Wish Me Luck

I'm interviewing for a job promotion tomorrow. 23 people, 3 positions to fill....

Movies Seen

With this post, I am trying out something new, actually two things new to me. Triggit allows you to drag and drop photos as well as easily link to Amazon and other affiliate sellers with your blog. So, to give it a try, I also signed up for Amazon's Associate Program. So, if someone clicks on my amazon link and buys, I get some money. The funny thing is, first I publish, then use Triggit on the web page with Firefox as the browser.

I think of blogs as a gift economy. People write from passion, giving their offerings to the world. It has the potential of reward through gifting. I know a published author who has said several times to me, "I don't read blogs." She says it with a finality that stops me from exploring further with her. Is it because she doesn't like the ease with which some bloggers plagiarize? Is it because a writer's monetary worth is brought lower? Is it simply because it can suck away too much time?

I think when the sediment trickles down, the future will find a way to recompense more authors on the web. We already see some of this with the music industry and bands choosing to give the consumers the choice of the amount they give. Some blog authors have a paypal "tip jar," and it works for them. Since I read a lot and watch a lot of movies, amazon seems a good choice for a low-key way to get tips.

Hoodwinked
Animated, Little Red Riding Hood crossed with The Incredibles. The movie begins at the end: each character tells the story of what happened while the grizzly cop attempts to solve the mystery. The squirrel talks too fast, same gimmick as in Over the Hedge. Fun fluff.

Rhinoceros
I thought I'd check this out as I saw a live performance of Rhinoceros several years ago. This is an odd play, in which one by one people turn into rhinoceros. You never actually see a rhinoceros, and it's all about the acting. Well done, but better live, I thought. I saw it in a small theater in the round, and the actors were only feet away from us in the audience.

Shakespeare Retold
Four Shakespeare plays retold in modern times. It comes from the UK, so it works. Best ones: Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Also Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth. I was least interested in Macbeth, all about competition and murder in high end restaurants.

Fast Food Nation
I thought I was getting a documentary version of the book, and it turned out to be fiction. I wasn't sure I had the right movie when it began with undocumented immigrants crossing the border into the US. Oh...nobody wants to work in the meat plants, gritty and brutal places. Greg Kinnear was great as the mucky-muck coming in to check out the problems with the burger suppliers. There were some cameos from stars, clearly some roles taken as public service to draw people to the movie. My favorite, Fez from That '70s Show had a lead. Oh my, he (Wilmer Valderrama) is going to be Ponch in the CHiPs movie. Childhood celebrity crush, meet adult celebrity crush.

Last Holiday
Queen Latifah is told she's dying. She decides to go on holiday and spend all her thriftily saved money. Because she spends so freely, all the rich people thinks she is one of them. One guess as to how it ends. Remember Joe vs the Volcano? But this kinda movie, of course you know the ending. QL is beautiful. It was just be accident that I watched it on NYE. Of course that is the last holiday.

The Motel
This caught my eye because of the graphic novel-like cover. It is a nerdy boy's story of adolescent sexual exploration. His Chinese-American family owns a motel with hourly, daily, and weekly rates. Of course, porn is involved. Honest, authentic, sweet.

On Memes and a Social Class Meme

One of the things I am enjoying about the library learning 2.0 is the almost complete lack of memes. Many of them simply clog up time and bandwidth. In the blogging world, some do not even recognize the definition of meme, and instead think of it as meaning me-me. One of the most popular of the new MCL blogs is the one titled Cheese Sandwiches. Recently, he shared most eloquently why a past acquaintance grew tired of sandwiches. While not inclined much to participate in memes, it inspired me to participate in one on social class that I've been hanging on to from The Goddess of YA Literature, titled What Privileges Do You Have.

Another thing I enjoy about the library blogs is the conscientious attribution found there. This often gets lost in the blogging world. Like a bad game of telephone, bloggers will just link to the blog where they found the meme. In fact that seems to be the point of blogging memes, rather than the original author. I found this meme on another blog, introduced simply as something that reminded him of his past. It wasn't intentional, but this is blogging telephone.

Thanks to The Goddess, I was able to find the explanation of the meme's origin from one of the authors. Who knew you could find where a meme originated? (That Quaker blog does look interesting.)

The meme:

What Privileges Do You Have

Based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you please acknowledge their copyright. Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home. [with 2 mortgages]
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere in a commercial airline before you were 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as a child.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

They say you should write at a 7th grade level

I think maybe that's what is wrong with the US.

Movie Reviews

Flickr Thoughts

Two posts from the 2.0 work blog:

I've been using Flickr for quite a while. It all began when I attended my nephew's graduation party, and I was the one with a camera. I needed a way to share the photos with my family. A year or so ago, I hit the 200-photo mark. Once over the mark, flickr hides the oldest until you pay. I decided to pay.

Some of my co-workers started asking me about features I hadn't really explored, and I realized that even if comfortable with a web tool, there could be a lot of things I don't know because I haven't used them. I decided to explore some of the groups, adding yet another layer to the social networking possibilities that already make me feel overwhelmed. Serendipitously, someone commented on this photo:

asking if I would add it to his Paul Bunyan group. Incidentally, rather than use Flickr's "Blog This" button, I prefer to choose "All Sizes" and copy and paste the code for the size I wish to use in my blog, or copy the URL for the size I wish to use and use the picture upload button. Roller is not so flexible as Blogger for this, and Blogger is not the greatest either, I have to say. I searched around for a few more groups for which my photos might be appropriate. I added a few to Pictures of Maps, for which I got a thanks. I looked at the guy's profile, and realized I'm really only scratching the surface at flickr. He has or is in about a hundred public groups, and has 30 contacts. Contacts? So I need to find friends here too?

I like Animoto for creating short little videos of my photos from flickr. Now I've discovered if I click the Toggle HTML button in Roller, the thing won't mess up the code I'm trying to embed, so there should be an animoto photo show below. If not, you can see these familiar scenes to many of us by clicking here.

A park
Originally uploaded by nicholaswegener

With this stuff, web 2.0, even when you think you're familiar enough with something, you learn something else that's always been there, or something new comes along.

I've used Flickr a lot, but saw little use for the "Blog This" feature. I prefer to use the bells and whistles of the blogging tool. Some people working on this 2.0 activity have learned that you can't post a photo from Flickr with the URL of the photo. To get the URL that works, you have to be looking at one of the sizes of your own photo. You can't do that with someone else's photo. Ever. "Public" does not mean you can just grab the photo without attribution. Even under creative common license, you can't find that URL that will allow direct posting to your blog.

So the only way to post someone else's photo without the Flickr blogging feature is to save it to your computer, and then upload it to your own flickr or blog. And that, it seems to me, gets into murky copyright territory. It's safer, and certainly more courteous, to use the blogging tool that will give a direct link back to the original photographer.

So...I decided to wade into use of this tool. The photo above comes from a group I joined where you guess where the photo was taken in the Portland area.

Eats Near Hollywood Library

This is one of my work blog posts, so it was written with Multnomah County Library employees in mind:

One of the big draws in the decision to sub at a particular location could be the places to eat nearby.

People have many choices near the Hollywood branch.

I thought I'd share some of these places. I hope other people will consider doing the same for their locations, and fellow Hollywoodians, don't let me stop you from covering places you go regularly.

Panera Bread has moved in next to Trader Joe's. Actually, many of us at Hollywood shop at Trader Joe's for our lunches, as there are many tasty ready-to-eat things to choose from there.

In order to eat somewhere, I have to be able to walk there, be served, eat, and return to the library within an hour. At Panera, there could be a line, but lines are dealt with fast. Last week, I met my sweetie for lunch. He was late, there was a line, and we still had time left on my lunch hour after we ate.

Unlike fast food chains, the food is good. The bagels alone can be worth it, but a bagel with one of their soups, even better. As a vegetarian, I can usually expect to have only one or two choices, but Panera often has three or four soups, one or two sandwiches, and a variety of bready things. I've had the Southwest roasted corn and tomato soup in a bread bowl, along with a half-salad. (I wish I'd remembered to take that photo.) Tasty, fresh, plenty. When I went to lunch with my sweetie, I had the tomato bisque, also quite good, and I'm pretty skeptical about tomato soups. A bagel with cream cheese, great for the side.

Besides coffee and fountain drinks, Panera also has Jones soda. For some reason I never noticed before that the labels change. This one caught my eye. It turns out you can submit your own photos.

Oh yeah, Panera is great for breakfast too. Someone I know has become hooked on the egg souffles.

While I don't have need to use their free wi-fi, it could come in handy when I'm not at work.