Dave Pattern's blog
Over the weekend the hosting company move my site to a different server, so I'm in domain limbo as the new IP address for "daveyp.com" propagates through the DNS servers across the world.
If you are currently unable to read this, then you'll need to wait a few hours before you'll be able to read it…
Apologies to anyone who's been wanting to leave comments — it looks like I managed to accidentally turn them off a few days ago!
This Second Life (SL) hack is slightly more useful and is my first attempt at integrating OPAC functionality into a SL object…
In what might turn out to be the most pointless thing ever done in Second Life, I've successfully embeded the Library 2.0 Idea Generator into an otherwise ordinary looking pavement slab…
Woohoo!
Fans of The Northern Kittens should head over to rathergood.com where Jacqui & Joel Veitch are raising money for Tommy's (The Baby Charity).
Why not leverage the awesome power of the Library 2.0 Idea Generator into your own blog and paradigm shift your way into library nirvana?
If you'd like to include random ideas in your blog, just use the following code:
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.daveyp.com/cgi-bin/l2/l24blog.pl">
</script>
If you want to also add a link back to my blog (you don't need to if you don't want to), just link to:
http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/106/
If you'd prefer to bring in a plain text idea (rather than one wrapped in JavaScript), then you can use this URL:
http://www.daveyp.com/cgi-bin/l2/l24blog.pl?plain
Have fun!
Welcome to the first part of my guide to Hitchcock on DVD!
Introduction
I've been running the Hitchcock DVD Site for over 3 years and, in that time, I've built up a collection of nearly 200 Hitchcock DVDs. Over the course of the coming weeks and months, I'm going to try and cover Hitchcock's entire career and, at the same time, discuss which are the best DVDs to buy.
To build up the best collection of Hitchcock on DVD, you need to have a region free DVD player. You also need to be able to view both PAL and NTSC format DVDs — this requires either a DVD player that can convert from one to the other, or a television set that can display both. To get the best of Hitchcock on DVD, you'll be buying DVDs from around the world!
I'm going to split Hitchcock's career up into decades, so the first article will cover the 1920s and that last will cover his final films from the 1970s. Out of the 53 major films Hitchcock directed, 50 are now officially available on DVD.
A quick side note — for the film year, I'm using the IMDB entry.
Continue reading →
Yikes — it's 2 months since the last Hitchcock update, so here's the latest news!
Finally! After years of craptastic "public domain" releases from the likes of Laserlight and Brentwood, fans in the USA should be getting some decent transfers of Hitchcock's early films. Lionsgate Home Entertainment will be releasing a 3 disc box set on 06/Feb/2007.
The upcoming UK Optimum Releasing box set (scheduled for the end of January) has been expanded and now includes 4 extra titles ("The Ring", "Champagne", "The Farmer's Wife", and "Murder!"). The transfers have been licensed from the likes of Studio Canal and Granada, so should be top notch. Be warned that Orbit Media might be releasing low quality PD transfers of the same films around about the same time in the UK!
The French release of Bon Voyage / Aventure Malgache proves that there are decent prints of both films available. Sadly (for non French speakers), this release is French only with no subtitles. Speaking of which, Alain Kerzoncuf has a new article over at "sense of cinema" — "Hitchcock’s Aventure Malgache (or the True Story of DZ 91)".
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two has been out for a while now. The good news is that Universal has seen sense and released the second series on standard DVD9 discs, rather than the more unreliable DVD18. I'm still busy adding info to the page in the wiki for this release. There's no sign of a non-US release for this set yet.
To be honest, I think Universal in Europe have just given up and will never release any half decent Hitchcock DVDs — they seem happy just to repackage and rebundle the same old transfers. Germany is the latest victim of Universal's greed, with a collection of new DVDs that just contain the same old tired transfers… seriously folks, it's nearly 2007 and the only place in the world where you can buy a widescreen (i.e. non pan&scan) transfer of "The Birds" is in the US & Canada!
I haven't quite managed a new wallpaper every week, but here are the recent ones (click to download larger versions):
Finally, some sad news — two of the surviving "Topaz" actors have passed away during the last couple of weeks from cancer. Firstly, Philippe Noiret (23/Nov) and then Claude Jade (01/Dec).
left: Philippe Noiret (1930-2006) and right: Hitchcock and Claude Jade (1948-2006)
Yesterday, during Brian Kelly's opening session on Web 2.0 at the CILIP "Fly in the Web: Power to the User" event at Leeds Met, I started to think about ways of our linking library stuff into del.icio.us…
One of the things I've already hacked into the OPAC is the ability for a user to see their lending history — you can see a bit of it at the foot of this screen shot:
So, I decided to play around with the del.icio.us import facility to see if it was possible to export the lending history from the OPAC and then import it.
The first thing I did was to get a version of the lending history in a suitable format (see Netscape Bookmark File Format). You can see my bookmark file at this URL:
http://webcat.hud.ac.uk/history/5/5d/5da5fe138f7cf2…html
(I should point out that my library card gets used for a lot of testing, so I haven't really borrowed everything on there… honest!)
If you look at the HTML source for the page, you'll spot that I've included the tag "hudunilibrary" and (when available) the ISBN for each item. Each item also has a description for the last checked date & time (I'm still not sure if I should include that info?).
Once you've got the bookmark file, you then need to save it to your hard drive and run the import process in del.icio.us:
The only real potential problem is that del.icio.us automatically marks all imported links as "private" — so, if you want to share your lending history, then you need to manually update every link (very tedious!). Anyway, I've shared a few just so you can see the tag in action:
http://del.icio.us/tag/hudunilibrary
The import facility at LibraryThing is able to pick out the ISBNs in the bookmark file, so it's also possible to transfer a subset of the lending history into there:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=hudunilibrary&view=daveyp
The Dynix/Horizon OPAC also has a "My List" facility, so I might see if it's possible to hack that to output a suitable bookmark file as well.
I did mean to take a few photos at the CILIP event, but totally forget until Sheila Webber was halfway through her session on blogging — anywhere, you can find a couple of photos here. I think someone may have taken a shot of me during my workshop session, although I'm not really the most photogenic of people!
Why not head down to your nearest Woolworths and pick up a copy of my "best of" album — it's pumpingly rocktastic!
(made using Cassette Generator, found in Iman's del.icio.us faves)
R.I.P. Alan 'Fluff' Freeman (1927-2006)
Whilst working on Pewbot, I wondered if you could really predict the future borrowing pattern of a user based on a specific book — in other words, if they borrow book X will they then go on to borrow book Y and then book Z?
Anyway, I've knocked together a basic script that will extrapolate the most likely lending path (both past and future) for a specific book.
For example, here's the lending path for "Learning SQL: a step by step guide using Oracle":
http://library.hud.ac.uk/perl/lendingpath/bib.pl?418925
The book in question is displayed in bold. The title directly before it ("Java: the first semester") is the title that is most frequently borrowed prior to "Learning SQL", and the one directly after ("Database systems: a practical approach to design…") is the most likely to be borrowed subsequently.
In turn, I then continue to extrapolate the paths in either direction until I run out of data or a title gets duplicated.
What we end up with is a hypothetical path showing what someone is most likely to have borrowed previously, and will then go on to borrow in the future.
What's interesting is the flow of subjects along the path — the books before are all IT books, but the future path flows into HCI, IT management, and then into corporate strategy and business titles.
If you click on a book title, then it'll take you though to the OPAC. If you click on the "path" link, then you'll see the lending path for that particular title.
Once you're in the OPAC, there's a link to the lending path at the foot of every full bib page (although the path can only be generated if there's enough raw circulation data).
If nothing else, it proves that our students are sensible enough to borrow the Harry Potter books in the correct order! 