Friends

Login

Service

walt crawford

Mostly retired library person/researcher/writer/speaker. All original FF contributions CC0 (public domain).
walt crawford
One discussion during the hike today had to do with tips and minimum wage. I asserted that California does *not* allow paying servers less than minimum wage, even if they receive tips, and that this was fairly unusual. Just checked: California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Nevada all require payment of full state minimum wage...
(and for California, Oregon and Washington that wage is at least $9/hour, a little higher in OR and WA). Montana and Minnesota have or will have *something* similar, but both allow smaller businesses to pay less. Just an interesting factoid... - walt crawford
5 more comments
Fortunately, the Feds don't say "and states can't treat workers any less shabbily than we do." - walt crawford
walt crawford
Reading some tweets that seemed to be about inadequacies in California's environmental work...then finally realized "oh, wait, CA means Canada in this case, not California." (Which then calls for a followup with the odd and maybe unfortunate fact in a recent PG&E ad:...
To wit, more than half of all rooftop solar/photovoltaic installations in the U.S. are within PG&E's service area, mostly northern & central California. I believe that, but it's still sad. (I think the state added 2.5gW of photovoltaic capacity last year, if I remember correctly.) - walt crawford
Oops. Just checked. California *has* about 2.5gW (or is it GW? gigawatts in either case) photovoltaic at this point; it's been growing rapidly, but it certainly wasn't all added last year. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Weather curiosity: When it's predicted to reach 95-97F in September, well, that's late summer. When it's predicted to reach 95-77F in the first week of October, that's BIG LOCAL TV NEWS WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE... I must be missing something: people's bodies change drastically on 10/1?
walt crawford
For those of you who don't already check NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day daily, you gotta see today's: A full rainbow--the full circle--with most of a double around it: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
Wow! - Marie
3 more comments
Where it's always been, I'm afraid. - walt crawford
walt crawford
For those who might be interested: finished the slow slog of re-trying 64 DOAJ non-medical/bio journals I couldn't reach the first time around (but didn't get a 404). Was able to reach & process 18 of the 64. (Well, 19, but on one, attempts to reach actual archives/issues always timed out.) Worth the time, I think.
A slog because I couldn't line up ten tabs in a row--Excel's miraculous trick of executing a hyperlink and opening a tab in your favored browser only works one link at a time, and Excel hangs until it's either found something, gotten an error message, or...well, or until I give up and hit Esc. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Wayne Bivens-Tatum weighs in again on the #teamharpy situation: https://blogs.princeton.edu/librari...
walt crawford
Apropos very little, we've now watched both new (broadcast) TV shows we'd decided to try this Fall: Madam Secretary on Sunday, Scorpion on Monday. Unusually (I think), we like both and plan to keep watching. (OK, so both are on the Old Folks' Network, CBS. But that's also where the summer series we regret having wasted 13 hours on was...)
That latter being Extant, which we assume won't be back next summer. We won't bother if it is. Started out with high hopes, devolved into a Plotfest that really never went anywhere. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Full marks for this one: the Forum for Inter-American Research, abbreviated FIAR. The "who we are" page (editorial board, etc.) has the heading "The Ring of FIAR." http://interamericaonline.org/about-u...
Down, down, down in a burning - Christina Pikas
walt crawford
Last night, went with wife, brother, sister-in-law to Campo di Bocce (restaurant & bocce ball courts), which my wife & I go to once a month or so, for my birthday dinner...partly because CdB gives people a full four-course dinner, anything on the menu (appetizer, salad, entree, dessert) for free on their birthday. And it's a pretty good restaurant.
Happy Birthday! I think you've caught up with me, now. - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
8 more comments
I like that place! And my birthday is hopefully coming up soon. <thinks> - Brian Johns
walt crawford
C&I and The Project: A quick update - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
walt crawford
I wouldn't normally link to a media trade publication, but this one's almost too precious. Here's the link, followed by my comments: http://www.medialifemagazine.com/people-...
Comment 1: The supposed biggest drop, for 18-34 year olds, amounts to five minutes a day--from 4 hours 22 minutes ***A DAY*** of TV viewing down to a mere 4 hours 17 minutes a year ago. (50-60 year olds supposedly average 6 hours 12 minutes ***A DAY*** of TV viewing, down a whopping six minutes.) - walt crawford
Comment 1a: This, of course, assumes that Nielsen's methodologies can be considered so accurate for the whole country that a five minute drop out of more than four hours is statistically meaningful or real-world meaningful. My BS detector is pinned at 11 at this point... - walt crawford
Comment 2: The article (not Nielsen) makes a thing of double-digit increases in "digital video usage" (never mind that all broadcast and nearly all cable TV is now digital, that just confuses the picture): the coveted 18-34 year olds jumped by 53% to a whopping 35 minutes a day. (I don't doubt that figure, actually, or the 19 minutes for 50-64 year olds.) - walt crawford
Comment 3: Note who's not represented at all in this report, presumably because we/they are economically irrelevant: kids under 18 and that handful of people who've lived to 65 and older. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Honest question: does GoDaddy just not offer autorenewal of domain registry--and fail to remind people that their domains need renewing? I'm seeing a large handful of Gold OA journals that have turned into parking pages, and they're almost always GoDaddy pages that weren't renewed. That shouldn't happen. Ever.
Admittedly, I'm spoiled: 1&1 charges less (I think), allows autorenewal *and* reminds you twice before the renewal happens, and reminds you in any case. Oh, and has never (AFAIK) run sexist ads on TV. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Minor revelation this afternoon when I had a mug of "coffee crystals" instant for the first time in 2 months: I rather like good instant coffee as a warm drink...I just don't think of it as being Coffee, which avoids the letdown.
walt crawford
Another one of those "some of my best friends are..." phrases: "it probably sounds like I oppose open access. I don’t." For some reason, I now hear that as "well, really, I do except as an empty term." Ref: http://turbidplaque.com/2014...
walt crawford
Doorbell rings. Usually, on weekdays, that's UPS dropping off an item and the truck's gone by the time I get to the door. But...today's Sunday. And there's a smiling USPS (not UPS!) employee, having just dropped off Gray's Anatomy Season 10, which we ordered with free ("5-8 day shipping") and which shipped on Friday.
I look surprised, she says "Starting today. Only parcels." I knew the Postal Service was starting Sunday deliveries to do the work UPS and FedEx don't do well, and to do Amazon grocery delivery...but this was a USPS parcel, sent at minimum cost. Delivered Sunday. Did I mention delivered Sunday? At no extra cost? - walt crawford
5 more comments
Meg: No, it was Amazon. But it appears that it's for other parcels as well. - walt crawford
walt crawford
Classic example of Business Insider at its best: A headline implying that Gartner says PCs are dying (which Stephen A. gladly repeats)...but, of course, if you click through to Gartner it actually says PC growth is slowing. Not *precisely* the same as dying....
walt crawford
Unsurprising side-effect of checking Gold OA journals published by (some) colleges & universities: sidebar ads on various other sites extolling the virtues of attending those colleges & universities, especially the private ones.
walt crawford
Open Data, Crowdsourcing, Independent Research and Misgivings - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
walt crawford
Perfect sentence in introductory essay for a journal from a semi-accredited (U.S.) university: "Special thanks go to Dr. [redacted] for his tiresome support of the journal." That support certainly can get tiresome...
walt crawford
gotta love this: a new Denny's in NYC with a "Grand Cru Slam"--two Grand Slam breakfasts and a bottle of Dom Perignon--for a mere $300. And I'll bet they sell a few of them. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-st...
walt crawford
Just got an email (from a vendor I explicitly allow them from) re a "Huge Distressed Cruise Inventory Sale." I know what they mean, but somehow booking a distressed cruise isn't high on my list...
walt crawford
Apropos of nothing much, it appears that Romania has a very well-developed English-language gold OA journal collection (mostly no-fee), at least in humanities & social sciences.
walt crawford
Graphic honesty - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
walt crawford
Are all these damn phone calls where there's never anybody at the other end of the line a conspiracy by cell-phone companies to make us give up landlines? Or something more nefarious?
walt crawford
Serious question and quandary: Someone hearing about the new OA journal analysis I'm doing says, in essence, "I assume you'll make the spreadsheet available for crowdsourced verification and further analysis." I do not see this as being a good idea, and if pushed on it would be inclined to drop the project ...
I'd hate to do that at this point, since I've already looked at (individually) 7,818 out of around 11,500 journals and "journals" in the project. But I'm using a variety of approximation techniques to make the project less overwhelming, and I can just see, e.g., Beall downloading the spreadsheet, finding that my numbers (which will NEVER be used citing individual journals) are off for two or three journals, and... - walt crawford
23 more comments
As I noted elsewhere, I'm perfectly willing to do that. (For the Beall and OASPA lists, the URLs "come with"--they're hyperlinked journal and/or publisher names. For the DOAJ list, which is of course just a subset of the downloadable DOAJ dataset as of May 2014, they're a separate column, but leaving 'em in is no more work than taking 'em out. For Beall, some fraction of journal cells would *not* have hyperlinks because of problems in downloading title lists from the publishers.) - walt crawford
walt crawford
For anyone who cares (and sees the little pictures next to people): the new one was taken August 20, 2014, in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve--one of the many hiking spots near here. (I wear a floppy gardening hat because I have a fat head, making more elegant sun-protecting hats difficult/expensive.)
walt crawford
If you've already downloaded Cites & Insights 14:9, you may want to do so again--I've changed one paragraph (where I managed to divide British pounds by 1.7 to get U.S. dollars rather than multiplying them). Here's the actual change: http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
walt crawford
Correction in Cites & Insights 14:9 - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
walt crawford
Flashback thanks to PUBLIB (a discussion of receipt printers): I never realized that Star Micronics--makers of the first (dot matrix) printer I had at home--is still in business (albeit not making printers for PCs). They made solid gear, and based on the PUBLIB comment I guess they still do. Fifty years: not bad in tech.
walt crawford
Cites & Insights 14:9 (September 2014) available - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
walt crawford
If you haven't already, go read Wayne Bivens-Tatum's latest "Peer to Peer" at Library Journal. Highly recommended! http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014...
I had missed the "pure bilge" comment on WBT's column on the first "The Big Deal..." and am now thinking I should use it as a new subtitle for Cites & Insights. (Or maybe not.) It's good to be pure. - walt crawford
walt crawford
More on the damage done - http://walt.lishost.org/2014...
from
« Prev Next »