Archive for the 'infostudies' Category

Jimmy V; Joe Jackson; some news.

Kelly and I headed to Madison Square Garden last night to see both Davidson and UT win their games in the Jimmy V classic. Both games were great (especially Stephen Curry’s last few minutes against West Virginia) and got me excited for our next couple of months. UT played Villanova, who seemed to really lose their way in the last 10 minutes of the game. The crowd was mostly rowdy Nova fans, many of whom were incredibly drunk– I saw more fighting in the crowd than at any other sporting event (or rock show!) than I’ve ever been to. Our section of Texas Exes was pelted with ice and drinks as we ended the game with “The Eyes Of Texas,” and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it a little bit when a bigger Texas fan dropped one of the worst offending Villanova idiots on his head in a particularly vicious altercation. This is, I guess, why beer is only sold at off-campus NCAA events. Ugh.

I just hope that the behavior of the Villanova fans is not typical of the Big East– we’ll be at a lot of BE conference games, hopefully, once we move to our new home in Syracuse next month. That’s right, we’re moving: I accepted a job at Syracuse University right before Thanksgiving. I’m really looking forward to it, and we’re heading up there this weekend to find an initial place to stay. I’ll start in early January.

Somewhat unrelatedly, on my way to the Garden to meet Kelly last night, I listened to this week’s The Moth podcast, which featured my hero Joe Jackson telling a story about his early days playing in pubs (a bit of the story is also in his great memoir, A Cure for Gravity). Thanks to J for making sure I didn’t miss it! I bring this up, because I keep meaning to post my top 10 or so albums for 2008… Joe’s Rain is definitely on that list.

Published
by
patrick
on December 10, 2008
in infostudies, music and nyc
. 0 Comments

Sensory deprivation in Austin;going off the grid

I”m in the Jet Blue Terminal at JFK this morning, on my way to Austin to take my qualifying exams. I meet with my committee chair Monday morning at 9, get my 4 questions, and begin writing around 50 pages worth of answers by 5pm on Friday. I polled some of my colleagues and have decided on the following as my game plan:

  • As Joe suggested, I will plan all of my meals in advance. This should be fun and delicious, since I have a super long list of Austin restaurants I miss. Having Kelly and others around to deliver the meals, as Don suggests, is going to be helpful.
  • Lisa convinced me that I should only spend about 3 hours each day reading and reviewing literature so I can force myself to write for the rest of the day.
  • I’ve asked Kelly to reset my bloglines password so I can’t procrastinate with my RSS feeds.
  • Everyone suggested avoiding staying up all night writing and trying to adhere to my regular sleep schedule, until perhaps Thursday.
  • Save save save save.

I’ve brought with me my APA publications manual and a bunch of pdfs and things I’ve written, but that’s about it.  I’m excited and nervous to see the questions I’ll be answering.

Kelly and I are staying in Austin until the 12th, so we’ll have time to relax once it’s all over.

The only real bummer I can foresee is that I’m still in physical therapy for my leg so I can’t run Town Lake at all while I’m there.

Ok, going underground….. now!

Published
by
patrick
on October 4, 2008
in austin, infostudies, pain, running and travel
. 0 Comments

Done! Paper’s in the mail. But my knee still hurts.

My convienient semi-injury freed up some time this weekend for me to actually finish my qualifying paper. Two years in the making! I feel like a new man– and as I just told a colleague– like maybe I’m doing what I should be doing for the first time in a while. Just waiting for some feedback to make it official, then down to Austin for my exams.

Running-wise, though, my cookie has crumbled a bit. The fatigue hast totally left my legs, but my knee is sore in places it hasn’t been sore before (partially because of a bruise from yoga), but once I stretch it out it usually feels mostly better. Sitting is what kills it.

I’m heading back to the gym tomorrow to try some sorta cardio and to do some strengthening on my calves and shins. Two weeks off of real running has been a bummer, but at least I’m still getting things done.

Published
by
patrick
on September 2, 2008
in infostudies and running
. 2 Comments

Still finishing up my qualifying paper, grounded myself from running until next week (at least)

I made a lot of progress on my paper last weekend, and got some very helpful feedback from my doctoral committee chair on Monday night. Tuesday night, I went for another see-how-it-feels run that ended badly. At the 2-mile point, my knee was barely hanging on, so I walked another two (walking is painless) and headed to an easy yoga class. The good news is, every day since Wednesday, the fatigue has been gone from my legs, and the pain is reducing. I still fully intend to run the marathon (8 weeks away still), but I am not going to push the training at all– definitely not going to try and get back up to the 40/50 miles a week range. I ran the last marathon with only about 25 miles a week, so I’m not worried about finishing. Maybe it won’t be my fastest race ever, but I’m going to do all I can to keep from injuring myself.

Paper-wise, though, I’m at the point where I’m putting the finishing touches on this thing. Nearly two years in the making, it’s the biggest milestone I’ve had since starting graduate school. The next step after it is accepted (might have to do a revision or two) is to fly down to Austin the first week of October and take my qualifying exams. Once that happens, and after some relaxing and celebrating, I’ll begin my dissertation proposal.

Published
by
patrick
on August 31, 2008
in austin, infostudies, nyc, pain and running
. 1 Comment

Joe got mentioned in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

There’s an article on Young Librarians today, and they interviewed Joe Sanchez from UT.  That’s even better than his recent USA Today mention.

Published
by
patrick
on October 17, 2007
in Uncategorized and infostudies
. 0 Comments

Another Obsessive Look at My LPs

A 2-minute video of my record collection, in its current organizational scheme (doubles included):

Most of you know that I have an obsession with visualizing/organizing/understanding my record collection. I probably spend more time thinking about these things than I do actually playing the records (except for the ones by Squeeze [who are apparently reuniting!] and Pylon).

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to weed my collection to make some space in our tiny apartment. In order to know what I could lose, I needed to organize things first. As they were, my LPs were not intentionally organized. Mostly they were just in chunks based on my use of them or how they came in boxes back to Brooklyn in August. The last intentional organization of my records took place when we moved to Austin in 2002, when I packed them up according to color and arranged them that way upon arrival.

I managed to weed out a few hundred discs– many of them unplayable, total crap (even by my standards), or just uninteresting (even by my standards). Now the whole collection is down to under 2000. (If anyone’s interested, the weeded LPs are still hanging around the apartment.) After I got everything roughly organized by blurry genres (with many exceptions), I decided a stop motion video of each LP could serve several purposes:

So, I set up shop in our breakfast nook with my iSight camera, two reading lamps and piles and piles of records. I learned a lot about the collection through the process, and found many, many problems with my current organizational scheme. You can see all of that in the video.

I wasn’t shooting for high production values, and figure I can make things nicer when I get access to a Final Cut Pro Station. To make the video, I used Frame Thief and MPEG StreamClip (take that Quicktime Pro!). Sorry the discs drift around a little, but it was definitely a quantity-over-quality issue. Managing the glare was difficult, but I wasn’t interested in removing each LP from its plastic sleeve– that would have doubled the man-hours at least.

The good news is, now I have photos of each of the records in my collection. Watching all of the strange rhythms and effects of seeing them all at 15-frames-per-second got me thinking about subsets of records to string together like this. Perhaps future Record Jumbles could be based on this.

Once I add metadata to them, though, then the real fun starts. I only wish I had 1) an automated means for doing that (I do have lots of the info in a spreadsheet, but it’s incomplete and old) and 2) a way to integrate it all with my digital/CD music collection.

So, the game. I realize the fact that you can download the video and watch it frame-by-frame makes this easier that it could be, but, some questions about the collection/trivia:

    Quiz Questions:

  • Name four LPs of which I have 2 copies, but the second instance of which appear upside-down.
  • How many die-cut LP sleeves are in my collection, and what albums are they (not counting center-hole cut outs).
  • One album cover contains a picture of Lawrence Fishburne. Which is it?
  • Which two LPs have the promotional 45rpms that accompanied them stuffed in the front of the plastic sleeve?

    • Discussion Questions:

  • What is the worst record I have? The best?
  • What are the strangest juxtapositions of genre/artist/album?
  • What artists am I way too interested in?

I hope someone else is willing to do this… I could watch these all day long.

Related Posts:

Published
by
patrick
on March 13, 2007
in film, infostudies, music and photos
. 5 Comments

Family Media Empire

Published
by
patrick
on February 15, 2007
in family, film and infostudies
. 0 Comments

Records of my record collection


  Color Coded Records 
  Originally uploaded by activitystory.

So, Sam and I were discussing our digital and analog music collections, like always, and I decided to see what happened if I uploaded photos of the spines of all my records. They were once organized by color, an arrangement that actually lasted a couple of years (see photo at right).  Now, however, my extreme laziness dictates that they end up where they end up, crammed into an order that only archaeologists will understand.

I actually like the way that forces me and others to browse, and, thanks to the wonders of flickr pro, I guess that experience is now semi-webified, but without the satisfaction of hearing what you find.  You can see all 25 cubes of my storage unit in this flickr set.  Sure, many of the images are a little blurry, this method doesn’t allow you to see what lives in the blank-spined sleeves, and you really have to click on "All Sizes" (above the image on each flickr page) to read even the ones that are legible, but… let’s see what happens.  A list of possible fun results:

  • Well, honestly, y’all can see my kick ass record collection without having to travel all the way to Austin (I know you were dying to do that)
  • Find my second worst record (I know in my heart my worst is an unmarked house remix of "Crazy About Her" by Rod Stewart, but these images don’t make that one visible).
  • Even though you can’t make notes on the large version of the images, maybe people will note and comment their favorite songs or albums, or the stories they’re reminded of
  • Maybe you want to make me an outrageous offer on one of these records (though I’m pretty sure I’m not the selling kind)
  • I don’t know what else… select mixes for your own personalized Record Jumble?
  • Maybe everyone else will do this and I can do all of the above to someone else’s records, which I’m dying to do.

So, let’s see what happens.  If y’all complain too much about the image quality, I may shoot some better ones; it took me way longer than I expected to get all 25 images cropped and accounted for, but if there’s anything I can do to make the above list easier. I guess if none of that happens, at least I have these photos for insurance purposes.

Published
by
patrick
on January 24, 2006
in infostudies, music and photos
. 1 Comment

If I were software….

I’d be Jason Freeman’s iTunes Music Signature Maker (via createdigitalmusic.com).  When you run this application, it goes into your library, figures out what you’ve been listening to, and creates a short collage  to represent your taste.

This is the same person responsible for the Network Aurlization for Gnutella that I posted about a couple of years ago. iTSM is great, a kind of hyperlocal, meaning-loaded version of that, with much more fun results.

Here’re two signatures from my iTunes Library, one w/ the defaults, one messing with the settings a little.

You’ll notice this is better than any of the songs by themselves. Please make one of your own.

More interesting stuff:

from the post at createdigitalmusic:

…uses an FFT to merge spectrally similar audio, mixing down your audio smoother than a baby’s bottom.

from the application documentation:

Maybe you’ll load your iTunes signature onto your iPod, e-mail it to some friends, share it in our signature gallery, or stick it on your home page. Maybe it will help you gauge your compatibility with your next blind date: "She seems nice enough, but her iTunes signature is just so atonal! Should I go with my heart or with my ear?" Or maybe an iTunes signature will figure prominently into a political attack ad: "If you’re mad at him for raising your taxes, polluting our environment, and cutting the education budget, just wait until you hear the music he listens to…"

Published
by
patrick
on December 9, 2005
in art, infostudies, machines and music
. 0 Comments

My Giant Face

Thanks to Libby, we can all see what my face looked like projected on a wall the Austin conference I presented at from the Mullville’s house in Buffalo. Ugh.

Published
by
patrick
on June 15, 2005
in infostudies
. 0 Comments