Without even necessarily being aware of it, scholars of all stripes have become dependent on databases, but while these databases are not really designed to provide us with the data we need, they don’t provide data in the way that we need it. New tools are available for presenting information, but the commercial publishers of most of the databases we use are not putting these tools to good use. This longer-than-I-intended entry looks at one such database and imagines applying one such tool, the treemap, to that database.

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It’s July. In the northern hemisphere that usually means it’s pretty hot. Here’s a quick and easy recipe that doesn’t require any cooking:

• 2 16-ounce cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 medium red bell peppers, cut into thin strips
• one half cup of low-fat vinaigrette
• one half cup of chopped fresh parsley
• one half cup of crumbled feta cheese

Directions: toss well, serve. You might combine this with a grain dish like couscous or with a nice, hearty bread.

Source: Vegetarian 5-ingredient Gourmet

So post your own favorite summertime recipe in your blog and TrackBack to this entry, or put the url in the comments section. Soon we’ll have a distributed cookbook.

A few days ago I was poking around in the message board hosted on musician Jay Farrar‘s website, and I came across a reference to Jim Boquist, bassist for Farrar’s on-hiatus band Son Volt, working as a guitar tech for Paul Westerberg. Being a guitar tech is not a bad job, I suppose — sort of a senior roadie. But I thought, “Man, that kind of sucks. Going from being a working musician in an active band with a major label record deal to being someone else’s guitar tech?”

That got me thinking about how musicians make a living, and how contemporary technology proposals designed to keep consumers from illegally sharing digital music might, in the end, be used positively to alter the way we pay for music and the way musicians earn a living.

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I’ll take a quick break from writing wrestling with my paper on “John Wesley’s Magazine Publishing Career: 1778-1791” for the SHARP conference next week to mention the blog of Edith Frost, Drag City recording artist and, apparently, righteous computer whiz. Who knew? I’m listening to Telescopic right now.

She writes her blog entries in an appealingly personal, folksy style, but she’s also integrated some pretty sophisticated functions (from my semi-technically skilled p.o.v) into her main page. In an entry from yesterday she lays out her DIY blogging ethos:

I like to keep my own website the way I like it. I want to run it, organize it, control the layout and structure, and all that good stuff. I don’t like the idea of somebody else hosting my site and controlling the way it’s presented.

I seldom hear music I want to hear on the radio. My ideal radio station would play Edith Frost, no doubt.

So I have a new layout. I’ll provide some design notes once I’m completely finished, including credit to the folks whose blog designs influenced me. But for now … any comments? Suggestions?