From my Dad: I Do Dog Tricks. Type in as many com­mands as you can think of, leav­ing “kiss” for last.

Happy Hol­i­days, everyone!

My won­der twin buddy Andy has an arti­cle in the inau­gural issue of The Code4Lib Jour­nal, a pub­li­ca­tion that arose out of the Code4Lib con­fer­ence and com­mu­nity. Andy does a lot of work to dig­i­tize and make infor­ma­tion about the his­toric Pull­man dis­trict in Chicago avail­able online, almost entirely as a labor of love and with no real finan­cial or admin­is­tra­tive sup­port. To me, he is an unsung hero of the dig­i­tal world, and I am proud to call him my friend.

Con­nect­ing the Real to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tional: His­tor­i­cal Demo­graphic Data in the Town of Pull­man, 1880–1940

“The Pull­man House His­tory Project is a part of the Pull­man State His­toric Site’s vir­tual museum and web site (http://www.pullman-museum.org/) which links together cen­sus, city direc­tory, and tele­phone direc­tory infor­ma­tion to describe the peo­ple who lived in the town of Pull­man, Illi­nois between 1881 and 1940. This demo­graphic data is linked through a database/XML record sys­tem to online maps and Perl pro­grams that allow the data to be rep­re­sented in var­i­ous use­ful com­bi­na­tions. This arti­cle describes the struc­ture of the data­base and XML records, as well as the meth­ods and code used to link the parts together and dis­play the data.”

The Joy of Tech cov­ers Gui­tar Hero. [Thanks, James!]

Please go play FreeRice right now. It’s a great exam­ple of using gam­ing for some seri­ous good.

• Click on the answer that best defines the word.
• If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an eas­ier word.
• For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

“FreeRice has a cus­tom data­base con­tain­ing thou­sands of words at vary­ing degrees of dif­fi­culty. There are words appro­pri­ate for peo­ple just learn­ing Eng­lish and words that will chal­lenge the most schol­arly pro­fes­sors. In between are thou­sands of words for stu­dents, busi­ness peo­ple, home­mak­ers, doc­tors, truck dri­vers, retired peo­ple… everyone!

FreeRice auto­mat­i­cally adjusts to your level of vocab­u­lary. It starts by giv­ing you words at dif­fer­ent lev­els of dif­fi­culty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approx­i­mate start­ing level. You then deter­mine a more exact level for your­self as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an eas­ier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keep­ing you at the ‘outer fringe’ of your vocab­u­lary, where learn­ing can take place.

There are 50 lev­els in all, but it is rare for peo­ple to get above level 48.”

From Scott Nichol­son, comes the call:

“Atten­tion ALA Members!

We are hop­ing to go to ALA Mid­win­ter with 100 sig­na­tures of ALA mem­bers to start a Mem­ber Inter­est Group on Games and Gam­ing. There are sev­eral ini­tia­tives across the ALA orga­ni­za­tion to look at gam­ing and our hope is to cre­ate a group to pro­vide a place to talk about gam­ing across demo­graph­ics and library types.

The charge of the inter­est group is:
To engage those inter­ested in games and gam­ing activ­i­ties in libraries and to col­lab­o­rate with ALA units to sup­port gam­ing ini­tia­tives and pro­grams across the Asso­ci­a­tion. Games, as defined in their broad­est sense to include tra­di­tional and mod­ern board, card, video, mobile, com­puter, live-action, role­play­ing and minia­ture games, and gam­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing plan­ning and run­ning gam­ing pro­grams, pro­vid­ing games for infor­mal play, devel­op­ing a game col­lec­tion, cre­at­ing games, devel­op­ment of infor­ma­tion and other lit­era­cies through games and part­ner­ing with other com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions to sup­port gam­ing, will be top­ics for pro­fes­sional explo­ration. This group is open to all members.

If you are will­ing to help start this group, print out the peti­tion below and col­lect sig­na­tures and mem­ber num­bers of ALA mem­bers in your orga­ni­za­tion, and send it to the address on the form in the next few weeks.

The form is at http://boardgameswithscott.com/ggmig.pdf..”

Judi is a stu­dent in Domini­can University’s GSLIS pro­gram who is grad­u­at­ing in Jan­u­ary (yay, Judi!). She’s writ­ing her final research paper on gam­ing in pub­lic libraries, and she’s ask­ing library staff offer­ing said pro­grams to fill out a brief sur­vey. If you can help her, please do.

Dear O’Hare Airport,

One of the nicest and most use­ful things you could do for those of us who pass through your air­port (espe­cially reg­u­larly) is add more power out­lets. Every­where. Blan­ket the gates in out­lets, and make sure they’re work­ing. Please. Even your own secu­rity guards could use them.

Thanks so much,
Jenny

cc: all air­ports, all libraries