We had Tani's birthday party today. (Yes, a month late. First was Pesach, then the Walk for Hunger, then Mothers' Day.) He wanted "detectives" as his theme, so we started off with "detective school" involving teaching the kids the rudiments of fingerprinting, lemon-juice writing, etc. Then we had a "graduation ceremony" where they got their badges, and then I went into the house to get their goody bags.

I barged out of the house, letting the screen door slam, and cried out, "Oh, no! The goody bags have been stolen! We're going to need detectives to look for clues! Where can we find detectives?"

The looks on their faces were worth a million bucks. They immediately started running all over the yard looking for clues. I wish we'd trusted their enthusiasm more, and had actually bothered to hide the clues, instead of planning on staging the discoveries.

( The rest of the Micro Mystery Hunt )

The kids all really threw themselves into the role-playing, accepted our role-playing, and seemed to have a good time with the puzzles. The puzzles were at just the right level of difficulty; none of them was a "gimme" but neither did we have to give extra hints to forestall frustration. Tani was thrilled. And the timing worked out perfectly.

The College Jeopardy tournament ended on Friday. One of the contestants was from Harvey Mudd College, so I had a mild interest in the outcome.

Going into Final Jeopardy on Friday, he couldn't win, so he punted on the final question. Instead of writing an answer, he wrote:

"Congratulations to the winner. West Is Best."

As a Mudder, I find that too awesome for words.

The lovely Marilyn Brant tagged me for this meme. Oh, and by the way? I'm psychic. Last year, after she won the Golden Heart, I said that they were usually followed by publishing contracts. AND I WAS RIGHT. Her book According to Jane will be out in fall 2009. Because she is awesome and she writes awesome books.

Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to the person who tagged you once you’ve posted your three sentences.

Bath is a beautiful city, full of architectural gems in a lovely landscape. In Jane Austen's time it was a fashionable spa -- with parties, balls, concerts, plays, and the constant toing and froing round the Pump Room where people met to gossip and take the waters. For us the attractiveness of the place is enhanced by what Austen imagined taking place there in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Yes, that's right. The nearest book is Becoming Jane Austen, by Jon Spence. Apropos, no?

I tag whoever has a book nearby.

Here's a slightly weird question. Can anyone think of a passage or a situation in a book where it *seems* to the reader that two (or however many) people might be having a sexual relationship, but it's not manifestly clear? And the reader is left thinking, hmm, what's really happening here?

(Is "manifestly clear" redundant?)

This is a very general question about scanners, for those of you who may use them. Can most scanners scan a bunch of pages into one file? As in, say, a 20-page document that is one file rather than 20 separate files? Also, do you need special software (like acrobat)?

Thank you in advance!

I've made a conscious choice not to try to become a Big Name Blogger in librarianship and archives. I've got too many strings to my bow already -- I am not a Bagthorpe! Unless maybe I am Jack. -- and it would be too much work to maintain that constant level of intelligent back-and-forth. Of course, there are negative side effects to not pushing my blog out there in the world. Sometimes I say something which I think is really important about sustainable digital preservation and I wish other people would contribute to the conversation so we can have some back and forth and develop the idea, and it doesn't happen.

Luckily, I'm not the only person talking about long-term economic sustainability. Brian Lavoie's "The Fifth Blackbird: Some Thoughts on Economically Sustainable Digital Preservation" is a good article I think everyone else in the field should read.

(Still, I'm going to be using my Operational Preservation Matrix for the next new project we start up here, and I'm going to keep track of how well it works to develop it further. Even if no one but me is interested, I think it's awesome.)

I have mail in my mailbox with the subject line "New black Chinese radicals".

This is an entirely legitimate work e-mail that does in fact contain new black Chinese radicals.

How sad is it that I learned of the Debian weak-SSH-key vulnerability from xkcd and not from Bruce Schneier or SANS (to be fair, the SANS email was waiting in my inbox this morning, but I read xkcd first.)

And how long is it before CBS buys xkcd? :-)

Wonderful news out of California today -- the ban on same gender marriage was overturned.

Here are some beautiful photos from the month in 2004 when gay marriage was legal in San Francisco.

Rain: Good
Administriva: Bad
Testing for Karate: Good
High Kick Day after Upping Run: Bad
CDs in car: Good
Insufficient Receiver: Bad
Income Tax Return: Good
Broken Dishwasher: Bad
Hypothetical Fenced Yard: Good
Hypothetical Post Hole Digging: Bad