2012 Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge

                                     Cupcake received

Lately I've thought that maybe hackerspaces have a future in libraries.  Certain large hardware in libraries are going to become irrelevant as computing becomes more mobile.  So why don't we have a room full of 3D printers and mechanically minded patrons.  This has already happened in  the Allen County library in Fort Wayne, Indiana and at the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York as reported in December by NPR.
Coincidentally, this weekend is the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge.

Hackerspaces worldwide are challenged to bake, decorate and package a single cupcake and send it to another hackerspace. The receiving hackerspace will then open and judge on various topics including decoration, condition and taste.

Even if you don't have a local Hackerspace available or you don't know how to bake, I'm sure that you can show solidarity by going to one of those horribly cute little cupcake boutiques that are sprouting about all over a gentrified inner-city near you and eat a cupcake without a measure of decorum.

           Public Libraries, 3D Printing, FabLabs and Hackerspaces

Source Hackerspace | Flux

Amazon is now officially a Vampire Squid, that ate Nancy Pearl.

You know you buy stuff from Amazon, the whole planet does.  One guy in my family even buys groceries from them (I think that receiving delivered packages daily is an obsession of his).  I just bought a textbook with my Amazon Prime account but it still hasn't arrived two weeks after I ordered it (evil).  But now Amazon has gone too far.  They have become like Rockefeller Standard Oil Trust owning the wells, the refinery, and the pump.  Amazon publishes books, refines them? and then sells them.  They sell e-books at bargain basement prices that undercuts any competitor, which is unsavory.  But now they've reached diabolical with their price check app that compares prices in analog book stores and then if you buy the book from Amazon you get a discount.  They may as well have ran around firebombing independent bookstores.  And if that wasn't enough they've entangled Nancy Pearl, America's favorite librarian, with their tentacles.  You know the one who has an action figure with kungfu "shshshing". She's doing something called Booklust Rediscoveries and it sounds horrible (they're publishing some of her favorite books that are out of print).  So next time hold off from ordering the gold leaf edition of The Hunger Games or those extra paper towels from Amazon, because each time you order, an independent bookstore catches fire.
Source: NPR