Kode Blog

Web 2.0 Activity Check List

2009-10-20T16:37:00.000-05:00

Are you one of my fellow library critters who's doing this fun little web 2.0 familiarization course? Are you sure you've got everything done and that you'll qualify for the prize thingy at the end? Well, I've made this list which has all the activities we've been required to complete, taken directly from the Joliet Library Discovers Blog. The list is a google document, which we were required to learn how to use as one of the steps in the course. It is available here:https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQEpUwCoHcfBZGQ5azMzcmNfMTM0Z25ncHhycTk&hl=en

I'll update it as more posts come from the assignment blog, though I'm doing it manually it might not update as fast as some might like. I'll post again after the last assignment with the completed list.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about Web 2.0 tools

2009-10-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

Another day, another assignment which I will endeavor to mock slightly while technically completing thus qualifying for the thingy at the end. Today I've got this list of web 2.0 tools to explore, some of them are quite cool and I've been using them for years, so I'll give you a list, I like lists.

Top 15 Web 2.0 tools that I have used and were awesome which are also mentioned in the SEOmoz.org's web 2.0 awards page here:

That's the end of that chapter.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about Google Reader

2009-10-19T16:36:00.000-05:00

So, I checked my google reader feed this afternoon, where I subscribe to several hundred different RSS feeds, including the Joliet Library Discovers blog where I get these assignments from. (Ok, so not that many any more but at one time I had well over 300 feeds subscribed to.) There I saw the new assignment for this web 2.0 program I'm doing at work... I lol'd.

I've been using Google reader for years, probably from it's very launch in October 2005. I have been and remain impressed with the growth of features I've seen come out of Google labs for Google Reader. I'd have to say that the best feature of Google Reader is the keyboard shortcut navigation. The j and k keys send you "next" and "back" respecively, r reloads the feed, gh "goes home", ag "goes to all", v to "view" the original page, etc, etc.

Recently, they've added some "social" features to the reader, probably part of their whole friend connect platform and the push at Google to integrate themselves into the entire semantic web enterprise. If you want to read my shared items you can find them here in my shared item feed. The feed mostly contains comics and other funny stuff but occasionally I'll include a political piece that I rally agree with or a relevant news story. You can also see the latest couple in a widget on this blog, over there --->

Regards,
-Benjamin

Google Sidewiki entry by Benjamin

2009-10-18T00:22:00.001-05:00

So, this is my twitter account. Follow me here if you want.

in reference to: Benjamin F. Klahn (kodemage) on Twitter (view on Google Sidewiki)

Bookmarking

2009-10-12T18:59:00.000-05:00

Ok, before I make a post on this for my web 2.0 course I just want to remind every one that the term is "bookmarking" not "book marking" it is one word. It means to make a bookmark for, book marking means making a mark in a book. You people are librarians I expect better from you! :p I know it's not the best term, but what does a bookmark do in books? It keeps your place or reminds you of where an important fact or passage or table or picture or whatever is. Well that's what a bookmark does on the internet, it reminds you where you found something that you wanted to be able to reference later.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about Twitter

2009-10-10T13:03:00.003-05:00

I think I've done this before, actually pretty extensively.... I've got a couple hundred followers on twitter, from back in the day and I've pruned my followed list to a reasonable number.

If you're part of the whole "internet" sub culture then twitter is totally for you. This is how we keep tabs on our celebrities. Just like in Corey Doctorow's book Eastern Standard Tribe we can observe today various tribes of peoples linked by culture. Doctorow thought that our circadian rhythms would have a great influence on which tribe we identified with but I think it's our celebrities, our microcosmic cults of personality. In this age of spreading global communities you can more easily identify a group by its heroes than any other factor. Yes geographic and linguistic ties still have some importance but more and more our cultures develop around the internet and are global in nature. The right has Limbaugh and Pailin - the left has Obama - the internet has Lessig, Laport, and Rose - Pop Music has Kanye West and Taylor Swift - Football fans have David Beckahm and Zinédine Zidane; I could go on.

Twitter is just another means for the huddled unwashed masses to get closer to those people who they wish they knew. Part of human nature I guess.

Oh, follow me on twitter if you want?

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about wikis

2009-10-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

Our next assignment talks about wikis and asks us to think about what applications a wiki might be useful for in a library setting. I find it interesting that according to the video provided in the assignment Google documents are technically wikis. Which is probably true for the most part, the great thing about web 2.0 is that we get this blurring of the lines between technologies. In the example of planning a camping trip I have used Google documents for that exact purpose before, as well as in various games I play and several school assignments.

How can a library benefit from using a wiki? Wikis are extremely useful to libraries, they're useful in the same way they're useful to Businesses, Community Groups, Schools, and the Government. All of these institutions use wikis. How? Businesses share resources and collaborate on projects much in the same way that the campers in the video do. They can coordinate schedules, projects, meeting room use, seminars, and more. They can share links to answers for commonly asked questions. Many businesses put their employee handbooks online and allow employees to edit them, though they often require management to approve any changes. The US military is trying this with some of their literature, not the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but some of their field guides can obviously benefit from some revisions by people who've been to the place they're about instead of a desk jockey at the pentagon or west point.

Community Groups can share info about upcoming events and plan everything from social events to fundraisers to community outreach programs. Any organization which is based in a geographically similar region can share information about local points of interest, pretty much all your basic nouns, People, Places, and Things. Imagine the library having a wiki where a person could look for historical information about the city and a couple clicks later find a nice place to eat down town then a couple clicks later order a book from the library to help them plan a trip.

Our library website could definately benefit from a wiki style re-organization. Much of the information at the top could benefit from better taxonomy and organization. Our lists of organizations and links could be split into several cross linked pages for easier navigation and better. The kids and teens sections could benefit from more direct involvement by their department staff and our calendaring system is in need of revitalization.

Well, that's enough about wikis, if you haven't infered from the above I think that the vast majority of sites can benefit from some kind of wikification or introduction of some wiki-like concepts.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about Technology

2009-09-29T19:55:00.000-05:00

This week's assignment is to blog about technology. Quote Wikipedia: "Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment."

Of course my natural inclination is to take the assignment literally and blog about something completely different than the intent of the post, perhaps I could blog about fire, or more specifically the discovery of how to make and use fire by humanity. Another good one, remembered from the excellent movie Thumbsuckser, is soap. Greatest invention of all time. Well, he might have said antiseptics and really meant antimicrobials.

I could blog about World of Warcraft. That takes up a lot of my time. My character is pretty awesome and we just had a new patch about a week ago with some cool new content. If I were to talk about World of Warcraft I'd have to mention all the cool tools I use to help play the game, from nifty little bits of LUA code called add-ons to character auditors. I could go on for several paragraphs on how sophisticated a game it really is.

I could talk about the web technologies that I use every day and just couldn't live without. Gmail and Google Reader, Reddit, Facebook, the list goes on and on. I can talk about my dell mini 9 net book and how I have the internet in a package the size of a hard cover book. It's like the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy but real.

I could talk about Firefox, the greatest web browser of all time, or Google chrome the second best, if only it had all the extensions from Firefox that I need to use. Adblock Plus, I'm talking about you. (This add-on is so important I install it on my family and friends computers and don't tell them so they think the internet has much less advertising than it really does. Don't believe me, check your Firefox if I've used your computer, it's there.)

I could talk about a lot of things, and I guess I have. So, I'm done here.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Blogging about Video

2009-09-24T17:23:00.000-05:00

This week's assignment is about youtube...

I don't think I need to say any more about that. This video explains why youtube exists... or at least why we care that it exists for without Youtube Rick Astley would have been forgotten as a one hit wonder. Quote, "the video is lame, super lame, and you have become more lame by watching it. Thus it is awesome." I wanted to embed the original rick-roll video, but embedding has been disabled.

Blogging about Blogging

2009-09-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

My job is offering a program that's intended to help the library staff learn about new web 2.0 technologies, blogging and the internet in general. Last week we were assigned to create a blog, having done that years ago I just sent in a link to this one. Today's task is to head on over to technorati and check out the blog search.

Some history about myself and Technorati. I first heard of Technorati long long ago, maybe 2003-ish. And then it was a great resource. It helped me find blogs with interesting info and was generally GOOD at what it did.

Back then I was using livejournal, though it wasn't so much as a blog but as a social networking site amongst my college friends. Thank the FSM that live journal lets you delete your old content, I hope there's no cache floating around somewhere to be discovered 20 years from now.

Then the spam blogs started showing up and Technorati was helpless to their onslaught. You couldn't find a single link out of the top 20 in any news worthy topic that wasn't a spam blog. Now, I think this was probably partially the fault of the free blog engines like blogger, live journal, and wordpress. Now, blogger and wordpress have gotten better at weeding out the spam blogs and Technorati hasn't gotten better at ignoring them. Take this search, from today, for a common topic, one near and dear to my heart, World of Warcraft. [click for bigger view]

If you're a savvy user you might notice that the first post is about gold farming, not a great sign. You should also notice the domain name that is completely unrelated to the subject matter. That is a spam blog, and it's still first on the list on Technorati. This is so disappointing. Technorati used to be great, but now...

Now, to be a little less of a curmudgeon how about something I like? Technorati's top blogs is great, it reminds me of which feeds I need to read to keep up with internet news. Browsing through their top 100 list gave me a couple new feeds to add to my Google reader feed. I also signed up for an account to get this blog registered and recognized by Technorati. Maybe I'll get some more traffic or something. Anyways.

Regards,
-Benjamin

Spiders!

2009-05-28T19:50:00.004-05:00

So, the elf in the party has a problem with spiders. (I hope it's not a personal arachnophobia which I am insensitively pushing in her face...) So, when she mentioned this I decided that I'd introduce some spiders into the campaign. When the elves arrived I needed an enemy to fight. Now, I wanted to use Drow, Driders, and such as a thematic grouping but they're all pretty high level in the Monster Manual (14th level) and I didn't want to have to make a whole bunch on new stuff.

So, here's what I did. Took the one spider which fits in with the level, Death Jump Spider put him in the first encounter. To go along with him I used some spitting drakes, gave em a climb speed and changed their spit to acid (or it may have been acid, don't remember) and there was encounter one.

At this point Pat can stop reading. :p Or not, just don't spoil it for everyone, kthx bye.

Encounter 2 is Pseudo Dragons and Needlefang Drake Swarms. The Pseudo dragons have a poisonous bite and I'm going to have them hop around the walls instead of flying and the needlefang swarm has a poisonous property too. So, that's inside the lair.

Encounter 3 is the final encounter where in I have made the monsters from scratch. The first is templated after the human mage and had the wizard template added to it. I had to make them from scratch basically since I needed something low level. The Drow Web Sorceress inflicts ongoing acid and/or poison damage and can cast web impeding her enemies movement and/or restraining them. The second is a simple Drow Fighter, two weapons, ranger template added with a spider as his Beast companion. Two Elite monsters and a spider addition, I hope the PCs can handle it.

And just wait until the PC's find out what the Drow have been up to and who they're working with!

Regards,
-Benjamin

Buy one and get four more free!

2009-05-19T15:39:00.003-05:00

I've got several bits of news to share today, D&D, WoW, Work, Other x 3.

D: The Friday night group defeated the Young White Dragon waiting for them at the heart of the kobold dungeon 2 weeks ago. Inside it's hoard they found a letter offering alliance against the people of Fellcrest, signed by one Ironjaw. The PCs returned to town for the first time in almost 2 months of real life game play. I'm using the distressed wife hook to send them to the Keep on the Shadowfell in search of Douvan Stahl. The PCs made quick work of the kobold ambush on the King's Road while heading west through the vale. I even added a couple extra kobolds to bump the encounter level to two. Then I realized they were down one character as the wizard was ill today. In any case they did really well, the slight bumps to their AC, atk, and damage made a significant difference in their survivability.

W1: In world of Warcraft my guild has started raiding again. After our raid leader left we took some time off and gave people a chance to gear up and get ready. We went into Naxx 10 and cleared 3 wings without a single wipe. Everyone did an excellent job and for the first time ever our DPS was amazing. Giving everyone that little bit of time to pick up some gear upgrades really shows when I look at the meters. So, now we want to do it again. Due to a conflict of our schedules and our joint venture with Eternity Matters of Naxx 25 we're scheduled to go again on Monday night. Speaking of which we did have to borrow a main tank for naxx, we could have probably done it with just our guild but then we'd be short a DPS and the tank we did grab is very skilled and well geared.

W2: At work I recieved a really nice thank you note from one of our patrons. My co-worker jack and I found a birth record for her grandfather that she'd been looking for for years. Just in time too, they're putting up a statue commerating him and establishing a family ancestry archive. So, having that info is pretty important.

O: My roommate has been running a Hunter: the Reckoning. The game is set in Alaska and I'm playing a media obsessed post-graduate degree seeking college student. He's a reluctant supernatural so he rarely uses his powers and then only passively for small things or when he does use them it's more of an unconcious action. (He uses Hide and Fool's Luck [from the Innocent splat book] most often, when he uses Bluster to counter monstrous actions or Demand to gain super strength that's when I'll change out the reluctant supernatural for a real nature.) My companion in this venture is a Exiled Russian fleeing from the Russian Mob after robbing them blind. We picked up some henchmen with a want ad on the Hunter-Net (hunter only internet). An ax weilding Native American and his gun toting wife, both from Texas.

O2: I've been renting entire seasons of videos from the library again. I've recently watched Deadwood Season 1, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer season 5, The West Wing season 5, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex season 1; also I borrowed Big Bang Theory season 1 and Boston Legal season 1 from my father, which I have watched already.

O3: I'm going to be running the Living Arcanis Mega Adventure Lords of the Pack for some local friends in a multi day event. I'm looking at about 16 hours of Role-Playing goodness.

That's enough info for now. i'm sure it's more than many of you wanted to hear :p

Regards,
-Benjamin

Free Time

2009-05-06T18:44:00.002-05:00

It's getting easier and easier to find something to use in my 4e game, but rarely do I want to use something exactly as it's written. I like the mechanics of the thing that is presented but not the flavor so, I make something up to replace that.

For example, there's an Ice hazard in one of the books but I needed something that was slippery and slowed the PCs down, so I used that and said it was slime instead of ice. It worked well and I've done similar things a couple times now. Then just recently I wanted an elite monster but couldn't find one or a template to apply to the shadow like thing I was using. So, I just took 2 monsters that had similar properties and combine them together, use the better of any defense, chose a couple powers added their hitpoints together and poltergeist + shadow of some kind = my new creation the "Dominating Shade".

Right now the PCs are engaged in a long series of social interactions with a neighboring kingdom of elves. I'm using the skill challenge mechanism to award them xp, but they still have to RP their way through a series of social encounters. The best part is making them plan out the social events that they host. That seems to get most of the players involved. Not as well involved as killing something does.

Regards,
-Benjamin

"You don't post enough. Blah, Blah, Blah."

2009-04-20T14:00:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the weekend at CodCon up at the College of Dupage in Glenn Ellyn. Played some Living Forgotten Realms and Living Arcanis. Judged a pretty good mod of Living Arcanis too. Everyone had a pretty good time and there was one character who never had to roll a die. (It was a story based mod, no combat. "Storms Over Argent Seas") My LFR rogue achieved 4th level and that's a significant power gain there, a feat, some stat points, and +1 to almost every thing in combat. No extra powers, but I'm looking forward to grabbing one next level, although I don't know which one yet.

The friday game next takes place later this week, they should reach the end of the dungeon and finish their quest(s). For some more information about that check out the warlord Annalia's blog. The group has dwindled to 4, which is fine by me. Warlord, Rogue, Wizard, Ranger. Not a bad party.

At this point in my 4e education I'm thinking that in most fights a defender is the role that you can do without most easliy and a striker is the best role to double up on. Now, in fights with Elite and Solo monsters a defender is a great asset and makes things better but I'd say that I encounter,when playing, or include, when judging, elite monsters in about one combat in 5 and solo in one combat in 10.

Saturday Night's game was mostly magical tea party. One of my players says "Needz Moar Combat!" to keep the rest of the party interested. Was inevitable that the group broke into a couple smaller groups to accomplish their various tasks and I like the way their thinking about the events in a realistic, for D&D, manner. Something unusual will happen to them next week, for sure, and while it wasn't going to be a combat I'm going to throw together some stats because it could easily be turned into a combat instead of the puzzel/trap/thingy I had planned on. Details left vuage cause one of my players reads this blog now...

In World of Warcraft there was a new content patch so there's lots of stuff to see and new and all the old tasks still sitting on my to-do list. I just can't get into playing an alt until I have every possible tast on my to-do list with my main done. Also, I'm not able to do as many heroics and raids and dungeons as I'd like due to scheduling problems and lack of guild interest. They've scheduled something for Saturday and I can't be there because of D&D but I can keep picking up PUGs whenever I can.

Anyways, that's enough for now. Time to celebrate the holiday. Happy 4/20 all.

Regards,

-Benjamin

4e D&D with a host of newbs

2009-02-27T19:17:00.003-06:00

Tonight we start the latest D&D campaign. I'm setting a goal of a minimal amount of effort put into this to start and later rachetting up the time investment when I know where everyone wants to go and what they want to do.

Tonight's adventure is gonna come right out of the back of the DMG, I'mk using fellcrest and the kobold dungeon. Later I'm gonna introduce Douvan Stall and send the PCs to the Keep on the Shadowfell. I want them to be second level or on the cusp of it when they get there, I definately think that it's a little too tough for raw recruits.

So, what's in the party? Absolutely No Humans. That's right, they're all metahumans. How about a list?

Annilea the Half-Elf Warlord

a Teifling Warlock

an Eladrin Wizard

a Dragonborn Fighter

a Drow Rogue

an Elven Ranger

As far as a six person party goes I think this is one of the most well rounded and tactically sound groups I've seen in a long time. The Fighter, Rogue, and Warlord are up close melee types with the Warlord providing movement to help the rogue get into flanks and near enough to heal the defender who should take the most damage. From range we have a Ranger, a Warlock, and a Wizzard.

There's a lot of fire power in this group, I forsee larg monsters going down quick when they need to and if they focus fire they can deal with more dangerous foes in short order.

We'll see how they take it and get you some more info on the characters, like names, in a day or 2.

Regards,

-Benjamin

Blogger Templates

2009-02-12T17:41:00.001-06:00

So a freind of mine asked me to help her change her blogger template and modify it a bit. This teminded me that I have this blog here and I haven't updated in a few months. So, um, yeah. I'm gonna go play around with blogger's CSS now.

Regards,

-Benjamin

Netbooks Rock

2008-11-28T16:37:00.002-06:00

Fed-ex needs to update their package tracking system to something more useful. It annoys me with it's seemingly hours long delay on posting information. What good is tracking if it's not in real time. Onward to the interesting part.

The day before thanksgiving my Dell Mini 9 netbook arrived at my home. This thing is small, sleek, and snappy. I'm not sure what they're doing right but web pages seem to load faster on it than on my home computer despite the facts that it's transfering over Wi-Fi and the Mini 9 forces me to use firefox instead of chrome. Hulu makes this the best portable media device ever concieved.

The stats are nothing great, 1.6ghz atom proc, 256mb ram (I've already ordered 2gb from newegg to upgrade), 8gb hd, and 8.9' screen with a 1024x600 screen. The screen on the Mini 9 is great. It's whites are bright, blacks are dark, video looks really good.

It's got a plethoria of USB slots(3, 2 on left, 1 on right) and I got the bluetooth addon so I can get a spiffy bluetooth mouse and/or headset eventually. (Shopping on Amazon now... Little pricy to get something good now.)

Regards,

-Benjamin

WotLK Midnight Release

2008-11-14T15:27:00.003-06:00

Below is an embarrasing video of my World of Warcraft guild's assistant guildmaster dressed up like a pirate and doing the "tree dance". Check out my youtube page for more videos including the costume contest with mroe WoW dancing.

Regards,

-Benjamin

Video from Obama Rally

2008-11-10T15:57:00.002-06:00

Better late than never?

I hope.

The video I took at the Obama rally in Chicago's Grant Park is uploading to Youtube as I type. I've removed a couple of the crappy ones but there's nine decent videos going up.

This concludes my first foray into videography and I'll say it's been a success. I learned a lot about taking video (I need a stabelizer of some kind desperately) and I got to see a historic event in person.

Thanks to WETA, Reddit, Erik, and all the people who let this amatuer take their picture and ask some simple questions with not so simple answers.

Regards,

-Benjamin

Interview Videos

2008-11-04T17:12:00.002-06:00

Here's the 5 interview type videos I made in chronological order.

Democratic Campaign Worker.

Husband and Wife After Voting.

Poll Worker.

Young Lady at Ice Rink Waiting for her Grandmother to finish voting.

Two Young Ladies who work at the Icerink which is a Polling Place.

Video My Vote

2008-11-04T16:03:00.002-06:00

Here's the video of my vote, there are 3 clips. I'll edit everything into one piece tomorrow or the next day.

Walking up to my polling place:

Video of my ballot, this one's really shakey, not sure why:

The irregularity, eventually my ballot went into the machine and the cops were called while I was outside but I think they were just afraid of my camera:

More to come, interviews are uploaded and will be in my next post.

Regards,

-Benjamin

Videos are Uploading Now

2008-11-04T15:50:00.002-06:00

As per the title I am uploading my videos now. I have myself at the polling place and an interview with a campaigner, then there was some trouble and the police were called on me by the election workers. (No video of that, but they were polite enough and nothing came of it.) So I went to another location and the poll workers were much nicer, I even got one of them on video. There I got interviewes with whoever was about before I had to head to work. (I'm at work now. Feel free to msg me.)

The first video is quite shakey, but they get progressively better.

Regards,

-Benjamin

VideoYourVote - Video 1 - Introduction

2008-11-04T12:19:00.000-06:00

As Promised here's the first video.

WETA - Video your vote

2008-11-04T12:14:00.000-06:00

Gtreetings,

So, a at the end of last week Erik, the community manager at Reddit put a call out for volunteers to record their election day experience. He selected me to receive a Flip Ultra video camera to that end. My first video is uploading now and I'm going to post several more throughout the day.

I should have video from several locations today, first at my polling place, then at my work, and finally at the Obama rally in Chicago's Grant Park.

I'm not very photogenic so I'm going to keep my appearances to a minimum and narrate from behind the camera.

Thanks for watching and stay tuned for video and more!

Regards,
-Benjamin

So I skipped two months, so what, it was the summer...

2008-09-06T13:58:00.002-05:00

I've neglected you again dear blog, I am sorry. I've been very busy with my life. I've got a new roommate and my apartment is very clean. I've started playing World of Warcraft and that sucked away most of my summer. (I've been playing for around 6 weeks and I have a lvl ~52 Mage that I am rather proud of.)

I've been slowly watching all the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2, having watched Season 1 previously, which I rented from the library where I work. I have the season 3 dvds but I haven't started on them yet.

I've got 3 D&D games going, the same one on Saturday which should be drawing to a close in the next few weeks, months. The Sunday game is the same group that it always is but we've been through a couple different campaigns that never really ran for more than a week or three. Wednesday we finished the campaign we were on and took a break for a month or so while we were all on vacation and going to conventions, etc. We just started a Gestalt game with a roman theme. I will be playing Seantor Marcus Quinctillia Flavus, a Beguiler for part with the second half of his gestalt ness to be determined when I build him this week.

All in all things are going well. I'll post in a bit about google chrome. I've been using it, at work only since I don't run windows at home, since it was released and I must say that I do love it, but do I love it enough to switch away from firefox and all it's extensions that I cannot, until now, live without? We shall see, stay tuned.

Regards,

-Benjamin