The Smudge

~One of my family's beloved cats, Smudge, passed away last weekend. While it was sad to see him go, he was probably one of the luckiest cats to walk the Earth. Despite having diabetes and a single functioning kidney, he lived for about thirteen happy years with humans who loved him and his brother Rascal. Smudge, like all pets, had many unique and interesting quirks of personality...he had a lot of them. I like to imagine him playing around someplace like the beastlands, happily chasing mice and barking at birds and squirrels.

In memory of Smudge, I present some of the better pictures I've taken of him over the years, along with a well-known poem:

(ahem) Cats sleep anywhere...

^ "any table..."

^"any chair..."

^ "Top of piano..." (or rather, dresser)

^"window ledge, in the middle, on the edge..."

^ "Open drawer, empty shoe, anybody's lap will do..." (although he liked Mom's the best)

^ "Fitted in a cardboard box, in a cupboard with your frocks..." (he loved curling up in boxes, and being the SPACE CAT when we played Omega Virus)

^ "Anywhere..."

^ "they don't care..."

^ "cats sleep anywhere!"

I hope you enjoyed the photo-poem. Here are a few other good Smudge pictures:

^ Looking regal on the front doorstep.

^ Smudge, The Cat

^ The Cat of the House

Smudge will be missed, but will live on in our hearts. He was a great cat, and remembering him will always make me smile. :-)

Venting

~I just spent 2.5 hours working on an assignment for one of my classes, which involved creating database queries in Microsoft Access 2007. Boring, you say? Indeed it was, but the reason I'm writing about it is mainly to vent. Micro$oft Office 2007 has got to be the most god-awful piece of crapware ever to disgrace the hard drive of any computer unfortunate enough to load it. It's a re-design of the many previous versions of MS Office, but features an "improved" interface that replaces the menus at the top of the screen with colorful icons and tabs.
Some people like the new interface, finding it intuitive and easy to learn. I am not one of those people. This is not an issue of not adapting or being set in my ways; rather, this is resistance to an infantile piece of junkware that forces me to wade through constantly-shifting tabs, ribbons, and icons with no logical placement. While working through the assignment, I frequently found my hands shaking with barely-suppressed rage from the extreme frustration of not being able to find things, which had been so easy to locate on earlier versions of the software. This is NOT a good change.

As if that wasn't bad enough, MS Office has somehow become the "industry standard", which means that professionals are expected to use it and be able to receive files using MS Office formats. All of this for the fine sum of $150. Yes, that's right, you're forced to pay $150 in exchange for a bloated suite of garbled software. Or your company pays comparable fees to "license" the software, and is able to install the programs on only a certain number of computers.

Fortunately for the sane people of the world, there is an alternative, a very, very good one: OpenOffice, which is open-source software originally created by Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice can do literally everything that MicroSuck Office can do, without the bloated "extras" and absurdly unintuitive icon-based interface Aside from being completely free to download, OpenOffice is open-source, the computer code for open office is freely available (so any programmer is free to modify it, as long as they don't profit off of it). On my home computer, I run StarOffice, which is based on the original form of OpenOffice.

StarOffice comes with "Writer" (a word processor), "Base" (a database program, which I would have vastly preferred to use over MS Access), "Calc" (spreadsheets), "draw" (for art and charts) and "impress" (slide show presentations). You may note that these are suspiciously similar to comparable programs in MS Office (Writer=Word, Base=Access, Calc=Excel, Impress=PowerPoint, etc). They can even read and save files in Microsoft formats (so StarOffice Writer can save in .doc format, which can be read by MS Word), so I don't need to worry about not being able to send and receive files to and from those poor unfortunate souls still using MicroScrew Office.

Another interesting piece of software I've been using recently is Google Docs, a free online document service (it's still in Beta testing, but works fine). For a recent class project, I created a "Google Presentation", which is basically the same thing as a PowerPoint slide show. I was then able to "share" the presentation by sending "invitations" to the email addresses of my groupmates, who then became "collaborators" able to edit it. It's hugely convenient, because the presentation and the tools used to edit it are all online and can be used at any time, eliminating the need to trade files by email. I've done the same thing for a group paper, and it's worked out great.

So for those of you still stuck in the dark ages of monopolistic, overpriced office software, do yourself a favor by going open-source: download StarOffice or any of its many freely-available variants. You won't have to worry about paying to "upgrade" the software every couple of years to pad out Bill Gates' paycheck, or put up with "Office Assistant" ever again.

LibraryThing

~I've signed up for a free account at LibraryThing, and online book recommendation database. It allows me to post the books I've read/am reading, and add metadata about them such as reviews, subject tags, related books, recommendations, etc. Of course, I can also see what others have written.

There are a number of fun features on LibraryThing. For example, check out the hilarious Unsuggester, a reverse-recommendation search engine. Type in the name of a book you like, and it will return books as unlike your title as possible. For example, if you type in "Dracula" (and then clarify by selecting the book by Bram Stoker), you get results like "The Opinionated Knitter", "Purpose-driven youth ministry", and (most disturbingly) "Pierced by the word : thirty-one meditations for your soul". Type in a book you like and be amused. Or, on a more practical note, type in a book you *hated* and get some better ideas.

I've added some of the books I've read and am reading, so in the future I'll add something to this blog that will let you see the titles.

By the way, there's a new poll on the right. Cast your vote on the downfall of humanity!

Fung-Fu Monkey

~I was all set to write about an amusing incident in class, but that will have to wait, as I've just stumbled across this amazing video:

^ Whatever you do, don't take his bananas!

Field Trip!

~I've been slacking with this blog, and so many interesting things have happened in the past couple of weeks. Today I went on a field trip for one of my classes, "Resource Selection and Evaluation", in which I'm learning how to build and manage a collection of materials for a library.

Our first stop on the trip was Perkins Library at Duke University. After some navigational difficulties caused by Duke's maze-like layout (and construction detours), I arrived and listened to the collections staff talk about area studies, foreign vendors, foreign-language materials, and so forth. The collections manager for China and Japan told me about the Japan National Library, and how ruthless the Japanese are about enforcing copyright law and restricting downloads from databases.

The next stop on the trip was the D.H. Hill Library at N.C. State University. This time, the panel consisted of the science collections staff, who discussed their work and relationships between the collections staff and faculty. This can be tricky, since many faculty do not understand collections issues, especially relating to academic journals which they want but the library cannot afford (or must cut other journals to compensate). The key is to engage the faculty and make them a part of the collections process, which helps to both minimize irritation when cuts are made and build a stronger overall collection.

I am registered for a course in Science Information next semester, which will cover many of these topics in more depth, so this visit to D.H. Hill was a great introduction to the subject for me.

Our final stop of the day was the Library Administration building for Wake County, located in eastern Raleigh. I'd been to the administration complex once before, to pick up free Hurricanes tickets as a gift for volunteering at Wake County Libraries. Here, the class spoke with Betty Utley, the head of collections development for the entire county system. I enjoyed this visit the most, as I am interested in a career in public libraries.

I also learned a lot of things about the library system that I wasn't aware of. For example, Wake County libraries have a "free-floating collection", which means that books are shelved in the library that they are returned to. So if one was to borrow a book from, say, Cary Public Library, and return it at Eva Perry, the book would "live" at Eva Perry until returned somewhere else.

While this system necessitates the periodic reshuffling of books to other libraries, there are several advantages. Books will tend to accumulate in libraries where they are most used; for example, one library is finding itself with more and more large-print books, which may be caused by many seniors that live in the area (a study is underway to determine exactly why). Patrons are better served when the books they tend to read are closer to them. In addition, the county saves money on fuel expenses, because books do not need to be transported back to a designated library when they are returned somewhere else.

I also learned about services that the libraries provide that I wasn't aware of. For example, did you know that you can access electronic databases from home, using your library card number and PIN? Also, you can request an item that isn't in the Wake County collection by using the Inter-Library Loan system, which will locate the book in the U.S. and mail it to a Wake library for pickup at no cost to you!

The field trip was a great experience, and I really enjoyed talking with the presenters. I may look into a field experience program (and job) with the Wake County library system.

The Rings of Rhea; or, the mini-Lord-of-the-Rings

~The Cassini space probe operated by NASA is still orbiting Saturn, years after dropping the Huygens lander to the surface of Titan. Almost every day seems to bring new and exciting scientific findings about Saturn at the Cassini website. One of the more interesting recent discoveries has been the detection of rings around Rhea, Saturn's second-largest satellite (diameter: ~950 miles) after Titan. This is the first time that rings have been detected around what is not only a satellite, but a rocky object.

^ Artist's conception of Rhea, with the debris size exaggerated so you can see the ring.

The rings were detected during a flyby of Rhea by Cassini, which detected a sharp drop in the usual rain of electrons from Saturn as it passed the satellite in November 2005. Another, more recent flyby on the other side of Rhea showed the same result, proving that there is some kind of debris field orbiting the satellite. A similar method was used to detect the rings of Uranus in 1977.

Like the atmosphere of Enceladus and the ice fields of Iapetus, the rings of Rhea are merely the latest findings from Cassini. Who knows what else remains to be discovered about the Lord of the Rings and its ever-growing family of moons?

Library Science Arcade Games

~Games and simulations are great ways to learn. Over the years, I've learned a lot from playing games, from geography in Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, to Ancient Egyptian history in Pharaoh. Library Science is an interesting area where simulations could be of value. Here are two library arcade games I've found on the Internet, developed at Carnegie Mellon University.


The first game is titled "I'll Get It!", and is a reference librarian simulation. The second, "Within Range", teaches the Library of Congress classification system, which is used by most academic libraries*. Feel free to try them out, and see how well you'd work in a busy library!

To play the games, click here, then select which game you want to play.

(* - but not Duke University libraries, for some reason, which still use Dewey Decimal...)