Ballad in Plain E

This past December, Courtney sent an e-mail around to a group of fellow library techs and/or book lovers in Vancouver, asking if any of us were interested in forming a book club in the new year. A bunch of us said yes and we held our first get-together on Saturday afternoon chez Court & Andrew.

The first book we chose to read was “The Accidental” by Ali Smith. While we had about a month to read it, of course I didn’t actually finish until a hour before leaving for Court’s. I had trouble getting into it at first; Smith’s writing style is very different from anything else I’ve read. Nevertheless, when I finished the book, I realised that I’d really enjoyed it and was glad that I’d finished it. In April of 2006, the Daily Mail’s book club selection was “The Accidental”, so we based our meeting on those discussion questions. I’ve had occasion to mention the book club to a few people, who have all been suitably impressed that we actually talked about the book - apparently, in most book clubs people just drink and gossip about other stuff!

Next up is “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold, which I’ve already read but liked a lot and will be happy to talk about. And then we arrive at my selection, “The Golden Spruce” by John Vaillant. I started reading this book a couple of months ago but had trouble getting past the first chapter. I’ve heard others say they had the same problem, but at the same time, I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s an amazing book, so I hope reading it for book club will motivate me to power though the…er…drier bits and get to the good stuff.

It felt really good to have a good talk with my friends about literature and get the ol’ critical thinking going. Even though I’m sure we’ll lapse a little more into the eating/talking book club MO over time, I hope we’ll manage to maintain a group of nine or ten, and keep the good discussions coming. A great start to 2007!

A while ago, I got tagged by Rob Golbeck to do the “5 things” “meme”. So here’re five things you probably didn’t know about me.

1. I could watch TLC Daytime (A Wedding Story, Makeover Story, What Not To Wear, etc.) all day, every day. Seriously. But only the shows about people, not the ones about home renovations.

2. I got dean’s vacation two times before I got my act together, school-wise. The first time was from U of L and the second was at LCC (affectionately remembered as the U of Hell and Last Chance College). Fortunately it wasn’t my last chance; I went to SAIT and maintainted a 4.0 GPA during all four semesters of my LIT program.

3. I had a pixie haircut for about 3 years. Yep. Shorter than Twiggy’s! I had it for three years because growing it out was such a pain. Fortunately there is no digital photo evidence.

4. I am learning to play the mandolin! My late father was a somewhat accomplished bluegrass musician (by accomplished I mean, “his band was popular on the folk fest circuits”), and I realised a couple of months ago that my life just wasn’t complete without some fine mandolin pickin’. Mind you, I can only play about five chords, but it’s all about the effort, right?

5. I think creamed corn is the fruit vegetable of the devil.

I’m supposed to tag five people to do this, but most of my blogger friends have been tagged and completed it already (waa waa). So… how’s about Laurel and Gels over at 12 Hours of Power and Kels at a Life & Times of a Lipstick Librarian?

I’ve really been neglecting the ol’ blog over the last few weeks. While there is no shortage of things I could be ranting about (i.e, New Quicklaw, my renewed disdain for the verbification of “Google”, etc.) or raving about (i.e., our fun VALL holiday lunch, my new Nano, etc.), it’s just been too busy to get much of anything done, including blogging. In a few hours I’m off to Alberta to the internet-connectionless void of my mum’s house for Christmas, so I’ll be incommunicado for the next little while.

Hope the geek and tech elves are good to you this Christmas, and best wishes for an excellent 2007!

Something is seriously wrong with the way the site is displaying. Bear with me!

Some interesting things I saw this weekend:

Spam: The Documentary aired on the Ceeb’s “The Lens”, a program that features Canadian independent filmmakers’ documentaries. I missed the first few minutes of the film, but what I saw opened my eyes. I mean, obviously, spam is a problem: they’re always on about enacting laws to combat it, so it’s got to be a bigger deal than just how annoyed I get by it magically multiplying inside the fertile breeding ground of my Gmail spam folder. (Although you’ve got to love the spam recipes that appear as sponsored links - who could resist savory spam crescents or vineyard spam salad?)

I learned about Spamhaus, an international non-profit team of spamfighters. They track down spammers and publish information on them, and maintain a list of spam rings that have been terminated by at least three ISPs (Register of Known Spam Operations). This information, along with their database of spam IP addresses, helps ISPs to identify and get rid of spammers who are already on their networks and keep more from getting on. According to the Spamhaus website, 80% of spam comes from 200 known operations. Yuck.

Investigatory journalism high jinks ensue as the documentarian tries out products he’s bought from spam, and buys a “Father of Spam” trophy for Gary Thurek. The documentary was both entertaining and informative - watch it if you get the chance!

Douglas Coupland’s Blackberry Pearl ad
I noticed it in Maclean’s - the issue with the cover story that proclaims “THE INTERNET SUCKS”. A quick visit to the Blackberry Pearl website (www.blackberrypearl.com>Life>Douglas Coupland) reveals more on Doug’s use of the smartphone. At first, I was disgusted. And then I thought to myself that it’s actually perfect. Reviewers love to say that Coupland “has his finger on the pulse of a generation” and to some extent, they’re right, so the fact that he’s hawking one of the hottest toys around is completely fitting. Good on him.

Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival
Aaron surprised me with tickets to Memory Lane, a program that featured readings and discussion with four authors who’ve recently published memoirs. All the authors were great, but I especially enjoyed Ryan Knighton’s reading, which was actually a memorization. Knighton is blind, teaches writing at Cap College, and is really funny. His new memoir, Cockeyed, is about going blind. His other books look pretty good too, and the pulp page has props from Don McKellar and Christian Bok. Sweet.

I’m a week late on this one, but how exciting is this?

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to Speak at 2007 SLA Annual Conference in Denver
Between Gore’s opening keynote and Scott Adams’ closing keynote, I’m very much looking forward to SLA. Those speakers alone make it very appealing. I just hope neither of them have to cancel, as Bill Clinton did for the 2005 conference.

It’s a tough choice though: my boss will be going to CALL in Ottawa, and I guess I could go to that one instead. For the cities themselves, I’d rather go to Ottawa than Denver, but I’m sorry… AL GORE! Aieeeee!

One of the coolest things I get to do as a member of the LTAIG committee is put together our new(ish) newsletter. Our third issue was published yesterday, and is available here. Two of my law library technician colleagues and fellow VALL members, Kathy Barry and Christina Tribe, generously contributed articles for this issue.

Kathy’s recollection of her library tech program practicums should be of interest to students who are at that stage in their own studies, and is a great reminder of how important it is to try out whatever you can while you’re in school - I had no idea I would wind up in a law library, but I got my foot in the door during a practicum at Faskens, and I’ve been working in one ever since graduation.

Christina’s recap of SLA/CASLIS seminar “A Google Smorgasboard” provides a thorough overview of what you missed if you were unable to attend, as I was. One of the speakers at that seminar was Eugene Barsky, who will be presenting “WIKing in your library: a practical overview” at the October 19th VALL luncheon. Should be great!

Well, here it is, my inaugural post. For a long time I resisted starting a “real” blog; I was content with my four-year-old LiveJournal, which suited me fine for (mostly) rants and (occasional) raves on all sorts of topics of a somewhat personal nature. So why’d I change my tune?

For starters, I finally decided to get serious about writing at a personal level (I’m taking a writing class at SFU) so I figure it’s about time to get serious about writing in my professional life, too. Also, the world we live in is getting too interesting not to be documented. Oh sure, there are naysayers skeptics who say “What’s wrong with keeping a paper journal, the kind you keep under lock and key?” (I believe that particular rant ended with something about a four-year-old brother hacking into said diary.) But since it has been such a pleasure and privilege to read others’ blogs, I feel that since I do have the inclination to do so, I owe it to my counterparts to contribute something to the blogosphere, not just take from it.

The first time I ever heard the word “blog”, I was enrolled in the SAIT library tech program, and it was 2002. Strangely enough, it wasn’t in one of my own classes that I heard the term. My good friend and then-roommate Marianne was studying at ACAD, and one day I sat in on one of her classes, because that day they would be discussing Christian Bok’s clever book Eunoia. The notes from the previous class’s lecture were on the board, and I noticed the word, with an explanation that it was a shortened form of “web log”. I didn’t realise for another year or two that the LiveJournal that I’d been keeping since that fall was, in fact, a blog. I started my LJ during the period when accounts were either invite-only or paid. There was, I suppose, an air of exclusivity, since you had to know someone who was willing to give you a code. Like Gmail was in the beginning. And now they’re practically liquidating them. Ubiquity.

Here what I think: good blogging takes commitment and enthusiasm, a love of writing, and then obviously something to write about. I sort of panicked about the commitment part for a bit, but now that I’ve taken the proverbial plunge, I think it’ll be ok. We live in pretty interesting times. “Ballad in Plain E”, the name of this blog, is a play on the name of one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs. “Ballad in Plain D” is both beautiful and heartbreaking, and interestingly, a song that Dylan wished he had never written and released. But there’s the rub: it can never be unwritten, and now exists for eternity. It is precisely that quality of the internet that makes it all at once appealing and terrifying. Depending on the context in which the information was created, and whatever subsequently unfolds, this clash of realities is fascinating, to say the least.

I make no such claims as to the eternal nature of my own words, but certainly hope that twenty years from now, I’ll be able to look back and see these words for what they are: a snapshot of how our world existed, in this crazy place we call “online”. And just as Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable, the internet’s influence on my generation is near impossible to overestimate. I’m not particularly qualified to talk about the hugeness that is the internet, nor should I spend much time trying to, since there’s plenty of great writing about that already. Nevertheless, working in the library field makes it possible to explore the information, business, and social aspects of the internet in ways that are more intimate than say, online banking, and more involved than oh, I don’t know…checking out weather.com.

So, thanks to all the great bloggers out there who said “no lock, no key” and let the world in on their thoughts and ideas on everything from crappy fonts to workplace politics and everything in between. I salute you and proudly join your ranks!