Posted by Richard in Information on
24 October 2007 with no comments
The DSpace Community held its User Group conference in Rome this year that was every bit as interesting and entertaining as last year’s DSUG in Bergen. The conference was held at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) headquarters in the centre of Rome. The 8th Floor terrace restaurant at FAO must have one of the best views imaginable, overlooking the Forum, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum, with the winged chariots of the Victor Emmanuel monument and the pale blue-grey dome of St. Peter’s beyond.
DSUG can be a slightly tense affair, since it must address the expectations of both technical and non-technical staff engaged with repositories. Interesting as I found Federico Meschini’s demonstration of managing the DSpace code base using Eclipse and Maven, I think many librarians attending found this “basic” tutorial beyond them. The slightly aspirational tendencies of several discussions can also be a little frustrating. It’s interesting to know what’s planned for version 1.6 and 2.0 of DSpace, but since 1.5 has yet to be released, this can seem like pie in the sky.
Stefania had asked me to contribute a short presentation on SAS-Space for a session of case-studies of DSpace instances. The brief case-study I presented was rather less than earth-shattering, and my plans to show a little more of it than the front page were scuppered by the FAO firewall. [Read more →]
Posted by Richard in Information on
8 October 2007 with Comments Off
In an email from Sam Easterby-Smith about Mediawiki skins, he also mentioned that he had got both Wordpress and Mediawiki working with LDAP, which sounds like a worthy achievement.
I followed up a link to his blog at and about CETIS http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/sam/2006/09/14/fitting-ldap-to-wordpress-mu/. Since he has set up both Mediawiki and Wordpress for CETIS he could be a useful person to know!
Posted by Richard in Information on
12 September 2007 with Comments Off
Today I presented this Bluffer’s guide to Institutional Repositories at the WESLINE Colloquium, hosted by IGRS.
I followed on from Zoe’s demonstration of SAS-Space. Also presenting during our session was Ed King from BL, who had a fascinating account of the 19th Century newspaper digitisation project, soon to go live. Will try to find links.
Posted by Richard in Russian affairs, Translating on
12 May 2007 with Comments Off
Thanks Gareth for alerting us to the Guardian story of Burton’s chic (sic) T-shirt with its trendy design proclaiming “ОчиÑтим РуÑÑŒ от вÑех неруÑÑких!”. The store’s buyers were told that this translated loosely as “Be proud of Russia”.
Sometimes, of course, loose translations aren’t good enough. A better translation might be: “Let’s cleanse Russia of all non-Russians”.
If you want one alas it’s too late: they’ve been withdrawn from sale. Burton’s buyers will spend the weekend writing out 100 times: “My hovercraft is full of eels”.
Posted by Richard in Apple on
10 May 2007 tagged Apple Records with Comments Off
More acetates on Ebay, this time US 10 inch acetates from c. 1971-1972 of Lennon’s Power To The People, McCartney’s Another Day and Oh Woman Oh Why (one acetate for each side of Paul’s 1971 single), and Ringo’s 1972 glam-rock offering, Back Off Boogaloo. The seller claims the discs are 78 RPM: can that really be true?
I haven’t captured the images for them all as they’re pretty dull specimens (for one thing the “Broadway” acetate labels aren’t as special as the “Savile Row” labels), but you can see them for a limited time here.
Posted by Richard in Odds & sods on
10 May 2007 tagged Bakewell House with Comments Off
There’s a lot of rubbish in the blogosphere, isn’t there? Rubbish blogs, rubbish comments on rubbish blogs, like this one. Too many “amateur” opinionists who should leave “comment” and “opinion” to the
professionals (according to arch self-abuser Howard Jacobson in The Independent the other day).
Every now and again, though, somewhere in the blogiverse, a post, or a discussion arising from a post, does seem to make it all worthwhile, and an example of one such discussion is below.
It’s from the Sydney Morning Herald, and began with a post about Bob Geldof’s 2006 concert in Milan, which was called off after only 45 people turned up to a 12000 seater venue.
The conversation initially sticks close to its subject, but before long a personal battle ensues between “onanist”, “Les Miserable” and “Uncle Pervy”. The debate manages to convey a convincingly Australian flavour – culturally sophisticated one minute, abusive and menacing the next. It also demonstrates quite effectively why online netiquette recommends extreme caution when criticising someone else’s spelling – if only because, in doing so, you will almost inevitably commit an even worse orthographical blunder yourself.
Here is the last part of the discussion, copied verbatim from the Sydney Morning Herald website. [Read more →]
Posted by Richard in Information on
9 May 2007 with Comments Off
Had to note the passing of this excellent map of Online Communities – in the style of all our favourite ’70s nonsense maps of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Posted by Richard in Uncategorized on
8 May 2007 tagged Apple Records with Comments Off
Now here’s a funny thing. We all know, don’t we, that the last proper Apple single release was R6012, George Harrison’s rather dour This Guitar (Can’t Keep From Crying) (no doubt unintentional, but sounding like a deeply ironic valediction to the label that George later said was his biggest waste of money).
And so what’s this we have here? R6015, Let ‘Em In by Wings, on Apple?!
It’s an Irish mispressing – nothing more to it than that, alas – just a tiny glimpse of what might have been. Someone’s flogging it on Ebay right now, and surely going to do rather nicely out of it (Record Collector have, elsewhere, claimed it’s one of McCartney’s rarest singles).
Posted by Richard in Uncategorized on
23 April 2007 tagged Apple Records with Comments Off
Having been off Ebay for a while (”Cold Turkeeee….”), just a quick post to note the passing of an acetate of Doris Troy’s single Jacob’s Ladder (Apple 28 in UK). Who knows, maybe it was Doris’s, or George’s, own test cutting.
Seems a shame Jacob’s Ladder didn’t do better, back in the Autumn of 1970: as I’ve commented elsewhere, there was a lot of spritual stuff going down, from Spirit In The Sky to Let It Be to Hare Krishna – to name but a few. Jacob’s Ladder is a very fine bit of punchy soul. However, for me, the standout track on Doris’s Apple album is still her thundering version of Buffalo Springfield’s Special Care: interesting to see how, playing the song live in 1974, Stephen Stills sticks closer to Doris’s rendition, than the slower and more bluesy original on Last Time Around.
Posted by Richard in Translating on
25 March 2007 with Comments Off
Just came across a very fine example of amateur podcasting, A Spoonful of Russian by Natalie Worthington of New Orleans.
Not much in it for me, language wise, as I continue to plough that rut between knowing the basics and being able to say anything very sophisticated or useful (or grammatically correct). But a really nice example of samizdat pedagogy riding the technological zeitgeist: the tone is considered and authoritative, and strikes just the right friendly note.
But my Mum’s long struggles with Russian language are on a much grander scale: I’ll definitely be recommending Spoonful to her, just as soon as she gets broadband. (Mum, sort out broadband, please!)
