Folderol

2008-07-24T12:52:00.002-04:00

I covet this shirt. It's been that sort of week!

When times get tough economically, public libraries get a lot more appreciation. However, the overdue fines can start to get out of control. One library's solution is to have seminary students handle the shakedowns!

The increasing technological aspect of law librarianship drives the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. If you're technologically inclined at both work and home, there's now a WoW guild just for librarians. Yes, it's true!

The future of the newsroom is a hot topic these days. (It reminds me a lot of the "future of libraries" topic that's been swirling around the last few years. We all need to cooperate and evolve together, I believe.)

Lastly, I give you a fun weblog concentrating on book covers.

Tomorrow: links from others! See you then.

2008-07-23T13:33:00.002-04:00

Right. So, um, apparently the Eucharist is being held hostage in a plastic bag in Florida. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, so I realize this is a somewhat touchy subject...but the melodrama in this article is hilarious. Can they do an exchange for ransom?

Meanwhile, Mr. Toast is on tour! It's true. Maybe you'll see him in your town!

More travel links: Andrew Bush took pictures of people on the freeways between 1989 and 1997, and they're fantastic. If you're itching to get out on a freeway yourself, Cassandra sent in a list of recommended travel reading.

And finally, UFO sightings in the U.K. are spiking. Why the U.K.? Is it crop circle tourism season among the aliens?

2008-07-22T14:44:00.002-04:00

Today's steampunk entry is mostly about the visual oohs and ahhs. If you'd like something with a little more density, however, sink your teeth into the history of science fiction between 1900 and 1910 - great material for research and inspiration! (Swiped from Matt's weblog.)

And now, on to fantastic robots that clank, a synthesizer that steams, a weblog full of artistic wonders that tick, and a game of clones and Cherry Chronoberry pies.

And look, a steampunk podcast! Huzzah!

2008-07-21T11:09:00.002-04:00

Feeling uninspired this Monday? If you're in New York City, you can buy an idea for fifty cents! (Actually, it's 25 cents - you get a quarter along with an idea.)

Although it annoys some people, I totally love this sort of nitpicky stuff. I'm willing to work a job that includes checking fonts for historical accuracy!

More stuff you may not have known: did you know The Wizard of Oz was banned in schools due to its allegedly Communist ideals? And that J.M. Barrie was a little strange? (Well, you probably did know that last one. But the stories of what happened to the actual Lost Boys were new to me.)

The National Library of Ireland has an amazing and extensive online exhibit on W.B. Yeats. (I could have sworn I'd linked to this before, but apparently not.)

Spooky visual art: the work of William Hand is way out there, which makes it fascinating. For more cheerful art matters, you can take a "color sense" quiz and see what colors you should paint your surroundings. Evidently my color palettes are "Pop Art" and "Mosaic/Tapestry." (Looking at them, I'd have to agree.)

2008-07-18T13:58:00.002-04:00

Links from others! Thanks, everyone.

From Bunny: A thousand-dollar suit that "transforms your movement into music." Oooo.

From Holly: Russian raver retinas irreversibly irradiated! Also, an NPR story on "Mr. Jalopy" and the whole DIY/MAKE movement. Incidentally, Mr. Jalopy has a very cool weblog.

From Cassandra: spooky singing icebergs and a numerological astrological chart. According to this, I am a 7, and "watery." Hm.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

2008-07-17T14:50:00.002-04:00

Today: stupidly busy: Me: rushed. You: get short post.

The 2008 Pimp My Bookcart competition starts in August!
Librarians in movies: a more detailed look than the profession usually receives.
From the Sparkle Queen: library perfume. Ha!
Visuwords is yet another visual dictionary, but a cool and intuitive one.
First, cyberpunk. Then, steampunk. Now...libpunk? Oy.

Tomorrow: links from others, and hopefully some more time to expound upon them!

2008-07-16T14:17:00.002-04:00

We're reaching that point in the summer where people get squirrelly from the heat and start festivals based on strange things, like snails or vintage Transylvanian bikes or mud. Then again, the world's falling apart and we're running out of all sorts of resources, like gallium (needed for LCD displays) and zinc, so maybe we should just go ahead and frolic in the mud and race snails, before the Vogons show up. Speaking of, Douglas Adams's typewriter is for sale!

A random spooky link concludes today's post: behold, the dark side of Central Park.

2008-07-15T10:54:00.002-04:00

Steampunk bits today. Off we go:

If you're in the area this weekend, do check out the "Out of this Furnace" art show in Pennsylvania on Saturday -- it looks like great fun.

The Chrono'Nauts parade also looks like it was great fun, and there are photos to prove it! It's staggering how many conventions have taken on steampunk aspects this year.

Botropolis, which is very cool in its own right, has linked to a hilarious steampunkish R2-D2 unit made from a beer barrel. It's the ultimate multitasking bot!

Are dirigibles the way of the future? Probably not, but the New York Times has an article on them anyway, complete with slide show. I hope to travel on a blimp someday, one way or another.

The Traveler's Steampunk Blog is a new arrival on the net; go and check it out!

I confess that I do ignore a huge group of steampunk aficianados on a regular basis, not out of malice but just because I don't spend a lot of time (well, any time, really) in Second Life. However, the steampunk community there is absolutely vast. The Heliograph keeps you updated on the goings-on there, and points the way toward other community websites.

Back in the first life setting, there are always ways to make your life a little more extraordinary. Look at what Mary Robinette Kowal did to her laptop to make it steampunkily gorgeous, for example. And then, there's always the secret passageways you could build in your home...

2008-07-14T10:27:00.002-04:00

If it's Monday, it must be time for art links...

Visual art: free coloring material is available at the (nearly) 10,000 pages blog!

Film: The Documentary Blog is...well, pretty self-explanatory. But very cool.

Music: Peter Gabriel's suggestion for dealing with information overload is "The Filter," which is a bit like Pandora.

Literature: Edgar Allan Poe's house in the Bronx is undergoing a renovation.

Life as art: Urban Prankster documents the culture jamming and bizarre happenings that make life interesting. My current favorite is the Kool-Aid Man poster.

2008-07-11T12:37:00.002-04:00

Friday, hooray! On to the links sent in by others. Thanks, everyone!

From Dawowar: the origins of ten Muppets. Rowlf was quite the star in his own right.

From Bunny: "A YouTube video by a European space agency...it's about 7 mins but is well worth it. Easily explains what the number 78 Billion looks like and helps to add some perspective to the lives of humanity (and the absolute stupidity and futility that we are surrounded by in this day and age)."

From Holly: we were very serious about '80s music back in the day, because the world was on the verge of ending, you see. A related link from Cassandra: post-apocalyptic novels.

Also from Cassie: Ingmar Bergman's island F�r� may be up for auction soon; those goofy hypercolor clothes are making a comeback; and the fascinating tale of a modern-day monkey god. The entire weblog is really interesting.

Have a spiffy (and safe) weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

2008-07-10T13:20:00.002-04:00

Come, fellow librarians, and join the Library Society of the World. They're nice! And Cory Doctorow is an honorary member!

Merriam-Webster has announced their new words for 2008. Some seem like a long time in arriving. Pescatarian? Wingnut? (M-W has it as "wing nut," two words. Weird.)

Tim of Geistweg pointed out a neat library question making the rounds: what do you do in a normal day as a librarian? I'm trying to figure out if I can go into any detail (the first rule of being a law librarian: don't talk about being a law librarian, or at least not about the specific stuff you're researching), but I encourage other librarians to talk about what they do in a typical day!

If you want to see a lot of librarian infighting, check out the recent post in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Google and its partnership with libraries. If you want to see some really ugly journalist infighting, read the comments in this post about layoffs at the Tampa Tribune. I think many of the issues are similar.

And finally...thanks to Matt's suggestion, I did a quick interview with Ekaterina Sedia, author of the just-published The Alchemy of Stone, as part of the ongoing interview meme. The questions and answers are over at the Steampunk Librarian - or it will be, once I wrangle Vox into submission. There may be more of these sorts of things in the near future over there!

Tomorrow, back here at HQ, there will be links from others. Stay tuned.

2008-07-09T13:11:00.001-04:00

Today looks like it could get really hectic. So, in the meantime, why not read this article, which I swiped from Jimmylegs, and ponder the possibility of another messiah who rises from the dead in three days.

More soon, hopefully!

2008-07-08T13:39:00.002-04:00

For steampunk fans: some history, some reading material, and some new arrivals.

First, the history: I just read an article about submarine telegraph lines from the fantastic Atlantic Cable website. There are dozens of articles, scores of photographs, and unlimited fodder for the imagination there!

More inspiration fodder: the true story of Napoleon's scientific expedition to Egypt. Be sure to read about Nicolas-Jacques Cont� in particular, and his engraving machine. (He also, incidentally, invented the pencil.)

The latest big paper to cover steampunk is the San Francisco Gate, with a story on Sunday. A new magazine has appeared, too -- the Gatehouse Gazette. Go! Read! Also, the L.A. Times has an inventive review of the recent steampunk anthology, complete with mechanical women.

Google has proposed a skybridge for its New York city offices, and Valleywag imagines a futuristic look to the city. (The commenters, sadly, remind the editors that skybridges aren't really anything new in this particular metropolis.)

New arrivals! Strange Engines intends to educate us on the history of steam guns and whatever else strikes the author's fancy. Meanwhile, new steampunk wallpapers are up and available for downloading. Your laptop may not be steampunk, but at least your wallpaper can be!

2008-07-07T12:03:00.002-04:00

Google is celebrating Marc Chagall's birthday today. Go and look at his art; it's good for your soul!

More visual art fun: Color Wars 2008 has a great "young and now" project going on where you recreate a photo of yourself. I am SO doing this. Color Wars, in general, is a pretty amazing website; you can spend hours there!

Missing footage from the 1927 classic Metropolis has just been discovered. Wow. Can't wait to see a new version!

In literary news, NPR has expanded its book coverage (hooray!). Also, in the midst of the handwringing over today's text language, it's being pointed out that we've always abbreviated the written word, regardless of the technology. There are some interesting points about language in the article.

Over in the music world, barbershop quartet organizations are arguing. There's only one solution, of course: a musical sing-off! Hey, that's how they settle things in the dance community.

History meets music in the ancient Aztec "whistles of death." Sounds eerie.

We end with the multimedia extraganza that is the home of Public Collectors. Be sure to check out the digital section!

2008-07-03T10:07:00.002-04:00

We start off today with a fun easter egg for anyone who's using Google Reader. While you're in it, press "up up down down left right left right b a" and see what happens. Shazam!

If you've been seeing new words or phrases tossed around lately and wonder about their origin, WordSpy may be able to help.

For the history buffs: Got Medieval is a great weblog full of interesting historical bits!

Gizmodo went to visit the LEGO heaquarters, and they have video! They also have the answers to all sorts of odd LEGO questions, like why there are no blonde LEGO people.

From Holly: the bizarre origins of wedding traditions. Also, McDonald's has a New Wave figurine that looks suspiciously like a member of Devo, and Devo is NOT happy about it.

From Cassandra: our planet apparently makes a lot of noise. Also from Cassandra: the Museum of the American Cocktail, the impending arrival of the robot lover, and news that cameras are being set up in order to capture proof that Britain's "big cats" exist, and oh, by the way, that invasion by Caesar might not really have happened on the day everyone used to think it did. Oops!

Have a spiffy weekend and/or holiday, everyone! See you Monday.

2008-07-02T14:08:00.002-04:00

The Fourth of July is almost here, and that means it's time for Northside's awesome July 4th Parade and Festival and General Extravaganza celebration. Locals, take note: there's a great photo of the Ladies' Lawn Chair Brigade on the parade info page. Let's hope the weather holds; so far it's looking...soggy.

If you're not in the Cincinnati area, you might want to, say, swim the Manhattan Island Marathon this weekend. Or if you're in Europe, get over to Geneva for the American International Club's celebration of Independence Day.

Bunny informs me that not only is it National Ice Cream Month, July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day. Therefore, we bring you...The Chicken of Tomorrow!

Double-post tomorrow, as we'll be off on Friday. Stay tuned.

2008-07-01T13:31:00.002-04:00

One of my spam messages yesterday had the subject line of "oyster perpetual cosmograph." Sounds vaguely steampunkish, doesn't it? And off we go...

I was reading details of William Gibson's induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and noticed that steampunk was mentioned as a literary genre. I poked around a bit and found that the Hall even lists a steampunk bibliography. I guess the term really has made it! However, the genre discussions continue, as detailed in this post on Futurismic. An excerpt that caught my eye:

For example, Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) might be dismissed as needlessly fantastical if seen as a detective story, but if seen as a work of steampunk cinema, it takes on a whole new set of meanings - despite the fact that it is rather unlikely that the writer or director had even heard of the term at the time.

(I have a deep and abiding love for this film, as anyone who knows me can attest, and seeing it listed as "steampunk cinema" does my heart good.)

The steampunk portals are arriving, slowly but surely! The Steampunk Feed is open for business, and the brand new SteamList aims to catalog the steampunky stuff available on Etsy. Another source of inspiration is the Steampunk Lab, which shows off items from all over the web. And Coilhouse, which has all sorts of great bits to it, has a steampunk category.

From Cassandra: Gogbot looks like a steampunk-oriented festival taking place this fall in the Netherlands. The site is in Dutch, but I did see that one of the bands performing is named Singing Tesla Coils, so you know it's going to be an interesting time!

Marconi News specializes in collages of "visual fabrications, chronological confusion and technological deception." Of course, I love it.

I also love the Process Indicator. It's for indicating processes, it is!

And lastly, space westerns may be a bit of a tangential interest, but many a steampunk story has a space and/or a western angle to it. It's a great site, regardless of your leanings.

2008-06-30T10:40:00.002-04:00

If it's Monday, that means it's time for arty links!

Architecture: imagine a building where each floor spins independently. Freaky.

Reading: BookRabbit is a UK-based site which combines bookselling with social networking.

Writing: Whitelines is a Swedish company which aims to reduce carbon impact by selling paper with white lines instead of black or blue. Sneaky, eh?

Music: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is 100 years old this summer, and the people who wrote the song had never even been to a game.

Visual art: I love the work of Anita Mej�a!

Puppetry: Fellow Americans! Are you fed up with prejudice against Felt-Americans? Here's your chance to make things right -- do your part to get Stephen Colbert the puppet on the ("fleshy")Stephen Colbert show! See the Stephen Colbert Puppet Challenge for all the info!

2008-06-27T10:27:00.002-04:00

Happy Friday, everyone! Celebrate by flinging your toast eight feet in the air!

From Satori: Boy George's U.S. Visa has been denied, which makes his upcoming tour a little...tentative.

From Holly: those Zorbs might be a little more dangerous than previously thought. Hm.

Also from Holly: does your high school experience affect your future job choice? (Holly and I both think that our high school didn't follow this trend; maybe it's a generational thing.)

From both Holly and Cassandra: Kermit Love, the designer of Big Bird's costume, has died.

We end with a slew of great links from Cassandra:

Edgar Allan Poe, game theorist? Maybe!
AFI has put out lists of the top ten films by genre.
Meditation increases one's brain size. Om.
Great white sharks have been misunderstood, thanks to Jaws.
The final installment of the notebooks of Albert Camus have been published.
Was the eclipse in Homer's Odyssey an actual historic occurrence? Scientists are finding out.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

2008-06-26T13:23:00.002-04:00

Hey there, arty library folks: LISjobs is looking for a logo! (Deadline: July 7th.)

It's a good summer to visit libraries virtually: the American Museum of Natural History research library has a great online exhibit titled "Picturing the Museum" that's chock-full of gorgeous black-and-white photgraphs, the British Library has joined Flickr and posted some fun images of what goes on behind the scenes, and the Chicago Public Library has undergone an "extreme" upgrade which now enables users to renew books online, peruse a kids-only catalog, and more.

You can also print out your own summer reading bookmarks from Worldcat, courtesy of OCLC, and ponder what the "library in the new age" will mean, exactly. I hope it means lots of crazy futuristic architecture, myself.

And finally, a call to action. Author and generally awesome person Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which is just plain rotten. While we can't do much about the diagnosis, we can help him in raising money for Alzheimer's research. He's donated half a million pounds so far, and the Match It For Pratchett organization has raised quite a bit so far! Spread the word.

Tomorrow: links from others!

2008-06-25T13:58:00.002-04:00

The big happening this weekend is Glastonbury, which is usually mud-filled but mind-blowing, according to most reports. Here on this side of the pond, we have Zombie Kickball going on in Maine, Custer's last stand re-enacting itself (a little less violently) in Montana, and dog-surfing contests taking place in California. You can't complain that life is boring. Even in Chicago, things are exciting, because there are gators in the river! (Sorry, Holly. Don't click on that.)

If you're not going out, you can stay in and lose yourself in the spooky art of Arkham House. (Swiped from Matt Staggs's awesome weblog.)

2008-06-24T13:38:00.002-04:00

Hi there. Yesterday ended up being an unexpected day off from the weblog, but we are back today with twice the links!

Is Italian cinema poised to make a grand comeback? The Italians seem to think so. Meanwhile, we're making Barbies from old Hitchcock movies. (Love the crows, though!)

Chicago's Millennium Park will host two temporary structures this summer from architects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Burkel. Summer pavilions are a neat concept.

I use semicolons way too frequently. However, I can now argue that I'm just doing my part to keep this particular punctuation mark alive!

How popular is steampunk these days among the DIY crowd? Just take a look at the results for "steampunk" on Instructables. Awesome. There's even a first volume of steampunky fonts out there now!

Mechanicrawl takes place July 12 in San Francisco. Go, crawl, and learn.

Recent arrivals: check out the Anachronaughts Guild as they gear up to celebrate Tesla's birthday, and join me in waiting with bated breath for the Airship Academy shirts at Got-Steam.

2008-06-20T12:00:00.002-04:00

Thanks to both Cassandra and Holly for sending in the latest on the increasingly bizarre severed feet mystery. I anticipate the discovery of an amputee cult soon.

Also from Cassandra: hunting the yeti in northern India and "photo albums of the soul." We are esoteric today on Folderol!

More random weirdness: there are massive earthquakes occurring in Antarctica, there are mermen magnets being manufactured, and there are also toys that kids can power up themselves (no batteries needed). This may be useful one day!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

2008-06-19T13:40:00.002-04:00

The Special Collections materials at the University of Iowa are okay, thanks to some intrepid staff and volunteers. There's a much bigger look of the flood's effect on the campus, too.

The OED has added a few new words. Apparently "subprime" was not an official word until recently!

The Huffington Post is expanding into local markets, and they want to hire local reporters! There's something you don't hear too often these days in the journalism world. Meanwhile, some enterprising British teens have discovered a great use for Web 2.0: finding local swimming pools and organizing spontaneous parties there. (The owners of the pools are not too thrilled.)

News from the archives world: the BBC is planning to put all its shows online. I thought I'd mentioned this before and checked - I did, over a year ago. Let's hope they keep moving forward!

And lastly, something for the law librarians: how do you reconcile your own ethics with the ethics of your employer? Being a bleeding-heart liberal hippie type in a pretty big firm, I struggle with this every so often. I don't have any brilliant answers, but I'm glad to know others out there think about this sort of thing, too.

Tomorrow: links from others!

2008-06-18T13:45:00.002-04:00

Today: the wanderlust and the spooky.

This weekend brings its share of wacky festivals, such as the Nettles Eating Contest in Dorset (?!?) and the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. The celebration of Juneteenth also takes place, starting tomorrow, and then over the weekend it's the summer solstice.

Incidentally, if you're trying to get anywhere (for these celebrations or just in general!), Delaycast gives you a general idea of how long you're going to be stuck in transit. (I'm going to use this to plan how much reading material to take on trips.)

It's been one hundred years since the Tunguska incident. Was it a meterorite, UFO, or something else altogether?

For more oddities and unexplained phenomena, Charles Fort was the expert, and now many of his clippings and files are online in one place!

Just how mad a scientist would you be, if you were a scientist and, er, mad? Find out by playing the Mad Mad Neuron game. Muhahahaha!