Library Elf--what number was that? 12?

Forging his way through the wild western lung, Conan the Librarian is constantly on the move. He explores, he discovers, he conjugates verbs. But more than anything, he journeys. Traveling so much, he has a lot of library cards to keep track of and finds the library elf a very useful way to consolidate the relevant information in one place.

His author, however, pretty much just uses the harris county library system, and could check the hcpl account as easily as the elf account, so said author doesn’t see a great personal value in elf usage. What is more, by making Conan the Librarian’s life easier, library elf has entirely destroyed several promising stories the author was going to write about Conan’s valiant attempts to return library books on time.

Um, yeah.

11b

I forgot I was supposed to include a link.

And it's not linking correctly hang on...
okay, got it.

#11--Y'know the thing... with the stuff... okay I don't know.

Neat.

The most basic levels of this are extremely user-friendly. The unrecommendations were fun but not remotely accurate and generally not even comprehensible. (The reasoning behind them I mean) It'll take more time to really troll through and devour all the wonderfulness of this, but neat.

I was initially worried that it seemed to insist on always displaying the same book on my blog--and it was one of the few that didn't have a title, but today it's showing a different one, so I guess it is working as I had intended so... cool.

#10 Which is of course not the 10th post, because that would make too much sense.

So far, the avatar-makers have been a matter of 'take what we give you.' Plus yahoo caught me by surprise--I managed to get something vaguely barbarianesque together with a library background and only then discovered that it wouldn't post to my blog (or maybe it can but I haven't discovered how). In any case I made a meez which is up at the top of the page now. Doesn't really feet the theme of the blog though, but we take what we can get.

I think I've just figured the magazine make out well enough to make book covers with it. But everything keeps throwing the same lack of flexibility at me. Which I guess is to be expected.

#9 Feeding the RSS

The RSS was hungry (which doesn't make sense--so instead of Really Salty Steak or whatever it's now Random Stationary Starian, Starians being residents of the lone star lung. And off we go) so Conan the Librarian set out to find food or "feeds" for him.

Oddly enough, he (I) found it easier to go the the sites I was already aware of and find the feeds there. On the whole I didn't find the feed-locators any more usefull for finding feeds than standard search engines just designed to search for websites. But the real issue in making the resource worthwhile (it seems to me) is a commitment of coming back and checking on things.

It just occured to me--I don't think I thought to check the onion for blog links. Zounds. [tangent]Which incidentally rhymes with "wounds" not "hounds". [/tangent]

So anyway, Conan found the feeds and fed the star
and all were happier by far
and so through lone-star skies we'd see
there's no escape from my bad poetry.

#8: Conan The Librarian discovers his inner chef.

And lo, as Conan the Librarian ventured through the great highways and byways of the great land of Tech-Sass, he discovered that exploring is hungry work--sooner of later you have to eat something. A friend at a Librarian Explorers Annonymous meeting suggested Really Salty Sirloin.

Conan was surprised to learn that he already had a bloglines account, no doubt something he had signed up for years ago and never bothered to figure out. Looking over things, he found it marvelously easy prepare Really Salty Sirloin, and other assorted Unsalted Roast Loins Servings. Actually consuming the product once he had assembled it he found a little more challenging.

I found bloglines extremely user-friendly to set up. Actually using it once set up seems to be a little more challenging. I'm not sure though--some of it may just be that the system needs a little time to catch up with the blogs or maybe I just need a little more time and exposure to get used to the interface. I particularly see potential here for breathing life back into things I can't find the time for--I certainly can't be bothered to keep up with myspace or livejournal, but I could potentially glance at bloglines for updates.

What exercise #5 was origionally supposed to look like but I lacked the technical know-how:

Dear Mom, How are things in the Frigid Northlands? I am having so much fun adventuring in the great lung of the nation. (Like the heart, only since it’s off to the west…)



There is a great variety of land and foliage to explore!







But the best part about this Tech-Sass is all the books here!


Your loving son,

#7 A letter home.

tech-sass
Originally uploaded by swounds

Dear Mom,

How are things in the Frigid Northlands? I am having so much fun adventuring in the great lung of the nation. (Like the heart, only since it’s off to the left…) There is a great variety of land and foliage to explore. But the best part about this Tech-Sass is all the books here!

Your loving son,

Conan the Librarian

Conan flickrs in and out of existence...

So the thing about Flikr--almost all of the neat features seem to just be searching though images--which in & of itself isn't entirely useless. But when I'm looking through a list of 30 applications and most of them end up ammounting to "search through pictures" I wonder if the long list is particularly efficient?

Eh--chalk it up to the inherent inefficiency that accompanies the enhanced creative opportunities in a medium that lets everyone come up with their own additions--yes, you re-invent the wheel ad nausium, but you also end up inventing the occasional diamond amid all the rough.

#6 So bibleographicly barbaric they made a collectible trading card game out of him...

Library of the Frigid Northlands
Originally uploaded by swounds

Conan the Librarian: The collectible trading card game. Available in stores in whatever alternate reality this blog exists in.

#5 Doing glorious battle against the demons of technology.

books
Originally uploaded by swounds

Okay, I had this post all planned out, but once I had things all set up flickr didn't support what I was trying to do. (Or more likely it did but I haven't learned how.) So here's this instead.

A very SAFE and PRIVACY-conscious adventure (4)

Conan the Librarian slowly explored the strange land, keeping to himself, very safely avoiding any fights or other dangerous activity, and visiting libraries--because that's the Frigid Northland Way (TM).

I would say that privacy is a double-edged sword, but that would just invite tangents. So we won't go there.

As Internet users, it seems to me that the most effective tool (I want to say weapon to fit the theme but, feh.) we have to protect our safety & privacy online is awareness. Certainly there are problems in our world. But the really disturbing ones are far easier to identify and overcome than the insidious ones that you never even notice. Simply recognizing that a problem exist is a huge first step in addressing it, and the more we keep in the back of our mind the universality and anonymity of the web and the potential consequences, the better protected we'll be.

There are no guarantees in life. There is always a possibility one could be mugged while crossing the street--but endeavoring to never again cross a street is neither practical nor does it effectively eliminate the risk of muggings. Taking reasonable precautions won't guarantee a life without risk, but there's no such thing as a life without risk, and reasonable precautions can minimize that risk.

That, as I said (well, typed), is us as Internet users. But I have read enough Spider Man to know that great power brings with it great responsibility, and we wield the power of the library (cower in fear before our bibleophiliac might!--or something like that). As many patrons' doorway to the Internet, we want to help make people aware of these issues so that they can best protect their own security and privacy. That's the easy part.

Then comes the aforementioned insidious stuff. How much respect do we have for our patrons' right to privacy? It's so easy to decide on policies without considering their ramifications--but if we are going to make rules disallowing patrons to view certain sites than we are committing ourselves to spend time monitoring patrons instead of doing other library work and more importantly we are committing ourselves to spying on patrons--ultimately the question arises, do we have the right? Do patrons deserve the right to look for Internet resources on living with cancer or on how to get a divorce, without library staff glancing over their shoulder to make sure they aren't playing games on a no-game computer? If so what other approaches can we take to discouraging gangs (no gang websites) or making sure certain computers are available for research? And if not how do we justify the denial of library resources--especially to those who can't afford to have computers at home or abused spouses afraid of seeking the information they need?

A Cry in the Jungle--exercise 3 references exercise 2.

Conan the Librarian was exploring the deep jungles when he heard a cry for help. After much in-depth jungle searching, he discovered that a temporal vortex carrying back his own voice crying out, crying out for the soul-searching that he would do during his jungle-searching quest. Especially which learning habits are easiest and hardest for him, because that's the kind of thing you think about when you're searching through the jungle...

Of the learning habits:

Laughing and positivity are my strengths.

Laughter is so often born out of the ability to take our assumptions and turn them on their collective head, viewing things through an unexpected frame. And I love re-examining assumptions. I am often drawn to books that provide new and different ideas whether it be non-fiction reexaminations about the way we think or calculate a la "Blink" and "Freakonomics" or fictional reconsiderations of reality.

I have often devoted excessive thought and purple prose to intellectual justification of my sense of positivity--progress reflected in the abolition of slavery, the move away from the class society of the middle ages, etc. But if I'm really honest with myself it probably has more to do with having had a great childhood with wonderful parents.

Now this is a puzzler--my greatest weakness among these learning habits is an inability to give myself credit. I have trouble rectifying that with my general sense of positivity about the world, with my mother's absolute determination that her children would know how valued they were--a lesson that my sister really mastered. I guess it may be the flip side of the coin of questioning. I'm not satisfied taking things at face value--it's not enough that an authority figure said something or that something is buttressed by years of institutionalized inertia, I need to ask why. I need to see that what we do isn't just a reaction to conditions which no longer exist or assumptions which we have since found to be false. And I refuse to believe that just because I came up with an idea, it must be right. That I consider a strength. But there's a degree to which second-guessing yourself becomes counterproductive. So call it overintellectualization. Call it a lack of courage. Call it whatever--but I do have the unfortunate habit of selling myself short.

In which a blog is created and a first post is made.

Out of the frigid northlands he came, a land so cold that the sidewalks could not be used as skillets. A land with air so dry you had to use a faucet to fill a glass. The golden umbrella protecting against the elements from above, the golden parachute protecting against gravity from below.

And away from the frigid northlands, he explored--an epic journey that took him to the heart--well, off to the side so maybe the lung--of the continent. Through this large ethereal land, he followed his lone star--the sword of imagination in one hand, the shield of perseverence in the other, and donning the armor of looking-both-ways-before-crossing-the-street.

He vowed to right wrongs, bring knowledge to the curious, and make his next blog entry far less cryptic.