Meanwhile, “In a truly landmark development, the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act makes permanent the federal government’s commitment to Open Data and an ‘open by default’ policy for all non-sensitive government data.”
We may have mistakenly adopted a kangaroo instead of a hound
Ever have that nagging feeling you’re being watched?
Next Wednesday evening, January 16, I’ll be a panelist at “Conversation in Civic Innovation: Libraries as Drivers of Civic Engagement,” at District Hall in Boston. Free and open to the public, but registration recommended (there will be a large audience).
The first What’s New podcast of 2019 is with Dan O’Brien, author of the new book The Urban Commons: How Data and Technology Can Rebuild Our Communities. Using smart city data, Dan has developed some fascinating ideas about the life of our cities. Tune in!
911 is for emergencies, but many cities now have 311 for citizens to report issues and request services. On the latest What’s New, Dan O’Brien analyzed millions of 311 calls to see how people relate to each other and their government, and build communities.
Coming later this month to @ClubSnell: “Touch This Page! Making Sense of the Ways We Read,” an exhibit on ability, access, and tactile writing systems like braille, followed by a symposium starting on April 4, which you can now register for: touchthispage.eventbrite.com
Say hello to Belle, a hound we just adopted from a rescue.
Not-to-be-missed exhibit: “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City,” currently at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA—a deep exploration of gender and power. The showstoppers are the incredible royal gowns, but it also has truly astonishing books and scrolls.
For New Year’s Eve, the British Library has a tutorial on how to party like it’s 999
Mark Twain: “A copyright term of an author’s life and 50 yrs will satisfy any reasonable author, b/c it will take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves.” Great-grandchildren worry as 1923 books finally enter the public domain.
The U.S. Potash Company commissioned Ansel Adams to make a photographic portrait of their Carlsbad, New Mexico mine, and he slyly gave them a version of Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed”
Love this photo of Georgia O’Keeffe taken by Ansel Adams (at the MFA Boston Ansel Adams exhibit)
Spent this week doubling down on going back to the indie web. Finally moved everything to the great Reclaim Hosting, set up FreshRSS there and imported my big OPML file of individual blogs, and looking into adding curated Twitter feeds there too. Happy with Microblog for social.
Indeed, that software interpolation makes the parallels between They Shall Not Grow Old and The Wizard of Oz (20 minutes of black and white before the surge of color) even stronger, as the WWI footage becomes a swirly, colorful dream state that actually turns the war into myth.
.@tcarmody is of course right about the general problem(s) with Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, but even on its own terms, the software interpolation needed to change 14 frames/sec to 24 frames/sec made the WWI footage uncanny and inauthentic.
I didn’t realize that the government shutdown includes the National Endowment for the Humanities, and my heart goes out to our colleagues at the NEH during this holiday season.
Snowboarding on Christmas Eve is the new Chinese food on Christmas
Good tip (and lede)
The full cold moon is out tonight, so bright it’s almost like the sun
My Own Personal Stonehenge is also my favorite Johnny Cash cover song
Today is the day of my own personal Stonehenge, when the sun sets perfectly into a notch between two buildings outside my office window.
Researching fonts for the visually impaired for a show on multisensory reading I’m recording with @SariAltschuler for @podcastwhatsnew. (The podcast will come out in January.) Here’s a 3D-printed sample of Boston Line Type.
Hey all, we’re looking for a Marketing & Events Coordinator in our fine library @ClubSnell @Northeastern. Let us know if this is you!
A project by @dasmiq, newly funded by @NEH_ODH, will compare multiple digitized copies of books to improve OCR and locate handwritten marginalia, which is a very cool twofer.
