It's been a good run but after four and a half years of nearly daily posts chronicling everything from my time at library school to the birth of my son to dozens of single link posts to all manner of technology stories and silly YouTube videos, the time has come to finally move this blog to a newer, snappier location.
This will likely be my last ever post at this particular URL and although my content will remain for the foreseeable future (see below), I'll likely also turn off comments in a week or two.
I've always loved the lists so let's stick a couple last ones here...
ADVANTAGE OF MOVING MY BLOG
1. Puts me on one of the leading blogging platforms on the Internet with all the advantages that provides in terms of timely development, a wide range of plug-ins and an established community.
2. The new site will be much more mobile friendly to both view and post from. It will also make it easier to incorporate other current technologies - those that currently exist and yet to come.
3. It will also have much better spam protection from what I understand. I wasn't getting a lot on this blog but enough that it was irritating to keep cleaning up comments linking to shady Australian vacation sites and so on. I also had to turn off trackbacks as that was unmanageable.
4. I think I finally resolved the issue with occasional outages that hit this blog about three times in four years as my site traffic grew but I still never liked being with a host that would shut down your site when you went over without any warning. I also got in the habit of doing a "CTRL-A, CTRL-C" before trying to do any post as I never knew when my current server was going to timeout on me.
5. Gives me a simpler, easier-to-remember domain that I now own and can take with me from host to host (as opposed to the current one which I rent and which was tied to this provider)
DISADVANTAGES OF MOVING MY BLOG
1. Since I'm currently on a non-standard platform, there's no easy way (at least that I've found) to import all my previous posts from this blog to my new one. So that history will stay here (my current host tells me there are no plans to end support for this blogging software. So as long as I keep my current jason@hammond.net e-mail address with them - which I plan to do - I'll still have my blog here at no additional cost) but won't be part of my new blog.
2. It's going to take awhile to get everything set-up the way I want on my new blog (I've got to remember that my current blog reflects four year's worth of tweaks and improvements) and though I've worked on WordPress a few times in the past, there will still be a bit of a learning curve now that it's my main platform.
3. It'll probably take awhile to re-build whatever credibility Google and other sites have given my blog over my four years of posting, gaining and trading links with other sites and so on.
4. It's a pain in the butt for you because you have to update your bookmarks, links to this site and RSS feeds (http://www.headtale.com/feed should do it.) Thanks in advance for taking a moment to do so!
(I'll stop at four because it's pretty clear that the advantages outnumber the disadvantages.)
The paint's still drying and I've got a few things to add and tweak but I'm excited to get in there and start building up my new history. So I encourage you to visit:
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Monday, August 9
The blog is dead. Long live the blog!
by
Jason
on Mon 09 Aug 2010 05:17 PM CST
Friday, August 6
Friday Fun Link - 15 Most Addictive Web Sites Ever
by
Jason
on Fri 06 Aug 2010 07:30 PM CST
Thursday, August 5
Minority Opinion
by
Jason
on Thu 05 Aug 2010 11:02 PM CST
A couple recent posts talking about extended breastfeeding got me thinking about the many minority opinions and beliefs I hold.
Here's what I came up with... 1. Extended Breastfeeding - Not even 20% of Canadian babies make it to nine months let alone past a year (or two!) 2. Atheism - anywhere between 16-30% of the population depending on which study you look at. (And actually, this is only a minority compared to *all* religions. There are actually more atheists/agnostics/nonbelievers than all but one major religion.) 3. Socialism - 18% of the popular vote in the last federal election. 4. (Male) Librarian - this isn't a "belief" per se but men are about 17% of the profession (though also over-represented in senior management positions.) 5. Polygamist - just seeing if you're still paying attention.  6. Reader - More than half the people surveyed in the US a couple years ago read only 4 books a year on average. A quarter said they'd read zero. 7. I'm a Mac = 3.6% (Really? That seems low.) 8. Firefox = 23% (but losing ground to Chrome) 9. 3% for that "M" in MLIS (though this is also the fastest growing level of educational attainment. Master's degrees are the new BA's - which were in turn, were once the new high school diploma. ) Also with all the StatsCan hub-bub, I'm more aware than ever before just exactly how often I come across and/or use their statistics in my day-to-day life. I always say this but if you try to look at it without any political considerations, how could anyone honestly think that doing away with the mandatory long form census is a good idea? (The breadth of the negative reaction across all sectors is a pretty big clue that the Cons fucked up but good.) 10. Flames Fan - 3-5% (slightly biased poll though as it asks "Which is Canada's team?" rather than something like "Which NHL team has the most fans?") Friday, July 23
Friday Fun Link - Best of Bookstore Bingo: 13 Most Ridiculous Things Overheard in Bookstores (July 23, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 23 Jul 2010 04:41 PM CST
Bookstore Bingo is apparently a new trend on Twitter where people post some of the silliest things they overhear at bookstores (and libraries?) HuffPost has collected some of the best ones.
Thursday, July 8
A Few (More) Random Book Lists
by
Jason
on Thu 08 Jul 2010 07:44 PM CST
Tuesday, July 6
Ten Random Thoughts From Our BC Trip
by
Jason
on Tue 06 Jul 2010 07:00 AM CST
4400 km. 20 days. 9 stops. 3 provinces. One really awesome trip! And a super-long post to vent all the built-up thoughts after three weeks without blogging!
Here are some random thoughts about our trip... 1. "It's the journey, not the destination" Shea's a "destination" person and I'm a "journey" person and though neither is right or wrong, I was happy to hear Shea say really early in the trip that she's getting to enjoy the journey instead of just wanting to get to our destination. If we'd just focused on our destinations (at least as we roughly outlined them before the trip), we'd have missed so many serendipitious experiences - from the enjoyable evening spent in the pools at Harrison Hot Springs to once again seeing the beautiful sight of the endless wind turbines on the southern route home, via Crowsnest Pass and Lethbridge. 2. The iPhone Rocks I'm already on record for how much I love my iPhone having named it "best purchase of the year" in last year's Christmas entry (I think I said it was the best thing I've ever bought actually.) But this trip made me realise even more, how amazingly useful it is. We took Shea's dad's GPS system but never even used it because the iPhone (even without a turn-by-turn GPS app) with Google Maps was more than sufficient for finding where we were going. With the tap of a button, we could call hotels from the road after doing a Google search for them (and a quick scan of TripAdvisor to see how they were rated.) I bought an FM Transmitter before we left and after loading the iPhone with about 10 GB of music (roughly half of our favourites and half randomly generated by iTunes), that became our radio for the trip. The camera was so convenient during our various roadside stops compared to our digital camera which we never seemed to have at hand. Pace could play games on it during those few occasions he got bored in the van or while waiting in restaurants. On and on and on. 3. Four Square Rocks Too...When Traveling Anyhow I'm still not sure how much I'll use Four Square (a location-based service where you "check-in" as you stop at various locations) in Regina since my check-ins would be some variation of: "Home", "Work", "Playground", repeat. But while traveling, it was great to check-in at the various hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and so on. Often, you'd find that people have posted "tips" and those could be useful. For example, I looked at "Nearby Tips" while waiting for Shea to run back to our hotel for her sunglasses just after we checked into our Vancouver hotel. By the time she got back to the street, I had an awesome avocado milkshake in hand from a nearby coffee shop! On a related note, it's getting to the point that you could probably follow our entire trip, not just by our Facebook updates and Tweets (which we didn't do that often) but by the other similar but more targeted services we use - Four Square to track where we went, Last.fm to see the music we listened to and so on. If I was brave/stupid enough to join Blippy, you'd know everywhere that I'd made a purchase including hotels, gift shops, restaurants and so on. The day of the complete record of our daily lives is not far off! 4. It Never Rains in Vancouver Although I've never spent a huge amount of time in most Canadian cities (save Regina, Calgary and London), I've visited many of them. And based on those limited experiences, I came to the conclusion that I could live in mid-sized cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, London - cities in the roughly 500 000 to 1 million range) but that I could never live in the bigger cities - Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Our time in Vancouver, though completely biased by being tourists and having barely a single drop of rain during our time there, made me think that I could possibly live in that city. Maybe. 5. Three Weeks Holidays My standard line about taking three weeks holidays was that "I haven't had that much time off in a row since I was last unemployed!" (I only took two weeks when Pace was born - something I regret to this day.) It was so weird at the end of the first week to think, "Hmm, during most of my holidays, I'd be getting ready to head back to work next Monday and now, my holidays aren't even half over." I've got a few other thoughts about holidays - how long they should be to be optimal and that dread comment, "You must be really refreshed and ready to go back to work" but I won't get into them here. 6. "Honey, Where's the Animatronic Mouse?" Shea and I got two "Valentine's" meals during our entire trip - wicked meals in nicer restaurants where your tab for two people might be bigger than the tab for six the following night at a Memphis BBQ joint (er, just as one example off the top of my head.) One was at Hanna's in Kelowna while Pace was being babysat by relatives and one was at the Teahouse in Stanley Park which our non-child having friends thought would be a great place to go for a Friday night sunset meal. Luckily, Pace was on his best behaviour for the most part and we ended up having a wonderful experience and nothing from the bread plate was thrown at any nearby tables. (We also got to eat a wide range of cuisines - from sushi to Korean to East Indian - throughout our trip and we're lucky Pace will eat most things. We only had fast food twice - once on the way out of Regina and once just before we got home while passing through Swift Current.) 7. The World's Longest Wine Tour? We managed to hit three wineries in Kelowna - Tantalus, Cedar Creek and Summerhill but a highlight was on our last day when we stopped at last year's Tourism Saskatchewan "Business of the Year", Cypress Hills Winery and Vineyards just outside of Maple Creek. (More serendipity - the winery had been closed by the flooding in the area - which also made us wonder if we'd get home - but had just re-opened on the day we were passing through.) 8. Let's Go See What They've Done With the Hospital Gift Shop! After visiting a few different libraries on our trip - in Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver, North Vancouver and playing "spot the local branch" as I drove through many smaller towns - I started wondering "Is there any other profession where practitioners visit similar operations in other cities?" Shea has no need to visit hospitals in other cities. Teachers don't go to other schools. But lots of librarians visit libraries. I wonder why that is? 9. In Absence of Blogging... ...I rediscovered my personal journal which I wrote in more than I have since, well, since I started this blog four years ago. Each has their advantages - I love the connection that the blog gives me to people around the world and the platform it gives me to blab my thoughts so freely. But the journal is special too - for allowing me to truly record my thoughts and opinions with no self-censorship and no thought of who may read it - now or in the future. (Okay, I sometimes dread the thought of Pace reading my journal someday after I'm gone from this earth. But I guess I wont' care much by then either, now, will I?) 10. One Highlight? The question you always get asked after any trip - what was the highlight? - truly has no answer this time around after a trip where we had so many fun, exciting, magical experiences - both planned and spontaneous. If someone had a gun to my head, I think I'd pick our night in Harrison Hot Springs, halfway between Kelowna and Vancouver. That's a trip you can do in a day easily but we'd decided, both to make it easier on Pace and also because we had such a large amount of time off, that we'd break our trip into lots of little stops. We were looking at a map and noticed Harrison Hot Springs and after talking to some relatives who raved about it, decided to stop there. I'd checked online and it looked like they didn't have rooms available but when we called from the road, they said there were lots available and to just show up. We not only got a great rate (the hotel was at low vacancy due partly to recent bad weather and partly due to the depressed economy) but unasked, they also gave us a free upgrade to a pool view room. We enjoyed their tea time service (yep, it's a pretty traditional hotel in some ways) soon after checking in then went for a swim. Pizza in our room to relax then another swim that extended to nearly 11pm since we ended up chatting with a fascinating couple who'd met protesting at Clayoqout Sound, had lived in Australia and Bali, were traveling across Canada in a camper van (well, we saw the next day that this is what they called their motorhome so not 100% the hippies we'd assumed!) and had two young kids including a girl who was Pace's age who hit it off marvelously. Delicious breakfast buffet the next morning overlooking the scenic lake and then on the road after stopping for some locally grown hazel nuts. Good times! Tuesday, June 1
Ten Ways To Fix CLA
by
Jason
on Tue 01 Jun 2010 12:00 AM CST
For anyone in the library community, you're probably aware that CLA is going through some tough times financially and is looking at remedies - which means this year's conference and AGM should be particularly interesting.
I don't know the full background and history of how they've arrived at this point but having seen numerous other member-based organizations face similar financial crises, often on a recurring basis, I won't let that stop me from wading in with some ideas on how to fix the problems! 1. Change the Membership Fee Structure Right now, I think any working librarian basically has two choices - they can pay $100/year for membership if they earn under $40 000 or $200/year if they earn over that amount (I may have those numbers wrong but that's the gist of it.) I think a better way to do it (and I admit to stealing this idea wholesale from an Ontario colleague) would be to figure out the absolute lowest recovery cost of a membership then restructure your fees with that as the entry level amount. But then, make the kicker that the brackets aren't based on actual income but on suggested income levels so members can pay what they perceive as the value of the organization. So the fee chart might look like this and someone who makes $50 000/year is asked to pay $125 but they can choose whatever level they believe the value of CLA is to them - from $50 to $250. Even if everyone paid the lowest amount, hopefully you'd see a corresponding uptick in membership that would offset the cost of membership. Plus you'd have a stronger association because of the increased numbers to sit on committees, volunteer, purchase other CLA-related products and services and so on.
2. Get 'Em While They're Fresh Take a page from the Marlboro playbook and hook 'em while they're young! Instead of charging anything, give free memberships to students and waive registration fees for their first conference as well. Hopefully by showing them what a useful, effective, strong organization you have with these free "samplers", you will get a lifetime of membership fees rather than students telling you to fuck off. 3. Get 'Em When They're Not Fresh A bit crude but on the other end of the scale, encourage bequests from members and others who support the CLA and its goals (though this may put the CLA in conflict with local giving programs.) We did this at the WGA and didn't have any huge bequests (at least while I was there) but did get some small bequests and there's always the possibility that one millionaire librarian (it could happen) with a mattress stuffed full of hundred dollar bills will decide that the CLA is where their money will be put to best use after they're gone. 4. Get 'Em When They're Not Individuals I've heard more than one person involved with library management say that they don't hold a personal membership in CLA but still buy a membership for their institution because of some of the advocacy and other valuable national-scope activities CLA encompasses. Perhaps CLA could do more to market itself to libraries that don't belong already? Another benefit of this approach is that (I believe - I'm too lazy to check) institutional memberships are more expensive so could bring in more money than individual memberships do. 5. Become a Registrar for the Profession Not sure what would be required to make this happen but often, people ask why nurses, doctors, engineers and other professionals need to join a professional association but librarians don't. A colleague theorized that our ALA-accredited Master's *was* our de facto professional designation but I still wonder if this goes far enough? At any rate, requiring any working librarian to register and pay a fee would provide a revenue stream for CLA - even though I suspect many librarians might (rightfully?) see it as a cash grab unless there could be some true value shown for such an arrangement - especially considering right now, we have no tradition of professional registration in librarianship. 6. Create a Speaker's Bureau I've obviously got Alberta on my mind but the Book Publishers Association of Alberta has a speakers bureau where presumably, they charge a fee to authors and publishers to be listed and then organizations and others looking for someone with expertise in an area can contact the speakers directly. Something similar would be very useful for the Canadian library community. There are numerous times we've hired outsiders to do training/consulting/speaking at RPL but these arrangements usually come about because a staff member knows (or knows of) the presenter. A speakers bureau would help eliminate that need for "a friend of a friend" type recommendations as well as letting new librarians get their feet in the door for this type of work. Plus, if CLA wanted to get really crazy, they could go all Web 2.0 and let people rate and comment on speakers in the database so others looking to get a sense of who to book could see the various speakers strengths and not-so-strengths. Although it wouldn't have the cachet of all its speakers being book authors like the BPAA example, there are examples where non-librarians would like to learn from our expertise. For one simple example, I've given a presentation on Web 2.0 to a local rotary club. It was a "friend of a friend" recommendation but a speakers bureau might help other organizations who don't have that "six steps of separation" connection find speakers. 7. Foreign Credentials Assessment Service ALA refuses to touch this (perhaps with good reason?) but perhaps CLA could step-up and provide some sort of service to libraries in both Canada and the US to help them assess the credentials of foreign-trained or non-ALA accredited MLIS holders? 8. Distance MLIS Coordination One of the things discussed at the 2008 Libraries HR Summit was the idea of a Canadian-based distance MLIS program. I'm a huge fan of this idea and perhaps there could be a role for CLA as a central coordinator between the various library schools (if they could work together to share offerings rather than having one single school bear the load.) 9. Seek out the next Andrew Carnegie Seriously. Find some wealthy industrialist in Canada who wants to see their money put to good use as they're getting older and thinking about their legacy. Help create a foundation to direct this money to whatever - greening library buildings, buying technology, a national childhood literacy strategy. Take a healthy administration fee. 10. Hold the Next CLA Conference in Vegas. Bet the budget on Red since that's where it is anyhow. (Ouch!  )Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. If you'd like to hear more, I'll be at the Westin! Wednesday, May 26
Top 40 Sites to Learn New Skills
by
Jason
on Wed 26 May 2010 12:00 AM CST
I suspect there's probably also an Internet site dedicated to teaching people how to make lists of other sites as a way to generate Google AdSense revenue.
Sunday, May 9
Betty White on SNL and Six Other Victories of the Internet That Influenced Pop Culture
by
Jason
on Sun 09 May 2010 07:24 PM CST
Former Golden Girl and definitely not-the-typical Saturday Night Live host, Betty White actually *was* the host of last night's show, mainly because of an Internet campaign that started on Facebook. Here's an article that details some other examples of Internet campaigns affecting pop culture.
Friday, May 7
Friday Fun Link - 10 World Changing Ideas (May 6, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 07 May 2010 12:00 AM CST
I love lists like this - especially with this one having lots of Canadian content about radical world changing ideas.
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