I decided my film wasn’t worth remaking. Anyway, the grapes were sour: screencasting hadn’t excited me. For what’s at bottom a series of menu choices, I wondered if the putative puzzled person would find it quicker to take in written instructions, and easier to refer back to them. But really, this only shows that I couldn’t think of a truly visual library computer task (the LibrarySearch word cloud is disqualified). If I needed to know how to design a bridge in TurboCAD, visualise experimental data in Matlab, or complete Quake in twelve minutes, I’d look for a screencast first.
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Screencasting
I was defeated by Thing 6. I tried to make a screencast to demonstrate how to reach and search LISA, the bibliographic database for library and information science, starting from the University Library’s home page. It took several takes to get a convincing performance out of myself, with decisive mouse sweeps and accurate typing. (Even then, I found the result almost too boring to watch through.) I spent more minutes fiddling with the timing of some simple captions, then by accident closed the Screencast-O-Matic window.
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Friday 22 July 2011
Professionalism
In an earlier post here, I said that I wanted to think about the relation between professionalism and a political commitment. Having since read two essays that deal with the matter and express ideas basically similar to each other, I thought I should at least go into more detail.
John Pilger's essay 'Brainwashing the Polite, Professional and British Way', printed by the New Statesman and the Morning Star, is inspired by Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds. 'Schmidt argues,' says Pilger, 'that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline" ... "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".' Barclays Bank, the Labour Party, and the BBC ('Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen') are Pilger's cautionary examples.
The essay by J. H. Prynne, possibly titled 'On the Current Conjuncture' and published on the web by the students of Cambridge Defend Education, is firstly a response to the higher education White Paper and only deals with professionalism in passing. Still, it mentions 'the noble restlessness of spirit shut up in a cage of professionalism'; the diversion of 'intellectual freedom ("enlightenment") ... into professional careerism, hedged in by caution and hesitation and loneliness'; and, the 'professionalism that immobilises the drive to understand and to act on the consequences of understanding'.
Somewhere, I'd myself formed the idea that an aspect of professionalism was political neutrality: of course I don't mean as between different coloured rosettes, but neutrality as to our social arrangements, neutrality in the struggles over them. I must have formed it by the time I saw a newspaper photograph of Pakistani lawyers in the street, throwing stones with their suit jackets still on, after President Musharraf had suspended the constitution in 2007. The contrast with my ideas of British professional culture left a lasting impression.
This sort of neutrality would seem a bit like the liberal principle of 'neutrality as to the good', and maybe that would fit. There are other intersections: liberalism, too, separates work from a private life in the first place; in liberalism as in the professions, merit is the desired principle of distribution (meritocracy); the ethic of service that motivates many professionals, in the public and private sectors, is recognisably liberal. (Raymond Williams memorably challenges that ethic in the conclusion of Culture and Society. John Berger's book A Fortunate Man, his study of a country doctor, is another approach.)
In Britain, liberalism is the national philosophy, corresponding to the dominance of the higher-educated middle class; the same class, in Britain and worldwide, is home to the professionals. (Professionalism must be one of the most frank class virtues.) But in Pakistan liberalism is fighting for survival, and the country's professionals join that fight. Is it that professional neutrality holds while satisfactory liberal institutions are secure? Would our lawyers, say, have observed 'ideological discipline' if Tony Blair had managed to introduce ninety-day detention without trial? I don't think it's certain that they would.
If my suggestion's right then professional neutrality wouldn't be a function of brainwashing or careerism, but a principled position for liberals (and professionalism a kind of ideal). They'd insist that political expression uses the channels their forerunners opened in private life. So professionalism seems to fit neatly with a commitment to liberalism. What about—what I first had in mind—a commitment against it?
John Pilger's essay 'Brainwashing the Polite, Professional and British Way', printed by the New Statesman and the Morning Star, is inspired by Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds. 'Schmidt argues,' says Pilger, 'that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline" ... "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".' Barclays Bank, the Labour Party, and the BBC ('Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen') are Pilger's cautionary examples.
The essay by J. H. Prynne, possibly titled 'On the Current Conjuncture' and published on the web by the students of Cambridge Defend Education, is firstly a response to the higher education White Paper and only deals with professionalism in passing. Still, it mentions 'the noble restlessness of spirit shut up in a cage of professionalism'; the diversion of 'intellectual freedom ("enlightenment") ... into professional careerism, hedged in by caution and hesitation and loneliness'; and, the 'professionalism that immobilises the drive to understand and to act on the consequences of understanding'.
Somewhere, I'd myself formed the idea that an aspect of professionalism was political neutrality: of course I don't mean as between different coloured rosettes, but neutrality as to our social arrangements, neutrality in the struggles over them. I must have formed it by the time I saw a newspaper photograph of Pakistani lawyers in the street, throwing stones with their suit jackets still on, after President Musharraf had suspended the constitution in 2007. The contrast with my ideas of British professional culture left a lasting impression.
This sort of neutrality would seem a bit like the liberal principle of 'neutrality as to the good', and maybe that would fit. There are other intersections: liberalism, too, separates work from a private life in the first place; in liberalism as in the professions, merit is the desired principle of distribution (meritocracy); the ethic of service that motivates many professionals, in the public and private sectors, is recognisably liberal. (Raymond Williams memorably challenges that ethic in the conclusion of Culture and Society. John Berger's book A Fortunate Man, his study of a country doctor, is another approach.)
In Britain, liberalism is the national philosophy, corresponding to the dominance of the higher-educated middle class; the same class, in Britain and worldwide, is home to the professionals. (Professionalism must be one of the most frank class virtues.) But in Pakistan liberalism is fighting for survival, and the country's professionals join that fight. Is it that professional neutrality holds while satisfactory liberal institutions are secure? Would our lawyers, say, have observed 'ideological discipline' if Tony Blair had managed to introduce ninety-day detention without trial? I don't think it's certain that they would.
If my suggestion's right then professional neutrality wouldn't be a function of brainwashing or careerism, but a principled position for liberals (and professionalism a kind of ideal). They'd insist that political expression uses the channels their forerunners opened in private life. So professionalism seems to fit neatly with a commitment to liberalism. What about—what I first had in mind—a commitment against it?
Friday 8 July 2011
Screenshots
I felt quite happy with this Thing. I don't intend to use many pictures on my blog, but it's good to have the technique to hand. I installed Lightshot as Ange suggested in her introduction, then went to Flickr and tried to think of something good that people might like to look at for three seconds. Got it: Aneurin Bevan!
Searching for photographs with Creative Commons licences, I found one of his statue in Cardiff. I cropped it with Lightshot, then (for reasons of style) converted the colour photograph to greyscale with a basic photo editor before uploading it to Blogger and posting it.
Searching for photographs with Creative Commons licences, I found one of his statue in Cardiff. I cropped it with Lightshot, then (for reasons of style) converted the colour photograph to greyscale with a basic photo editor before uploading it to Blogger and posting it.
My first screenshot
![]()
Birds do it,
To-ries do it,
And just occasionally G-Ps do it:
Don't do it!
Don't— [That's enough. Margot.]
Original photograph by Rhisiart Hincks
Birds do it,
To-ries do it,
And just occasionally G-Ps do it:
Don't do it!
Don't— [That's enough. Margot.]
Before 23 Things I held the sort of boring prejudices about Twitter that Annie sends up in her introduction: that it was about Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown telling each other and an awed retinue what they had for lunch. Clearly that's not it at all. Twitter people look outward, and share the things they find.
I have found it difficult to get into, though. I'm a slow writer and—might as well confess now—I don't read as much library commentary as I should. It's helped to look instead to what I'm doing at work for tweet inspiration.
I tweet as neil_bc.
I have found it difficult to get into, though. I'm a slow writer and—might as well confess now—I don't read as much library commentary as I should. It's helped to look instead to what I'm doing at work for tweet inspiration.
I tweet as neil_bc.
Friday 1 July 2011
Strike rally and march
I estimated seven or eight hundred people at the strike rally yesterday; the Cambridge News put the number at one thousand. I set off back to work as the march began at 12.45. Half an hour later I watched from a window as it passed my library, behind the graduation celebrations on Senate House lawn.
Google Reader
There's too much happening! Of course in the world, which has consequences in Reader if you subscribe to any kind of news feed, but also on screen.
The lefthand bar I find a bit confusing. Wouldn't 'Browse for stuff' fit better under 'Explore'? Why is 'Starred items' not part of 'Your stuff'? Why 'Your stuff' when it's 'Blogs I'm following'? And I can't work out how to create subfolders under 'Subscriptions'.
I've subscribed to other 23 Things blogs, a few journalists, and a few library writers. I think I should experiment with similar subscriptions in Thunderbird, my email client, and see whether I prefer it.
The lefthand bar I find a bit confusing. Wouldn't 'Browse for stuff' fit better under 'Explore'? Why is 'Starred items' not part of 'Your stuff'? Why 'Your stuff' when it's 'Blogs I'm following'? And I can't work out how to create subfolders under 'Subscriptions'.
I've subscribed to other 23 Things blogs, a few journalists, and a few library writers. I think I should experiment with similar subscriptions in Thunderbird, my email client, and see whether I prefer it.
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