• 10:15 Just put up a new post at The Nascent Librarian: bit.ly/Oyya8 #

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It started with a presentation Chris Miller and I made at the Upstate New York Science Librarians Meeting on cloud computing, which ended up going rather well; you can check out the LibGuide Chris threw together as supporting materials here, if you’d like. (And my sardonic commentary on it here.) What’s really telling is that when I started writing this post I initially thought it had just been this past Monday, as opposed to two Mondays back. It’s really been that kind of Autumn, flying by like a reckless teenage driver and often feeling as dangerous. Or at least as heedless to its surroundings.

Seems like every day these last couple weeks has left my brain fried, unable to accept further input or produce further results; staggering home to dinner and maybe a touch of WoW seemed within my capabilities, but only barely. That being said, there’ll be something besides a level 76 rogue to show for my efforts before too long, some of which I’ll even be able to post about shortly. I’m shallow enough that the possibility of displaying the fruits of my labor makes the labor easier to endure.

And of course, this fortnight included Halloween, for which I finally provided some context to an oft-used icon by dressing up as Doc Gnosis: hero, pulp adventurer, and man of science.

This made me happy in a way which only confirms my earlier statement about shallowness. Sadly, my idea of using NaNoWriMo to write a longer tale involving the Good Doctor and the Raptormen of Venus has not materialized in any way. We’ll see if that changes, but considering how this week, fortnight, month, and season have been going, it does seem unlikely.

For a brief period of time, while I was working in Baltimore, I was a weekly purchaser of single-issue comic books. I enjoyed it, but after we moved back to Ithaca I gave up the practice (much to the betterment of my wallet). However, there are times when one must make exceptions to even the best of habits.

This is one of those times.

All I can say is: finally.

Thanks to the imagination of David Malki ! and the diligent effort of one Liam Cooke, the internet has now obviated the genre author.

On September 26th — less than one week away! — I’ll be taking part in Fight Gone Bad IV, a fundraiser to honor and support our injured service men and women and the thousands of people fighting and living with prostate cancer.

Fight Gone Bad IV benefits Athletes for a Cure and the Wounded Warrior Project. Last year they raised $627,000; this year, they are going for $1million. The event itself is a grueling workout, but I’m looking forward to the opportunity to raise money for some worthy causes. If you’re interested in donating, click on the link below to connect to my personal fundraising page.

https://www.rapidreghost.com/fgb/php/frpage.php?frID=28388

Yesterday I discovered through various means two links, each detailing a forthcoming work from an author to whom I’ve taken more than a passing fondness.

The first is from Scott Lynch, who many of you may know from The Lies of Locke Lamora and its excellently piratical sequel.* While he’s working on the next Lamora book, he’s also publishing a serial planetary romance novel for free on his website, called Queen of the Iron Sands. It’s tough to say which bit of the previous sentence sold me on the project, but initial testing indicates that it was somewhere around “also”.**

The second is from Scott Westerfeld***, author of The Risen Empire****. His new book is called Leviathan, and it’s set in an alternate WWI being waged between the Clankers of Germany and the Darwinists of England. But the reason I’m writing this is to link to very keen video trailer that the publisher’s produced to promote the book:

I’ve already requested that CUL get a copy. I’m not made of stone.

* I first got to know his writing when he did a very cool supers RPG called Deeds Not Words, but that’s neither here nor there.
** There’s some margin of error.
*** Huh, two Scotts. I feel like I should’ve leveraged that into a pun for the title of this post.
**** Which I’m definitely going to review at some point, I promise.*****
***** Fine, here’s the review: The Risen Empire (and its sequel, The Killing of Worlds) doesn’t just walk the line between “hard sci-fi” and “space opera”, it slams down the line at .1 light speed firing nanoweapons and accounting for relativistic effects. It’s got solid characterization, an engaging far-future setting, and heroes trying to make sense of a conflict waged between post-human AI-worshiping cultists and the undead. Highly recommended.

I am always amazed by how much worse traffic in this town gets once the Cornell students return. Since they rarely drive to class and only slightly less rarely leave East Hill — mainly to go to Wegmans — I tend to assume that there is some indirect mechanism by which they cause this effect. Of course, correlation and causation and all that, so I shouldn’t rule out the possibility that there is some Z factor snarling late August traffic every year.

The scholastic influx’s effect on the library is much less obscure. This week saw me giving tours, fixing links on the library’s web page, and selecting my slots on the semester’s reference desk schedule. It’s a hectic time, especially after summer’s languorous pace, but it’s also an irrefutable reminder of why we’re here in the first place.

It’s also cool to realize that in amongst the several thousand incoming freshmen there are a few people who are going to fall in love with this town and end up staying here long after they’ve graduated. They likely have no idea that this is the case; I certainly didn’t.

At around noon on Friday, July 24th, 2009, something really cool happened: I finished my last class as a library student. The nice pieces of paper with “Master of Science in Library and Information Science” and “Certificate of Advanced Studies in Digital Libraries” won’t show up for a while, but barring unforeseen calamity I am done with library school.

It’s a major milestone in the path I’ve chosen for my life, and it’s sort of mindblowing that my answer to the question, “Are you a librarian?” just changed from “Not yet” to “Kinda!”  The progress serves as some validation: if I’d decided to go to law school, I’d probably be wrapping up my seventh year of practice by now. If I’d decided to be a professional policy wonk, I’d likely be giving myself an ulcer working 100 hour weeks to get some traction with the new administration. If I’d decided to keep making sandwiches, I’d almost certainly be exploring the experimental reaches of concept sandwiches — like concept albums, but delectable:

“Hey man, can I get a Silmarillion, hold the avocado?”
“Are you mad? The avocado represents Fingolfin’s brave yet futile stand against Morgoth before the fell gates of Angband itself!”
“Great, but… I don’t like avocado.”
“I think you should probably leave.”

…yeah. Librarian was definitely the way to go.

I’m currently watching the sun set over Syracuse’s Bird Library from the dorm room in which I’ll be lodged for the next week as I finish what should be the final class of my time as a library student. (For those of you wondering how I can watch a sunset and type at the same time: that’s how all those prepositional phrases made it into the previous sentence.)

It’s hard to believe it’s almost done. Two years ago to the week I was moving into the dorm next door and preparing for my first library school class, and now I’m making sure I didn’t forget to do any pre-work for my last one.  On the one hand, it seems like the intervening years barely happened, and on the other it’s tough to remember a time when I didn’t work all day and then come home to do homework. Or even a time before I understood the virtues of meta-metadata.

I’m hoping I’ll have time to post this week. Of course, it’s possible that I’ll actually be posting as part of my course work. We’ll see.

Several weeks back, I mentioned that I’d made a presentation to the ILR Extension Leadership Team, but noted that the story portion wouldn’t work as well without the verbal component. Well, thanks to the fine work of Don Bazley, ILR’s Multimedia Producer, you can now enjoy the full experience.

I think it came off pretty well, considering that it was done with no notes beyond my slides (which is why I keep glancing back at the laptop). It’s much less fun without a room full of people to play off of, though. That being said, I think Don did a great job on the videos, and I hope we get to do more of this.