Month: July 2009

Yes, They Are Real

We’ve installed these things called Cones of Silence into our media area.  The idea is that you can play something with audio underneath one and it will limit the sound to you and the person right next to you.

If that didn’t sound too sci-fi for you, please gander at these photos of our 3 Cone of Silence stations.

Try’em out, let us know how they work.

Campus Ledger: Summer Reading

“Beta” seems to be the excuse for “things don’t quite work perfect yet.” Well, here’s one of those excuses.

The Campus Ledger, JCCC’s student newspaper is now available online from beginning to 2006. Peruse it here before we get it ready to announce across campus. We’ll build it a pretty search page and gussy it up for prime time.  It is just a long time comin’.

Accidental Billionaires

Chances are that you, your kid, your brother, or plenty of other people you know use Facebook.  This library even has a Facebook page.  But what’s funny is that the two founders of one of the most recognized social networking tools don’t even really like each other.  at least, that’s what Ben Mezrich’s book, Accidental Billionaires, claims.  In it, you’ll discover an account that begins with the hacking of a Harvard student image database to rank how hot the female students are, and ends with the youngest billionaire ever.  That’s a lot of ground to cover in the middle, but should be an interesting read for anyone with a Facebook profile or an interest in social networking.

Or getting rich quick.

Behind the Scenes: Inching Closer

So this process has been pretty crazy.  We’ve got a batch of ten items photographed and cataloged, and now we have to meet with a fashion expert and the photographer to make sure we’re doing it right.  After that we’ll be ready to roll on forward.

Until then, here’s a link to the test collection: http://bit.ly/Oyd8p. We’ll be manipulating this, cleaning it up, then adding to it at a fairly rapid pace.

2490 garments to go… eesh.

This is the New Scam; This is the New Book (of the Day)

If the title of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s book, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, sounds familiar, you’ve probably opened some spam in your day.  Perhaps a Nigerian Prince needs your bank account to secure his fortune, but will soon pay you back, or perhaps a sure fire business deal overseas needs a modest investment to get going.

Hopefully, we now all realize that this is BS.

But here’s a fictitious story about the people behind sending those e-mails. A recent Engineering graduate, Kingsley, can’t find work in his home country of Nigeria.  His lady leaves him, he’s stuck with his family that he’s expected to assist in supporting, and his fancy degree isn’t amounting to squat.

Enter Kingsley’s uncle, Cash Daddy.  I think the name should be the first deterrent, but it turns out that, if he works with Cash Daddy, he can make a modest living running e-mail scams.  What follows is fairly predictable hi jinx, but hilarious nonetheless. As funny as the book is, it reminds us that, even if you find it despicable, people usually do what they do for a reason, be it family, necessity, or the occasional greed.