Tragically Hip plays Madison

When the band Tragically Hip plays in their native land of Canada, they are so popular they have to play in arena-sized venues. Here in Madison, they cannot fill a small venue like the Barrymore Theatre. At last night’s show, the theater looked to be about half full to me. More’s the pity. I’ve seen Tragically Hip several times, and from my experience, I believe the band would play their hearts out whether they were in front of 20,000 or 10. They certainly did last night.

The Hip (as their fans call them) opened last night’s concert with the first track from their latest, and very strong release, World Container. “Yer Not The Ocean,” an ode to Lake Ontario, very much in the style of The Who, was a perfect way to begin the show.

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Daydreaming of a move

Yesterday I finished painting the upstairs bedrooms in my place. I had plans to do that over the winter, and here it is May already. But, late last week I got some serious motivation when I drove past a house for sale about a mile from work. The price was very reasonable, and that got me daydreaming of living within walking or biking distance of work. How great would that be?

Of course you can’t buy a new house until your current home is sold, so I headed off to the home center for some paint. Next on the to-do list, get two of the windows fixed, do some serious cleaning, and contact my real estate agent.

Advocating independent causes

Here are a couple of causes worthy of support (in my humble opinion).

Save Net Radio: Preserving Music Diversity On The Net

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the Copyright Royalty Board has increased the royalty payments internet radio stations must pay. That increase makes royalty payments drastically higher for the internet radio industry than those paid by traditional broadcasters. Even more absurd, royalty payments would be owed retroactively, for music that was played as far back as January of 2006 (which is kind of like the petroleum companies telling me I owe them money for the gas bought last year, because the price is higher this year).

When it comes to broadcast radio, I listen only to public radio, and the occasional sports broadcast. If I want to listen to music, I turn to internet radio such as Radio Paradise. Take a look at their playlist. You won’t hear a quarter of those songs on any commercial station.

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The term 2.0 jumps the shark

There’s been an interesting thread on the Web4Lib listserv about using the term Library 2.0 (which comes from the term Web 2.0). In the discussion, Tim Spalding (creator of Library Thing) said:

I don’t think Web 2.0 is a fad, but it’s clear the term has jumped the shark when the media starts talking about powerful marijuana as “Pot 2.0”.

Of course, everything will change when we have Pot 3.0, the Semantic Pot.

Which was so funny (to this web geek) I just had to share.

And for those of you who might need an explanation, here are links to jumping the shark and the semantic web.

Computers in Libraries 2007

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Earlier this week I attended this year’s Computers in Libraries conference. While I wasn’t all that enamored with the hotel location, the conference itself was excellent. I got excited about, and learned a LOT of interesting things. Below are a few highlights.

The folks at the South Carolina State Library recently redesigned their site using Joomla, the open source content management system. This was a very inspirational session for me, as I’m looking at adding a CMS to my library’s website.

Another intriguing session was Derick Willis’ talk entitled Creating Browsable Content with Django. Django is another open source CMS I want to learn more about.

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Disconnected

Today I returned home from the Computers in Libraries conference (more on that soon). I was away for a week, and what I missed most was my internet connection. I found myself very envious of the librarians who had their own notebook computers, and were taking advantage of the free wi-fi in the conference rooms.

I spend a great deal of my normal day (both working and off days) using a computer. Going without access while seeing others online almost made me feel like a junkie in need of a fix. Waiting in line to use one of the conference’s eight email stations for ten minutes did not cut it. I wanted to check out the cool things the librarians were talking about in their presentations. I wanted to be able to take notes more efficiently. And, I wanted to do some of the normal, daily things I do on the web.

I seriously need a notebook computer.