That went rather well, actually

OK, for the time being, while I get all of this hosting stuff sorted out, I'm going to stick my blog on Wordpress. (This went shockingly well, actually.) If you regularly go to my site to see my blog, start pointing your browser here: http://caveatquaestor.wordpress.com. I apologize, but I'm not putting a lot of time into making it pretty. In 3-4 weeks, when the address changes again (sorry), it should be pretty.

And if you use an RSS reader, please update the feed address to this: http://caveatquaestor.wordpress.com/feed/. And, yeah, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to update it one more time (sorry).

I figure, on balance, doing things this way is a little bit less annoying than putting ads on my site (which would, over a very long period of time, probably pay enough to allow me to double-host... but since I don't have ads, I can't justify that kind of cost--you see my logic).

So, all new posts are going there and NOT here.

More CSS troubles

It's just come to my attention--by my happening to look at it after posting to the CIT Library Blog--that my blog looks bad in IE. One problem with developing on a Mac is I can test with Firefox and, when I think about it, Safari, but IE is a whole other ball of wax. And given how well MS Office for Mac works, I'm not inclined to risk installing IE:Mac.

It's interesting that it would mess up like that, since I really just took one of Blogger's templates and modified it to my uses. I feel like, since the core of it is theirs, it should have stood up better against browser changes.

It kind of makes me want to rebuild my site in--and therefore export my blog to--Wordpress. There's some good information out there about Wordpress-as-CMS, and I'd kind of like to give it a try. Then again, my current page [with the exception of this blasted blog] does a good job of showcasing my XHTML/CSS development abilities. ... I'll have to think on this.

I'll fiddle with it this weekend, or as soon thereafter as I get a chance. In the meantime, my apologies if you're an IE user. (By the way, it's OK to contact me with stuff like that--even in the comments of unrelated blog posts. Feedback is always useful, even if it's "negative," or the way I see it, constructive.)

Kind of a shame

I just utterly changed the look of my blog. It bothers me that it looks so different from the rest of my website, but not nearly as much as the CSS error bothered me.

Funny, I meant to be doing something else entirely. I guess I'll get to that now. :D

Whoa

Blogger apparently went nuts this morning. It told me my most recent blog post didn't get published, and then it published it three times. Awesome.

On Blackboard and Blogs

I'm going to be honest: I don't love Blackboard (Bb). Certainly, it fills a niche, and I agree that something like it should be used. But I'm just not sure Bb is the be-all, end-all solution for every problem, in every class, in every university. Honestly, course webpages are, in many ways, an improvement. Let me break it down:

Bb Pros:

• It's a great place for storing course-related files and assignments, that students and professors can access 24/7 (mostly).


• It is customizable, within certain parameters.


• It is 508 compliant.


• It is massively improved since 1999.


• The professor does not need to learn HTML or gain access to web design software (or a TA who knows HTML) to build a course page.

Bb Cons

• The discussion boards are painfully slow, at least from off campus.


• There is no way to set content to "push" instead of "pull." More plainly, it is a waste of the student's time to have to go to each and every course's (sometimes multiple) discussion board(s), read all the new posts (which, I reiterate, do not load all that quickly), comment where they choose to, rinse, and repeat. And to check it constantly. Whether there is new data or not. Because catching up on it, if you get behind, is a nightmare. RSS is not new technology; fixing this should be trivial.


• I'm harping, now, but, for that matter, how difficult would it be to implement e-mail functionality in the discussion boards? We'd have a better discussion with Google Groups than we do with Bb, and it would be equally easy for our instructors to watch--easier, I imagine, since they must get the same headaches as we do, using the boards.


• The organization of each course's Bb page is completely different from that of each other course. In one of my courses, I click the tiny "Communications" link at the bottom of the page to get to the Discussion Board. In another, I click the "Discussion Board" button on the sidebar. In one other, that button goes to course-wide questions, so to get to the Discussion Board I'm usually interested in, I click "Groups," in the side bar, click my group number, and then click "Discussion Board." When we're put in groups for projects, as I understand it, there will be other Discussion Boards opened up to us. It's a little confusing, when I'm going class-to-class, keeping it all straight. Honestly, I'm pretty worried that I'm going to ignore one Discussion Board altogether and lose 10% of my grade, or something, for "not participating."


• Presumably, the university paid money for this clunky monstrosity. I wonder whether it was more or less than site-wide license of HTML creation software (spoiler: that link goes to a list of free products) and a web site for each faculty member (this is already in place, although storage space usage would go up; then again, if we dumped Bb, that would free up some server space, I bet!).
  

In short, I'm thoroughly convinced that the old-school[ish] way of dealing with course administrivia--making a webpage for the course, with the syllabus, assignments, and so on all there--is in most ways equal, if not superior. (Robots.txt it and password protect it, if you want to keep outsiders out of it. It worked great for many of my classes, undergrad, so I know the technology is there. 508 compliance isn't hard; just don't make the site stupid fancy and colorful, or use frames, and that will more or less cover it.) And I really feel that we are not well served, using Bb as a discussion platform: a Google Group for each sub-group of the class would lead to--I am certain--better communication between the students than pull-only discussion boards.

I really, really like what we're doing in 2670, where each student has to keep a blog and post the feed link to the Discussion Boards. We're doing all of our "virtual" discussion of the readings that way. (As I understand it, we'll also discuss in class.) I put all of the feeds in a folder in Google Reader, and I see the updates that other students and the professor make as soon as I sit down at my computer. It's fantastic. I wish all my classes would do something like this, really. I'll do my part and post my writing assignments here, as well as in Blackboard (I'm aware that it'll turn up a hit if they're using automated anti-plagiarism software--you wouldn't believe how quickly Google indexes my blog posts--but I trust my professors to investigate and realize that this blog belongs to me). This is a little nerve-wracking, honestly, because I don't have a lot of faith in my writing skills. (Brevity, for one thing, seems to be completely beyond me. I know.) It took me three years to get up the guts to let CMU post the full text of my Master's thesis; I still haven't had the wherewithal to go look at it. But I assume that I'll have some ideas worth sharing, once in a while (I mean, most people do), so I'd like to start putting my thoughts out there, even the naive ones that mean I just haven't learned enough, yet. This blog will grow with me, and hopefully my writing ability will grow with it.

Ends and beginnings

I've changed around my class schedule. I think it's pretty solid, though I may still want to change sections for one class. 

LIS 2000: Understanding Information

LIS 2001: Organizing Information
LIS 2670: Digital Libraries 
LIS 2700: Managing Libraries (the real name is longer)

You'll notice there are only four classes there. I mean, that's a pretty heavy load for grad classes, anyway, but I had resolved to take five, so that I wouldn't be stuck taking four during the summer. (I hate summer classes. A semester seems a little short, for some topics, but trying to finish a class during the summer is just insane. I already know one of my summer classes will take up a few weekends, for instance; it says so on the course schedule.) I found, as I was trying to schedule things out, that the only way I could possibly take five classes was to force myself to attend nine hours of class, in a row, and I know myself and my attention span better than that. I'm worried about six hours, honestly. (I'm buying a coffee pot and cleaning out my thermos.) Or I could take a class I didn't want as much, which seems like a waste, in its own way. So, I lamented, it will just have to be four classes, this semester, and I'll make up for it in the spring.  Ah, well; it'll be an easier transition, this way, and having the extra time to do everything well, the semester before PhD applications are due, isn't the worst thing in the world...

Having my schedule decided, having my Pitt digital ID and login information reportedly on its way to me, having met several of my new coworkers at CMU, having watched one very cool coworker leave Brentwood already, and having seen the post made to the internal blog at Brentwood, saying I'm leaving, I'm kind of in a different mindset, now. I no longer feel entirely like I'm part of the Brentwood staff; I'm sad to be leaving them--in, you know, two weeks--and I'm excited about starting my new job and my studies. (It's very funny that I only just got my status changed to "Staff" yesterday, in Millenium. :)) Again, I find myself just feeling kind of liminal and floaty. 

This post was originally just going to be about how much I like the Brentwood folks and will miss working with them and also how excited I am to work with the folks at CMU, who also seem pretty excellent. I just kind of wandered off into logistics, though, instead. But I can't understate what a good experience I've had, or how excited I am about working with the folks at CMU (which I expect to be a better education, in a lot of ways, than my classes themselves). It's a pretty fantastic time to be me. 

Back to scheduling, for a second: not to seem like a dork--which you know I am--or like someone with a bad set of priorities--which you know I am not--but I did check with everyone to make sure my bi-weekly Exalted game could be moved to Wednesdays, instead of Tuesdays, if needed. Obviously, school and work come first, but I'd like to be able to fit that into my schedule, if at all possible. It's good to have regularly scheduled "play" time, you know? It keeps a person sane ... ish. And Josh is a very good ST. And I think I finally have my character set up so she'll be fun to play, within that group. So I'm extra pleased that everything seems to be falling into place, with respect to scheduling.

[Spoiler-free Review] Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

First, some meta-commentary: I do most of my book reviews over at GoodReads and would heartily encourage you to do the same, because their interface is excellent, and I find their mixture of "convenient place to store book lists" and "social networking/geeking out about books" to be just about right for my needs. My only complaint is that there aren't more people I know on there. OK, no, my other complaint is that there isn't some way of specifying "I am planning to read this and already have a copy," versus "I am planning to find a copy of this and read it" (there is merely "I plan to read this"): I can't use it as a clever way to buy gifts for friends.

But I make exceptions for really excellent books, books about libraries, and sometimes even really horrible books. In this case, I've come here to share a review with you, because the book was just that good, and I'm too excited about it not to mention it here. Also, I know most people won't have read it, so it'll be more helpful than a review of, say, Ender's Game.

Without further adieu... My review of Anathem: I really believe this is the best book Neal Stephenson has written. For one thing--I don't want to spoil it for you, so I will be vague--it has an actual, honest to goodness ending. The book's size might be a little daunting, especially to those readers who have come to expect unnecessary verbosity from him, but I think it's entirely appropriate: he covers a hell of a lot of ground. (Full disclosure: the page of cereal discourse in Cryptonomicon didn't bother me, or even seem out of place as I was reading it. I tend to find his writing appropriately verbose, rather than unnecessarily so. Others may be less patient.)

I won't claim that I fully understood every idea or reference presented in this lengthy and deeply thought out tome; my background in philosophy and mathematics isn't nearly that good, and I did kind of steam through it. But I certainly got enough of it to appreciate what he was doing--as will most readers--and to want to explore further. Obviously, I'm going to have to read it again, probably with the help of the citations that will be posted online when the book is formally published. Not being in a hurry to find out where the plot is going will help.

As for the plot, it is as good as any he's written and better than any I've read in recent memory. I admit, I found a relatively non-central love story to be a little unbelievable, but not enough so that it diminished the rest of what was going on. As for other commentary, I'm having trouble coming up with a way to describe the scale and enjoyability of the plot without spoiling it, so I won't; I'll just say again, he covered an awful lot of ground.

And I suppose that is the real crux of the five-star rating I gave this book (and the subsequent urging I will give to all of my friends to pre-order it or get it from the library, or something, but to read it, as soon as possible): it was worth the read for the plot, and it was also worth the read for the ideas presented within. I don't know how a book could be made that I would enjoy more.

Now that I think of it that way, I'm kind of sad that I've finished it, honestly.

I'd encourage you NOT to read the other reviews on GoodReads or Amazon, or even the jacket insert, until after you've read at least the first 3/4 of the book. The journey is better if you know nothing about it, going in. Seriously. You don't even want to know the genre, beyond "Neal Stephenson wrote this." Or, at least, I am super grateful that I didn't.