a break in broadcasting

Posted on 24 June 2022 by snail

I went to VALA and stopped blogging. VALA was good. Also exhausting. Even getting there was exhausting. A downside of moving to the Highlands is suddenly airports are no longer easy to get to…especially on a public holiday. VALA was moved from February to mid June which meant I spent the public holiday Monday travelling to Melbourne.

I left home at 10.30 Monday morning and 8 hours later, made it to my hotel in Melbourne. That’s a long commute. Part of it is the 2 hour train ride to get to the airport on a line where trains run every hour or so and because it was a public holiday, they were two hours apart at the crucial time. Qantas was encouraging folk to get to the airport 2 hours prior for domestic flights. Due to vagaries of train timetabling, I arrived around 2 hours 40 prior and was airside with 10 minutes. All their queueing problems of a couple days earlier had been resolved. Then the plane was half an hour late as they had to change a tyre…at least it wasn’t cancelled which seems to be an increasingly common occurrence.

I normally fly home from VALA on the Thursday night but that would have meant touching down at Sydney airport around 9-9.30pm and a 2 hour+ commute home. Work instead recommended I stay Thursday night in Melbourne and fly back in the morning. That worked well and I went from the airport to the office.

Next time I do this I might look at other airports. I did explore other options but stuck with Mascot this time round but did note for a 4 day trip:

Shellharbour Airport: 1 hour 15 min drive – free parking
Mascot Airport: 1 hour 20 min drive or 2 hours on train – $100-250 parking
Canberra Airport: 1 hour 50 drive – $108 parking

There’s a few variations on this eg I could drive to Stanmore in Sydney’s Inner West and park near a friend’s place then get a train to Mascot, reducing the reliance on the vagaries of the Highlands train line. The Shellharbour option is interesting as there’s a smaller company that does flights twice a day to/from Essendon. The flight home was too early for a VALA departure but would have worked for a Friday morning flight. I’m a little surprised that Canberra is a viable option. The only question is how comfortable I am leaving a car at the airport for a few days.

in transit

Posted on 13 June 2022 by snail

Being overprepared and early does wonders for keeping me relaxed. A moment of panic initially when the 10.18 train from Mittagong was running 15 minutes late…and increasing. I was planning on catching the 10.47. Curiously, there were two trains half an hour apart…then a 2 hour gap to the next one. My partner gave me a lift to the station and I had a couple of backup plans including driving to Sydney and getting a train from Stanmore where I used to park for work long ago. Had the time if that option was required.

All was well. The 10.18 was ultimately cancelled and the 10.47 was a mere 5 minutes late. A change at Macarthur, then put my backpack on on approach to Domestic and hooned through the corridors to checkin just like old times. No queues anywhere whatsoever. No queue to get baggage tag (had checked in yesterday via app), no queue to drop luggage, not even a queue at the security gate. I figured that might be the case but wanted to be cautious. Here I am flight side, having brekky and a coffee with 2.5 hours to spare.

Getting the foundations right for this trip gives me time to breathe. I need to work out ways to rebuild my resilience and this trip is a good start. I need to handle challenges better as I’m a wee bit rusty.

packing for vala

Posted on 12 June 2022 by snail

Well that was fun. I’m fairly sure I ain’t “match fit” for travelling and flying. Have packed my bags, carry-on and checked pack. First time I’ve packed for a flight since VALA in February 2020. It’s going to be raining in Melbourne so I’m taking an umbrella but it won’t fit in the pack so I’ll have to carry it in cabin. Quick google to confirm that that was ok. My umbrella is purple and pretty and I do not want to lose it. On the good side, it’ll be warmer in Melbourne than where I live.

I decided taking two laptops was a bit excessive…not to mention additional weight. As it’s close to end of financial year, I need my work laptop to keep on top of things. But it is heavy and has poor battery life which doesn’t make it fab for conferencing. My personal laptop is light and quick with a reasonable battery life.

I’ve been slowly migrating over to my personal laptop as a possible “bring your own device” scenario. I recently had to install the work’s office suite so I could do some database stuff and today I took the final step and added access to my work’s onedrive. All done, and seems to be working and accessing the stuff I need.

Feeling a little anxious and out of practice. Looking forward to flying again. Not sure how I feel entering conference space and meeting with folk, numbers are down so it shouldn’t be too scary. I’ve got a bunch of meetings lined up with vendors, often at the same time as papers – conferencing is always that balance of making sure I get to the key papers and keynotes I want, while ensuring I’m meeting with as many relevant suppliers as I can.

travelling soon…

Posted on 3 June 2022 by snail

In a couple of weeks I fly to Melbourne for VALA, a conference in person. The 2020 conference was my last major face-to-face conference prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with lockdowns declared a few weeks later. I did manage to make it to Shellharbour a few weeks ago for GLAMawarra and that was my first in-person conference thang since the last VALA. In fact VALA 2022 was supposed to be first but it was postponed from February to June amid concerns of further COVID breakouts.

This will be my first time out of the state in nearly two and a half years and my first time in a plane since then. This will be the most time I’ll spend with folk other than my family. A few days and evenings of people from Melbourne and other parts of the country…not sure where my comfort zone is these days. I know I’m looking forward to it and VALA has always been something of a professional touchstone for me. At the same time. I know I will need to manage my contact time carefully so I’m not too overwhelmed.

Attendance numbers are unclear though well down on past years…not unsurprisingly. This conference will be a hybrid of in-person and online. The delegate list isn’t clear as to who will be attending physically or just virtually. I’m starting to wonder if vendors will outnumber delegates though it’s good to see the commercial support. There are plenty of speakers who will be there but there’s also a bunch of presentations that will be online only. I haven’t got it in my head yet how to be in both spaces. I guess I may well be able to catch some of the online presentations later. I’m keen too, not to conference online, but focus on the physical presentations, and hanging with colleagues.

I am hoping this will be a practice run for more travelling. I have been cautious of booking things and I had a trip to Tassie booked last August that I had to cancel due to another lockdown. I registered for VALA last year but work didn’t book flights or accommodation initially. Turned out that was a good plan so those could be booked fresh a few weeks ago.

i am not a number

Posted on 21 November 2019 by snail

Many years ago, prior even to my own existence, there was a British TV show starring Patrick McGoohan titled The Prisoner. Actually, McGoohan not only starred in it, he also created, wrote, produced, and directed it; clearly a passion project which contrasted individual needs with those of the group. It was rather surreal and ideas driven, with a certain eccentricity and a key logo being a penny farthing.

I had initially thought it was all filmed on a specially created set, but discovered later that the village where it was set was real. Portmeirion is a town in North Wales, on the River Dwyryd that was built during the mid 20th century. There is an extensive quote from Lewis Mumford in the wikipedia article noting:

an artful and playful little modern village, designed as a whole and all of a piece … a fantastic collection of architectural relics and impish modern fantasies

In the series and in the descriptions it looks deliciously quirky and eccentric. I don’t often visit places from TV or cinema but this one particularly appeals both as a reference to The Prisoner and interesting destination of its own.

It looks like I may get to travel to Europe in 2020 as my partner will be undertaking a study trip supported by The Churchill Trust. Consequently I am putting together my own self-funded trip that will occasionally intersect with her’s as she’ll be working. The challenge is find places to visit that I’m happy to visit by myself, and the village of The Prisoner might just fit.

Location-wise, it’s not far from Dublin, possibly a few hours by bus and ferry, which is significant as it is the host city for IFLA in 2020 and I’m hoping to make the first few days of it. The last time I went to an IFLA conference was in Milan in 2009 and I think that was just after the IFLA Australia conference had been cancelled. I have good memories of the Milan conference, aside from the heat, and good friends and connections and would love to go again, hopefully Dublin will be a little cooler.

The challenge of visiting a town in Wales is to avoid another Welsh town, namely Hay-On-Wye, rumoured to have more bookshops per capita than anywhere else. I was last there in 2008, visiting many bookshops and bought more than a few books. Afterall, it’s the one place where buying books is its own form of souveniring :-)

bits of paper

Posted on 11 June 2019 by snail

The call for abstracts has gone out for the ALIA National Conference in 2020. Been a long time since I wrote a conference paper, a proper paper that is. I’ve presented occasionally, here and there, love the performance of presenting. Doing the work for the paper not so much. Papers tend to be like essays for uni: take forever, full of distraction, procrastination, anything but focus. Presenting also takes work; building a presentation for me is as much about developing the concept and the flow as it is about the appearance and the words.

Hmmm…a thought bubble: perhaps I should prepare the presentation, then write the paper, updating the presentation as the paper progresses. Things progress, new things are learnt, ideas change.

I have a bunch of things I do, and are in my head. Some of those are long overdue for broader exposure. I keep missing, or perhaps avoiding, conference deadlines. I missed the deadline for Information Online which was earlier this year, I have missed the deadline for VALA 2020 next Feb. ALIA 2020 is end of August and Information Online 2021 will put out their call mid 2020ish.

Today I made a list of things that could generate a bunch of papers. Rather than aiming for one conference, aim for several over the next couple of years. I need to push out and engage. Make myself visible again. Play with ideas again. Open up again.

techie librarian; meatier than a seahorse

Posted on 29 June 2017 by snail

Tag lines…whatever do you use for your tagline: the subheading of your identity, the punchline by which people establish a connection. Mostly I pay them lip service, smiling occasionally at a clever one. My own tend to refer to variations of: techie, librarian and eclectic, sometimes all 3 at once.

In a rather wayward conversation, spinning down a rabbit hole of curiousity, as things are wont to do when Matt Finch is involved, a recent conversation turned from roasting penguins to eating seahorses.

Somehow in my first activity on library island I ended up roasting a penguin #nls8

— snail (@snailx) June 23, 2017

I participated in a workshop as part of NLS8 and the first activity was for everyone to sketch a scene, in 90 seconds, on a piece of A4 using at least one of three figures on a screen: 2 humans (or human-like) and a penguin. As is my wont, I immediately gave into the dark side and sketched the two humans roasting the penguin. The second half of the activity was for each table to construct a cohesive story using those scenes as panel. They were two quick activities that worked really well as an icebreaker and got you thinking at how easy it was to come up with ideas under pressure.

The seahorses came later…or rather many years earlier:

@DrMattFinch @ALIAnls @amywalduck @sallyturbitt I'm still disturbed by @snailx eating roasted penguin #nls8
—
Clare McKenzie (@ccmcknz) June 28, 2017

to which I responded with my “meatier than seahorse” remark and commented elsewhere that while I have never eaten penguin, I have actually eaten seahorse.

@snailx @ccmcknz @ALIAnls @amywalduck @sallyturbitt new twitter bio right there
—
Matt Finch (@DrMattFinch) June 28, 2017

Many years ago, 2003 I think (really must upload those photos to flickr), I spent a few weeks on an Intrepid trip in China with friends. We started in Beijing and went to the Beijing night markets, a place where you can eat just about anything including silk worms and even scorpions on a stick. Scorpions were a wee a but scary but we figured had to be ok as noone was dropping dead. As far as we can figure, they’re bred without their stinger.

While trying to order something else, there was a language issue, and I ended up with seahorse on a stick. I think the scorpions were about 20 cents for five whereas the seahorse was a few Oz dollars for one. Our tour guide tried to talk our way out of it but the shopowner insisted. So I paid for it and ate it. There wasn’t much flavour as it was primarily shell with perhaps a tiny morsel of meat.

Matt suggested “meatier than a seahorse” as a bio and it immediately rang the right sort of bells, both physically and metaphorically. I am now using it for all my taglines :-)

why nls8?

Posted on 19 June 2017 by snail

In a few days time, I’ll pop into the car and drive down to Canberra for the 8th-ish New Librarians’ Symposium – I say “ish” as I recall there was at least a 1.5, and I don’t remember if there were other in-between events. I’d like to link to some of the earlier NLS websites but ALIA’s own conference page only links back to 2008, ignoring the earlier iterations of NLS, and even the ones listed are not available because ALIA are upgrading their conference website though I don’t really understand why “upgrade” means removing access altogether. Thankfully, I’ve found the NLS2006 site on the wayback machine, along with the 2004, and even the first in 2002.

It feels a bit odd going to NLS as I am very definitely not a new librarian by a long shot. I’m probably what is termed a mid-career professional which doesn’t sit well either as I’ve never been career or goal focused mostly just wanting to work with interesting people and occasionally do fun things. To be honest, mostly just wanting to work. I s’pose one could argue that I’m going to mentor newer members of the profession but that would be nonsense as I’ve never been much of a mentor-type. With that said, I remember one of the concerns in the early days was about ensuring there was a continuity of contact between different parts of the profession and avoid that sense of cliques developing. I want to make sure I don’t end up in a clique myself and want to get to know people outside my usual circles. I’m also going because it’s always been a bloody good conference, with a good sense of engagement, a welcoming attitude and lots of fun.

So yeah, all my reasons for going are totes selfish and all about me :-)

My first NLS was in Adelaide in 2004 and I have found some of my thoughts on my previous blog iteration. I recall being blown away by it and made lots of new friends in the profession many of whom I’m still in touch with. Alan Smith, State Librarian of SA, spoke on the importance of thinking two jobs ahead and working out what you need to do in-between to get there. I’ve tried to apply that thinking but keep failing and still have no idea what I want to do next, nevermind after that. Post NLS3, I ended up on the committee for the next version, NLS2006 (we chose to use the year rather than number), 2 years later; it seemed to go pretty well and was a total blast.

I made it to one or two NLS since and I missed a few as life stuff intruded. I think the last one I attended was in Perth…which I may have gatecrashed :) I’ve been on organising committees for a few library camps and unconferences too though I don’t think I’ve been on a full blown conference committee since NLS2006. Camps/unconferences are reasonably easy to organise, however something like NLS takes 2 years of commitment to make it happen. It is a rewarding experience and I have no regrets, likewise I applaud the efforts of the NLS8 committee in making it happen.

i wanna go camping

Posted on 31 March 2017 by snail

So, VALA is running a tech camp in July and I wanna go. In fact, I’m fairly sure I will go. I can teach myself coding things and did study computer science a decade or two ago. Actually now I think about it, it was nearly 3 decades ago. Eep! I’m almost 50 and still pottering along and trying to work out what I want to do with my life. Anyway I can teach myself but do tend to learn better with other people around.

A year or so back, I was playing with code on my vaio (running Win8 then, win10 now) and trying to get stuff working to explore and analyse web harvesting stuff. Got caught in a neverending circle of installing software dependencies and eventually ran out of puff without getting to the playing-with-code stage. I did have docker running, virtualbox running linux, and got most of the way with maven2.

This year I’m trying again on my mac mini. Installations ran smoothly, I’ve had few issues with software dependencies…I now have docker and maven3 and ~~SPARQL~~ apache spark installed and running. I have approached it differently this year, following a different guide. Also, the mac is easier as unix is fully integrated with the OS, whereas it’s a separate thang under windows.

I stalled a month ago as I couldn’t get the test example in ~~SPARQL~~ spark/scala to work. I realised a few days later that it was probably an issue with pathnames. Finally got round to trying again last night, and it was indeed a pathname issue and I resolved it in minutes and got the text example to work.

Yay me.

So my current dev environment is a mac mini, not the windows laptop. But I wanna take it to tech camp. So I looked at connecting the mini to laptop and it’s sorta doable but a little bit painful with reduced functionality.

I could hire a screen in Melbourne and travel with the mini and a keyboard.

I could get a handheld mini projector…and they really are handheld now.

Or I could apply what I’ve learnt from the mac install and revisit the windows install and get it all running there too. That’s the cheapest option and a happier one as I remain fond of my laptop and want to keep using it. I love the idea of a handheld projector but it is a wee bit excessive and possibly gratuitously so.

stuff I haven’t read

Posted on 9 June 2016 by snail

There is a fun meme going round, #iconfessineverread (Con, Rachel and others) and I had fully intended this post to be in similar vein but I seem to have rambled on instead :) Perhaps I will try and list some books I should have read but haven’t, in another post.

It’s fair to say that beyond what was required for school I have read little of the literary canon. I have on occasion dipped my toe into literary waters and at one stage I was at least trying to read Booker winners. That’s mostly a fail these days. Yet what I did read I enjoyed including Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam. McEwan I particularly liked as he managed to write interesting, intelligent books that were also short :) I haven’t read of his in years either including Atonement which everyone tells me I should read.

A lot of my reading has been more what is termed “genre reading”. Truckloads of science fiction, not to mention thrillers. Later I “diversified” into fantasy and other things. These days I read a mix of SF, fantasy, graphic novels and of course gaming. I’d argue that the games I like to play generally reflect a story telling approach and could be included in a list of “stuff I read”. I’ve recently finished Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and it was split into sections labelled chapters to chart the plot progression. This worked for me and it felt like I progressed through a story of the classic 3 act approach, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think it even had a prologue and an epilogue.

I’ve not been particularly keen on writers’ festivals or conventions either. I’ve been to the odd event at the Sydney Writers’ Festival but mostly skip it. On the other hand, the few times I’ve gone I’ve usually run into people I know in the crowd and had engaging catch ups. Despite my fondness of SF, I’ve never been fond of SF conventions either and usually skip them too. Looking back I think it would have been nice to have got involved in a book club at least. I’ve had friends who’ve been in clubs for years and enjoy the continuing engagement with a group of familiar faces.

This week in fact I have started a book I should have read years ago, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I have no excuse, I even bought the hardcover when it was first published. Disappointingly even though it’s the first edition, it’s the 8th printing. I have had a look around and it seems there was a very nice edition published some years ago by Hill House. Unfortunately it’s also a little expensive.