Created by Planet Mat, this image is a nice (and omg I hope eventual) representation of what he hopes will be the Omni-Gadget: the hand held that can do everything, and do it well. He has a fairly detailed explanation of the functions, whys, and hows, and the comments that follow only build on the idea. Definitely worth a read!
It’s been running on our CBS affiliate for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve yet to catch it. Hooray for the internet! And hooray for Kuro making it in! He’s a Save•Point regular.
Catch it on the SJCPL site. (.mov)
So we just got back from Tokyo. It was amazing! Why? Let’s start with a simple flickr tag - tokyo.
My wanderlust has been an issue for a while now. I’ve been treating it with flickr tag feeds over the years; london, tokyo, travel. Eventually I got bored with looking at London. It’s just not the same as being there. Tokyo was of new interest to me, so I subscribed to that. I noticed one person who took pictures of daily existence rather than your usual fish market and cherry blossoms. I liked that, so I added him as a contact. I then noticed that he contributes to the salaryman pool, and is a moderator of the tokyo punk rock pool. From the latter, I found amazing show shots. Many of which have ended up as my desktop at some point. So I added him as a contact too.
From there, I was led to the Nikkei Sindex, a not-for-the-faint-of-heart punk rock podcast. Needless to say, I have a few new favorite bands now. And I also had another contact in Tokyo. So when it came time to get serious about planning this trip, I had some seemingly cool people to ask the who/what/where/when/why/and how of it all. And boy, did they deliver. I’ve always said that punks are the smartest and nicest people you will ever meet, and once again, I was proven right. A quick email to the Sindex, and a day or two later, I had more info than I could ever wish for including where to eat, places to stay, and a rather helpful and hilarious punk rock travel guide (also not for the faint of heart).
With food, lodging, and the best of random insanity set, the next step was scoring show tickets. This proved way harder than I would have liked. Japan is not hip to e-commerce (do people even use that word anymore?) like the U.S. They are still a very cash based society, so ordering tickets online was out. What to do? Email my favorite show photographer and flickr contact of course! After a little back and forth on the hows and whys of ticket buying I had this in my inbox:
In any case, you are lucky, for apparently general tickets
are still available and I just walked down to my local 7-11
and paid for two, which were summarily printed and given to
me. So, you owe me $97, or an even $100 if you feel like
subsidizing the chocolate milk I also bought =P
How’s that for awesome? I magically had tickets waiting for me to a show full of bands that we will probably never see play in this country. Add in a few more email exchanges and our first weekend there was fully booked: show Friday night, FC Tokyo J-league game on Saturday, show Saturday night, and the aforementioned show on Sunday afternoon. And we hadn’t even left the country yet.
Needless to say, these guys are all my new best friends.
You can see the flickr fun here, here, and here (slacker finally got ‘em up. :P). And a bit of YouTube fun here and here.
Yes, I know I’ve been sparse. Anyone who was used to seeing me online, surely has started to wonder where I’ve been. Well, I’ve been working. The new job is going along swimmingly! While there are some things I miss about being in Reference, I am really enjoying branch life. I like that I do a lot more readers’ advisory now. I get to chase toddlers and distract them with stuffed animals and bubbles. I’m in charge of fiction(!), my beloved low number Dewey areas, and teen and graphic novels! And I’m in charge of the shelvers. It’s a really awesome gig.
Did I mention we break ground for a new building in just over a month? Yes, I am one busy lil’ assistant manager.
And yes, Ms. Hill, I do get “real” reference questions. In fact, after you made that comment, I had a kid come up looking for sources about the potato chip industry for a school project.
I feel safe in saying that I am a Mid-Core Gamer. No, I don’t play MMOs, but I know what they are (my hubby is reading Massively right now). I own 2 PS2s, a Wii, a now unused GameCube, a 360, a working and broken DS, a PSP, Rock Band, several import games, etc. This morning I offered pro advice about purchasing a DS to a colleague of mine. He appears to be adequately swayed. (He is partially responsible for my extensive knowledge of Metal Gear Solid 2. It’s nice when the student becomes the teacher).
So thank you Jeff Fulton. I feel like I have a place now.
Last night I had a dream that I was hanging out with Michael and Darren somewhere in Seattle. We were outside looking at flickr photo streams of skylines and listening to last.fm radio. We had to do this outside because Darren had caused too much of a ruckus and was no longer allowed to do anything with music indoors.
i love you.
Jordan, Eric, and Dan,
you are our new best friends. Hope you’re ok with that.
Kingfox and Libraryman,
Happy Birthdays!!!
Comments off
Jaleh broke the news, but for those of you who haven’t heard: starting Monday I will be the Assistant Branch Manager of the Francis Branch of SJCPL. Huzzah!
It’s not a secret that I’m a fan of the Francis Branch, so this is truly a welcome opportunity. Thank you!
sjcplskagirlie
