way. For example, people on the lowest incomes are the least likely to have broadband access at home; these are arguably the economic demographic who need it the most. One of the works Jessamyn cites, by the American Library Association, states that 71% of libraries report that they are the only source of free access to computers and the internet in their community. In these economically turbulent times, with job hunting and CV creation and updating needing IT skills, such access isn’t a luxury but a necessity for most adults. Librarians are often the main or sole facilitator of services that can make the difference between a person being employed, or unemployed.

Jessamyn discusses this in some detail, with some of the expectations and pressures put onto the library service (and therefore librarians), and how they can adapt to successfully serving the online information needs of patrons – especially as these needs inevitably change when new forms of technology become mainsteam (e.g. the uptake in Kindle ownership over the recent Christmas period). An element of dealing with patrons successfully that the book covers well is overcoming incorrect assumptions about the Internet. Just about everyone has an idea of what the net is – but that doesn’t mean that their idea is correct.

This isn’t JUST a book for librarians, or information professionals. Or, for people who are not yet online or able to use a computer, but feel a curiosity or need to do so. It is indeed useful for those people – arguably essential, as there is little out there that is adequately written for the many who are (still) offline. Many of these pre-existing guides are patronising, generic or dated in nature (as a side point, other books that cheerily state or imply on the front cover that the reader is a “dummy” or an “idiot” are puzzling in their approach). But, this particular book is useful for funders, policy makers, sociological researchers, politicians (especially those who strangely assume that all information is online and anyone can just somehow magically get it), teachers, the media, and members of the public who are called on by family and friends for IT help. This book is a collection of sound advice and straight facts that sometimes contradict the (often incorrect) consensus or mainstream media view on who is not “online” and why.

The book is written in an informal, but clear and accurate style e.g. “…if a computer is doing something hinky, there is a reason.” This makes for a rapid and easy read, but the text is still of substantive content. Above all, the book is indeed useful for librarians and IT trainers. Not just inexperienced ones, but “old hands” who have been doing this for years. It’s easy to recycle the old material, forget how every aspect of technology has changed, and forget the social or economic reasons why patrons need to get online. This book helped to overturn some assumptions I’d unknowingly accumulated after 18 years of teaching people how to get to “stuff” online, either through laziness or ignorance, and I’m hopefully a better trainer for reading it. For example, I’ve never thought before of telling patrons what the symbol for the on/off button is and to look out for it, despite it often being in a different place on whatever computer(s) they may use outside of the library. One of those obvious, but essential, things that slips under the training radar.

So this book serves as both an introductory guide, and a refresher, for librarians and information professionals. Despite the occasional uniquely American or possibly rural Vermont word (in all cases, easy to work out what is meant), the book is useful for librarians in other countries, based in locales both rural and urban. I’ve read many books and guides on how information professionals should assist those members of the public who have few or no IT or online skills; these texts vary alarmingly in quality. “Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide” is one of the very few I’d summarise as “essential” for information professionals.

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April 8th, 2012 by John

TO MOVE: #curioussounds at #fierce2012

Sigh. I’m starting to speak in hashtags. Perhaps we all are; evolution of the wired.

To clarify; more by accident than design, I went to part of the Birmingham Fierce Festival for 2012 yesterday. This particular set of events took place in and around Birmingham Symphony Hall, with an appropriately loose theme of sound.

My first trip to an event at the Symphony Hall happened in 2009. It wasn’t good. I went to a classical music concert with my ex. We hated each other, then and now. Plus, classical music I’ve always found intimidating live, due to a childhood where it was forcefully made clear to me, over and over, that I shouldn’t get involved in such forms of art as I was working class (most of the kids at first two primary schools I went to were middle class – I was not). I was allowed, once, to play the triangle in the school orchestra, but as the cow of a headmistress (she used nettle stings stroked down the arms as a unique punishment) informed the audience at the time, this was only because the kid who was supposed to play it was ill.

I hope that if there is a hell, she’s screaming and roasting in it. And the only sound she can hear is me playing the triangle, for all eternity.

So classical music, and everything that goes with it, and many forms of culture still bring out the simmering hatred and resentment in me. Illogical, but it’s just the way it is. You are who you are.

Thankfully, Fierce Festival wasn’t about posh people being snobby and exclusive and pretentious, and pretending they somehow “owned” culture because (a) it was sophisticated and (b) they were wealthy. It was pretty much a random selection of events, most of which I went to.

Behind the organ

This was the thing I spotted online late morning that alerted me to the event, and the specific reason I went. In the end, it turned out to be the one disappointing thing; there’s nothing to see really behind the organ, though it is impressive and very tall, from the base to the top of it.

(Look, I’ve edited this section over and over, and there’s no way I can make it innuendo-free. Sorry.)

Feral choir

Oh, these were good. I sat on the extreme front side to get a close view, and it was interesting watching how the conductor physically coaxed the sounds out of the volunteers he had been working with. From bird songs, to sounds similar to those in 2001 (see the clip), to laughter, talking, babbling, muttering, the rule was – no singing. This worked, and it was enjoyable both listening to, and watching, the performers. Here they are:

Balloon release

Balloons, filled with helium, are released and float to the ceiling of the Symphony Hall. Each balloon is tagged with a harmonica, and so makes a one-note sound as it rises. After a few minutes, the balloon deflates and floats back down.

This was enjoyable to watch and listen to. And also to listen to with your eyes closed, as the balloon rose in front of you.

Speak and Spell

Ah, this was fun. More of this kind of art/music at events, please.

Brian Duffy set up five Speak and Spell machines, and made them “perform” as individual units, and as a kind of digital choir. Seriously. There’s more on what he does and how he does it here.

This required some concentration, as to the casual listener it may have sounded like a lot of random digital beeps and squeaks. Towards the end, there was a convergence in sound, as each instrument played the same, but slightly off in timing from each other, to create some new layer of sound (there’s probably a word for this). Great stuff.

See the side notes at the bottom of this post for a nudge on how to correctly promote this kind of event.

8 bit games and DJs

Wandering upstairs, I found the cool kids and their kit. This was the 8 bit crew, who combine DJing 8 bit video game (and other) music, with other kinds of digital sounds. In addition, a few of them bring along a nice array of video game consoles stretching back the last few decades, for members of the public to try.

And one of those consoles was the Sega Dreamcast, which has been, and still is, the most influential piece of technology in my life to date. There’s a very long blog entry on why for another day, but I can honestly say that the Dreamcast, and the games on it, changed my life more than anything else. Including the Internet.

So I played the Dreamcast for two hours. Rez, Ecco the Dolphin, Chu Chu Rocket, Quake 3 Arena, Shenmue; heck, there was a good selection of games there. Here’s me, absolutely thrashing some four year old kids at Chu Chu Rocket (picture by Pete Ashton). Like life, you don’t learn anything by easily winning every game, so it was a good experience for them:

Various members of the public came over and either watched, often puzzled (Dreamcast games were refreshingly unconventional), or had a go, or in a couple of cases attempted to rudely push in when other people were playing. And to the parent who appeared and immediately tried an Alpha-male “My son will play this game now” when others were in mid-game, I make no apology for humiliating you in front of your children. Don’t cross my path again. And never interrupt a serious games player mid-game, especially when they’re 230 pounds and 6 foot 3 tall… ;-)

It’s odd playing games in a very public arena and with an audience. Even stranger with DJs doing various … things a few feet away. Possibly the most surreal experience of the year was playing the mellow and calming Ecco the Dolphin while a sweaty, jumpy DJ was repeatedly screaming the same word into an amped microphone, close to my right ear.

When I needed a break from Dreamcast play, made a small video of the consoles there. Like the other videos on this post, it was made with my “Not made for video” cheap 2004 camera, hence the quality. Or lack of.

A few side notes on the day, for organisers of this and similar events.

1. “Family events” and “Events children may like” are not quite the same. Brian’s event with the Speak and Spell machines was packed with families with their children. By the time it had finished, most of them were long gone, many under the – wrong – impression that they were going to hear soothing baby melodies, lullabies, or the like (I overheard one muttering that they expected the Tellytubby theme music). It might be a good idea to make it clearer what kind of sounds may be heard at a particular event in future, so parents and children aren’t dismayed when they, instead, encounter something closer to Kraftwerk on Acid (which was pretty good).

2. Some volunteers in society perform admirable roles. Trained lifeguards; or people who can do CPR before a medic arrives. However, information-possessive pensioner women are often not good with the public but, like alcoholics, have been the bane of my life for decades. Be they secretaries of community councils (“There’s no need for anyone to see the correspondance”) or volunteers in the sham that are “community libraries” (“Oh, we don’t want to have that kind of book on the shelf”), these people are an obstructive pain and crop up over and over. And so, a few of the volunteers at Fierce were, as several of us encountered. One in particular, who was supposed to answer questions and give directions, was ferociously keen to give as little information as possible, actively preventing me from reading the information sheets she had. I don’t like to be this close (insert mental image of very small gap here) to throttling a seventy year old lady, because it never looks good, no matter how justified. Just, please, don’t let these people eagerly gain “control” over information, any information, no matter how crucial or minor, as it quickly goes to their head.

But apart from those two carps; it was an enjoyable, open, creative afternoon of various events.

And long live the Dreamcast. If my DNA is ever analysed, the two strands of the spiral will probably be Sega and Nintendo. Nowt wrong with that.

Tags: #curioussounds, #fierce2012, #sh21
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February 26th, 2012 by John

Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass first popped up on my reading radar during a first read of Blue Highways, where the author mentions packing this book to read as he travels around America. I’ve been curious since then as to why William Least-Heat Moon (yes, that’s his real name and his book I’ll review another time) chose this book in particular. Since then, I’ve become more aware of Leaves of Grass as an important book within the canon of American literature, and the controversial and lively debate surrounding its author – to the extent that Walt and Mark are the two people who adorn my Kindle cover. But it’s only the last few weeks that I’ve properly read Leaves from cover to cover.

Poetry is not a form of literature I’m at ease with. There’s cultural and upbringing reasons for this discomfort. Ironically when very young I won a national poetry competition, more as an act of rebellion against being told that culture such as literature, poetry, classical music and other “fine arts” wasn’t the kind of thing that people of “my type” (farming lower working class) should or could do. That was by the headmistress of the primary school I endured, but hopefully for many reasons she’s now burning in whatever kind of purgatory exists for people of “her type”.

Anyway, that’s why I’m not going to attempt to analyse Leaves of Grass; it’ll just read like some fumbling junior school literature review 101 essay. I’ll just write about what I read.

The edition I perused was a 1986 reprint of the 1959 Viking Press print of the original 1855 text, borrowed from Birmingham Central Library. The first version of Leaves, as Walt tweaked and fiddled about with it for the rest of his life, seemingly never happy with the body of work (typical Virgo, perhaps). The editor of this edition, Malcolm Cowley, added a lengthy introduction and analysis of his own which, for me, didn’t really add or shed any new light on the core work. It speaks for itself pretty well.

Leaves is partially a kind of observation of America as it was 160 years ago, the people in it, what they do, how they go about their business. It’s also partially about the author, as a person, a human people, a physical and emotional being, and as an American. The second paragraph of the original work begins:

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

So I guess it’s interesting, not just from a literature perspective, but from a historical perspective. For example, there’s a rather graphic retelling of a retelling of the massacre at the Alamo (of the accuracy, we are not sure), of how people of trades travel around their country, of what they wear and what they eat. And there is mention, descriptions, of slaves and slavery; for example:

The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him
…
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at the table, my firelock leaned in the corner.

It’s a very person-based piece of work. There’s probably a deep and meaningful poetry phrase that means “person-based”, but that’ll do for me. And Americans, leading American lives, is the element that most reoccurs in the text; for example:

The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shoregoing passengers.
The cleanhaired Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill.
The canal-boys trots on the towpath – the bookkeeper counts at his desk – the shoemaker waxes his thread
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin leggings

Walt obviously takes pleasure in observing Americans being themselves, and makes no secret of this:

And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

Speaking of observing women, Leaves of Grass was controversial in its day and for a long time thereafter because of the “explicit” nature of the work. It isn’t, of course, explicit in terms of the low-grade Internet pornography of today. But Walt doesn’t hide his often celebratory thoughts regarding the human body and nakedness, which appear frequently, or his musings about sex. To an extent that a subtext of Leaves of Grass could arguably be “I really want to get laid more”. For example:

Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

Voices of sexes and lusts … voices veiled, and I remove the veil

I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
And tighten her all night to my thighs and lips

Despite my lack of poetry experience, I did enjoy reading Leaves of Grass fully. It’s a collection of poems and texts that, for me anyway, has to be read in pretty much one go in order to get some kind of grasp on the work.

It’s also useful as a historical timeline marker in the compressed, accelerated history of America. This work was published in the decade before the civil war, and less than 80 years after independence – but this is still recent enough that there are people alive today whose grandparents would have been alive then and would have recognised the America, and Americans, described by Walt. The relative “recent-ness” of the text, compared to European historical descriptive poetry which can be many centuries old, is what makes Leaves of Grass still easily readable, and the people and places within it recognisable.

Tags: America, history, Leaves of Grass, literature, poetry, sex, Walt Whitman
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