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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Реактивный микрокиборг / Wingless Angel's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, February 6th, 2010 | |
| 2:42 pm | Articles that damn near write themselves "4Kids CEO Buys 9-Million-Dollar Apartment Manhattan three-bedroom penthouse's former owner was convicted scam artist Bernard Madoff" ...A headline I *totally* did not expect to see in the paper this morning. Well, OK, this particular headline is actually my take on the headline that I *did* see...but, still, hey, talk about unwanted publicity! |
| Friday, February 5th, 2010 | |
| 12:43 pm | Also, seriously best title for a law book Death in Wisconsin: A Legal Practitioner's Guide to Postmortem Administration. Eagan, MN: Thomson/West. |
| 11:32 am | Single best e-mail I've ever gotten at work "No need for drinks: I still owe you for that pigeon shooting case. :)" |
| 8:54 am | Small surprises... BookScan (for those who don't know, Nielsen Bookscan tracks sales at chain and independent bookstores, Amazon/BN.com, and many big-box stores - but not Walmart; also, *not* comic book shops) 'sales of Graphic Novels', January, Top 5 1 YU-GI-OH! GX VOL. 4 NAOYUKI KAGEYAMA VIZ MEDIA 2 THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUS. BY R. CRUMB HC ROBERT CRUMB W. W. NORTON 3 NARUTO VOL. 47 MASASHI KISHIMOTO VIZ MEDIA 4 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST VOL. 22 ARAKAWA HIROMU VIZ MEDIA 5 WATCHMEN TP ALAN MOORE DC COMICS That's actually rather unexpected! Also, you see something like this, and you just happen to be working at Viz...and you just feel damn good about yourself. (...another indicator that Viz is doin' pretty good for themselves: the number of fairly hard-core/highly specialized positions they are currently hiring for) ...Kris, if you feel kind of done with New York, I think they would be all about you going for one or another of those. Hell, you can probably do almost all of them with your eyes closed and/or asleep.) |
| Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | |
| 4:35 pm | Newspaper, anime book, rent woes...the promise of a mental health day! A snappy video-game review in a blog or on a dedicated website is one thing...a genuinely thoughtful, non-condescending, and, most importantly, contextually grounded video-game review in the Times - that's something else! (And that's always my thing: a good review doesn't just evaluate whatever it's reviewing as a thing in of itself; a truly good review *has* to be a comparison and an evaluation in context.) --- Though, while I'm on the topic, the Times also writes up the current Big Development in legal research and information management. --- Because fansubs really are so 2005 (...and for that matter, so *1995*)...and pirated books are the cool new thing, here you go - full text, in PDF, of Steven Brown (Ed.), Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation. --- ...and because my life is clearly not as exciting as it should be, got my lease renewal notice in the mail yesterday. If I renew, my rent goes up $75; not crazy in of itself, but now, above a certain psychological mark for an apartment that *does not* deserve rent above that mark. Plus, it's not like I get a raise to compensate for those seventy-five bucks! ...what's more annoying is that they are also asking for a new security deposit - at *double* the rent. Which on one hand is almost definitely open to negotiation - even when I was originally looking at the place, the real estate agent first quoted me the double, then was fine with just one month's - but even then, I'm somewhat confused by the process. Oh, and, whatever happens, I have a grand total of a month from today to make my decision. Plus there's that little yet inescapable irony of the fact that even if I find something in this area, and cheaper, the broker's fee on that is almost definitely going to be higher than the year's worth of additional rent. ...actually, now *that* I think about it this way, hey, maybe I can deal. And even, come on, the economy is still pretty bad, my job is still not going anywhere, so, could even try to negotiate with the building! Heh; guess, as usual, I'll just sit here, do my thing, drink my beer, and see what happens next. |
| 1:24 pm | That was a fun little two-year back-and-forth! "Dear Mikhail Koulikov, We are pleased to inform you that TWC accepted your submission "Fighting the fansub war: Netwar theory and conflicts between media rights-holders and unauthorized creators/distributors" for publication in our Fall 2010 issue. We will be contacting again you during copyediting and are looking forward to seeing your essay in our general topics issue." I prepared the first version of this for my competitive intelligence class at SLIS for what, the Fall '07 term. Well, hey, only three years (...and three revisions) between completion and actual publication. Still not too crazy about the second part of the title, so hopefully, can figure out a way of using most of those same words, but in a slightly less creaky way. But in any case, hey, now my second officially published article, plus in a field completely unrelated to LIS. Score! |
| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | |
| 8:49 pm | The world's most bad-ass librarian Special Agent Hugh Coughlin, Office of the Inspector General, Library of Congress. And there is not a movie or TV series about this dude *why* yet? (...granted, because mostly, his job probably consists of sitting in his office and waiting for things to happen...but at the same time, hey, when you have that kind of job title, if things *aren't* happening, that actually means you're doing your job the best you can.) |
| Monday, February 1st, 2010 | |
| 10:43 am | Things done on a really efficient weekend. So, signed up for Zipcar a while ago (...like in November, when we needed to go out to Long Island and *really* did not feel like screwing around with the LIRR). For various reasons, actually first *used* a Zipcar this weekend. Impression - totally satisfied. For those of you who don't know how the deal works, you pay twenty-five dollars to apply, and then fifty a year for the actual membership. Rather than having a few locations with dozens of vehicles in each one, they go for as many sites as possible, usually at 24-hour garages, with anyone between just one car, and maybe ten or so. There are two locations maybe a five-minute bus ride up the street from my building, and another two right by the Flatbush Avenue Target. Booking is mostly online - though of course, there's also an app - and the greatest thing is, you book not by the day (though there is a day option), but by the hour. An hour runs you around ten to fifteen bucks (I think $8 is their absolute base rate, $17 or so probably the highest) and so, if you just need to run errands, pick up something fairly heavy but not too huge, or hell, go into the City or up to Westchester or something - for a couple of hours - it totally beats "real" rentals - especially given that most real rental places around here aren't even open over the weekend. Even when you pick the thing up, the whole process is ungodly cute. Every car has an Ikea-type personal name; you unlock it by tapping your Zipcar card on the windshield-mounted sensor, the key stays in the ignition the whole time, and, you're good to go. Obviously, for an Ikea run, it doesn't really work. But for many other things, it totally does! (Plus, they really do a good job of thinking about useful features/options, and then actually introducing them. For example, if you need to do late-night running around on a weekday, after like 6:30 in the evening, you only get charged for a max of two hours until eight or something the following morning.) --- In other things, eighty hours and what, like nine months later, finally beat P4. Except, not as much "beat"...as got an ending - basically, the bleh 'things just come to an end' ending. Wasn't quite prepared *for* the ending...and...seriously, game, wtf. What I *expect* from an RPG is to sit there, watch the storyline fold out, and then go crazy with the battles. I *do not* expect the storyline to fold out based on like five levels of dialog tree choices. If I wanted five levels of dialog tree choices, I'd go and play a *real* dating sim! Honestly, the thing right now is, I don't know if I'm going to be motivated enough to go back, replay that sequence, and try to make those other dialog choices that *would* open the other endings... Heh. |
| Friday, January 29th, 2010 | |
| 3:09 pm | How did I not know about this before? So, I guess every kind of journalism needs its own Hunter S. Thompson. Anime journalism has (had?) its; for a while, Jeremy very well could have been video game journalism's. Except, then there's Tim Rogers. ...all you need to know about whom is this paragraph: "There’s not a speck of life; the game is that shopping mall by the highway in Kentucky where every store is that seasonal store that sometimes sells Halloween costumes, and it’s the middle of August and there’s a single senior citizen power-walking laps; you can’t tell if it’s an old man or an old woman, though you follow him or her around for a while, kind of wondering if he or she is about to keel over. Playing the game is like being sixteen, having a birthday in July, and receiving a gift-wrapped fat stack of spiral notebooks and other assorted school supplies as a present from a grandma who was supposed to have died ten years ago." (...wanna guess what game he's talking about?) ...Well, OK, there's one more thing to know about this man. This man is capable of putting together a 31-page, 18,000 word New York Magazine-quality (...if New York Magazine ever were to write up a video game) essay on FFXII that references Hitchcock, Shen Mue, *and* Dr Pepper - and is easily the single best piece of video game journalism I have read. |
| Thursday, January 28th, 2010 | |
| 9:58 pm | That thing I do at work. A while ago, I talked about the claim made in that one article - from 1986, but since then, pretty much accepted as a given - that only about 55% of the time that you ask a librarian something, the answer you get will be *correct* (the paper in question is Hernon, P., & McClure, R. (1986). Unobtrusive reference testing: The 55 percent rule, Library Journal, 111(7), 37-41.) And you know, pretty much since I started working here, I've been wondering how long it would take me to *really* get into the 45%. Patron request: The text of U.S. House of Representatives bill no. 6, 93rd Congress, 1973. I know we don't go that far back in terms of what we actually physically have, and neither do the databases. But it's a government document, so it *has* to exist in a library somewhere; the only real questions are how long are you willing to wait for this, and how much are you willing to pay for this to get it as soon as possible. I e-mail the government documents librarian at IU; no, they stop in the mid-'80's too...but supposedly, the University of Illinois library does goes back much further. Right then, also get the word from the patron that they need this thing as soon as possible, regardless of the price. OK, now the fun starts. The company I work with that can actually send a guy to the National Archives or the Library of Congress is going to be billing a hundred an hour at the least. Which is sometimes fine - but usually, not too fine. On the other hand, the fee-based document delivery service at Columbia University's law school is actually much more reasonable, and what they have in their library is not bad at all. Put in the order, an hour and fifteen bucks later get what I needed...and then realize that we actually have that same book they pulled the text from here too. ...except also, hey, not my problem, as long as I have a client matter number to bill this thing to. But also, a set of books to now *really* keep in mind - because if a question comes up once, good money says it'll come up again within the year. ...and this is how I spend my 10-to-6. |
| Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | |
| 9:58 pm | Hey, didn't get that international affairs BA thinger for nothing! Reading books on diplomatic history is one thing - heaven knows, I've read plenty. Except, well, then I read a book on *very recent* diplomatic history, and come across this: "The sheer scale of the Russian attack did lead several senior White House staffers to push for at least some consideration of limited military options to stem the Russian advance. The menu of options under discussion foresaw the possibility of bombardment and sealing of the Roki Tunnel as well as other surgical strikes to reduce Russian military pressure on the Georgian government." (Ronald Asmus, A Little War That Shook the World, p. 186). --- That was a sunny and generally care-free Otakon weekend. ...but I really cannot help but stop and think about what my reaction and response and next thing to do would have been had this gone from 'some consideration' to 'thing that actually happened.' (...of course, I also fully understand that it is pretty much *the* role of some senior staffers to offer options that are theoretically feasible, but realistically highly unlikely. If you've ever studied the processes of American international relations, you already know exactly how a somewhat similar process worked out in 1962. Which also does not change the weird feeling of knowing that there are people in this country who would be fine with killing, even if remotely, other people who could have been my classmates or even friends.) --- Unrelated to *anything* else at work, well, hey, so now I guess I'm also kind of the boss's research assistant - he's teaching a class on federal legislative history research at St. John's next week, and has me putting together the actual materials. Then again, hey, given what I'm being paid *for* doing a bit of research assistant work, I really do not mind. Hell, I wouldn't even be too surprised if he just lets me take over most of that lecture. |
| Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | |
| 1:47 am | An evening full of surprises? For years, I've been wondering, when will we see an AMV (or an anime-based fanfic) that is explicitly political. ...and then, we get an - of all the things in the world - an LoGH anime music video that, put together with its (entirely novelty) song is specifically meant to critique the Russian Army's new approach to uniforms. o_0;;; |
| Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 | |
| 2:45 pm | Gee, thanks... (also, not really unexpected, either...) Gayest Cities in America (Advocate Magazine - and now, picked up by NPR) "4. Bloomington, Ind. This forward-thinking college town is a magnet city for gays in the Grain Belt. It’s also home to Indiana University, where Miss Gay IU — said to be the first student-sponsored drag competition held on any campus — is in its 20th year. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is also here, inspiring the entire town to be heteroflexible." Seriously, B-Town, not *that* gay! --- ...and, on an actually somewhat related topic, so, of course, for the New York tabloids, this has been their official 'make fun of Indianapolis in particular and Indiana in general' week. (...for those of you all you don't care - or don't have any reason to care - about sports, the Jets are playing Indianapolis in the AFC Championship game...in Indy, on Sunday.) I never lived in Indianapolis (though did interview for a summer internship gig there - who knows where I would be right now if that worked out), and I've only really *been* to Indianapolis two times (...flying out of - or into Indianapolis International totally does not count). But I spent two years in a town that Indianapolis was the "big city" for...and, you know, Indiana, *not that bad*! --- ...Once I pick a thing, whether a hobby, a school or a job, I also get unreasonably attached to that thing, and make an effort to defend the thing against all slights, real and imagined. But hey, that's just what I do... |
| Thursday, January 21st, 2010 | |
| 9:01 pm | Hey, I guess he knows me! Envelope my brother's New Year's card came in. Good money says he picked at least one of those stamps very deliberately... |
| 4:39 pm | Back to like back in Before Grad School! Thing learned yesterday: I'm actually not nearly as bad at Guitar Hero as I assumed I would be. Now, all I ask from life is that the gods and Red Octane grace us with Guitar Hero: Early/Mid-'90's Russian Rock...and I'm good to go! --- On the other hand, in Valkyria, *for like a week now* stuck on the desert skirmish. Though slowly learning...this whole 'even though it's a strategy RPG, you *can* move a unit more than once per turn' thing is still something I tend to forget about, so is the whole 'orders' mechanic. Well, and the usual having to remember to actively improve/outfit your tank and level up the soldiers. --- Hey, easy ego boost: "I like how you have this very clear sense of self, as defined by the stuff you do and/or are interested in - elevating so much of it to a quasi-Japanese aesthetic Way Of Doing Things! - yet at the same time you're pretty chill about letting/accepting change in that self over time." |
| Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 | |
| 12:01 pm | I guess that time again? Dream 1 last night - I'm leaving for Bloomington - being driven by my parents all the way there...except, I don't actually have a place of my own in that town any more. And, well, had it been just me, a bookbag, and a few hundred dollars in my pocket or in my bank account, I could *do* without a place of my own for a couple of days, coming into town with my parents, who would be expecting that I have an apartment waiting for me, would be awkward to say the least... ...then I woke up, remembered that it's now a year since I've been done with Bloomington, *also* remembered enough of the dream to have to smile at the sheer ridiculousness - yet somewhat mundane-ness of it...and then went back to sleep. ...only, *next* dream was being back in junior high, except, Shallow was now roughly the size of Stuy, though only seven floors, set on an actual campus, and if not quite *looking*, then certainly *feeling* like CLAMP School. And from there, Dream 3, we go into my girlfriend and I on the 4 train, somewhere in Brooklyn, and needing to get to, like, that small segment of Queens north of Ditmars Boulevard. Should be easy enough, get off at 59th, transfer to the N, then walk? Only then, what I'm actually seeing shifts to just the train moving along the subway map, well, and then a panoramic view of the same train, now gleaming in the sunlight, running with no stops, on elevated tracks, and over a Manhattan and Bronx that are both much more lush and much less urban than they ever are in reality. Then we get to the end of the line, which I see as being 205th Street though - even in the dream, I know doesn't make sense if we are on the 4...and then wonder whether there's a bus that runs from where we are to where we need to be. And the really weird thing is, yeah, I never think about what my dreams "mean" or imply or whatever...but I can tell you where the individual images that I then twist and play arond with come from, or at least how those things and places and situations first get into my mind... --- ...after what, like half a year?, picked up P4 again. There was a point where I just got a little too frustrated, what with finally just *way* too under-level for one of the bosses, and, well, things happen. And especially with an RPG like that; once you put it down for a couple of days, it's bloody hard to pick the thing back up again. Except, also, finally told myself that you know, I put like eighty hours - two f-ing work-weeks - into this game...I really should just get it over with! ...especially since, after the third or fourth try, at least now I *think* I have that boss (Namatame) figured out, and it just comes down to a) whether I have enough items to outlast him...well, and b), whether this time around, I get to be the lucky one. I mean, hell, there already was *one* time when I got him down to like a couple of hundred health, and then just ran out of both healing items *and* SP - so there will have to be another time when I can push just a little more. --- You know, so, for these ten years, if there is one thing I really stop and think about, it's the sheer number of people who I met and got to know - in DC, around the con scene, in the two between-years after college, in Bloomington...and then things happened, or absolutely nothing in particular happened...but now, I'm here doing my thing, those people are wherever they are, doing whatever they're doing, it's been years since we've talked or had reason to talk, and chances are, we don't really have anything to talk *about* - and yet, I still have to wonder just what they are doing now. Well, and, whether what I'm doing would be any different if I still knew those people or did not stop knowing them. (...of course it would be. *Every day*, I could do a hundred different, equally possible, things, but can only do one of them at a time.) |
| Saturday, January 16th, 2010 | |
| 4:21 pm | Half-way to cyborg territory? ...this is kind of dumb, but, at my eye doctor's office earlier today, for the first time ever asked what is the proper term for the definitely pre-digital, though also definitely post-steampunk thing I had inserted in my eyes in [cue accent] Soviet Russia...in 1986. The proper term is 'iris-clip lens'. ...and of course, once I look into what the term actually means, I come across this - entirely scary-sounding - piece: Yeh, O, et al. (2008). Long-term follow-up of obsolete design: Iris-clip glass intraocular lens. Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, 34, 520-522. (for a more thorough - and actually open to the public article on 'ocular imlants', see here.) Yeah, totally half-cyborg. |
| Thursday, January 14th, 2010 | |
| 7:28 pm | Three days in Texas. Better than three days in Boston. "Congratulations! The Selection Committee of the Conference on Teaching Research in Private Law Libraries is pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a participant. We are looking forward to this unique opportunity to learn and share information on teaching legal research programs. The conference will be held at the Westin Stonebriar Resort on April 23 - 25, 2010. The conference officially begins at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 23, and formally concludes at noon, Sunday, April 25. LexisNexis will cover all conference materials, meals, lodging and transportation to and from the airport in Dallas." Hey, it's like twelve hours of class...that I don't have to pay for...*and* I get to spend a weekend in the wilds of the Dallas suburbs. I fail to see anything wrong with that! --- Also, continuing fun with alternate realities: Librarian – Member Services. LA Law Library "The LA Law Library seeks a Librarian with a focus on Member Services. Under the general direction of the Senior Librarian, Reference and Research Services, this position works with all reference librarians to provide reference and instructional service to the Law Library’s diverse group of users that includes both the legal and public communities. In particular, this position supports services provided to attorneys who participate in the LA Law Library Members’ Program including collection development, training and outreach, program development and customized legal research." Which is to say, they're looking for someone to do in LA exactly what I'm doing in New York. Except, hey, I've now been here a year, it's a tad too early to be thinking about going anywhere else. |
| Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 | |
| 12:41 am | First thought, second thought On taking a look at Militant cute and sexy politics in Japanese moe comics First thought: Oh, wow, for io9, that's a surprisingly intelligent/well-written article. ...second thought: Oh, wait, that's not as much io9 as it is Jason Thompson. (third thought: I didn't know he was writing for io9. But, hey, wherever the money is nowadays...) |
| Monday, January 11th, 2010 | |
| 3:46 pm | I'll say this once, and never again Oh, to work in a New York City public library! NYT: "Under a little-known contract provision titled 'Extreme Temperature Procedures,' unionized workers at branches of the New York Public Library can take paid leave or accrue compensatory time when the temperature inside dips below 68 degrees for a couple of hours." At least one person will find this *particularly* ironic. |