IRC log for #koha, 2011-10-01

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
00:02 NateC left #koha
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01:06 druthb o/
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04:01 Oak joined #koha
04:01 * Oak waves
06:18 cait joined #koha
06:18 cait hi #koha
06:21 pianohacker left #koha
06:26 Oak hello cait
06:27 cait hi Oak :)
06:27 Oak :)
06:29 rangi go tonga!!
06:30 cait go tonga!!
06:31 Oak who is tonga?
06:32 cait in this case a rugby team
06:32 Oak ah
06:33 cait but also a country
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06:52 rangi wow
06:52 rangi that is amazing
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08:43 slef the rugby's going well again...
08:43 rangi i think after the tonga - france game, any game that doesnt have front row forwards screaming tonga as they take the hit is gonna be pretty boring
08:44 rangi the last 5 mins of that game was a sight to see
08:46 slef heh bit early for me... prob highlights this evening
08:46 rangi :)
09:02 slef bloody heck this is getting intricate
09:02 Oak left #koha
09:12 slef what no swallow dive? ;)
09:12 rangi heh
09:15 slef love the commentary on our tv of course
09:16 slef stv and itv use the same commentary... so they're being very level
09:16 rangi ahhh
09:16 rangi maori tv is very biased
09:17 slef s4c (sianel pedwar cymru) is a bit too, so I'm told
09:18 slef but itv1 serves wales and southern scotland too
09:19 slef so it only goes nuts when one home nation is alone
09:19 rangi makes sense
09:20 slef I'm pretty sure the bbc use two commentary teams when they're showing such a match.
09:21 slef but itv is commercial public service rather than tax-funded, so it's all about the cost I guess
10:36 pianohacker left #koha
12:22 jcamins_away slef: around?
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13:43 druthb o/
13:44 cait hi druthb :)
13:45 druthb :)
13:53 jcamins_away \o
13:54 cait hi jcamins_away :)
13:54 jcamins_away is now known as jcamins
13:54 jcamins Hi cait and druthb.
13:54 druthb hi, jcamins! :D
14:05 rhcl_lita joined #koha
14:11 jcamins How many records could fit in a 20GB database?
14:12 cait no idea
14:12 cait a lot?
14:12 wahanui rumour has it a lot is possible already without having to rewrite the templates
14:12 jcamins Yeah, that was my analysis.
14:12 rhcl_lita morning jcamins and afternoon (?) cait
14:13 druthb hi, rhcl_lita
14:13 rhcl_lita druthb!
14:13 druthb jcamins; we've had libraries with nearly a half-million bibs whose mysqldump was less than 10GB.  So I would think lots and lots.
14:15 cait afternoon is right :) 16:14
14:15 cait hi rhcl_lita
14:18 rhcl_lita lita talks tweeted on tag #litaforum
14:28 jcamins druthb: that's what I thought, thanks.
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14:52 rhcl_lita <quote>: "The library catalog isn't something that should be exposed to the public.  Stop trying to make the catalog better" </quote>
14:53 rhcl_lita <quote>: "Library catalog needs to become back room database. It is not the face we want to show our users. Move beyond it." </quote>
14:56 druthb sure wish I could have been at LITA this year.  Would love to kick some ideas around the table with some of the people who are really smart.
14:56 * druthb isn't.
14:58 jcamins rhcl_lita: the problem with that idea is that "discovery layers" are not an improvement over the catalog.
14:58 rhcl_lita Would be glad to discuss the general topic of info exchange here with u later, but I think much of what I've heard has been overly generalized.
14:59 jcamins rhcl_lita: I'm just commenting. As I don't work with discovery layers, I'm hardly an expert.
14:59 rhcl_lita There is a general sense that paper books will be "essentially" gone < year 2020, but I don't get the impression that libraries are doing much to prepare for that
14:59 liw when I was a teenager, I loved going to the card catalogs in my local library and look things up, either on purpose, or by random...
14:59 druthb The problem with most catalogs--and indeed, most "discovery layers" atop them--is that they continue to persist in preserving the MARC.  But a *lot* of that is stuff that few or no borrowers care about.
15:00 druthb But we're afraid to cut the MARC apart to slice and dice it in ways the patron might be interested in...and if we can get past that, that's where things start getting more-useful.
15:00 druthb (all IMO)
15:00 * jcamins agrees.
15:00 rhcl_lita one of the points of the current speaker is that real world people think in tags, and that is, in fact, what they choose to use in their world
15:01 druthb all of that, but we *do* need to preserve the MARC--at least until something better supplants it--for the purposes that it originally was developed--description and inventory control, data exchange, etc.
15:01 rhcl_lita and that a "cloud tag" might be more useful than an OPAC in it's current form
15:02 rhcl_lita and yes, marc (or RDA or whatever) still lives, but happily in the server room for the tech services people
15:02 * druthb 's opinion, and a dollar, will buy you a small cup of coffee at participating McDonald's locations....it isn't worth much.
15:03 jcamins liw: since you're here, I have a question about the Koha packages, if you have a moment. If I were to install the packages and set it up with the database running on localhost, could I later move the DB off localhost by changing the koha-confs?
15:04 liw jcamins, sure
15:04 jcamins liw: awesome! That's what I thought.
15:15 Oak joined #koha
15:16 * Oak waves
15:16 cait hi Oak :)
15:17 Oak hi cait :)
15:17 slef druthb: bad coffee too
15:17 druthb exactly, slef.  :)
15:17 druthb Hi, Oak! :)
15:17 slef jcamins: sort of
15:17 Oak Hello druthb :)
15:20 druthb Back in a few.
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15:32 rhcl_lita http://www.alicebot.org/aiml.html
15:33 rhcl_lita http://www.mentorpl.org/catbot.html
15:35 druthb I've played with the Alice bot before.  AIML is a bit tedious, but you can get some useful bits in there.
15:37 rhcl_lita Might be an intriguing interface for many; some would find it tedious, but it's interesting and worth investigating perhaps
15:39 druthb I initially seeded it with a staff directory for a small consoritum, and some tidbits about each library.  The library staff all had fun talking to her, to try to figure out what Easter eggs I had put in the information.
15:40 rhcl_lita I always did like Ask Jeeves. Regret his demise.
15:42 druthb what if you used an AIML-bot as a front end "discovery layer"?  Would take some fairly creative hackery, and it would need a tool for going out to the biblio database and finding things out, but that could be interesting.  "Where do I find books on auto repair?"  "I have forty books on auto repair; all of them are <location code>, at call number <call number>."
15:43 druthb then, you could work out ways to answer their question, not just give a list of items.  "Where do I find" != "What do you have"
15:44 druthb It wouldn't replace a reference desk person any time soon, but you could get a good bit of mileage out of that, I should think.
15:45 druthb (and, of course, the commonest single question in any library I've ever worked at:  "Where is the restroom?" )
15:46 rhcl_lita sounds good. will you have it ready for 3.6?
15:46 druthb We're already past feature freeze, sorry.  :P
15:49 druthb In Koha's case, all you'd need, to let it go get data, is a plugin to let the AIML-bot search Zebra, and C4::Items::GetItemsomethingorother.
15:53 huginn New commit(s) needsignoff: [Bug 6953] Value builder for NORMARC 007 does not show further options <http://bugs.koha-community.org[…]w_bug.cgi?id=6953>
15:54 * slef starts the koha-patches/bugs reconciler
15:55 slef rhcl_lita: I think Jeeves was part of the reason "artificially intelligent" is a synonym for "very stupid"
15:57 jcamins slef: do I remember you mentioning something about running Zebra on a different server than the Apache server?
15:58 slef jcamins: maybe
15:58 jcamins slef: do you find that it is worthwhile, in terms of performance?
15:58 druthb I've done it, as well.
15:59 slef I've definitely done that somewhere. Not straightforward but possible. Not fiddled with it recently I think. The need to do it has been reduced by ever-faster hardware.
15:59 slef getting mysqld to its own CPU is more worthwhile I think
15:59 druthb Given a choice, moving the MySQL gives a larger performance boost.
15:59 slef snap!
15:59 druthb :)
15:59 jcamins Yeah, that's already part of the plan.
15:59 slef I don't have any recent numbers though
15:59 druthb Tried it both ways on a problem child once, for comparison.
16:02 jcamins Step 1 is "make sure Koha works with MySQL on localhost." Step 2 is "move MySQL off localhost."
16:02 druthb This particular site (a big big K12) had huge numbers of returns first thing in the morning, followed about an hour later by a ton of OPAC activity.    Moving the MySQL made both choke points quite smooth.
16:12 rhcl_lita slef: oh, yes, probably. But it was an early start. They're talking about a cat chatterbot here,  but in the real world in the near future....
16:13 rhcl_lita I think we're going to have to get "smart" fuzzy language android/gynoid interface bots.
16:23 rhcl_lita gotta move
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17:10 rhcl_lita lyrasis speaker using Koha and Evergreen for all his ILS examples :)
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18:55 jcamins Hi, pianohacker.
18:55 pianohacker hi, jcamins
18:56 jcamins Back in classes?
18:56 cait hi pianohacker
18:57 rangi hi pianohacker
18:58 pianohacker Yup, back in classes. Life's been crazy, but good
18:58 jcamins What are you taking?
18:59 pianohacker Geology, Multivariable calculus, physics and data structures (compsci class)
18:59 pianohacker all hard, but interesting
19:00 pianohacker How's your academic life going?
19:00 jcamins Yikes! Sounds very busy.
19:01 pianohacker Always is.
19:01 jcamins I'm just taking one class right now, which is a relief.
19:02 pianohacker That does sound nice. What's the class?
19:03 jcamins A Cultural History of Russia.
19:03 jcamins October 24 I'll be starting an intensive course on growing my business, which should be pretty interesting, too.
19:05 pianohacker History class sounds cool, business even more so
19:08 jcamins Yeah, I'm pretty exciting.
19:08 jcamins Actually, I applied for what was essentially the "level 1" business class, and I got a call from the course administrator saying "you should be in level 2."
19:08 jcamins s/exciting/excited/
19:09 pianohacker That's always nice, when other people have a higher opinion of our skills than we do
19:15 jcamins Yeah. Apparently when they said "new to business," they meant "haven't turned a profit, or, indeed, even started offering services," not "had a sideline business for a while."
19:18 jcamins Is anyone else getting intermittent lag, and lots of it from OFTC?
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21:37 druthb o/
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22:21 jcamins is now known as jcamins_away
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