Because I Require Stimulation

I got introduced to Cibo Matto when I saw a video for Know Your Chicken. As the video played I realized that, while I had no idea what the hell was going on, I knew I liked it. They were quirky and creative and something you don’t hear every day in the music biz, which has been going steadily downhill since the 80s. As I listened to more of their songs I discovered that all of them seem to have some kind of food theme. (As a matter of fact, their name means “crazy food” in Italian.)

Take Sugar Water here.I happened across this video a few days back and figured I’d share. If you’ve never heard their stuff, I seriously recommend checking them out.

So, I give you Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori. Ladies and gentlemen, Cibo Matto.

Certain jobs have certain tools which are analogous to the profession. You expect to see wrenches and air compressors at a mechanic’s shop. You aren’t surprised by the size of the knives used by cooks at a restaurant. So it surprises no one that libraries and librarians are known for having computers and little things that shoot red lasers and go “beep.�

Actually, it’s been my longtime theory that everything in a library must go beep, even if only on occasion.

Thing is, watch your mechanic and see what they do with their tools. You’ll see them use their stuff in surprising ways. Similarly, in a professional kitchen, you’d be amazed at what a veteran cook can do with one chef’s knife. So, why shouldn’t we librarians be any different?

Issue: You have to type your password several times per day.

I call this an issue and not a problem because, well, it really isn’t a problem more than it is something you could do better. At the very least, it could be done more easily.

I don’t know how your library works, but at my branch my day goes something like this:

• Arrive at work, log into my desk computer. Type my password to log in.
• Log into the ILS (Integrated Library System). Type the same password again.
• Eventually, head out to work one of two desk shifts for the day.
• Sit down at desk computer, log in using the same password and then log into the ILS by typing the same password again.
• Log out and leave the desk and head for a check in shift where I log into the check in computer and then into the ILS, entering my password each time.
• Leave check in. Head back to my desk.
• Go back out to the front desk for the second desk shift. Log into…

See a pattern here? With our setup, you have to type your password once to get into the computer. Then, if you want to do anything productive, you’ll need to log into the ILS and type that password again.

Why bother? Especially when you’ve got stuff to do that for you.

Solution: Create a barcode that is your password.

You’ve got all those beeping laser enabled barcode scanners. You do realize those things will scan more than your library’s items, right?

Step 01: Generate a barcode that matches your password.

There’s a dozen ways to do this. Probably the easiest is to use Barcodes, Inc,’s free online barcode generator. The default settings should work pretty well with most scanners so simply type your password into the generator. Remember to put in any capital letters and stuff like that.

Step 02: Print out your barcoded password and cut it out.

Step 03: Put your barcode on something you normally carry with you.

My, I taped it to my keycard/ID badge. After all, I’ve always got it with me at work because I need it to get into the staff areas from the public floor. I carry it on one of those retracting lines that you attach to your belt. When I sit somewhere I need to log in I pull my tag, scan the barcode and I’m in. Given our setup, I only need to type my username once when I log in because the ILS picks it up automatically.

Whenever I need to put in my password to over ride something, I scan my tag. That gets something done a little faster and, as an added benefit, I never mistype the password.

Optional: Programme an RFID tag with your password.

Some libraries have RFID readers and programmers. Using the software that you’d normally use to replace and fix RFID tags, you can take a blank tag and encode your password onto it. Depending on how your library uses RFID technology, this may be just as desirable as having a barcode.

And hey, there’s no reason you can’t do both.

Problem: No Way Are You Going To Write Five Pages About That

I think most librarians have been in a situation where a student comes to the library, they need information for a report, but they’ve got such a huge scope of things they could write about so they’re having trouble narrowing down what they should write about. As an example, I had a student referred to me because I’m the science guy at my branch and they figured I might be able to help them narrow down their report on astronomy.

Yes, he wanted to do a report on astronomy… all of it apparently.

Well, that’s not going to fly, especially for a five page report. As you can imagine, the subject is just too big. There’s too much to talk about, write about, discuss, and detail. It’s impossible to do it in five pages. Heck, it’s be hard to write an entire book about astronomy.

Or is it?

Solution: Wikipedia Books

Wikipedia has a feature that a lot of people really aren’t aware of. After all, Wikipedia doesn’t really go out of it’s way to advertise stuff. Yet in cases like this, it can be an awesome tool.

See, what my patron needed was something to read through that was general enough to get him a grounding in just how big his subject was and then he could use that to whittle things down to a manageable subject. We all know that encyclopedia articles are pretty good for that kind of thing and, like everyone else on the Net, we know that Wikipedia is a pretty good encyclopedia.

But do we really want to print out a bunch of articles? Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a book? Something they could take home?

Turns out, you can.

Step 01: Head on over to Wikipedia.

Here’s a link to them if, for some reason, you don’t know it.

Step 02: Check out the left sidebar. You’re going to find a dropdown menu called “Print/export.�

This dropdown is usually collapsed, so people don’t always click to see what’s inside. Once you do that, you’re going to see a link there that says “Create a book.� Click it.

Step 03: Turn on the Book Creator.

What this will do is put a bar across the top of your Wikipedia pages with a link that allows you to add pages to your book. In other words, you’ll be able to stuff the article you’re looking at into your Wikipedia book. Now, let’s go search for Astronomy.

Okay, now let’s say we want this article in our book. Simply click “Add this page to your book� and it does. Okay, we’ve got a page added, let’s flip through this article. Oh hey, “Planetary science� sounds kind of cool. Let’s click the link.

Read through that. Sound interesting? Okay, let’s add that too. And keep going, adding pages to your book. When you think you’ve got enough, then click “Show book.�

Step 04: Download your book.

You can download the book as a PDF or as an OpenDocument text file. It’ll take some time for Wikipedia to format the book and get it ready for you.

I would expect that you’ll probably want a PDF file because what I’d recommend you doing with that PDF file is…

Step 05: Email the book to your patron so they can look at it at home or in the library.

Your patron now has a pretty decent collection of focused articles they can flip through, print out, highlight, mark on, and all those other things you probably don’t want them doing on your public computer monitors. The PDF contains all the images, image captions, tables, and even the bibliographies of the original article. The only thing you don’t get are the links.

I mean, the thing even comes with a table of contents.

You can even order a printed copy of your book. Keep that in mind next time someone complains that libraries no longer have encyclopedias in book form.

Look, she may be cheesy. She may be retro 70s with a layer of the 80s thrown on top. But seriously, Dazzler has always been one of my favourite comic book characters. I mean, shit, look at her. She’s got white leather, studded wristbands. A jumpsuit split down the front almost to her navel. Then there’s the masquerade mask. A crystal ball pendant. And really, what outfit wouldn’t be complete if not for the roller disco skates with sequins?

Face it, what we have here could either be a hero or a villain in an Austin Powers movie.

Also, the part of Dazzler here is being played by Olivia Newton-John.

Oh, hi.

Been looking at books on Amazon, just snooping around for interesting stuff. Then I noticed this. It’s one of those things where I wonder if there’s a series I didn’t know about.

A long time ago I threw out a question to my readers (Hi, all you beautiful people.) about installing some kind of forum thing here to allow for conversations, socializing, and that kind of thing.I’ve never done that simply because I wasn’t all that impressed with what was out there.

But I found something fairly recently that did impress me. It’s a plugin for WordPress called BuddyPress. Basically it turns your blog into a social networking site. And while I have no aspirations of being the next Facebook, I wouldn’t mind making it easier for people to interact here and, perhaps, do some interesting things.

The content won’t be changing all that much. I will still post things featuring erotica, hotties, fashion, cultural, and all that stuff. However, I hope to start putting some of my side projects on here. Things like my art, my writing, stuff related to libraries, and other things. I’d love to hear people’s opinions on those kinds of things.

So over the next few days you’re going to see some changes on the site. Things might break, but I’ll fix them. Hang tight, because I think this is going to be pretty cool.

Rutger Hauer is…

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

Introduction

William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk, once said that the street finds its own uses for things. Without getting into a whole lot of literary analysis, he was talking about how people, especially those living without a lot of money, tend to find surprising ways to utilize what they have at hand.

Speaking of people living without a lot of money – librarians.

I don’t know how your library works, but I don’t always have the money or the approval to buy certain things when I absolutely need them. And that, my friends, is assuming I can buy it at all. What I need may not even exist. It has to be created, and who’s going to pay someone to create, build, and/or develop something?

As a Circulation Librarian in charge of the third busiest Circulation Department in the system, I face some really odd and interesting problems. In this two part series first part of an new series,* I’m going to talk about a couple problems vexing me and my branch and how I solved them. I’m also going to talk about AutoHotkey, which helped me solve them. With a little luck, you can take something away with you to help you fix up a few issues in your branch, be it large or small.

So, let’s get started, shall we?

The Problem: The $350,000 State of the Art Robot Who Can’t Call For Help

I have got the coolest machine.

It’s an FKI Logistex LibraryMate self check-in machine with a nine bin sorting system along with a staff induction unit. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, let me break it down like this. I’ve got a machine where patrons can drive up to the outside of the building, feed their materials into a reader, the machine checks them in, and then sorts the materials into one of nine bins for easy slipping and reshelving. We’ve also got a feed on the machine inside that allows the staff to do the same thing.

It’s incredibly rad. In 17 years of public library circulation, it’s the first labour saving device I’ve seen that actually saves labour.

Basically, this is a robot. It uses a combination of three RFID readers along with laser scanners to read the barcode or RFID tag on an item. After it reads the tag or the barcode, it contacts the ILS, checks the item in, receives information about what the item is, and then it uses that information to figure out which bin that item goes in. As a technologically minded library guy, this thing is like electric sex.

But it’s not without its flaws.

While the machine comes with a little app that you can install on any locally networked computer, all that app does is pop up when there’s a problem. So if the machine is jammed, shuts down, or otherwise goes inoperative this little programme throws up a window to let you know.

Sure, that’s very handy… if you happen to be sitting there at the desk and looking at the computer. So, what if you’re not?

Well normally, you’re hosed. That’s exactly what I was on the weekends when it went down and no one was working. See, the library is closed on Sunday. Thus from Saturday night to Monday morning, the machine is on its own. Then, one Monday, I came in to find this:

What’s more,you see those rolling bins in front of that mountain of books? One of those was also filled with returned items. It took us over an hour to get all of it checked in and then another hour or so getting the machine emptied and the stuff onto trucks for shelving. I thought to myself, “I’ve got a little piece of sci-fi in my check-in room using radio and lasers to check items in, and it can’t call for help when it goes down?�

That’s just unacceptable.

So I told my boss that I had a goal: By the end of the week, I’d develop a bit of software that allows that machine to let someone know it’s broken, even when we’re nowhere near the library. Thankfully, there’s a very easy way for this to happen, and millions of people do it everyday.

I’d have it send a text message to my cell phone.

The Solution

Making some notes on paper, I developed a workflow and architecture for this to happen. I knew that I’d need a couple different pieces of software to make this work. First, I’d need something that could send me a text message. No problem, my work computer has Microsoft Outlook on it. Second, I’d need something that told me the machine was down. That too wasn’t an issue because, like I said, I have a little programme that already does that. Third, I’d need something to tie them together.

That’s where AutoHotkey comes in.

AutoHotkey is a free scripting language. Using it, you can write some pretty nifty programmes that automate all kinds of things from text replacement to system maintenance to automating tasks in World of Warcraft.

After tinkering around, I came up with 21 lines of code that did the trick. Here’s how-

Step 01: Set up an Internet shortcut using a “mailto:� command.

I created a shortcut on the computer that used a mailto: command just like you’d see in a webpage. I set it up to mail my phone number @vtext.com. That’s Verizon’s email gateway to sending text messages. For the subject I put FKI ALERT! and for the body I typed PROBLEM DETECTED WITH THE FKI SELF CHECKIN! I saved the shortcut and, since it was a mailto: shortcut, Windows immediately associated it with Outlook. So if you double click the shortcut, Windows launches an Outlook composer with everything already filled in. All you have to do is send it.

Step 02: Set up a trigger within the code.

My programme works on a very simple workflow. It starts out by looking for the window that pops up when the machine goes down. Normally the little app monitoring the FKI just sits in the system tray and you’ll not see its window. However, when anything goes awry, that window comes up and that’s the only time it comes up. It never appears without cause.

That window is the trigger.

The little app I wrote does nothing but look for that window and, if it doesn’t see it, it goes to sleep for five minutes. No reason to have it check too often and waste processor cycles. Five minutes is fine. So that’s it. It scans the desktop, looks for the window, and if it’s not there it goes to sleep because all is well.

However, if the window is there, the rest of the programme kicks into gear. Like Visual Basic, you can use AutoHotkey to “send keys� just like you would if you were typing. When the window is detected, it calls up that Outlook shortcut. It waits five seconds to give the computer ample time to respond. Then it sends the key combination “Alt S� because that’s the keyboard shortcut used to send an e-mail in Outlook. Then it waits another five seconds to allow processing.

Then my little programme terminates, which brings us to-

Step 03: Fixing the problem

After the e-mail goes out, my programme exits itself. Why? Because the window it’s looking for will not go away until you fix whatever is wrong with the machine. In other words, you have to come in, fix the machine, close out the window, and re-launch my programme. It’s kind of like a grenade, it’s only useful when it goes off but, once it does, that’s all there is. As an added benefit, it won’t keep texting me. I get a text and, depending on the time of day or night, I can go in and fix it if I need to. So while I may just ignore a text coming in on Sunday night at 10pm, I will not ignore the one coming in on Sunday morning at 9am.

So far, it’s been a pretty reliable bit of coding. Then again, in 21 lines (I’m not counting the remarks at the beginning.) there’s not much to screw up. While I’m not a great programmer, everything I do is open source. If your library has a similar machine with a similar problem. I’ve pasted the code below or you can get it from a Google Doc.

; FKI Alert by Daniel Messer
; This programme monitors a computer for the FKI Alert window. When the window is detected
; this programme will call upon an e-mail shortcut to call for help. Ideally, this email
; shortcut should be directed toward an SMS address, but any email address should work.
Loop {
ProcessNameSearch = javaw.exe
; DetectHiddenWindows, on ; Currently commented out because I don’t think I WANT to find hidden windows.
WinGet, id, list,,, Program Manager ; Get all windows for the entire system.
Loop, %id%
{
StringTrimRight, this_id, id%a_index%, 0
WinGet, this_process, ProcessName, ahk_id %this_id%
if this_process = %ProcessNameSearch%
{
WinGetTitle, this_title, ahk_id %this_id%
Sleep, 5000
Run f:\FKI_ALERT.url
Sleep, 5000
Send !s
Sleep, 1000
ExitApp
}
}
Sleep, 300000
}

*So I got some pretty decent response on this article, and I have more than just a couple of items to share. They’re not all as involved as this one, but hey, if it helps someone out, then I’ll write about it.

Greetings, salutations, and how the hell are ya?

The latest issue of Dr. Gonzo Recommends is online for the reading. I mean, you could read it… if you wanted to. I guess?

I’m a data guy.

Recently, I finished a project where I collected data from the last two years of my branch library’s operation along with the last two years of the District’s operation. I chose two years because it was two years ago when we opened our new branch. I also drew out the spreadsheet to cover a full four years. Then I gathered the data, and put it into the spreadsheets so I could chart trends, make graphs, and observe and predict changes.

I wasn’t asked to do this. It was my own side project. I did it, and I’m still doing it, because I’m curious.

That’s it, just curious. I wanted to know some stuff – that’s all.

Given my love of cover art, when you combine cover art and data you’ll find one very happy library nerd sitting at my desk. So have a look at a lovely chart showing the trends in fantasy cover art from 2009 and, when you’re done with that, go check out the story behind it. I did, and I sure wasn’t sorry.

They must have played it for a fuckin’ decade or something:

So, I’m working check in this morning, which isn’t at all odd because I tend to work check in every morning. It’s literally a moment of Zen for me because, when I’m working check in, that’s all I’m doing. Occasionally I’ll listen to music, but mostly, I’m just checking in.

A Buddhist wise man once said that when you’re walking, know that you are walking. Well, when I’m checking in I know that I’m checking in. Still, I have the occasional odd thought because my mind is really fond of making connections between two or more seemingly unrelated things.

We have several branches in our system. Two of which are called El Mirage (which is the coolest name for a branch) and Sun City. As I’m checking things in, I come up with one item that needs to go to El Mirage and two that need to go to Sun City. So, as I set them aside I say to myself:

“I’ve got two Sun Cities and an El Mirage.”

Which was immediately replaced with:

“I’ve got two turntables and a microphone.”

That’s just the barest peek at the workings of my brain. Is it any wonder I drink?

The problem with people putting information online is that people are stupid and don’t understand what they’re doing or how to do it properly.

As an information professional, a librarian, and a citizen of the Internet; this Google search scares me. What is it? Well, if you typed it out, this is what you would type:

filetype:rtf | filetype:ppt | filetype:pptx | filetype:csv | filetype:xls | filetype:xlsx | filetype:docx | filetype:doc | filetype:pdf “this document is confidential” site:gov

And in essence what it’s doing is searching governmental sites for any and all document types with the word “This document is confidential” in it.

So much for confidentiality.

Especially the parts about “71 million astro-miles” and “the scorching surface of the fires swamp that is Mars.”