Year: 2013

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: April 6, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
I’m going to stop saying this week was, $insertdramaticadjective here, every week and just accept the farce of my life. But at some point, I think I would settle for just a week where everything is stable in some capacity or form.
This week, I am trying a new ADHD drug called Focalin, which isn’t too bad actually. It’s way more potent than Concerta, which is awesome, and it’s not filled with crazy producing side effects like Adderall, which is even better. My mood has been pretty stable so emotionally I’m feeling pretty good.
Outside of that scope, however, things have been slightly, “Jesus fucking christ!” producing. My Macbook Air, Bawdy Wench, died last weekend and after two trips to the Genius Bar, hours spent attempting to fix it by TheHusband and myself, a host of unicorn blood spilled – nothing worked. I specifically name what type of laptop not because I’m being a pretentious douche (well – you got me.) but for those who are tech centric will know that the diagnosis is either the hard drive (which is a SSD) or the logic board. But it is not clear if it is one or the other. If you buy a replacement logic board for $300 or so bucks — which are only available used or refurbed — and that doesn’t fix it, then you spend another $300 or so bucks getting a new drive and hope that fixes if it. If you’ve bought both and it’s not fixed, not only are you out of about $750, but you have a dead Mac still and by  that point, you might as well have sucked it up and bought a new Mac.
All of this happens a month after the warranty had expired and as such, I could not buy AppleCare to get it covered. So we had two choices: We can spend a flat rate $280 and send it to the Apple Depot where they would fix whatever was broken (so if it’s the logic board AND the drive, both would get fixed for $280) OR I can buy a new Mac. We went with the $280 fix.
TheHusband and I talked about selling the dead Air and the held together by string Macbook Pro that I use for my desktop to Gazelle and using the cash to fund a new, better machine but we opted against it. Medical bills from all my surgeries hit us harder than anticipated and I’m just thankful we had the $280 to fix my laptop.
Since the discussion of Macs brings out STRONG FEELINGS in people, you can at least acknowledge TimeMachine is a most glorious invention. My drive was backed up to the minute before it died and everything is safe.
The lack of laptop hit harder than anticipated – namely that in the early evenings, I usually start needing to elevate my foot and the only way to do that in some form comfortably is in bed, with my laptop on my lap. No laptop means that a lot of the work I was planning on doing this week didn’t get done. I have an iPad, with a Bluetooth keyboard, but that does not have the same power or options as my Air.  Less browsing and working on writing projects, more TV watching. I’ve been spending the nights mainlining Veronica Mars and attempting to keep a Zen attitude about everything (it mostly working).
You may notice I’ve started appending “This day in Lisa-Universe in:” at the end of posts with dates (sometimes) after it – as I start adding the back content, I’m now linking to that content in current posts. That has been entertaining to read.

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Watching

  • Doctor Who
    Second half of season 7 has started. Fantastic!
  • Game of Thrones
    Season 3 has begun.
  • Veronica Mars
    Recently I mentioned there was a Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter in progress that I think I may have hyperventilated when the goal was reached in a scant 11 hours after launch. Since that day, I’ve been humming the theme song in my head almost non-stop, which moved me to discover Netflix no longer had the show available on streaming, NOR was it available on Hulu or Amazon streaming services. So I did what anyone else in their right mind would do: I bought the DVDs. Now you may say to yourself, “But Lisa! You said you were not going to spend extra money this year!” I’ve been 86% keeping that promise – except for red lipsticks and Veronica Mars.

Weekly watching: Formula 1, Vikings, The Vampire Diaries, House of Lies, Elementary, Spartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway.

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

The Site’s Tale (A foray into the tech abyss)

Dear Internet,
And so, here we are.
What started out last summer as a support ticket to my web host provider for site slowness has become a farce of epic proportions. Here is the timeline:

  • In the summer of 2012, open up ticket for site slowness
    • Web host provider claim other sites that live on the server my domains are located on, plus the random DDoS attacks that were occurring during the same time on the server, are reason for my sites slowness. Web host provider suggest I get a VPS to clear up the problem. (Note they did not offer to move me to another server cluster, which would have more than likely fixed the problem.)
  • Domains are moved to the VPS. VPS configured with Apache, MySQL, PHP (Web host provider’s default setup.)
    • Less then a month after the move, my sites become almost inaccessible. We discover Apache is randomly spiking the memory and CPU. The randomness doesn’t give any clues nor is there anything in the logs.
    • To clear the spikes, we have to restart the VPS. Sites become accessible for a few hours and then the spikes start all over again.
  • Inbetweenest the spiking, my main domain is infected with an injection hack. Three separate times. After each hack, I use WordPress best practices for site security as well as web provider’s list of security recommendations. Yet, I was hacked two more times after the first.
    • When I opened up a ticket with the provider about the hacking and I had followed their best practices AND WordPress’ for security, they told me there was “nothing they could do.”
  • Web host provider cannot diagnosis the problem or provide a fix/solution with the Apache issues. All they do tell me is to move over from Apache to Nginx, another web server software provided by the provider.
    • The change over to Nginx is seamless and the spiking immediately stops. As does the injection hack attempts.
  • End of December 2012, all of my domains start throwing up 502/504 errors. I open up ticket with the provider and the errors almost immediately stop. I’m told to clear my browser cache and DNS cache on my computer in the future.
    • 502/504 errors come and go most of January 2013 and into February. Sometimes they get so bad (like hours without access) that I have to restart the VPS to get it going again.
    • I open up a ticket in mid-late February as my sites has been inaccessible that no matter what I do (restart VPS, clear caches), unload plugins, nothing works. While I care that my sites work, it’s becoming more of an imperative in having a working portfolio in April to hand in to my boss.
      • No one responds to my ticket for 8 days.
  • When I get a response, the person responding used http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ to verify site connectivity and wanted to close the ticket. Site was apparently live when they did it because when I got the response from them, the sites were dead again.
  • When I respond back the sites were down again, and had been down, the support person’s response was we needed to have supervisord installed and running to kill any PHP processes that were just hanging. Supervisord was installed but not configured and the only way to configure that was adding a user to the VPS as root and configuring it ourselves, which we did per web host provider’s instructions.
  • TheHusband installs supervisord and gets it configured, and the 502/504 errors do not end. We respond to the ticket and we are told the  only way web host provider will look into this if we disable supervisord, remove the root user and then they will reconfigure and manage supervisord.
  • We do as they request and in the interim, I am told the sql server is in the wrong cluster. This is surely the problem and why we are getting all the 504/502 errors.
    • My SQL server is moved and nothing changes.
    • Web host provider configures supervisord and nothing changes
  • Support then recommends I turn on PHP XCache Support in our domain control panel and install W3 Total Cache in WordPress to help
    • W3 Total Cache had a vulnerability discovered in it in December 2012 that was immediately fixed and updated. My domain had the updated version but was hijacked by script kiddies for the same vulnerability (so the plugin has another vulnerability hole in it) within hours of installation. I was notified by Google Webmaster, within hours of installing the plugin, my site was no longer secure. After turning the plugin off, and cleaning up, I opened a ticket with provider for their security to verify my site was clean. The support person(s) verified the site was clean, ventured a guess the whole problem with the 502/504 errors was the W3 Total Cache plugin, so they suggested in addition to uninstalling the plugin, I also clear my cache and everything will be right as rain.  I pointed out this was an ongoing issue that was known for months and had nothing to do with W3 Total Cache, which I had just installed for the first time a few days ago. Transfer me back to regular support.
  • Original ticket for the 502/504 errors (not including previous slowness history) was opened on February 12. As of March 30, there has been no resolution or solution.
    • During that period, nearly 70 emails were exchanged by me and support — most of it having to remind them they already told me X solution and it didn’t work or providing them with data to back up my problem. Every time  a tech suggested I “just clear my browser cache” as there was “nothing in the logs,”  they got an email from me with data of users from around the globe who were getting the same 502/504 error. Every time they suggested I go to Apache, I point to the ticket from them telling us to move from Apache to Nginx because they couldn’t fix the Apache spiking errors when I was on Apache.

During all of this, TheHusband noticed a couple of things:

  • The provider never offered to move me to a new server or cluster, the default response from them was for me to move to a VPS and once on the VPS, up my memory  (aka, to get more money from me)
  • The VPS is crippled. You have zero control to update any software (Apache, Nginx, PHP, whatever) nor  can you do any configuration that goes outside of what the provider allows (which you don’t find out until you try to do thing)
  • Even having root access on the VPS, which should give you full control, doesn’t. That too is crippled and some functionality is stripped.
  • CPU and memory usage should be minimal on site like mine, but when the 502/504 errors were not going on, they were spiking. Running top on the VPS showed nearly 50% CPU utilization with web services turned off, so nothing should be running and yet here is 50% CPU utilization. Since that is all controlled by the web provider, we could not clean it up or turn off unnecessary services that were eating away at my CPU/memory usage.

Fed up with my caterwauling, TheHusband set up a near identical site at a new provider’s VPS, migrate the content, update the DNS, and get EPbaB running fairly quickly.  TheHusband was also able to update and optimize PHP, Nginx, and WordPress as that was not allowed at Dreamhost and swapped us from MySql to MariaDB, the open source solution, for the database. After we got everything up and configured,  he ran structured packet queries against both sites. The result? Host provider had 93% packet loss while new provider had 0% packet loss.
TheHusband also calculated the current provider could not handle more than 1 connection a second, where as the new provider can handle 5 times the load – on the exact same set up.
We’re moving the remaining three domains over in the upcoming weeks, then I’m canceling service.
The last email I got from the provider, from March 30th, gave me a long spiel of apologies and trying to make this right. It was similar to an email I had received from someone else at support that told me, “502/504 errors are normal” a few days earlier. Both suggested I move to Apache, which would solve all my problems.
Apparently neither of them read the ticket history, though they both claimed to have done so.
There are so many levels of frustration going on, it’s hard to figure out what to fight and what to let go. I have been with this web host provider since April 2003. A decade of service and loyalty, so much so that my referral kick backs meant my monthly bill was pennies. Shit just worked. Up until say, 2010, I never had to open a damned ticket with them.  Then it got progressively worse.
I would have held on for loyalty and the years of great service by this provider, but the constant defending or reiterating ourselves on what we did (95% of the time specific directives by the provider), the miscommunication of the support team, technical negligence, the often patronizing tone of the emails (“It’s no a problem with us, it’s a problem with you.”), coupled with you had no idea what line of support you were with or even who you were talking to was the final straw. My sites don’t generate a lot of hits, and I am okay with that, but they should work when I need them to work.
And so, here we are. New provider. Snappier site. Everything working. I have an awesome husband who not only got the site up and running, but was able to fix all the gaping security issues he couldn’t fix on the older provider because it was locked down.
Now, the world is starting to look better again.
xoxo,
Lisa

Five Copper Bawdy House

Dear Internet,
It’s evening hour here at Throbbing Manor and Game of Thornes is about to start soon, and then Vikings right after. I had plans to complete various types of work this weekend and the shows were to be my present for jobs completed, but that did not happen and I have to find a way to be okay with unplanned failure. Failure is such a harsh word, but I am not sure what else to call it? How do you explain you’re so overwhelmed with things, you feel as if you’re drowning? Simply by writing it? It airs it in public, sure, but it does not help alleviate the feeling.
I have found myself in often the predictable role where I throw so much out to the heavens, expecting very little to come back, but here is it is – a nice fortress of things for me to hide behind. Then this is coupled with frustration when the things you want to succeed but for whatever reason, fail. A current example is I reached out to the local library system to work with them on joint projects since they are a block away from MPOW. The projects were all free or paid for by grants/somewhere else — and, they rejected them all. How do you, as a public library, reject free programming that will not require resources (or very little resources) from you?
Then there is frustration’s and overwhelmed’s sibling, discouraged making an appearance. Outside of my home life, I feel like I don’t get the support I need or require, because I’m a pawn in someone’s game. This sounds like I’m wearing tin foil hat time, but there is a level of truthiness to those words. Some of it is professionally related, some of it is personally related, but I just have not been wanting to deal with the world lately and everything is suffering.
I’m trying to figure out how to cope, but I don’t feel like I’m being successful. That sends in a whole set of emotions on the failure of success.
After what seemed an eternity, we’ve got EPbaB moved to a new host. I’ve written up a post about the hows, whys, and process, which is getting published on April 2. I fear to post anything on April 1 for it might be mistaken as some elaborate ruse. (Not tin foil hat time here either.) I’ve started cleaning up posts from the LiveJournal migration I initiated a week or so ago, and sometimes, the past just needs to stay buried.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is back!

Hey there!
I’m pleased as punch to announce EPbaB is back. TheHusband and I migrated the content and did the DNS cutover on March 30 to the new provider. The DNS migrated within a few hours and the site for the last two days has been super snappy. While everything is more or less in place, a few notes:
Continue reading “Exit, Pursued by a Bear is back!”

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: March 30, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Watching

  • BBC Four – Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain’s Holiest Places
    A six-part series on the BBC that follows Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn as he travels the British countryside exploring oft-forgotten sacred sites that weave together Britain’s rich spiritual history.
  • BBC Two – Ice Age Art: A Culture Show Special
  • BBC Four – The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
    It is a common misconception that during the period from when the Romans left Britain (402 CE) and until William the Conquerer won The Battle of Hastings (1066 CE), Britain and the whole of Europe was plunged into an age where there was no creation of art, no furthering of science, and no sense of wonder. This is, of course, completely untrue. The British art critic Waldemar Januszczak looks at art and architecture from around Britain and Europe that flourished during this period.
  • BBC Two – Vikings
    Three part series, hosted by Neil Oliver, who travels all over Scandinavia and Britian on the forming and dissolution of the Vikings. It echoes some of the points made in the last episode of The Dark Ages: An Age of Light, which concentrated on Viking/Celtic artistic influences, but I found the series overall lacking in depth. There was no mention of Viking settlements in the Hebrides and one or two lines were thrown out about the Norman invasion in 1066, which historians mark as the end of Viking era. The issue I take is Normans are descendants of Viking raiders from generations ago, so to not mention this ouroboros effect seems super sloppy. I liked Oliver’s previous documentaries, so this was even more disappointing.
  • BBC Four – Heritage! The Battle for Britain’s Past
  • BBC Four – Elegance and Decadence, The Age of the Regency

Weekly watching: Formula 1, Vikings, The Vampire Diaries, House of Lies, Elementary, Spartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway.

Links

x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

Summary of LibTechConf 2013

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Library Technology Conference, which is held at  Macalster College in St. Paul, MN. As I mentioned at the beginning of my talk, I did not know LibTechConf (as it is affectionately referred to) existed until last year, when several people I professionally admire were prepping for their talk that year. After some research, I found it was highly regarded, specially curated, and previous LibTechConf conferences had a wealth topics that were  often not repeated elsewhere  The content was not a regurgitation of the same stuff, different conference (or year) you may see with larger conferences.
I’m thrilled to have been a part of it this year.
Wednesday
Keynote: Virginia Eubanks – Can Tech Serve Social Justice?
Eubanks, Internship Director of the Women’s Studies Department at University at Albany and co-founder of Our Knowledge, Our Power, gave an impassioned talk on the use of technology in the realm of social justice. She explored the idea the digital divide is not just a barrier between person and tech, but it is also a barrier and a preventer to getting services and needs that many existing without making a living wage were getting access to. Eubanks also discussed how companies, in the US and elsewhere, took advantage of impoverished areas to find workers for their factories and exploited them for cheap labor. In addition, some of these companies would train their employees to work within various areas of the company, but instead of investing more education or training to promote them, the workers were often fired or laid off due to outsourcing or job consolidation.   If interested in more of Eubanks’ work, check out her book Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age
Session: OMG! My metadata is as fresh as the Backstreet Boys
Short, but sweet, session on using Google Refine (which recently changed to OpenRefine a few days before the talk) and Freebase to clean up dirty metadata. Examples were given of how robust the products are and how to best utilize them
Session: Websites are for people
Highly informative session that makes the bold statement: Libraries should not be building or designing websites for supposed library needs, but should be building  for the library’s patrons/community/users needs. The presenter walked us through how user design and experience (UX) is not just for websites, but for everywhere and everything  in our world.  He gave examples of these outside the digital world experiences such as the badly designed parking meters that give conflicting instructions to directional information at walk-up restaurant counters that force the person to make too many choices in order to order food and pay for it.  He then tied these back to user design for websites and how the same mindset is seemingly applied. “Library websites are too complicated.” And he’s right.  After the talk, I started seeing user experience problems everywhere. My current favorite example is on the way home from the conference, the terminal as MSP had a large display built to emulate an app that was available for you to download on your smartphone. The problem is they don’t illustrate it’s just a demo and not usable, so you walk up and start mashing your fingers against the glass to get information and see that it won’t do anything.
Session: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Institutional Repositories
My presentation!
Session: Digital Preservation = Enduring Access
This isn’t what I quite thought it was going to be. I was looking for more information about on plans, techniques, and tips and it turned out to be more of a “This is what we’ve done, this is we may do.” It felt really like an intro class to archives and digital preservation, which would have been fine if it had billed itself as that, but it didn’t.
Thursday
Keynote: Kimberly Bryant – Founder, Black Girls Code
Just like Virginia Eubanks, Kimberly Bryant’s talk was passionate, engaging, and brimming with lots of good information. Bryant talked about the formation of Black Girls Code, with the purpose of getting women into tech as well as engaging them, and getting them to start taking chances in technology. While discussing the early days of BGC, Bryant was pleasantly surprised to find it was not start-ups or colleges that would help, but it was  libraries that would become the place for BGC meetings, programs, and workshops. BGC started out with intent to bring its messages to under represented areas (underscoring much of what Eubanks was discussing in her talk) and it has grown. There is now discussion to start similar groups like BGC for other underrepresented populations.
Session: Copyright, Licenses, and Fair Use: What’s Up With That?
Here’s the first thing you should know:

If you’re not a lawyer and you’re giving advice on copyright issues on campus, you may get in trouble for practicing law.

Second thing you should know, First sale rights could be applied to EVERYTHING: Used cars, after-market products, even library lending.
A recap of this really informative presentation should be best be presented in links that were relevant to the talk:

  • Center for Social Media: Fair Use
  • Fight Copyright Trolls
  • Ruling of Cambridge University Press, Oxford  University Press, and Sage Publications vs Georgia State University
  • Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (Not legal advice.)
  • Buffy vs Edward

To see more what people are saying about LibTechConf, check #LTC2013 on Twitter.

Dragon who sits on the treasure

Dear Internet,
This past week has been hellacious.
When I came home from my conference super late Thursday night, I found out TheHusband had thrown his back out (he’s feeling MUCH better now), which coupled with my exhaustion from prepping, traveling, and attending the conference prompted me to stay home on Friday. The last year has been rough as all the up/down with the drugs and surgeries has wrecked unexpected havoc on my person, so even a three day trip with a one hour time difference throws me. Dr. P. has often talked to me about the body’s memory and our idea of what we think we can handle and what we can truly handle. Sometimes you need to rest and pull back, even if your mind says otherwise.
In trying to find a way to decompress, I started working on a project I started over holiday break: Importing all old diary/blog content into a single site. We’re talking hundreds, maybe thousands of entries spanning nearly 20 years. With the continuous issues at EPbaB and no defined time frame for the final domain move, it was going to be sketchy moving the content to it in its current condition. But, exporting data out of WordPress is easy and if I can get as much of it into EPbaB before we do the final cut over, I’d save myself hours and hours of time.
Even despite the time saving, there is no easy or direct way to do this – some if it is in plain text format, some if it is importable via another host provider, some if it was grabbed from SQL tables. I started working on the SQL table stuff first, as TheHusband was kind enough to dump it all in a text file for me. This is a tedious job, for I have to do the following:

  • Paste the content into the text side of the editor
  • Add title in title box
  • Strip out all wayward “” that randomly appear throughout content
  • Strip out “rn” which should be appended at the beginning of all returns (between paragraphs, typically) but are also apparently random
  • Adjust date/time of post, as it will be backdated
  • Turn off auto-posting to LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr
  • Check to see if entry was cross-posted to LiveJournal in its first posting and use LJ to check for tags used, to apply to this posting
  • Lightly edit (spell check, grammar)
  • Once post is published, unlink broken links found (if any) and add post to list on Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes to highlight

(TheHusband commented some of the above could be accomplished by a global search/replace, which is true. But I would still have to manually edit each entry with date, title, and so on.)
Friday and Saturday, this system worked out okay. EPbaB remained relatively stable but it’s slow going. On Sunday, TheHusband and I prepped for the week ahead and I didn’t get a chance to work on the site until much later in the day. As I was getting a little bonkers from the previous methodology, I decided to see if I could invoke the import LiveJournal tool within WordPress.
That was a huge mistake.
The import tool stops after importing $X number of entries, which it won’t tell you what the max is but you can find out by the number count of your posts. (It’s about 100.) Secondly, you can’t choose which categories, tags, or any other formatting will be applied before the import. It just chooses something and runs with it so after the content is imported, you still have to manually change each and every entry.  Thirdly, the entries it chooses are random. I had some things from 2002, 2004, and 2008. The import, in turn, created nothing but an even bigger mess since the entries are random and I have no clue or idea what it pulled.
But why am I doing all of this?
My brother from another DNA, John, often lives a curiously parallel life to mine and while we may not often talk, our influences often tend to be the same. He recently, unbeknownst to me at the time, decided to undertake a similar project and listed his reasons why:

Because badly formatted, dead linked stuff – like much on this blog at the moment – just looks amateurish. Things will, eventually, look neater and consistent, and also hopefully fulfill my OCDs around the numbers 3 and 5. Speaking of which:

  • To remember. Good times, bad times, things of use I’ve forgotten, and so I don’t make the same often dumb and easily avoidable mistakes.
  • To remove repetition. I keep writing the same things over and over. As well as looking a bit odd, it’s a complete waste of time. Note to self: learn how to improve memory.
  • To see if there’s any really good stuff. Stuff which can be put into another format or media e.g. an ebook.
  • To look for opportunities for making a living that I’ve missed.
  • To have a much more efficient infrastructure, and platforms, for adding content online in the future. And to make myself come up with a damned good reason for starting to add content to the Internet somewhere else.

Very eloquently and succinctly, he lines out all the reasons I’ve found myself struggling with over the years and could never quite express. The first half of point one is incredibly important to me. Second half of point one and all of point two are me in massive volume. Points three and four are going to become important to me in the next year plus for numerous reasons and I’m always looking at point five as the proverbial monkey on my back.
I did find out today, despite what I had written earlier, a time line for when the domains need to be sorted, which is April 15. That is when my portfolio will be due so that is when everything must be working on the back end by. The content will more than likely not all be transfered by that point, but hopefully I can come out of exile and go back home!
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2009 (and again in 2009), 2004

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: March 23, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
This week I was in Minneapolis for Library Technology Conference, which turned out to be a pretty awesome thing. I presented on, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Institutional Repositories and got to meet a lot of awesome people. Before I left, I wrote about my packing list, which turned out others were into the packing list idea like me.  The follow up is coming soon. TheHusband threw his back out when I came home, so we’ve been taking it easy around here though I have a lot of work to do over the weekend.

Writing

Last weeks Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes included nearly 20 entries from The Lisa Chronicles, mainly from 2008, that I was able to get online. The wonkiness of the site issues prevented me from putting up an intro, so consider this to be it.

Reading



I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Amazon | Local Library | GoodReads)
By Alan Bradley
While at LibTechConf, I observed something I had always suspected to be true – even the most techiest of people prefer print books.
In a conversation with a friend, we were rationalizing the difference of an ereader and a paperback while traveling, namely that for most of the flight (if the flight is relatively short), the ereader has to be turned off and stowed. It also has to be unpacked when going through security lines and there is always the danger of cracking the screen. None of this is a problematic with paperbacks. While I had my iPad and my laptop with me on this trip, both were too cumbersome to read in bed,  while using public transportation, and obviously while in an airport and on the plane. After passing through security on my way to my gate to get home, I slipped into a bookstore and picked up the fourth Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows.
I loved the first three titles of the series and I’ve been waiting forever to get this book via the library in print and eBook form, but the wait was always too long. While I swore I would not buy a book this year, I was desperate. By the time my flight landed several hours later, I was more than half-way through the book. I inwardly chuckled as people on my flight struggled with their ereaders and laptops during the flight while I happily read my paperback. A proper review will be forthcoming.

Watching

  • Formula 1
    Lewis Hamilton has left McLaren for Mercedes – how will McLaren fare this season? Will I have to shred my tshirt in disgust? Will I get up at at 4AM to watch the Pan-Asian runs? How is it possible all the drivers are inhumanly beautiful?
  • Top Gear UK
    The seasons ended with a bang, almost literally, as the boys were sent to find the source of the river Nile, which had them driving all over Africa. The views, as to be expected, were breathtaking.
  • Banshee
  • Mr. Selfridge
    Staring Jeremy Piven playing the titular role loosely based on the life of American Harry Gordon Selfridge, who opened up the eponymous department store in London in 1909. Mr. Selfridge walks the viewer from the opening of the store to all the trials and tribulations of the Selfridge family, key store employees, and other people of the era. Much more palatable than The Paradise, BBC’s version of similar story, ITV seemed to waste no money making the store, the set, or the storyline luxurious. It’s coming to PBS in a few weeks.

Weekly watching:  Vikings, The Vampire Diaries, Portlandia, House of Lies, Elementary, Spartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa

Wanna get involved in LITA?: An Experiment

A couple of months ago, I was talking to Andromeda Yelton and a few other women on IRC and the discussion of LITA came up as Andromeda is running for board in the current election. I lamented, as I always seem to do, that whenever I tried to get involved with LITA actively in some fashion whether by responding to open requests, joining committees, or starting a SIG, I never seemed to get a response back from anyone within the organization.  It is super frustrating because there IS content coming out of the org, but seemingly trying to penetrate it is some kind of Byzantine affair.
Andromeda said this was one of the things she wanted to change once she was elected — there are a lot of amazing people out there with a lot of awesome talent and skill sets that could make LITA amazing but it’s current set up is driving us all away. Her response was to write up a HOW-TO guide on how to get involved and since this started with me, in a way, I  promised her I would renew my due and try out her tips for a year to see how much her advice worked.

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part I.

Andromeda’s first suggestion is join Interest Groups. She lays out all the reasons why this is a great idea, with the big one being flexibility. I also liked the fact that there is short life span (they sunset after three years, but can be renewed ergo they reflect current interests of the profession). Working from the top, I started checking out IGs of interests and here are the ones I selected.

  • Digital Library Technologies Interest Group
    Due to my resurged interest in repositories and past work with digital archiving, this is right up my alley. I check out their page and see there is very little in terms of content or resources. I head to their mailing list page and see there has only been a few emails in 2013 (namely adverts and solicitations).  I’ll join the mailing list, the group on CONNECT, and get the RSS feed for the public posts on CONNECT.
  • Emerging Technologies Interest Group
    Another interest up my alley, and unlike the DLT group, Emerging Technologies has content on their page. Except – no mailing list nor can I find it on the list of all ALA mailing lists. They DO have a CONNECT site, which I join and also pull their RSS feed as well. Downside: With the except of the 2013 Midwinter dates, the content on the CONNECT site is two years old and older.
  • Technology and Industry Interest Group
    Established in 2011, this group is the melting pot of vendors, librarians, organizations, and everyone in between. CONNECT is rarely used as is the email list. I subscribe to the mailing list, join the CONNECT site, and add the RSS feed.
  • Universal Accessibility Interest Group
    My institution has started several initiatives with Accessibility, so again, this is another one of my interests. I join the CONNECT site (again, content is not currently upated), grap the RSS feed for the CONNECT site, and join the mailing list. Now the mailing list is not listed on the IG page, but I did search for it list of all of ALA’s mailing lists.

I also looked at Open Source Systems, Standards, and Mobile Computing but figured four would be a good place to start.
Almost all of the IGs looked as if they were incredibly quiet, if not dead,  if the mailing lists and CONNECT sites were to be believed. If work is being done, it’s being done somewhere not immediately visible which then brings up the, “How do I get involved?” question up again.

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part II.

Communication. It’s the backbone of librarianship. Andromeda recommends following LITA via Twitter  and Facebook  and to subscribe to the LITABlog as these are the official modes of disseminating news about the org.
This is one of my biggest complaints to Andromeda: The official channels are pretty dead. I used to follow @ALA_LITA, but their rarely updating feed meant I would often miss something if they posted in the waterfall that is often my timeline, so I unsubscribed from them and put them on a list to check at my leisure. I had added the LITABlog to my RSS reader ages ago, but the site mainly pushes job openings and not much else.
I apparently had NOT liked LITA on Facebook, so I  made sure to do that AND added them to my interests list (apparently the current way to get all the content from page/person).
I never knew about LITA-L as a separate mailing list because I was getting email what I assumed to be LITA-L for years now only to find out what I was getting was the more advertisement / announcement stuff as opposed to discussion and involvement stuff. That’s super confusing. I’ve now joined LITA-L.
Now if you’re not on Facebook, or Twitter, don’t know about LITA-L, and stopped following the blog, other than getting content from the random LITA email every once in awhile, how are you to know about upcoming events and shenanigans?
You’re not and you won’t.
This isn’t a LITA thing, or a even an ALA thing, but it seems to be a lot of big orgs thing: Blind acceptance your public is going to follow you on Facebook, or Twitter, or something else that requires a login to get access to.  If you’re not updating your blog/website with the same information you’re putting to your community on those sites, then you have failed at your job.

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part III.

Conferences. I LOVE conferences. The learning, the networking, the gossiping, the often free booze.
When I headed to ALA Annual in 2010, I was looking at the workshops/pre-conference list and saw a LITA technology petting zoo. My interest was piqued until I saw the multi-hundred dollar price tag associated with it – for a technology petting zoo that was filled with mainly open source software freely available to download.  No one could give me an explanation as to why I had to pay all that cash (on student budget) on something I could do at home.
Ever since then, I’ve been weary of LITA at conferences.
But keeping true to my commitment to give my wooing of LITA my best gung-ho effort, I submitted not one but two proposals to LITA Forum (one solo, the other in partnership with Val Forrestal). In addition, I’m going to ALA Annual this year (first time since 2010), and will be tracking the LITA tracks while there so expect updates from the various conferences.
I also started following LITA Planning Committee on CONNECT and added them to my RSS reader. (They also seem to rarely update CONNECT, but no stone unturned, etc).

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part IV.

Board meetings. This one I have not yet had an opportunity to take advantage of yet, but as I am on the official communication mailing lists now, I should be able to monitor quite easily.

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part V.

Informal communication – my favorite. I already follow Andromeda on Twitter, but I also subscribed to her Twitter list of LITA Board members, many of whom I already follow. I also follow numerous people involved in LITA who are not on the board via Twitter or their existing blogs, so there are those options as well.
She makes it clear she’s listing her favorite places and haunts and others should search for ways via channels they really like, but I think there’s a good point to be made here. I’ve been working on cleaning up and closing social media accounts I do not use or have interest in, so a lot of potential ways to meet or get involved are closed.
For example, I dumped my LinkedIn account last summer after LinkedIn was hacked. I have no intention of starting an account there again as I didn’t find it particularly useful and often, more intrusive than Facebook. I am on Google+ but I look at it maybe once a month if I even remember that often. I was on FriendFeed but dumped it because I was never really active on it.
This will be an interesting experiment this year how to keep up with what is going out in LITA via informal methodology, especially if stuff seems so random.

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how, part VI.

By-laws.
Holy cats pajamas. I’m not sure I’m ready for this quite yet. The manual will probably begin as more of my speed, but this something for further down the field. Just not today. 🙂

Wanna get involved in LITA? Here’s how: your turn.

I really appreciate and am grateful all the work Andromeda did to put this together, but I’m curious as to the other responses she received  as there is very little commentary on her blog. I wanted to make an honest effort on changing my perception of LITA because I want to contribute to my profession in meaningful ways. I’ve been a member of LITA since the days I was in library school (I graduated in 2010) and I never felt like I was part of a community that was supposed to be supporting me.
Here are the things I learned so far from Andromeda’s posts:

  • You can get the RSS feeds of groups in ALA CONNECT. This is awesome because I almost NEVER log in to CONNECT and the ability to get the RSS feeds of public content will keep me up to date on lots of stuff.
  • I had no idea LITA-L existed until recently.
  • I was not aware of LITA Forum, also until recently.
  • There seems to be a genuine effort for transparency but it needs more work.

At the very least, if anything comes out of this, it should be organizations like LITA should have a friendly, single HOW-TO guide freely accessible to hand to their new members to  get them started in the organization.
I’ll be checking in every couple of months or so on this experiment to see how things worked out. Stay tuned.

MSP: The Packing List

Dear Internet,
I am a notorious over packer. (And I blame this on having been a Girl Scout – I am prepared for EVERYTHING.)
For our honeymoon in 2010, TheHusband and I travelled to Europe for nearly three weeks. After researching and planning, we purchased a lime green clamshell three piece luggage set with intent to take the two largest pieces with us. In addition, we each had our own messenger bag and I had a purse. We did laundry in the bathtub of our hotel room in Brussels half way through our trip as we had planned. We hardly bought any souvenirs. I think a Swatch, a few tshirts,  a hat.
At Amsterdam airport, we were charged $150 USD for having overweight luggage. “Can you pack some things somewhere else?”, the airline person said helpfully. No. No, we couldn’t. Our messenger bags were bulging, our luggage was bulging. What in the sweet name of Satan happened?
In the spring of 2012, I flew to England, solo, for a few weeks to visit friends and see some concerts. In an attempt to not repeat the honeymoon incident, I tried to pack as sparingly as possible. I was bringing over items for friends, which I anticipated was going to be weighty, but I didn’t anticipate coming back with even half the number of items that filled that space.
Weight of my suitcase going TO England: 67lbs. Weight coming BACK from England: 71lbs.
This does not include my purse OR my tote bag filled with enough electronic gadgets and gewgaws to entertain a small nation.
Once arriving in England, I had to schlep my shit on the Tube from Heathrow to center of London, then to the south east of London where Karen lived (and so to apparently do dragons). When it was time to leave for Alice and Jon’s, I schlepped all my shit solo again to King’s Cross to catch the train up to Biggleswade, except a wheel had broken on the bag. When they met me at the train station, poor Jon almost killed himself carrying my crap to their car. No matter how much I thought I was paring down, I could never get my luggage light enough with only useable content.
Overweight surcharge when I left England for those 71lbs? £125 or about $190 USD.
And it wasn’t just plane trips, but any kind of trip. A train trip to Chicago in 2012 for two conferences I was attending that were right after the other, almost had me in tears at the Amtrak station. My duffle bag was over 60lbs, plus my tote bag, plus my purse. I had bought so much shit at the second conference, I almost bought a second duffle to drag all my treasures home but my clever repacking saved me.
While trains do not have weight limits or luggage limits, travelling solo with a 60lb duffle bag, plus a jammed tote bag, and a purse is just as frustrating. Even more so when the luggage areas in the train are filled with other people’s possessions or you’re blocking traffic getting up to the second floor because you can’t physically carry everything at once and you’re relying on the kindness of strangers to help you. (Thank you kind strangers.)
After my final trip last year, I decided I had enough. I was no longer going to pay outrageous luggage surcharge fees, or find myself in a situation where I couldn’t handle my own bags because they were so heavy.
While I was laid up last summer, I became obsessed with the idea of traveling with less. And found a sub-culture based on the idea of packing less and creating packing lists that catered to just about anyone.
While the curation of a list varies from person to person, there seems to be agreement on two things:

  1. The gear should be light weight and multifunctional
  2. Items should have multiple purposes

I decided I had a new goal: Next time an opportunity arose where I needed to travel, regardless of by plane/train/automobile, I was going to do it with a carry on and a messenger bag.  That was it. No excuses.
Towards the end of 2012, early 2013, my conference dance card was beginning to fill up. Starting March 1 and ending July 2, I would be attending seven conferences and speaking at four of them. Some of them were one day affairs or held locally, so there would be no need to pack, but the remainder would require travel either by plane/train/automobile.
This was perfect.
I asked around on the social sphere what did people use for travel? The number one response was: Tom Bihn. After spending hours of reading packing lists on the Tom Bihn site and the internets, I knew I found my bag.
Since all but one of our combined luggage pieces (purchased together and what we had before we got married) had fallen apart or were in the process of falling apart, TheHusband  and I were in the market for new luggage. He was intrigued by my research and reviews, so for Valentine’s Day he bought me the Aeronaut in Aubergine/Wasabi with the Absolute Shoulder Strap. The idea being if the bag was as impressive in person as on the site, we’d pick up accessories and pieces as needed later on.
The bag was incredibly impressive in person. The Absolute Shoulder Strap worked with TheHusband’s 6’6 frame comfortably, the backpack straps also were comfortable over his 52″ chest and shoulders and could be adjusted to fit my measly 5’11” frame. There was a lot of thought to the organization of the bag, such as the generous central area bookend by two external, fairly large pockets. Overall, it is very well constructed and designed.
A few weeks later, I bought the Imago in Plum/Olive, 3D Clear Organizer Cube in Azalea, large Packing Cube, and the Packing Cube Shoulder Bag in Wasabi.
Here was my thought: The Aeronaut would be the one piece of luggage, with clothing organized by the large Packing Cube. The 3D Clear Organizer would act as the container for TSA’s 3-1-1 rule. Instead of carrying a purse and a messenger bag, I would use the Imago as the messenger bag and use the Packing Cube Shoulder Bag as a packing cube until I got to my destination. Then I would  use the Packing Cube Shoulder Bag as a daytime bag since I can dump all my smaller items from the messenger bag into it. For night time events, I have a clutch, that is very thin and flat, I always bring with me so I was covered for purse needs.
On Tuesday I fly to Minneapolis for Library Technology Conference and return home on Thursday night. I need to sort out clothes for Tuesday as the travel day, plus the two days for the conference, and maybe an extra outfit. Plus pajama jams and other clothing accouterments, then add in toiletries and sundries.
Below is the Aeronaut and the Imago, fully packed for Tuesday’s trip.  Weight of the Aeronaut: 15.2lbs. Weight of the Imago: 9.7lbs. (Weight of the pug: 20lbs, but she’s not coming.)

The Aeronaut and Imago. And a pug.

Now the fun part! Let’s unpack the Aeronaut and see what’s inside!

  1. Packing cube with two pairs of pants, a tunic, leggings
  2. Bra (I’ll be wearing one and bringing one.)
  3. Doc Martens, which are my dressy shoe (One of the few pairs I can fit into post-surgery)
  4. Two t-shirts, pair of yoga pants, and a long sleeve t-shirt
  5. Belt, glasses in case, curling iron
  6. Drugs, toothbrush in case, prescription receipts for said drugs
  7. 3D Clear Organizer filled with non-liquid toiletry sundries (According the site, the 3D Clear Organizer was built specifically for 3-1-1 but I could not get the same amount of items from a quart bag into the Organizer.)
  8. Loofah in a plastic bag, lady time essentials in the drawstring bag
  9. Plaid pencil case, teal clutch, assorted Air adaptors
  10. Packing Cube Shoulder Bag, that will hold four pairs of panties, three pairs of socks, a scarf, and a tank (and the aforementioned belt)
  11. Pug paw.

Over to the Imago:

  1. Macbook Air in case
  2. iPad 2 in case
  3. Business card holder, Epipen, plus “What to do if Lisa has an allergic reaction to LONG LIST OF ALLERGENS” from my allergist.
  4. Quart bag of liquids! All your usual sundries here.
  5. Sunglasses
  6. Makeup bag and bag of Lactaid/benadryl. The TSA’s stance on the website about makeup is vague, so instead of using precious quart bag space, it’s in its own bag as it always is. I only use mascara, gloss, and liquid eyeliner so it’s not like there is a lot. The makeup bag also has Tylenol, glass cleaner, and few other sundries.
  7. iPhone/Pad USB cable with wall wart, ear buds, work ID badge
  8. Moleskin
  9. Wallet
  10. Two pens, two liquid pencils, stylus for the iItems, ratty nail file, even rattier hair pick
  11. Pug making her move.

Total weight of both pieces: Roughly 30lbs.
And I still have room for another complete outfit or two in the Aeronaut.
Missing from pictures: Phone (used to take said pictures), strap for the Packing Cube Shoulder Bag, charger for my Air, coat (I’ll be wearing it on the airplane), hat/gloves (see coat), boots (see coat). Granola bars. Small jewelry bag (I leave off all my rings/earrings/necklaces until after I get through security).
On Tuesday, I’m wearing a tunic, tank, leggings, and a cardigan that goes with all my other outfits.  I have a pants outfit and a tunic outfit planned for Wednesday and Thursday. I also packed an extra pair of pants and two t-shirts so if I’m not feeling something, I’ve got options.
I had planned on wearing dress boots that went with everything and only bringing that one pair of footwear, but I can’t fit into them post-surgery. As snow is on the horizon, I’m wearing my green Hunters on the plane and packed my Docs as the dress shoe since they have foot traction. The Hunters work with both tunic outfits and pants outfits.
As much as I love my plaid pencil case, I’ll probably leave it home and only take the few pens/pencils. I’ll probably also leave behind my sunglass case.
I’m bringing the Air and the iPad as the conference is requiring us to bring our own equipment for presentation (the Air). The iPad is going to be the reading/gaming/entertainment machine with better battery life.
My goal is to do a packing list entry for every trip to see what changes from trip to trip. But if I can pull this off, you have no idea how pleased as punch I will with myself.
x0x0,
Lisa

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