I just updated my talks page. All of my energies are directed at the book. Book, book, book.

It is done. All of the data have been migrated to the new On-Lion. We took book lists that were in bad HTML, turned them into text files containing tab deliminated data, and then moved it all into the database. This was gnarly but fun. My eyes hurt.

On-Lion will be replaced in three days. Look at the old version while you have a chance. It really is some good ol’ 1996/1997 Web design. Some of my favorites are Go Wild! Read… and Read to Win: Team Up With Books. I will definitely back this up somewhere.

Now I need to make a text-only version of the site. Should be ok because all content is in a database!

And now… ice cream!

"When Martin Scorsese wanted to recreate the city’s 19th century tenements, bordellos, and saloons for his upcoming movie ‘The Gangs of New York,’ he sent his film producers to visit the archives of a neighborhood called Five Points. The collection contained over 850,000 items from the infamous slum — dishes, thimbles, combs, medicine bottles, and children’s toys — that documented the history of working-class life in lower Manhattan.

"A little over a year after the visit, the entire collection, except for 18 items that were on loan, was destroyed when debris smashed into the World Trade Center 6 building." — Mark Berkey-Gerard for the Gotham Gazette.

Surely, the loss of human life we experienced on September 11, 2002 can’t compare to this. There is no need to discuss the value of people over objects. The fact still remains that the the damage done to our material culture, including company histories, photograph negatives, musical scores, a portion of Helen Keller’s letters, leaves a gaping hole in our cultural record.

Have Jacob test your site for free. The Nielsen Norman Group is conducting a usability study about designing usable intranets, and they are looking for companies who are interested in having their intranet sites analyzed. The catch: you must agree to allow Nielsen Norman Group to publish their findings, and screen shots of your site. Jacob has the discretion to stamp the papal seal of infallibility on the ass of the best intranet designer. Thanks Andrew.

In just 90 minutes, Jeffrey Zeldman will host a Photoshop Tennis match between Pixelsurgeon and Surfstation.

My grandparents were married 60 years ago today. This afternoon they celebrate with a small mass given by their friend Father Grasso. The news is that he will not let them take him out to lunch. I suspect that there will be a small struggle; at the end Grasso will have the bill.

My grandmother, father and I were all born during wartime. What a strange connection. If I should reproduce in the next few years, we will have a four-generation tradition. Better get hopping.

Valentine courtesy of the Picture Collection, The New York Public Library.

Next week I hope to dazzle you with a theme week that the likes of my maternal grandmother and Imelda Marcos would appreciate. It may be titled Celebrating the Spree.

The first twenty-five percent of my manuscript is with my editor.

Watching Maria Shriver on Larry King Last night, I was reminded of the show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. We did a little Google search, and found a site that includes episode clips. Be sure to visit ZoRaK’s PaGE of RAISIN’ HECK!!!

Why did Larry King and Maria Shriver remind me of Space Ghost?

A. King’s interview style is much like Space Ghost’s.
B. Shriver looks like Zorak.
C. Shriver and Space Ghost both like kids.

Friday at Simone’s

Sad news in the library world. New Breed Librarian has published its last issue. For 18 months, the site’s daily blog postings have kept many a new and not-so-new librarian in the know, and have promoted our field by reaching out to those in related fields. A quarterly New Breed magazine has explored such issues as the semantic web, metadata and internet filtering in ways simply not possible in traditional professional publications.

In the final issue:

• FEATURE: Corey Harper argues that cataloging *is* a public service
• INTERVIEW: Eric Miller on the Semantic Web
• PEOPLE: Fiona Bradley, Aussie music librarian
• TECHTALK: What’s new and cool in library technology
• ASK SUSU: How do you propose a new subject heading?

Congratulations to Juanita Benedicto and Colleen Bell for a very good run.

Thanks to those who wrote about fixes and improvement to the style guide. We have updated the Tips section on authoring XHTML with DreamWeaver.

Thanks to David Perini for the link to the DreamWeaver extension that converts your pages into XHTML. Note that this is a zip file, not a Web page. I have tested it on a few pages and like it. Remember that you still have to validate your pages and check your work. I suggest that you back up files that you intend to convert. What if something goes wrong, terribly wrong?

Thanks to William of styrofirm.com for the tip on configuring DreamWeaver to close non-closing elements. If you are comfortable with JavaScript, it is quite easy to customize the software so that it writes <hr /> instead of <hr>, <br />, instead of <br> and so on. Full details await you in the Guide.

Thanks to JZ for the CSS validation fix. The problem was that the system identifier was pointing to a relative destination. Once we added the correct URI to the DTD, we were set. If that is too much to think about, just copy and paste.

Week one: I was asleep in bed by 7:30 or 8:00 PM.

Week two: I was out by 9:00 or 10:00 PM.

Week three: I could not sleep at all. Among the things keeping me up were the cost of marking up historical texts with the Model Editions Partnership DTD, a slippery vagueness about the details of my new job, and a book deal with New Riders.

Be careful about what you wish for.