#23 – Grand Finale

Well, I hate to say it, but I did find a surprising amount of utility from the Ocean County Library’s Web 2.0 Challenge. Whether keeping up with my LibraryThing, contributing more actively to wikis, or even browsing the Web 2.0 awards for new applications, I have this challenge to thank for it. I may even start keeping a blog of my own.

What I didn’t like is how all this terminology is backward-thinking already, it’s hard to move forward when we’re already looking behind us. This exercise was great to help the uninitiated, but if we’re looking to be cutting-edge, we have to go much farther and delve much deeper.

For those of you interested in the song quotes I’ve placed at the bottom of every post, her are the corresponding artists and songs:

The Mountain Goats – Family Happiness
Los Campesinos! – Don’t Tell Me to do the Maths
Silver Jews – Random Rules
Television – Marquee Moon
King Khan and His Shrines – (How Can I Keep You) Outta Harm’s Way
The Pixies – Manta Ray
Built to Spill – Car
Dirty Projectors – Rise Above (also Black Flag – Rise Above would work)
T. Rex – Spaceball Ricochet
Saloon – Shoot the Singer
The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations
Pavement – Frontwards
Wolf Parade – Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts
Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives – I Get By
Cut Copy – Nobody Lost, Nobody Found
Sunset Rubdown – The Taming of the Hands That Came Back to Life
The Replacements – I Will Dare
Pulp – Common People
Okkervil River – Black
The Pogues – The Recruiting Sergeant

and for the final post below: Lucky Soul – One Kiss Don’t Make a Summer

The only thing that ain’t blue is the sky, ’round here

#22 – The Listening Wind

ListenNJ is a great resource for those of you who love audio books.

Me? Can’t stand them, but I would recommend this to anyone appropriate.

This is an important step towards the idea of the “virtual library,” the idea(l) that one can get their library fix from anywhere at anytime, and not be restricted by our brick and mortar chains.

I mentioned in an earlier post how eReaders won’t be popular until their screens don’t have the harshness of a computer monitor, and instead give the softer feel of paper to look at. Ok, so I really said that they won’t become popular until they’re pre-loaded on our mobile devices, but this is an important point to!

I bring this point up because in the interim between posts, I was made aware of amazon.com’s Kindle. While $400 is a downright ludicrous price to sell it at, this is the exact step that needs to be taken.

Come rain or hail or wind or snow
I’m not going out to Flanders oh
There’s fighting in Dublin to be done
Let your sergeants and your commanders go
Let Englishmen fight English wars
It’s nearly time they started oh
I saluted the sergeant a very good night
And there and then we parted oh

#21 – Anybody with a Microphone

I can’t really be against podcasts. I know, I know, my fans are probably disappointed: “Surely Pat can find some minor foible to harp on.” The truth of the matter is…. I can, but it’s like criticizing Google for finding a copious amounts of worthless web pages. Poor podcasts are like poor web pages: weakly executed and devoid of content. Since I came to the realization some years ago that more than 75% of the internet can be ignored for various reasons (i.e.: factually inaccurate, abandoned web sites, biased opinions, lascivious pages of ill repute, etc.), I take the internet-at-large with a grain of salt. That’s why I can accept podcasts as they are, because they aren’t trying to be anything more than the internet.

Podcasts aren’t innovation, per se, they are an audio extension of what is generally a visual medium.

Sifting through the wretched refuse of the general mass of these is too great a task for me this day, but luckily I’ve got a backup. I’m an occasional listener of the Penny Arcade podcast (I’d provide a link, but the language they use probably makes this NSFW), which is two guys who draw a comic strip on the web. Their comic, and really all their content, stems from the hobby of video games, something I grew up with and, being of similar age, had a very similar experience of with the creators. Their acerbic wit, individual psychoses, and general attitude keeps the listening absorbing.

Don’t you realize that I wouldn’t pause,
that I would cut him down with my claws
if I could have somehow never let that happen?

#20 – The paragon of civilization

Ah, youtube, bastion of street fights and fire melons; of parkour and grievous injuries. The other week I was visiting a friend’s apartment and witnessed several children beating another with cardboard tubes and empty 2-liter soda bottles while filming.

This is our culture.

Well, I guess it’s not that bad. While home to some seriously mind-numbing insipid content, youtube is also a vast repository for anything recorded. While a lot of copyrighted material won’t be on there if anyone can make money off of it, the sheer breadth of material is staggering.

The video I’m posting is British, very British. Originally aired on BBC as a satire of educational films of the 70s and 80s, each episode is about ten minutes long. The humor in it is very dry and absurd, so if that’s not your thing, you might not quite enjoy it, but then you would be no friend of mine.

I wanna live like common people