Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

Final blog posting

Saturday, December 19th, 2020

This is probably my final blog posting using the WordPress software, and I hope to pick up posting on Infomotions’ Musings.

WordPress is a significant piece of software, and while its functionality is undeniable, maintaining the software in a constant process. It has become too expensive for me.

Moreover over, blog software, such as WordPress, was suppose to enable two additional types of functionality that have not really come to fruition. The first is/was syndication. Blog software was expected to support things like RSS feeds. While blog software does support RSS, people to not seem to create/maintain lists of blogs and RSS feeds for reading. The idea of RSS has not come to fruition in the expected way. Similarly, blog were expected to support commenting in the form of academic dialog, but that has not really come to fruition either; blog comments are usually terse and do not really foster discussion.

For these reasons, I am foregoing WordPress, and I hope to return to use the of my personal TEI publishing process. I feel as if my personal process will be more long-lasting.

In order to make this transition, I have used a WordPress plug-in called Simply Static. Install the software, play with the settings, create a static site, review results, and repeat if necessary. The software seems to work pretty well. Also, paying the roll of librarian, I have made an effort classify my blog postings while diminishing the number of items in the “miscellaneous” category.

By converting my blog to a static site and removing WordPress from my site, I feel as if I am making the Infomotions web presence simpler and easier to maintain. Sure, I am loosing some functionality, but that loss is smaller than the amount of time, effort, and worry I incur by running software I know too little about.

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My water collection predicts the future

Tuesday, September 29th, 2015

As many of you may or may not know, I collect water, and it seems as if my water collection predicts the future, sort of.

Since 1979 or so, I’ve been collecting water. [1] The purpose of the collection is/was enable me to see and experience different parts of the world whenever I desired. As the collection grew and my computer skills developed, I frequently used the water collection as a kind of Guinea pig for digital library projects. For example, my water collection was once manifested as a HyperCard Stack complete with the sound of running water in the background. For a while my water collection was maintained in a FileMaker database that generated sets of HTML. Quite a number of years ago I migrated everything to MySQL and embedded images of the water bottles in fields of the database. This particular implementation also exploited XML and XSLT to dynamically make the content available on the Web. (There was even some RDF output.) After that I included geographic coordinates into the database. This made it easy for me to create maps illustrating whence the water came. To date, there are about two hundred and fifty waters in my collection, but active collecting has subsided in the past few years.

But alas, this past year I migrated my co-located host to a virtual machine. In the process I moved all of my Web-based applications — dating back more than two decades — to a newer version of the LAMP stack, and in the process I lost only a single application — my water collection. I still have all the data, but the library used to integrate XSLT into my web server (AxKit) simply would not work with Apache 2.0, and I have not had the time to re-implement a suitable replacement.

Concurrently, I have been negotiating a two-semester long leave-of-absence from my employer. The “leave” has been granted and commenced a few of weeks ago. The purpose of the leave is two-fold: 1) to develop my skills as a librarian, and 2) to broaden my experience as a person. The first part of my leave is to take a month-long vacation, and that vacation begins today. For the first week I will paint in Tuscany. For the second week I will drink coffee in Venice. During the third week I will give a keynote talk at ADLUG in Rome. [2] Finally, during the fourth week I will learn how to make croissants in Provence. After the vacation is over I will continue to teach “XML 101” to library school graduate students at San Jose State University. [3] I will also continue to work for the University of Notre Dame on a set of three text mining projects (EEBO, JSTOR, and HathiTrust). [4, 5, 6]

As I was getting ready for my “leave” I was rooting through my water collection, and I found four different waters, specifically from: 1) Florence, 2) Venice, 3) Rome, and 4) Nice. As I looked at the dates of when the water was collected, I realized I will be in those exact same four places, on those exact same four days, exactly thirty-three years after I originally collected them. My water collection predicted my future. My water collection is a sort of model of me and my professional career. My water collection has sent me a number of signs.

This “leave-of-absence” (which in not really a leave nor a sabbatical, but instead a temporary change to adjunct faculty status) is a whole lot like going to college for the first time. “Where in the world am I going? What in the world am I going to do? Who in the world will I meet?” It is both exciting and scary at once and at the same time. It is an opportunity I would be foolish to pass up, but it is not as easy as you might imagine. That said, I guess I am presently an artist- and librarian-at-large. I think I need new, albeit temporary, business cards to proclaim my new title(s).

Wish me luck, and “On my mark. Get set. Go!”

  1. blog postings describing my water collection – ./2009/09/water-1-of-3/
  2. ADLUG – http://www.adlug.net
  3. “XML 101” at SJSU – http://ischoolapps.sjsu.edu/facultypages/view.php?fac=morgane
  4. EEBO browser – https://github.com/ndlib/text-analysis-eebo
  5. JSTOR browser – https://github.com/ndlib/text-analysis-jstor
  6. HathiTrust browser – https://github.com/ndlib/text-analysis-htrc

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Doing What I’m Not Suppose To Do

Friday, October 24th, 2014

imageI suppose I’m doing what I’m not suppose to do. One of those things is writing in books.

I’m attending a local digital humanities conference. One of the presenters described and demonstrated a program from MIT called Annotation Studio. Using this program a person can upload some text to a server, annotate the text, and share the annotations with a wider audience. Interesting!?

I then went for a walk to see an art show. It seems I had previously been to this art museum. The art was… art, but I did not find it beautiful. The themes were disturbing.

I then made it to the library where I tried to locate a copy of my one and only formally published book — WAIS And Gopher Servers. When I was here previously, I signed the book’s title page, and I came back to do the same thing. Alas, the book had been moved to remote storage.

I then proceeded to find another book in which I had written something. I was successful, and I signed the title page. Gasp! Considering the fact that no one had opened the book in years, and the pages were glued together I figured, “What the heck!”

Just as importantly, my contribution to the book — written in 1992 — was a short story called, “A day in the life of Mr. D“. It is an account of how computers would be used in the future. In it the young boy uses it to annotate a piece of text, and he gets to see the text of previous annotators. What is old is new again.

P.S. I composed this blog posting using an iPad. Functional but tedious.

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TriLUG, open source software, and satisfaction

Friday, December 9th, 2011

This is posting about TriLUG, open source software, and satisfaction for doing a job well-done.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I lived in Raleigh (North Carolina), and a fledgling community was growing called the Triangle Linux User’s Group (TriLUG). I participated in a few of their meetings. While I was interested in open source software, I was not so interested in Linux. My interests were more along the lines of the application stack, not necessarily systems administration nor Internet networking.

I gave a presentation to the User’s Group on the combined use of PHP and MySQL — “Smart HTML pages with PHP“. Because of this I was recruited to write a Web-based membership application. Since flattery will get you everywhere with me, I was happy to do it. After a couple of weeks, the application was put into place and seemed to function correctly. That was a bit more than ten years ago, probably during the Spring of 2001.

The other day I got an automated email message from the User’s Group. The author of the message wanted to know if I wanted to continue my membership? I replied how that was not necessary since I had long since moved away to northern Indiana.

I then got to wondering whether or not the message I received had been sent by my application. It was a long shot, but I enquired anyway. Sure enough, I got a response from Jeff Schornick, a TriLUG board member, who told me “Yes, your application was the tool that had been used.” How satisfying! How wonderful to know that something I wrote more than ten years ago was still working.

Just as importantly, Jeff wanted to know about open source licensing. I had not explicitly licensed the software, something that I only learned was necessary from Dan Chudnov later. After a bit of back and forth, the original source code was supplemented with the GNU Public License, packaged up, and distributed from a Git repository. Over the years the User’s Group had modified it to overcome a few usability issues, and they wanted to distribute the source code using the most legitimate means possible.

This experience was extremely enriching. I originally offered my skills, and they returned benefits to the community greater than the expense of my time. The community then came back to me because they wanted to express their appreciation and give credit where credit was due.

Open source software not necessarily about computer technology. It is just as much, if not more, about people and the communities they form.

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AngelFund4Code4Lib

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

The second annual AngelFund4Code4Lib — a $1,500 stipend to attend Code4Lib 2011 — is now accepting applications.

These are difficult financial times, but we don’t want this to dissuade people from attending Code4Lib. [1] Consequently a few of us have gotten together, pooled our resources, and made AngelFund4Code4Lib available. Applying for the stipend is easy. In 500 words or less, write what you hope to learn at the conference and email it to angelfund4code4lib@infomotions.com. We will then evaluate the submissions and select the awardee. In exchange for the financial resources, and in keeping with the idea of giving back to the community, the awardee will be expected to write a travelogue describing their take-aways and post it to the Code4Lib mailing list.

The deadline for submission is 5 o’clock (Pacific Time), Thursday, December 17. The awardee will be announced no later than Friday, January 7.

Submit your application. We look forward to helping you out.

If you would like to become an “angel” too, then drop us a line. We’re open to possibilities.

P.S. Check out the additional Code4Lib scholarships. [2]

[1] Code4Lib 2011 – http://code4lib.org/conference/2011/
[2] addtional scholarships – http://bit.ly/dLGnnx

Eric Lease Morgan,
Michael J. Giarlo, and
Eric Hellman

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How to make a book (#2 of 3)

Friday, January 1st, 2010

This is the second of a three-part series on how to make a book.

The first posting described and illustrated how to use a thermo-binding machine to make a book. This posting describes and illustrates how to “weave” a book together — folding and cutting (or tearing). The process requires no tools. No glue. No sewing. Just paper. Ingenious. The third posting will be about traditional bookmaking.

Attribution

Like so many things in my life, I learned how to do this by reading a… book, but alas, I have misplaced this particular book and I am unable to provide you with a title/citation. (Pretty bad for a librarian!) In any event, the author of the book explained her love of bookmaking. She described her husband as an engineer who thought all of the traditional cutting, gluing, and sewing were unnecessary. She challenged him to create something better. The result was the technique described below. While what he created was not necessarily “better”, it surely showed ingenuity.

The process

Here is process outlined, but you can also see how it is done on YouTube:

  1. Begin with 12 pieces of paper – I use normal printer paper, but the larger 11.5 x 14 inch pieces of paper make for very nicely sized books.
  2. Fold pairs of paper length-wise – In the end, you will have 6 pairs of paper half as big as the originals.
  3. Draw a line down the center of 3 pairs – Demarcate where you will create “slots” for your book by drawing a line half the size of of the inner crease of 3 pairs of paper.
  4. Draw a line along the outside of 3 pairs – Demarcate where you will create “tabs” for your books by drawing two lines from one quarter along the crease towards the outside of the 3 pairs of paper.
  5. Cut along the lines – Actually create the slots and tabs of your books by cutting along the lines drawn in Steps #3 and #Instead of using scissors, you can tear along the creases. (No tools!)
  6. Create mini-books – Take one pair of paper cut as a tab and insert the tab into the slot of another pair. Do this for all of 3 of the slot-tab pairs. The result will be 3 mini-books simply “woven” together.
  7. Weave together the mini-books – Finally, find the slot of one of your mini-books and insert a tab from another mini-book. Do the same with the remaining mini-book.

The result of your labors should be a fully-functional book complete with 48 pages. I use them for temporary projects — notebooks. Yeah, the cover is not very strong. During the use of your book, put the whole thing in a manila or leather folder. Lastly, I know the process is difficult to understand without pictures. Watch the video.

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Good and best open source software

Monday, December 28th, 2009

What qualities and characteristics make for a “good” piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered “best”?

I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as “best”. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered “open”?

For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the “best” library-related open source software. Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions in (more or less) priority order:

  • Does the software work as advertised? – If the program says it can do one thing, but never does, then this may be a non-starter. On the other hand, accomplishing a particular goal is sometimes relative. In most cases the software might perform excellently, but in others it performs less so. It is unrealistic to expect any software to be all things to all people.
  • To what degree is the software supported? – Support, can mean many things. Most obviously, users of the software want to know whether or not there are one or more people behind the software who can answer questions about it. Where is the developer and how can I get in touch with them? Are they approachable? If the developer is not available, then can support be purchased? Do I get what I pay for when I make this purchase? How expensive is it? Is their website easy to use? Support can also allude to software updates. “Software is never done. If it were, then it would be called hardware.” For example, my favorite XSL processor (xsltproc) and some of its friends work great but recommending it to friends comes with hesitation because I wonder about ongoing maintenance and upgrades to the newer versions of the API. Support also means user community. While open source is about “free” software, it relies on communities for sustainability. Do such communities exist? Are there searchable mailing lists with browsable archives? Are there wikis, virtual and real meetings, and/or IRC channels, etc?
  • Is the documentation thorough? – Is there a man page? A POD? Something that can be printed and annotated? Is there an introduction? FAQ? Glossary of terms? Is there a different guide/section for different types of readers such as systems administrators, programmers, implementors, and/or users? Is the documentation well-written? While I have used plenty of pieces of software and never read the manual, documentation is essencial if the software is expected to be exploited to the highest degree. Few thing in life are truly intuitive. Software is certainly not one of them. Documentation is a form of writing, and writing is something that literally transcends space and time. It is an alternative to having a person giving you instructions.
  • What are the licence terms? – Personally I place a higher value on the viral nature of a GNU-like license, but BSD-like licenses enable commercial enterprise to a greater degree, and whether I like it or not commercial enterprises are all but necessary in the world I live in. (After all, it enabled the creation of favorite personal computer’s operating system.) At the same time, if the licensing is not GNU-like or BSD-like, then the software is not really open source anyway. Right?
  • To what degree is the software easy to install? – Since installing software is usually not a process that needs to be repeated, a difficult installation can be overlooked. On the other hand, if tweaking kernels, installing a huge number of dependencies, requiring a second piece of obscure software that is not supported is required, then all this counts against an open source software distribution.
  • To what degree is the software implemented using the “standard” LAMP stack? – LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl (or PHP, or Python, or just about any other computer language), and the LAMP stack is/was the basis for many pieces of open source applications. The combination is well-supported, well-documented, and easily transportable to different hardware platforms. If the software application is built on LAMP, then the application has a lot going for it.
  • Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? – It is possible to divide software into two group: 1) software that is designed to build other software — libraries/modules, and 2) software that is an an end-in-itself — applications/systems. The former is akin to a tool in a toolbox used to build applications. The later is something intended for an end user. The former requires a computer programmer to truly exploit. The later usually does not require as much specific expertise. Both the module and the application have their place. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the implementor’s environment one might be better suited.
  • To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? – This question is specific to my particular audience, and is dependent on a definition of librarianship. Collection. Preservation. Organization. Dissemination. Books? Catalogs? Circulation? Reading and information literacy? Physical place fostering community? Etc. For example, librarians love to create lists, and in a digital environment lists are well managed through the use of relational databases. Therefore, does MySQL qualify as a piece of library-related software? Similarly, as Roy Tennant was told one time, “Librarians like to search. Everybody else likes to find.” Does this mean indexers like Solr/Lucene ought to qualify? Maybe the question ought to be rephrased. “To what degree does the software satisfy your or your institution’s needs?”

What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in the list of specific software distributions to come up with the “best” of class?

‘More questions than answers.

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Crowd sourcing TEI files

Friday, August 15th, 2008

How feasible and/or practical do you think “crowd sourcing” TEI files would be?

I like writing in my books. In fact, I even have a particular system for doing it. Circled things are the subjects of sentences. Squared things are proper nouns. Underlined things connected to the circled and squared things are definitions. Moreover, my books are filled with marginalia. Comments. Questions. See alsos. I call this process ELMTGML (Eric Lease Morgan’s Truly Graphic Mark-up Language), and I find it a whole lot more useful than the use of simple highlighter pen that where all the mark-up has the same value. Florescent yellow.

I think I could easily “crosswalk” my mark-up process to TEI mark-up because there are TEI elements for many of things I highlight. Given such a thing I could mark-up texts using my favorite editor and then create stylesheets that turn on or turn off my commentary.

Suppose many classic texts were marked-up in TEI. Suppose there were stylesheets that allowed you to turn on or turn off other people’s commentary/annotations or allowed you to turn on or turn off particular people’s commentary/annotation. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Moreover, what if some sort of tool, widget, or system were created that allowed anybody to add commentary to texts in the form of TEI mark-up. Do you think this would be feasible? Useful?

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