Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

I know the title isn't apt, but I love that quote so lets roll with it. I was looking about on the blogger tool bar in my dash board and found the Stats button. You guys have to try this out! It's a really great feeling to know that your reader ship is higher than you expect. It even has graphs.

In honour of Iffat...

Found another cool thing guys, it's called ZooBorns, http://www.zooborns.com/ . It has pictures of the adorable and exotic baby animals born at zoos all over the world. From the obvious pandas and koalas to tapirs and aardvarks this site has it all. The pictures are amazingly good and there are little blurbs about the zoo's work to keep endangered species alive and thriving. Here is a picture of one of my faverite animals.

Google Docs, part duex

So I made my husband co-editor of my first Google document, just so I could explore it as a sharing tool. So far it's pretty cool but I still need to stress test it to see how robust it is. One thing that bothers me is that it seems to not register all of my keystrokes. It misses at least one every two words. This doesn't happen in blogger so it's not my keyboard. If anyone has an idea to fix it I offer chocolate in return, the extra time needed to edit is very annoying.

Just like Microsoft, only better?

So this weeks things are the first ones I haven't been previously aware of, and the ones I've been least enthused about. Maybe it's my age (young) or my newness to the work force but I found Google docs and Google spreadsheet to be kind of boring. Now I know for a fact that these tools are both really useful. I can see how they can be applied to library work, especially in an academic library, really easily. I even feel like a bit of a traitor for saying this, but I'm still just too used to Microsoft Word. The same thing happened when my Husband tried to switch me to open office. I think I fear change, or some fun thing like that.


One thing though, I think that I will never again choose to pay for Microsoft Office, when there are other products on the market like this one. I mean why would some one choose to shell out a hundred dollars plus when Google has almost all of the same features and you can share documents with others and even let other people edit them as well? So I guess I'm going to have to put more effort into playing with this weeks things, since we will need to be good friends soon!

Genbu Kaiden, a Fushigi Yûgi prequel

So I've been reading the newest version of Fushigi Yugi lately and I'm actually enjoying it even more than the first one. The main characters are Takiko Okuda, a young girl from Japan who spends her days looking after her sick mom and attending an all girls school. The young man is Limdo Rowan, a prince from a country in side of the mysterious book Takiko's father brings home from a trip. Once Takiko is pulled into the book the two meet and the story truly starts.

One thing I liked better about this version is that the main character has about 100% more guts than Miaka did in the original. Because of the era Takiko grew up in (the 1920's) she's actually trained in weapon fighting and one of the first things she does is get one built for her self in the book world. She never acts helpless, even when she's scared and she never turns to food for comfort (unlike Miaka). So far she has failed to get anyone killed.

Because of the epic nature of the story there is quite a lot of violence and adult themes. The country in the book world is entering an ice age and people are poor and starving. Young women are forced into sexual slavery and prostitution. War, and all of it's trappings, is quickly approaching. Mostly these dark scenes are mixed in with light humor and a love story so the book never gets depressing even while we feel deeply for the characters.

And now the best parts of a Yuu Watase series: The Awesome art and the hours of painstaking research she puts into her work. Here is a lady who loves what she does and it really shows. She even talks about the research trips around the world she takes in the sidebars. Her line are is gorgeous. I would buy her books just for the pretty art, but the story telling is just as good. While it's still being printed in Japan and we have to wait for the next issue I highly recommend picking it up for your library, or even for yourself.

I'm so out of the loop it just looks like a straight line from here

So lately I'm becoming more aware of how unaware I am. Now it could be squeamishness on my part, or it could be because I've spent the last eight years in tunnel vision until I graduated. For whatever reason I don't always know what is going on in the world. On of my goals in working with the current journals is to read at least one article a day on my break. Another way of fighting my giant wall of ignorance is online news feeds. Many people in this group seem to be subscribing to RSS feeds from local and foreign news makers and I might try that. I've also added some to my iGoogle page. I like how it doesn't save piles of stuff for you, that way I'll never get bogged down in what I missed. I've also added a few sources from around the world (India, Japan, GB) so I can compare. We'll have to see which (if either) method works. Other wise I'll be the one reading the comics and the horoscopes in shame.

Cool free radio? Is such a thing possible on the internet?

Has anyone heard of the site called Stereomood? http://www.stereomood.com/ They offer free music organized by moods like "road trip" "it's raining" and "busy as a bee." This is how I organize my play lists at home so finding a radio station that does it too is a real gem. But here's the thing... I'm not sure how legal this is. I tried reading the disclaimer about what they do and it sounds okay, but I'm not up with the legalese. So anyone who knows better let me know. Or just give it a try, because it's a really cool thing. Many of the songs are emerging artists but they also have classical and oldies as well.

Well I'm going back to my "working" play list, I have things to do.

Reader rabbit and the trouble with RSS

As I mentioned before I started this blog for a class project. I started using Google reader for a completely different reason. See, my husband got a little cranky listening to me grip about how my web comics were never updating on time. "If you have a reader you can just check that instead of a billion other web pages" he said. "Yeah, but that makes too much sense" said I, which forced my poor husband to sign me up instead of continue to listen to me ranting. Unfortunately I read a lot of web comics. Twenty on a daily basis and many others whenever I feel like reading through the archives. This leads to a very messy list of "feeds" showing up everyday. Now, instead of signing up for RSS feeds I'm taking the opportunity to weed myself down to the few I really want.

Another little issue I never expected: I sign into Blogger and Google with two different email accounts. This means that when I sign into one it automatically signs me out of the other one. It's possible to do work from one to the other, but kind of a pain. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I the only one using two email accounts?

I'm going to have to make a file folder for the blogs I follow too, just to keep my self organized! It's harder than it looks :)

Somedays it's all catching mice and no pats on the head.

Found out how to give me an avatar picture, so now I'm no longer faceless. I figured it was apt, since I started this blog as "Kimicat." I always try to be pretty annony-mouse on the net, just in case. Of course most of you guys already know who I am!

Blogged down in blogs :)

So I've decided to try to follow everyone on the 23 Things list. I hope no one thinks that's creepy, it's just how we went about things in Library school. I think it helped encourage people to know they weren't writing into a void, I think knowing that I was talking to myself once the class ended was a major factor in my stopping. I suppose my wedding and the massive amounts of planning might have been a factor too. :)

One thing I've noticed is that everyone seems really excited about the 23 Things project. Not a single person has said "well I guess I'll do this, since it looks like I'll need it." I find it pretty exciting too. Sadly, despite the fact that I just finished a Library 2.0 class last year there are parts of it that are already out of date. Or at least tools I've never seen before.

So that's my goal for taking this class, to keep up with the rapid change in social media and other Internet tools. I'm naturally not adept with computers (there are days when I'm sure my laptop is possessed by some kind of trickster demon) and could use all the help I can get. I have a small crazy fear of being the only girl in her twenties who has less computer knowledge then her 80 year old grandma. To be honest, my grandma is pretty spiffy and could probably kick my butt at most things but still... :)

Well whatever, blogging is really fun and I'm glad to get back into it. I'm going to try adding more posts on Manga, so you can read or skip those as you please. Have a great weekend folks!

P.S. Registering my blog was a lot easier than I feared.

The Re:Purpose of this blog

Since I started this blog for a Library 2.0 class, and I'm now taking a Library 2.0 seminar I thought that a temporary change would be appropriate. Anyone coming to the blog from the 23 Things course can blithely ignore anything I've previously published, or if you choose, you can go forth and read it. I may even add a few new Manga recommendations here and there, but not on work time. :)

So week one started out with iGoogle, something I've used before. Of course that was before they jumped on the apple bandwagon and it was called something else so it's been awhile. One thing I like is the themes, you can really customize the look of your page. Customization seems to be the big thing with iGoogle, each person can choose which gadgets they like and how they're laid out on the page. I added two new tabs to my iGoogle page and added a few apps to each. It was amazingly easy. Another thing (pointed out to me by a friend who's learning to make apps for Apple products) each gadget is free. Apparently this is uncommon, but a really nice touch.

So how would something like this work in a library setting? I'm not sure, because there are so many apps I had a hard time finding some that were functional. Mind you I did not go look at the sample layouts from other libraries, looking them up by name might be much easier. I can see how having a dictionary.com app, and various other links all in the same place would be very useful. Especially for ready reference. Maybe a customizable map of the campus that can be zoomed in, or that can have destinations drawn on like in Google maps. Or a link to good reads so you can look up information ab0ut books and authors. Or maybe the Library of Congress would be better for that.

I guess the point is that I can see how it could be useful, providing all the things I wanted could be added to my page. I'll just have to look into that, or maybe kidnap my friend the app builder and have him get on that!