You may say that I'm a dreamer ... but I'm not the only one?

Week 3 - yeah right (back to that parallel universe again!)

I don't think I'm a book club person - and I'm not sure whether I'd ever want to be ... This rash assertion is totally based on trawling through the Litlovers website.

I should have known, I should have read the warnings signs. After all, in the cyberworld of the Carolingian minuscule , they spell Lit with a capital L. Yeah yeah, I know it's abbreviated, gotta be slightly hip after all, but you can't go past that capital L.

It's a massive red flag waving from your monitor, an air raid siren blasting out of the your computer speakers, hands ready to reach out and grasp you around the neck and yell "This site is for Readers (note: capital R), for people who read real books, for people who worry about the subtext in Jane Eyre (I always thought that subtext was pencil notes people had written under the lines in a book), for people that read Literature" (and who probably went to more than the first lecture of English Literature 101)

It might as well also shriek "Anyone who can name more than one Janet Evanovich book does not belong here."

I found this website didn't so much tell me what books I might want to read (possibly based on some rash rationale around what books I have enjoyed in the past) - rather what books I should be reading if I knew what was good for me - in between dropping Tarquin at Rudolf Steiner and volunteering at the Oxfam/Trade Aid shop.

I searched for various books I was remotely interested in reading that I thought might be good to discuss in a book group - and soon realised that either

a) I have very strange taste in books (probably true)
b) People that join book groups have an even stranger taste in books (see note above)
c) I should never join a book group (see above)

Want an example? Under Bridget Jones' Diary - which I defy anyone to categorise as anything other than chick-lit (despite preponderance of P&P references/plot stealing) - are the following suggested "questions/discussion points" from LitLovers

1. How does the media influence women's self-images?
2. Why do women collaborate so energetically in the process?

Arghhhhhh! What about just enjoying the story? What about the jokes? What about the sheer delirium of losing yourself in a book?

So apologies dear autonomous anonymous blog auditors ... but I couldn't really find any appropriate resources for my book group's reading of Bridget Jones Diary on the venerable LitLover website ... here's my suggested list anyway

1. Copy of book (or copy of movie DVD for those that can't be buggered reading the book) - extra points for the odd coffee stain, chocolate biscuit smudge (unless it's a library copy then double points off)
2. Various nibbles, canapes, hors d'ouerves etc (triple points off for anything with Weightwatchers branding)
3. Bottles of cheap wine from supermarket (triple points for under $10 price tag from Foodtown)
4. Many and various forms of chocolate - timtams, Reeses peanut butter cups and Cadbury Tiramisu preferred
5. Never ending supply of coffee (fair trade OK - as long as it's full-leaded)
6. At least two friends who have been dumped by boyfriend that they worked with
7. At least one friend who found boyfriend/lover/husband in bed with (former) best friend

Discussion points

1. Should Bridget have decked Daniel when she found he was cheating on her?
2. Why didn't Daniel & Mark's fight end up on Youtube?
3. Why is it that book heroines who have no job skills always end up in journalism or marketing? (and where can we get a job like that?)
4. Are there more calories in a packet of Timtams or a bottle of house red?

So maybe I'm just a book lover not a LitLover ....

Dead relly digging

Yeah, yeah, I know it's not week 2 already (apart from in some parallel universe where Shakespeare runs the local dairy and Daniel Vettori is prime minister), but I couldn't resist ploughing on with the next task.

You see, I will have to confess - I am a dead relly digger, a granny hunter, an ardent genealogist. I like wandering around cemeteries. I know how to use every microfilm reader between here and Waipukurau. When my doctor asks if there is a history of heart disease/madness/diabetes/etc in my family, I can tell him what my great-great-great-great-grandfather died from (and by the way ... it was none of the above)

So I was really keen to see what new Web 2.0 stuff is out there for family historians and genealogists. I recently printed off a family tree of just three generations which took over 20 A4 pages and thought there must be an easier way. Unfortunately web2.0 ain't it.

Hmmm ... can't say I was overly impressed with either myheritage or geni. Fine for doing a basic tree with cute photos to send to your rellies. But majorly lacking in many features that are standard in other genealogy programs. Neither program had places to add sources which are vital in family history/genealogy research. If you can't locate where you got the information, it becomes a bit useless. Hard to find (and had to trawl through too many windows) places to stick additional information like christening, burial, occupation. Also very little space for notes or other longer information such as cemetery transcriptions, immigration records, education information etc etc.

I added "my tree" (pretending to be Henry VIII - figured if it could cope with 6 wives, it could cope with anything) - and stuck in a couple of photos and embedded in my blog. That all worked fine - it wasn't easy to find out how to sort the wives into the proper order. It was also tricky getting the thing into some viewable format where you could be more than two people at a time. All up, neither was particularly user friendly unless you were somewhat of a cyber-geek to start with and were not afraid of breaking the internet by trawling around through multitudinous windows and pop-ups.

I eventually found the two (or three or four) places needed to enter basic information about a person - but couldn't find a place to add random comments (likes tennis, wrote Greensleeves, had strange taste in codpieces) and notes. Maybe it is there somewhere but I left my speleology equipment behind.

I don't think I'd recommend these sites to customers - they're both pretty 'genealogy lite'. Plus I don't think many people would get far with being only able to add 500 people without paying - mind you my family are Catholic and we can easily get up to 500 in one generation! There are free programs out there like PAF and Legacy which offer far more features. There are also many sites where you can share your tree on the net for free - Rootsweb, World Connect, FTM World Tree, Ancestry, Lost Cousins etc.

These established sites also adhere more strongly to standard genealogy protocol of not including information about living people on internet trees. Even though, these programs are invite only, I would be loath to stick too much personal information about living relatives on an internet based tree.

Maybe sites like these will give people a taste of that mad, bad and dangerous to begin pastime of dead relly hunting.

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog

Another year, another Web 2.0 playtime. So it's back to the blog.





Alas, poor blog, abandoned in the cyber-sphere - left to adrift unattended. Ashamed to show its face at blog parties due to its lack of posts. Apparently size does matter - particularly when it comes to the length of your blogroll.

But now this thing of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy is revived. Ready to shine its bloggish light once more across the realms of web 2.0 land.

Best blog found ...

• Batgirl was a librarian - notably for the Library Cats Map - which includes our own St Helier's Xena who has her own blog.

But seriously folks - now for the real stuff

Your post should contain comments on what you liked.....

I will have to come clean and admit ... I do like blogs. The random ramblings on subjects as diverse as knitting patterns from sweaters seen in movies to my brother's actual ramblings up and down various mountains/hills/bumps across the United Kingdom.

disliked......

For every interesting or mildly amusing blog out there, there is a lot of dross and drivel. Mind you, you could say that about the fiction section of your average library ... So finding the good stuff and forwarding it to your friends and/or adding it to your RSS feed is essential. Otherwise you'll never read the second post about how to knit Cameron Diaz's jacket from The Holiday.

found easy or hard to do.......

Easy to do - find my blog again in my favourites. Hard to do - remember the password I thought up for it last year.

whether you would recommend this to customers....

Probably - have shown customers the library blogs - and have also shown a customer how to set up a blog to record their travel diary.

and how you think you could use these tools in your role.

It is always useful to know where to find a knitting pattern for a Stargate Atlantis insignia

There is a word for it ...

Just when you thought the English language could not get any stranger (meh is being considered for inclusion in the latest Collins dictionary), you realise that there is indeed a word for everything.

Like acnestis - that spot on your back just below your shoulder blades that you just can't reach to scratch. Now you just knew there had to be a word for that didn't you???

What does a girl do ....

when she has three (count 'em 3!!!) weeks holiday and she manages to get the flu by day 4?

Ended up downloading Treasure Island from Librivox and dozed in bed listening to Jim Hawkins get up to all sorts of bother.

The thing is with the "classics" - you 'know' the story, have seen the tv programme/mini-series/movie(s) and may have even flipped through the Classic Comic version or (horror of horror!) read the Readers Digest Condensed Book while staying at your aunties. (What is it about those condensed books - you only ever find them at your auntie's house?) And then you read (OK, listen) to them for the first time and realise you had it all wrong ...

And then you start adding to the list of others you must get around to ... so here's my "classics I really should have read when I was supposed to have read them at school but couldn't be buggered so I'm just going to have to read them now" list (needs a bit of work that title, a tad on the longish side).

Kidnapped
David Copperfield (although my bro says that it "does go on a bit")
Oliver Twist
The Wizard of Oz
Gulliver's Travels
Robinson Crusoe
Peter Pan (aka Peter & Wendy)
Wuthering Heights
The Three Musketeers

Now don't get me wrong, I am a serious bibliophile. I love the touch, the look, the smell, the sheer beauty of a physical book ... but audio books rock in the fact that you can do something else at the same time ... for instance

• drive to work (or anywhere else for that matter)
• knit
• iron (OK - so I don't do that ... not that you couldn't, it's just that I don't iron)
• garden
• wash dishes (and dry them too)
• supermarket shopping (hint: comedies not recommended unless you want funny looks when you start giggling by the brussel sprouts. Nobody should giggle next to brussel sprouts)

So I'll let you know how ole Jimbo gets on ... at the moment Squie Trelawny is really excited because he's got this really cool one-legged guy called John Silver to come on their expedition as ship's cook ... uh oh.

Feed your head

I've decided that the publication schedule of this blog will have to revert to "occasional" - i.e. posts at random, sporadic and varied intervals when I remember what my password is and have something I feel like raving about.

Today's topic - my reversion to childhood - or rather my current plan of re-reading all those childhood classics - but in a Web 2.0-ey kinda way. Which means fantastic sites like Librivox - free public domain audio books.

These are all read by volunteers so be prepared for varied sound quality (I swear I could hear someone doing the dishes in the background of Chapter 1 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and a cornucopia of American accents (it's OK - only one reader so far sounded like George W. Bush).

But it's just soooooo cool to be able to sit and listen to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - knowing that I have Treasure Island and Little Women waiting in the wings (and yes, Hamster I can listen to Lewis Carroll and Radio Sport at the same time!)

Hints for the Audiobook download newbie

• leave Dickens until you can find version with British narrators - David Copperfield should not sound like he's just left an Iowan cornfield.


• If you have dial-up - don't fall off your chair with shock/disgust/laughter when your computer tells you that Great Expectations will take one week, four days, 5 hours and 53 minutes to download.


• Don't start casting nasturtiums about Mr Carroll's use of hallucenogenic substances while penning his tome before you check that you have loaded the chapters onto your mp3 player in the correct order.

And if you need explanation of the title of this post ...

I want to be a mad scientist!

Yes, I am one of those people who browse the weird and wonderful stuff around us in newspapers, magazines and the web. And everything now and again, I find a gem.

Check out this article from the Inhabit website - apparently kangaroo farts do not contain methane (nasty greenhouse gassy stuff) and they're trying to find out whether this handy little piece of Antipodean physiology could be transferred to cows?

Perhaps I enjoy stuff like this from a hidden dream to be a mad scientist? And this from someone who ditched science in fourth form (Year 9 for those of you who had the misfortune to be born anytime after Bohemian Rhapsody was released). The most likely reason is that at that age I wasn't particularly interested in my future scholastic endeavours - I chose the subjects that had the a) highest pass rates, b) least psychotic teachers and c) no classes after lunch (my attention span in those days being similar to a mayfly).

Why else would I drop something potentially useful (such as biology or chemistry) for the archaic wonder that was School C Latin? I mean we got to learn all about Caesar conquering Britain - even though he didn't stick around and actually complete the exercise as I later found out, had to wait for Claudius for that (did you know I always thought Claudius' first name was I? Blame Robert Graves)

Instead we translated ancient Latin cookbooks and realised where English food came from (blame Caesar and Claudius? You bet!). I mean, there weren't any recipes for chicken tikka marsala back then - but this 'Roman' food bore a marked resemblance to something Jamie Oliver would harass a school dinner lady about rather than anything Nigella Lawson would toss her hair over.

Anywho - back to Skippy and his (her?) mates. Perhaps we've got it all wrong - ditch the cows and farm kangaroos? Me Mum's an Aussie and says that Skippy can be quite tasty. Mind you there was a war on at the time ... and the kids were told it was smoked mutton. Milking sheds would need to be re-designed somewhat and the standard taranaki gate would be slightly redundant in keeping the buggers contained. Gosh maybe we could plant trees around paddocks to corrall Kanga and Roo?

But this all leads to one extremely vexing question ... how did they find out what exactly is contained in the average kangaroo's fart?