Clear Blue Dei

Well, I didn’t check my sources and I am pretty embarrassed by that. On my last post called From 1954 Popular Mechanics - Scientists Illustrate What a Home Computer Will Look Like I used a picture that I got from an email and I took it for face value without verifying the source.

Sara left me a comment and a link to Snope’s Hoaxes, Viruses and Urban Legends page about this picture and caption. It turns out that this is not from 1954 Popular Mechanics, nor is it what the RAND scientists envision the home computer to look like in the year 2004. Here is what Snope’s has to say about the photo:

“Although the photograph displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a “home computer” might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn’t, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype “home computer.” The picture is actually an entry submitted to a Fark.com image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television (as well as to add the gray-suited man to the left-hand side of the photo)”

The original color picture was taken in 2000 at the Smithsonian Institution exhibit “Fast Attacks and Boomers: Submarines in the Cold War” and depicts: full-scale display of a typical nuclear-powered submarine’s maneuvering room in which the ship’s engineers control the power plant and electrical and steam system.

I always, always check out every email about viruses and the like before sending them on. But I forgot to check this one before posting it. I generally get all my information from verified sources so I didn’t think to check this out. And I forgot that posting something is different than just forwarding on an email.

Well, live and learn! This is a very good lesson for me and I am glad I learned it (although I wish it was not in such a public manner).

Blogging is very much like writing a newspaper column and requires the same verification of sources and attention to detail. It isn’t like email where you can just forward something interesting.

This is definitely a lesson learned for me and not just that all sources need verified, but that blogging is reporting and a reporter needs to be sure they have their facts straight and need to be highly professional at all times in their approach, at least those bloggers who are trying to provide information for other people and not just using it as a diary or such.

So while this was learning the hard way, I hope it helps you avoid this problem for yourself and you can bet I will be more careful about this, and especially will verify email sources in the future.

~Susan Mellott

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How about this in your living room?

Click on the picture to see it full-size. Check out the console TV hanging on the wall!

The caption reads:

“Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also, the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.”

We’ve come a long way baby,

UPDATE:  Not True.  See my post called Blog Tip Lessons Learned: Email Sources Always Need Verified for the real story.

~Susan Mellott

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Stephen Abram, noted Library 2.0 speaker and Vice President of Innovation for SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute was at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana and spoke to the ACPL staff on the Top 10 Strategies for Library Success and gave a public speech on Library 2.0 in the Real World on September 19, 2007 at the ACPL Downtown Main Library Auditorium.

While he was there, Sean Robinson and Kay Gregg, who have been creating the “Conversation with” youtube series of conversations with influential people in the library and web 2.0 field, videotaped a conversation with Stephen Abram. They have finished the editing and have just released this interesting video with Stephen Abram talking about his lifelong fascination and love of libraries and library science.

~Susan Mellott

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A couple of Thursdays ago, while driving back from getting a haircut, I was, as usual, listening to NPR (National Public Radio). NPR has been running several stories in their Digital Culture reports about Social Networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and how adults are now using them. And Thursday on Talk of the Nation, they had a broadcast called Online Social Networks no longer just for Teens. Here is a preview:

” Andy Carvin, NPR’s senior strategist for online communities, describes how online social networking sites are taking off among adults. No longer the domain of high-school and college students, today parents — and even grandparents — are logging on and finding friends.”

They also have links to other stories they have run, such as Social Networking Sites for Boomers Blossom and Social Networking on the Web Grows Up.

And as always, you can listen to the full audio podcast of any of their stories.

It was very interesting and well worth a listen.

~Susan Mellott

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My husband Sean Robinson and Kay Gregg from the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, created a video for the Librareo “Why I Love My Library” video contest.

Out of over 175 public, school and academic libraries that submitted videos for the “I Love My Library!” video contest, Sean and Kay’s video was selected as one of the 5 finalists.

The winner was revealed at the annual ALA (American Library Association) conference. Unfortunately, the ACPL video did not win (though it was certainly the funniest, although the others were also good). However, it did get many, many more views than any of the other finalists!

And who doesn’t love a zombie video? Especially one set in a Library! So just in time for Halloween, I present to you: Reference Zombies!

~Susan Mellott

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We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

This is how the preface begins in this timely and evocative book called Unmasking Identities: An Exploration of the Lives of Gay and Lesbian Teachers by Janna Jackson, PHD.

From the back cover:

“Based on a qualitative research study of gay and lesbian teachers, Unmasking Identities: An Exploration of the Lives of Gay and Lesbian Teachers explores how these educators negotiated their gay and teacher identities in a climate where the two have historically been pitted against each other. …Janna M. Jackson demonstrates that these gay and lesbian teachers made direct and indirect connections between their experiences related to being gay or lesbian and their classroom practices of creating safety, promoting social justice, and building on students’ understandings. …Unmasking Identities provides theoretical understandings and practical advice for teachers, administrators and policymakers who are concerned about gay and lesbian issues. This engaging text will appeal to those interested in gender studies and issues in education.”

Janna is an assistant professor in the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachuesetts, Boston. Prior to receiving her PHD from Boston College, she taught high school English in Fulton County, Georgia.

But more importantly to me, Janna is my cousin. I just got back from a vacation in Florida where I visited my Mom and sister and my Uncle Dick. My cousin Jason and Janna and her wife Carrie and their Aunt Dot were visiting Uncle Dick so I got to hang out with them too, which I greatly enjoyed. Janna and Carrie are wonderful people and a wonderful couple and they were able to marry because they live in Boston where they can legally marry. So few gay and lesbian couples have that option now. Hopefully that will change, and soon.

Janna and Carrie are really unpretentious, down-to-earth, nice people and I really like Carrie. This was the first time I’d met Carrie and she is just as nice and down-to-earth as Janna. Since that is the way I am (well, down-to-earth anyway and I like to think I am nice), we got along right off the bat. Here is a really cute picture of them that I took at Weeki Wachi in Florida a couple of weeks ago:

And here is a picture of Janna holding her book, Unmasking Identities: An Exploration of the Lives of Gay and Lesbian Teachers.

Janna has written a book that not only studies gay and lesbian teachers, but also tells their personal stories. And it gives practical advice to teachers and administrators on how to address this sensitive issue with understanding and in a way that promotes growth and acceptance.

And someday perhaps, we will be able to look at each teacher according to his or her skills and ability to teach and inspire our children, rather than their gender, color or sexual preferences. We have a way to go, but as we open our minds and our hearts, we can do it.

~Susan Mellott

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As you might have read in my last post, Odiogo (audio text-to-speech post converter plugin) was down last night and was causing problems in blogs that were using the plugin causing them not to load.

Well, all is well this morning and I re-activated my Odiogo plugin and everything is working fine. You can see the Odiogo plugin in action by clicking on the “listen now” at the top of each post.

If you get the message “Sorry, this article is not available yet”, it just means that I’ve just posted that post and it is still processing it. NOTE: or if you are in another blog and get that, it could mean that they just installed the plugin and it is processing all their posts. Or if they didn’t have an rss feed of some of their posts, those posts would not be available since it uses the rss feed to create the podcast.

You can also get an audio rss feed via Odiogo. You can see the button on my right sidebar under my regular feed.

Odiogo is a pretty amazing tool and very easy to use. If you want to know more about Odiogo, click on my “categories” dropdown and choose “odiogo”. I have written several posts on it.

~Susan Mellott

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NOTE: it is back up now. It was just down last night for a while.

I received an email from my cousin Jason who was trying to view my blog and was having trouble getting in. So I went to my blog and I too was having problems getting my blog to load, although I could get the admin screens just fine.

So obviously it was a problem with one of my plugins. I deactivated the Google Analyticator plugin first (since I’ve had some small problems with Google Analytics in the past) but that didn’t solve the problem.

Then I deactivated the Odiogo plugin and my blog loaded just fine.

I went to the Odiogo Blog and the Odiogo Website and neither one would load. Clearly they are having some sort of problems.

But in the meantime, if you are having this problem and you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, you just go to your Plugins tab and deactivate the Odiogo plugin.

When the problem is fixed (which we should be able to tell by going to the Odiogo blog), then we can reactivate the Odiogo plugin.

~Susan Mellott

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Before I get back to my regularly scheduled posts, more typically on Web 2.0 tools, I have one more generally useful tip/trick for you.

Yesterday, we had a refrigerator delivered by Sears and once again, I saw that they were using a really interesting system to move the fridge. They each had harnesses on and they took a strap and put it under the fridge and hooked it to their harness and moved the refrigerator very easily, even through a tight doorway where the fridge was almost as tall as the doorway.

I had seen delivery men use this before for us, the last time was when our stove was delivered and before that, our very large screen, rear projection TV. And each time, they seemed to lift and maneuver the large, bulky, heavy item with ease.

So I asked the Sears delivery guys about it and they said you can buy them for yourself from Shoulder Dolly for about $60 and that they highly recommend them. They said that it takes all the strain off their backs and that they can lift and maneuver heavy, bulky things easily up and downstairs, around corners, through tight spots, etc. They said it makes it very easy to move large items.

So I went to their website and it was very informative. Here is an overview of the Shoulder Dolly system:

“The Shoulder Dolly® is a revolutionary system of moving heavy and bulky objects that works using leverage. Rather than bending over to pick up an object from the bottom for a good hand hold, the Shoulder Dolly uses webbed harnesses that go over the large shoulder muscles. The system allows the lifters to maintain an upright posture using the large shoulder and leg muscles to lift the weight, significantly decreasing strain and risk of injury to the lower back, hands, biceps and forearms. There are two models of the Shoulder Dolly, The Heavy Duty and the Light Duty.”

It looked to me like the Sears guys were using the light duty shoulder dolly. Here is a video from their site on how to use the light duty shoulder dolly:

There are several places to get the Shoulder Dolly, including from Amazon: Shoulder Dolly #LD1000. And I see that it is marked down on Amazon to $39.99 (free S&H).

And here is a link to the Above All Company Forearm Forklift Lifting Straps, 2-Pack #L74995CN which is another moving enhancement product, although I really do not know anything about it except it seems reasonable and has gotten good reviews.

We have been very impressed each time we saw delivery men deliver our products using the Shoulder Dolly and we definitely plan to buy one.

This is not a paid endorsement. I do not know, nor have any affiliation with Shoulder Dolly, TDT Moving Systems or Tom Dent. I just think it is a good and useful product.

~Susan Mellott

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Well, I had originally planned to write about a cool set of posts I found on Dark Roasted Blend about weird and wacky cars. But as I started looking at their blog, I found myself reading more and more posts of theirs and being totally amazed and amused.

So while this post is mainly about the amazing cars they have written about, it is also a huge recommendation to go surf round on their blog. But only if you have plenty of time! And don’t forget to bookmark it because you’ll want to go back again and again.

So without further ado, here are some of the wild and wonderful cars and similar forms of transportation that I found on their site.

This is the picture that I originally viewed that led me to their blog. How could you not go look to see where it came from.

And if you’ve read my prior posts, you will know how much I love the new fortwo Smart car. Check this smart car out!

This is from their World’s Smallest Cars. It is a 1954 Mivalino small car (truly rare find) - Italian Mi-Val motorcycle company’s own version of the Messerschmitt KR-175:

Smallest ever car to go into mass production was the fascinating “Peel” P50 car (you could almost carry it as a suitcase) - more info here.

Despite having only one light (of any kind) and 5-inch wheels, the car was nevertheless deemed street legal.

Here’s some seriously lit up trucks:

From their Future Tech Review, the Moovie concept car built by Peugeot has a length of just 2,3 metres (7.6 ft) and width and height of 1,5 metres (4.9 ft). Access is created by two large sliding doors placed in the centre of the hub-less side-wheels.:

And what about these Super Recreational Vehicles?

Too fancy for you? Try these:

Not really cars, but mechanized mobility suits “i-foot” and “i-unit”. The units can climb the stairs and are part of “The Wonders of Living and Moving Freely” and “The New Relationship Between People and Vehicles” exhibits.

These are just a very small preview of the cool cars and transportation (and related) things they have written about.

And then when you’ve spent hours looking through these, check out another of their categories, like Architecture or just plain Weird and start all over again!

~Susan Mellott

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