February 28, 2008 • 9:59 pm
my classmates and i have been trading a bunch of emails about our latest class assignment (the final for our cataloging course). we’re just mad because it seems like more stuff than we should really need to do, and not in a good way – which would be like, making us better catalogers – it’s just more about extraneous work and stuff that makes us (me, at least) more confused rather than more…enlightened.
but part of our complaint is that we’ve just been assigned to watch a whole lot of things in the school media lab. i foresee many logistical problems, seeing as how she’s only given us two weeks to watch everything, there are 20 people in the class, and the lab is not open 24/7.*
so. we’re mad that we have to watch a bunch of TV and that our assignments are longer than they need to be. why is life so hard??
so maybe it’s not so surprising that, after “stuff white people like,” my new favorite RSS feed comes from “whitewhine.”**
* also, the lab is cold.
** they’re (i’m) not racist! the idea behind both blogs is that people in my SES (high education level, solid middle-class background) are…well, spoiled. i guess that makes me classist, but hey, they’re my people so it’s okay, right?
Filed under: best thing
February 25, 2008 • 5:51 pm
Last night was kind of a big night at the place where I’m currently an intern, so when I walked into work this morning, there was practically nobody there.
As people slowly drifted in, they were either hung over, sleepy, and/or pretty much useless. Everyone just kinda debriefed each other on the previous night’s happenings, and nobody got any work done (excluding people like me, who didn’t get to participate – which I didn’t mind in the least, to be honest!). The atmosphere in the whole building was pretty subdued, overall.
It was nice! Even more low-key and quiet than usual, making for a pretty relaxed workday.
Also, I found deluxe, raspberry- and mint-flavored hot chocolate packets in the kitchen today. Yummy!
Filed under: work
February 23, 2008 • 7:27 pm
About “Inbox Heaven: The Ultimate Email Setup“: Im’ not planning on implementing this, but what the fellow says about Gmail is the truth:
Who cares if Google is smuggling gremlins to a secret bunker in order to launch a subterranean attack and take over the Earth in 2143? Not me! I’ll still be smiling when they arrive at my doorstep, happy in the knowledge that — yes — the gremlins might have come for my Hobnobs, the true source of all power, but at least I’ve got Gmail.
If it’s a Faustian bargain we’re making with Google, well, hey, it’s email! You’re supposed to assume the whole world can read your emails anyway (because they can)!
I also like this funny image they use:
Filed under: web2.0
February 21, 2008 • 6:41 pm
David Bordwell on “His Girl Friday“:
The lesson that sticks with me is this. If Columbia had renewed its copyright on schedule, would this film be so widely admired today? Scholars and the public discovered a masterpiece because they had virtually untrammeled access to it, and perhaps its gray-market status supplied an extra thrill. Thanks mainly to piracy, His Girl Friday was propelled into the canon.
This part comes at the very end of his article but the rest of it is a good read too. As always!
Filed under: movie
February 19, 2008 • 7:28 pm
“Police say a bullet hit one of the struggling men, shattered a window and then hit McRoy.
“The bullet hit a DVD McRoy was carrying in his pocket. He suffered a bruise but didn’t realize he had been shot. As he told a police officer what happened he noticed a bullet hole in his jacket, the shattered DVD case and a piece of the bullet.
“The DVD was nicked. It was a gift from an employee who had recorded a TV show about fire extinguishers.”
Okay, so maybe recording a show off the TV isn’t a crime (yet), but it could very well have been something like piracy!
[Yahoo! News]
Filed under: best thing
February 15, 2008 • 3:40 pm
Today I joined one of the l-school’s geek clubs on a tour of Yahoo!’s usability lab facilities. I don’t know what I expected, exactly, but the labs are very well put together, I think. The rooms and equipment were cool and fun to look at. It was a far cry from that one time I did user-testing at Flock in a spare room stocked with only one video camera and a Macbook Pro =D
Usability design seems like an interesting path to take. I never really thought about it as a career option before, but it looks pretty solid. Must investigate!
Filed under: best thing
February 13, 2008 • 10:11 pm
Every time I try to read this one article for my cataloging class, i find myself completely unable to read more than a paragraph at a time.
The article is about how to catalog episodes of “I Love Lucy,” and it just makes me want to watch “I Love Lucy,” so I stop reading and go on the internet to find clips to watch.
Come to think of it, that’s what I do every time a movie or tv show or website is mentioned in an article.
Filed under: school
February 12, 2008 • 9:53 pm
The new digital archivist at the place where I’m interning started her job yesterday. Today we had a nice chat, and she’s really cool.
She went to library school in Florida, working in school libraries and doing media things and IT, before moving to CA with her husband and landing a cool-sounding job at a well-known basic cable network, setting up content management systems/workflows there.
Then she moved to Seattle and became a consultant, and did information architecture work at MS!!!! I told her Id’ just read about that thing in the IA polar bear book and she was like, heck yeah MS rawks!
Okay, so that comment took a few minutes for me to digest, but I can see her point, really.
Anyway she moved back down here because her husband hated Seattle (heh), and did more consulting work.
She assures me that there will be plenty of work out there for IAs. So it’s too bad I’m not majoring in IS and specializing in IA, eh?
She also ventured that content mgmt and DAM would be okay too, job-wise. Hmm, okay.
She said UX was also big.
I dunno.
Are chimeras hirable?
Filed under: school, work
February 10, 2008 • 10:53 pm
I think I watched more movies in the theater over the past weekend than I have in like, the past 2 years. For someone who’s half in film school, I really suck at actually going to the movies.
Anyway, thanks to a rather nice job perk, I saw “Juno,” “Atonement,” and “Michael Clayton” on film, free! I thought they were all pretty good, which should be no surprise given that they’re all Best Picture nominees this year. Most def. worth the price of admission (not to mention 6 hours of my life).
On DVD I watched “The Awful Truth,” “His Girl Friday,” and “Killer of Sheep.” I’ll leave it to you to guess which one was a class assignment =D
Actually, the two Cary Grant movies are part of a 5-DVD set I bought last week because one of the films, “Holiday,” is for a class assignment. I mean, I guess I totally could’ve just rented it or gone ot the library, but I had a Border’s coupon and none of the films in the collection. The two films in it that I haven’t seen are “Only Angels have Wings” and “The Talk of the Town.”
I guess I’ll leave those for next weekend.
Filed under: movie
February 9, 2008 • 2:25 am
I am still awake right now because I just watched two episodes of House on hulu.com. I don’t know how I got sucked in, I was supposed to dedicate this sad Friday night to homework…Well, I guess technically it *is* Saturday now. =P
I like House and watch it if I ever happen across it during those rare times I’m using the actual telly. On those occasions I usually miss the teaser, and now I realize that was a good thing, because that’s when a lot of gross, scary sickness-related stuff happens.
And then near the end of the second act there’s usually something gross going on too. That’s when I get sort of weak-kneed and nauseous and have to avert my eyes.
But, I love Hugh Laurie and Dr. Wilson. Maybe I should just suck it up and buy a season of Jeeves & Wooster like I’ve always wanted to. And…what, Dead Poet’s Society? Blegh. What else has Mr. R.S. Leonard done…
Filed under: tv
