jadesfire

Good morning, campers. How is everyone this sunny spring morning? I'm much better for a relaxing weekend at home, seeing people, cooking, crocheting and generally letting myself just 'be' for a couple of days. It's going to be another busy week, but at least I feel ready to face it today.

Not much to report otherwise. I'm crocheting like a mad woman, writing as fast as I can (and yes, okay, I'd be outpaced by a snail right now, but I'm trying!) and working hard, which is surprisingly satisfying. I'm also itching for a camera phone, so that I don't have to remember to take the camera out with me all the time. Will have to see what I get offered when my contract comes up for renewal.

The most exciting thing about today is that it's my last trip to London on a Monday afternoon \o/ I've been travelling back and forth since last September, and while the course has been really good, I'm really, really looking forward to not having to make that journey every week. I made cake in honour of the occasion, then left it in the kitchen *headdesk* Hopefully the other half brought into town, otherwise I'm sure the folks at work will enjoy it. It's an unusual one - orange yoghurt cake. I got the recipe from mumsnet here, and added 2 tbsp of cocoa to make it a chocolate orange cake. It's one of those "throw everything in the bowl, then in the tin" recipes, which are definitely my favourite, and the resulting cake has managed to be dense, light and moise all at the same time. Nom.

I've been gathering links for you lately, but have lost track of what I have and haven't posted, so apologies for any repetition:

The Latest Guerilla Knitter draws attention from the police.

Cardboard city, but not what you're thinking

Little Billy's Letters and some awesome replies.

Visualising the Internet. I love graphics like this for statistics. Much easier for visual learners like me.

Speaking of which, The VARK learning styles survey is worth a look and has some interesting links from its final page.

The trouble with ebooks

Pictures of breakfasts from around the world. Stunning photography.

Self-sorting craft box. WANT.

Gummi bear chandelier. No, really.

Patrick Hughes. 3D art, from a certain point of view.

Oh wise and wonderful friends-list, if I give you shiny links, will you help me out? Please?

We do pretty well for variety when it comes to dinners. We try new recipes all the time and I enjoy having the leftovers for lunch the next day. But on days when there aren't leftovers, I do get kind of fed up of jacket potatoes.

My staple freezer-dinners are moussaka and stoo, and I'd really like to have some more variety in there. It's my chance to have things that don't really do anything for J, so Shepherd's pie is on my list, and I'm thinking of trying to make meatloaf, which I was fond of as a child.

What do you make for the freezer? Our lasagne attempts have been mixed (the pasta doesn't freeze very well), and the chip experiment was a failure due to sogginess. We already eat things like chilli and bolognese. Is there anything I'm missing?

In return, I promised you links:

For the typography fans out there, you can now get your own alphabet soap

The Chile earthquake may have shortened Earth's day

This will be irrelevant to many of you but I couldn't resist a link to the London chocolate tours

Bored with your screensaver? Set fire to your monitor!

This would take more paper and patience than I possess, but how much do I want to make this rhombidodecadodecahedron?

I'm not entirely convinced that vandalaising your home fixtures is the way forwards...

This might be a library joke, but it made me smile: If OCLC controlled hashtags...

And finally, check out this artist: Mark Evans: etched leather

I'm working my way through comments and emails, so please bear with me for the moment. My mood is still on the floor and I have almost no energy, so it's taking me a while to type them, then I have go back and take out the typos.

And just to give me more to reply to, I was wondering if anyone out there uses a blogging platform other than LJ, and if you do, which one? For a work project on Web 2.0 tools, I've been keeping a Blogger blog going, and if I'm honest, I can't stand it. I find the interface awkward, the lack of threaded comments bizarre and the whole site difficult to navigate. The only thing it has going for it is that I can use my Google account, which isn't without its own problems for keeping my fannish life well away from my professional life.

So what places do you use? No need to link me to them unless you want to (see separation note above ;)) but what platforms do you find good? Wordpress? Typepad?

I'd like to keep a non-fannish blog going once I finish with the work programme, but I want to keep it somewhere that doesn't make me want to throw things at the screen every time I use it.

For thanks in advance, have an article about an early Turkish temple, Ambigram magazine (if you like art/design and don't know what that is, just click the link. Trust me, I'm a librarian), and Giant George, the world's tallest dog.

Current Mood: listless

Happy birthday

nightporters and

stackcats! Hope the weather is better for you than here right now \o/

Apparently my life didn't have enough complications already, since I got another one added last night, so I'm still not entirely able to focus right now. What I have been doing is saving links to my Delicious account, although most of them have to do with crochet and craft (if you're interested, I use the same username over there as here). But I do have a few of more general interest. Well. I say general interest. Mostly they're pretty things and Radio 4.

There's some great stuff on the BBC iPlayer right now. I particularly recommend the History of the World in 100 objects, The Classic Serial "What is a man?" which is about Henry II and his sons, the In Our Time archive and From the Ban to the Booker which traces the history of lesbian fiction (although I don't get on with her books, I love listening to Val McDermid).

The pretty stuff I am looking at includes the work of Baptiste Debombourg, who creates art out of staples; The Evolution of the Book; Dante's Internet; and two pieces about design: Color theory and The Global Visual Language of the BBC which is a fascinating look inside the process.

I've also been skimming this book, which is a vision of libraries in 2010, written in in early Seventies.

And finally, this article suggest you should ship your luggage rather than trust it to the airlines. I'm not sure I trust the post office more...

Current Mood: hungry

Since I am very boring at the moment, have some stuff that isn't:

The Zoo vs The Internet. Following the carrier pigeon beats broadband story from South Africa, CNet has done some more comparisons.

YouTubeDoubler. Because you need to watch more, clearly.

Every wanted to make your own lego designs but didn't know how? Lego Design will let you create whatever you want and THEN buy the bricks, just for your model. Wonderful. Incidentally, did I mention that

rustydog, who knows me far too well, sent me Pirate!Lego for my birthday? J and I spent way too much time firing the tiny cannon...

Which actually segues nicely into my recommendation of James May's Toy Stories. He's so far covered Airfix, Plasticine and Meccano, and it's been an absolutely joy.

Since it is grey, gloomy and horrible here, I'm going to turn on my daylight lamp and try to actually get some work done. Any other recommendations of how to entertain myself while doing so?

I figured it was time to match my house-cleaning to some internet-cleaning and go through my Delicious account. I've got so many links saved in there it's getting silly. These are just some I thought you guys might enjoy :)

Reading the whole internet would take you 57,000 years. Fortunately, you have me to pick the best bits for you ;D

A literary cat makes library visits. And it's not alone

( More library and book related links )

If you've been on LJ any length of time, you'll know that Terms of Service are a sensitive topic. TOSBack helps keep track of changes to TOS at various sites - essential if you want to be sure what you're signing up to!

( More things to see on the internet )

Approach with caution and with your coffee well out of reach: Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences. GAH! MY EYES!!!!1!
( More randomosity from my wanderings )

And finally, I'm sure I must have posted these before, but just in case I haven't, have some hot library smut.

Current Mood: productive

It's my turn to post links to

writers_lair this week. With great difficulty, I managed to post a fairly short (for me) list, which can be found here.

There are more lurking in my Delicious account, but they'll have to wait until I have a smaller pile of papers on my desk...

It's been a while since my last linkspam, and although I've got over 60 links on my library list, these seemed more fun right now:

( Things to Read )

My 'must read':
I don't know if I've posted this before, but it bears repeating: Personal Network bill of rights and responsibilities. This is something I would do well to remember sometimes.

( Things to see )

My 'must see':
Yes, this is a cake. *whistles*

( Things to watch )

And finally, my 'must watch':
How do you eat yours? Seriously, WATCH THIS VIDEO. I cannot imagine being bored enough to make this, but wow, I'm glad they were.

( Things to see )

My 'must see':
Yes, this is a cake. *whistles*

( Things to watch )

And finally, my 'must watch':
How do you eat yours? Seriously, WATCH THIS VIDEO. I cannot imagine being bored enough to make this, but wow, I'm glad they were.

Normally I try to put these into some kind of logical order, but I'm on my little computer and LJ runs intermittently slow, making shifting stuff around tricky. So it's pot luck, I'm afraid! It also froze and crashed just as I was about to post *loves LJ's draft function*

Now *rubs hands together* Let's clear this delicious account, shall we?

I try not to make assumptions about what people know, and this post was useful to me: How to highlight spoilers for all journals Someone recently tried this for a fic, but because I have a brown background for my reading list, I could see the spoiler pretty clearly in their white text. Highlights matter, folks!

The galaxy's centre tastes of raspberries

Encyclopaedia Romana. There was a time when I saw this kind of thing and thought about my degree. Now, I just think about Nightdog's Annals series *g*

I haven't had much of a chance to check this out properly, but Book Army looks interesting for helping people find other books they might like.

Blackmare, you may not want to scroll down to the bottom of this. Seriously, why would you make a cake that looks like that?

I have no idea what the sciencey words mean, but so pretty!

I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want my tap recognising me...

This is for those of us who often have trouble proving we're human. Some of those warped letters are seriously hard to read...

Music folks, take your collection to any computer (legally!)

Tweeting by telepathy. Yes, really.

An interesting perspective on reinventing the book

I really enjoy the O'Reilly Radar blog, and this piece about teaching and memory is a good example of why.

I still can't quite get over the fact that I've lived through a time when a proper noun has become a verb, and now a verb. Let's face it, very few people are ever going to call it "the dysoning", but Un-Googlable is a neologism people will instantly recognise. It's fascinating. Oh, and the article's quite fun too.

Fantasy maps are always great. Fantasy book maps are even better

Keeping up with the digirati (this is another favourite blog, btw)

She's either desperate or mad, but either way, this is not how to get a good divorce settlement. Relatedly, the strangest legal cases of 2008

McSweeney's INTERNET-AGE WRITING SYLLABUS AND COURSE OVERVIEW. Someone possibly has too much time on their hands, but this is still brilliant.

Given I'm in a different timezone to at least 60% of my flist, Universal Greeting Time strikes me as an excellent idea.

And finally, if anyone has not seen Zoo borns (thanks

naye!), it's gloriously sweet and highly recommended. And this is the cutest ass you will ever see

Still sick and decidedly anti-social, although only apparently in internet terms, since I am also the proud owner of a train ticket to Cardiff for next Monday \o/

Also, for the few people I know track my icons, I'm going to be changing lots and lots and lots of them later today, so unless you want around 200 emails for deletions and uploads, you might want to turn notifications off :) This assumes that I can choose from the 315 that I have saved...

I don't have many links saved right now, but I wanted to say thanks for the lovely comments, to which you'll probably get a reply in about a week once I'm off the cold drugs and the painkillers:

Adding to the list of Amazon alternatives, The Book Depository is an excellent source of books. Postage is free to anywhere in the world, and when you look up a book, it tells you whether it's available/cheaper at Amazon, or if it's out of print, it directs you to Abebooks to find a copy. And yes, you read that right. Free postage anywhere in the world. One book I'm going to get from Abe (because TBD don't have it) is probably The Detective as Historian, because historical mysteries are my favourite kinds of books.

For the library bulletin board

Parrot custody case. The squawking is my favourite part :)

What do writers owe their readers? And fanfic authors think that comments like "PLZ RITE MOAR" are bad...

Research into the 'stereotypical' librarian'. My favourite article about this so far included the line "shockingly, 11% of them have tattoos!" (exclamation mark theirs). It's also worth noting that it's a tiny sample of a specific type of Australian librarians (the UK doesn't really have 'teacher librarians' in the same way, I don't think), but looking around my 2-300 colleagues at the last staff conference, I'd say it was pretty accurate!

Right, I think that's everything I had tagged for posting.

Since some people have said they like the library links, and I'm cross-posting mode anyway, many of these will appear here and in my library blog, but I'll keep the ones here under a cut so people who just want the fun, pretties and other articles and get at those as well.

Having said that, if I had to choose once link that really summarises my feelings about libraries at the moment, it would be this one: The search for the next big thing. To paraphrase Yes, Prime Minister, there's a lot of things we can do, and a lot of things we ought to, and a lot of things that people want us to do, but choosing what we should do? That's hard.

( Library links )

( Law Library things: )

Fun stuff:

Eat this book!

The art of bookmaking is not dead yet!

Books, young man. Books!

Stephen King on enjoyment

How to be a bat. Absolutely captivating videos and fascinating research into bat-life.

Dog vs bedsheet, set to drums

The history of art, online. Complete with pictures, commentary and text.

Have I shown you this before? Just in case I haven't - Forgotten bookmarks. It's amazing what people will leave behind.

Also, for all the Classicists: The Aeneid on Facebook

The temple of Apollo as Naxos Stunning photography.

Those who forget their history… When I was a student, my strongest interest was in reception studies – how the present receives, interprets and re-casts the past for its own needs. There are some obvious comparisons to be made, and some less obvious ones. Further reading recommended in the article.

Celebrating Wikipedia

Values of the Facebook generation. It did strike me that you could substitute "fandom" for "the Web" in most of these and not be too far off.

The Ministry of Type. Beautiful typography.

Master Classes from Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein

Flickr Commons More photographs, more history.

[cross-posted to LJ]

Thanks to meanderings around the blogosphere, I have managed to seriously and deeply upset myself, to the "I'm so angry I'm in tears and can't see my monitor" point. Honestly, I should know better by now. Also, yes, there is a long angsty post about it, but it's staying private for now.

While I think of it, last call for anyone who wants to watch me flail my way through my Big Bang before the deadline. I would say it's 15k in 10 days, except that I can see quite clearly the shape of it in my head and it's more like 30k in 10 days. Remind me why I failed at NaNoWriMo? Anyhoo, if you want to see a sprint writer in action, drop me a comment.

Nope, that's still not making me feel better. If I give you some fun links, will you tell me something happy? Music, stories, jokes, pictures - I'll take anything right now.

*bribes you with links*

With Dreamwidth in so many posts and everyone trying to decide what to call themselves, this article seemed all-too appropriate. Although it's more about Caitlin Moran's fear of fish than Sainsbury's recent fish-naming policy.

The Secret Libraries of San Francisco

This web trends map is lovely to look at and is probably even better if you know the Tokyo underground.

Why should bookshelves be boring?

Where gadgets go to die

So you think your library books are overdue? With book in hand Wednesday, the American walked into the Lyn Heritage Place Museum with the five-inch thick Webster's Dictionary his great uncle Mutt failed to return just before the turn of the century.

Best fancy-dress costumes ever Y/Y? (with thanks to

nnwest from whose google-feed I pinched this)

Kate. Katharine Hepburn is my heroine, so I intend to listen to this asap.

Get your degree in Twitter. As always with headlines, not quite, but it's not actually that far off. Speaking of which Follow Herodotus!

Are we looking for aliens in the wrong places>

Uncomfortable Plot Summaries. Not all of these are funny, but the Lord of the Rings one made me snort. As did the Doctor Who one. Er. Spoilers, I guess, for all sorts of famous films...

Strip and Knit in Style was in 4th place. Old news, but still funny.

Giving Good Beta. THIS.

For those of you who might find it handy: Nihongodict is an English/Japanese online translator.

[cross-posted to Dreamwidth]

I love getting my teeth into research for a new story. As promised to

apiphile, 2009 is the year of the subplot, and I'm doing my best to construct one for my Big Bang. So far, I'm up to my ears in Arthurian legend, dragons, sedimentary rocks, Welsh poetry, Geoffrey of Monmouth, physics and the geography of North Wales. It's great! I also had one of those moments where you read something in research that you're pretty sure was put there just for you. Oh yes. Subplots, here I come...

When I'm not doing that, I've been clearing out some of my delicious links that I thought you might like.

My pick of the bunch:

Truly beautiful kinetic sculptures. I could watch them all day, and his own website could prove addictive.

And the rest:
( Cut for length )

Today, I am certifying myself as aweseome once again.

Just as one night's sleep can make the world of difference, so can one night's insomnia, and I've been the walking dead today. On the other hand, I've still managed to get a good lot of work done, as well as finishing my first 'proper' Supernatural story and taking tentative steps to starting one for

tardis_bigbang. I've also done all the admin needed for

bau_bigbang and am loving my co-mods right now *loves*. For the first time ever, I feel geniunely multi-fannish, and I'm really enjoying it. There's less chance for me to get bored, and less pressure somehow. I'm happily paddling and it's all good :)

There's still a shedload of stuff that I didn't get done, including clearing out the gazillion library links that I've gathered as well as the ones I thought you guys might like. Maybe I'll just have to dish them out in small doses. Here's a few to get me going:

Nine words you might think came from science but which are really from science fiction [with thanks to

aoibhe for the link]
Stargate Sunday at Cakewrecks. SGA: Good enough to eat.
How much would I love my Google page to look like this?
The Library of Congress puts the nation's treasures on YouTube

I'm going to have a go at some more of the 'Five Things...' prompts that you all thought I'd forgotten just to get my brain shifted back into Harkness-mode.

If anyone else is trying to get back into writing-mode at the moment, do have a look at

writercon100. I'm still gutted beyond the telling that I won't be able to go this year, but at least I can help someone else. No donation required on the part of the writers, just some time and words, but it could make a huge difference to the scholarship fund. This week's prompt is "con" but you're not constrained by that in any way. Check out the 'matching pledges' here to see how to raise even more money!

Oh, and I'm thinking of updating a meta I wrote a while ago about structure and tone in stories. Something I was listening to today completely threw me by taking what felt like a left-turn halfway through. It wasn't a problem exactly, just that I felt that the two halves weren't connected in any meaningful way, except by the plot. I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone but me, so I might try to put it into sensible language at some point, along with the meta about Gen that I've been meaning to write. Oh, and the one about writing action. At this rate, I'm going to need a list of lists...

Everyone okay? It's all going quiet for Passover and Easter, but I'm sure some of you are still out there in LJ-land.

Poetry isn't something I generally connect to, but just as last year was my experiment in 'trying to understand vids', I thought I'd use this poetry month to try out some poetry. I went through a phase of memorising it, although the only things I can remember now are the couplets of "If" in a more or less random order, "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day", a couple of Yeats poems and this one:

( She walks in beauty... )

And while we're on the subject, I can't recommend the Mark Steel lecture on Byron highly enough. He has a few series on 'People with a Passion' and is a joy to listen to.

Oh, and not directly on that subject, but related to the idea of 'People with a Passion', if you can access the BBC iPlayer, try the latest Horizon programme. (

apiphile, you'll like this - it's an hour of Marcus du Sautoy getting enthusiastic about maths and at one point they scan his brain :D) I swear, I fangirl that man to an embarrassing degree. Since the programme features Alan Davies getting maths lessons, you can also watch it and see where I went to school! We even had the same maths teacher *g*

I have a whole load more links I wanted to share with you, but for now, I'll settle for Diablo III - Archivist. There's more like this under my 'LJ' tag at my delicious account if anyone wants to get a head start on my next linkspam.

And if anyone spots my life while they're out and about, please send it back, along with the sleep that I seem to be missing at the moment. Ta muchly :)

I need to clear these out more often. And these aren't even all of them. Click the cuts at your own risk.

Also, people who expressed interest in my librarianship blog (which is about as exciting as it sounds right now, but still), drop me a message or email and I'll send you the link. Once I've replied to the 80 other emails that I've labelled 'pending' in gmail *eyes account* This could take a while.

Oh, and can anyone direct me to a good place for SPN icons? My usual art-fu has deserted me somewhat...

Anyway, enough blather. On to the links!

( Writing )

( Pretties, including some wonderful photographs and art-work )

( Time-wasters )

( Some reading material, useful links and random round-ups )

And finally:

Dead at your age.com Does exactly what it says on the tin.

I'm seriously going to have to open a new blog for these, because there's just too many of them. It won't be heavily linked from here, so that I can keep my fannish and professional stuff at least nominally apart, but if anyone's interested, I'll drop you the link when/if it exists.

In the meantime:

What Google can learn from history. Interesting piece bringing together the history of copyright and competition (antitrust) law and drawing some striking parallels.

Australia's blacklisted internet site list is leaked. The objections are not entirely about the list of sites blacklisted, more about the opaque nature of the choices made.

Podcast about Cloud Computing and the EUCALYPTUS project. I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet, but it sounds interesting.

Library news (not all good, not all bad):

This is an old article, but worth the read. One of the biggest challenges in US libraries in recent years has been the Patriot Act. I'm still reading up about this, but this was one librarian's response to the privacy issues involved.

MIT Open Access mandate. It's hard to over-stress how important this is. Open Access should be HUGE, and institutions are starting to catch up. Harvard's doing it, Oxford's working on it. It's becoming real.

Washington State Libraries offers advice for hard times, and Friends of the Library in MN are doing their part

New York Libraries may lose up to 17% of their budget. That's about $23m and nearly 500 more people out of work. The rest could face losing 20% of their hours. More details about Brooklyn

Philadelphia's having problems too. Oh, and Virginia Tech

An email with a link to an article in the Independent about discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgendered people in the workplace is filtered out by 'content filters'. Can anyone spell 'irony'? The original article

I really hope this guy's wrong...

Web 2.0 in libraries:

Defusing traditional arguments against letting go of content. With bonus flash presentation!

CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) has been getting into hot water over Web 2.0 matters lately. It was originally sparked by a blog post in which the Chief Executive seemed to be highly dismissive of Twitter and other social networking sites, and talked about only having conversations in 'official spaces'. This backfired on him somewhat spectacularly, but to his credit, he's been listening and learning from the experience. His latest blog post suggests that he has at least grasped the problem ("Foster a culture of working on the web. Explain the value of modernised professional qualifications. And get a lot better at communication."). I'm not holding my breath to see what happens about solutions, but some cautious optimism doesn't feel too out of place.

There are interesting debates and conversations going on in the library world at the moment about what 'the future of libraries' is, and how we avoid getting left behind by the technological revolutions (JISC are leading the discussion - their website). There's a debate taking place in Oxford on 2 April, and one of the invited speakers, Peter Murray Rust, a computational chemist at Cambridge, has been blogging about his thoughts and the processes he's using to draw them together. Personally, I have my doubts about using the word 'revolution' in this context, but that's for another post.

Spring at last?

Food, Glorious Food

Life beyond LJ

Places I have been

Anywhere but here.

Linksies!

Swift links

Linkspam. Which I need to remember to actually crosspost...

In which I attempt to be organised. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Spam spam spam spam (2nd verse, the same as the first)

I would use an appropriate icon, but it'd be the wrong one in a few hours...

Delicious clear-out

Clearing out Delicious

Grr. Argh.

Grr. Argh

Research and Links

Tentatively awesome

Sand and me have handled the most bizarre briefs

Links round-up

Library round-up

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