Hey!

Sent by one of the greatest librarians out there. And by out there, I mean retired. Thanks, Adrien!

I think that this may have been around before, but some of them seemed new to my forgetful brain.   Enjoy what you can, while you may.
Adrien.

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the 2009 winners:

1.     Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2.     Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3.     Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4.     Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5.     Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6.     Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7.     Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8.     Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9.     Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10.    Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11.    Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

12.    Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13.    Glibido: All talk and no action.

14.    Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15.    Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16.    Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17.    Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

The winners are:

1.     Coffee (n): The person upon whom one coughs.

2.     Flabbergasted (adj.): Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3.     Abdicate (v.): To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4.     Esplanade (v.): To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5.     Willy-nilly (adj.): Impotent.

6.     Negligent (adj.): Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7.     Lymph (v.): To walk with a lisp.

8.     Gargoyle (n): Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9.     Flatulence (n): Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10.    Balderdash (n): A rapidly receding hairline.

11.    Testicle (n): A humorous question on an exam.

12.    Rectitude (n): The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13.    Pokemon (n): A Rastafarian proctologist.

14.    Oyster (n): A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15.    Frisbeetarianism (n): The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16.    Circumvent (n): An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

I team presented two sessions for the Southwest Idaho Library Association conference (SWILA), region 3, at the College of Idaho, in Caldwell, ID. One as member of SPLAT (Special Projects Library Action Team) on screencasting, and the other as member of the Boise State library posse on RSS use (see below). Both sessions focused on cool online tools libraries can use to empower library services, or just to enhance your own personal online experience.

The conference takes place during CofI’s Spring Break so we had the whole campus to ourselves. The campus is idyllic to be sure, and has the brick, trees, and classical architecture you can expect from a school that was founded in 1891. We even had a tour of the Terteling Library (totally awesome facade) and the archives collection in Sterry Hall.

This one-day conference is full of good stuff for everyone. While the majority of attendees were from public libraries, the presentations had enough diversity of content to intrigue and make it relevant to all. The food was delicious, the breakfast spread was stupendous, and coffee overflowed everyone’s system. Truly, it was fun times all around.

One gripe I did have was with the ubiquitous, fickle, angry tech gnome, cousin of Murphy’s law and bunk mate of unforgiving plugins. While the building that houses this one-day conference is great, its limited hardware and closed wi-fi system did put a dent in a couple of presentations, not to mention putting the kibosh on any blogging or twittering (unless you had an iPhone like my friend Liesl. Yes, there were two computer labs available but, if you are attending a day-long conference, your time is limited. Besides, the bigger computer lab had sessions throughout the day so it was rendered useless. Luckily we had library folk in attendance so these minor aggravations were taken in stride and we all had a laugh about it; they know that, as cool as the online tools we were there to showcase, they are only as good as the machines you use them on.

So, lessons learned (besides conference fodder) to equip one’s self against the gnome:

• If you can, bring your own computer/projector unless you know the equipment you’ll be using has the applications you need.
• If you do bring in your own hardware, have all the necessary accouterments (cables, USBs, connectors, male/female parts, etc.).
• In lieu of flash, do a flash dance.
• No internet access?! Good thing I only have screen shots. What? Can’t get the projector going?
• If you want to play a movie, have it in several versions. RealPlayer only? Really?
• Never assume your PowerPoint will be shown on a big screen. Tiny whiteboards can render your text ineligible.

But these are, in a way, almost expected and you really can’t account for everything. I look forward to next year’s conference, which I’m assuming will have these kinks worked out. If not, I’ll refer to the above list.

You can get find most of the SWILA presentations at the growing SWILA conference wiki.

View this document on Scribd

My PowerPoint presentation of Sprout for ACRL’s Cyber Zed Shed session on technology use in libraries.

View this document on Scribd

Sprout – Cyber Zed Shed presentation, originally uploaded by M3MO.

A fellow librarian and I traveled to Seattle on Saturday, March 14th, to attend/present at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). My presentation was on Sprout, a widget creation tool, and how libraries can use this platform to create dynamic widgets (or as they’re called, “projects” or “sprouts”) to engage faculty and students with library resources.

I really really like how Sprout makes it easy to put together a virtual space, from small widgets to full-featured websites, and populate it with a variety of content: RSS, video, photo galleries, tables, blogs, etc. The availability of such an awesome free product that libraries could use to provide interactive content as an embeddable and fully-featured web gadget was too good to pass up, so I sent a proposal to ACRL as a Cyber Zed Shed (CZS) session, which was accepted. I’m not sure where the CZS term comes from but I’m sure it has to do with the X-files or pirates. Here’s ACRL’s description:

Cyber Zed Shed presentations are 20-minutes in length, with fifteen minutes to present a demonstration, and five additional minutes for audience Q&A.  Presentations should document technology-related innovations in academic and research libraries.

Of course, as with any successful online endeavor, Sprout decided that its user base was large enough, and their product versatile and well received, that it would support a paid platform. This free-to-fee change was resolute: if you wanted to keep your stuff, you had to pay for it. So now my presentation was in danger of being blown out of the water. However, as with any online product with many loyal users, Sprout heard about the sheer dissatisfaction with this move from its loyal base: no fair! Being good players, Sprout now offers a limited number of projects for free (3 at any one time), and my presentation of Sprout as a viable, though limited, widget creator as a library tool went ahead as planned.

If the Twitter chatter was any indication, most of the Cyber Zed Shed (CZS) were well attended and well presented, and I’m hoping that mine was at least as informative as the rest. I even got to meet some great folks that I’ve only known through Twitter. Twitter, and ACRL’s Twitter stream, was my pulse to conference chatter, tweet ups (Twitter meet ‘n greets), favorite sessions, running commentary of various presentations, and the overall zeitgeist of the ACRL experience. Also, check out ACRL’s Flickr pool for a visual experience of the conference in the rainy city.

I’ve been thinking about my pending tenure hoedown later this year. It’s a big deal for me since it’s my first foray deep into my academe experience, but I’m still unclear about what the mantle of tenure entails. Prestige? More money? Bigger pants? Elbow patches? Well, YES! At least, I think so. Better yet, is it this?

Couple of great things are coming down the pike. The first is the unleashing of another session of SPLAT 101, and the other is my presentation at ACRL in Seattle.

SPLAT (Special Projects Library Action Team) is an initiative to “act in the ‘crows nest’ capacity, searching for innovation, proposing and leading experiments and pilot projects, discovering new opportunities.” SPLAT 101, our second foray, is about showing/playing/experimenting with web tools via a six-week, go at your own pace online course.

Each week we take one web tool and encourage people to spend that one week playing/experimenting with it. After you complete all six modules you get a certificate and the accolades of your fellow library denizens. Last year we had 230 library staff from all over the State of Idaho complete the course and we had a fantastic time doing it.

The best part is all the comments and feedback in each module; there was a richness of content that permeated each session, from thoughts about the nature of the Internet, web tech success stories, issues with blocked networks at schools and some libraries, privacy concerns, excitement at learning something new (and easy), and everything in between. If you’re interested in participating then get thee to this registration link. The first session starts March 16.

The other exciting thing is my attending and presenting at this year’s ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) conference in Seattle. I’m doing a presentation on libraries and widgets for one of the Cyber Zed Shed sessions on Saturday, March 14.

The whole trip will be quick tho, as I arrive Friday night and leave Saturday evening. Still, I’m extremely jazzed by the opportunity to hang out in Seattle with a bunch of really great library folk.

Don’t know if I’ll have time to visit two restaurants in Seattle that my good buddy Francisco introduced me to via the Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food” show. The first is Beth’s Cafe, which serves monstrous 12-egg omelets, but the hash browns are supposedly as delicious as their omelets, tho 12 eggs might be a stretch even for me. The other is the Crab Pot, which serves delicious steamed seafood by the bowl (a big bowl) and dumps it right on your table, then is on to the mallet whacking. Writing about this is making me hungry so it’s a sure bet I’ll hit at least one of these places!

If you care to explore Seattle or plan something, reach me on Twitter or Facebook. It’s gonna be fun.

If you consider yourself an Internet noob when it comes to all things “viral,” then you must, must I say, check out this list of important and life-changing videos/sites around the web. I’m serious. The “Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something” is, well, definitive in the sense that these videos/websites achieved–or rather defined–the term viral. These are Internet culture classics, the million plus views in YouTube, the ones that stretched kitsch into cool and/or pure awesome sauce. And for the most part, funnier than Hades:

This one is a variation of one of the videos on the list:

Ah, good times.

(Apologies, Mr. Diamond) Touch technology has come a long way–Apple certainly hit it out of the ballpark when they mass produced the iPhone/iTouch and unleashed a new sense of expectation from our computing devices.

It’s fairly easy to imagine the ways these new surface technologies will develop, and if the Kindle can blow your socks off, think of the possibilities of the tools shown in this ReadWriteWeb post:

A post, finally! There have been many many things happening right now (Tenure shenanigans, conference meeting shenanigans, work shenanigans, etc.) that I’ve barely had time to squeeze in a blog post about all the amazing and interesting things I’ve found on the web: foxes playing on trampolines, or cats riding Roombas, or funny zombie signs–you get the picture.

So, on with it rather than veg out, right?

One of the things that I do want to share is this meme that made the rounds not too long ago in Facebook: 25 things about you, which goes nicely with the mostly selfish nature of blogs:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. I don’t have a poker face. I wish I did but dang it, you can read me like a book.
2. Lobsters are giant insects, but at least their insides are delectable.
3. I once climbed out a bathroom window w/my best friend to get away from two girls. This was high school so…you know.
4. I see beauty in everything: the curve of a knife, the impasto of a painting, the sleekness of sharks, really nice hand writing.
5. My older sister bonked me on the head with a lead pipe when we were little. I have a tiny scar on my forehead that seems to creep down as my baldness progresses.
6. Related to #5, my increasing baldness makes my forehead scar blaze with anger that I’m going bald.
7. Growing up I always had long hair, even when it wasn’t fashionable, hence my resentment in #5 & #6
8. Part of me thinks werewolves exist just to scare the piss out of me.
9. I have an overactive imagination.
10. I have seen what a bullet can do to a human being. A shotgun blast, too.
11. I emigrated to the U.S. in 1983 from El Salvador and haven’t been back. On a trip to Hawai’i the smell of tropical flowers flooded me with beautiful memories of my childhood.
12. I was going to be an illustrator a la N.C. Wyeth and Frank Frazetta and, while good, was punched on my artistic sensibilities by computerated graphics (that was the term then).
13. I love reading. As a librarian, I can pick the good ones.
14. I find religions fascinating but I’m not a believer. The “ultimate questions” keep me guessing and in flux, which I like.
15. I laugh easily and try to make light of everything. That’s what gets me into trouble too.
16. How come the specter of Death never wears plaid?
17. The funniest bumper sticker to date: “Isis Isis Ra Ra Ra!”
18. I’m really good at games hardly anyone plays anymore: foosball, chess, alligator wrestling.
19. I’m a Sagittarius through and through.
20. I really like beer (stouts & porters), wine (cabs & merlot), and tawny port.
21. I wish I could write creatively. I write like I play basketball: lots of dribbling and drooling but no pretty layouts.
22. I’m thankful for to be alive 99.8 percent of the time. I thought for sure I would never reach 30.
23. I almost choked to death when I gorged myself on powdered milk when I was 12.
24. I mentally whistle Monty Python’s “Always look on the bright side of life” when faced with hostile situations.
25. Caspar David Friedrich’s “Monk by the Sea” is illustrative of my inner self.

Now you know me a little better. Lucky you, huh?