Jeaun Blogs

Update! The camera has found a home. A young, talented artist is going to take the camera. What do I get? Apparently, she’s painting fat ladies right now. Awesome.

Jason and I are going through our box labeled “To Ebay”, and I came across my old, new camera. After toting a 1970’s Minolta (weighing in at 7 lbs) for a few years, I upgraded to a shiny auto-zoom, adjust-the-eyepiece-to-your-prescription, autofocuses-when-you-lift-it-to-your-eye, 28-200 lens camerabot.

That was in 2002. I learned that I was a photography Luddite, and reverted to my old Minolta. This camera is fancypants, and gives a wide range of focal lengths all in one lens. (It also is a huge lens.)

Anyway, it’s not worth *that* much on Ebay, so I thought I’d see if there was anyone in my personal blogosphere who would be interested in it. I’d much rather it go to a good home.

If anyone is looking at it and seeing potential, let me know, and we can barter. I’m willing to give it up for brownies, yarn, a good back massage, or just about anything else.

Click on the photo to go to Flickr and see my notes on the kit.

In this day and age (meaning, with the technology and social web we have) there’s no reason for a giant company to make libraries pay tons of money for access to the library (MARC) records they’re helping to add. It’s like if Wikipedia started charging everyone access to use it. Not only that, it would be like if people did start paying to look at Wikipedia, AND still added content.

Watchdog.net has a petition for you to sign.
(Also, you don’t have to sign up with them to sign the petition.)

Here’s what they have to say:

OCLC, the not-for-profit that provides library services around the world, has gone too far. Originally, it was a library collaborative — one library could catalog a book, upload it to OCLC, and then other libraries could save time by reusing the catalog information. But as the price of such technology has fallen, its prices have risen. It charges membership fees, record retrieval fees, user support fees, and fees for all sorts of additional services. But now it’s gone a step too far — it wants to set the terms of use for every library record ever retrieved through OCLC, so that it can maintain its monopoly in the field. In a very real sense, they’re trying to steal our libraries. We have to make them stop — sign this petition.

For more information, see this wiki page: OCLC Policy Change.

And let the MARC records be freeeeeeee:

Thanks to everyone who came out for Run At The Dog’s show at Lee’s the other night. It was a good crowd and a good vibe, despite (or perhaps because of) the snowfall and the midnight set time. For those of you who missed it … well, you’re lame. But there will be more shows in the future.

Med School:

My Baby, She Really Plays My Song On The Radio:

Specks:

River Bottom Nightmare Band:

There’s a big set of photos taken by David Katz from the evening of November 4. They’re documentary-style images of Barak, his family, and those who came to watch the election results.

I started looking at the set, and although one of my favorites shows Barak with his feet up on the table, with perfectly-worn in soles, the one that caught my heart was this one:

Barak and his mom mother in law. Now I’m all teary.

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Librarian in action, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

This is a librarian at my local branch. I stopped in to pick up some
holds, and noticed she was taking needle and thread to a children’s
book (the most battered of kinds of books). It made me happy, and I
took this surreptitious photo to share.

Also, she falls into the “Over 50 Hot Librarian” demographic, and I
just hope I can look as good as she does when I’m her age.

librarian hot

A friend of mine works at the Plymouth Regional High School in NH. He’s responsible for their zine collection and their movie club (therefore fits neatly into the ‘hot librarian’ category).

He pinged me to brag that after their committee to evaluate challenged books (to non-library/school folk, I mean books that are scrutinized for being inappropriate) sat down to look at John Irving’s “Hotel New Hampshire“, and deemed it appropriate enough to stay.

The head librarian wrote a letter to John Irving, and he wrote them back, and sent signed copies of 5 of his books. How awesome is that?

Can you imagine how many letters J.D. Salinger would have to write?

I read almost everything Michael Crichton wrote, in junior high, high school, and college. I even read his autobiography, Travels, which is about as close to The Celestine Prophecy as I’ve seen. (Who knew dude had a transcendent conversation with a cactus?)

Anyway, I grew out of Crichton’s books. I don’t mean to make that sound like his writing is for younger people - I just read so much of his that I couldn’t read any more (same with Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels and M.C.Beaton).

Books can be like blinders, ushering you though time not with guidance, but with an alternate place to be - to be comfortable. Crichton did this for me, and so I’m a little bit sad today.

Being the narcissist I am, I inevitably frame national and global politics in terms of the events of my own life, making connections—often tenuous—between the macro and micro in an effort to better contextualize historical developments so huge they defy contextualization.

Being the narcissist I am, when I think about what happened tonight, I think how I spent the bulk of the last decade. I am old enough to have plenty of unhappy adult memories of the years 2000-2008, especially the last time we tried to find a new leader. But I am still young enough that eight years feels like a really long time; a quarter of my life, in fact. And no eight-year span has ever felt as long as the most recent one.

Being the narcissist I am, I feel as if tonight, my country vindicated me by vindicating the whole.

Riding my bike home tonight I made a mental list of the ways things were different the last time I was proud of our country’s leadership:

- I was twenty-four years old

- I was living in Grinnell, IA

- I had a predominantly different set of friends than I do now

- My favorite band was the Dismemberment Plan, and they were still together

- Gas cost $1 a gallon

- My father was still alive

- I was a member of Speed of Sauce

- I was still in college

Things are different now, in a billion different ways. It might take me a while to get reacquainted with my own patriotism, but I’m looking forward to that process. If a person is bombarded by enough bad news, that person might begin to forget what good news sounds like.

Finally, some good news.

I’ve always thought there was room for the right library in the right community to have unconventional items for the community to borrow. It’s rare that I wish I had a crepe pan or electric drill, but when I do, I only want it for a couple of hours.

So it made my heart happy when I read a Library Journal article yesterday. It combines two of my favorite things: libraries and ukuleles (specifically, a library that circulates a ukulele).

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Better than a sticker, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

My polling place didn’t have stickers. I took matters into my own hands.

“My war paint is Sharpie ink” - Kimya Dawson

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Election Day Fashion, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

I’m wearing my lucky shirt, and Jason’s wearing his lucky PowerBook.

We finally broke it to Stella that she can’t vote for McCain, because
cats can’t vote. Jason deemed her a Republican, because she’s scared
of her own poop.

In an effort to take my mind, and yours, off Tuesday’s momentous importance and the incipient nationwide dread tying our collective electoral stomach into knots, I want to share the good news that over the weekend I traveled to Chicago with my new band to play a show there.

I think the statute of limitations on referring to Run At The Dog as “my new band” has almost expired, which is nice. Especially now that we’ve successfully survived a road trip together. Even though I’ve suspected as much for several months, I’m now completely convinced that we are a good fit for each other as musicians and friends. And I think I proved to them that I am the sort of person willing to drop everything and make a 14-hour road trip, spend money on gas, sleep on the floor, etc just to play a rock show in another city. It’s important for them, and me, to know that I am still that kind of person.

The best part of the whole experience, other than the show itself, was singing along with the Scissor Sisters and Tears For Fears in the middle of the night during the return drive. If a single album can give birth to the collective musical consciousness of five people, it would seem that Songs From The Big Chair is the musical father of Run At The Dog, and we are all siblings living under Roland Orzabal’s roof. This is, happily, true of most of the bands I’ve been in.

Finally, here’s a video of our first song on Saturday night. It’s a personal favorite.

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Halloween costume, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

I’m myself from 1988!

I’m not much for Halloween costmes, though I’ve had a couple smartass showings over the past few years, ranging from the esoteric to the extremely esoteric.

Far be it from me to discontinue a trend. And yet, my costume this year is esoteric while at the same time obnoxiously inevitable.

And it exists only in photographic form. Click here to see this year’s costume and groan accordingly.

Via Whip Up, I saw this post with knitting patterns featuring Barak Obama.

I wish I had a small dog, so I could knit the Bark Obama sweater for it.

I don’t think I can knit fast enough to get this done in time.

I’ll have to settle for some fingerless gloves [pattern here]

I tried looking for McCain-inspired knit patterns, but came up short. The only hit of interest was the Spock Ears.

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What you need if you have a cold., originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

By that, I mean a friend who brings you exactly what you need.

In honor of the launch of gazelle.com, the team got hot, new Adidas.

This my first post from the new Wordpress iPhone app. Yip.

I am fully situated at NPR New York as the video producer for a new morning show, "The Bryant Park Project." It's such an awesome job and I'm really stoked to be working with so many amazing people. I've also done some work with NPR & National Geographic on a few pieces that I think are really cool. Anyway, it's nice to be doing something a little less staid and serious for a change...

Below are some links to some of the stuff I worked on in the last few weeks...from stupid to interesting.

the Elevator Effect

Bryant Park: R2R

the Cyclone turns 80

it's all about Carbon (parts 1, 2 &3):