SHARE FAIR AT KING'S BAY LIBRARY

Back in January 2020, my local Buy Nothing's co-administrator came up with the idea of asking the local library to host a swap meet, except everything is free because, Buy Nothing...  The librarian approved the request and the rest was history.  Well, sort of.  Recall that by March 2020, the whole world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  No library, no swap meet.  Eventually things got back to normal, hard to believe but it happened.  We continued to have monthly event, lots of stuff changed hands, all free, the leftover went to a nearby soup kitchen the next morning.  The event got so popular that these days we need two cars to take the stuff to the soup kitchen.  With the more recent events, I had to drop some stuff by the side of my house and advertise them as Curb Alert.  I live near a train station so there is much traffic, sometimes everything would be gone by the next morning.

Today, I attended a similar event, organized by the Buy Nothing group in the King's Bay area.  The local library is on Nostrand Avenue, between Avenue X and Avenue W.  It was nice to look at the stuff without worrying about people grabbing too many or helping others separate the donations.  I was just an attendee, not running the show.  I did chat a bit with the organizer.  I only visited King's Bay Library once before and didn't know that it has a sort of an art gallery just to the left of the lobby as you enter the building.  It is a spacious room.  The stuff was spread out on tables and clothes racks along the walls of the room and there was a little island in the middle with shelves and more tables.  They plan to drop off the leftover at the Salvation Army on the same block, near the corner of Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue.  I told myself not to take anything but in the end I took a music CD and two books, the books are for my own faux Little Free Library.  It's good to see the Buy Nothing movement going strong and build the community through events like this Share Fair.  Photos in the following Google Album:

Share Fair 2025 March 22 at King's Bay Library

THINGS MOST PEOPLE DO NOT THINK ABOUT BEFORE STAYING A FEW WEEKS AT A NEW TOWN

What do most people think about before a trip to somewhere that they would be at for a few weeks, whether on business or for leisure?  What to do, things to see, right?  Well, in the case of business, I suppose they'll think of places to unwind.  I have a slightly different set of things to think about, such as

1. Hope I will have time to keep up with my exercise routine, mostly running and walking.  Will there be a nice waterfront place safe enough to run early in the morning or late in the evening?  The only down side is I'll have to bring a extra pair of shoes (running shoes, that is) and some running clothes.  Work will be hectic, hope I'll have the time to do some walking after lunch as usual.  I might even sign up for a 5K foot race!
2. Make sure to bring along my stainless steel coffee container.  Where I work the cafeteria gives a discount to encourage customers to bring their own drink containers, to reduce the use of paper or plastic cups.  Where I am going I am not sure if the incentive exists, but I'm sure there will be a water cooler.  I'll have my reusable cup with me on trips from now on.
3. Will there be an event I can volunteer at?  Whether it's a foot race or a soup kitchen, I think volunteering is a nice way to see the local neighborhoods in a  different angle.  Maybe I'll find an animal shelter and help walk some dogs!
4. Will there be a public library where I'm going?  I don't plan to pay the fee to use as a visitor, but it'll be nice to just sit down and relax with a book or a magazine.

Do you have any unusual thoughts before visiting a new place for an extensive stay? 

Farewell to Donnell

It seems my back yard is not the only place I did not visit often enough.  Today, after picking up the bib and T-shirt for tomorrow's 4-mile Central Park Conservancy Run at the NYRR office on 89th Street, I went looking for a book for my son's summer reading.  He will go to Bay Academy in September and they already sent him a reading assignment for the summer.  I figured I know my NYPL pretty well and would just visit some library in the area.  I could have gone to the Yorkville Branch, at 79th St. and Third Avenue, since it was the closest library to the NYRR office.  However, for exercising purpose, I walked along Fifth Avenue from the Apple Store to the NYRR office and would rather walk back the same way and do my library search from there.  Donnell Library Center on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues would then be the best choice.  Much to my surprise, the library was closed for good!  I just met some visiting distant relatives at MOMA a few weeks ago but I did not notice the library at all.  Further research later in the evening revealed that the Donnell Library Center was actually closed in August 2008.  That means for almost three years I never went by that place.  Either that or I forgot being there in the past three years!

Years ago when I still read Vietnamese literature, Donnell was the place to be.  As far as I know, Donnell had the best collection of Vietnamese books in the NYPL system.  It was from the Donnell collection that I read "Ngọn Cỏ Gió Đùa", which my late father often mentioned as the only novel he ever read.  He was the oldest child in a big family and had much to help the family.  He was very interested in futbol and did not care much about literature, but he did read that one book, by Hồ Biểu Chánh.  Much to my surprise, the book was really just a re-packaged version of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables".  Different setting of old-time Viet Nam during some war, but same story.

Also thanks to Donnell that I got to read the classic Chinese lit "Water Margin", translated into Vietnamese as "Thủy Hử", of course.  My Chinese is too poor to be pitched against the Chinese version and English version somehow just would not cut it for me.  I might have read a few other Viet books but "NCGĐ" and "TH" are the two I recall in recent memories.  While we are on the topic of Viet lit, one disappointment I have about it is that there seems to be no impartial books out there.  Maybe I have not read enough, but the few I came across are either for or against the topic at hand, especially when it comes to modern Viet history.  They are more like propaganda materials, for or against the Communist regime, or other topics.  It was like reading The New York Post, where every Jew is a hero and everyone else in the Middle East are referred to by some negative adjectives.

My memory is failing me now but I think I used to go to Donnell's media center to watch videotapes or listened to music at the many cubicles set aside for such consumption.  Those were the days before the advent of YouTube and the Internet.  Certain pieces of music or movies would be available only at some media center, some physical place you have to be at to enjoy the work.  It is entirely possible that I am confusing Donnell's Media Center with NYU Bobst Library's.  I used to take advantage of the shared resources between The Cooper Union and NYU.

My #1 blog fan used to work near Donnell, I wonder if she has any special memories about it...

Audible Alternatives?

I am very tempted to cough up some dough and sign up with Audible.com. The thing that holds me back is I feel that it seems wasteful to spend money on something that will not be enjoyed over and over. There are songs that I listened to over and over yet not get tired, but movies and books are only used once. At least with movies they sometimes get loaned to friends. With digital audiobooks, I may have to loan the player as well, or burn the book onto CD and convert the CD back to MP3 format... too much work and the reading experience won't be the same.

There are some Audible alternatives out there. Note that I include a question mark in the title of this blog post. I admit that the experience of using these "alternatives" is certainly not exactly the same as using a paid service like Audible. You get to have someone read to you, alright, but the process of getting the content to your device, plus other steps, won't be the same.

For me, the most obvious alternative is the public library. One great thing about living and working in New York City is convenient access to its public libraries. I live near a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and work near one in the New York Public Library (NYPL) system. Both library systems offer at least audiobooks as sets of CDs. I think the BPL even offers audiocassettes audiobooks. My audiobook experience did start out with the Queens Public Library, with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Without Remorse by Tom Clancy, and some others. Yes, many times I fell asleep while listening to the audiotapes and had to painfully rewind the tapes back to some recognizable place, but I did finish a few books, for free.

If dealing with physical media like audiotapes and CDs is too cumbersome for you, the library systems can also let you borrow digital content. It seems only public domain materials can be used readily on both Macs and PeeCees. More current materials requires installing additional software like OverDrive. Last time I gave OverDrive a try, it was with using movies from the NYPL. I had to use Windoze emulator to be able to use the material on my Mac. There was much troubles, not worth the hassle. OverDrive does have Mac software now. I'll give it another chance and see how convenient it is.

Perhaps getting a library card is too much of a hassle to you. Or you don't live or work near a public library. If you don't mind being limited to classic books only, LibriVox.org is the place for you. LV's books are already in the public domain, i.e. their copyrights have expired. LV makes use of volunteers to do the reading in order to be able to provide the service free of charge. You don't have to register with LV in order to get audiobooks from them. Unlike Audible, where the books are broken down into one or two big files, LV's offerings come in many small chapters. You can listen to them right in the web browser, although for me I prefer to open them in iTunes for later syncing to the iPod. I do have to make sure the files are marked as audiobooks and that playback positions are remembered. It takes a little, just a very small little, extra work when dealing with LV. I already downloaded Chapters 1 through 5 of Book 1 of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Should you like LV's service so much and want to volunteer then you would need to open a free account with them.

Lastly, I cannot help but think back to the time a long time ago when I accidentally came across a reading of the book Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam on the radio. I think it was some time after 1985, when I started college, because I do remember that I listened to the reading in the afternoon on a weekday. During high school I wouldn't be home at that time of the day during that time of the week. I managed to remember the station and listened to it a few times but now of course I have no other recollection of the station. My guess is that it was some NPR station, maybe even WNYC. I wonder if the program is still around. Anyone with more info please post a comment.

When I Was In Fourth Grade

My son started fourth grade this week. New home room, new teachers, new requirements of school supplies, etc. It got me thinking about my own fourth grade experience... and I came up with nothing. Not just fourth grade, but fifth and third as well. Actually, anything older than sixth grade. Mind you, it's not like I don't remember anything at all, just that I couldn't place the few memories I have at an exact grade.

I am actually a fifth grade dropout. It was some time in April or maybe March 1979. My family and I were a few months away from our scheduled departure from Viet Nam as boat people. The arrangement were made with the Vietnamese government that on some day in May 1979 we would leave Viet Nam forever with a bunch of other people. By boat, of course, thus the moniker "boat people." So some time early May 1979 I simply decided I shouldn't bother going to school any more. Perhaps someone with better memory can correct me, I think in Viet Nam, at least back then, summer vacation had 90 days, from June through August, inclusively. There is a line from a popular song that mentioned "chín mươi ngày hè", or "90 days of summer". Of course, I cannot recall the name of the song either. Whatever the case, I know I didn't finish fifth grade. Nobody from the school got in touch with my parents. Maybe many Chinese were leaving Viet Nam and the school already many similar cases like mine so the school didn't care less. That's all I remember of my fifth grade experience.

One other thing I remember about my school experience in Viet Nam was that, along with my second elder sister, I spent time after school to collect paper for recycling. I can confidently place the activity as after 1975, the year the country became unified under the Communists. I was a "red neckerchief" scout, sort of a Boy Scout thing but it was a government program to get kids involved in government activities. I guess we didn't have much homework to do, if any, because after school we, just me and my second sister, be allowed to visit the classrooms and go through all the drawers and trash bins looking for paper left behind by the students. Kids back then in Viet Nam, and now in the U.S., are equally wasteful. We always collect stacks of paper for recycling. I have zero recollection of where we turned in the paper or whether we got any recognition for doing it. I just know that we did it.

It was some time in those early school days post-1975 that I learned of the idea of a public library. A male teacher told a class I was in that the school was going to build a library from donations by the students' families. Each family would bring in a book for the school to collect then in turn the students could borrow from the library. All for free, what a wonderful idea! Back then, my only exposure to books, outside of the classroom, was to rent them by the days or even for the minutes. My sister would rent books from some place, we read them at home then bring them back a few days later. Kinda like Blockbusters or NetFlix except we were dealing with physical books. The practice is still in effect at certain stores in Manhattan's Chinatown. I myself, when I somehow had money, would rent graphic novels and read them right there and then. When I was done, I would return them, mere minutes later, or however long it took me to read them. The idea of a free, public library was very appealing to me. I don't recall the school's library ever took off, but ever since then I love the whole concept very much. I am a regular library patron these days, all thanks to the idea I learned of from about 30 years ago.

OverDrive Video Optimizer Sucks

Some time ago I saw a flyer at a branch of the New York Public Library touting an online library where one can borrow movies and more. I knew not to expect to find the latest Hollywood blockbusters available, but I do watch really old, classic movies from time to time. I never found the time to actually try to borrow any movies, until recently when my son became interested in the classic Short Circuit. It's been 22 years since the movie came out, it should be old enough to be in any library's online collection. It is indeed, but the only hurdle is that the required software runs on Windoze only. Fine, that's what I got Parallel for. I have enough of Windoze at work and don't want any at home, but the sad truth is that there are software out there that only runs on Windoze.

First I had to download the OverDrive Media Console software. Because I don't use Windoze much on the Mac via Parallel, I also had to download Windows Media Player. Through the Brooklyn Public Library's eMedia site, I downloaded some .ODM file that is supposed to lead me to the movie Short Circuit. Although the web site said that it's over 500 MB, it downloaded very quickly. Turned out it's kinda like those BitTorrent file.

Since I installed Windows Media Player after OverDrive, I automatically thought WMP would be used for opening the ODM file. To make matter worse, WMP did not flat out refuse to load the file but instead offer to try it anyway. Of course, it failed. Next, I managed to open the ODM file with OverDrive but then it complained about some WMP security being outdated. The error message did say that I would have to do something under the Tools menu of OverDrive, but because the outdated security was with WMP, I went to WMP and naturally couldn't find any options to update the security setting. To make things worse, the default fancy skin for WMP didn't readily show a Tools menu, you would have to switch to Classic skin first. It would be so nice to have the Check For Updates menu option like all Mac apps. Finally, I got OverDrive to update WMP's security, and the only hurdle was to download the large file for viewing. Yup, when I loaded the ODM file and clicked Play, it didn't automatically go ahead and download the file then play, but instead had to present an error window. Why can't the software just do whatever necessary to get the movie to be played?

What a painful experience that was. Compared that to the typical purchasin experience with the iTunes Music Store and I can see why the iTMS is popular. I have no idea how many use the eMedia service, but if it can be streamlined a lot more more people will make use of the resource.