Today I moved some bots from PythonAnywhere over to GitHub Actions. This is a follow-up to my previous post about migrating the front-end of the bots over to mastodon.ocert.at. Now I’m modernizing the back-end with GitHub Actions. There were a few reasons for this switch: I get GitHub Pro services for free via the GitHub… Continue reading GitHub Actions
Coding with those who show up
This week, I have a new paper out titled “Coding with those who show up: Two methodologies on technical committee work” in Information Technology and Libraries. It is licensed CC-BY-NC, so you can read it for free here. The point of the article is that the literature on “laissez-faire leadership” is disproportionately (and in my… Continue reading Coding with those who show up
Eight months with Debian
I checked the date of my previous post, and it has been eight months that I have been running Debian on this old HP laptop. Here are a few things that have struck me about the move from Ubuntu: The desktop environment can be pretty much identical. I am still running Gnome now — as… Continue reading Eight months with Debian
CUNY IT Conference 2024
The past two days, I have been at CUNY’s 23rd annual IT Conference. It’s a conference I enjoy, even though it’s geared toward IT professionals, which I am decidedly not. Nonetheless, the smattering of librarian presentations is usually enough to keep me occupied and contented throughout the conference. I did catch some of the presentations… Continue reading CUNY IT Conference 2024
Further thoughts on building AR projects in libraries
Caroline Jedlicka and I recently published a paper in the Journal of Web Librarianship called “Creating a Homemade Mobile Augmented Reality Game in a Community College Library: An Open Source Approach.” This link will get you past the journal’s paywall. For me, the standout message of the article is that you do not need a… Continue reading Further thoughts on building AR projects in libraries
Thanksgiving challenge, bots edition
It is getting to be time for my annual post about the Thanksgiving Challenge. Previous editions of this post can be found here, here, and here. Basically, the challenge is to spend the entire Thanksgiving long weekend coding by yourself. I’ve already covered the questionable productivity benefits (and very real mental health downsides) of doing… Continue reading Thanksgiving challenge, bots edition
Cmus
I’ve been using cmus to listen to music lately. It is rather glorious software. To see what I mean take a look at this screenshot: It runs in the terminal and has weird key bindings. To get it running I had to build it from source. It lets me play music off my hard drive,… Continue reading Cmus
SpringyCamp
This week, Carrie Jedlicka and I presented at SpringyCamp, the annual Springshare conference. Our talk was called Creating a Fun Library Tour with Augmented Reality and LibGuides! If you have a Springshare login, you can watch the video here. It was fun, although I was nervous because there were ~300 people there! Carrie handled it… Continue reading SpringyCamp
Fediverse relays
Fediverse relays have historically been a bit of a dodgy undertaking. In the past, when I’ve tested a relay, it was a largely unmoderated firehose of random stuff from the network. Unmoderated fedi is often particularly unpleasant; so much so that I could never really stomach it for more than a few days. But I… Continue reading Fediverse relays
Transformative
Recently, I posted about my commitment to read one academic article per day. It’s now been just over a month that I’ve been doing this, and I have to say, it has been transformative. I feel a whole new level of engagement with my work and my discipline. This has also prompted me to read… Continue reading Transformative

