Today I bought a pair of cool-bananas librarian’s pyjamas at K-Mart, not CafePress. What is the world coming to?
Cancel my subscription…I don’t want your issues.
Uncategorized
Poor pus-y pierced punk puss
UncategorizedBeware of gross tale to follow….if you want to read about happier animals, try this article about the rabbits who take ecstacy.
Nougat trendsetting
Poor Nougat had a grass seed surgically removed from her ear a couple of weeks ago. On Tuesday I noticed a lump on her cheek on the same side. Took her into Dr Jess, our neighbourhood vet.
Jess saw that Nougat had been fighting and picked a very small scab off the top of the cat’s head. She then gently pressed on the cat’s cheek.
A lava flow of greeny smelly pus poured out of the little puncture in the top of the cat’s head, and flowed down. Jess kept pushing. I’d say about one and a half teaspoons of gunk came out. Exorcist city!
Nougat had to stay in the night and Jess operated the next day. After Nougat’s cheek was drained, it had to be kept open. She now has a piece of fishing line looped inside her head…entering through the wound at the top of her cheek, through the cheek and out the hole at the bottom of it.
For the next week or so, we have to pick the scab off the top of her head, wash off the ooze and turn the string to keep the wound open. And wrap her in a towel to stop her clawing us and stick an antibiotic down her throat twice a day.
So..girls and boys, if you want a nice fluffy kitten for Christmas, just ask yourself….are you prepared for it all to turn out like this??
Look listen read
UncategorizedLast night, when I had time and inclination to blog, I accepted blogger’s offer to take two minutes to tansfer my blog to blogger beta. That was around 8:30pm. When I went to bed around midnight, it was still converting. Hence the 25 “new” posts from this blog this morning in my aggregator.
So…will blog again when I have time. Meanwhile, if you want to know some of what I’ve been doing:
- read this
- listen to this and/or;
- look at this
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Fulfilment
Bloglines..you are sooooo dropped!
UncategorizedDear Bloglines,
It’s over between us.
You were my first serious aggregator relationship. I know I flirted with RSS Reader and RSS Popper, but I settled on you.
I loved checking in on you and how you responded with new and exiting feeds. I loved those extras you did for me…like providing a blogroll on my sidebar and letting me see what others subscribed to. The “Sub with bloglines” button. Ahh..memories.
I used you as my first blogging software. I know I was misguided and you just couldn’t fulfil that need…but I thought your great aggregation made up for it.
I used to visit you regularly and you were always ready with an update. Recently, you’ve just not been up for RSS fun when I drop by. Your performance is…..slow. I know some users want intimacy and a bit of teasing with their updates, but for me it’s all about frequency, frequency, frequency.
I’m sorry, but I’ve been dallying with google reader. It’s not quite as fancy as you are, and doesn’t have all the features you have..but it can give good update.
I hope you understand. It’s time for me to move on. I hope to keep in touch through my sidebar, but for now I just don’t want more than that.
Goodbye and good luck.
Kathrynarium
My Life-hacks
UncategorizedWas just commenting over at Pop Goes the Library on Sophie Brookover’s post, On Not Doing It All — Further Thoughts on Life Hacking. She reports changes in her life since her column on the life/work balance in the September 2006 Library Journal, Priorities and Professionalism.
Among her life-hacks are:
- getting a career coach
- using Remember the Milk
- chunking her tasks
- Ensuring that her extra-curricular activities match her long term goals
Here’s how I responded to her question about how I Not Do it All:
I’m mum to 2 little boys, work 2 days a week looking at new web tools for my library, and do professional development many, many hours more. My trap is that my employer lets me do half my work from home, around the household chaos.
Thing 1. For me, it’s the maxim “SLEEP COMES FIRST”. Sounds simple, but every time things go out of whack with us, it’s because I’m not sleeping enough. With babies, that meant restructuring so I slept when the baby slept, no matter what else needed doing, or other interesting adult fun was to be had.
Now, it’s turning the PC off at night so I get enough sleep. I’ve not been doing it in the last few weeks (working on projects, having too much fun) and am a gumpy messy b*tch. I know I need to go back to that first principle for my life to work.
Thing 2. I live by my PDA. Have bought one for my Co-Pilot and we sync. to the home PC, so I can share the load by putting tasks on my calendar I know he’ll pick up.(They have his name next to them – he has to :))
Thing 3. I’ve been experimenting with saying “yes” more. When I did that, I realised that most of the things I’d been saying “no” to were things that I said I couldn’t do because I had a family. I was saying “yes” to baking cakes for the kids’ schools, but “no” to professional opportunities and fun nights out. Worth the experiment. I’ve become happier, but now need to re-tweak my life to get it back in balance (see Thing 1.)
Thing 4. Exercise. It works. I sleep better and have more energy, so the time pays for itself by making my other hours much more fun and productive. Now, after a 5 week family holiday, I have to get back into it. (see Thing 1)
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Rest.
(Oh, now you will think I’m making them up..but they ARE random. Honest)
Power of one….
UncategorizedPeople with enthusiasm, who embrace what they do with joy and encourage others, can change the lives of hundreds of people…far more than most committees do. Here’s a few of them…
Fig 1. Enthuse, embrace, learn, play.
Enthuser 1 – LORI BELL
Lori always seems to be online when I visit Second Life. She was showing librarians around Info Island 10am Western Australian time this morning, yet when I just emailed her (about 9pm my time), she replied straight away. She’s getting out of bed at 3am her time to show us around as part of our LINTy party.
She is co-ordinating countless projects in Second Life, creates a Real Life buzz around her project and is a hub around which many folk are empowered to try out skills in Second Life. She’s part of a team but she works many extra hours and brings extra ooomph to it.
**********
Enthuser 2 – WARREN HORTON
Director General of the National Library of Australia, 1985 – 1999. I’ve been doing a bit of reading about Aurora and discovered that the foundation is self funded due to a legacy he left on his death in 2003. He believed in empowering future librarians, and was deeply involved in Aurora’s inception and running until he died.
I’ve been reading how he scrutinized the applications and took delight in matching applicants with mentors. He was affectionately called the “Grand Poo-bah” by participants and mentors when he joined in each 5 day live-in course. He let down his guard and talked frankly about some of his best and worst decisions. He had an extensive knowledge of who was where in the library world, and apparently a talent for suggesting who should be where.
**********
Enthuser 3 – RICHARD RENNIE
Richard runs the Fremantle Light and Sound Museum. He’s not a librarian, but a passionate ex-science teacher who won the Premier’s Award for Science Communication 2006, He single-handedly runs his collection as a volunteer, in a small room in our local museum..and always seems to be there when we visit. He lets us play with his stuff collected over 40 years, talks to us about it and we leave thinking about it for days afterward.
The last few times we visited, we
- Played “Pong” on an old tele-tennis machine hooked up to a portable black and white TV
- Ran our fingers along a string dangling from a christmas card and heard it play a tune due to the friction of our fingers over the special bumps in the string
- Used a magnet to distort the picture on an old black and white TV set
- Wore special red and blue specs and goggled at Michael Jackson and Dr Who in 3D
- Placed our $50 notes under ultraviolet light to reveal the anticounterfeiting marks on it
- Used a typewriter – a highight for Mr4 who now wants to get one.
- Debated whether the baffles on a gramaphone really made the sound quality better
- Looked through periscopes and kaleidoscopes and stroboscopes.
**********
Enthuser 4 – REG BOLTON
I’ve previously blogged about Reg Bolton. He packed an entire circus into his suitcase and inspired and taught thousands of children that they had the power to amaze. He had a few “circus swear words” that he banned from his Big Top
“No, Can’t, Impossible, Embarrasing, Difficult”
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Face the situation.
Just missed a classic moment in kiddie rock.. Greg the Yellow Wiggle quits
UncategorizedMr4 has an orientation afternoon at his new school this afternoon, and Mr9-next-week has one tomorrow. Otherwise, I would have had a lot of explaining to do.
The fifth wiggle? Mr-then-7 even had the yellow shirt.
For the last couple of years, we joined the pilgrimage of parents and kids worshipping at the alter of The Wiggles for their annual concert in Perth. If we’d been there this morning, we would have been part of kiddie rock history. Greg Page, the Yellow Wiggle, announced he’s quitting the group due to health problems.He has a condition called Orthostatic intolerence, which Dr Kathryn understands is “falling over when you stand up”.
The official announcement states that understudy, Sam Moran, will take his place. I’m imagining an update of The Red Shoes called The Yellow Skivvy.
After hearing that Steve Irwin had died the day before we visited the Australia Zoo, and then the Big Red car breaking down in the middle of the Wiggle’s house at Dreamworld, I’m kind of glad we weren’t there, or we would have felt strangely responsible.
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Guilt.
(Honestly, these are randomly selected from over 100 cards)
Meme-y begging
UncategorizedPlease, please, please join in on this one….please, please…even if you have to create a blog to do so…………does that sound enough like begging?
Please see below.
Via Ruminations:
Scott Kaufmann‘s trying to measure the speed of memes.
If you’d like to help out, follow these steps, and I quote:
1. Write a post linking to this one in which you explain the experiment. (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, &c.)
2. Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances. Imply I’m one of them. (Do whatever you have to. If that fails, try whatever it takes.) [I have no sob stories: do it if you want to?]
3. Ping Technorati.
He’ll be reporting on what he finds at the forthcoming MLA convention.
Via Bitch Ph.D.
Speaking in tongues: Libworm and VLINT
UncategorizedTwo new library resources:
1. Libworm: describes itself as:
“the librarian RSS engine
over 1000 RSS feeds go in
exactly what you need comes out!”
I still subscribe to feeds for individual blogs, rather than feeds for searches. I’ve noticed that some more techno-savvy bloggers are tending toward the latter. This may just be the tool that makes me switch – but I doubt it, I’m too attached to connecting with people’s voices and their individual lives
2. VLINT (Virtual.librariesinteract.info: blog central for Australian Libraries in Other Worlds)
Since Lorelei Junot very nicely offered me a building in Cybrary City for Australian Libraries to share, we’ve been pottering about the building. VLINT started as a place to record the nuts and bolts, daily operations of the project. This gives whoever takes on the project (soon I hope) a history to work with.
snail suggested that we could broaden it to include Australian Libraries in all “Other Worlds”. Great idea. I really hope someone interested in virtual library branches or gaming in libraries starts posting.
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Let go of the past
Keep “Library2.0” in Wikipedia
UncategorizedThere is a proposal currently for discussion on Wikipedia that the entry for “Library 2.0” be deleted from Wikipedia.
Initial proposal says that it is…
“A neologism coined by a blogger and used by bloggers, not notable Lurker ”
The people I’d expect have jumped in and defended it, using the arguments I’d expect. They cite legitimate academic articles to show how the term has escaped the bilbioblogosphere. It is now being used by librarians who have never read a blog in their lives, to describe a change in our profession.
In itself, it’s an interesting debate about the “Library 2.0” concept …is it just the “2.0” label whacked on the end of another concept, to form a buzzword…or is it a shorthand to describe a new way of serving our clients?
I’m also enjoying learning about how Wikipedia works as a living, breathing “debate” and reflecting about what this means for “set truths” found in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. I don’t remember any entry in my print version of Encyclopedia Britannica changing from one reading to the next. Does this lead to more or less certainty about the veracity of the facts?
I was just as fascinated watching the “discussion” page for Steve Irwin‘s entry immediately after his death.
found via Panlibus…
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Wake Up