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I finally pushed out some embarrassingly outdated WordPress plugin updates a few moments ago.

• Updated unAPI plugin with a patch contributed by Jay Luker that removes the hard-coded "wp_" table prefix. The updated version of the plugin has been tagged as 1.4.1.
• Updated LinkPURL plugin with a patch contributed by Mark Matienzo that enables partial redirects. I made some additional tweaks to the plugin to make this feature configurable via the WordPress management UI. This has been tagged as 1.1.
• Created a new unAPI plugin branch for Mark Matienzo's Scriblio-oriented tweaks. The branch is called 1.4.1-anarchivist-scriblio and it contains the scriblio.diff file. I have yet to integrate the diffs, as the file that was patched has changed since the patch was issued. If anyone is interested in working on unAPI/Scriblio integration, please get in touch with me.

And here is my to-do list which I hope will keep me honest.

• Update OAI-ORE plugin to support version 1.0 of the ORE specification.
• Add per-post (and per-page?) resource maps that wrap all embedded images and links.
• Enable "cool URIs" for all resource maps.

It is my hope that I'll get to those sometime before the summer begins. :)

On Monday I woke up with a very mild and very annoying bronchial infection. Doctor Me prescribed two days of rest, relaxation, and chicken soup. Where "chicken soup" is "finally dropping the unreasonably expensive and embarrassingly outdated web hosting package at Speakeasy and transferring all of my domains and content to Dreamhost," that is. I am now paying less than a third of what I had been for a hell of a lot more features. And, I must say, administering DNS records, transferring files, and upgrading long-neglected software is rather amusing when you're loopy and feverish.

My experiences thus far with Dreamhost are very promising. I'm impressed but perhaps that's because I've been in the web hosting ghetto for so long. I understand there will very likely be downtime and sluggishness — that I can deal with. Being shackled to 1999 technologies for $30/mth, while my e-mails go unanswered, not so much.

I upgraded both Technosophia and my wife's blog to the latest WordPress release (2.3) from something ridiculous like 2.0.3. In doing so, I also switched to the svn upgrade configuration Ryan Eby detailed a while back.

I crossed my fingers and it turns out the unAPI server plug-in still works in WP2.3. Huzzah! Not sure if it works in the 2.1 or 2.2 branches, but I suspect it does.

I proposed an NJ Library BarCamp some months ago, not realizing that efforts were already under way to do the same in NYC. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't do anything to get things moving; I wouldn't have pulled things together nearly as well as the NYC folks did. The event was excellent. It was my first camp, and I'd definitely try another. A big thanks to Stephen Francoeur et al.

Here are the three sessions I attended, with links to the "official" wiki pages for summaries:

• Solr and Lucene (session moderated by AIP's Mark Matienzo and NYU's Jason Casden) seem to be gaining momentum in the library world. Having gone to the last Code4Lib conference, my head was already chock full of relevant tidbits, but the moderators did a great job of showing examples, evangelizing, and keeping the discussion going.
• Grid Services (session moderated by OCLC Openly Informatics' Eric Hellman) might have been very interesting if I hadn't kept receiving phone calls from an insurance company. I had to take the calls, and so this session was difficult to follow. The basic idea was to think of networked library services like the power grid. What would libraries want from the grid? What would they be willing to contribute back?
• Semantic Web (session moderated by NYU's Corey Harper and CUNY's Sunny Yoon) was the most widely attended session I went to: standing room only! When I first added the topic to the wiki, I had no idea it would draw this many people. Odd that I would suggest this topic since I had little to offer on the topic, so I gleaned an awful lot. The discussion was spirited and, as you might expect, the RDF vs. microformats arguments flew fast and furious across the room. I'm left wondering if the RDFa/GRRDL approach might not be a good middle-road between the "everything must be represented as RDF in a triplestore" camp and the "just embed microformats in xhtml" people.

And now, the requisite name-dropping. I got to reconnect with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a while, like Terry Catapano, Jay Datema, Nicole Engard, Valerie Forrestal, Kevin Reiss, and Sunny Yoon. And I got to meet LibLime's Chris Cormack, NYPL's Josh Greenberg, Corey Harper, Mark Matienzo, Jenkins Law's RayAna Min Park, and Steven's Tech's Linda Scanlon, among other people.

It was about as good as any camp without kayaks and archery can be. Check out some more summaries.

This is a slightly modified (read: rough) transcription of the talk I gave at this year's NJLA conference, called "Library Revolution." Continue reading…

A number of folks have responded to the Liminal Librarian's original meme asking for a sampling of five non-library blogs folks read.

Here are some of mine:

1. dmiessler's "grep understanding knowledge" - He writes about society, programming, UNIX administration, and his personal life. I enjoy both his writing style and the diversity of topics he covers. His recent piece about the passing of his grandfather resonated strongly with me, as I've been struggling with having lost my own, one and only, grandfather in December.
2. Slow Leadership - Gosh, this is sort of a dirty secret, but I am ridiculously interested in management. It mystifies me, and it's a skill I'd like to gain and hone someday. Effective management and leadership are tasks I never expected to have an interest in, but I've been drawn more and more to them the past few years. Slow Leadership contains a number of insights that I have found quite useful in making sense of how (good) administrators do what they do, and I try to take some of their advice to heart.
3. The Rails Way - I'm a programmer by day, and most of my web application work is in the Rails framework. The Rails Way is written by two Rails committers who know the conventions and good patterns inside and out. Here's how it works: folks submit Rails applications they are working on, and these two rip them apart (in a very constructive and nice way), giving code samples along the way. It's very instructive. To wit, I've taken more notes on their suggestions than I can shake a stick at.
4. The Seattle Times - Okay, it's not really a blog, but I do read it in my aggregator. And what can I say? I can't let go. I still feel like Seattle is my home.
5. Slog (NSFW) - The Slog is the blog of Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger. It's an odd combination of gutter humor, satire, social commentary, political rants, and philosophical bombast. Where else can you read about deep-fried, beer-battered, bacon-wrapped, spray-cheese-filled hotdogs, analysis of the Alaskan Way viaduct vote, the recent Garrison Keillor flap, and the latest eating establishments in Capitol Hill (Seattle, not D.C.)?