Dave Pattern's Blog
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted something Hitchcock related on the blog, so here’s the first in an infrequent series of Hitchcock/Simpsons comparisons that I’ve just added to the wiki.
To start off, there’s “Saboteur” and “Three Men and a Comic Book”:
And secondly, here’s “Psycho” and “Itchy and Scratchy and Marge”:
(click on the images to view larger versions in the wiki)
Typical — just when I’m having fun messing about with Amazon Web Services, almost every Amazon site in the world breaks down…
…I almost got the full set, but Amazon Japan is still going strong…
Given Amazon’s dominance, I wonder how much it’s costing them in lost sales per minute to have their entire Western World web presence offline? By my reckoning, they’ve been offline for at least 30 minutes now.
Continue reading “Dang — almost got the full set…”
Okay, I’ve never seen any episodes of Saturday Night Live, so the recent spate of “more cowbell” posts went straight over my head (leaving a very unflattering centre parting). Thank God for Wikipedia 😉
Anyway, never one to willingly miss a passing bandwagon, here’s my contribution…
There’s an ancient Japanese proverb which translates roughly as:
“If you put an infinite number of programming monkeys into a room, one of them will write a Library 2.0 Idea Generator”
So… tonight, Matthew, I am going to be that programming monkey and I proudly unveil the…
If you get any particularly juicy ideas, please post them as comments — here’s a “starter for 10“:
[update] I’ve added the ability to save your favourite ideas to the Library 2.0 Whiteboard
[update] To complement the Idea Generator, I’ve hacked together…
It is with profound personal sadness that I must announce the passing away of Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394, aged just 3 years old. Below is a picture of GA-7VT600 in happier days:
Continue reading “RIP: Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394 (2004-2006)”
A little later than planned (due to a mislaid memory stick containing the final Powerpoint!), here’s a link to the “Free Software” presentation:
https://library.hud.ac.uk/mediawiki/dughug2006/UsingFreeSoftware.zip
…and here are the photos from the end of day two and from the award ceremony on day three:
http://www.daveyp.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=14
http://www.daveyp.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=15
Grace Bays also emailed her photos through to me, so I’ve added them to the conference wiki:
https://library.hud.ac.uk/dughug2006/DUG/HUG_2006_photographs
…if you have any photos you’d like adding to the wiki, please feel free to email them to me: d.c.pattern[at]hud.ac.uk
A big thank you to everyone who came along to the sessions I presented in — I’m sure you were all sick to death of the sight of me by Friday, but I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to share some of the things we’ve been doing at Huddersfield!
Also, many thanks to David Bigwood, Michael J Giarlo, Luke the Librarian, and Susan Johns-Smith for their Library 2.0 examples. I just managed to squeeze the Web/Library 2.0 presentation into 45 minutes but, given the chance, I could have happily gone on for another 45. However, that would have meant missing Professor Bruce Royan’s excellent keynote speech “The Library, The Web, and the Warp Factor“.
Finally, another big thank you to everyone at Lincoln for making us feel so welcome, to the DUG/HUG team for all of the hard work they put into organising the event, and to the staff at SirsiDynix — I can’t wait for the conference next year!
Sarah Houghton (aka LibrarianInBlack) has blogged that Answers.com has a new natural language “Web Answers” feature which lets you pose life’s great unanswerables – e.g.:
(I should point out that Sarah didn’t pose that exact question, but it’s one that’s been niggling at the back of my mind for years!)
After reverse engineering the new feature, it looks like they’re using Ajax and XML – e.g.:
Some of you will already know that we’ve been using Answers.com on our OPAC to provide serendipity keyword suggestions, so I’ll have a go incorporating the “Web Answers” output into those suggestions too.
The only problem with offering to do presentations is that they don’t leave you any time to blog about the actual event itself!!!
For those who prefer an electronic version, here are the 3 presentations I gave today:
If you have any questions or comments, you can always use this blog or you can email me at:
….right — got to dash off to get ready for the conference meal!!!
ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
It’s 01:02am and I just spent the last 30 minutes writing up an in-depth blog entry for day one… by the time I submitted it, the University of Lincoln network has timed my web connection out and refused to reload the page containing the text I’d just typed.
I honestly don’t have the energy to type it all out again, so here’s the O’Reilly “DUG/HUG Day One In a Nutshell” edition:
AM: no training sessions, so went to castle.
PM: Welcome speeches, Peter Gethin’s speech, my presentation about HIP tweaks (big thank you to everyone who came along — hope you found it interesting/useful!), evening meal, and lots of good networking!
…so tired, Homer need sleep now!
Martin and myself travelled down to Lincoln yesterday (via Sheffield) on a train that seemed to stop at everywhere else in the UK — what is about a 1 hour drive from Huddersfield to Lincoln is a good 2½ to 3 hour train ride along bumpy winding country tracks.
No sooner had we checked in, we were back at “the shed” — one of two pubs within a stagger from the conference venue:
Yep, your eyes aren’t deceiving you – that’s David “Mr CODI” Schuster sampling the best that “the shed” has to offer!
After popping into another pub, we joined Jim Fraser (from Angus Council) and headed off for a curry at the Royal Tandoori (118 High Street). A fantastic curry, loads of chapatis, a cup of coffee, a complimentary glass of brandy, and all for less than a tenner each… life is good! 🙂
There’s a few more pictures here, including some shots of the “Glory Hole”.