Among The Jumbled Heap

PC Magazine has a list of recommended free software. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2271644,00.asp

It’s freeware, but not necessarily Open Source. I would not have picked all the things they pick. I especially hate the Google Toolbar. I’ve found it to be clunky. It takes up too much memory, slows things down, and is always, ALWAYS, collecting information about how you behave online. That’s the part I hate the most about it.

I intend to check out the Maxthon browser right away (I’m downloading it now). I love Firefox, but I’m always looking for a better browser. Disappointing, though, that Maxthon is Windows specific, what’s up with that? I’ll install it on my work machine and see how it flows for me.

Zotero is probably the best app they have listed. In librarian speak, Zotero is a “bibliographic management tool.” A fancy way of saying that it stores your references and builds bibliographies. If you’re doing any kind of research that requires keeping track of references, Zotero is the tool for the job. There are commercial options available (like Endnote and RefWorks), but I’ve found Zotero to be superior (at least to Endnote). The fact that it is open source means that many people have jumped on the Z band wagon and extended it’s functionality. It can, for example, now be used to capture snippets of online video. It is a reference generating tool for the social web. I’m doing a workshop on Zotero in a few weeks, so I need to bone up.

One newer tool that didn’t make the PC list is Omeka (http://omeka.org/). Omeka comes from the Center for History and New Media, the same folks that gave Zotero to the OSS world. In their own words, “Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online.” It’s currently still in version 0.9, which is probably why PC didn’t write ‘er up, but it looks to have great potential. At my work, there is a group of folks who are working on an online exhibition of our rare books. Omeka is the perfect tool for that kind of project. Check out the list of sites that are using Omeka to get a better idea of the it’s potential, http://omeka.org/showcase/.

Are you the Key Holder or the Gate Master?
–Wilson in Be Kind Rewind

Critics of Be Kind Rewind range from tepid to hostile. Those critics who enjoy the film label it as “cute,”"goofy and endearing,” or “a heart-warming story.” Those who hate it scream “undeveloped,” “ameteurish,” or “a thick stew of awful” (see Rotten Tomatoes).

Many of the critics—-both pro and con—-refer to the story as “fairy tale.” The far-fetched narrative, the flat, nearly caricatured, characters, the simple and quick progression of the story, these things give Be Kind this fairy-tale allure, and they also provide fodder for the critics. Perhaps what most entices me about Be Kind is the way the story never takes the HollyWood turn (that moment in most movies of this genre when the story is absolute and predictable). Alma and Mike don’t fall in love. The potential love triangle that would pit Jerry against Mike with Alma in the middle never develops. Danny Glover’s character Mr. Fletcher does not have a sweet old-person fling with Miss Falewicz, and most surprisingly, despite the positive and uplifting conclusion, the movie does not end with the video shop being save from the wrecking ball.

This cinematic move away from the expected may disappoint the viewer, but it also refocuses the story on what is really happening, namely, a community of people is waking up to its own creative potential. The conflict of the movie is not about love or relationship but between communal creativity and corporate control. As such, Be Kind is a morality play of the Open Source Movement and more precisely of the idea of a Creative Commons.

When Jerry and Mike Swede a film, they enter that gray area of copyright law known as derivative works. Is the Sweded Driving Miss Daisy the same film as the original? Are they plagiarizing? Is the Sweeded Miss Daisy to the original what Disney’s Steam Boat Willie was to Steam Boat Bill Jr, viz. a parody and a stand-alone work of art? Does a community have the right to exercise their creative power in this way? Are they taking money out of the pockets of the actors, directors, and movie personnel (think of those anti-piracy ads featuring the poor, deprived pyrotechnics expert)?

With copyright law as it is today, Sweeding is, in fact, illegal. Even Disney could not get away with a Steamboat Willie, as Lawrence Lessig makes clear in his book Free Culture (a book, btw, that you can download for free). Be Kind puts the lessons of Lawrence Lessig into a visual narrative. The movie shows us what the world, and more specifically what our communities, could be if we were not only unafraid to let our creativity flow but unhindered from doing so.

For a synopsis of the movie visit IMDB.

This is my year of OpenSource.

Since last December, I have:

• installed Ubuntu on my Desktop,
• reconfigured my wife’s laptop to dual-boot MS-Windows XP and Open Suse,
• reconfigured my mp3 player (a Sansa Sandisk 250) to run RockBox,
• initiated a web project at work that uses the Joomla CMS
• played around with Django, a web-development platform that uses Python
• set all the library computers up with Firefox, and
• recently created what my coworkers are calling the “Ubuntu Lounge”, a computer room on the third floor of our library where I’ve set up four legacy machines to run Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu.

And, of course, I am running this blog on WordPress.

What have I learned from all this opensourcing???

I am proficient at none of these things. My geek-powers are limited. I am not strong in the Force. And that, I think, is the beauty of open source. There is always more to learn. Open source takes the power of computing and places it back into the hands of the user.

I remember growing up with computers. My dad bought our first computer, a Texas Instruments machine that plugged into our television, when I was eight or nine. The TI was a glorified calculator with a diminutive keyboard with bubble keys, and I loved it. I could make it print my name to the screen to infinity. This was my favorite trick. As computers developed, my skills developed. Yet, somewhere about 1990 things began to change. Microsoft began its dominance of the PC operating system market. My dad finally gave in and bought Windows (prior to that he stubbornly held on to the propriatary TI Dos-based system), and life conspired to take me away from computing.

My skills are still small, but I feel like I am picking up where my nine-year-old self left off. If we don’t want to cede all the power of the information age to a few large companies, then we would all do well to start using and abusing Open Source.

So…I am doing my part. This blog will consist of one part OpenSource. I intend to talk about my Open Source disasters and successes. Step one is learning to create a decent WordPress Theme/Template.

I also write. I’ll be putting some of my writing up here. Short Stories, mostly, but also Creative Non-Fiction, Essays, and perhaps even bits o’ novel that I’m working on.

I am a librarian. I like musing about our information age. I’ll do some of that here.

I am an arm chair political pundit.

All of these things bleed into my blogging.

I am also a perfectionist. This trait hinders my blogging. I want each word, each phrase, each posting to be perfect. Right now I am looking at what I have written and thinking, “this pointless entry does not deserve to be posted. Chadly is not cut out for this bloggin’ stuff.” I plow on. I post on. I hope you, whoever you are, read on.