wherever you think you are

maura @ 10:30 pm

Right now we’re in the midst of our busy teaching time at work, when most of the English Comp classes (between 60-100 per semester!) come in for a session to learn how to do research in the library. I usually start off my sessions by talking about finding information on the internet. As a segue into discussing library resources I ask the students: “Is there anything, any kind or format of information, that is NOT available for free on the internet?” Usually most of them assert that everything is on the internet, and then I jump into finding books in the library catalog and scholarly journal articles in the subscription databases.

I was caught off guard by one student’s response last week, in an 8:30am class no less! “You can just download anything you need, even books.”

Woah. I do mention a bit about copyright during these sessions and we talk some about plagiarism, but I’ve never had a student bring up peer-to-peer file sharing before. There were a couple of articles about illegal textbook downloading on the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s website last year, but the issue didn’t feel concrete to me until today. With the insanity of textbook prices and students’ limited budgets I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was.

And speaking of pirates, they’re apparently the subject of one of the most popular courses taught in the Anthropology department of my alma mater these days. Course content includes both pirates with peg-legs + parrots as well as the kinds of pirates that the RIAA has in their sights, and copyright issues too.

Arrrr!

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a shiny object caught my eye of course

maura @ 9:33 pm

This past week was a pretty intense TV week for us. So intense that I need to blag about it!

Last weekend was the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. Overall it was a great show though of course there were weak points — last season, for example, and nearly every scene with Apollo (and his hair). But I was quite sad, somewhat unexpectedly so, after watching the last episode. When it was good, it was the best show on TV. Not a space show, not really, but a show about big meaty ethical issues that just happened to be set in space. And Starbuck was awesome.

The “angels” in the last ep were kind of weak, but I was glad that Helo didn’t die from that awful leg wound (I have a soft spot for Helo because he kind of looks like my brother). And the mitochondrial DNA bit at the end made my old archaeology self smile.

The other TV we’ve been obsessed with around here lately is Avatar: The Last Airbender, a cartoon/anime series that ran on Nickelodeon from 2005-2008 (I think). We started getting the disks from Netflix for Gus but by the end Jonathan and I were equally hooked. It’s just really frakking good.

It’s a fantasy martial artsy kind of premise: the world has 4 nations (earth, air, water and fire) and certain people called benders can control these elements. The Avatar can bend all elements and has traditionally kept balance in the world, but the old Avatar disappeared and the Fire Nation has been at war with everyone else since then. A bunch of kids (early teens) find the new Avatar, also a kid, and set out to defeat the Fire Lord and make things right. There’s action, adventure, friendship and well-drawn, beautiful animation (for a TV show, at least). Plus the girls kick at least as much ass as the boys (tho the Avatar is a boy).

And big meaty ethical issues are front + center. In one of my favorite episodes the kids go to a library (yay!) in which a spirit has amassed knowledge from all over the world. The spirit makes them promise that they won’t use the knowledge they gain to do harm to anyone, and they lie because they need to find the Fire Nation’s weakness. When the spirit finds out about the lie he’s furious and destroys the library, and the kids narrowly escape. Gus and I had a long conversation about the morality of war after that one.

A live-action Avatar movie is planned for sometime in the near future, though we may have to boycott it because all of the main characters have been cast with white actors. The cartoon is entirely made up of kids/adults of color. Hello, Hollywood, it’s 200-frakking-9, what is your damage?

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your voice has a singsong quality

maura @ 9:31 pm

Today I finally finished my new iphone cozy. I did most of the work 2 weeks ago, but finishing the edges has lingered on and on, mostly because it involved lots of hand-stitching. But I am really quite pleased with the result.

Here’s the outside view:

and the jaunty stripey inside view:

Like the last one, this cozy has a thicker inner lining (in this case, felt) with thin fabric on either side. I used ribbon for the edging again. It took forever to hand-stitch but I think it looks pretty nice this time. I used darker fabric and ribbon because lighter ones in the last version got dirty pretty quickly.

There are definitely a number of improvements in this iteration. For the last one I cut out 6 rectangles of fabric, layered them appropriately and machine-sewed on 3 sides. Then I couldn’t get the top ribbon edging to work because the external seams got in the way (and also had a frayable bottom seam to deal with).

For this one I cut 3 long rectangles of fabric and folded them before machine-sewing the sides (voila: no bottom seam). I stopped short of the very top, then hand-stitched the ribbon onto the top edges. Then I hand-stitched the ribbon on the sides; it’s mostly decorative, but also served to sew up either side at the top where I’d stopped short with the machine. I also remembered the old trick of halting a fraying edge of ribbon with a few drops of clear nail polish.

I can already see the improvements to the next version. All that hand-sewing is a drag — I have to figure out a way to machine-stitch the top edge ribbons on. They’re so slippery, though, that it’ll be rough going. I also need either thicker ribbon or to trim the fabric edges along the sides a little closer to the seam, because sometimes the seam stitches peek out from under the ribbon. And I need to figure out how to hand stitch the tops and bottoms of the side ribbons more neatly.

But all in all I think it’s a good effort. Go me! And now I have another useful skill, should I ever need it. Because in the 21st Century Great Depression *everyone* is going to need an iphone cozy!

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three things about today

maura @ 7:50 pm

1. Today is St. Patrick’s Day and I accidentally wore green. Usually I don’t — green is my favorite color so I wear it lots of other days, and also since I am 15/16ths of Irish descent I figure is it really necessary? Except that today I forgot about the date and picked a green blouse primarily because it’s short-sleeved and it’s been 100 million degrees at work recently and I had a class which meant I’d be pacing and waving my arms around for 75 minutes. And then I got to work and remembered and thought: doh.

2. When we got the kittens last Memorial Day they were about 2 1/2 months old, so we arbitrarily decided that March 17th is their birthday. Happy Birthday cats! They are still mostly bundles of fun, except when they chew electrical cords and eat Gus’s lima bean plant and scratch my record jackets (which I noticed this morning and which MUST STOP).

A couple of weekends ago we went to a giant pet store to get them some new toys. The best is a long feather on a stick that is very serpentine when wiggled. There’s also a small blue mousey thing with catnip that has already inspired growling and dirty looks. Rock on.

One of the toys came on this helpfully labeled card:

Duh.

3. Today is also the birthday of my job. Happy Birthday, job! The past year has gone by almost in an instant. And I still love it. Definitely worth the investment in tuition to library school. Go, nerds!

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yes, alright, i can, with sunburned lips

maura @ 10:37 pm

Where I’m not:

1. Throwing Muses/50 Foot Wave, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Yeah, so it turns out that I was kind of lying when I said I wasn’t all that disappointed not to be going to this show. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve had the 50 Foot Wave records on repeat this whole week. I’d listened to them a bit a while ago but hadn’t much recently and holy crap they are amazing. Much harder than Kristin Hersh’s solo stuff, and even harder than much Throwing Muses, but in a wall-of-driving-guitar-and-drums way rather than an intricately-woven-guitar-and-drums way. I like it. Which makes me even more mopey because 50 Foot Wave don’t play out much and I’ve never seen them live, bah.

But it *is* late, and I’m already exhausted. For whatever reason Spring Forward is really kicking my butt this year. Maybe it’s the morning darkness, but this has been a long week. Who’s idea was it to move the time change up to March, anyway?

2. ACRL National Conference, Seattle, WA

Yes, the biannual library nerd-a-thon! It’s far away and expensive and inconveniently right in the middle of our semester, so I decided not to go. CUNY follows the public school holidays which means that our spring break is in April, not now like everywhere else. (Which I don’t hate at all, actually, since it makes childcare easier.) Also I thought that this would be a really busy week for instruction in our library.

But it turns out that we don’t have that many classes this week (we’ve scheduled most for after midterms, in a week or so). And I’ve been thinking a lot of research thoughts recently and really jonesing for an academic conference. Yes, had you any doubt about the depth of my nerdiness, I’m pretty sure I just dispelled it.

So I am using twitter to follow the conference. I guess living vicariously isn’t so bad. And it is much, much cheaper.

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i strap on my ear goggles and i’m ready to go

maura @ 9:04 pm

1. My son, the poet

Recently for homework Gus had to choose a fruit, eat it, and write a few descriptive sentences about it in his homework notebook. Here’s what he wrote:

Shiny as a ruby pond, this fruit holds the stars.
Once bitten, it clangs as a ruby, oozing a texture of sweet, ripe juice.

Can you guess what fruit he was eating?*

2. My son, the rapper

I have a new computer! If you want to be amazed by advances in computing technology I highly recommend waiting nearly 7 yrs between machines. This one is very, very fast.

One night last week Jonathan asked me to test out Mac MAME on the new machine. You know, the app that plays all of those old ROMs from video games of the ’80s. Scrolling through the list I picked Burger Time (somewhat at random: there was a whole mess of Atari sports games and this was the first thing my eye caught after them). I played for a few minutes, then Gus came in and was instantly enthralled. It’s kind of a classic dumb ’80s game, but also it’s quite amusing to walk the little chef guy over the patties while the hot dogs and eggs chase him.

Gus wanted to play next, so we set him up and away he went. He’s apparently internalized Jonathan’s constant, low-level, semi-silly rhyming,** because in the midst of playing he busted out with this rap:

Eggs and hot dogs, on my tail
I think I want some, ginger ale

There may have been more to it, but I was laughing too hard to remember.

* raspberries, of course!

** I should talk — the other day I came up with a rap about IRB. Maybe I will share it someday (after I get IRB approval for my research project, of course!).

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