Your Blog is a Marching Wiki

Posted on 2008-09-04 by richardxthripp

When I think of a wiki, I think of a collection of articles that can be edited by anyone. But wikis have another core trait. If you’ve ever looked up an article on Wikipedia, you’ve noticed that practically every other word is a link to related articles in the wiki.

There are no direct links to external sites. All those are footnotes or references, appearing at the bottom of the page. But within the text, there are internal links all over the place. It’s a self-contained Internet.

I think your blog should be the same way. This isn’t reasonable until you’ve built up a good collection of content—perhaps thirty articles at least. But once you’ve done that, you should start linking to them whenever relevant. When I talk about artistic photography, I’ll link to my gallery, and when I talk about happiness, I’ll probably link to How to Be Happy. And when I talk about linking, darn it, I’ll link to The Perils of Redundant Linking. These links are redundant to people who read my whole blog from start to finish, but those people can just ignore the links. The larger majority skims two or three of my articles to take in the essential points, and for them, the links are invaluable, because they connect them with other subjects of interest. Because the links are contextual and manually added by me and me alone, they’re better and more relevant than what any search engine or group of people can offer.

I believe in subjective reality / multiple truths. Wikis are disconcerting because they try in vain to represent an objective reality by synthesizing and representing the beliefs of hundreds of people. Sometimes, it works, but within the whole wiki you always see incongruity. Certain articles read like advertisements, others are comical, others are dead serious. Some use weak language and weasel words like “may have,” “possibly,” and “back in the day,” while others try to be overly-precise, to the point of being inaccurate. I could say John Lennon was killed at 1980-12-08T22:52:52-05, and it would be very precise, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Even if I am accurate, my accuracy is unprovable. The point is, no two people have the same perspective on wording or accuracy. When you merge too many perspectives, you end up with a muddled mess. Sure, like Wikipedia, you can still be informative, but it’s nonetheless a mess. There’s room for someone else to come along with a clear vision and really share expertise with others. Committees don’t do this. One person alone, having synthesized the perspectives of the world in a way more congruent than any collection of people, shares knowledge more compelling and evolved than all else.

Your blog should be a marching wiki, meaning it marches forward without looking back. Ordinary wikis do not march. Old articles are constantly being revised, updated, and perfected. Many bloggers and photographers refuse to let go. They spend so much time revamping old stuff, they never create anything new. If you’re drafting a book, this is fine. But like publishing a book, I consider posting an article to my blog a singular act representing your beliefs and knowledge at a fixed point in time. Unless I find a typo, or a broken link, or I write something new that expounds heavily upon the topic, I don’t update the old post. When I update the old post, it’s just to correct those errors or add a link to the new post.

Substantially changing the content of old articles can be a good thing for your readers, but that doesn’t make it worthwhile. Your time is much better spent putting what you’ve learned into a congruent, fine-tuned, new work of art, rather than adding bells to an old piece. Rewriting your archives can even be a disservice to your readers, because those articles show your history and your beliefs at a previous point in time. Do you dare erase your past? Would you rewrite and dress up an essay from middle school for a college assignment? No—you’d write something new entirely, and it would be much more evolved than your old work.

If you strive for a faster pace of evolution in your persona and your writing, tending to your old work will seem as unusual as tracing your drawings from kindergarten. Sure, tracing your childhood sketches would garner you experience, but the experience of creating anew is far greater than dwelling in the past. Our time is limited in this life, so it is important to optimize our learning processes as far as possible.

Similarly, don’t go back to old articles to add links to new articles, unless it’s something really important. I’ve done it about ten times, and considering I’ve been blogging for eight months and have written hundreds of posts, that isn’t a lot. While I could go back to Investment and Efficiency and add a whole bunch of (relevant) links to newer work, including this article, it would actually distract my readers. Simply put, if I wanted to link to newer stuff in the older article, I would’ve written the newer stuff first. I didn’t, so the older stuff doesn’t need to reference the future.

When you establish yourself as a soldier on the march, you lift a great weight off your shoulders. No longer must you worry about maintaining continuity with the past. In fact, I encourage you to openly contradict your past—should it represent the evolution of your opinions, or a different perspective that is valuable to your readers. Don’t feel you have to explain yourself. Don’t write for the critics. Most people aren’t trying to shoot holes through your work; they want to share in the wealth of your knowledge. They’re just like you. It’s far more important to cater to the important people, rather than a vocal, critical minority.

Abandoning continuity is most important for beliefs, but also includes presentation. In some articles, I highlight key points in italics; in others I use bold. In my school essays, I underline. Sometimes I’ll use inline bold headings like this, while other times I’ll use large headings bounded by line breaks, which really draw the eye. In some articles, I highlight nothing, because everything is important. I don’t have to make a list of rules for myself to govern these processes. I do whatever feels right in the present context. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match up exactly with my history.

Let your beliefs and standards be fluid like water, changing to meet the demands of different terrain, rather than rigid and inflexible like ice. Your important beliefs may turn to ice, but even ice can melt or break. If this happens, don’t resist it—recognize it as inevitable change: the only way to transcend your current level.

Finally, don’t create lists of rules for yourself. There are plenty of other people who are happy to do this for you; you don’t need even more rules. You are your own boss, and you control your own destiny.

Money and Love

Posted on 2008-09-02 by richardxthripp

What I made online, 2008-08

Just wanted to give you a little hint for how my websites did last month. My goal is $1 per day, and while I didn’t hit that every day last month, the overall total was $56.41, or $1.80 per day.

I can see I’m making a bigger impact on the world. In July, I made $20, so my income basically tripled last month. You can’t get that kind of raise with a regular job.

$53.73 was from Google AdSense; $2.68 was from this blog’s Amazon Associates commissions.

Of the $53.73, $1.54 came from Brilliant Photography and Personal Development by Richard X. Thripp. Th8.us made $2.30, DaytonaState.org made $42.63, and the Thripp.com users made me $7.26. Our hosting / domains bill is $15 per month, so I’m more than covered.

DaytonaState.org is targeted. A lot of people come from Google looking for information on enrolling in colleges, so the information appeals to them. On the other hand, Thripp.com is black-listed by Google, so this blog and others appear low in the search results. I haven’t done much marketing either, instead focusing on writing and producing new works of art, so that explains the low turnout. But in the long run, the richardxthripp.thripp.com is where the action is going to be.

If I was still working at the library, I would have made ten times more. But last month, I did no work. Even though I exhausted far more time and energy here, the energy comes back twofold. This simply isn’t a job at all to me.

When you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t matter how much time you “spend” or how much money you make. (You’re not really spending time; you’re saving it.) You’ll do it anyway, because it’s what you do. If you’re looking for something to love, photography is a good place to start, even as a freelancer. I wouldn’t do it myself; I’d prefer writing articles for free and making money indirectly. But every person enjoys different methods.

Also: when you love playing with LEGOs or battling in World of Warcraft, it still doesn’t matter, but the problem is you’re not helping anyone else. You think you’re doing what you love, but you just haven’t found what you truly love. When you combine ambition with a purpose that really makes an impact on people around you, you’ll find something you love far more than child’s play. It’s still play, but it’s play taken to the next level. You character has just reached level 100. He’s replaced hit points with love points.

How to Create a Public Library

Posted on 2008-07-26 by richardxthripp

I’ve disappeared for the last few days because I’ve been working on The Thripp Public Library. While I can’t open it to the public yet (Dad won’t open our house to the world), I’m working on it now because I have time off and Dad’s generously donated lots of his books. Though I wanted to use Evergreen or Koha, I picked the simple and obscure OpenBiblio as my library system, because it’s the only thing I could find that would run on shared hosting. I was disappointed by the lack of features to start, but I’m starting to like the power and control with it, especially since the database makes sense, so adding new features is easy.

Before I even got started, the first step was to choose a barcoding format, classification system, and spine labeling format.

I don’t like Library of Congress (LC) classification because it’s arcane and confusing, so the Dewical Decimal system (DDC) was the default choice. But what to use it for? You can use it for everything, but I decided right away not to use it on fiction items, instead opting for “FICTION / *last name*” as the spine label and call number, which is the same as the Volusia County library system. It may not be ideal, but it’s much easier to use. Biographies are tougher. I chose DDC, but I put two lines above that say “BIO / *subject last name”. The DDC part is always “*numbers* *first three letters of the author’s last name*”. Large type items get “LT” at the top of the spine label. Spine labels == call numbers, always. I created a template file for spine labels in OpenOffice.org Writer, which I add to as I catalog books. Then when I get to twenty or thirty, I print out the whole sheet and start cutting them out with scissors and taping them to the books. Here’s part of a recent sheet:

Lots of spine labels

The numbers after the dot are sometimes six or more in Dewey Decimal classification. You can truncate (cut off) them, but I let them stay and just wrap the label around the book.

The next big step is barcoding. I don’t have a reader yet (too expensive), but it’s good to be ready ahead of time, and it gives a unique identifier for each item. Many libraries, including Volusia County, follow the format F LLLL XXXX XXXXC, where F is the flag, 2 for patrons or 3 for items, LLLL is the system identifier (2417 for Volusia), XXXX XXXX is an incremented number, and C is the check digit. The symbology is Codabar. This is nice, but the institutional identifiers are only useful if your part of a larger organization. I can’t find who oversees them, nor a list of each county / system and it’s code. If I picked one for my library, no one would respect it, plus it makes the barcodes unnecessarily long. So “normal” barcodes are out.

Codabar is old, and there’s no reason to use it if you aren’t follow the 14-digit format. So I picked the more robust Code 39. I looked in vain for open-source or free software that makes it easy to print up sheets of barcodes while generating the check digits, but gave up in disgust. I’m just doing it in OpenOffice.org Writer with this free Code 39 font. No check digits. My barcodes are only eight digits, and check digits aren’t needed anyway because the symbology is self-checking (so I’m told). Plus, forgoing check digits makes things much easier. I have a template of 5 pages with 20 barcodes each, numbered 1-100. When I want to print new ones, I can just find and replace every instance of “300300” with “300301” and it’s all done instantly. Here’s what that template looks like:

Lots of barcodes

This is awesomely cool, and it is a robust solution, even if it seems too simple. I invite you to use this template to print similar barcodes. Make sure you have the font installed first, as this .odt document expects it. I just print these on card stock, cut them out with scissors, and affix them to the books with clear packing tape. I thought I had to decide to put the barcodes on the outside of the books or the inside… but I have the best of both worlds! I printed two copies of the template and put a barcode in both places. This way, I have the convenience of outside barcodes, but my items can still be identified if the barcodes peel off or the covers are destroyed. Clear tape over the barcode won’t matter for any scanner worth its salt. These barcodes are big and easy-to-scan too. I don’t know why most libraries use ones so small.

My numbering format is eight digits; two groups of four. The font doesn’t allow a space between them, but they are visually separated by the zeroes. I start patrons with 2 and items with 3 like traditional library barcodes. The format is 2001XXXX for patrons and 3003XXXX for items. So far I have 5 patrons and 81 items, so the highest patron barcode is 20010005, and for items, 30030081. When I get to 9999, I’ll go up to 2005 and 3007. There’s no reason the last 7 digits of patrons vs. items need to ever clash, and no overlap makes it easy to use abbreviated barcodes for internal memos.

A record number is created by OpenBiblio when you add an item. It’s just a numeric counter starting at one. The record number is used in OpenBiblio’s URLs, and is an easy identifier for my patrons to communicate to me. Barcodes are good too, but the problem is that they are transient, while record numbers are static (as long as I don’t delete the record). Also, the record number stands for the whole record, while a barcode is just for one item. There could be 10 copies of one item, but there still is one record number. So it makes sense to divorce barcodes from record numbers.

Of course, since I’m printing barcodes myself on a home laser printer, there’s no reason for barcodes to be transient. If a patron loses his library card, I just print up a new one on the spot with the same barcode. Same for damaged barcodes on books. But I can also replace the code with a new one if that’s quicker or easier for me, if I use record numbers as the unique identifier for the record (instead of the first barcode or nothing). While OpenBiblio makes similar numbers for patrons, mainly to distinguish them in the MySQL tables, I see no reason to use them. Each patron will only ever have one barcode. Even if I offer keychain library cards, they’ll have the same numbers as the big versions.

Before we go on to cataloging, let’s take a look at library cards. I took what I learned from item barcodes and applied it here. I made a cut-out template in my graphics software, which I’m using to overly text onto in OpenOffice.org. A sheet of library cards looks like this:

Lots of library cards

Here’s the library card template (font required). To change things, I right-click the background image, click Wrap > No Wrap, go to page 2 and change the numbers or other text, then go back to page one, right-click the image again, choose Wrap > In Background, then print. This is in OpenOffice.org 2.2.0. I haven’t upgraded to the new version, but it should be the same. To use them, I print them on card stock (a.k.a. matte photo paper), cut them out with scissors, then laminate them with packing tape (carefully). Of course I enter them into OpenBiblio too. I created custom fields under Admin > Member Fields, for alternate library cards, driver’s licenses, notes, and dates of birth. Those look like this:

OpenBiblio custom fields

The logic with the alternate cards is this: a patron can get a card and add his Volusia and/or Flagler cards, so he can use those instead if he forgets his Thripp card. If he does that, I look him up by name because OpenBiblio won’t allow searching by custom fields (I may fix this later), and then approve the alternate card if the numbers match. Primary Card Origin is different; a patron can choose to use only his Volusia, Flagler, or other library card to identify himself in the Thripp system, in which case I can use the built-in barcode search on the third-party card, and the patron doesn’t even need a Thripp card. In that case, I type in the origin of the primary card in that special field (i.e. “Volusia”, “Flagler”, etc.).

Now that we have labels, barcodes, and cards out of the way, the next step is cataloging. I didn’t want to do all the work myself; instead I get some of the cataloging data from the Library of Congress. The problem with this is the LoC Lookup Patch won’t work with SYN Hosting because they won’t enable the PHP YAZ module because of security concerns. I tried the alternate LoC SRU, but I get this error:

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to z3950.loc.gov:7090 (Permission denied) in /home/richardx/public_html/lib/catalog/locsru_search.php on line 98

Notice: Socket error Permission denied (13) in /home/richardx/public_html/lib/catalog/locsru_search.php on line 125

I gave up on direct import and went to USMARC files. This was hard to figure out. The way to do it is to get MarcEdit 5.1. In the software, go to Add-ins > MarcEdit Z39.50/SRU Client, go to Modify Databases, click Add Database > Import from Master List, click the second in the list (Library of Congress), click Select Resource, go back to Search Mode, click Select Database, double-click Library of Congress, search for something, and double-click the item you want to import from the results. Then, click Download Record. Rinse and repeat, using the “Append” option. After you have, say, 30 records, go to Cataloging > Upload Marc Data back in OpenBiblio, and upload the files. It should say that 30 records are added, and then you can polish the data by searching and editing under Cataloging > Bibliography Search, book by book.

I edit the data to format the title my way, clear junk from the ISBN field, make the extent field a page counter, add the cover price as cost, and create the call number based on the Dewey Decimal code. Unfortunately there’s a lot of junk like “BOOKS” and “Copy 1” in the LoC Marc records, and I haven’t found a way to filter them out. I went through the MySQL database and cleared a lot of them recently.

This still saves me a lot of time, because coming up with the information myself would be too much work. The search doesn’t work well. If ISBN fails, I try title or author, or I go to the online search and get the control number to search by as “Record Number” in MarcEdit.

Sometimes there is no Dewey Decimal classification; just Library of Congress. I hunt down the item at another library in WorldCat to see what dot code they used. It’s easier than coming up with it on my own, and I wouldn’t get it right anyway.

As an alternate for when the Library of Congress has nothing, I installed the Amazon Lookup Module, which actually works. It just gets a few things like title, page count, publication date, author, and sometimes DDC code, but it helps.

Note that when I say “install,” this isn’t your typical WordPress plugin installation. This is getting down and dirty adding and editing pieces of code. Some modules are even distributed as hard-to-use-on-Windows .patch files, which scamper about editing two-dozen files in the OpenBiblio core. I’ve changed so much stuff, that when I upgrade to the next version, I’ll be merging the author’s changes with mine rather than mine with the author’s. It’s a completely different mindset.

Cataloging constructs are yours to set. Unfortunately, it’s rather inflexible because you have to work on a per-record basis, but this is expected with ILS’s. The standards are lower than with photo-cataloging software, because librarianship is considered a full-time job (time is cheap) and most libraries have fewer books than I have photos. I try to get things right the first time, meaning I use consistent formatting like putting a period at the end of the extended title and after the author’s name, keeping the ISBN field clean, using consistent capitalization, etc. This is a typical record. I let a lot of the Library of Congress’ stuff stay the same to save time, but the fields that I’m picky about are the ones that are shown in search results. Speaking of which…

This is the default search system:

OpenBiblio old search

And this is mine:

OpenBiblio new search

And mine has this, too:

OpenBiblio scoping

I realize no one knows what “federated” and “scoping” mean, but they’re such cool words I don’t care. You’ll learn it if you use my OPAC. OPAC stands for online public access catalog, for those of you not familiar with LIS jargon. LIS is library information science, and the OPAC is part of the ILS, or integrated library system. For scoping and federated search, I applied the Advanced Search by Title, Collection, Material Type .patch file using TortiseSVN, then modified it to fit my needs by removing the material type field (because it’s the same as collections in my library), changing “Search All” to “Federated,” and adding barcode and call-number search to it. This is an easy MySQL query addition, because the barcodes and call numbers are stored right in the biblio table in the database.

I like how the search works, because it matches partial words. I can type in “mel” as an author search, and I’ll get Typee by Herman Melville, which is the only book by him in my catalog right now. The Call Number search is good because I put useful data in the call number: “LT” for large type, “BIO” for biographies, “J DVD” for kids’ movies, “FICTION” for fiction, etc. So you can search by it. I haven’t figured out how to implement boolean queries yet, but what I have is pretty good.

This is the code behind the search. It’s in opac/index.php and shared/biblio_search.php, to be displayed below the search results so you can search again right from there. If you use it, do it after applying the patch I mentioned. This ASSUMES that you’re using mod_rewrite to change shared/biblio_search.php to search-results. Change action=”../search-results” to action=”../shared/biblio_search.php” on line 1 if the assumption is false.

<form name=”phrasesearch” method=”POST” action=”../search-results”>
<table class=”primary”><tr><th valign=”top” nowrap=”yes” align=”left”>Search the Catalog</td></tr><tr><td nowrap=”true” class=”primary”><select name=”searchType”>
<option value=”all” selected>Federated
<option value=”title”>Title
<option value=”author”>Author
<option value=”subject”>Subjects
<option value=”barcodeNmbr”>Barcode
<option value=”callnmbr”>Call Number
</select>
<input type=”text” name=”searchText” size=”55″ maxlength=”256″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”sortBy” value=”default”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”tab” value=”<?php echo H($tab); ?>”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”lookup” value=”<?php echo H($lookup); ?>”>
<input type=”submit” value=”Search!” class=”button”>
</td></tr></table> <table class=”primary”><tr><th valign=”top” nowrap=”yes” align=”left”>Advanced: Scoping (Optional)</td></tr><tr><td nowrap=”true” class=”primary”><script type=”text/javascript” language=”JavaScript”>
function selectAll(ident) { var checkBoxes = document.getElementsByName(ident); for (i = 0; i < checkBoxes.length; i++) { if (checkBoxes[i].checked == true) { checkBoxes[i].checked = false; } else { checkBoxes[i].checked = true; } } }</script>
<input type=”checkbox” name=”selectall” value=”select_all” onclick=”selectAll(‘collec[]’);”>Flip <?php $dmQ = new DmQuery(); $dmQ->connect(); $dms = $dmQ->get(“collection_dm”); $dmQ->close(); foreach ($dms as $dm) { echo ‘<input type=”checkbox” value=”‘.$dm->getCode().'” name=”collec[]”> ‘.H($dm->getDescription()).” n”; } ?></td></tr></table></form>

I compressed some of it to one line, to make it really hard to read, because I like making things harder than necessary. It makes it easy to scroll through in the file, and I shouldn’t need to change that part. If I do, I’ll just look through it carefully. It seems to make more sense to my brain than regular, fluffy code.

In shared/global_constants.php, I have this:

define(“OBIB_SEARCH_BARCODE”,”1″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_TITLE”,”2″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_AUTHOR”,”3″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_SUBJECT”,”4″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_NAME”,”5″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_ALL”,”6″);
define(“OBIB_SEARCH_CALLNMBR”,”7″);

The beginning of the search function in my classes/BiblioSearchQuery.php file looks like this:

function search($type, &$words, $page, $sortBy,
$collecs=array(), $materials=array(), $opacFlg=true) {
# reset stats
$this->_rowNmbr = 0;
$this->_currentRowNmbr = 0;
$this->_currentPageNmbr = $page;
$this->_rowCount = 0;
$this->_pageCount = 0;

# setting sql join clause
$join = “from biblio left join biblio_copy on biblio.bibid=biblio_copy.bibid “;

# setting sql where clause
$criteria = “”;
if ((sizeof($words) == 0) || ($words[0] == “”)) {
if ($opacFlg) $criteria = “where opac_flg = ‘Y’ “;
} else {
if ($type == OBIB_SEARCH_BARCODE) {
$criteria = $this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio_copy.barcode_nmbr”),$words);
} elseif ($type == OBIB_SEARCH_AUTHOR) {
$join .= “left join biblio_field on biblio_field.bibid=biblio.bibid ”
. “and biblio_field.tag=’700′ ”
. “and (biblio_field.subfield_cd=’a’ or biblio_field.subfield_cd=’b’) “;
$criteria = $this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio.author”,”biblio.responsibility_stmt”,”biblio_field.field_data”),$words);
} elseif ($type == OBIB_SEARCH_SUBJECT) {
$criteria = $this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio.topic1″,”biblio.topic2″,”biblio.topic3″,”biblio.topic4″,”biblio.topic5”),$words);
} elseif ($type == OBIB_SEARCH_ALL) {
$criteria =
$this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio.topic1″,”biblio.topic2″,”biblio.topic3”,
“biblio.topic4″,”biblio.topic5”,
“biblio.title”,”biblio.title_remainder”,
“biblio.author”,”biblio.responsibility_stmt”,
“biblio.call_nmbr1″,”biblio.call_nmbr2″,”biblio.call_nmbr3″,”biblio_copy.barcode_nmbr”),$words);
} elseif ($type == OBIB_SEARCH_CALLNMBR) {
$criteria = $this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio.call_nmbr1″,”biblio.call_nmbr2″,”biblio.call_nmbr3”),$words);
} else {
$criteria =
$this->_getCriteria(array(“biblio.title”,”biblio.title_remainder”),$words);
}

And finally, this is the code that interprets the posted data, in shared/biblio_search.php:

#****************************************************************************
#* Retrieving post vars and scrubbing the data
#****************************************************************************
if (isset($_POST[“page”])) {
$currentPageNmbr = $_POST[“page”];
} else {
$currentPageNmbr = 1;
}
$searchType = $_POST[“searchType”];
$sortBy = $_POST[“sortBy”];
if ($sortBy == “default”) {
if ($searchType == “author”) {
$sortBy = “author”;
} else {
$sortBy = “title”;
}
}
$searchText = trim($_POST[“searchText”]);
# remove redundant whitespace
$searchText = eregi_replace(“[[:space:]]+”, ” “, $searchText);
if ($searchType == “barcodeNmbr”) {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_BARCODE;
$words[] = $searchText;
} else {
$words = explodeQuoted($searchText);
if ($searchType == “author”) {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_AUTHOR;
} elseif ($searchType == “subject”) {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_SUBJECT;
} elseif ($searchType == “all”) {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_ALL;
} elseif ($searchType == “callnmbr”) {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_CALLNMBR;
} else {
$sType = OBIB_SEARCH_TITLE;
}
}

// limit search results to collections and materials
$collecs = array();
if (is_array($_POST[‘collec’])) {
foreach ($_POST[‘collec’] as $value) {
array_push($collecs, $value);
}
}
$materials = array();
if (is_array($_POST[‘material’])) {
foreach ($_POST[‘material’] as $value) {
array_push($materials, $value);
}
}

Notice that I added CALLNMBR and BARCODE search, the logic for which was enumerated in classes/BiblioSearchQuery.php. It’s a good feature for my patrons to find an on-hand item in the OPAC, and for me it’s especially helpful.

I revamped OpenBiblio’s search results. A typical result looks like this:

OpenBiblio new search result

Compare to the old style:

OpenBiblio old search result

Notice all the new stuff in the top image? The link is bold. The extended title is below. No more small text. Material is gone (my collections’ titles make it self-evident). The record number is shown. The call number is important, so it’s bolded purple, and on the same line as the collection to save space. On Shelf status is bold and green; a great visual cue. It’s not “checked in” anymore, it’s the more sensible “On Shelf”. I changed that right in the database, in the biblio_status_dm table. Most importantly, do you notice the wonderful info line? Everything you could ever want to know is right there. It’s year / ISBN / pages or minutes / cost / Amazon.com link / # of circulations. That really puts a lot of power into the hands of your patrons.

I wrote/modified the code for my set-up, so you’ll have to change some things if you want to use it. This goes in shared/biblo_search.php, above the footer. Here it is:

<tr>
<td nowrap=”true” class=”primary” valign=”top” align=”center” rowspan=”2″>
<?php echo H($biblioQ->getCurrentRowNmbr());?>. 
<a target=”_blank” href=”http://lib.thripp.com/<?php if ($tab == “cataloging”) echo “e/”.HURL($biblio->getBibid()); else echo HURL($biblio->getBibid());?>”>
<img src=”../images/<?php echo HURL($materialImageFiles[$biblio->getMaterialCd()]);?>” width=”20″ height=”20″ border=”0″ align=”bottom” alt=”<?php echo H($materialTypeDm[$biblio->getMaterialCd()]);?>”></a>
</td>
<td class=”primary” valign=”top” colspan=”2″>
<table class=”primary” width=”100%”>
<tr>
<td class=”noborder” width=”1%” valign=”top”><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchTitle”); ?>:</td>
<td class=”noborder” colspan=”3″><a target=”_blank” href=”http://lib.thripp.com/<?php if ($tab == “cataloging”) echo “e/”.HURL($biblio->getBibid()); else echo HURL($biblio->getBibid());?>”><?php echo H($biblio->getTitle());?></a>
<?php $bid = HURL($biblio->getBibid());
$getxtitle = mysql_query(“SELECT title_remainder FROM biblio WHERE bibid = ‘$bid'”) or die(mysql_error());
$printxtitle = mysql_fetch_row($getxtitle);
if ($printxtitle[0] == “”) echo “”; else echo “ $printxtitle[0]”; ?></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class=”noborder” valign=”top”><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchAuthor”); ?>:</td>
<td class=”noborder” colspan=”3″><?php if ($biblio->getAuthor() != “”) echo H($biblio->getAuthor());?></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class=”noborder” valign=”top” nowrap=”yes”>Ref. #<?php echo HURL($biblio->getBibid()); ?>:</td>
<td class=”noborder” colspan=”3″><?php echo H($collectionDm[$biblio->getCollectionCd()]);?> / <?php echo H($biblio->getCallNmbr1().” “.$biblio->getCallNmbr2().” “.$biblio->getCallNmbr3()); ?></td></tr><tr><td class=”noborder” valign=”top”>Info:</td><td class=”noborder” colspan=”3″>

<?php // RXT 20080723 code:
$bid = HURL($biblio->getBibid());
$getyear = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘260’ AND subfield_cd = ‘c’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$getisbn = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ’20’ AND subfield_cd = ‘a’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$getpages = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘300’ AND subfield_cd = ‘a’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$getminutes = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ’20’ AND subfield_cd = ‘c’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$getcost = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘541’ AND subfield_cd = ‘h’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$getamz = mysql_query(“SELECT field_data FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘970’ AND subfield_cd = ‘a’ AND bibid = ‘$bid'”)
or die(mysql_error());
$printyear = mysql_fetch_row($getyear);
$printisbn = mysql_fetch_row($getisbn);
$printpages = mysql_fetch_row($getpages);
$printminutes = mysql_fetch_row($getminutes);
$printcost = mysql_fetch_row($getcost);
$printamz = mysql_fetch_row($getamz);
if ($printyear == “”) echo “Year Unknown”;
else echo $printyear[0];
echo ” / “;
if ($printisbn == “”) echo “ISBN Unavailable”;
else echo “ISBN: “.$printisbn[0];
if ($printpages == “”) echo “”;
else echo ” / “.$printpages[0];
if ($printminutes == “”) echo “”;
else echo ” / “.$printminutes[0];
echo ” / $”.$printcost[0];
if ($printamz == “Not on Amazon.com”) echo “”;
elseif ($printamz != “”) echo ” / <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/”.$printamz[0].”/brilliaphotog-20″ title=”See this item on Amazon.com”>Amazon.com</a> / “;
elseif ($printisbn != “”) echo ” / <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/”.$printisbn[0].”/brilliaphotog-20″ title=”See this item on Amazon.com”>Amazon.com</a> / “;
else echo ” / “;
$getCircs = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(bibid) FROM biblio_status_hist WHERE bibid = ‘$bid'”) or die(mysql_error());
$getCircsRes = mysql_fetch_row($getCircs); if ($getCircsRes[0] == ‘1’) echo ” (1 circ)”; else echo ” ($getCircsRes[0] circs)”; ?>

</td></tr></table></td></tr>
<?php
if ($biblio->getBarcodeNmbr() != “”) {
?>
<tr>
<td class=”primary” ><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchCopyBCode”); ?>: <?php echo H($biblio->getBarcodeNmbr());?>
<?php if ($lookup == ‘Y’) { ?>
<a href=”javascript:returnLookup(‘barcodesearch’,’barcodeNmbr’,'<?php echo H(addslashes($biblio->getBarcodeNmbr()));?>’)”><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchOutIn”); ?></a> | <a href=”javascript:returnLookup(‘holdForm’,’holdBarcodeNmbr’,'<?php echo H(addslashes($biblio->getBarcodeNmbr()));?>’)”><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchHold”); ?></a>
<?php } ?>
</td>
<td class=”primary” ><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchCopyStatus”); ?>: <?php $status = H($biblioStatusDm[$biblio->getStatusCd()]); if ($status == ‘On Shelf’) echo “On Shelf”; elseif ($status == ‘On the Shelving Cart’) echo “On the Shelving Cart”; else echo “$status”; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php } else { ?>
<tr>
<td class=”primary” colspan=”2″ ><?php echo $loc->getText(“biblioSearchNoCopies”); ?></td>
</tr>
<?php
}
}
}
$biblioQ->close();
?>
</table> 
<?php printResultPages($loc, $currentPageNmbr, $biblioQ->getPageCount(), $sortBy); ?>

This code assumes you’re using mod_rewrite to create friendly permalinks, in the format of YOURSITE/BIBID and YOURSITE/e/BIBID for the cataloging section. I’ll tell you how later in the article. It also assumes your site is http://lib.thripp.com and your Amazon.com affiliate code is brilliaphotog-20. Change the first one definitely. Leave the second alone if you want to donate to me.

This code also makes the assumption that your using my cataloging methods I defined earlier (year field, ISBN, pages are clean, etc.). For DVDs to show the minute count instead of pages, the number MUST be in “Terms of availability:”, which is the field I chose. You can change it easily if you examine the database structure and modify the code to fit your methods. The code defines the Amazon.com ASIN as the text in the ISBN field of the record, so your ISBN fields MUST be ISBN-10 and MUST be clean (no “(pbk.)” after the numbers). I’ve defined a contingency method: create a Marc field with tag 970, subfield a, with the ASIN if it differs from the ISBN or there is no ISBN. That will be used instead. If you enter “Not on Amazon.com” as the Marc field, no Amazon.com link will show even if there is an ISBN.

“On Shelf” statuses are shown in bold green, “On the Shelving Cart” is bold orange, and everything else is bold red. Make sure to change the statuses to those in the biblio_status_dm table, or do the opposite in the code. The number of circs includes checkouts and renewals for all copies attached to the record, past and present. Links open in new windows (I added target=”blank”). This is because the search results page uses POST data instead of URL parameters, so opening in the same window and clicking back prompts a warning. I wish it used URL parameters instead.

I like my search results format. It’s a lot more useful than what I see at most libraries.

I also upgraded shared/biblio_view.php to this:

OpenBiblio new item view

A typical record before would be this:

OpenBiblio old item view

Examples for the old style are from the Frances D. Still Learning Center OPAC. They use a stock OpenBiblio install. Nearing 3000 items. OpenBiblio scales failry well.

The code for the record view page is mostly copied from the search results page, so I won’t copy it for brevity.

I created a robust statistics system on the home page, which goes around aggregating numbers in the database so that it’s always up-to-date. It has one huge flaw: it assumes each record has one and only one item. Mine do, so it isn’t a problem, but I’ll have to re-work it when that changes.

The code requires you to create config.php and global.php in the OpenBiblio root. config.php should look like this:

<?php unset($config);
$config = array();
$config[‘db_hostname’] = “localhost”;
$config[‘db_port’] = “3306”;
$config[‘db_username’] = “yourDBusername”;
$config[‘db_password’] = “yourDBpassword”;
$config[‘db_name’] = “yourDBname”; ?>

Replace the database details with your own above, then make global.php exactly as below:

<?php function db_connect() { global $config; mysql_connect($config[‘db_hostname’].”:”.$config[‘db_port’], $config[‘db_username’], $config[‘db_password’]) or die(mysql_error()); mysql_select_db($config[‘db_name’]) or die(mysql_error()); } ?>

Finally, this huge block powers the statistics:

<?php require(“../config.php”); require(“../global.php”); db_connect();
$cCount = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(copyid) FROM biblio_copy”) or die(mysql_error());
$cCountRes = mysql_fetch_row($cCount);

$cPrice = mysql_query(“SELECT SUM(field_data) FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘541’”) or die(mysql_error());
$cPriceRes = mysql_fetch_row($cPrice);

$cPages = mysql_query(“SELECT SUM(field_data) FROM biblio_field WHERE tag = ‘300’ AND subfield_cd = ‘a'”);
$cPagesRes = mysql_fetch_row($cPages);

$cNonFic = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(bibid) FROM biblio WHERE collection_cd = ‘2’”);
$cNonFicRes = mysql_fetch_row($cNonFic);

$cFic = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(bibid) FROM biblio WHERE collection_cd = ‘1’”);
$cFicRes = mysql_fetch_row($cFic);

$cDVDs = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(bibid) FROM biblio WHERE collection_cd = ’12′”);
$cDVDsRes = mysql_fetch_row($cDVDs);

$cOut = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(status_cd) FROM biblio_copy WHERE status_cd = ‘out'”) or die(mysql_error());
$cOutRes = mysql_fetch_row($cOut);

$cIn = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(status_cd) FROM biblio_copy WHERE status_cd = ‘in'”) or die(mysql_error());
$cInRes = mysql_fetch_row($cIn);

$circOuts = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(copyid) FROM biblio_status_hist WHERE status_cd = ‘out'”) or die(mysql_error());
$circOutsRes = mysql_fetch_row($circOuts);

$circRens = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(copyid) FROM biblio_status_hist WHERE status_cd = ‘crt'”) or die(mysql_error());
$circRensRes = mysql_fetch_row($circRens);

$circTotal = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(copyid) FROM biblio_status_hist”) or die(mysql_error());
$circTotalRes = mysql_fetch_row($circTotal);

$pTotal = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(mbrid) FROM member”) or die(mysql_error());
$pTotalRes = mysql_fetch_row($pTotal);

$pTotalAdults = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(classification) FROM member WHERE classification = ‘1’”) or die(mysql_error());
$pTotalAdultsRes = mysql_fetch_row($pTotalAdults);

$pTotalChildren = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(classification) FROM member WHERE classification = ‘2’”) or die(mysql_error());
$pTotalChildrenRes = mysql_fetch_row($pTotalChildren);

$pPhones = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(mbrid) FROM member WHERE home_phone != ””) or die(mysql_error());
$pPhonesRes = mysql_fetch_row($pPhones);

$pEmails = mysql_query(“SELECT COUNT(mbrid) FROM member WHERE email != ””) or die(mysql_error());
$pEmailsRes = mysql_fetch_row($pEmails);

$cAllBooks = ($cFicRes[0]+$cNonFicRes[0]);

echo “Live Statistics: 

The Thripp Public Library has $pTotalRes[0] patrons: $pTotalAdultsRes[0] adults and $pTotalChildrenRes[0] children. 

There are ”.$cCountRes[0].” items: ”.$cNonFicRes[0].” nonfiction books, ”.$cFicRes[0].” fiction books, and ”.$cDVDsRes[0].” DVDs. 

Stats: Nonfiction books: ”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($cNonFicRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])*100)); echo “%; Fiction books: ”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($cFicRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])*100)); echo “%; DVDs: ”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($cDVDsRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])*100)); echo “%. 

”; if ($cOutRes[0] == ‘1’) echo “1 item is”; else echo “$cOutRes[0] items are”; echo ” checked out and ”.$cInRes[0].” are on shelf. 

”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($cOutRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])*100)); echo “% of the catalog is checked out. The average patron has ”; printf (“%01.2f”,($cOutRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])); echo “ items out. 

There are ”; printf (“%01.2f”,($cCountRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])); echo “ items for every 1 patron. 

The collection is worth $$cPriceRes[0], or about $”; printf (“%01.2f”,($cPriceRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])); echo “ per item. 

There have been $circOutsRes[0] checkouts and $circRensRes[0] renewals; a total of $circTotalRes[0]. 

    This is an average of ”; printf (“%01.2f”,($circTotalRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])); echo “ per patron, or ”; printf (“%01.2f”,($circTotalRes[0]/$cCountRes[0])); echo “ per item. 

There are ”.$cAllBooks.” books with ”. number_format($cPagesRes[0]).” pages. The average book has ”; printf (“%01.2f”,($cPagesRes[0]/($cFicRes[0]+$cNonFicRes[0]))); echo “ pages. 

The ratio of fiction to nonfiction books is ”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($cFicRes[0]/$cNonFicRes[0])*100)); echo “%. 

The collection represents $”; printf (“%01.2f”,($cPriceRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])); echo “ of value per patron. 

”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($pPhonesRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])*100)); echo “% of my patrons have telephones and ”; printf (“%01.2f”,(($pEmailsRes[0]/$pTotalRes[0])*100)); echo “% have email accounts.”;

?>

I do know this is all over the place, it’s a mess, it’s inefficient, and it probably should all be cached. It’s working great, so I’ll cross the “I have to fix this now!” bridge when I come to it. Feeding the library address into this speed test, it’s 0.4 seconds; the same as thripp.com which is totally cached. That might slow down as the database gets bigger, but for now it’s fine.

You can use this code for your OpenBiblio site, by adding it to opac/index.php, but you have to change some stuff. Notice “collection_cd” and “classification”? The arguments there are hard-coded for my database, so change them for yours. Otherwise, you have to make sure to enter the cost for each item, and the number of pages as “###” or “### pages” in “Physical description (Extent):” and nothing else. If you do this, it’s cool because you get the total number of pages in your library.

Right now, the stats look like this:

Live Statistics:
The Thripp Public Library has 5 patrons: 3 adults and 2 children.
There are 81 items: 63 nonfiction books, 15 fiction books, and 3 DVDs.
Stats: Nonfiction books: 77.78%; Fiction books: 18.52%; DVDs: 3.70%.
2 items are checked out and 79 are on shelf.
2.47% of the catalog is checked out. The average patron has 0.40 items out.
There are 16.20 items for every 1 patron.
The collection is worth $1681.82, or about $20.76 per item.
There have been 19 checkouts and 15 renewals; a total of 34.
This is an average of 6.80 per patron, or 0.42 per item.
There are 78 books with 29,786 pages. The average book has 381.87 pages.
The ratio of fiction to nonfiction books is 23.81%.
The collection represents $336.36 of value per patron.
100.00% of my patrons have telephones and 100.00% have email accounts.

It’s amazing what computers can do, no? In the print age, or even in an out-of-the-box ILS, it would take hours to compile this report, and you’d have to do it every time something changed. If anyone made reports like this, it would be once a month at best, and still it would be a great drudgery and expense. Not so anymore.

The stats are a bit messed up when you have records you’ve just imported from the Library of Congress, but not processed. Nothing fatal; the numbers are just wrong. Once you’ve done all the cataloging, it’s fine, though.

A good OPAC needs good URLs. My URLs are like lib.thripp.com/93. No titles in the URLs keeps them nice and simple-to-implement. I’m using Linux + Apache, so fixing this is easy. Let me show you my .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)$ shared/biblio_view.php?bibid=$1&tab=opac [NC]
RewriteRule ^e/([0-9]+)$ shared/biblio_view.php?bibid=$1&tab=cataloging [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ opac/index.php [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^search-results shared/biblio_search.php [L,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.lib.thripp.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://lib.thripp.com/$1 [L,R=301]

That does all the magic. Change http://lib.thripp.com, of course. This requires changes in opac/index.php and shared/biblio_search.php to match. If you’ve used my code in this article, it’s already done, though. Now, you can jump from a regular view to the view with the edit links by adding “e/” before the bibid. And the OPAC is mapped to the root instead of home/index.php, which is cluttered and has a lot of staff functions. I don’t know why it’s the default home page. Anyway, after the change you can still get there by URL by adding “/home” to your URL. That’s the best way, because not having a link to the staff area from the home page is a bit of security through obscurity.

I’m happy to have started my library, despite being just for family and friends for now. I need to buy a house or a warehouse to host it at, and then open it up to the world. OpenBiblio has good facilities for checkouts, renewals, limits, fines, and even receipt printing, and I feel I can build upon them through my own programming, so on the tech site I’m ready. I plan to have a lending library with a limit of 5 items out per person at a time. You can renew and place holds, but only by phone or by coming in (this is OpenBiblio’s limitation; other OPACs have these features). You get three weeks on everything, except DVDs which are one week. Late fees are 15 cents per item per day.

It might be 5 years before I’m making enough money from advertising on this website to find a space to open the library. I’m not too worried. It’s better to start now than to start later. Here’s a photo of the stacks now:

The Thripp Library shelves

These books displaced my photos, but it’s worth it. I used to have stacks of photos on these shelves, but I crammed them in with other photos on my other bookshelf to make way for the library. If you’re a good friend, feel free to come over to my house, get a library card, and check something out. Make a donation to get this off the ground. If you make a donation, you’re a good friend.

I’m seeing a big gap between what public libraries are… and what they could be. There are no charismatic leaders in librarianship. Most everyone is dull and unoriginal; even the software and basics like online catalogs need lots of work. This is because most libraries are government-funded; even many academic branches are not immune. So the strategy is “let’s waste as much money as possible and leech from the taxpayers,” not “let’s work efficiently and make a real contribution to the community.” More frighteningly, libraries are becoming elitist, discarding old, unpopular, or “offensive” books and rejecting self-published books or anything without an ISBN number. I’ve written a mission statement for the Thripp Public Library to address this:

The Thripp Public Library is founded on a healthy attitude of dissension and skepticism, a distaste for lies and fallacy, and a love of learning from history. To know history and avoid 1984-style revisionism, it’s important to keep old books around. Unfortunately the Volusia County library system doesn’t do this, as I’ve gotten many of my library’s gems right from their book sales. These are my library’s universal principles:

1. Timelessness eschews popularity.
2. The message trumps the medium.
3. Truth is independent of source.

This means that good information can come from any person or organization in any form, be it a book, magazine, CD, DVD, website, etc. I’ve founded the library on timelessness, meaning that I refuse to destroy parts of the collection that are rarely looked at, because they are often the most important. Popular movies circulate more, but are fleeting and unscholarly. I’ll include them if they’re cheap and terribly entertaining, though.

Here’s an example item, with the Thripp barcode:

Thomas Jefferson book

And here’s what a Thripp library card looks like:

Richard X. Thripp's Thripp library card

Cataloging is on hold till I go to the store, because I’ve run out of clear packing tape to affix barcodes and spine labels.

Take a look at the catalog. Just click Search! to see everything. Then come back and tell me you’re not impressed.

The Perils of Redundant Linking

Posted on 2008-07-19 by richardxthripp

Sometimes I’ll write a post, and I’ll mention something twice. Often it’s my wonderful camera, a Canon Rebel XTi. And then I wonder: should I make the text a link twice? In the Rebel XTi case, it’s a link to Amazon.com (an evil affiliate link). Sometimes, the link will be with different text, or in an entirely different context than the first, though it goes to the same page. That could be linking to Glass Drops once while talking about night photography, and then again when discussing raindrops, in the same article.

I’ve noticed other people doing this, and I’m finding it ever more annoying. I’ve found there are two approaches to double-linking:

1. Link redundantly, because your readers will be annoyed and confused that your talking about a subject so much but not linking to it, if they missed the first link. Or do it to really get people to click your affiliate link. More commonly, readers scan your content rather than reading closely. Either they scan by default, or find your writing useless. To accommodate that group, you have to mention important stuff as many times as possible and hope it won’t be missed. Your writing for the unengaged rather than the engaged, and your putting the wrong ones first.

2. Don’t link redundantly, because you choose to cater to thorough rather than casual readers. Readers who take in every word and click every link in perfect succession. Readers who will be annoyed and confused if they find the same page twice in their tab bar after a work-out session with the scroll button. I click every link if I like what I’m reading, because I know the author will have good recommendations about the topic. And I’ve been finding it quite disconcerting when a good author is type 1.

I’ve decided to abandon double-linking because my audience should be type 2 rather than type 1. This goes along with blogging selectively and writing insightful, comprehensive articles rather than shallow, fleeting posts. Stuff like Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value rather than a Quick Post on HDR. Stuff that’s unbelievably useful rather than unbelievably useless. Gold rather than garbage.

I don’t mind redundant links outside of a single post. Even if the same links are in the categories list or header, it’s okay, because that content is generally fixed and largely ignored. A contextual link going to the same place is fine, because it adds to the content of the article, unlike saying “check the sidebar.” The problem also is that the header and sidebar are expensive places, because they show up on every page. I can’t be sure how long a link will stay there. If its value is transient it can’t stay up once the value is gone. There is no space for clutter. A services link is still worthwhile now, but in three months I may stop taking commissions entirely, and “check the header for services” would be out of date. The other problem is that it’s better to show than to tell. A direct link is always better than saying “see here” or “search Google.”

Within a single post, Type 1 linking just doesn’t bode with this style at all. It’s fine if you don’t value your readers’ time and assume they don’t read what you write. If you assume no one’s reading, it will come true, because you’ll start writing stuff that’s valuable to no one. But if you’re writing for the heart first, and profit second, it just doesn’t work. Type 2 is the only way to go.

Th8.us: URL trimming service

Posted on 2008-07-09 by richardxthripp

I created a URL trimming service at Th8.us. The URLs are shorter than Tinyurl: 19 characters instead of 25, in the format http://xxxxx.th8.us. I put it together using Hidayet Dogan’s Phurl for my Twitter account, but then thought it should be released to the world. I made modifications to the code so the random part is a virtual subdomain, is five characters instead of six (it’ll be a while before the 24 million combinations are used up), it respects trailing slashes, it links to the new address instead of just showing it in plain text, and it tells you the number of characters you’ve saved (it’ll even be negative if the original address was shorter). Also, hard-to-read characters are excluded (0, 1, j, l, u, and v). The service is simple, fast, and clean, unlike Thripp.com, which is heavy and feature-laden (flexible) and thus more prone to outages. th8.us shares no code and uses a separate database from Thripp.com, so you can count on the URLs working forever (barring problems with my host, SYN Hosting).

Here’s the first trimmed URL as an example: http://oorph.th8.us/.

Drag the one-click Twitter bookmarklet from the home page to your bookmarks toolbar. It’ll take you to Twitter and type in the shortened URL of the page you were visiting into the post box.

My photos on the HTTP 500 Internal Server error page

Posted on 2008-07-03 by richardxthripp

I made a custom Internal Server Error page for the Thripp.com network, with all the photos from my portfolio. Error pages are fun again.

I put a lot of ads there too, so I can monetize the outages. Plus, the links are to the photos on my jpgmag.com gallery, and all the thumbnails are on Photobucket, so the page is light-weight, won’t chew up bandwidth, and makes my photos accessible when the database is down. It’s only 10KB!

I posted this to digg too:

Check out this HTTP 500 page; instead of being rudely interrupted with a cryptic error message and an accusation that you broke the server, on Thripp.com, you’re greeted by beautiful photography (and plenty of ads to boot).

Enjoy.

Switched to SYN Hosting, Outage is Over

Posted on 2008-06-19 by richardxthripp

Hi everyone. The website’s been down for the last 18 hours, since 7:30 A.M. (EDT) this morning, but I’m back now. I discovered it when I awoke at 2 P.M. (I’m happily unemployed), and immediately began trouble-shooting. It wasn’t on my end at all; it had to be Netfirms’ fault (they’ve given me trouble before). Netfirms wasn’t serving up anything from the MySQL database, which cripples me, because this blog is all dynamic.

Netfirms has been growing progressively worse in the past two weeks… FTP has been terribly slow, the website is slow, it’s gone down a couple of times because of them, etc. I called them… and after 30 minutes on hold, hearing only an automated message telling me how “extremely important” I am, I just hung up. By then, it was 3:30, and I decided to give up and switch web hosts. Even though I have Netfirms’ first-year $10 special ending on August 2, I can’t stand it anymore. I did an hour of research, and picked SYN Hosting because they sound good and honest. I sent in the request for an account, and then headed for school (my night class was from 5:30 to 9 P.M.), not being able to do anything more for the time. I had a test in precalculus algebra, and I did poorly on it (will find out Monday). If I do well on Wednesday’s final (2008-06-25), the grade is dropped, so that’s what I need to do now. I should be fine with 85% on the final.

So when I got back home, I got my email from SYN Hosting. I’d already started downloading the files from Netfirms before leaving, and it was done. I promptly switched DNS servers in my triple.com control panel and began uploading files to SYN Hosting. Still haven’t done everything (the stock photos are ~160MB and will take hours). But the site’s back.

It takes a long time on my slow ADSL connection with just 128kb upstream bandwidth. Especially when you have 3000 small files, like with my WordPress MU installation and army of plugins. And I had some trouble importing the MySQL database, since it is so large (23MB). I got it all worked out finally. I’m glad to be back, and sorry for the trouble.

All of the thripp.com network was down. I’m posting this here, because I get 60% of the community’s traffic.

SYN charges $8.34 a month for their basic plan, billed every six months. I searched first, and found the SAVEME offer. Basically, if you’ve had your domain for over six months and are hosted elsewhere, you get three months free. I sent this emphatic message in the notes field when I registered:

Save me! I’m using Netfirms now, and after four outages in the past two days (one right now), and no one to answer their phones, I’ve had it, even though I have a over a month left on my contract. SYN Hosting is a lot better, I can tell.

Boy, was I surprised to log on and see that I’d been given six months free. Here’s what my invoice looks like:

SYN hosting paid

Mind you, I haven’t actually paid them anything. I was expecting to get an email to do so, or at least provide credit card or PayPal billing information for their security, but no. You don’t often see this kind of commitment from hosting companies.

What I’m really enjoying, is the fast loading times. Checking on this website speed test, I see my page takes under a second to be compiled:

thripp.com loads quickly

In my last days with Netfirms, it was often over 4 seconds. Waiting isn’t fun.

Netfirms claims to give me something ridiculous like 2TB of disk space and 2000TB of bandwidth. SYN Hosting keeps it real: 6GB disk space and 120GB bandwidth each month. And their interface and control panels are better. You can even see how much CPU and RAM resources you’re using. That’s far more important than bandwidth, because with a dynamic, database-powered site, bandwidth isn’t what drags you down.

Managing your own website is hard work. I’m glad now I can stop worrying about it disappearing. Go ahead and try out SYN Hosting; they’re a real gem. Make sure to enter the coupon “saveme” and tell them who you’re transferring from in the notes, if you want a few months free. I’m looking forward to much more enjoyable days here, for my readers/viewers and me.

How to give file names to your photos

Posted on 2008-06-08 by richardxthripp

This is a lengthy post (~4500 words). I cover file names in great detail, but go much further into the differences between a literal and abstract asset management system (descriptive file names vs. not), spend many paragraphs debunking time zones, daylight time, traditional date formatting, and use 500 words to debate underscores vs. hyphens vs. spaces to break up words in your web addresses. The implications go way beyond mere file names. Read on if you’re in for a adventure . . .

I don’t like that all the articles I read on organizing your photos recommend giving them descriptive file names. The problem with files and directories is that they’re just like their non-computerized equivalents: rigid and inflexible. Your photo cannot appear under “flowers” and “macros,” because a file can only belong to one folder. Similarly, it can only have one file name, and if you fill that with keywords so you can use the Windows search to find it, the name becomes long and unwieldy. Plus, if you take a lot of photos (I’m averaging 500 a month), it’s totally impractical.

Why is it impractical? Because you’re restricted in length and taxonomy, there are no connections between files besides rigid folders and rudimentary keyword searches, and you’re adding metadata in a bad place, because the file name should be the unique and persistent identifier for the image. If you want to change all your pictures of “cars” to “automobiles,” you’re in trouble. Every time your taxonomy scheme changes, you have to change dozens of file names. This is fine if you’re the average, uninformed user: you have one copy of each photo in “My Pictures” on your hard drive, and that’s all that exists. But even then, unless you’re use batch renaming software like 1-4a rename (the biggest kludge ever), it’s still tedious to change your terminology. If you’re an informed, smarter user, you’re backing your photos up to the closest thing we have to an archival media: recordable CDs or DVDs. And then, you have to deal with all sorts of tracking issues when you change your file names, because the names of the files on the discs you’ve already burned are etched in stone.

The ideal file name provides no information whatsoever about it’s content. I’m all for ideals, but this is just impractical. No info about the file is like DSCF0001.jpg. A serial number, sort of. But really, what we need to use is some constant, timeless fact about the photo. The date and time. If you’ve set your camera properly, it’s recorded in the Exif metadata of each file (or for RAW, somewhere like it), so we can just pull it out and use it as the file name. But first, the other options . . .

Maybe you think you can be smart—you’ll just combine it all to get the best of both worlds. Create folders by date, make the start of the file name the date. Then, give a whole bunch of info about the file after that. Perhaps you’ll even pioneer a controlled vocabulary system so you have a taxonomy you feel you can stick with for the next few decades. I love this page: File Naming Conventions for Digitally-stored Images. It’s a classic example of this newbie mindset: that you can control everything within the Draconian structure of the file name, enumerate all the important details, pick a syntax to stand the test of time, fit it all in 64 characters, and apply the same processes to the hundreds of photos you’ll be taking every month. With this gauntlet, you could become a librarian and fill eight-hour work days, because there’s no end to the battle. As soon as you take a photo, five minutes of administrative decisions for your “catalog” come into play. And you don’t have a “catalog,” because if you had one, you wouldn’t be using file names.

For pre-computer libraries, we had card catalogs. We can’t move books about on a shelf like we can records in a computer database, so it makes sense to have the metadata stored separate from the items being cataloged. Film photographers devised similar (though hopefully less complex) methods to track their negatives. With a card catalog, if you want to add a new subject, you create new records for all the items under that subject, even though they already have other records (cards). If an author has a pseudonym, he gets a separate card. Card catalogs waste space, are redundant, hard to use, and torturous to update. Using file names to organize your photos is no different.

One principle that I hold, is that it is easier to have one way to do things, than several divergent methods. The same applies to organizing your photos, and I suggest you simplify your life by doing the same everywhere.

What are these things? First, write the date as YYYY-MM-DD, always padded with zeroes if needed, and never omitting the century. The time is HH:MM:SS with a 24-hour clock, always padded with zeroes. When written together, separate the date and time with the letter “T”. So the time now is 2008-06-08T18:30:22. This is ISO 8601 date formatting, and it will serve you well for all your papers and computerized files. The reasons: first, it’s unambiguous across regions. In the U.S.A. we often do MM-DD-YY (completely senseless), and in the U.K. it’s DD-MM-YY (better, but still senseless). When you put the date in descending order, with the full year, everyone understands it. No one’s going to think it’s YYYY-DD-MM… because that would be stupid.

Also, we have this crazy predilection for dividing the day into two halves, one “A.M.,” and the second, “P.M.,” which stands for something in Latin. I don’t even want to know how this came about. It’s just pointless. Don’t even think of naming your files with that format. They won’t even sort properly. The correct form of the date (descending order, each field padded with zeroes), sorts chronologically in even the oldest, simplest computer systems, because they’re all based on lexicographical order.

Next, give up time zones. Even if we’re looking just at your file names, why would you use a time zone? What are you going to do when you begin your great photographic adventure, crossing time zones left and right? Are you going to change your camera’s clock each time? What happens when you get home, and you want to show a chronological slideshow of your journey to your family? But then, you have photos you snapped at 3:30, and then you have photos that you snapped at 3:00, but really they were snapped a half-hour later than the ones from 3:30, because you crossed into a new time zone. Do you want to have to work out that mess every time you travel the world?

“But Richard,” you might say. “Why can’t I just use my home time zone all the time, and put that in my file name?” Sure, you can do that. But then you’re holding an arbitrary time zone while in another, arbitrary time zone. What if you live in California, but you vacation to Florida, keeping your California time zone on your camera? Then a year later you move to Florida, and switch the time zone for all photos from then on. Then you go back to California to visit your family, but now, you’re keeping the Florida time zone. Then 50 years later your grandkids are trying to decipher the mess you’ve left them. Or ten years later, you want the exact time you shot a photo, but you can’t even remember.

Even worse than time zones, is Daylight Saving Time. Just looking back in Florida (my state). In 2006, it started in April and ended in October. In 2007, it was changed to start three weeks earlier and end one week later. In 1974, it started on January 6. And try to figure out the rules in any other state or city, and you’re in for headache. In Indiana, there is no daylight time till 2006, and now they’re on board with us. Some cities followed daylight time before, though. Daylight time isn’t enough; many counties and even half the state have switched back and forth between Eastern and Central time. There’s a whole article on Wikipedia about it: Time in Indiana. Can you tell me they’d need that if they followed rational time all the time (UTC)? We even have a year 2007 problem due to the U.S.A.’s recent changes to daylight time. I don’t remember where my government got the power to declare to me what time it is.

This is a mess, a terrible mess. It’s so bad, the Zoneinfo database defines rules by city, because it can’t even assume the rules will be consistent across a particular region. Reading the Wikipedia entry… “The database attempts to record historical time zones and all civil changes since 1970, the Unix time epoch.” It attempts? We aren’t even daring enough to claim that it has all the rules for the past 38 years? In 2050, maybe we will be attempting to remember all the rules going back to 2012? Do you really want to be poisoning your photos’ metadata with this nonsense?

Daylight time can even kill you. This report, titled FDA Preliminary Public Health Notification: Unpredictable Events in Medical Equipment due to New Daylight Saving Time Change, warns about the changes to daylight time that began in the U.S.A. in 2007:

If a medical device or medical device network is adversely affected by the new DST date changes, a patient treatment or diagnostic result could be:

* incorrectly prescribed
* provided at the wrong time
* missed
* given more than once
* given for longer or shorter durations than intended
* incorrectly recorded

A treatment could be missed or given more than once? And we’re doing all this to “save” energy? In reality, it leeches from everyone. Computers, DVRs, VCRs, and countless other devices need to be needlessly complex to accommodate these idiotic rules. People have to change clocks—dozens of them—twice a year (everything has a clock now). And I’m sure the missed appointments number into the thousands. It messes up all e-commerce systems too. All the sudden you have one hour that’s skipped in the spring (2 to 3 A.M.), or duplicated in the winter (2 to 1 A.M.). You don’t have accurate statistics for that day or hour, and any order tracking software that’s worth its salt has to include extra code to work with the phenomenon without exploding.

The entire concept of time-zoning is evil and pointless. Daylight Saving Time is even worse. We must forsake both in a unilateral shift of thought. You can be the catalyst. The beast must be slain. Of course, you can’t give it up for appointments, or at your job (unless you’re a free-thinker and self-employed), because everyone else is using a convoluted system. But like Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” So do it wherever you can.

When you switch to better date formats and smarter time, you’ll fix all sorts of issues on your computer. Now you can just prefix your documents with the date (YYYYMMDD), and they’ll sort in order because the date is in the right order. Same for the time, with the better 24-hour system. I gave up daylight time and local time on 2007-01-01, as my New Year’s resolution. Before that, I’d have lots of issues with file synchronization, because the modern NTFS file system is pretty smart about time zones, and uses UTC all the time just like you’ll be doing. Your time is just an offset from it, and when your computer’s clock switches for daylight time, all the files change (even if they shouldn’t and don’t need to). So then, if you’re backing up to other devices, especially ones using old file systems like USB flash drives, all the time stamps are wrong. You’re synchronization software (I use SyncBackSE) will re-copy all the files thinking they’ve changed, even tens of gigabytes of them. There’s some option to override that in the newer versions, and most other software has hopefully provided for the problem as well. But it doesn’t need to be a problem. If you’d give up the silly notions of changing time that you’ve been brain-washed into by the state, you won’t ever need to deal with this problem again.

You do have to go all the way and give up time zones while you’re at it. My clock says 20:00 right now, but the “real time” is 16:00 here (or 4 P.M. if you’d prefer). If I need to make the adjustment for friends or relatives that are still stuck in their old ways, it’s a snap to do in my head. Then, if my friends use my computer, they get to be confused and ask funny questions like “why would anyone do this?” Before, I’d just say “nevermind, I could never make you understand it.” Now I can, with this article. You can too. Don’t let anyone sway you in your decision to rebel against time zones. Time zones are for average people. They mess up online communication, they hinder commerce, they confuse travelers. “Noon” should be completely arbitrary. It isn’t even when the sun is at the top of the sky now, with the daylight time problem and our expansive time zones. Do you think that with a time zone that’s hundreds of miles wide, that “true” noon is going to be at the same time in all of them? To do that, we’d have to have time zones by the second, that change every few feet. We don’t even have a good system now, so whatever we move to has to be better.

What’s my final recommendation? Switch your camera and computer to Universal Coordinated Time (four hours ahead of North American Eastern Daylight Time). Abandon “logical” file names. There was nothing logical about them after all. Keep the Gregorian calendar. Use the date for your name; don’t go for completely arbitrary names (like DSCF0001). Format it as YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS@#. The number counts from 1 if there are multiple photos in one second (burst shooting). The @ is your initials. Not your name, just two or three letters in case you get your family on board for naming files like this, and you need basic tracking. You can name your photos with their titles, if it’s small scale like for an email or a website. Never do it in your main archive, because you’ll have a lot of photos there and you want consistency. If you’re any sort of photographer, then you will have a lot of photos there. 100 a day perhaps. 20 a day if you’re like me and cull a bit more. It’s still a lot, so you need a good system. Put the files into folders by month, like 200806.

The whole reason to name your files like this, is because it can be easily automated. You can have a computer program apply your file-name format to all your photos as you save them to your computer. I recommend and use Downloader Pro for this, because it’s flexible but not horribly complicated. My file-name string is {Y}{m}{D}-{H}{M}{S}rxt{l} . Then, after downloading and backing up my photos (which Downloader Pro can do too), I delete them from the memory card immediately. Oh, and when I plug in my memory card, the software starts up and copies the photos automatically. Very nice and swift. It’s $30 though.

If you want something free, Digital Image Mover looks good. If I used it, my string would be %Y%M%D-%H%m%Srxt . There’s no counter that only comes into play if there’s a name clash, so if you have two photos in the same second, it won’t work for you. You can use %c, but then you’ll have a number on every file. What I’d do is just rename the problem files on my own, because it doesn’t come up often (unless you burst shoot and don’t do your deletions in-camera). Be sure to check “Use EXIF ‘DateTimeOriginal’ field” and “Verify files after copying” under Options. You should always use Exif time instead of the file time-stamp, which can be seconds later (because it’s from when the camera wrote the file to the memory card, not exactly when it was snapped). Verifying checks the source against the new copy twice. It’s slower, but it’s insurance against corruption.

The third option is to just move your files over in Windows Explorer, and then use IrfanView to rename them. I used to do this. It works well, though you have to do it each time you import your photos. Go into File > Batch Conversion/Rename, and specify a file name like this: $E36867(%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)rxt . Replace “rxt” with a two or three-letter name for yourself. You’ll have to deal with file name collisions in the same second on your own.

Keep in mind that Exif metadata is only a property of JPEG files, not RAW, and you should be shooting in RAW if you have it. I know Downloader Pro gets the date in whatever proprietary format my Canon Rebel XTi formats it to, but I’m not sure about the other programs.

Anyway, it’s important you switch file name schemas now; change gears completely. Whatever you did in the past is past. Gone, zilch, nada. Don’t change old stuff, don’t update, just switch to a smart naming scheme now, because this is something you shouldn’t have to deal with anymore. Same if you’re on board to abandon traditional date formatting and time zones in your daily life. You shouldn’t have to wait until you catalog your photos to being archiving them to discs or sharing them with friends. But that’s what you have to do if you use “reasonable” file names.

Let me make a note here that you should never use spaces or capital letters in your file names. When you post them to the Internet, that causes trouble. URIs aren’t supposed to have spaces; read this for a good discussion of it: spaces in file names. In the UNIX world, which your web server will probably be using a derivative of, all file names are case sensitive. I know, I don’t like it either. But it’s better just to stick to lowercase so if anyone writes down a web address from your website, they don’t get mixed up. Sure, when you need to post your photos online, you could just change the file names. But it’s so much better to get it right to start with.

I remember posting an album to Photobucket to share with friends… and I found that since I’d used capital letters in the album name, it wouldn’t work when you typed it in lowercase. Not at all. Photobucket considers “Photos” and “photos” to be completely different. You can even have both albums and put different photos in them. This is nothing like Microsoft Windows (which is case insensitive except for display), and it’s confusing for everyone. So just stick with lowercase.

For separating words in file names, don’t use spaces ever. Hyphens or underscores are your best bets. I like hyphens, because if you have something like my_photos, and it’s underlined, it shows as my_photos. The underscore looks like a space. And it will be underlined, if it’s a part of a URI on your future website. And it will confuse your readers, because they’ll be sending the URI about by email when your site gets popular… and then someone will write it down on paper to share with a friend… and they’ll use a space instead of your beloved underscore… and then the world will end, because someone won’t be able to look at the photo or article that will change their life, all because you used underscores instead of hyphens in your URIs.

Historically, Google has treated underscores as part of a word, but hyphens as spaces. This meant that if you used underscores, you’d rank much lower in Google searches in general. This changed a year back; read Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google. But still keep using hyphens, to prevent the issue with underlining. Also, they look nicer and are easier to type (no holding down Shift). You may be asking: why are you talking so much about the Internet, if this is an article about the file names of photos on my computer, which aren’t even on the Internet? The reason is that if you ever post your photos online, the file names will become an issue. It’s always easier to do things one way, as I talked about several paragraphs up. Your computer keyboard doesn’t do things one way, and that is why the Caps and Num lock keys cause so much trouble.

How should you implement your catalog? Definitely not by file name; that’s the lowest form of cataloging. It hardly even deserves to fall under the umbrella term of “digital asset management.” But of course you know that (or are fighting it) if you’ve read this far. Don’t do it directly with IPTC metadata either; that’s barely a step up from file names. Use an abstracted database. Browse your photos in that database. I like IMatch, because it’s scalable, terribly complicated yet still easy to use, and it decouples your photos from your files. Basically, the assumption that you should have the files on the computer to browse them is gone. It was never a good assumption anyway. You can browse your photos by thumbnail and metadata with just the database (~3% the size of the files), and they’re in “offline” mode; but you’ll be fine for copying or manipulating them once you bring them online (i.e. turning on your external hard drive, or inserting the CD the photos are on), and nothing blows up or disappears. You’ll wonder how you got by with the old way, where the photos had to be there to be browsed or cataloged, even if they took up 250GB (like mine are approaching). And of course, photos can be assigned tags, called “categories,” though of the flexible kind. A photo can belong to any number of hierarchal categories, or none at all, or child categories but not parent categories, or anything you can think of, without wasting space. The categories aren’t even like folders, because when you click a high-level one, and it shows its images plus all the images in sub-categories, which is much better than clicking through dozens of folders in Windows Explorer. But of course, you can change this if you want.

IDimager is my second choice, and seems to do all the above. ACDSee is third, though I haven’t used it. If you switch between software, you can export your work by embedding it into the IPTC metadata, and then importing that in another program. IMatch provides a bunch of other methods, and the others probably do, too. The problem with IPTC metadata is that it puts your files out of sync with the backup copies you’re making to CDs or DVDs, because they can’t be updated. I don’t like that. Think of the files as books on a shelf, static and permanent. Your database is your card catalog (on steroids). Using file names or inline metadata is like going to each book on the shelf, and putting a whole bunch of keywords on its spine label. Senseless and impractical. We wouldn’t even try that sort of thing in the stone age.

So, avoid syncing IPTC data with the database, unless you don’t mind your archival copies being out of date. I mind it. I don’t use IPTC, even as a backup; I just backup my database instead.

The three programs I mentioned are all about $60, quite a hefty investment. But less than your camera, and certainly worth it if you value your time. I see people spending more time naming their pictures, than actually taking them, and I don’t want you to fall into that trap. You can easily fall into that trap with a dedicated cataloging application. But accomplishing as much as you did with file names takes a small fraction of the work, and that’s the important thing.

Don’t touch Picasa with a ten foot pole. I just tried v2.7, and it still has the same horrid behavior it had when I attempted to use it in 2005. What did I do? I indexed a folder on my USB flash drive. Then I closed it, removed the drive, and started it again. What happens? All the photos disappear. Oh wow, Picasa. You’re so smart. Not. They reappear with my captions when I plug the drive back in (as long as it has the same drive letter). But Picasa shouldn’t pretend to be a photo management solution, with captioning and descriptions, if it’s all smoke and mirrors. And it is. Read this: Dear Google: Picasa Needs Improvements, particularly the “Database Export/Import” section. Picasa makes it really hard to move the keywords and descriptions you’ve assigned between computers. Some settings are strewn through the file system in “picasa.ini” files, others are in a proprietary database, which is dumb and sloppy. They should all be in the database, and the database should be easy to transfer, backup, and export to other formats, if Picasa wants to be a real cataloging application. But it’s not, and if you use it, don’t treat it as such. Oh, and the keywording interface is awful.

Abandon the old and start with your new abstract file-names immediately, even if you haven’t thought up how to catalog your work. With 2000 photos, it’s not too hard to find them by thumbnail, and you’ll have more time to shoot when you end the tedious process of assigning descriptive file names. If you use Picasa, don’t touch the functions for keywords or captions. I don’t even recommend the program for browsing; FastStone Image Viewer is simple, free, doesn’t pretend to solve digital asset management, loads thumbnails quickly, has a great slideshow mode, does batch converting and file renaming well, and can be run from a flash drive.

Always, when you’re cataloging your photos, catalog what you will search for. I do this with the photos in my gallery; you can see a list of tags below each one, and they link to similar photos. There aren’t many tags. Just simple stuff like flowers, raindrops, dark, bright, shallow dof, etc. See, if I wanted to be thorough, I could record where each photo was taken, add the hour, year, aperture, etc., each as a tag, use scientific classification for plants and animals, and other terrible stuff. Newbies to cataloging get caught in this trap. It ain’t worth it—you’ll never need it. And if you do need it once in a blue moon, it’s still a waste of time. The time to reward ratio just doesn’t match up at all. It’s all pain and no gain.

Don’t be too dedicated to tagging your photos, whatever method you choose. I follow all the stuff I recommend for file names here, which is done automatically with Downloader Pro, but I haven’t cataloged anything in six months, despite having my abstract database. It’s just not needed when I only use 4% of my photos for my website or exhibition; I can keep track of those fine, just browsing by thumbnails. I’d rather be out shooting.

The Profit Police and How They Kill Everyone

Posted on 2008-03-30 by richardxthripp

Silhouette of a man holding a hammer -- Photography by Richard X. Thripp

The profit police are as old as eternity, but insidious as the devil. They threaten to steal our happiness, to sour us with envy, hatred, and guilt. Their orthodoxy is codified in institutional policies all over the world. They kill everyone. They are us.

Profit is not just money. Profit is also prestige, notoriety, and mere exposure. The profit police take keeping up with the Joneses to the extreme. They tell us that promoting our names or starting a business is selfish, greedy, and wrong. They are responsible for the professionalization of jobs that have no business being bureaucratized. They create sad terms like vanity press, as though not having a book approved by a committee makes the author an egotistical lunatic. Their influence starts with us, at the micro level.

The Junior Anti-Profit League is alive and well on the forums of the Internet. Well-meaning adults persist with policies of “no advertising, no self-promotion, no links to your website, no ‘commercialism.'” They cry foul at affiliate links, for no reason further than to stifle the success of their users (my photography articles are proudly littered with them). Brilliant computer-programmers publish free software with the clause, “no commercial use,” as if every dollar earned with the help of their applications comes straight from their wallets. As if profit is bad. As if the very act of seeking prosperity—called the American Dream by many—is the bane of humanity. Run the phrase, “free for non-commercial use” through Google, and you get 264,000 web pages, all of people afraid of something.

What are they afraid of? The success of others. Why are they afraid of it? Because they perceive that it diminishes themselves. We all do this. Charles Wheelan, financial blogger, elaborates:

“There’s a very interesting strain of economic research showing that our sense of well-being is determined more by our relative wealth than by our absolute wealth.

In other words, we care less about how much money we have than we do about how much money we have relative to everyone else. In a fascinating survey, Cornell economist Robert Frank found that a majority of Americans would prefer to earn $100,000 while everyone else earns $85,000, rather than earning $110,000 while everyone else earns $200,000.

Think about it: People would prefer to have less stuff, as long as they have more stuff than the neighbors.”

This scales down to the minute level. I am guilty of it myself. When I opened my website, I set my Google AdSense advertising up to filter ads for other photographers. I stopped doing this after a week, realizing how silly it is. But the fact is that fear of the success of others is a subconscious human response. It’s also irrational. Another’s persons success is not my loss, no matter how it may seem.

I’ve had my own encounter with The Profit Police as of yesterday. If you’ve read The Thievery of richardxthripp, you know of my rush to secure my name on the popular blogging, photography, and social networking websites after richardxthripp.blogspot.com was claimed by spammers. One of the sites I registered for was 43 Things, a destination for sharing your life’s goals with the world. I’ve admired their community for a while, so I added to the discussion to help others with two things I’ve done, and to drive visitors to my website:

I added to the goal, have a blog:

“I’ve done this now. Set up my blog for my photography: Brilliant Photography by Richard X. Thripp. Started three months ago, but it’s an ongoing project. I’m using WordPress as my blogging software; it’s worth it to have your own domain name so you aren’t tied to any third party.”

And, sharing my knowledge on playing the piano:

“Playing the piano is a great hobby for reflection, mental and finger dexterity, appreciating music, and enjoying with others. I’ve been playing since ten; here’s a performance from January.

What I don’t buy, is that you have to start when you’re young. Plenty of adults learn to type quickly (with our newfound reliance on computers), yet that takes dexterity, skill, and practice, like piano. And also—you can look at your fingers while playing. You may come to memorize a song just from working on it a lot, and then begin watching your fingers so you don’t miss the keys; don’t fight it.”

Don’t bother looking for my entries; they’ve been vaporized now, along with my page. I’m alive in the Google cache for now: have a blog, play the piano (2008-07-31 Update: now removed). Little did I read that they have a policy against my kind of writing:

“43 Things is for personal use only. If you sell or promote products, services or yourself through your 43 Things page, we will suspend your account.”

So promoting yourself is not personal use? Sure, if you own a social network you can enact whatever rules they want, but that doesn’t mean you should. This is the cowardly, suicidal behavior that profit policing drives us to. It is cowardly because it sweeps under the rug the work of others, as if the publisher deserves no credit for his insights. It is suicidal because it destroys discussions and useful information at the fear of others’ gain, reducing morale and alienating users.

I used to release my stock photographs with a license that said “no commercial use.” It took me months to finally give it up. The question: What if someone gets rich from using the resources I provide? They’d be earning money off my hard work! The answer: So what? This is not a Reversi game, where every acquisition by your opponent is an equal blow to you. 200 A’s do not necessitate 200 F’s. Life is not a zero-sum game. It’s time we stopped playing it as one.

The Thievery of richardxthripp

Posted on 2008-03-29 by richardxthripp

the pain of it all

I tried to register my name at blogger.com but got the error message above. Turns out someone’s swiped the name: http://richardxthripp.blogspot.com/ is just a parked spam blog, set up just over a month ago (2008-02-20). It’s about two thousand spam link ads.

One thing that I’ve always counted with my name (Richard X. Thripp a.k.a. richardxthripp), is that it is so unique that I can go to any website and register as richardxthripp with no fear of my identity already being taken. Apparently, I’m picking up a bit of notoriety and that is changing. The only thing to do next is to launch a pre-emptive strike against the thieves.

http://richardxthripp.deviantart.com/
http://richardxthripp.livejournal.com/
http://www.xanga.com/richardxthripp
http://technorati.com/blogs/richardxthripp.thripp.com
http://richardxthripp.stumbleupon.com/
http://digg.com/users/richardxthripp/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard_X_Thripp/593538525
http://www.animalcrossingcommunity.com/user_profile.asp?UserID=28254 (must log in)
http://www.43things.com/person/richardxthripp
http://del.icio.us/richardxthripp
http://www.flickr.com/people/richardxthripp/
http://profiles.friendster.com/richardxthripp
http://richardxthripp.hi5.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardxthripp
http://www.myspace.com/richardxthripp
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=15787114936809567549 (must log in)
http://www.photoblog.com/richardxthripp
http://www.photoblogs.org/profile/richardxthripp.thripp.com/
http://reddit.com/user/richardxthripp/
http://richardxthripp.sheezyart.com/
http://slashdot.org/~richardxthripp/
http://www.squidoo.com/richardxthripp
http://www.thoughts.com/richardxthripp/blog
http://www.tickme.com/member/richardxthripp.html
http://twitter.com/richardxthripp
http://richardxthripp.wordpress.com/
http://youtube.com/richardxthripp

How do you like them apples? Twenty-six websites where I’ve claimed my identity. Some are old, but there are sixteen ones I registered in the past few hours. Obviously, I won’t update any of these, but at least no one else will be carrying on their evil plans in my name.

These are two great articles on stopping the new-fangled cyber-squatters:

SearchRank: Securing Your Brand on Social Networking Sites
ProBlogger: When Seth Godin isn’t Seth Godin

I ran across these before, but wasn’t motivated enough to take action, unfortunately.

So tell me, is there any killer social networking, blogging, photography, or art network that’s missing from my list?

2008-03-29 Update: Added Animal Crossing Community and YouTube; forgot about those.

Thripp Photography

Tag Archives: internet