MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Moving a Subversion Repository

I foolishly just moved a Subversion repository by importing the contents of a current checkout into a new repository. Wrong. A friend pointed out these instructions that make it easy and preserve the revision history.

Here’s the trick:

svnadmin dump /path/to/repository > repository-name.dmp

and

svnadmin load repository-name < repository-name.dmp

[tags]svn, subversion, move, repository[/tags]

Castro Sued For Wrongful Death of CIA Operative, Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Taking Notes

The Bangor Daily News is reporting a Maine woman has sued Fidel Castro for her father’s death. Sherry Sullivan of Stockton Springs accuses Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, the Cuban army, and the Republic of Cuba for the wrongful death of her father, who has been missing and assumed dead since he was last seen […] » about 300 words

Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookie and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream Sandwiches

So once again, my husband called on my assistance with a Friday Food Fiesta challenge. This week’s theme was cookies and biscuits. I scoured my pantry, but alas, like Old Mother Hubbard, my cupboards were practically bare. The one interesting thing I did have was a bag of Hershey’s white chocolate chips. So, between my […] » about 300 words

Is It That They Don’t Care? Or Just Don’t Want It From Us?

&tJessamyn asks “do library users care about our new initiatives?” It comes from a survey done by the Wisconsin Public Library ConsortiumOn one hand, if you interpret the results literally you could make a decision to reject technology and focus on building a collection around personal enjoyment for Wisconsin residents. On the other hand, these […] » about 600 words

Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman is dead at 89. The Local calls his work immortal, as did many of his colleagues.

Until now I’ve been misremembering the title of one of his movies as Three Smiles of a Summer Night, a 1955 romantic comedy. I’d say that most of his works I’d seen were depressing and that Smiles was one of the few that wasn’t. But I couldn’t even remember the title properly, so perhaps I should keep that to myself.

Sour Cream Berry Bread

My wonderful neighbor, Wendy, went berry picking and dropped me off a large container with luscious, fresh blueberries and raspberries. I decided to try a bit of an experiment and use the batter for one my favorite cakes with the berries. The result was this heavenly sour cream berry bread. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. […] » about 200 words

Liz Danzico on WordPress Usability

Liz Danzico of Happy Cog Studios spoke today about her consulting with Automattic on the design of the WordPress admin interface. As with so many of the presentation today, I’m really hoping the slides will be published soon, as there are some great ideas coming out. Liz spent a lot of time watching WordPress users […] » about 200 words

Scriblio Goes To WordCamp

Scriblio is based on WordPress, an open source content management system, and the community that uses, supports, and builds it is what makes it great. WordCamp started last year, when the community was about 750,000, and it’s even more important now that it’s grown to nearly two million.

The first day of the schedule focuses on how to better use the software, and included a great session by Lorelle VanFossen. Tomorrow is more technical, with discussions about performance, usability, and development.

What’s it all mean to Scriblio? Part of the Scriblio design philosophy is to make it easy to take advantage of advances in technology and practice that are serving all internet users, not just library users. The community has ramped up the WordPress development and release schedule, by building on top of that we get to spend our time figuring how to use the technology to serve our patrons without having to build a library-specific version of it.

[tags]WordCamp, WordCamp 2007, WordPress[/tags]

Designing the Obvious

Robert Hoekman, Jr is speaking now on Designing the Obvious, his book and philosophy: These principles include building only what’s necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. I just added the book to my must read list, but what I’m hearing here sounds like instructions to […] » about 100 words

Presentation: Bringing The Library To The User

I’m at AALL in New Orleans as part of a program organized by June Liptay and Alan Keely, speaking with U of R’s David Lindahl and NCSU’s Emily Lynema. From the description (see page 5 in the program): Traditional library online catalogs are being marginalized in an increasingly complex information landscape. …Better methods are needed […] » about 100 words

Yes it’s laughable, but…

I get as frustrated with airport security as the next guy (and I’m plenty doubtful of its effectiveness), but really, if you don’t yet know liquids aren’t allowed, and you hold up the one security line at a small airport at an ungodly early hour, it’d be nicer if you didn’t laugh like a kid at a theme park about it. Yes it’s farcical, but not funny.

Usage Instructions

What’s really angering about instructions […] is that they imply there’s only one way […] their way. And that presumption wipes out all the creativity. Actually there are hundreds of ways […] and when they make you follow just one way without showing you the overall problem the instructions become hard to follow in such […] » about 100 words