Terry’s Worklog

I posted this update Thursday.  It fixes some problems found in 0.9.1.  The main issue with 0.9.1 was that the svn got foobared a little bit and some files needed for install were left out of the package.  Files that were left out and errors that they caused:

1) migrations 031 & 032 – would cause a method not found error of is_private when adding/editing collections

2) QueryAPI note found – the services directory was left out

3) classic_pagination not found – the classic_pagination plugin was left out

The errors were a bit of suprise because all the files were in the svn, but they had become weirdly locked.  I had to run svn cleanup a few times and then switch branches between the dev and trunk to finally get everything synced up.  But, I’ve had outside confirmation that everything is good now.  So if you were trying to install 0.9.1 and had trouble, pick up 0.9.2.  It should solve your problem. 

You can find it at: http://www.libraryfind.org

–TR

I’ve been getting some questions from a number of people trying to upgrade to LF 0.9.1 and it appears that our SVN has gone a little wonky.  When I checked in the last set of changes, appearly, SVN marked a number of the files and keep the changes from moving from my development branch to the trunk.  The files in question are:

1. app/services (the wsdl api element which will result in a queryapi missing error)
2. migrations 031 and 032 missing (resulting in an is_private undefined error on collection)
3. vendor/plugins/classic_pagination (resulting in a missing pagination reference).

I’m sorting through the svn right now and will post an update to 0.9.2 by Monday that includes a few changes and the missing files.

–TR

I posted an update to MarcEdit on Thursday.  The scope of the update is limited – a new function in the MarcEditor (copy field), enhancements to the validator, etc.  Nothing earth shaking.  I’m still working on a few larger initiatives – but wanted to get a few bug fixes/convenience functions out to people.

As always, you can pick it up from: MarcEdit_Setup.msi

–TR

Yesterday, Kyle and I finished up our first organized century of the year, the Strawberry Century (http://www.santiamspokes.org/strawberry.html).  I was really looking forward to this ride because it represented the first organized ride on my new bike.

This week, I’d been doing a lot of riding to break things in.  Without counting this century, I’d put in close to 300 miles on my bike – so I was curious to see how my legs would hold up.

The ride itself – lots of fun.  This is the first time that I’ve ever ridden the Strawberry and it’s a nice route filled primarily with rolling hills and nice scenery.  There really is only one short, steep hill to be climbed – so you can actually push the pace of the ride if you wanted to.

And how did the new bike do?  Great.  I can tell that there are places where I’m definitely faster on this bike and the effort that it takes to hold faster speeds really is quite a bit easier than on my old bike (probably due to the different gearing).  And the best part is – today I’m feeling fine.  Other than my legs being a little sluggish today and my backside being a little sore from breaking in a new bike seat – I’m feeling like I could probably head out and do the ride again today.

Oh, and for those that missed the ride this year and want to think about it for next.  They give out strawberry shortcake at the end of the ride to all the riders.  Around 80 miles and a bunch of gatorade and bananas later – that sounds like the best food in the world (that an McDonald’s Cheeseburger, which I had after the ride).  But the shortcake is definitely a good reward for all the hard work (and good too).

–TR

I just picked up a new bike.  It’s a Felt Z70.  Love this bike.  Can’t wait to take it on my first big ride.  Here’s a picture.

–TR

Whew, what a lot of fun.  Today, we held our first meeting of the C4L PNW group.  This was a meeting that essentially got started after I returned from the C4L meeting in Providence and noticed that pretty much no one from the PNW was able to make the trip.  After a few conversations, Kyle Banerjee and I decided to see if we could make this happen for our region (especially with the C4L meeting in North Carolina next year and the prospect of few if anyone from our region attending again).

So, how did it go?  As good as could be expected I think.  When we started planning this in the beginning of April – it reminded me a lot of the first C4L meeting in Corvallis in 2006.  That happened very quickly – but for that meeting, I was pretty much an observer.  Jeremy Frumkin and others did the heavy lifting.  Well, this time it was my and Kyle’s turn and I think it turned out great.  There were 45 attendees (a little under our goal of 60) and few Washington attendees in part due to travel restrictions, so it was pretty well attended.  And, I should point out, we couldn’t have done this alone.  We had help from the community, and especially help from three organizations:  the Orbis-Cascades Alliance which provided logistics helping to setup payment processing, food and working with the University of Oregon to provide a meeting place.  And then Oregon State University, which provided materials and financial backing.  I honestly don’t believe that we could have pulled this off without the help of these three institutions…they really stepped up for us and I really appreciate it.

Anyway, the day went great.  Here was the schedule:

08:00 – 09:00  Registration

09:00 – 09:20  Welcome/Opening Remarks

09:20 – 10:20
09:20 – 09:40
Andrea Peterson; Western Washington University; Using Drupal in an
academic environment
Andrea will talk generally about the implementation of Drupal within
an academic environment.  This presentation will provide a general
discussion of setup, applications and customizations of the Drupal
system.

09:40 – 10:00
Ryan Wick; Oregon State University; Taking a closer look at the Omeka
Platform
Ryan will introduce and discuss the Omeka platform, discussing
functionality, development and the use of plug-ins.  Having
implemented Omeka with the Oregon State University Special Collections
as a method for preparing exhibits, Ryan will discuss what he has
learned during the process.

10:00 – 10:20
Jeremy Williams, Lewis and Clark; Mark Dahl, Lewis and Clark; Terry
Reese, Oregon State University; Flicker and Academic Image Collections
The speakers will discuss decisions by Lewis and Clark and Oregon
State University to utilize Flickr when building academic image
collections.  Jeremy and Mark will discuss accessCeramics, a project
that utilizes images being stored within Flickr, while Terry will
discuss Oregon State University’s entry into the Flickr Commons
program.

10:20 – 10:40  Break

10:40 – 11:20
10:40 – 11:00
Duncan Barth, University of Oregon; Considering storage systems
Duncan will talk about storage on the cheap and how to get there from
where we are right now. He will talk about his views on dealing with
large datasets, IR’s, and whatnot.

11:00 – 11:20
Paul Weiss, Eastern Oregon University; Sage/Evergreen migration update
Will discuss challenges encountered in a project designed to help the
76 libraries of the Sage library system migrate to a shared Evergreen
catalog.

11:30 – 12:00  Lighting Talks #1
12:00 – 01:00  Lunch

01:00 – 01:15 Raffle goodness

01:20 – 02:00
01:20 – 01:40
Bill Jordan; University of Washington; Update on the University of
Washington’s DataNet proposal
General discussion of the University of Washington’s NSF DataNet
proposal.

01:40 – 2:00
Mike Spalti, Willamette University; Integrating Tools and Content with
OKI Repositories OSIDs
Describes work underway at Willamette University to integrate
CONTENTdm repositories with open source and proprietary applications
that use the Open Knowledge Initiative Repository Open Service
Interface Definition (OSID).

02:00 – 02:20  Break

02:20 – 03:00
02:20 – 02:40
Kyle Banerjee, Orbis Cascade Alliance; "Duraspace — what’s in a
name?"
On May 12, Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation announced that
they were joining forces to pursue a common path in providing Open
Source software for managing and providing access to digital content.
Although they share a same general goal, DSpace and Fedora supported
by different communities have different architectures. This
presentation examines what the announcement means for those who manage
institutional repositories

02:40 – 03:00
        Terry Reese, Oregon State University; Two years later – and Update on
the LibraryFind Project
Talk will discuss changes to the LF project and how it has grown over
the last two years.

03:00 – 03:30  Lightning Talks #2

03:30 – 04:00  Raffle goodness/Closing

The talks were great and varied.  Better than I could have hoped for such a short time period – and I’ll be collecting PPTs from speakers to get them posted into our google group.  And for next year…the general consensus was that this was something that folks wanted to do again.  Though, maybe next year we’ll look at doing something that is a day and a 1/2 and really go out of our way to get a keynote.  Likewise, with a group of this size, we will also be able to look at trying a few different things with the format.  One suggestion for example, was to provide a short rebuttal time for lightening type talks – this way, folks could present on topics that were meant to generate discussion and allow the audience to respond.  I thought that was a great idea and something we might play with this year in a couple of other settings. 

Anyway, I can’t wait to see what we can pull off when given a year to plan it.  Below are a few pictures.  I got pictures of every speaker but Bill Jordan from UW (sorry) – but maybe someone else caught one and can send it my way.

Waiting to get started

Andrea Peterson talking about drupal goodness

 
OSU’s Ryan Wick talking about Omeka

 
Mark Dahl and Jeremy Williams talking about accessCeramics

 
Duncan Barth from the UO sharing his vision of large scale storage (this was a great presentation)

Paul Weiss – another great talk.  Paul talked about Eastern Oregon’s experiences migrating between III and Evergreen.

Michael Spalti discussing OSID

Kyle Banerjee

–TR

What started out as an idea to help out some colleagues stranded in state by travel restrictions will become a reality.  Kyle Banerjee and I hatched our plan in late March – since really no-one from the west coast was able to attend code4lib in providence (and won’t next year as well) – we figured we would bring it to the PNW.  And thanks to Oregon State University, the University of Oregon (who is providing facilities in Portland) and the Orbis Cascade Alliance – it’s on.  At present, there are just over 50 people registered (it’s capped at 60 due to the location) and I think we have a pretty good schedule of speakers.  We’ll have lighting talks, 9, 20 minute presentations, and a raffle (with secret prizes) that would make the formal Code4Lib conference drool with envy (thank you Karyle and OSU).  Whether or not we can record the sessions (we might) is still up in the air – but the closer we get, the more I’m looking forward to it.  Hopefully, this will be the first of many meetings in the PNW, with an eye towards maybe trying to bring the main conference back to its unofficial home, Oregon :), in 2 or 3 years.  I’ll post more after the conference wraps up next Thursday.

–TR

What a fantastic movie.  I love Pixar movies because I know that I can take the kids and they will enjoy it and there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll like it too.  However, after last year’s Wall-E (which I loved), I had pretty high expectations going into the theatre this afternoon when my wife and I took the kids and I wasn’t to be disappointed.

Up! is exactly what you’ve come to expect from Pixar (but in Digital 3-d).  First, the story.  Up is a sweet story about an old man keeping a promise to his wife – and along the way, he meets a number of new friends.  Now my wife, she will tell you it’s a tear jerker (she shed many a tear) – as for my boys and they will tell you that it was hilarious.  With my boys, I can always gauge how good a movie is for them by how involved they are.  For this movie, they were laughing, hollering at the screen and having a good time.  I’m not sure my oldest every really sat in his seat (he gets fidgety when he’s engrossed) and my youngest was telling me all the time how bad the villain in the story was.  By the end, they were walking out the movie telling me how much they would like to get it when it comes out on DVD. 

Anyway, I won’t talk at all about the plot, etc. – but if you have kids – especially young kids (mine are 4 and 7) – they will like this movie.  And as a bonus, you will too. 

–TR

So, last week (May 20th), I had the opportunity to meet with about 56ish folks in Columbus, OH to talk about MarcEdit.  I don’t give MarcEdit workshops very often, though I have always enjoyed doing it when I have.  (The main reason I don’t is the time – I simply don’t have the time to organize them– so the times that I do provide these workshops, it’s really for much larger organizations that can handle all the logistics for me.)  This particular workshop was much more lecture style (so I spent more time talking than any one person really wants to hear), but I thought that it went really well.  There were some good comments and some enhancement requests (which I’m working on) – and, I had a good time in Columbus – even if I did forget to pack clothes (and I’m talking pretty much nothing – had to do some shopping the first night I was there). 

Anyway, this is the first of two public workshops that I’ll be teaching over the next month.  The second will be in the Washington DC, though I know that this session is already full.  The session in DC will be more hands on (less lecture) and I’m really interested to see what kind of feedback about the program comes out of it.

Lastly, slides.  You can get the slides from this workshop here:
http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/tutorials/olc.zip

–TR

So over the last weekend (Sat – Mon., May 16-18), I was at Timberline Lodge near Portland, Oregon for the annual Timberline Acquisitions Conference (9th annual anyway).  The conference is one that I would generally not attend (what do I know about acquisitions other than you buy things) – but this year I had been approached with giving the Keynote.  The group was looking for someone to give a talk on Open Source/Open Data – and that I can talk about.  :)  Overall, I think that the talk was successful.  I’ve posted the slides from my talk into the OSU IR and will update the URL as soon as it gets it’s way through the submission process, though honestly, my slides are generally desolate of information – I like to use them primarily as a place holder. 

From the conference, there were a few gems that I came away with.  One came from a presentation by the folks at BYU discussing the VLC media player/server for setting up your own home grown video streaming service.  It was an interesting talk – primarily because I’d primarily associated VLC media player use with folks that tend to utilize unofficial copies of media.  Its very popular with that crowd due to its ability to pretty much read any media format (including some fairly rare codex).  And while the folks from BYU did comment that by requiring the student body to utilize the VLC media player has resulted in an increase in what you might call, questionable media use by their students, it also provided an infrastructure for setting up high-quality streaming video. 

For me, much of the remainder of the conference was getting to meet new people, talk to folks about issues related to the licensing of academic content and spending time with my family on the mountain.  Unlike many other conferences that I attend, since this one was in Oregon, my wife and kids accompanied me to Timberline.  For the boys, the trip was one that they had been looking forward to for months.  They were really excited about the possibility of getting to play in the snow.  And I think that Alyce was looking forward to getting to have a bit of a miniature vacation (especially since I was travelling to Columbus right after my time at Timberline). 

So a couple of things about Timberline.  Most people, whether they realize it or not, have likely seen the lodge.  The Timberline lodge stood in as the hotel for The Shining (at least, for the outside shots of the lodge in the movie).  I’ll admit, when I found out, I was wishing I would have brought the movie, and was, somewhat disappointed that I didn’t see the river of blood getting off the elevators.  Oh, well.  Timberline is also the only place in Oregon where you can ski year round.  The lodge is located at the base of one of the many glaciers that reside on the mountain year round.  Though, at this point of the year, there is still probably 120 inches of snow on the mountain around the lodge.

Back to the fun.  I was able to do a few things with Alyce and the boys.   We played in the pool (yes, there was snow around it), had snow ball fights and just played.  I’ve attached a few pictures below for anyone that is interested.

–TR

Playing in the pool – yes, that is snow in the background

 
From above the lodge on the mountain

From the top of what is known as the Miracle Mile – around 7500 ft.

Snowball fighting

 
Burying Kenny in the snow