Video Friday: Polar Life

So I'm sitting here, and I'm looking out my office window, and there are a bunch of snowflakes coming down, and I went searching for a video that related to the snow. Today's video is about Paul Nicklen, a photographer who has been specialising in photographing the polar regions since 1995.

Here, he shares a number of gorgeous photos, but also talks about the power and necessity of the ice and the related ecosystem. (A few of the photos are disturbing - the cycle of life and climate change is not always pretty.)

Also, a really wonderful story about a leopard seal. (Totally worth watching and amazingly funny: it starts about 13 minutes in.)

Printable Fashion? Call me "Maybe".

It should come as no surprise that a library environment nurtures creative and - yes - geeky people like a petri dish nurtures bacteria, and this library is no exception. So when things like maker spaces and 3D printers come up in conversation around here, eyes gleam and hearts pound. But I, being a fully fledged Captain-Planet-Green-Crusader, have so far been on the "meh" side of the 3D printer fence. The way I see it, the technology as it exists right now, in a format that most private individuals or maker spaces can afford, is only good for making plastic models. Is it cool? Yes. Does the world really need more plastic models? No.
But yesterday I saw a pretty fabulous argument for 3D printing:

The Little Black 3D Printed Dress.
I'm not sure if, from an environmental standpoint, printed textiles make more sense than conventional textiles. But from a design standpoint?  Something with this much creative potential just might sway me from "meh" to "maybe".

Check out Ecouterre for the full story on Iris Von Herpen's 3D printed couture.

The Wonders of Browser Add-Ons

I just wanted to take a second to expound on the virtues of browser add-ons. You know what those are, right? They're little programs you can install on your computer that will let your internet browser do all sorts of cool things. Just the other day, for example, I was bemoaning how hard it was to look up the IMDB ratings of movies I find on Netflix. While I enjoy Netflix's tailor-made recommendations, I often find them to be a bit lacking, especially in determining if a movie is going to be good or just so so. (Three stars or four stars--there's a big difference there. Sometimes I'm willing to put up with a 3 star movie. Sometimes I want to be sure it's going to be good before I get into it. I find IMDB's 10 star system better at judging that, especially since the users there often tend to be better at evaluating films. No offense, Netflix.)

Well, today I came across this article. There's now an add on for Chrome that will automatically bring up IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings when you're looking at a movie on Netflix's site. How awesome is that? I installed it immediately. While it still has some bugs, it works quite well for the most part--and it's free!

Add-ons will do all sorts of other nifty things. You can find out more about them here. They're generally very easy to install. (Though sometimes *too* easy. Internet Explorer users are notorious for having a slew of add-ons on their browsers. I've opened IE sometimes and had the whole computer just lock up as it tried to load them all at once. A little can go a long way. Only install the add-ons you actually are going to use.)

Mantor Monday

Oh the fines, they are a-changin'. 
Or, to be more precise, it's not library fines that are changing - just when you can pay them. Due to some changes in the way the library will be staffed on weekends, we will no longer be accepting payment for fines or replacement charges on Saturdays and Sundays.
New hours for payment of fines are:
Monday - Thursday 8am - 6pm.
Friday  8am - 4:30 pm.
We accept cash and personal checks. Sorry, we can not accept credit cards or first born children.
Any fines or charges from the Kalikow Center may be paid at Mantor Library.

Trolling the Trollers

I came across this story a while ago, and it's been on my "To Share" list for quite some time. It's an article about a guy who was contacted by a scammer, and he knew it was a scammer. He decided to turn the tables on the bad guy, and hilarity ensued.

The basics were simple. The scammer's goal is to get the scammee to download software that will let the scammer take control of his computer. To do this, the scammer argues that the computer is full of viruses, and it needs to be cleaned remotely. The sad news is that this works an awful lot of the time. So many people really don't understand how their computer functions, and they can be suckered into turning the keys to it over to the Wrong Sort of People.

Of course, in this case, the scammee was a techie, and he managed to keep the scammer on the phone for two hours, with lines like "I have to connect to CompuServ" and by playing modem sounds into the phone. I found this incredibly amusing, although I don't think I'd have the patience to stick with something like that for two hours.

The bottom line is that if you have something go wrong with your computer, you call someone to fix it. People don't call you. If anyone ever calls you saying they know your computer is infected or broken, they're either psychic or lying. (Or they're from your work's IT department, I suppose. This doesn't mean their not psychic of lying, of course.) Be very cautious of situations like that.

But that all goes without saying, right?

When Will Virtual Reality Take Over?

I was sitting here at the reference desk today, and a thought popped into my head: "Second Life." Does everybody remember Second Life? It was all the rage a few years ago. An online virtual world where people could buy property, create merchandise--live their lives. Virtually. In library circles, it was THE THING for a while. Libraries were all heading on to Second Life in droves, creating virtual libraries for their patrons. It was supposed to be this new age of wonder, ushering in exciting new directions for librarians.

You don't hear about it much these days.

In fact, it seems to have fallen on some hard times, at least from a cursory glance through their home page. I mean, when the big feature on the home page is a girl dressed in a "Mrs. Claus with Loose Morals" outfit, you have to wonder just how seriously the product expects to be taken.

Part of me really wonders why Second Life didn't take off. Sci fi novels are filled with people living in virtual reality worlds, after all. And those worlds look pretty darn appealing. You can meet up with people anywhere in the world, you can hang out, play games, chat, go anywhere. There are a ton of perks, right?

Then again, part of me knows why it's fizzled. It wasn't much fun, to tell the truth. I tried it some, and the controls were frustrating, the people were less than social, and there wasn't much to do. Yes, I could theoretically live a Second Life, but the life I already was living took a ton of attention. I had no time to be living two lives at the same time.

Which leads me to think that for virtual reality to really take off, it's going to need to be based around some sort of a game first. Something that makes people want to go in and play. Steps are being made in that direction. You've got World of Warcraft, and more recently Minecraft. You've got the social structure emerging through Facebook. The games Facebook has you play right now are irritating and pretty rinky dink, but I could easily see this social structure blossoming when matched with the right sort of game.


I personally believe there will come a game that will hit critical mass. Where there are enough  people playing it, that it starts to make sense to join up, just so that you're not left behind. I think this game would be free to play, with addons costing money. People would sign up for the social aspect of it alone. Instead of walls, you could have entire houses people could visit, filled with whatever you want to put there. Second Life has the structure for this, but it never had the gaming side down--which is what I think you need in place to attract that critical mass first.

I could see something like this happening in the next decade. I could be wrong, but that's where my money would be.

Any of you have any thoughts or predictions?

Facebook's Improving Search

Facebook made an announcement today. Ahead of time, people were speculating it was going to be about anything from a new page design to a new mobile interface. The truth? They're expanding their search capability. This doesn't sound too exciting at first--and it might not end up being absolutely thrilling--but it should make some things easier to do on Facebook. For example, if you wanted to search for friends of a friend you know, it used to be convoluted--go to that friend's page, click on her "friends" link, and then start looking through all the results. With this new interface, you could search for "Friend of ________" and "Lives in ________".

I think it has some potential, but I'll have to see it in action before I really make a judgement. Facebook was being very careful to keep repeating that this has no affect on current privacy settings. We'll also see about that. (Sometimes when someone proclaims something a bit too loudly, you start to wonder . . .)

Facebook's also partnering up with Bing to incorporate some web results into these Facebook results. Because, search.

It's a small beta launch right now. To find out more information, go here, where you can also sign up for the beta--assuming they open the doors a bit wider soon.