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.