Subscription to O'Reilly technical books

Tim O'Reilly in a presentation at MySQL User Conference notes that his company licenses online access to a large collection of high quality computer and other technical books. It might make sense (depending on pricing, the detailed makeup of the collection, etc.) to add this collection to Marvel! (licensing to academic, public and K-12 libraries is through ProQuest.)

Finding out about the power outage

A big power outage yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon into the night. Apparently the whole island was out. I'd seen that there were severe thunderstorms to the north, but here it was just threatening at the time the power quit. I figured I could find out something about it on the web.

But no. I tried:

• The Mount Desert Islander
• The Bar Harbor Times
• A Google News search for maine outage bangor

The Latest Newscast at Maine Public Radio is streaming yesterdays morning's 8am broadcast. I listned to the live broadcast 8am and that didn't mention it.

Bangor Hydro has an Outage Information page, clearly tied to its automated outage reporting system, but it doesn't give any overview or reasons.

It appears that none of these sources is set up to provide this kind of fast feedback on what's happening.

So I called the Southwest Harbor Police Department business line. He had heard that there had been a lighting strike in Veazie and that all of Hancock County "down to the boarder" had been affected. He suggested calling Bangor Hydro, but I know how hard it is to talk to a person (as opposed to a machine) there.

That's the state of the art for local reporting at this point in time.

Islander Photos

There are some great photos at the Mount Desert Islander website, including the Quietside Parade, the Harry Potter fest at Sherman's and Gail Gibbons' book talk.

Pat Choate interview

Sam Felton has sent me several pieces relating to Pat Choate and his book, Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization. I listened to his interview with Leonard Lopate at WNYC. He's usually very thoughtful, and sometimes very nationalistic. I see some logical inconsistencies. For example:

More...

Trevor Corson is missing too...

Another local author missing from the Waterboro list is Trevor Corson.


We've got it in Southwest Harbor.

Trevor has a great list of articles available through Marvel!

Places I've never heard of in Maine: Waterboro

I first came to Maine in 1969 to go to Bowdoin. I've lived permanently in Maine since 1981 When I moved to Bar Harbor. I still on a regular basis see references to towns in Maine that I've never heard of. I know Waterville and Waldoboro, but Waterboro is new to me.

Of course, my memory is not what it used to be...

Maine Authors

Dick Atlee sent this list of 350 Maine authors maintained at the Waterboro Public Library.

I emailed the webmaster suggesting that they include Richard Sassaman who lives in Bar Harbor. He's written scores of magazine articles and Bar Harbor police beat : true stories from the police files of Mount Desert Island (Amazon; LeLiLo)

In the pink!

More pictures

Yikes!

Here come the police! Hide Harry and turn off the flashlight!

Gail Gibbons Booktalk & Signing

We had a great visit with Gail Gibbons this Saturday past. She talked about how she got into writing and illustrating non-fiction books for kids. I'd forgotten that she started out in television doing art direction. A one point she worked on Saturday Night Live. She said it was really strange.


More pictures

Cory Doctorow interview

I listened to a great interview with Cory Doctorow this morning. Cory is a science fiction writer who has published several books as both regular paper books and as free downloads on the internet and thinks that his income is all the better for it. He has interesting perspectives on copyright and what a book is in todays world.

Guns, Germs and Steel on Public TV

Starting Monday evening at 11. Three Mondays total.

More and more...

Reading vs. Laptopping

Susan and I were speculating: How is a person sitting in a chair at the library reading a book different from a person sitting in a chair at the library working on a laptop?

• In general, the level of concentration of the person on the laptop is greater.
• The person on the laptop would probably not be in the library if the library didn't offer Wifi.
• Others?

A room full of laptops (like the upstairs this morning) has the quiet and intensity I associate in my mind with a reading room of a hundred years ago. All that was missing was someone saying, "Shhhh!"