Noise Between Stations

In an attempt to summarize the relationship among various metadata-related terms and how they relate to building Internet systems I created a metadata glossary. Addressed, for example, are metadata, taxonomies, indexing, CMS, Semantic Web, and XML. I then ordered and tied the terms together with a bit of narrative to explain the relationships among the [...]

I’m serving on jury duty now, as many Americans do in our system of judgement-by-peers. I can’t discuss the actual case, but wanted to record some pedestrian notes: No one is quite as bright as on Law and Order, which is not surprising as the writing there is fast, dense, and excellent. Incidentally, if you [...]

Had a great weekend in the Hudson Valley. For miles and miles both sides of the river offer gorgeous views. We rented a car and drove first to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, now owned by the U.S. Park Service after the Vanderbilts failed to find a buyer for it in the late 30′s. [...]

Here’s my new RSS feed. It’s a bit of a hack, generating a Movable Type RSS file and using a server side include to pull in the Tinderbox entries, but it works (or at least it validates :).

Tomorrow, sadly, Mike Lee ends his stay in New York to return to Baltimore. Mike’s a talented, smart, thoughtful person we’ve been lucky to have around for the past few months, talking IA, admiring his gorgeous photography, and stirring up Sidekick lust. Mike, don’t forget to visit!

If you’re a regular, please note I’m migrating to a new address: victor at victorlombardi dot com. Please don’t post it on websites and such (unless you encode it as I have here), I’d like to keep the spam to a minimum. And yes, there’s a shameless ego-page at that domain.

‘Sadness sweeps through the land as NBS’s RSS feed goes silent. The dark gloom and numbness that has enveloped my soul is only slightly touched by the drizzle of rain that soaks my clothes and sends shivers down my back,‘ writes James, and I’m sure you’re all suffering a similar fate. Any day now I’ll [...]

Does anyone know of guidelines for using ampersands vs. the word and when constructing terms in a taxonomy, like Fruits and Vegetables vs. Fruits & Vegetables?

Peterme et al on Craft and Engineering in user experience design. Engineering must refer to usability engineering, with accompanying research. While I’ve been a proponent of the craft approach, I don’t see why there couldn’t be systematic methods inserted where appropriate. I think it’s premature to debunk, or even debate, design engineering as we don’t [...]

How much business might I have lost so far? How much do I stand to lose in the next year? How much could I gain by doing what Java Jim is doing? What could I lose by not doing it (my whole business??) How much can I invest in my website? What would happen if [...]

The phone rings, she shakes her head free of coffee lust and jogs to the phone, rubbing her slightly oily fingers on her apron. "Hello, Sweet as Love. This is Catherine""Hi, Catherine, it’s Tim, from Angelina’s." Angelina’s had been a huge boost to her business a year ago when Tim, a manager there, suggested Sweet [...]

Bend It Like Beckham…fucking brilliant.

I’m doing a lot of heavy taxonomy lifting these days. Because it involves working with existing systems, what I find more useful than LIS knowledge is IS knowledge, being able to talk to DBAs and read database tables, talking to the people who have to implement this stuff. In this case I’m reverse engineering and [...]

I didn’t completely get the utility of those new little USB pen drives until I saw them in action as the new sneakernet. In a world where removable disks are more rare but everyone has USB, they are the new floppy disk for exchanging files quickly, no networking needed.

Excuse my lack of blogging/email/other, I’m away on business and frantically trying to keep up with everything. More contact and blogging will ensue in a week or two.