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Turkey Derby, Wall Township Speedway 2007 November 24

On Black Friday, I decided to go to Wall Township Speedway for the first day of the 34th annual Turkey Derby. I usually only go if the weather is real nice, and while it was Sunny, it was cold so I was iffy about going, but I figured if I bundled up I’d be OK. As it turns out, I found a spot out of the wind and in the sun, and until the sun went down it wasn’t so bad despite the about 40 degree weather. I decided on the Friday of Turkey Derby instead of Saturday because I wanted to watch the TQ midgets. They, as always but on a good show, as did the Legend cars. The other divisions where as exciting, but still fun to watch. It looked like Factory Stock victory was going to go to a driver from Buffalo NY, but with 4 laps left, cars he was coming up to lap were going three-wide and wrecked, and he couldn’t get by them. What a shame as it would have been great to see the out-of-towner get the win.

My 2007 stats after my Turkey derby Friday

Races: 27
Tracks: 18 (12 new) (162 lifetime)
States: 16 (8 new) (43 lifetime)

Rockingham Speedway 2007 November 23

As the race fans that follow this blog have probably heard, Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina is re-opening next year under new track owner, “Indiana” Andy Hillenburg . Well, tickets just went on sale for the two scheduled events in 2008, and I managed to get a couple seats in the top row near pit exit. I’m really excited about the ARCA race in early May as Rockingham was a great track for stock car racing before it was shut down after the NASCARCup race in early 2004. Although I always liked Rockingham on TV, I never saw a race on the oval. I did see an SCCA regional event on the road course once. The other race next year is the season-ending Hooter’s Pro Cup event on November 1st. If the events prove successful, I expected to see a few more races in 2009. Maybe on the same weekends, or maybe Andy will add a third weekend. I’d really love to see a USAC Silver Crown race at the track, a NASCAR Truck series race, or maybe even the IRL race that was rumored over the summer (although I’m not holding my breath for the Truck or IRL race).

NYTSL Presentation 2007 November 14

On Friday, November 9 I went to the Princeton Club in New York City to present at the New York Technical Services Librarians (NYTSL) Fall Dinner Program. After a couple of drinks and dinner, I gave my talk on “Libraries and the Free and Open Source Software Movements.” I am not sure what the actual head count was, but I think there was about 80 people in attendance. With 80 or so people there to hear me speak (there was no other presentations), I was really hoping it would go well. As it so happens, I think it went extremely well and the feedback I received from people after my talk and at the pub where we continued the discussion of Free/Open Source Software in libraries, I am pretty sure that at least most of the people enjoyed my talk. All-in-all it was a great time and the people there were great. I am happy to have been able to present to NYTSL and hope to be able to attend future NYTSL programs. I placed the “extended version” of my slides on my Web site at TCNJ. I had limited time to talk, so I had to cut out a number of screen shots and slides from my original slides (I tend to create as much content will come out of my brain, and then cut it back when I am preparing presentations or papers).

One Laptop Per Child, One Laptop Per Ecorrado 2007 November 12

For only a short amount of time, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation is making it possible for members of the general public (at least those in the USA or Canada) to order a OLPC for themselves via a “Give One Get One” program. The catch is, you have to buy two, one of which will go to a child in the developing world. The total costs is about $425 after shipping. Really, if you wanted to do this for the laptop only, it isn’t a bargain. The specifications aren’t really impressive for today’s standard, but that isn’t the point. The point is to make something that can be distributed, and used, buy children in the developing world – in some cases places without regular access to electricity. You can get something better for $400, however, it is a good cause and I’m pretty sure 1/2 of the cost is tax deductible (see your tax professional for details). Anyway, after thinking about it since the program was announced, I decided to Give One Get One. I hope to have it by Christmas.

One thing I wish it did have was a video out port so I can use it for presentations. While I’m not 100% sure it doesn’t have one since the photo of the prototype motherboard shows a VGA port, the specifications say nothing about this and the photos of the finished product don’t show one. I guess when I get it delivered I’ll find out for sure. If it doesn’t, as I suspect, I guess I’ll need to look into one of those USB-to-video adapters.

If you are interested, you better order soon as the program ends on November 26.

Google Scholar v. Metasearch 2007 November 7

John Price Wilkin from U Michigan has an interesting piece about Google Scholar versus Metasearch applications. I highly recommend that if you are interested in scholarly access to materials, you take a look at it.My thoughts are when it comes down to it is that metasearch is doomed to failure with the current model. Unless all the vendors agree on a single, robust, and open metasearch standard, it has no chance to get significantly better, and even if they did agree on the perfect standard, it is questionable how much better it would be because of network issues.

As John mentions, Google Scholar has its issues. However, it has one big strength over metasearch. No, not all of the money Google has. While that helps, the real advantage is local data storage. (Well, I guess with big pockets, you can get local data storage from some vendors, but I digress). Libraries, and vendors of databases that libraries purchase, need to work together to make the content easier to get too, and that means making the data available in local systems. I know some people are working on this, but it needs to come more quickly if we are to improve access to our patrons. If we don’t, they will go to Google (or Google Scholar) and not come to the library.

Syndication 2007 November 5

As many of you know, after maintaining the GNUJersey planet aggregator for a couple of years, Dave Harding decided to take it down. In its place are two new aggregators, Planet Ubuntu NJ LoCo and a clone of Planet GNUJersey created by Brian Jones. My blog is aggregated at both sites and if you are interested in Free and Open Source Software in New Jersey (or in general for that matter), you might want to subscribe to them instead of individual blogs.

As always, you should also check out the Planet Code4lib aggregator (which I’m also on) if you are interested in Open Source or other software development in the library world.

October presentations posted 2007 November 2

All of the slides from the presentations I made in October are now available at:

• Corrado, Edward M. (2007, October 30). Top 10 (or so) WebVoyage Hacks. Presented at the 2007 ExLibris Mid-Atlantic (EMA) Conference. Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ.
• Corrado, Edward M. (2007, October 23). Social Tagging: Community Tagging or Personal Tagging in Communities?. In panel: Corrado, Edward M., Kipp, Margaret , Zhang, Qiping, Moulaison, Heather Lea, Tonkin, Emma, and Pfeiffer, Heather D. Tagging and social networks: The impact of communities on user centered tagging (SIG TAG, SIG KM and SIG CR). Panel presented at the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T 2007) Annual Conference. Hyatt Regency, Milwaukee.
• Corrado, Edward M. (2007, October 19). The Library is Now…OPEN! The Rudi Weiss Memorial Lecture at New York Library Association Annual Conference. Buffalo Convention Center, Buffalo, NY.
• Corrado, Edward M. (2007, October 6). http://library2.0. Presented at 2007 LITA National Forum. Marriott City Center, Denver.
• Corrado, Edward M. (2007, October 6). Letting the Cat 0ut of the Box?. Presented at 2007 LITA National Forum. Marriott City Center, Denver.