At work today we are having a cake decorating contest – here’s my less than fabulous (and really quite expensive) entry – “Trainwreck”.
I was joking to Dr K. on the bus this morning that my employer is trying to expose other marketable skills in our workforce. Still, it turns out that cake decorating will not be my golden ticket out of librarianship (perhaps that is for the best.)
Trainwreck
I’ve been visiting Canberra for the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee meeting yesterday and am looking forward to attending the Libraries Australia forum today. Follow the hashtag #laf2014 for today’s event.
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On Wednesday when I arrived at the airport with a cosy buffer of an hour to spare I did my usual prowl of the bookstore looking for something to keep me occupied on the journey* in addition to my knitting and queued podcasts.
I purchased: W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton. An excellent book – I was hooked and finished the book last night after an amazing meal at Rubicon restaurant (recommended!)
Now I’ve finished it – what to do with it? I don’t really want to take it home (even to pass it on to a friend and honestly, my close friends are public librarians, so if they wanted to read it, they already will have).
Is bookcrossing still a thing? Yes, apparently judging by their website – but it looks like to leave a book I need to join – I’ll leave that to a morning when I have more time.
The subversive part of me wants to do this …
What do you do when its time to discard your airport reads?
*Yes, I have the kindle app on my phone and iPad – airport reads are an old habit I can’t shake.
I was up early again this morning – it’s become somewhat a habit to get up, read my favourite websites, have a cup of tea and water the garden all whilst waiting for Dr K to get up. On weekday mornings, I also pack my lunch and squeeze in an early breakfast before saddling up at 6:30 for my ride into the city to work.
This morning I had one of those perfect moments in time – it was a beautiful cool morning and I was listening to Elvis Costello (specifically, Pump it up – had to get up and dance around my study); stroking Felix, my senior cat and attempting to knit on my fugly shawl (really, it is ugly) between enforced cuddling of the cat and the endorphins pumping through my system from the tea and delight at the music. Pure joy really.
Just to include a photo – here’s Felix and Dr K during another one of those moments of bliss.
Dr K and Felix playing Elder sign last Sunday night.
I got this book from my in-laws for Christmas – The Novel Cure – from abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 books to cure what ails you by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin. It’s a lovely book to dip into now and then. This morning I got up early before my household slept on (our household is temporarily enlarged by my father staying with us whilst he is visiting from Adelaide). These mornings when I alone am awake, I tend to walk through our house to my study/craft room and sit with my tea and a book or magazine (the wifi doesn’t reach my study – before you ask about my ipad).
The Novel Cure
Today I picked up The Novel Cure again. I read “cures” for being married (try Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin) and the desire to jump ship (read Rabbit, Run by John Updike) and also a list of books for Thirty-somethings. There are now 62 days till I turn 40. Do I try to burn through the 10 books on the list – or, do I just give up and move onto the list for forty-somethings? This question is largely rhetorical – I just ask it to amuse myself and maybe you, the reader. Ten books in 62 days is rather pushing it for me – and the descriptions of Rabbit, Run and Enchanted April made them sound like something I like to read too.
Here are the ten best novels for thirty-somethings as recommended by The Novel Cure:
+Of course there is a book by one of those cursed Bronte Sisters (I still haven’t read any Bronte).
I got up early and went for a 6 km walk. Ta-dah!!
For the first few kilometres Dr K joined me but he split off towards the homestead when we got briefly close by. I continued on…
I was just looping around one of the Lakes near our place and saw this:
It came as somewhat a surprise as we just don’t express our emotions like this in Maylands. I had to read it twice to get the meaning.
Then further on, I saw this cute bike bunting on the bridge.
Sweet! I carried on round the lakes and rounding a final bend I saw:
All was revealed! Preparations for a wedding – I’ve never seen one in our neighbourhood before (other than at Tranby House, which “does” Weddings).
I don’t envy the wedding party in this heat (Perth is predicted to get temps of 44c today). Good luck to all the people getting married today.
I enjoy reading Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog and in this recent post she talks about choosing a word or phase as a theme for the year (the comments on this post are also very interesting). I thought about it briefly yesterday afternoon and decided my two themes for 2014 are: Discipline and Celebration (sounds a bit sadomasochistic?)
I chose Celebration because I have a few things to celebrate this year: I’m turning 40 in March, Dr K and I will be celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary in May and I will be eligible for long service leave in May (which means I will have completed 7 years with the State Library).
Discipline was selected because I need to impose some – mainly in the finance and health areas of my life.
I had a minor health scare during my short Christmas break from work. I had a cold* and the major symptom of this cold was a very sore throat with my neck glands extremely swollen (aside from all the headaches, coughing and mucus fun, delightful!) Finally after a week of putting up with this cold I saw a Dr on Monday who gave me an antibiotic to fight off the sore throat. One thing this about this little incident, I have sleep apnea and the cold symptoms were making sleeping was very difficult and I often awoke gasping for air in a quite violent manner, frightening Dr K (who of course only confided his fears after I saw the doctor – I hadn’t really noticed it till just before I saw the doctor, being too miserable with everything else going on – see delightful comment above).
The need for some discipline for health: the sleep apnea symptoms are reduced for me if I am carrying less weight. I do have evidence – I lost 25kg two years ago and we saw the symptoms decrease to virtually none (sadly I have gained back 15kg of those lost). Time to get back on track – nothing like a health incident to get your heart in the right place!
Financial discipline – I want to celebrate with a few meals in expensive restaurants and take a long holiday in June/July, this will require ramping up the savings plan.
January goals:
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* I did say it was minor – that said it has hang around for more than a week and I hate being sick (actually who does? Silly statement really).
The scene: a sleepy librarian picks up her mobile phone and finds that a friend has already sent her a text – it’s 7:30 am and she needs that first cup of tea to wake up…
Cathy to Dr K: “I just got a text from Sandy, she says she’d like to borrow the sewing machine. She’s burned hers out and she wants to finish a quilt for her son. Yes not a problem. You’ll be home all day, hon?”
Dr K: “Yes, you’ll need to get it out for me so I can find it when she calls by…”
Cathy: “Thanks, I hate to say it but I hope she breaks mine too, so I have an excuse to buy a new one. It’s like the car, it works but it’s missing some things I want these days …”
Dr K: “Like iphone connectivity …”
Cathy: “A sewing machine with iphone connectivity??? [long pause] Oh, you mean the car!!!”
It’s been an odd couple of weeks. I’ve been a bit run down with a cold. I think my brain has melted too!
I attended a debate hosted by Curtin University last night; the topic was “Digitisation is the death of history”. To my surprise, the team arguing the affirmative won what I thought was an no-win position in this day and age.
Photo credit: Dave Carter (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
You can review the night’s debate via twitter following the hash tag #digideath13 – the tweets of the evening give a pretty good picture of how the discussion unfolded.
I have a couple of tips for the negative team should a rematch occur next year – this clearly had an effect on me I’m up at 3:45am writing this post.
The affirmative side made a big deal of the concept of digital deluge – that researchers today could be overwhelmed by digital material (and then argued somewhat daringly that only selective material is being digitised which might seem a contradiction) – the negative side at this point could have pointed out that in the face of this deluge there are tools to assist the researcher:
The other affirmative argument that had traction with the adjudicator (according to her summation) was digital obsolescence – the idea that storage formats are changing as are file formats making data inaccessible. There is a school of thought that promotes the idea of keeping old formats and the machinery used to access them and not using modern emulators to access the data or translating the data into modern file formats. I saw a post on The Signal (Library of Congress’ digital preservation blog) this year that commented that libraries are not “museums of computer hardware” that was pretty compelling (although a couple of days later an alternative POV was presented).
I found the suggestion that selective things are being digitised an interesting idea that will need to percolate a little longer – I know at my library we are prioritising Western Australian original materials (preserving WA history is our raison d’être) . Of course, we can only really digitise what we already have so selection is made for us in that sense (again there are some exceptions, e.g. materials lent to us for copying).
Well, I’m going to go back to bed and get a couple more hours sleep. Hopefully, my sleep deprived ravings make sense, apologies if they don’t :0) All in all, a very enjoyable and thought provoking evening. Thank you to the organisers and speakers. I really hope that there is a re-match next year with a different result (I think my bias has been pretty clear throughout this post).
This week’s topic for 23 mobile things is AR or more formally, Augmented Reality. Funnily enough in recent weeks at my workplace we had another fabulous “It’s not that hard” session this time on AR (the timing was a godsend).
During the session we experimented with several apps: Wikitude, Floodlines (from State Library of QLD), Anatomy 4D, Augment and String.
Here’s a picture of me my friend took using her device showing a cat climbing up my side…
fabulous shot of my double chin! 😛
Whilst she was taking that picture I was taking this one:
Making use of the App Augment. So. Much. Fun.
All the applications (barring Wikitude which relies on location services such as GPS) required an image (called a tracker or marker) to anchor your device’s camera.
Markers work by having software recognise a particular pattern, such as a barcode or symbol, when a camera points at it, and overlaying a digital image at that point on the screen. If the image is three-dimensional or animated, the effect is of a digital experience unfolding on the surface upon which the pattern is printed. (source)
We had a lot of fun playing with the tools. And having had a play, I can see how it could be used to enhance exhibitions at my library (which is what Floodlines was created for by SLQ). I’d also like to do some work on making digital exhibitions for our library (It would be nice if our website supported the activities that our in-person visitors enjoy). Honestly going into the session, I wasn’t that enthusiastic (gimicky!) that said, I had installed the apps on my iPad in preparation and had been looking forward to learning more – now I am a convert.
Have you had a play with AR?
From my evening walk with Dr K on Saturday.
A Kelso Miscellany 