// archives

Archive for October, 2008

why i’m discouraged, part 2: the customer is always right

first, a confession:  I’m not actually that discouraged anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have some significant but low-level anxiety and I’m still intellectually upset about all the stuff I was upset about before but i’m not feeling that deep, soul-shaking discouragement that I was before.  which is good but it’s made it hard [...]

wishlist for an ebook reader

Sometimes it takes near on a year to finish a thought, so here goes.
Early hype of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader raised the question of whether it could revolutionize the book industry the way Apple’s iPod had recorded music. “Revolution” and its variants are some of the words I most commonly read or hear in discussions [...]

leaky libraries

I’ve been thinking a lot about leaky libraries lately. From chains on books to user authentication, we do everything we can to make sure that when people get some information from us, they have to come and get it themselves.
This is no good. It’s not how the world works anymore. To be found on [...]

why i’m discouraged, part 1: on “balance”

I’m kind of a relentless optimist.  I was asked in the interview for my current job to describe myself in 5 words: “optimistic” was the only one that came easily.  One quality optimists tend to have is the ability to take the long view, to believe that things have been better before and they’ll be [...]