Rainbow's End-- Vernor Vinge-- Thoughts

Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge is the story of Robert Gu who has been cured of Alzheimer's and rejuvenated so he looks like a teenager. Robert Gu has to learn to fit in again in a society that has changed tremendously. He is sent to a technical school to learn a new set of skills and be useful again. This is a mix of teenagers and rehabilitated adults.

I rather like the main character, he is a kind of man out of time. His son doesn't know quite what to make of him. The main character is cranky, mean, and does not hesitate to hurt or bother other people if it amuses him.

While at the technical school Robert is drawn into a sinister plot unwittingly. This starts as he joins up with a group of librarians at UCSD who recognize his literary genius from his past life. The librarians are trying to save all the books at the Theodore Geisel library from the shredding and processing machines.

The descriptions of everyday things are wonderful. People use wearable computers and contact lenses which simulate different environments adding overlays to the real world like the SpielbergRowling fantasy overlay. Cars pick you up and drive you where you want to go, then drive off by themselves. It is rather imaginative.

The librarians have a plan to destroy the shredders. This involves creating a disturbance aboveground while they slip past a set of secret biolabs to get at the shredders. This is where the second strand of the story picks up. Getting past the biolabs is really a setup for a crazed agent to plant a research project for mind controlling virus.

Only Mr. Rabbit, an intelligent AI can stop the virus with the help of Robert Gu and his niece Miri.

Aboveground a riot is occurring between the librareome and the people who are against the library. The two sides are trying to take over the library building using robots, construction equipment, toy mechanicals, and various gadgets.

This is a wildly entertaining book with a very convoluted plot which can be mind boggling at times. Sometimes you feel like you are in a state of futureshock like Robert Gu. This book is one of a string of near future thrillers that have come out recently that use familiar backdrops with advanced technology. Two other books in this style are Spook Country by William Gibson and Halting State by Charles Stross.

Rainbow's End won the 2007 Hugo Award. vernor Vinge has won four other Hugo awards. Another book by him which I really liked was A Fire Upon The Deep. This book is hard science fiction. It extrapolates existing science into a future world.

Morning Thoughts

A Wandering Scholar With A Walking Stick

This morning has been mostly putting inserts in the legal books as well as finishing up the weeding for the reference books. I also am going to weed more of the legal books today. It is doing everyday work.

I did a brief tour for a visiting librarian from the system headquarters of the areas where we have foreign language material, world language, some films, literacy books, and language instruction materials. She also asked questions about programming for Spanish speakers. I gave her the local contacts for SCORE, the Women's Enterprise Development Center, and the African American Chamber of Commerce. I also suggested that some programs get restarted. The school district ran out of money for GED classes and tutoring which they funded at our library.

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I am rereading Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge. There are places where the book gets quite chaotic and complex. It can be hard to figure out what is happening exactly. I am rereading it to figure out what exactly happened at some points.

The chaos is kind of intriguing. There are a lot of little details which can catch you by surprise. For example the library at UCSD is the Theodore Geisel library. The book sometimes describes possible technology in a disorienting way, much like you are experiencing future shock, which the main character is experiencing. I think the second read will be enough for me to review it. The book is fascinating.

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Today, I am doing the Open Microphone Poetry Program at 4:00 p.m. I think that I may read some of the haiku I wrote earlier. I have been pulling some poetry books to display as well. The room should be set up. We will have the typical water, strawberries, juice, and cookies. The community relations person is out, so I get to go shopping at the local supermarket.

Five people came in and read their original poetry. Three more people came in to read from a few books that I had selected and put aside on a cart. There was a lady with her little baby. The baby was very quiet. A few teenagers came in and out and drank the fruit punch and ate some strawberries.

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They are breaking up the collection development ordering process right now, so I will probably have more coverage of things which I would order. This would include in addition, to the Job Information Center, graphic novels, anime, manga, science fiction and fantasy, and social sciences. I am asking that I get the same coverage in reference as I would in circulating materials, business and law. I am not sure what is happening yet. The new director is shaking things up a bit.

Sometimes when you think you have the least amount to say, you have the most amount once you start sitting down to write things.

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I sometimes think I got my reading habits from my 90 year old grandmother. She reads all the time and likes to visit libraries. Unlike me, she reads lots of mystery books. She worked at Brown University for a while and was also a public schoolteacher.

Wandering Through Blog Land, Virnor Vinge Ebook

I've been wandering through blogland looking at lots of different blogs. I find most library blogs to be pretty boring. They usually have a big picture of the library building on the outside. It would be much more interesting if they took a picture of the inside with the staff next to the bookshelves.

Most of the blogs I've looked at have been pretty incoherent. One of my pet peeves so far is the icon which people use to show their blog. If they put a little symbol of what they are writing about, it would help a lot better than a picture of themselves, or in the case of many book sites, their cat. There are so many blogs out there, that if you don't immediately give an idea of what your site is about, you lose people. This is especially true when you are looking at blog directories. Often there is no caption, just a picture in places like blogcatalog and bumpzee.

Looking at book blog sites has been very interesting. Mostly the book sites provide reviews of books and thoughts on writing. There is very little else. It is interesting when people put in videos of authors talking, news about books, and bits on new technology. Even a little bit on their experience in a bookstore or library might break up the endless reviews.

Some of the sites also include movie reviews and television show reviews in addition to book reviews. This is actually a good thing. Most libraries are media centers. Where I work more people check out dvds of movies and television shows than books. We even have a section for the greatest films, and a section on African films.

Of course there is often the ubiquitous picture of the cat curled up on the book in book blogs. Cats must read a lot.

I usually see a short biography as well. Quite often this is very cozy and sweet in nature. I haven't seen anything truly wicked yet. It would be nice to see something wicked. The Bookslut Blog is the one exception which is mildly risque. It is also kind of sexy. The site gets a lot of visitors and is very well done. http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

These are just some thoughts on visiting different blogs. I will write more as I think of more to write about. I am also seeing endless attempts to support a million different products everything from bookmarks to computers to advertising. If you are going to sell something, stay focused on selling what you are talking about.

People get turned off by advertising. Some people suggest that you should not have Adsense ads because people will leave your site if they see them. Almost every site has pictures of them. I am thinking of replacing one of my adsense ads with a cafepress button for a store. I know this sounds kind of silly. I just did, it contains a really basic logo and a few gift items. I found out about Cafe Press when I was looking at bookslut.

Every site I visit has social bookmarking tags. I am not even sure that these are particularly helpful. I think it is more important to go visit other peoples sites and make comments about what they are writing about. I've visited quite a few different peoples sites and done this. Everything from David Brin, Jeff Vandermeer, SpamPoetry, and others. I make it a point to visit your site if you post a comment on my site. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. This seems to be the best thing that works. Also posting in newsgroups discusing blogs seems to help as well.

Keywords, search engines, and little buttons which are spread across most of the sites which I visit don't seem to do a whole lot. Joining sites which discuss blogs like blog catalog, and fuelmyblog seems to help as well. Communities of people discussing different subjects tend to be interested in what you are writing about. My favorite site for discussing blogs and the site which seems to do the best job for blog promotion, blog searching, discussions, and exchanges is http://www.blogcatalog.com/ . My experience with them has been very good. I just put in a widget for blog catalog.

I've also spent a bit of time looking at various library blogs. It is not pretty, there is a lot of secret disgruntlement, or not so secret disgruntlement. People talk about things like unacceptable behavior in the library. Monitoring bathrooms and internet access in public buildings is an interesting experience...

An interesting topic which I see coming up repeatedly is the concept of Library 2.0 . Nobody really defines it, but every article I've seen seems to be talking about social networking tools and web gadgets in the library setting. Meebo is one of the gadgets I saw talked about. Also some librarians are talking about using http://www.librarything.com/ for certain very popular parts of their collections to improve circulation which is a very ineteresting idea. From my experience most librarians have no idea what to do with social data in the library setting.

The other topic that is coming up a lot is digitalization. The Google books project where they are scanning thousands of books every day into the internet is quite controversial among librarians. Also, there is a new project being spearheaded at MIT, the million books project for scanning huge amounts of free material into a giant library. It is called the Universal Digital Library. Supposedly when they are done with the initial batch there will be 1.5 million books in the library. This is a joint project of China, India, and the United States. Here is the link, http://www.ulib.org/ .

I think both social search and digitalization change the purpose of what a library is. Librarians are not keeping up with the changes. It shows in the slow decline of the number of librarians and the general unfocusedness throughout the profession.

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I found another free science fiction ebook, Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.
http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html . I haven't started reading it yet. I think I'll review it for a change of pace.

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The "blog" image at the top of the post is something which I did with paint because I couldn't find a public domain image on wikipedia for blog.