Walt at Random

For some reason, I woke up in the middle of the night wondering about this:

• How many CD players do you have in your house/do you own?
• How many FM radios do you have in your house/do you own?

Those are four questions, not two. Let me add definitions:

• CD player: Device capable of playing a CDAD “Red Book” audio disc. (Thus includes PC CD drives, DVD drives, Blu-ray drives.)
• FM radio: Device capable of receiving broadcast FM and making it audible in some form.

The second actually hit me first, because I was thinking “it’s odd that we don’t have a radio in our house”–then, when I did a quick mental inventory, came up with what I *think* is the answer(s): Five in the house, seven that we own.

Huh? Well, there’s a crank-powered emergency radio. That’s one. (That is: It has a hand crank for real emergencies, also a little LED flashlight. We don’t listen to cranks on it, unless you count the Tappit Brothers.) But there’s also a boombox in the garage. That’s two. (And it plays CDs as well.) Oh, but I also got a silly little radio as a premium with a magazine subscription–it’s tiny and tinny, but it works. That’s three.

Four and five? The 8GB Sansa Fuze that I use as an MP3 player these days has a great FM tuner–but then, so does the 2GB Sansa Express that I used to use, even though that one was clumsy to use.

Six and seven, probably obvious (and also constitute CD players two and three): Car radios.

Only noteworthy because I think most folks would regard us as having very little in the way of consumer electronics. One TV (technically, zero TVs at the moment), no iAnythings, a little tiny stereo system…oops, wait:

Make that six and eight. The Denon stereo (with a malfunctioning CD door) also includes an FM tuner. I’d forgotten that, since we never used it. And that’s a fourth CD player, even if it’s barely functional.

This is surprisingly difficult. Now, what about CD players. I think I count eight and ten, of which five are DVD-capable. (TEN optical drives in this low-tech household? Good Gaia!)

Besides the four already mentioned, there are DVD burners in each of our budget notebook computers (#5 and #6, also DVD #1 and #2). I had a neat little $15 CD portable that I used before getting a Sansa (#7). Because we love the Denon’s sound and fixing the door would cost $200, we’re using a cheap Sony DVD player as a CD front-end (try finding a non-DVD CD player that has a track display and costs less than $1,000…), so that’s #8 (and DVD #3). Oh, and the freebie DVD player we got during a Safeway post-remodeling grand opening and have been using as our only DVD player for a couple of years (#9, and DVD #4). And the big luxury–the $129 Blu-ray player we just picked up to go with the TV that will shortly replace our 13-year-old TV (which has been Freecycled to another household, not junked).

That’s us–and this really is a low-tech household…no teenagers, no DVR, no second TV in the bedroom, third in the kitchen, fourth in the…whatever.

How about you? Can you even count the number of optical drives you own? The number of FM tuners? (And now Big Media thinks your cell phone should have a mandatory FM tuner, ‘cuz, you know, otherwise there’s no way for you to listen to the radio…)

No big moral here. Just an oddity: Things do accumulate. Remember when household lasers were rare and expensive devices? Maybe not; most readers may not be that old.

Enough procrastination. Back to the OA project.

Once again, it’s a good thing: Few posts because energy spent on other things. To wit:

The first draft of The Project–that is, “Open Access: What You Need to Know,” an ALA Editions Special Report that will appear in 2011–is complete, and starting today/tomorrow I’ll do the Big Changes: Integrating a fair amount of new material (some of it from “a dozen or so” delicious entries that turn out to be, oog, 88 of them), refining organization, clarifying, aiming toward a second draft that’s probably publishable. That won’t be what I submit to the publisher, but the third (and final) draft should be mostly refinement. (Given that blog posts are “not quite first drafts” and most C&I essays are roughly 1.5th drafts, doing three drafts is unusual for me.)

The Other Project–current working title “The Way We Blog: English-Language Liblogs 2007-2010″–gets a little attention when I’m not working on the book, and got a lot during a few days while letting the first draft sit (complete) before revisiting it. Now up to 1,250 liblogs and another 1,262 excluded candidates. A few (anywhere from 5 to 20) more hours of data gathering to do, before setting it aside until it’s time to start the analysis and writing, probably after C&I resumes and the book is complete.

A couple of changes at home (OK, finally getting an HDTV after discussing it for 2-3 years) have taken up quite a bit of time, and that’s not quite done.

I’m learning a lot along the way in The Other Project, as I expanded it from “liblogs that show up in one of the typical places” to “liblogs the existence of which I can discover.” For example:

• There’s a large and extremely vigorous group of liblogs almost none of which show up in the typical places (they have their own typical places), namely kidlit and tween/teen/YA lit blogs (I’m only including ones clearly by library people–not all the others). I mean extremely vigorous. I wonder when some of these people sleep…
• I’d already apologized for an intemperate post a couple of years ago about what program is used by most libloggers. Turns out, I suspect, that the only answer is the usual one: “It depends.” For example, Blogger seems pretty clearly to be the platform of choice for many or most of these book review blogs, even while WordPress is pretty clearly the platform of choice for experienced tech, etc., liblogs. But that’s preliminary.
• A few blog templates (or individual choices) seem to go out of their way to discourage reading more than either the most recent post or the most recent handful of posts–e.g., blogs with neither archives nor “older post” controls, or blogs that show “older posts” one. post. at. a. time, with no monthly or weekly archive functions. Such is life.
• Relatively few bloggers are adopting light-text-on-dark templates (although I was astonished to see a highly-touted new WordPress template that’s exactly that)…but there are some, and one or two that use the even worse black-text-on-dark or purple-text-on-black template, or something other that actively resists reading. I usually take the hint.

So there’s an update, such as it is. Now, off to make sense of those 88 items tagged “OA” in delicious. I would have sworn it was only a dozen or so…

Oh, by the way: Lulu’s summer free delivery sale ends either today or tomorrow.

I have a request. It’s a simple one.

If you’ve downloaded the free collection of OA-related essays from Cites & Insights, Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights 2001-2009, could you let me know?

Either a comment here or a quick email to waltcrawford at gmail dot com would suffice.

Here’s the thing: Because the PDF is free, it doesn’t show up in Lulu sales records–so I have no way of knowing how many times it’s been downloaded or, indeed, whether it’s ever been downloaded.

One paperback copy has been sold. That’s fine with me–while I find the paperback version enormously convenient, it’s also unindexed, unedited, and has essentially no new content. You’ll notice how strongly I’ve been pushing it: It’s not even featured at the bottom of this blog page.

For that matter, I don’t really know how often the ePub versions at waltcrawford.name, referred to in various earlier posts, have been downloaded. Prior to mid-May, the draft PDF had 155 downloads and the various ePub trials had been viewed anywhere from 60 to 304 times, but I’ve lost track since then…

Update: I’ve now regained track. Since January 1, the draft PDF has had 155 downloads (clearly, none of them coming after May 15!). The ePub version that’s still available, oal.epub, has been viewed/downloaded 136 times. The rtf-to-epub version was viewed/downloaded 78 times, the pdf-to-epub version 104 times, and the html-to-epub version 304 times. Hmm. Chances are, only oal.epub has been available since mid-May.

This is just curiosity. Not entirely idle curiosity. (No, I’m not thinking of charging for the PDF or raising the book price–and I can’t really lower the book price more than $1 or so, since everything else is production charges for the hefty 513-page paperback.)

Thanks!

Why not many posts lately? For the same reason that the September Cites & Insights will be late and probably atypical.

Yes, I know, it’s impossible for a C&I issue to be atypical, since that would imply that there’s such a thing as a typical issue. Humor me here: Go read some C&Is that you’ve missed…

To wit, the Real Project for a Real Publisher is moving right along–I’m 2/3 of the way through the first draft, which isn’t too surprising since I have loads of source material, much of it already in good shape for inclusion. I hope to complete that first draft next week and let it sit for a week or so, before starting the tough road to a polished 2nd draft. (When the first draft is finished, I’ll probably turn to producing something that resembles a September C&I. Maybe.)

But I find that I can’t work on it full time–after a few hours, brain fatigue sets in. So I’m also continuing work on The Whole Liblog Landscape project (I need to come up with a suitable title one of these days, and consider whether I should submit that one to a Proper Publisher…)–harvesting (some) blogrolls (where there’s some reason to believe a fair percentage of links are library-related) and, simultaneously, picking up one new measure that’s easy to get in about 90% of blogs and could work with some other measures to provide some possibly interesting insights…or not.

That and, of course, other stuff–certain things having to do with turning 65 very soon, weekly hikes, planning possible trips (and unplanning some), reading, starting serious looking for a new TV…

One little note for some bloggers

If:

• You have a liblog (you’re a library person with a blog that’s not an official library blog, or you blog about library matters)
• You check your usage statistics regularly
• You look at pageviews
• You see some 404s…attempts to view pages or archive sections that aren’t there

it may just be me. Not to worry: No harmful intent. And I’m charmed by the range of 404 messages (instead of 404 itself) provided in various WordPress templates…

Back to relative blog silence. Not that this blog has ever been all that prolific…

Time for another cheap-and-easy post, partly because I’m focusing on my new project (a real book through a real publisher), partly because the number of comments trapped by Spam Karma 2 has gone up a lot in the last few days–60 for the last 24 hours, 53 the previous day, as compared to 20-30 most days–and because some of them are so bizarre.

Take this one:

Why did you remove my post… My post was actually useful unlike most of these comments. Ill post it again. Hi guys, I’ve a brilliant way to make alot of money online making blogs…

There’s more, but that’s enough. Let’s see: It was a comment, not a post. I didn’t remove it; Spam Karma trapped it as spam–properly. Learning punctuation wouldn’t hurt. And your comment is entirely irrelevant to the post. Other than that, well, maybe I just don’t like “useful comments” that disparage other comments. (I now see a different version of this post–lacking the first three sentences–at least four different times over a four-hour period, always from different usernames, always nicely trapped.) Oh, look: The followup comment once more and the earlier version twice more…

Here’s another one, praising Apple’s app store and disparaging Microsoft and the Zune–which, apart from being posted on, um, the wrong blog for MS-haters, was targeted at a post about our photovoltaic system. Relevance, anybody?

There are also the repeated spamments about creating short films on the topic of one of my posts (I’m SO flattered) and wanting my comments. Since two of those are targeted at a post updating the Liblog 2010 project…well, you know, I’m just guessing nobody’s done short films on that project.

There seem to be repeated spamments asking what theme I use for this blog. Assuming spammers actually read the posts, it’s LetterHead 1.0 by Robin Hastings, with significant modifications by yours truly.

Now, back to the writing…

Added Saturday, August 7: Good Gaia! 80, count them, EIGHTY spamments in the last 24 hours…at this rate, I’ll have to give up scanning them for possible errors. (Typically one legitimate comment gets marked as spam every couple of months…when I’m getting real comments at all, that is.)

I waited too long to write this post, so I’ll keep it short, even though the more general problem–see the post title–has happened before and will happen again.

What I wrote down on my infrequently used Little Pad o’ Post Ideas [yes, there is one; yes, it is a little pad--3.25x4.5 inches, lined; no, most posts don't actually come from the pad] was “Wave & blogs.” I wrote that down after I saw a post, or maybe more than one post, that seemed to be seriously suggesting that Google Wave would be a great thing for blogs.

Seriously. The idea: Your followers could see your post as you write it!

There is a way to send people your raw, unformed thoughts, pretty much as you write them, with no real time for editing (if you’re a typical user, I think). It’s called Twitter.

I honestly don’t want people to read what I’m writing as I’m writing it–and certainly not in an instantaneous manner. I’m not one of those Serious Bloggers who writes a draft, lets it sit for a day or two, comes back to it, thoroughly reviews, then posts it–in about 95% of cases, I’ve spent less than an hour total on a post and almost no time reviewing and editing. (The exceptions are either my movie reviews, posted from Word in groups of four, or a handful of more serious posts that I also write in Word, using the publish-as-blog mechanism in Word2007. I almost never intentionally save a WordPress post as a draft for more than a few minutes.) Even so, I do change drafts–I realized after previewing this post that I’d left out this sentence–and I do want the chance to think for a minute or so before I say something inappropriate or erroneously. Nor, for that matter, can I imagine that any sane person would actually sign up to follow my actions as I’m writing a post…or to do the same for any other blogger. If they did, the word “stalker” would come to mind.

To me, the whole concept of WaveBlogs was a case of looking for a “problem” that Wave could provide a solution for. I thought it was a spectacularly silly notion.

Now, to be sure, the adoption of Wave for its many obvious uses has been so spectacular that…Google’s shutting it down. So if you were wondering whether your library was behind the curve because you didn’t yet have a Wave expert on board, and hadn’t even started any Wave initiatives–well, you’re too late. Such is life when you’re not instantly on top of every new web tool.

On April 25, I posted “Little milestones,” about reaching two (or three) milestones with our solar photovoltaic system. (Again: “photovoltaic” both because it’s a great polysyllabic word and because there are quite a few solar systems around here that *aren’t* photovoltaic–that heat water for pools and the like rather than generating electricity.)

At the time, the milestones were that we’d reached–or almost reached–17 kWh in one day, 70% generation (that is, we’d generated 70% of all electricity used since the system went live in November 2009) and a “negative tick” on the monthly PG&E statement–the first month we generated more than we used.

I also thought it might take three weeks or so to get from 17 kWh to 18 kWh for a peak day, hoping that we might eventually get to 20 kWh. And noting the difficulty of moving from 70% to 75% to 80%…since each percentage increase gets tougher.

Consider: At 75%, you’ve generated three kWh for each kWh you get from the utility. At 80%, you’ve generated four kWh for each utility-provided kWh. At 85%, you’re approaching six kWh for each utility-provided kWh–and at 90%, you’ve generated nine kWh for each one you get from the utility. That gets tough.

I believe our target was 80% over the course of a year; that’s usually what companies aim for in designing photovoltaic systems.

Well…

The 18 kWh day has proved elusive, and I now suspect that unless we fully wash the panels (not just spray them down, which we’ve done), we may never get there (since Sunday was presumably our best chance). Spraying down seems to have done almost no good. Our peak generation seems to run around 2,200 watts, not the 2,350 peak the system should do. That’s the not-so-good news.

On the other hand, as of the last time I checked, we’re at 86%: That is, we’ve generated a little more than six kWh for each kWh we’ve used from the utility. (We peaked at about 680 kWh of PG&E power; that’s down to 380 kWh net as of this morning, since we’ve generated 300 kWh more than we’ve used over the last three months.)

I’m thinking we might get to 90% before the end of summer, depending on how much AC we use (so far, we’ve barely had it on at all, and we have an 18SEER system set at 80F during the day). Will we reach the end of the “true-up year” (end of October, basically) at 90%? Hard to say.

Again, a caution: Photovoltaic results vary wildly depending on suitable roof (or ground) areas, extent of cloud cover where you are, etc., etc., etc…. If a company says you’ll earn back your investment in six years or eight years, I’d triple-check the figures. Energy-efficient usage is still the best way to save money on electricity, and we’d already done a lot of that.

[Are we happy we installed the system? Absolutely.]

“Making the case” for what, exactly? Well, really, for “semi-” still being part of my self-description as semi-retired. Oh, and for going to ALA conferences (or any library conferences) after this year, as part of staying involved in the field–which, for reasons of real economics and household harmony, needs to involve some appropriate earned income.

To recap:

• Making the Case 1 notes the solution I’d find most desirable–finding ongoing sponsorship for Cites & Insights or (and) Walt at Random.
• Making the Case 2 starts with a surprise (the shutdown of the Library Leadership Network) and considers the possibility of a new site providing diverse essays that can inform library leaders (and managers) and possibly generate conversations on relevant topics.
• Making the Case 2.5 explains some fine points (that 1 and 2 aren’t either/or, that finding a home for much of the LLN content is relatively easy but also less interesting, etc.)

I think this is the last of this post series, both because it’s getting close to ALA Annual (the ideal spot to discuss these possibilities) and because I’d rather get back to other topics.

Research

I’d love to be involved with some group involved in real-world library research, and I believe I’ve demonstrated my ability to carry out focused, transparent projects.

I did some of those projects on speculation, hoping that they would result in some modest amount of income either from book sales or, potentially, from speaking or other invitations. The results–not only monetary, but even having the research noticed–have ranged from mediocre to abysmal. It’s hard to justify doing any more projects except out of pure personal fascination, unless there’s some up-front sponsorship.

At this point, I don’t see how this is likely to happen. I’d love to be proved wrong.

Other improbabilities

When I was first looking for a new gig, three years ago, I did get a couple of offers–one to teach a library school course (after designing the course), one to do seminars. It’s also been suggested that I should become a consultant (hmm: suggest that someone out of work become a consultant–what a novel idea!)

Why haven’t I followed up on these possibilities? Turns out John Scalzi has a post today at Whatever that speaks to this situation: “The Self-Awareness of Incompetence (or Lack Thereof).” An excerpt:

I think there’s a critical intersection between being willing to try things you’re not good at (or good at yet) to learn and experience them — and thus accepting that there’s an interim period of incompetence in the area while one gets up to speed — and the self knowledge (or lack thereof) that no matter how much effort you put into something, you won’t ever reach a sufficient level of competence. Or in shorter words, there’s a cross street between “try something new” and “give it up, already,” and I think it’s interesting to find out, when people get to that particular curb, if they actually know where they’re standing.

I’ve done loads of the former–starting with computer programming and going on from there–with, usually, reasonably good results. I’m willing to continue.

But…

• I really don’t believe I’d be more than mediocre as an adjunct faculty member at a library school, and I do believe that if LIS students are to be taught by non-MLIS holders, those non-MLIS holders should be a whole lot better than mediocre.
• I know I’m not enough of a self-promoter to be a successful consultant, and the question “Consult about what, exactly?” keeps coming back to haunt me. I’m not closing this off entirely, but it’s clearly not My Future.
• As for webinars, quite apart from the ungainly name…well, not impossible, but it appears that I’m no longer in demand as a speaker (possibly for good reasons), and I think I’d be even less spectacular as a webinar presenter.

So, well, I haven’t followed up on these. Maybe that’s wrong.

Otherwise, there are always columns, articles and books. I have one book proposal (yes, with somebody else publishing it) in the works now. I suspect I’ll have one or two others along the way, although the sheer multitude of books in the field (ten at a time?) gives me pause. (One topic that’s been near & dear for many, many years might be ripe for book treatment…) Always possible–columns and articles. But with all of those, maybe books more than others, the issues of compensation and value add come into play. That is: I don’t want to write books that I don’t believe add substantial value…and most books and articles don’t really yield much of a revenue stream. They’ll be part of it, I think, but not a major part. (Psst: Thanks to the two people or institutions who’ve purchased But Still They Blog this month!)

And I think that’s it for the cluster.

Availability during ALA: Most any time Friday from noon to 6 or so, any time Saturday (period, so far), and Sunday from, say, 2 p.m. through dinner time. But contact me beforehand, ‘cuz I still travel without a netbook or notebook or iPad or iTouch or…  waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

Fair warning: There may be one or two more Making the Case posts. There may not be.

Meanwhile…

Obviously, Making the Case 1: Sponsoring C&I (and Walt at Random?) and Making the Case 2: Leadership? are both about “keeping the semi- in semi-retired”–finding revenue sources to encourage me to keep doing work that I believe I’m particularly good at and that I believe is valuable to the library field.

But I find myself considering the two posts together, which raises a couple of minor points along the way:

• If it’s one or the other, I’d choose Case 1. That’s the one I’ll be most reluctant to give up.
• It’s possible that the two could work together under the right circumstances, and I’d certainly be delighted to consider that possibility.

With regard to Case 2, a couple of people have suggested places that the existing articles–or at least the ones I feel primarily responsible for–could be archived in lieu of any ongoing development.

For now, I’m less interested in considering those possibilities. Finding an archive is easy–heck, since the pages I have stored are all HTML pages, I could set them all up within Walt at Random (or figure out how to spin off another blog using WP3 and turn that blog into a leadership archive). The harder part, but also the part that would continue to add value, is to maintain ongoing content streams.

Anyway, it’s the weekend–time to relax, read, maybe work a little on an ongoing essay (one where I scrap a category of material in the process), do chores, and make my ALA speech more presentable. And, of course, check blogs, email and Friendfeed from time to time…

Anyone want to set up a site containing worthwhile essays for current and would-be leaders (and managers) within the library field, about leadership, management and some of the issues library leaders need to be aware of?

Anyone want to pay for the site (minimal) and for maintaining and building high-quality material on that site, and encouraging participation and feedback from people in the profession?

If so, then do I have a deal for you…

This one’s sort of a surprise. I spent roughly 2.5 years as editorial director for the PALINET Leadership Network, which became the Library Leadership Network, which became a LYRASIS service. Working as a part-time contractor, I straightened up/edited/reorganized a whole bunch of material that PALINET had acquired (and continued to license) from the original Library Leadership Network, wrote a bunch of original articles, got contributions for a while from a panel, and put together a lot more articles with the help of more than three dozen library bloggers who were pleased to make posts available.

The whole thing started as a wiki (and some day I’ll use MediaWiki markup without twitching slightly). Then it moved to a Drupal site as part of a LYRASIS initiative to broaden the network’s sources and services…which meant retouching all the articles and, in the process, consolidating them into 189 longer and more substantial articles.

In March, as some of you know, LYRASIS stopped funding me as editorial director.

This week, LYRASIS announced that the Library Leadership Network would shut down at the end of June 2010.

Meanwhile…

All the articles I was responsible for carried (and carry) a Creative Commons BY-NC license, which means they’re freely available and can be copied for any purpose that doesn’t carry a direct charge.

When I knew my tenure at LLN was over, I started copying the articles that were primarily work I had done–which turns out to be 104 of the 189 articles (omitting articles that consisted of Leader’s Digest material, articles sourced from the original LLN, articles from the LLN Peer Panel and the PLN Challenge).

While I haven’t gone through those articles and excised *portions* that were from Leader’s Digest, that wouldn’t be an enormous effort.

What remains is partly my original writing (some of it excerpted from other writing I’ve done), partly–mostly, I think–articles consisting of combinations of credited blog posts by library people and some original commentary.

A future home?

With some appropriate level of commitment and compensation, I could see turning this into a new site, continuing to add new material and update existing material, and finding ways to encourage direct participation. I can’t see spending as much time on it as I spent on LLN, but I also wouldn’t be looking for equal compensation.

If this sounds interesting and you either work for, are, or know of some group (association, division, whatever) that could make this happen, get in touch–waltcrawford at gmail dot com–and we can talk.

• The site needs to be open to all readers at no cost–the CC BY-NC license would apply on a new site as well.
• Updated 4:45 p.m.: The site can, of course, have ads (text or banner), sponsorship or both. The requirement is that the material be freely available.
• I think the site should encourage conversation, but I also think lightweight tools to do that need to be used, and that it needs to work even if there isn’t much conversation.
• I’d be happy to work on organizing the site, which I think needs to run on HTML one way or another. (I could see doing this using WordPress. I could see doing it using Drupal, with somebody else doing the heavy lifting. I could not readily see turning everything back into wiki form, frankly!)
• If I’m involved, I’d need some medium-term assurances…

If nothing comes up, I’ll probably look at the content again, see how much of it should be adapted for use in C&I or elsewhere, and possibly find a home for it as a static set of pages. (One such home has already been suggested…but, sigh, it’s a wiki.) That’s really not ideal.

We seemed to have close to 50,000 pageviews per month for articles on the wiki site (late in 2009), which suggests there’s a real readership for this stuff. I don’t think I’d have too much trouble restarting the network of blogger permissions, if the sponsorship/support makes sense.

Interested? Get in touch.

In the Interesting & Peculiar Products section of the new Cites & Insights, discussing the prospects for 500GB optical discs, I question an assertion that the real-world lifespan of optical media is “well under ten years” and note that “I have 25-year-old CDs that work perfectly.”

A reader says that her eight-year-old CD-Rs are unreadable and questions what I’m saying…and says industry estimates are about ten years.

So here’s a clarification:

• The paragraph I was questioning specifically said “mass-market physical medium”–by which I assumed pressed/pre-recorded media, not recordable media.
• My context was 25-year-old audio CDs (pressed audio CDs)–and every one of the (prerecorded) CDs I purchased two decades ago still works perfectly.
• While there are special archival optical media, I can’t speak to life estimates for recordable media–although I do have (audio) CD-Rs that are still readable after eight years, that’s anecdata.
• I would also note that the paragraph I questioned said people wanting long-term archiving would stick with magtape. Permanence of magtape ain’t so hot either…

Meanwhile: I am not an expert on archival media (and other than ink or properly-fused toner on acid-free paper and *maybe* high-quality microfilm, I don’t know of any), and my casual comment should under no circumstances be assumed to be a guarantee that the DVD-R you burn today will be readable in 25 years.

Peter Murray has a post this morning that updates an old conversation he and I had, one that Cliff Lynch also played an indirect part–all riffing off the old note,

When you think you have a really zippy network connection, someone will (should?) bring up an old internet adage^L2 which says “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.”

…which, more recently had entailed versions such as “a truck full of CDs” or, what started this all, “a 747 full of Blu-ray Discs.”

Go read the post. I’ll wait.

In the spirit of scientific investigation (which you can translate as “Because I really should be doing the indexing for the new Cites & Insights, and indexing is really boring…”), I decided to check out a couple of things–e.g.,

• Would 2TB internal hard disks provide even greater bandwidth?
• Would cargo weight or bulk be the limiting factor?
• Which provides greater bandwidth, a 747 full of double-density Blu-Ray discs or a 747 full of 2TB internal hard disks–and what is that capacity (from New York to LA)?

I also changed one thing: Realistically, even double-DVD slimpacks aren’t the way you’d ship all this stuff. You’d use 100 disc spindles, which result in less packaging overhead.

Here’s what I found

Table

Notes

I checked Boeing’s website for the maximum payload capacity of a Boeing 747 freighter (see Peter’s link, but go to other sublinks as needed). I did real-world measurements for the size and weight of a 100-disc spindle and used Western Digital’s own specs for their Caviar Black 2TB internal hard drive–and, to simplify calculations, I assumed “10packs” of the discs, wrapped 10 high in plastic wrap. (I assume plastic wrap throughout rather than boxes, again to simplify things.) The bandwidth calculations assume the 16,200 seconds in Peter’s post.

To explicate what’s here:

• A spindle of 100 Blu-ray discs (total data capacity 5TB or 40Tb) occupies 0.00347 cubic meters (basically, 7.5×5.5×5.5 inches or 177.8×139.7×139.7 millimeters) and weighs 1.316 kilograms (2.9lb.) You could fit 220,173 spindles (in other words, just over 22 million discs) in the 747 freighter–but the plane couldn’t take off. By weight, it could hold 93,964 spindles (just under 9.4 million discs)–so the actual data capacity would be 3,758,541 Terabits, for a bandwidth of 232,009 Gb/s–just a little higher than Peter’s numbers, because spindles add so much less bulk than individual packages.
• A stack of 2TB hard drives 10 high (total data capacity 20TB or 160Tb) occupies 0.003898 cubic meters (261 millimeters high, 147 millimeters wide, 101.6 millimeters deep) and weighs 7.5 kilograms. That’s the killer: While you could fit almost 1.96 million drives into the plane, you could only take off with 166,487 drives (16,487 tenpacks)–so the actual data capacity would be 2,637,995 Terabits for a bandwidth of 162,839 Gb/s.

Both are, to be sure, three orders of magnitude greater than the fastest reported network transmission. I was a little surprised to find that Blu-ray discs offered more bandwidth than hard disks–because a spindle of 100 Blu-ray discs with 5TB total capacity weighs less than two 2TB hard disks.

Another little table:

Significance and omitted elements

• None…except that the proverbial station wagon full of tapes still has some, erm, legs.
• Many–some of them discussed in the original post and comments.

Now for that indexing…

The June San Francisco Chronicle Magazine (the Chron only does its own glossy-magazine section once a month, a very sensible decision–the weekly book section and review/entertainment section are separate anyway) leads off with an editor’s column with the same title as this post.

It’s not all that long (465 words–shorter than this 558-word post); you can read the whole thing yourself, and look at the amusing picture. The theme: Meredith May (the writer) has been

getting into polite arguments with friends who have been posting pictures of me on Facebook and Flickr that I would never want you to see.

They’re not nude shots or anything like that–but they were “taken in private moments with friends before the world was wide and covered in a Web.” May doesn’t think it’s up to other people–even her friends–to decide which parts of her own history should be made public.

She notes a specific incident–she’s going to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to talk about her story on girl slavery in Nepal and, checking Facebook in the airport, finds that an old friend has psoted pictures of her drinking and posing at high school house parties…

May doesn’t quite understand people’s impulse to overshare their own stuff–”but over-sharing someone other than yourself without his or her permission is baffling.” And, indeed, since we learn that any candid shot is likely to turn up on the web, spontaneity could be suffering.

I have had parties at my house with a dozen of my lovely artist friends, and nine will bring a camera and start shooting. The whole reason for having your homies over for a party is that you can let down your hair and dance on the counter if you want to. But I’m more cautious now. The joie de vivre, the carpe diem, the being alive part of living – is tempered.

In our haste to document and share everything, are we losing what it means to live in the moment?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but this editorial certainly resonates with me. I’ll take it a step further: “Agreeing” that a picture can be posted isn’t always being entirely happy about it. Coercion is a strong word for the process that takes place, but it’s a form of social pressure–the desire not to be thought a complete killjoy.

There are pictures of me on the web (oddly enough, they show up in Google but not on Bing) that I could do without. One of them has a caption about what a good sport I was. “Good sport” in this case really means “didn’t feel he could avoid this without looking like a killjoy.”

I know that my own behavior at, say, conference receptions is now much more circumspect than it might have been in the past, that I’m much less willing to don silly hats or assume silly poses or hold up silly signs. A few years ago, I would have assumed that a few folks would have gotten little laughs out of the silliness as captured in photos. Now, I assume that the silly pictures will live forever on the web and in search-engine results–and while they can’t really do me any harm, I’d just as soon not, thank you.

So does this make me a killjoy? Maybe so. Such is life. Apparently I’m not the only one…

OK, so that’s a lame misquote of an Elton John song. But then, I never thought of Roy Rogers as a comic book character anyway, so…

Anyway: After 23 hours off the internet (one of those unusually social days), I open up gmail today to see a pitiful email “from” an old acquaintance (who I’ve never met in person, AFAIK). Here’s the text:

Hello,

I am in a hurry writing you this mail. I traveled to UK wales for an urgent function and i got mugged at a gun point. It was a terrible experience. All cash and credit cards were stolen away from me. I reported to the police they asked me to wait for 2 weeks to carry out investigations. I am totally freaked out here.

Right now, my return flight leaves in couple of hours from now. I am only telling you this because i do not want you to panic at all. just keep it the way have told you till i return back home.

I am seriously having problems in settling my hotel bills and to get a taxi down to the airport. Just wondering if you could loan me $2000 to settle my bills and to get a taxi down to the airport. I promise to pay back when i return back home today.

Please you can help me send the money to my name and my present location because i am only left with my passport to pick up the money.

[Name Omitted]
[UK address omitted]

Do let me know if you will be going to the western union outlet right now to send the money to my name and my present location and please dont forget to get back to me with the transfer details which is the senders information and the MTCN number.

I await your urgent response.

Thanks Alot

The email address was that of “Name Omitted”–but it was a gmail address, and all my correspondence with this person has been at a .edu email address, so I was suspicious right off the bat.

Beyond that, what kept me from running out to my local Western Union outlet to wire that $2K to my dear friend? Let’s count a few of the ways:

• He doesn’t address me by name.
• The person who supposedly sent this is a careful, elegant writer would never in a million years forget how to capitalize or how to write complete sentences…so “wales” and “i got” and “at a gun point” and “stolen away” and “I reported to the police they asked me…” are each suspicious and cumulatively convincing: “My virtual acquaintance Name Omitted did not write this.”
• It gets worse…the second sentence of the second paragraph is essentially incoherent and the fourth paragraph is no better.
• I figure the chances of Name Omitted signing off with “Thanks Alot” and no name as being roughly equivalent to the chances of Google actually sending me $750,000 in a Gmail lottery. (Google has to line up behind the seven Nigerian princes whose wives I’m negotiating with on terms of their money-laundering schemes…)

Oh, and the fact that Name Omitted probably knows a few hundred people–people he deals with face-to-face–who he would contact before he’d contact me.

There’s one more: If this was even close to legitimate, No Name would have included a telephone number and a hotel name, thus giving me some plausible chance to confirm the situation.

It’s a shame that scams like this are spreading–which can only mean that they work once in a while. I suppose the semiliteracy of most scam artists helps.

There it was, in today’s USMail, along with two more offers to inform me about my Medicare options (I’ve lost count of those mailings) and some junk mail.

An offer from Street Rodder–specifically, “A Special Welcome-Back Offer for Former Street Rodder Subscribers”

It’s a great deal, too–3 years (36 issues!) for $30.00.

And I get a free Street Rodder cap!

With every issue, I’ll get:

• In-depth information on past and present trends
• “How to” subjects ranging from beginner skills all the way to the talent levels of the master fabricator
• Coverage of the hottest “must see” shows nationwide.

I’m impressed. Except for one thing:

To the best of my knowledge, I have never, ever, not once, subscribed to Street Rodder. In fact, I’m not really sure what it’s about (presumably some kind of car magazine, and I’ve never subscribed to any of them).

If the magazine was in any plausible way related to any other magazine I take (and I take quite a few), I could see this: “Maybe he’ll think he used to subscribe and he’ll start again.” But, unless you count car reviews in Consumer Reports, it’s not.

Turns out there is a bizarre link: The publishing company that publishes this magazine also publishes an audio magazine I subscribe to. That’s the only relationship I can think of. Notably, the Exclusive Online Price for Street Rodder at the general website is $25…per year, not for three years.

I think I’ll pass. Somehow, it’s never occurred to me to turn my 2001 Honda Civic into a street rod, whatever that might be…