In case of sadness, disappointment, boredom (and other enemies of twentysomethings everywhere)…

…Break out your fluffiest pillow, put your glasses in a safe place, and get out to Pillow Fight NYC.

Vital info:
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
Union Square @ 2:00 PM
(Take the N/R/W/Q, 4/5/6 or L to Union Sq/14th St.)
Bring a pillow Rain or shine.

The site has the rules and other pertinent info about the event, as well as a video clip from last year’s event. It looks fun, and it looks like that’s where I’ll be, as I have no other plans.

Alternately, or additionally, this is also the weekend of the NY Comic Con. You can see various celebrities, buy lovely bits of art and comics, and attend different special events.

Vital info:
Friday, feb 23: 10AM – 4PM (Trade only) 4pm – 9pm (Public hours)
Saturday, Feb 24: 10am – 8pm
Sunday, Feb 25: 10am – 5pm
Jacob Javits Center
Note: Saturday/Weekend passes are sold out online, but VIP packages are available, and various retailers may still have passes for sale.

Whatever ails you, either pillow fights or comics can surely cure you. Rock on!

In case of library-related interests + iPod…

…Break out the library & librarian podcasts. Ranging from smarmy and useful, to techy and fun, there are a whole bunch of podcasts out there for us. I’ve also included general geek podcasts as well, as I feel they are useful for librarians.

Good:

• ALA – Can be quite good. Useful for the latest currents in the field. However, at present, it is being quite tempermental and I can’t get anything at all to download.
• Library Geeks – Interview format; entertaining. Disappointing that thus far, it’s dudes only. It would be good to have some female geekery in there, so let’s all cross our fingers.
• XML Podcast – Poor sound quality, but seems to have very useful information. First episode is about Yuri Rubinsky, one of the creators of SGML.
• Basic HTML – Ridiculous, but good for learning the basic tags in HTML. If you can’t stomach the weird visuals between screenshots, pause and skip to the demonstrations.
• Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing – Let’s face it. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how to write well, and Grammar Girl can help you get back on track.
• The Library Despot – Newscasting-style developments in the library world. Only one episode currently on iTunes, which is a shame.
• Teacher Librarians – Good K-12 librarian resource. Interviews and other.
• Longshots: Library-related Commentary and Interviews – Very good, informative interviews about subjects that librarians face, such as issues around ‘Net neutrality and the like.

Avoid:

• If you like nasal, condescending news, LibVibe is for you. Useful news with a voice like condescension personified. If you can overlook the bizarre cadence in the podcaster’s voice, it might be worth it.
• The Sexy Librarian is neither sexy nor a librarian. Discuss amongst yourselves. I can’t stand pretentiousness, and I can’t stand arty pretentiousness, so it was a double whammy of awful. Not very useful.

In case of being short of funds…

…Break out your student ID and hie thee hence to NJTransit.com for an awesome freebie.

Free Trial Week Registration for College/Post-Secondary Students

Please take a moment to complete the following questions. When you click on submit, a coupon will appear. Print it and keep it. You should show the coupon, along with your valid college or post-secondary school identification, to ride NJ TRANSIT for free as often as you like from January 22 through January 28, 2007.

How sweet is that?? Ride for FREE for a week, as much as you want. Enjoy!

In case of RSS needs that go beyond the everyday…

…Break out the reviews, or actually, one blog that already did all the legwork for you.

If you’re a syndicated news junkie, you’ve probably come across a video clip, or even an audio clip where you have to stop what you’re doing to open up the right app for. That can be irritating and disruptive, but what is the solution?

SplashCast has written a great article, What’s the Best RSS Reader for Rich Media? that can help you judge the pros and cons of RSS readers that suit your needs best. Instead of having to open up a new application every time a feed has an audio, video, or image file, the writer has looked around to find a reader with media integration.

They provide a list of the best, or at least the least worst. Most seem to be free, at least at this point, and there are several options for both Mac and PC.

In case of snack food fatigue…

…Break out your optimism and hope there’s a catered faculty meeting with left-overs.

Tired of eating Garden Salsa Sunchips and Snickers from the vending machines, but don’t want to shell out $5 for a sub-par sandwich? Well, on some lucky days, like today, there are wonderful left-overs from the faculty meeting, including cheese and crackers, cookies, fruit, and beverages. Can’t get much better than that.

So if you’re hungry, and fortune smiles upon you, dig in!

In case of geekery gaucherie…

…Break out your browser and click quickly!

• Geek “Stuff”
  • ThinkGeek: Your SGO (Significant and Geeky Other) doesn’t really want a classy Alpine/Reindeer/snowflake wool sweater or a lame box of Russell Stover chocs with caramels tough enough to rip fillings clean out of your mouth. Truth be told, none of us really do (sorry to break it to you). However, you can get them snazzy shirts, HTTPanties, and/or binary ties that say “01110100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101011.”
• Geek News
  • /.: All the nerd news that’s fit to be rehashed and flamewarred about. Not very lady-friendly at all, but neither does it tend to be very Micro$oft-friendly. You win some, you lose some.
• Geek Humor
  • Bash: Ever wish you could say something truly brilliant on #IRC and then have it immortalized and rated by others? Well, Bash is the place for it. They know no shame, and the link to the top 100 showcase the best, and worst, they’ve got.[Goddamnit. Yet another night that I have been up past 3:00am because of it... ]
  • Penny Arcade: Dear L*rd! I know real people like this. Funnier in 2 dimensions.

I’m really only addressing computer and tech geekery here. I do so apologize for neglecting other choice areas of geekery, such as book geekery, gamer geekery, and others. Alas (and alack), my scope is limited due to flickering internet access. If I don’t get these posts done posthaste, my internet explodes…

In case of pitiful podcast prowess…

…Open iTunes and let’s get searching.

In case you’re not sure where podcasts are in iTunes

1. Open iTunes.
2. Click iTunes Store.
3. Click Podcasts.
4. Click Power Search.
5. Search by title, author, or description.
6. Find something you love? Click subscribe and get new episodes when they come out.

Nowadays, there are podcasts for everything, and from places you wouldn’t expect (e.g., the ones on the textbook website for 700). It can be a bit bewildering to look at the thousands upon thousand of podcasts out there and figure out which ones are good. Luckily for us all, I have a plethora of podcasts and can recommend some great ones.

Music podcasts of note:

• Pretty much anything by Magnatune.com is gold. They support their artists and don’t support DRM, which makes them pretty swell. They regularly release podcasts (weekly or monthly) in many muscial genres, and they average about an hour each. My favorites encompass several kinds of music, including:
  • Hammered Dulcimer
  • Mozart
  • Great Pianists
  • Viola da Gamba

• Jazz Piano small pieces is from a businessman in Japan and is released every week or so and has short, pretty jazz songs.
• Lute Songs isn’t updated very often, but has several very pretty lute pieces. Some also include vocals.
• Speaking of lutes, The Lutecast is a great podcast that details the history of the composer and the pieces that are being presented in each episode. Not updated very frequently, but will hopefully start back up.

Video podcasts:

• I don’t have very many favorite video podcasts. I suspect that’s due to my iffy internet connection. However, I highly recommend Freshtopia.net. They release a video cooking podcast for vegans several times a month. Entertaining, environmentally-friendly, and recipes that are good for you, even with chocolate. Some ingredients aren’t very familiar, like agave syrup, but if you’re looking into eating healthier, this is a good resource. They also have a website with more cool stuff.
• Also, the show Scrubs is offering a free episode clip from the iTunes store for a limited time. If you love Scrubs, I totally recommend it.

NPR:

• NPR: Most E-mailed Stories include the best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other NPR programs. Released daily.
• NPR: Satire from The Unger Report is short, snarky snippets of satire. Say THAT five times fast. Released weekly.
• Piano Jazz Shorts is a short preview of interviews and music with Marian McPartland and jazz musicians. Released weekly-ish.
• This American Life is a radio show with a different theme each time. Of note is #203: Recordings for Someone, which includes love letters on tape, war correspondence on tape, and the best phone message that has ever existed. Released every Sunday-ish.

Humor:

• The Ricky Gervais Show is a bunch of Brit dudes talking with their idiot friend. Amusing. I unfortunately have only one episode (I didn’t subscribe), so I’m not sure the frequency of the releases.
• The Sound of Young America is chock full of interviews with interesting people and quirky bits of humor. Updated weekly or biweekly.

Smarty Stuff:

• Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing are short but sweet informative clips that tackle common writing woes, like when to bust out the em-dash or the en-dash, or i.e. vs e.g. and when to append etc. Updated often.
• ALA Library 2.0 Podcast can be useful for us Library Sciencers. My friend was able to utilize their Banned Books discussion.

In case of taxing tech purchases…

…Trot out the charge card and let’s go shopping!

Like death and taxes, another constant in life is that tech stuff costs lots of money. And if you’re not a total Luddite, chances are that you’ll need to make some purchases sometime soon. Whether it’s for a computer, or for just a flash drive, there are a few websites that have good stuff for cheap-ish.

• Newegg‘s got the goods. I got my pretty pink LG USB drive here for only $15. They really have a bit of everything, with such diverse items as toasters, Spongebob Squarepants phones, computers, monitors, and other fun things.
• Computer Geeks has some pretty good stuff, and they’ll also have random deals where if you buy one item, the second is a certain percentage off (anywhere from 5%-50%). That can really rock. From books to USB mini hard drives, from barebones kits to gamer gear, they have a pretty awesome selection.
  
• Amazon has a wide variety of cheap ‘tronics. Make sure to read a lot of reviews, and google the item to make sure it’s not cheaper elsewhere. Still, good option for the lazy, and most likely to give you free shipping if you spend a certain amount.

In case of ship-shapelessness…

…Break out the ship terms and let’s get naughty… erm, nautical.

Yep. I admit it. I am happy to be a geek. And I happen to like geeking out on ship stuff. Terms, decor, novels. They’re all good. So, below I present to you several fun sites to get your ship shipshape and to fill in those blank spots in your seafarin’ vocab.

• Lady Washington’s Glossary of Tall Ship Terms: Unfortunately, seems only to be located in Google’s cache. However, its bountiful bouquet of terms is very useful.
• Schooner Man: Clickable links to a large glossary. Some terms also have links to images.
• Sailing ship on Wikipedia: Lovely pictures and good information about the general “sailing ship.” Wikipedia also has other pages with other ship types, such as windjammers and barques.
• Seaside Treasures: Who doesn’t want to spend $200 on an 11lb nickel-plated genuine porthole window? If I had the money to burn, I’d be first in line. Since I am a broke grad student, the site is just fun to look at. It’s also useful for planning out the giant pseudo-ship dream bungalow we all hold near and dear to our hearts.

In case of recycling reservations…

…Get your mouse a-clickin’ and get ready to surf.

Need to recycle a compact fluorescent bulb and have nowhere to turn? Never fear, Earth911 is here. This site is a valuable resource for locating local recycling facilities, as well as other safe methods, for safely disposing of a wide variety of items, from motor oil to expired medicines. This site not only helps you with recycling, it lists environmental events and information, too.
Get the kids involved with games and activities that make recycling more fun, which will hopefully get them on a lifelong path to thinking about the Earth and making eco-friendly choices.

In case of half-baked haiku-ery…

…Let me lead you down the path of poetic awesomeness.

Here are a few sites on haiku composition, both traditional and modern, but mainly a plethora of funny haiku. Who wants to think about deep metaphors of life as reflected by nature when you’ve got tests to take and papers to write? Much better to read a 17-syllable block on cat butts…

• Haiku for people
  • Gives an overview of what haiku are, and also has a good selection of haiku from famous Japanese poets.
• Computer haiku
• Kitty haiku
• Haiku, the OS
  • Looks interesting. Well designed site. An open-source operating system, currently working on an alpha release.
• Haiku Circus
  • Haiku comic strip.
• Airless Suburban Haiku
  • “A cynical celebration of conspicuous consumption in haiku form”
• Haiku Generator
• Unabomber Haiku
• Harry Potter Haiku
• Bad Haiku
• Haiku Mama
  • “(because 17 syllables is all you have time to read.)”

In case of blah blogs…

…Break out teh interwebs!
Are you running out of the internet? Are blogs going from blah to blegh? Sick of reading about your depressed friend and their shite job/life/knife-throwing skills? I have two swell places to check out, and you don’t even have to try very hard.

• WordPress.com’s main page has a great listing of recently updated blogs, from all walks of life, and new and exciting things can be found.
• Also, check out the collection of blogs from GSLIS students (located in a convenient list on the right-hand side of my blog). Some of them even update!

In case of PDF panic…

…Break out PDF Pen and get, um, pdf-ing?

If you’re like me (e.g., awesome, smart, a Mac-user), you have a Mac, but are probably too broke to shell out a bajillion bucks for Adobe Acrobat to make your own PDFs. Well, luckily for us, PDF Pen is good, but also wonderfully cheaper. Around $50-$100, as opposed to Adobe at $200+, depending on version.

Also, if you don’t mind an obnoxious watermark, PDF Pen is free.

In case of gramatically-incorrect buffaloes…

…Break out the gramatically-CORRECT buffaloes.

Did you know that “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a gramtically-correct and complete sentence? At first, I thought someone had snuck a fakey article into Wikipedia (not like it would be the first time), but they actually parse the sentence out. I had no idea that “buffalo” is also a verb. Go figure.

Well, anyway, if you’re bored in linguistics, this is a great sentence to bring up. Enjoy!