Goodbye Blogger, hello WordPress

Okay, I've finally come to the conclusion that I can create a far more aesthetically pleasing and easily mutable (and I mean that in the most positive way) blog on WordPress. So, if any of the three of you I've actually shown my blog to are interested, my new blog address is: http://informationatrix.wordpress.com/.

Women of Our Time: An Online Photographic Exhibit from the National Portrait Gallery

The photographic online exhibit "Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery" does darn near everything that an online exhibit should do; it has a compelling purpose, it is aesthetically pleasing, and it attempts to not only show you the photographs of these women, but to give you some sense of who they were as people. The scrolling format is a little off-putting, and it would be nice if you could get a higher-resolution view of a lot of the photographs...but it's still visually very evocative. Thumbs up.

Why smart people are sometimes very stupid

My new best friend, as I noted in the post below, is StumbleUpon, and, in using my new best friend (which, granted, sounds extremely inappropriate) I found this ditty of an article, titled "Why Smart People Can be So Stupid". I call it a "ditty" because it's a sort of a light romp through academic literature on stupidity. It's by no means "serious" read, but I think that's what makes it fun.

My infatuation with Firefox: part I

I happened upon an article on Digg today about Firefox extensions, appropriately titled "I Want a Firefox Extension to...200+ Common Problems Solved" . Some of my favorites (I'm new to Firefox, so I'm sure this list will grow): I am a creature of habit, which is why Morning Coffee is my first choice. It does what all extensions should do; take what you already do online, and help you find a better/more efficient way to do it. You can add all of the websites that you browse daily (or daily by morning/afternoon, bi-weekly, weekly, etc.) and, when you hit the "Morning Coffee" icon in your browser, each of your selected websites will open in your Firefox browser. So handy! I'm a big fan of the feeling of serendipity that I get when "old-school" shelf browsing (which is not to say that I think the Library of Congress classification system translates well to an online environment...but that's a whole 'nother post), so I am inclined to say that I will, once I get used to it, like StumbleUpon. When you sign up, you're given a large list of very broad categories of interest (clothing, liberal politics, etc.). From these categories, StumbleUpon "randomly" selects websites according to your interests. As I mentioned before, I'm a creature of habit, both online and off, and I think this will help me get out of the online ruts that I tend to get myself into.

Pwned: USC offers a class on why DRM "pwns" you

As I hope to someday work in archives and special collections, and these collections are increasingly either born-digital, electronically available, or both, the issue of Digital Rights Management has been looming larger and larger on my personal horizon for awhile now. To be perfectly honest, though, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around both the definition and the potential consequences of DRM....this isn't an issue that, to my knowledge, has been discussed at my library school, and so a lot of my information has been sort of informally gleaned from a combination of web trawling and the sites whose RSS feeds I subscribe to, a situation I'm trying to remedy. This is why I was so pleased when I noticed that one of the sites in my aggregator, Boing Boing, a self-described "directory of wonderful things" mentioned that a professor at USC is teaching a class on Digital Rights Management, titled Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?". Thankfully, the article also links to the draft syllabus for the class, which looks to contain a lot of interesting reading material. The teacher has obviously taken a decidedly negative stance on DRM, so I'm doubting I'll find any attempts at a "fair and balanced" representation of information regarding DRM. However, unlike other disseminators of "fair and balanced" information, he's at least owning up to his biases, so he's all right in my book.

An informationatrix by any other name...

I was going through my saved Gmail chats today, and I came across one with one of my very good friends that detailed the creation of the name of this blog. I've taken out her name, and done some cuts to tighten it up a little, but in length only. This only took up the span of about ten minutes, so, NO, we weren't slacking, we were taking our "ten". And thankfully, I don't listen to her, or the name of this blog would make absolutely no sense....as you'll see if you manage to make it to the end of our inane ramblings:

me: Oh, I forgot to ask you again...ideas for a blog name.

friend: Oh, yay!

I am no good with professional ones though.

me: Maybe not completely professional, just not unprofessional.

Nothing referencing sex or alcohol or anything.

Some sort of clever play on my name, being a beginning information professional/librarian/archivist, something like that.

friend: Fine, make me think. That takes time.

me: Hey, you said you didn't want to work.

I'm just trying to help.

friend: Here are the ones that I suggested last time you asked:

The Library Information Scientess

The Brink of Librarianship.

Informationista?

me: That's nice.

I like things that end in -ista and -atrix.

Informationatrix.

friend: That is good too!

me: What are other -ista and -atrix-y endings?

friend: -grapher

me: I could be Informationatrix (in training)

friend: -oid? –opolis?

me: I'm not a whole city! Meanie.

friend: Datalyptica

me: That makes no sense, but it sounds neat.

friend: I know!

Like apocalyptica.

me: Yes.

friend: Informationutrition.

me: Ha.

friend: Portmanteau that!

me: Yeah!

Informationteau.

friend: Informationthropomorphism

me: Yes! That's it!

Kidding.

friend: Aw, come on!

me: I'm going with informationanteau.

Because it sounds like I'm french.

Or, French.

friend: Stewart.

me: NO!

I don't want to be French Stewart!

*feet stomping*

friend:: Too bad, you are cursed now.

me: Information French Stewart?

friend:: That is pretty snazzy.

me: I think so.

Story in six words? No way!

I admire (but don't usually practice) the "vigorous" brevity of language prescribed by Strunk & White's Elements of Style. Still, I was tickled to see that Wired magazine had coerced (or otherwise convinced) dozens of my favorite writers to compose six-word stories. The premise for this was that Hemingway had once written a story in six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn") and called it his best work. No disrespect to Hemingway, but I think that my personal favorite out of this bunch, Margaret Atwood's ("Longed for him. Got him. Shit!") is far superior.

Digital cameras + blog publishing = paranoid informationatrix

I'm contemplating the purchase of a digital camera...or, more accurately, I'm adding a digital camera to my Christmas wish list, as I'm currently skint. In any case, I was very happy to find this very helpful article today, which provides both a broad sketch of photographers' rights to take and publish photographs, as well as some links to other websites for further clarification. Here's hoping that knowing my rights will prevent any potential future frog-marching out of public places, having my camera taken away, or being set upon by angry librarians who only want to be photographed on a certain side.