Disqus - Latest Comments for ksclarke

Re: Why are Kindle ebooks so expensive?

ksclarke — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 11:01:34 -0000

A little off topic, but on "Digital books never get damaged, whereas print books, so many things can go wrong." I've lost access to more digital books due to DRM issues than I have to spilling tea on a physical book. These days I still prefer ebooks, but they're not (in their current state) without their problems. At least with a physical book you actually own what you purchase.

Re: Eggs & Diabetes

ksclarke — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 11:17:55 -0000

I've had a meat eating friend ask this before and I was a really surprised because I've never had trouble finding pasta or bread without eggs. The idea that eggs were common in them puzzled me because it didn't match my experience at all.

Cakes, of course, are another matter. You do have to go out of your way to find a cake without eggs. I definitely don't eat as many cakes as I did back when I ate eggs. That's probably a good thing, though.

Re: Just Use an IDE

ksclarke — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 19:32:55 -0000

Perhaps your experience was related to the big switch to Unity (which I didn't do); I've always found Ubuntu very stable. That said, I didn't take the Unity plunge (other than testing it out in a VM and deciding it was a path I didn't want to follow). I did just recently install Ubuntu Gnome (http://ubuntugnome.org/) and it went very smoothly (no tweaking needed... everything Just Worked(tm))... much different from my days using Gentoo (where you were under the hood by design). I've used Red Hat/CentOS before. The experience wasn't bad there either (though I prefer Ubuntu). I've used Mint Linux, too, which was also a pretty smooth experience.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I agree with you on using an IDE.

Re: Just Use an IDE

ksclarke — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:16:20 -0000

"But I equate using an IDE in this instance to why I don’t use Linux as a desktop OS. I really just don’t feel like dicking around with my environment ad nausea just to reach what I would consider a baseline of productivity."

The above reads like a troll, but I'll respond nonetheless... Those Linux days are long gone (unless you still want to do that sort of thing, in which case you choose a distro that encourages that). But you don't have to; there are polished Linux distros, now, that don't require the twiddling they did back in the days of ole.

Re: How to deal with intense frustration

ksclarke — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:32:40 -0000

I think I'd agree that the ultimate answer is patience. For me, frustration is also a result, sometimes, of confusing the things over which I have control. I like the serenity prayer ("grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference") as a practice for dealing with these particular things/times. Patience is a part of that of course, but there is also the desire for wisdom.

Re: Upgrading Wordpress

ksclarke — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:06:16 -0000

Turn off all your plugins and turn them back on one by one. I had several break with the new version. Other than that, though, no problems...

Re: Future of MARC

ksclarke — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:30:12 -0000

I agree we'll be using MARC for awhile (I think the shift away from it has started though -- mostly because we've started looking at really reorganizing the data in MARC). I was wondering, though, more about the expression of relationships between parts of the record. I know this is done to some extent in linking fields in MARC. I just wonder if there aren't better ways (richer relationships which could be brought out given a different markup standard in which to put them).

As for other levels, one possible place would be dates. I assume we'd want to have dates in a standard format and consistently handled across our new data structures. There is a lot of information about dates in MARC that is sort of encoded in the data itself ([19uu] or 1943? -- indicating ranges, certainty, etc.) Would dates move into a field so that subfields could be used to indicate additional information? If so, how do the dates get related to other aspects of the record (it's currently in subfields to indicate a relationship with data in other subfields in the same field)?

Using MARC in such a different manner though would be just as hard on our current systems. It's not the MARC that is central to our current systems. If there really is a separation between MARC and our content standards, then MARC is just the transmission format (and input/export modules are pretty easy to swap out). It's the data in MARC (the content standard) that keeps us using MARC in my opinion; if we swapped out the content standard(s) -- the tough part -- swapping out the MARC piece would be relatively easy, I think.

Not sure if this is coherent or not. My mind is thinking about the packing I should be doing for my flight out tomorrow morning to Access 2007. :-)

Re: Future of MARC

ksclarke — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:47:46 -0000

Hi Nicole,

Interesting... it sounds like you're saying if we fix the content standard(s) we would want to put the new data back into MARC (now better organized than it was in its original MARC form)?

Two questions... Would you say the fixed fields should be continued to be used or just the variable length ones? Also, you don't think our new content standard(s) would need any more depth than field/subfield? Thanks.

Re: Good News

ksclarke — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:37:28 -0000

Congratulations! I work in Firestone Library at Princeton. I hear the PTSEM folks have some very interesting plans (and that position did look really interesting!) Anyway, welcome to the area... it's good to have another code4lib'ber around.