the king is dead…again

John Blyberg has a nice commentary up re Libber 2.0 stuff; some folk are recanting, some are stopping to question. I think Farkas hit the point well when she commented:

“When you have something as amorphous as Library 2.0, it can be interpreted in so many ways. Some people see it as being all about technology. Some see it more as a service philosophy. Others see it more about organizational change.”

It’s probably fair to say that a bunch of folk have got caught up on the tech toys side (nothing wrong with that, I love toys too) and not been so successful on fitting it in with their workflows, or their library structure. As I’ve occasionally commented, online and off, I still reckon the bookmobile remains one of the best examples of library 2.0 in action. It’s about connecting with your patrons, it’s about meeting them in their space. A thought I hadn’t considered before, the bookmobile is a thing where patrons invite it into their spaces, where the library says “Hi, we’ve got a book delivery service, would you like us to visit?”. Rather than the recent 2.0 approach of, “hey! We’re in your space, come talk to us”. I don’t know if that’s a fair or even accurate, representation.

There has been a sense in some areas, that library folk are jumping into various spaces like facebook, myspace, flickr, etc and going “we’re here…”. Yet at the same time I think it’s been useful for folk to gain experience in these things, to try them out, play with the levers and buttons. If, as a result, folk re-examine their workplace, think about why they do what they do, consider possibilities for improvement, then that strikes me as a good thing. I’ve been playing with 2.0ish stuff myself and it’s fun, similarly I used to be really active on usenet many years ago, and the occasional MUD, and IRC. These days, 2.0 stuff is similar but with pictures

conferencing and stuff

I’ve had a couple of bits of nice news in the last couple of months. I had been part of a group paper for VALA, unfortunately whether it be my inability to write a paper collaboratively or simply continuing personal dramas, I failed to contribute to it. Actually it’s not necessarily an inability to collaborate, it could just be that I see deadlines as fluid and flexible whereas everyone else meets them While I’m sad that I let folk down, I’m also glad that they got the paper done without me. I’ve also been keen to get my name taken off the paper and requested it a couple of times. Got a very nice email in the last week asking if I’d be ok with my name being removed given my lack of contribution – the person in question had missed my emails requesting the same and I’m guessing was rather relieved when I happily responded that removing my name would be fine In other news, I’ve been asked to chair a session at Beyond the Hype in a couple of weeks. That at least I can do, and do on time, and as I know all 3 folk in my session, should be able to mostly adlib it. Well, I’ll be reading up on all 3 papers and people anyway because adlibbing works best for me, when I have a good foundation of knowledge. Preparation does wonders and it means if my muse fails on the day, I have a fallback position.

almost there

I haven’t added the updated NFS modules to my eee yet however I have been playing around with options for mounting the SD card. Said options were successful which means I can insert a line

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/sd_card -o defaults,umask=0

into the startup config file (not sure where that is yet) and that will mean that the SD card will be active every time I start up and importantly, I’ll be able to write to it without going into the linux superuser mode. The “umask=0″ bit allows regular folk to create/delete/write. At the moment, all I have to do is enter the sudo… line at the command prompt and hit enter. Though I’m also wondering if “vfat” is the right setting as my SD’s file system is FAT16 whereas the one used in the guide was FAT32. Regardless, it works as is. It may well be the case that I don’t need to install the new NFS module now. According to Niel1952, it may be enough to disable the device detection script (to prevent the file manager from opening on startup when it detects the SD). I think that combined with mounting the SD on boot will mean all the mods I want to do (for the short term at least) will be complete and I can start using the eee properly…well ok, I’ll still play some

when less is not scary

Hmmm…while playing with my Eee some more, I realised that a side effect of installing the 2GB kernel was that my SD card was no longer accessible. That probably relates to NFS issues also described in the eee forum. So I’m guessing I need to download the NFS archive also described on the site which includes the updated modules. As I know a bit about boot menus now, it’s easy to choose between booting into 1 GB (with SD) or 2GB (without SD) mode. That will suffice until I’m able to update NFS so that the 2GB boot will support the SD card.

memory revisited

The evolution of my Eee continues. On Friday, I popped into what I think is MSY’s new Sydney store and bought 2GB of memory for my Eee for $72 (this is the better quality Kingston card, I had planned to buy the $55 Transcend memory but they were out of the 2GB version). Unfortunately the version of Xandros that ASUS has installed on the Eee has a hardcoded limit of supporting 1GB, however a lovely person on the Eee forum has recompiled the source code for the Xandros linux kernel to support 2GB. Following the instructions on the Eee wiki to the letter, my Eee now happily boots in 2GB mode…and it worked first time…phew! As a side effect I now have a rescue mode should I stuff it up in the future. I’ve also added an image as my background which required creating a desktop file for the image so that Xandros would recognise it (otherwise it was lost each reboot – took a few days to work that one out).

Upgrading the kernel to support 2GB was the last step I needed to do before I could start using the Eee properly. It wasn’t a necessary step but as I like to open a lot of programs at once (not to mention lots of tabs in firefox), I figured 2Gb was probably essential, as I have run out of memory on my 1GB thinkpad. I figured installing a new kernel was the thing most likely to kill my Eee so I’ve held off doing much with it til that was done. Thankfully it’s been a painless experience and I’ve been picking up old, old, old *nix skills once more. I still need to mount the SD card properly and set it so that it doesn’t start file manager on bootup. I’m thinking that should be less nerve wracking than a kernel install.

king of the mountain

News to hand is that Sir Edmund Hillary has died today. He and Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the summit of Mt Everest in 1953. A legendary kiwi and Helen Clark, the NZ PM probably sums it up best.

memories

Hmmmm just noticed on download squad that someone has got the AmigaOS running on an OLPC…now can I get that for my eee As far as I can tell from that article there will be an emulation that runs under linux which suggests I can have it on a usb stick.

dead computers

Well some dead, some empty, some old. Been clearing up stuff again and been visibly reminded that I have a chunk of old computer gear I need to get rid of. There’s a chunk I’m keeping too but a full height empty tower and a 19″ CRT (that I bought cheap from a mate and never ended up using) are just taking up space, plus a dead half height tower, a maybe working half height tower, all being many years old, and other bits. Hmmm then there’s the stuff I’ve never used but would sorta like to keep including an old HP-UX box (pizza box sized), a green screen terminal, I think there’s an old Sun SPARCstation there too, plus a couple of my old amigas, and my first computer, the System 80.

I had considered taking them to Reverse Garbage as I recall seeing a chunk of old computers and will still do so if I can, need to call them to check. I’ve just been reading about attempts for a national recycling scheme and am somewhat disheartened. I’d like to get rid of my gear and in a responsible fashion. Hell, I’m even willing to pay a little if it means it’s not going to end up as landfill.

krikkit

It’s not normally my wont to follow sport in any size or shape. While in Melbourne recently visiting my girlfriend’s parents, I watched a bit of cricket, and am continuing to try and maintain a passing interest. It goes against type I know, but in the sense of trying something different, or thinking outside my usual patterns, it might be worth continuing with. While I admit my grasp of the game may leave something to be desired, I was somewhat confused to read that a batter, Symonds, admitted that he was actually out when the umpire declared him not out. He knew he was out at the time, acknowledged in public, after the conclusion of the day’s play, that he was out, yet didn’t walk off the field. That he went on to score an additional hundred or so runs suggests that if Oz does win this test, the victory will be rather hollow.