Interesting things

I've been having trouble keeping this blog updated over the school holidays, obviously. It's hard, because I don't really have anything library-related to write about. I haven't been learning anything, I've only been working in the cafe a lot. So I've decided that I'm going to try to update this blog every couple of weeks, with some links to things that I've been reading or listening to.

First up is The Untold Story of Silk Road, a two-part article written for Wired Magazine by Joshua Bearman. Silk Road was an online black market, where people could by drugs, or guns, or other illegal stuff. In class we covered the Dark Web a little bit, and the lecturer touched on Silk Road, but she strongly recommended that we never go on there. This article examines the creator of Silk Road, and how he was tracked down by the police. Part 1 is here, Part two here.

Serial podcast is back! I'm super excited about it; I loved season one, it was my gateway podcast that introduced me to how amazing they can be. Season two is focussing on Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier that walked away from his base in Afganistan and became a hostage of the Taliban for almost five years. After a case last season that no-one had heard of, it's interesting that they have chosen such a high-profile case for the second season. Serial can be found here.

Something that is more linked to library action is an article from American Libraries Magazine on Melvil Dewey, called 'Melvil Dewey, Compulsive Innovator'. It turns out that Dewey was a massive weirdo, obsessive about numbers and a bit gross towards women.

Summer Holidays

So I finally finished the semester, which is a great relief! I just found out that I got an HD on a scientific report, and I'm super-chuffed about that. I feel like I'm finally improving at writing reports. Now I have four months off Uni, and I need to find stuff to keep me entertained. I'm going to keep playing around on Trove, and I'm also going to learn JavaScript. Codeacademy, who I have talked about before and love, has a whole bunch of different courses that you can take online, all of them free. It's really good for someone like me who has never done anything like coding before, because it is simple, easily understood, and also updates in real time so you can see exactly what you have done.

After I've done that, I'm going to help a friend build an online store. She wants to sell all the vintage clothes that she has collected, and her brother-in-law was supposed to make her an online store, but I've known her for a couple of years now and he hasn't done it in all that time. So I'm going to do it for her. It shouldn't take too long, hopefully, and it will spur her on to get organised.

Other things - I'm going to take up running. I've never done it before, and I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to read a book called Sleepwalkers, about the first world war. I'll give my house a really, really good clean, which is boring but needs to be done.

Here are two digital information interesting things that I found this week: an article on The Atlantic, by Walter Kirn. If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy is about how pervasive digital technology has become, and how it's listening to us, and it totally feeds into my own concerns about information and privacy. Also, Internet Live Stats shows you in real time how many web sites there are, how many emails were sent today, as well as instagram, google searches, and other internet related items. It's pretty amazing to see the numbers tick over so rapidly.