Radio Over IP

Well, I made the jump today. After trying to get radio over wireless IP to work with the 2 SMC units that I purchased about a year ago I finally gave up on them. I went with a new unit that hopefully will work a lot better. I won't have to deal with Twonky anymore - what a shame, as it was so fun to say 'restart the Twonky!' The new unit supposedly plays any Internet radio stations, but I'll believe that when I see it. There are some really great stations out there, KCEA is a great Big Band station and there are several Old Time Radio stations as well. It's a great concept, now I'd just like to see it work in action - playing it through the regular stereo is so much nicer than through the computer. I'll keep you posted.

We are a little closer tonight to being able to offer streaming audio of classroom lectures. After doing a few trials with the new voice recorder I feel confident that the audio quality will be much improved over the current system being used by Biology. Lucas figured out a fairly secure way to stream the audio feeds, so once we get the new microphones, we should be just about ready to make the announcement of the new service. The question will then be whether or not there are any willing faculty members. If nothing else, perhaps we could stream the poetry readings... If one of our staff would just join the 21st century and buy an ipod or something like that, we could experiment with doing podcasts of the lectures. Hmmm, maybe that is an excuse for me to buy one for Meg for Festivus.

Sable went to the Vet yesterday and had a tooth pulled and a general teeth cleaning. Apparently she lost another tooth sometime last year. She was very uncomfortable last night, and I felt guilty for having taken her to the vet in the first place, but I know she is probably in less pain now than she was before she went in. Still, it was very hard to hear her moan and cry all night...

We had our book discussion for The Endurance tonight and it was quite enjoyable. One of these days more people will show up and they'll discover how much fun a book discussion can actually be. We need to improve our promotion - next time we will put up posters at the public library and the grocery stores.

I heard today that the White Sox are trying to get Juan Pierre. Oh my, how much speed can you have in a lineup? Would Scotty go to Right Field? His arm isn't good enough... The Brewers haven't done much so far except re-sign Chad Moeller and Jeff Cirillo. We need some middle relief. If only they could have seen me play Strikeout... My Fern Curve would have made them drool. Ok, well at least I could have mowed their lawn - until I would have run over my leg with the tractor...

That's all for now!

Pat McCurdy and the Pixie unit

We're going to see Pat McCurdy play tonight at Shank Hall. It will remind of college, when Paul and Don and everyone would go down and have a great time at the Celebrity Club. Shank Hall seems a little too big for my taste, and the parking is horrible - but I guess it was bad at the Celebrity Club too.

We're moving ahead with plans to add a permanent wireless handheld mic to the big lecture hall over the break - this will be in addition to the lavalier that is already installed. I made contact with Mike Palacek yesterday and I think he's going to be a big help in future AV projects. We're going to be trying our own home grown AV controls in rooms this year - there is a new product called the Pixie which controls the inputs via an IR sensor. It's basically like setting up your own programmable remote control. After talking with Mike, it looks like we'll be going in a new direction with amplifiers too - in the past we've used commercial receivers and we always wondered how best to switch the audio channels. However, now we're going to go with an amplifier that takes all input signals and puts them out on a single channel, so there is no switching involved. This will make the room setups much easier. I wish I would have thought of this 3 years ago.

Work is coming along on the Strategic Plan. Both for Library Council and for the Campus. It's amazing to see how the two planning processes are proceeding differently. We'll start having the public sessions next week, so that's when the feedback should start coming in.

We'll be starting two new outreach programs in the library next Fall - although we might get them going this Spring. One will be a literature lecture series in which we will bring in faculty (or others who are specialists or experts) from ours and other campuses to give a presentation relating to either an author or a specific work or even a genre that they have studied. These lectures will be followed by a question and answer session and are open to the community. The other series will be a fiction series in which authors will either read short stories or chapters of books they have written. These are in addition to the poetry and book discussion series that we currently run. I expect the addition of these new programs will help to increase community participation in our existing programs as well.

Finding Direction

I'm still not sure what direction this blog will take. The Thanksgiving break is coming up in two days and it will be very nice to have a couple of days off. We're going to visit Meg's family in Ripon and that will be nice. It'll be strange to not see my family this weekend though. Sable is hanging out with me tonight and we've got the candles burning while listening to the Connection. Frank McCourt is being interviewed and it is making me look forward to reading his sequel to Angela's Ashes called 'Tis. His newest book is about teaching in NYC for 30 years.

This makes me realize that I have too many books to read all at once. If only I had more time. Perhaps if I spent less time with the blog and website. Or a little less Wolfy.

Blogging during Monday Night Football

The question I ask myself as I watch tonight’s Monday Night Football game is whether or not it would be better for the Packers if they lost the rest of their games. The best we could do if we win out is 9-7 and we all know that’s not going to happen. However, if we lost the rest of our games we will get the first pick in the draft. Would Favre retire if we have a 3-13 season? I’d rather see us continue to improve and win some games and build some momentum going into the next season.

Library note of the day – We’re going to try to increase the number of classes we offer lectures on audio e-reserves. We currently offer a type of streaming audio, but it’s not really streaming, as it has to download fully to the local desktop and the user can not save the file. Eventually we’d like to look into podcasting classes as well.

Also, we’re looking at expanding our outreach programming in the library – we’re thinking of adding a literature lecture series as well as a fiction series. The poetry series has been a real success, and I hope that it will help to increase the participation in the book discussion series.

Second Post

This weekend has been odd - since the Badgers are off and the Packers don't play until Monday night. The Brewers have made comments that they will re-sign jeff Cirillo, so that is a good sign. It will be interesting to see what they do with the first base situation.

Meg has just started a new sub position at Slinger for the band in both the middle school and the high school.

The original Post

Well, in my quest to become re-acquainted with the web, I decided to create a blog. This weekend has been spent trying to get the new megandmarc.com website up and running. Let's see where this blog goes. In the coming days there may be interesting library related info, or perhaps just some ramblings on every day life in this fascinating city of West Bend, WI.