τεχνοσοφια

Deploying Rails (to Apache servers) is about to get much easier.  Hopefully.

 http://www.modrails.com/ 

Deployment has long been the bugaboo with Rails, so this should bode well for the framework.

… meanwhile, the Code4Lib Journal has published its second issue and boy is it packed with articles; Eric Lease Morgan, Coordinating Editor of the issue, does a bang-up job on the introduction (though the title has effectively Bostonroll‘d me).

Each article in this issue has a little bit of something for all who call themselves a librarian or work in a library. Each identifies some sort of library problem to be addressed, and offers one or more solutions. Many are complete with code snippets. After all, this is Code4Lib.

For example, people in public service may be interested in Edward M. Corrado and Kathryn A. Frederick’s review of database-driven subject guide applications. Kenneth Furuta and Michele Potter describe a simple help system that brings librarians running to the reference desk. Margaret Mellinger and Kim Griggs explain how library resources can be organized into course pages without the need of HTML knowledge and yet sport Web 2.0 features. Nancy Fried Foster, Nora Dimmock, and Alison Bersani shed light on participatory design.

For those of us who enjoy cataloging and metadata issues, Jonathan Gorman outlines how he modified VUFind to exploit Wikipedia and cataloging authority records to enhance information about authors in a library catalog. Chris Freeland, Martin Kalfatovic, Jay Paige, and Marc Crozier illustrate a different use of Library of Congress Subject Headings by integrating place names with Google Maps. Carol Jean Godby, Devon Smith and Eric Childress describe a technique for crosswalking just about any metadata format into just about any other metadata format.

For the systems librarian in you, Dan Scott and Kevin Beswick share how they used Linux live CDs customized as kiosk browsers to provide laptops as ‘quick lookup’ stations at their library. Andrew Darby takes advantage of the Google Calendar API to easily manage the display of library hours. Jody DeRidder exploits Google sitemap technology and static HTML pages to make content in the “deep Web” more accessible. We hope you find these articles useful, stimulating, and relevant to your daily working lives.

I am ashamed to admit that I have not yet finished the first issue, so I now have pages upon pages to read. Ordinarily when I am behind on my reading I wind up letting bits fall by the wayside but the material largely looks too good to ignore.

Congratulations to Editorial Committees past and present and to the community on the whole!

That I very nearly called this post “Southern comfort” reveals me as a long-time yankee from the urban northeast.  No, I suppose Arlington, Virginia isn’t quite the south — certainly not culturally — but you can see why I’d say so if you consider that I once thought any place south of 195 may as well have been Deliverance country.  Ah, the old provincialisms.  And to further deconstruct this ridiculous metaphor, my entire apartment is probably smaller than a veranda.

But, boy howdy, did I have a relaxing and refreshing day: sitting on the couch with the windows open, reviewing a chapter of a friend’s upcoming book, while the wind rustled the blooming saucer magnolia right outside the windows.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the pair of mourning doves that have taken up residence on the neighbor’s window sill were soaking up the rays, singing their “woo-woo-oo-oo-oo” song on occasion.

Almost any sort of writing is a real chore for me and yet every now and then I commit to writing or editing something or other.  I enjoy it but it does take the sort of concentration that I’ve found so difficult of late.   I do not regret agreeing to review the chapter in question (on DRM technologies, for the curious), and I feel somewhat validated in my decision after the elements all aligned today and made for a very pleasant time.  (I did not get as much done as I would have liked, but what else is new?  Time management remains a challenging task, especially when the television and the internets are so near. )

I’m beginning to ramble and I don’t really have a point.  It was a good day — an entire good weekend in fact — and I felt it worth committing to bits.

… Hey, are those banjos I hear?

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. — Thomas Payne, The American Crisis

Rest in peace, GOP. You had a good run, but in the end, loyalty to a broken system weighed down the time-tested principles of the party that Lincoln built. Now you are grand only in name.

I remain hopeful that the enthusiasm of the Ron Paul Revolutionaries sustains their efforts to transform the Republican party, from the ground up, back to the party of non-interventionism and small government (even while my own energy to stay involved has waned). I do believe there is a place for (small l) libertarian ideals in American political debate and that place is not out along the fringe. And though I am a lifelong progressive, I will continue to play whatever small part I might in nudging the GOP away from neo-conservatism, which I see as a highly dangerous ideology.

It is looking more and more likely that I will have no better option than to vote for Barack Obama (EDIT: or Hillary since she did not bomb in last night’s primaries) in the 2008 election. The Democrats are no less the party of American Empire than the Republicans and I am troubled that the only two viable options in our electoral system are both agents of big government and imperialism. I have long supported the Democratic party despite their being a ship of fools, more concerned with the fringe than with the core, despite rampant political correctness, despite turning their backs on the anti-federalist principles upon which they were founded. I won’t feel at home among their ranks, but I will very likely be supporting their candidate against the war-mongering John McCain.

Cynicism and idealism are battling within me, and I fear it’s only a matter of time before cynicism once again wins the day.

Yes, I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’m overreacting a bit. But damn it, am I bummed.